Free The Irish Cairn Murder by Dicey Deere

want to work on a new villanelle about Irish women. I’m going to make it sound centuries old, the time of ladies weaving tapestries and the like. But I want
the reader to slowly realize, with a little frisson, that it’s about Irishwomen in the year 2002.”
    Sheila said, “Rosie is fixing lunch now. Ham sandwiches.” And at the door, “At least I know they won’t kill me.”
    Winifred, picking up the quill pen, said, “We can go after lunch and my yoga. We’ll take the basket Rose uses for the kitchen garden. And the Barnaby.”

19
    T he sun was in Natalie’s eyes, it flickered through the trees, so that she saw only the man’s figure. She squinted and moved aside. Now she could see his face.
    Pale eyes were looking back at her from a flat-cheeked face. It was a sensual face with a jutting mouth that right now bore a triumphant smile. His hair, faintly receding, was brown and looked dyed. He could be in his midforties. He looked fit, as though he worked out. He wore corduroys and an expensive-looking, diamond-patterned sweater. A brimmed suede hat lay on the cairn beside him; it had left a faint red mark on his forehead. “Well, now.” He surveyed her. “Finally! Wasted my time. You should’ve known better.”
    Not an Irishman. American accent? Australian? A cultivated accent. She stared at him. He wasn’t quite the Cro-Magnon man, the brute she had visualized.
    â€œWell? Come on! The money! I haven’t time to dither around.”
    She was too enraged to speak. Her heart was beating hard. When her voice came out, it was hoarse and almost strangled in her throat. “Who are you? I don’t know what your letters mean! And those trinkets! I—”
    The man’s eyes went narrow. He took a step toward her.
There under the trees, she hated his closeness. “You—Where’s the money?”
    â€œI don’t understand any of it! You’ve made some kind of mistake. I haven’t any past! I haven’t any secrets for you to blackmail me about! I came to tell you—”
    â€œThe money ,” the man said. His voice was incredulous. “The forty thousand pounds! You didn’t bring the money? ”
    â€œNo, it’s all wrong!” She was shaking. In the right-hand pocket of her jacket, her fist closed spasmodically on his third note. “I don’t know, for instance, what you mean by Cloverleaf.”
    â€œLiar,” the man said softly. “If you know anything you know Cloverleaf. The last thing you’d have wanted to know.”
    She was in a nightmare. Was she really under the trees by the cairn at this corner of the Sylvester Hall lands? A nightmare, but here she was, sun filtering through the trees. The worst of the nightmare was that it bore some dreadful kind of reality just outside her reach.
    â€œYou …” The man’s face was furious. He reached out and gripped her arm. “You—”
    â€œNo!” She wrenched her arm free. “No! You! Invading Sylvester Hall! Sneaking in and creeping up the stairs and stealing my father’s, my—” For now she was the furious one, frightened but furious, and she dug her hand into her left-hand pocket and pulled out her father’s ivory penknife. Her hand shook as she held it out for him to see. “You stole it! My father’s, my—”
    The man stared at her holding the penknife. He said roughly, “Are you crazy?” He reached out and snatched the penknife from her hand. He was looking at her so strangely that her confusing, bewildering fear made her tremble. Then the man shook his head as though to clear it. He stepped away.
    A breeze had sprung up, leaves scattered down from the
trees, turning in the sunlight. What now, Natalie thought, what now? But she was immediately to know, for the extortionist stepped close to her, his flat-cheeked face fierce in its anger. “You lying bitch!