Erin Go Bloody by Dan Andriacco

Author:Dan Andriacco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes novels
ISBN: 9781787050129
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2016
Published: 2016-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

Not Buying It

“Jamie didn’t kill himself,” Karen Ellicott insisted, sitting in Mac’s office the next morning.

“You didn’t say that yesterday,” I pointed out. I had a vivid memory of her moaning over the body, “Oh, Jamie, Jamie, why did you do it?”

“Yesterday I was in shock.”

Johanna Rawls’s front-page story in that morning’s Observer stuck with the standard “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” phrase. She quoted Oscar; noted the presence of Mac, Karen Ellicott, and yours truly on the scene; and even squeezed a few words out of Phil Oakland, not about Kierkegaard. Somewhere around the middle of the fifteen-paragraph story Johanna recapped the St. Patrick’s Day controversy and snagged an expression of sorrow about Ivanhoe’s death from Brett McGee.

“Now that you are unshocked, to adopt a neologism, on what do you base the conviction that your brother did not take his own life, if anything?” Mac asked. “It is not unusual for survivors to deny that a loved one killed himself or herself. Suicide used to be considered rather disrespectable.”

Karen looked small sitting in one of Mac’s big chairs. “I loved Jamie, but he thought too much of himself to deprive the world of him. And if he did kill himself, he wouldn’t have used a gun. He hated guns and he had plenty of other weapons - you saw them on his wall. He’d been collecting antique arms for years.”

That had bothered Tall Rawls, I remembered.

“I don’t think he could kill himself with a battle axe or a crossbow,” I said.

“He had knives and swords. On top of all that, his ‘creative juices’” - she made air quotes-”hadn’t dried up. The last time I talked to him, a week ago yesterday, he was excited about the new book he was working on.”

“Not mourning his murdered lover?” I said in faux surprise. “That was the day after her funeral.”

“When the real world let him down, Jamie retreated to his own. He was like that even as a kid. But you saw him at Hawes & Holder. He was very upset about Cassie’s death, and even more upset that he wasn’t welcome at the visitation. He didn’t kill her.”

The fervor in Karen’s voice was almost enough to convince me.

“You make a good case,” Mac told her.

My phone rang. Well, actually it played the Indiana Jones theme song. I looked down and saw that Walter Ellicott was calling. I turned off the ringtone. “Sorry.” I made a mental note to call him back, even if he didn’t leave a message.

“Was your brother left-handed or right-handed?” Mac asked Karen.

“Right-handed.”

And Ivanhoe was shot in his right temple, with the gun in his right hand. Thank heavens! The old it-couldn’t-be-suicide-because-the-victim-was-left-handed trope is so old its beard is white.

Mac cleared his throat with a rumble. “Perhaps your brother’s talk of his next book was only a brave front for his favorite sibling. Chief Hummel has suspected all along that Cassandra was killed with a gun that belonged to her husband. It is conceivable that the two illicit

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