Murder in the Fairy Ring: Erin's Glen Cozy Mysteries, #2

Murder in the Fairy Ring

Book Two in the Erin's Glen Mystery Series

A.P. Ryan

Copyright © 2024 by A.P. Ryan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at Glenside Books, Devon, UK.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between characters and persons, living or dead, are unintentional and coincidental. Erin's Glen and many locations referred to in the book are fictitious. Some other places will be familiar, but time and imagination will have altered them.

Contents

1.Astray

2. Change in the Air

3. Rosie’s Rant

4.Time for Tea

5.Hot News

6.Quinn’s Curiosities

7. Newsround

8.An Elemental Discovery

9.A Dark Morning

10.Shocking News

11.Craft, Cake and Conversation

12.Nightmares in the Woods

13. Stirring Memories

14.Protests

15.Sharing Knowledge

16. More Questions than Answers

17.Voices from the Past

18.Invasion of Privacy

19.School Days

20.Mysterious Disappearances

21.Haunted

22.Father’s Confessions

23.Paper Trails

24.Technology Old and New

25.Blaney’s Blarney

26.Cause of Death

27.Covert Surveillance

28.Information, Communication and Technology

29.No Kidding

30.Echoes from the Past

31.In the Clear

32.That Monday Morning Feeling

33.Blues and Twos

34.Stitch Up

35.Good News

36.Making connections

37.Home

38.Midnight Meditations

39.One Year Later

40.Revelations, Reunions and Retreats

Chapter one

Astray

The night was inky black. A thick layer of cloud obscured the stars that usually twinkled over Erin’s Glen. A wispy veil of mist hovered close to the ground and seemed to be rising as the darkness closed in. Toddy lived a way out of the town and had a long walk back home to his dilapidated cottage in the woods. Half an hour earlier, he had left the Shenanigans Pub in town with a gaggle of other locals. The guards were about, and the proprietor of this drinking establishment wanted to hold onto his license, so he called last orders and moved the crowd out onto the street just before 11 pm.

Toddy had begun his journey shiny-faced and bleary-eyed, still giggling and hiccupping. He had been slightly unsteady on his feet but stable enough to walk the few miles home. A few of his drinking pals called out cheery goodbyes and mild jocular insults as they went their separate ways on the road out of town. It was mid-week, and after the straggle of drinkers had dispersed, a silence had crept over the street. The shop sign for Quinn’s Curiosities, the antique store on the high street, creaked in the wind that now whistled along the street. A few streetlights blinked. Toddy turned up his collar and shook his cap out of his pocket. He pulled it over his unruly black curly hair and grimaced as the breeze picked up with a damp, chill edge.

‘Onwards and upwards,’ he murmured as he plodded up the street towards the fairy ring and home.

Toddy didn’t relish his return to his squalid home. He had lived in the cottage all his life, and now that his parents had passed on, he was there alone. He had taken it upon himself to be an unofficial custodian of the fairy ring and felt that his presence was needed to protect the ancient site. His father had told him how this duty was in the family, passed on from father to son down the generations. However, the pay for this self-appointed role was non-existent, and Toddy had to make do with state handouts based on his claims of poor health, supplemented by a poached rabbit and homegrown vegetables for many of his meals. Despite his material poverty, he had a sense of purpose and an iron-clad belief in the Shee or little people that inhabited the sacred mound he protected.

As Toddy left the environs of the town tonight, the darkness intensified. He passed the old stone that marked the entry into the town of Erin’s Glen and glanced down at it. He could barely make it out. The mist started to swirl about his legs and seemed to be creeping up his body as he walked briskly along. His pace had quickened, and his gait had levelled out now that he had sobered up in the frigid night air. He looked up, expecting to see some stars as he left behind the lights of the town, but the sky was a heavy, cloudy-black dome above his head, moonless and starless. Toddy had no torch but wasn’t too concerned; he knew the route home well. He had walked it thousands of times, first with his parents and school pals and now, as an adult, increasingly solitary. He knew he was considered an oddity in the town but accepted it as part of his role.

His life now had few immediate ties with the local community. The bonds that brought people together in the town, such as church, school, sports and shopping, were not a regular part of his existence. He wasn’t one for ‘kissing the altar gates’ as his mother used to put it; he didn’t go near the church. He had no family now, and due to his bad health as a child and adolescent, he played no sports. Most weeks, his only trip into town was to venture down to Shenanigans mid-week to take advantage of the cheap drinks. Fortified by a few Guinness, he would latch on to a crowd there, usually hovering on the edge. He had learned the script of what to say – the usual jokes, jibes and nicknames that he and the others used every time they saw each other. It was a jovial social shorthand that obliterated the need for any proper conversation. That suited him. He didn’t want any intrusive questions. But the men he exchanged banter with, the grown boys he went to school with, now had families of their own and jobs to go to. All Toddy had was his cottage and his position of watcher and keeper of the fairy ring.

As he rolled these thoughts around in his mind, familiar musings, he became conscious of the mist getting denser as he left the town, now a long way behind him. He put his hand out in front of him and couldn’t see it. He felt his levels of anxiety rise due to the dark closing in around him, rendering him blind as he walked home on his own. He could hear the river gushing along in the darkness and was gripped by an almost primal phobia of falling into the depths of the sub-zero water. Toddy couldn’t swim, and nightmares of drowning haunted him. Bad dreams troubled him more recently, isolated as he was in his cottage at night.

Toddy lifted his feet with increased awareness as he walked on. He stamped each foot down with a sense of purpose. He could feel the road beneath his feet and hear the thud of his boots on the tarmac. The land was his home, and his intuitive closeness to the earth soothed him. With a countryman's sense of direction and knowledge of the landscape, he knew where the river was in relation to the road. ‘No chance of me falling in like some townie eegit.’ He comforted himself with these thoughts and concentrated on the rhythmic sound of his steps along the road.

After a few paces, he stopped.

The usual landmarks, the trees, hedges, walls, mounds of earth, and the well he looked for as his two-mile marker out of town had all disappeared. Toddy felt a vertigo-like sensation sweep over him and thought he might fall to the road. His innate sense of direction was gone. He turned around, then around again. A sick, icy panic knotted in his stomach and seeped up through his intestines into his chest and spread out into his limbs. He felt jittery and disorientated by the lack of his inner compass, which usually functioned so well. He stood in the murky, misty darkness, frozen to the spot. He was confused by the sudden disappearance of the external landmarks that he usually used as his guide.

Toddy took a breath and shook himself. He strode forward in a futile attempt to regain his confidence and sense of direction. He stopped again and listened. Yes, he was sure of it now. He could hear a clip-clop behind him.

He stopped, and it stopped.

He walked on a few paces; there it was again.

Clip clop, clip clop.

He stopped abruptly, his body tense with fear and cold.

Silence.

He stood stationary, frozen by a sudden terror in the claustrophobic darkness. He could feel the tendrils of mist creep along his cheek like fingers. The fog surrounded him and hovered, silent and brooding as he waited. Toddy could hear his raspy breathing. In the distance, an owl hooted.

He gritted his teeth and strode on resolutely.

The clip-clop started again. It seemed to be following him; he quickened his pace, and it got quicker. Toddy ran and stumbled into the grass verge at the side of the road, unable to make out where the road ended and the fields began. He tripped up in the thick, long grass and fell heavily into the wet foliage. His old, broken boots had let in the wet from the grass, and he swore as his feet became soggy. As he lay shivering in the grass, he could hear the hungry gushing of the river closer now. He swallowed hard. The knot of panic now wedged in his throat, he called out hoarsely, ‘Who is it?’

No answer.

Chapter two

Change in the Air

The spring sunshine splintered the bare trees. The wooded area, sheltered by a circle of green hills and the mountain in the distance, was quiet and still. A few songbirds, returned from their winter sojourn, made a distinctive chiff-chaff sound in the distance. Ziggy, a curly-haired chocolate-coloured spaniel, scampered ahead of Rosie, a neat grey-haired lady dressed in Wellington boots and a heavy tweed coat. Rosie loved mornings like this. She smiled as she tilted her head to feel the warmth of the gentle sunshine on her face.

Over the winter, these woods had often been under a blanket of snow, but now enticed by the warmth of spring, tiny emerald shoots appeared. The daffodils provided splashes of golden colour, and Rosie spotted some early bluebells. The trees, so recently bare and stark, were now adorned with unfurling green buds. A sense of awakening and renewal was in the air. After a difficult few months over the winter, Rosie’s heart began to warm with a sense of hope.

A few puffy white clouds drifted across the pure blue sky. The air sparkled with a crystal-clear freshness unique to Erin’s Glen. Everything felt alive, and the sunshine sparkled off the young green leaves. Rosie paused and breathed in the sharp pine scent of the wood, her fingers brushing the rough textured bark of an oak tree she was standing by.

Suddenly, her attention was drawn to the spot where Ziggy had decided to stop abruptly. A poster was pinned to a tree. At first, Rosie was almost pained to see the trunk punctured in this way, but as she drew nearer, her attention was drawn to the content of the notice:

Please be advised that planning permission is being sought to build in this area. This site has been identified as a prime spot for an international tourist interpretation centre. The proposed centre will attract millions of visitors each year and help them understand and enjoy this area's folklore, history, and culture.

If you have any comments on this proposed development, please contact Erin’s Glen Planning Permission Office.

Rosie stood stunned. She was horrified that this sacred spot would be disturbed in such a rapacious way.

Ziggy was looking intently at his mistress. His head cocked to one side with a quizzical expression on his fuzzy face. Rosie caught his eye and tutted, ‘Just you wait and see; no good will come of this.’

With a deep sigh, she walked through the woods, Ziggy now scampering ahead. As she walked along thoughtfully, she caught a glimpse of something white just on the edge of her vision. She stopped to look more carefully. Rosie was able to make out a figure in the woods in the distance. It was just fleeting.

Ziggy ran off to greet the person draped in white and carrying a basket. Rosie hurried after her nosey dog, curious to catch up with the enigmatic figure. She could hear a female voice, light and tinkly, greet her canine companion. The new spring growth in the woods obscured her view, and Rosie had to rely on her sense of hearing to locate the mysterious voice. Then Rosie heard Ziggy make a noise that was halfway between a yelp of pain and a bark. A sudden panic gripped Rosie. She moved as quickly as she could through the wooded area but had to tread carefully to avoid tripping over tree roots and branches that had come down in the recent late winter storms. A low-hanging cobweb caught Rosie in the face. With frustration, she had to stop to clear off the sticky threads that clung to her features and obscured her glasses. The tinkly voice stopped, and Rosie looked this way and that, trying to decide on her route.

Ziggy came scampering back, barking at her as if to say, ‘Where have you been?’ He stood close to her, shivering. Rosie could feel him trembling as he leaned in against her leg. She bent over and smoothed her hand over his back, partly to reassure herself he was unharmed and partly to calm him down.

‘Mmph, where have you been, young man?’ Rosie replied. ‘And who have you been talking to?’

Ziggy sat down and blinked at her, his amber eyes glowing in the low sunshine of the early spring morning. Rosie was unsettled by his behaviour but tried to shake off her discomfort. The little dog’s shallow breath slowed, and Rosie and Ziggy continued their walk through the fairy ring wood, but this time in the direction of home. The wood was on the edge of the small town of Erin’s Glen, where Rosie had lived all her life. Today, Saturday, was a day off from her job as Parish Secretary at St Brigid's church in the town, and she savoured every moment of her walk through the picturesque woods.

The sun created dappled patterns on the forest floor, and the crunch of her feet through the leaves provided a background sound to the mental chatter in Rosie’s head that morning. A lot had been going on in Erin’s Glen, and there had been dramatic changes over the past couple of months. Not least, a change of boss. Father Gerard, the priest she had worked with for decades, was now gone, replaced by a younger man with some strange ideas. At least as far as Rosie was concerned. The many changes in Erin's Glen unsettled her, and she had much to think about on these walks. She had taken to coming through the woods now that the weather had improved and the days were longer. It was deeply unsettling to see news that even the fort itself, an ancient monument that had been in existence for millennia, was not immune to the effects of change and so-called progress. Before leaving the woods, she turned around and looked at the hill fort. The mound dominated the woods. The grassy banks were ringed by terraced walls and ramparts. The steep curve of the convex hill rose to a flat surface on which a majestic oak tree flourished. The locals called it ‘The fairy ring,’ and many believed that the little folk inhabited the mound's interior. Rosie pursed her lips and sighed. She intuitively sensed it would cause trouble.

Rosie returned from the woods along a country path that opened into a sparsely housed residential area. Her small, neat bungalow was at the end of the road on the way back towards town. Its tidy garden, floral curtains and freshly painted door welcomed her home.

As she put the key in the door and stepped inside, a tall figure loomed behind her, creating a shadow in the early morning sunlight. She felt a hand on her shoulder before she turned around.

‘Good morning, Rosie.’

Chapter three

Rosie’s Rant

‘O h, dear God, don’t creep up on me like that!’ Rosie chided her longtime friend Mary Jo.

Mary Jo – or Sister Mary Joseph – was setting off for an early morning run. A Carmelite nun living locally, she worked as a Physical Education teacher at the local school. She was often out and about walking briskly, jogging or even swimming in the river that ran through Erin’s Glen.

‘Ah, Rosie, I'm sorry; I just wanted to catch you quickly to ask if you heard the news.’

Both women entered the hall of Rosie’s bungalow; Rosie deftly got out of her coat and boots and undid Ziggy’s collar as she answered. ‘I saw a notice up in the forest about planning permission for an interpretation centre. What do you make of it?’

As usual, Rosie put the kettle on to boil without asking Mary Jo if she wanted a cup of tea.

Rosie stood with her back to the counter, facing Mary Jo, teaspoon held aloft as she warmed to her subject, ‘Well, there’s going to be stiff opposition, I can tell you, not least from that commune that has set up at the foot of the mountain.’ Mary Jo was nodding her head in agreement as Rosie gave her opinion. ‘And they will