CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Dr. Richard Farrely looked too young to know anything. He was short and very skinny, with sandy hair cut so that it almost looked like a mullet. He wore round horn-rim glasses and kept sniffing. Grant was reminded of a mouse.

They met in the middle of Dublin Park and sat on one of the benches near the gardens which, incongruously, were still in bloom in late October. Grant had forgotten about the strange flora of Ireland; on their stroll over, before passing over a bridge at the River Liffey, they had seen palm trees, one of the signs the isle’s temperate climate. Before meeting Farrely, Malone had steered him around the park to stand before the mounted bust of James Joyce.

“Anything you’d like to say to the great man?” Malone asked.

“I couldn’t get through Ulysses.”

“Bah. Riley and I didn’t even make you try to read Ulysses. It was Dubliners we pushed on you on that trip.”

Grant stared at the blackened head of Joyce. “Good stuff, James,” he said.

Malone laughed and took his arm. “Let’s go see the Boy Wonder,” he said.

“You have to realize, Detective Grant, that Samhain is not a person.”

Farrely, unable to sit down, was pacing in front of the two cops, sniffing and moving his hands as if they were on fire. Grant was surprised at his accent: Midwestern American.

“Can you possibly stop shaking your hands, Doctor?” Grant asked.

“Hmm?” Farrely said, and Malone jabbed Grant in the ribs.

“You were saying, Doctor?” Malone said.

“Ummm . . .” Farrely looked at the ground, sniffed, put his hands into his pockets and took them out again. “I was saying that Samhain is not a person. Samhain is a festival, marking the beginning of winter and the completion of the harvest. In Irish it’s pronounced ‘Sah-ween.’ The Druids were deathly afraid that once winter came it would never end, and that there would be no more crops to plant. Samhain was marked by the offering of harvest bounty—and sometimes human sacrifices—to the Lord of the Dead, in hopes that the next planting in Spring would be a good one. It wasn’t much of a jolly celebration at all.”

Farrelly paced, sniffed.

“But—” Grant began, but the teacher went on, not minding him.

“However . . . this harvest festival, eventually, became what is known as Halloween. You realize that Halloween isn’t much celebrated here in Ireland. In America it’s a different thing, of course, but the roots are in the festival of Samhain.”

He suddenly stood stock-still and stared at the ground.

Grant tried again. “But you said there was a Lord of the Dead.”

“Oh, yes! And, actually, there are a few texts where his name became merged with that of the festival. It was said that on one night of the year, on what became Halloween, that the Lord of the Dead had the power to let the spirits of the departed roam the earth.”

Grant was about to speak when the teacher answered his question: “Therefore, yes, over time—centuries, long after the Druids were gone—the name Samhain has been blurred with that of the original festival.”

“And is there really a Lord of the Dead?” Grant asked.

“Hmm?” The teacher looked up, startled. He thrust his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. Suddenly he laughed, a dry blurting sound. “A Lord of the Dead? Of course not! Are there banshees? Leprechauns?” He stretched out the last word to a ridiculous length, making it sound silly. “Look, there are all kinds of manifestations of the Death Lord in nearly all cultures. The Archangel Gabriel was known as the Angel of Death. In Hindu mythology—”

“We’re done here,” Grant said, in disgust. He started to rise but Malone pushed him back onto the park bench.

“Doctor,” Malone said politely, “aren’t there folk who still believe in such things?”

The teacher barked another laugh. “Of course! I’ve been dealing with them my whole academic life!”

Grant wanted to ask him if that meant for the last twenty minutes.

Malone continued politely. “Have any of these folk been more . . . persuasive than others?”

“Yes! I’ve talked to people out by the Blasket Islands who swear they’ve seen witches and fairies! Once you get out of the cities nearly everyone still believes in changelings. Or at least many of the older folks do. I tried doing a treatise on leprechauns,” again he pronounced it “leap-ree-cahns,” “but I couldn’t stop laughing enough to get more than a few pages into it. I have enough banshee stories to fill a book and a half! As a matter of fact I’m publishing a book on banshees next year, University of Michigan Press. The notes alone run forty pages. If it does well—”

“Doctor,” Malone interrupted gently, “have you come across anyone who seems . . . familiar with the Lord of the Dead?”

“Yes! Megan Conner almost had me believing he was real. She knows where he used to reside, claims she knows all about him.” He laughed. “In fact, she called me not two days ago, said she had just seen him! I tried to corroborate a few of her other claims, banshee sightings and such, and nothing came of it. She’s quite unreliable, in my opinion.”

“And where might we find Megan Conner?” Malone asked, pulling out his notebook at the same time as Grant.

“Hmmm?” Doctor Farrely stood up straight and said, “I can give you her address, if you like. She lives on the way to the Dingle Penninsula, in a beehive.”