Free Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly Page A

Could have been a traveler, although we don’t see many of them around here. And why would someone from away find himself dead in our bog?”
    Maura found herself getting lost in the Irish terms again. “Wait a moment—‘gardaí’ means police, right?”
    “It does, if there’s more than one of them. It’s a ‘garda’ if he’s alone. Or she, these days. But the place they work from is a garda station.”
    “Okay. So what’s a traveler?” Maura said.
    “Ah, you don’t know the term? A traveler, a tinker. They’re the
Lucht Siúil
, meaning ‘the walking people’—they wander about and do odd jobs.”
    Maura still wasn’t sure she understood the term—something like a gypsy, maybe? “So you’re saying that someone just passing through might have thought the bog was a good place to dump a body?”
    “I don’t think so, dear. More likely it was someone who didn’t know the land well, who stumbled off the path after dark. Might be that he’d had a bit too much to drink—there’s a pub not far along the road, at the Killinga crossroad.”
    “A pub? Out here?”
    Mrs. Nolan nodded. “Not so long ago when people didn’t have cars and such, they’d welcome a place they could walkto when their work was done. It’s still there—I’m sure you’ll be going by it sometime.”
    But one small question nagged at her: if everybody knew everybody else, shouldn’t someone know the dead man in the bog? Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t one of those prehistoric mummies she’d heard about. Was it a mummy if it had been preserved in a wet bog rather than a dry desert? She had no idea.
    “That bog where they found the…remains…right down the hill from here—the gardaí haven’t figured out how long it was there?”
    “Ah, now, there’s a question. A bog can hold many secrets, and it’s hard to say for how long. Seems hardly a day goes by without someone digging up an ancient crock of butter or a nice bundle of old silver or the like. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where a thing’s been left, and they do tend to shift around over time.”
    “Are there experts to talk to?” Maura asked.
    “Oh, certainly. No doubt we’ll be seeing some high muckety-muck from the National Museum poking around down there. Seems like the government always wants to stick its nose in our business.”
    The last thing Maura wanted was to get involved in a political discussion, especially since she knew nothing about the Irish government and was happy to leave it that way. Local regulations might apply to her, though. It struck her that if she wanted to stay on and work at the pub for more than a day or two, there might be paperwork to consider—or to ignore. Maura had seen more than one bar back home run afoul of regulations: were things more casual here? From what little she’d seen of Jimmy and Mick, they didn’t seemlike the types to bother with details like that. Maybe it would be simpler to close the place down, now that Old Mick was gone.
    “Mrs. Nolan, did Mick tell you he’d asked me to stick around and help out at the pub for now?”
    Mrs. Nolan beamed at her. “He did that. I think it would be grand—I’d have more time to spend with you. There’s so much I can tell you about your gran and the families, but as you can see, I’m not as strong as I once was, and my memory isn’t as good as I’d like. But I’d be happy if you’d take him up on that.”
    “I’m still thinking about it, but I’d love to be able to spend more time with you too. I wish Gran had said more, but she was always so tired in the evenings, and didn’t always have the energy to talk.” And Maura herself had been too young and self-absorbed to ask. She regretted that now.
    “Ah, you’re a kind girl to humor an old woman. The young people now, they don’t want to listen to the old stories, or try to save the old language. Don’t worry yourself, dearie, and don’t feel you have to spend all your time with me. But if you