Excerpt of Murder at Irish Mensa by Clare O'Beara

Cara needed to fetch the papers for the next event of the day. The clutter of papers in her bedroom was gradually diminishing but raffle prizes were being added. Stifling in her silk blouse and waistcoat on the warm day, she decided to change as the formal meetings were ended. Pulling on a clean white t–shirt and transferring her badge, she took papers, a bag of pens and a bag of wrapped mint sweets and trotted downstairs again. The lifts were always busy in hotels and she quite enjoyed the carpeted stairs – she had only one floor to go.

A Garda car, white with a high–vis stripe, was now parked in front of the hotel. No uniformed people were in sight. The ambulance had gone. Getting more worried about the injured parties as time went on, she decided to stand in front of the door and ask the next guard to appear what was happening. Meanwhile small knots of Mensans were clustering in the foyer.

"Treasure Hunt," she called, waving a sheet in the air. "Teams of three or four." The teams were to make sure everyone had company and met other people besides, in the case of couples, their own partners. Immediately teams formed and Cara had a queue on her hands.

"You're not timed," she told them. "You'll be sent out three minutes apart. Hand the sheets in at the registration desk on your return." She distributed sheets, pens and mints and set the first team loose. "Out the door, out the gate, turn right." They jogged off reading the first clue.

"Any problem?" someone asked her, indicating the Garda car.

"Nothing to worry about," she assured him.

"Can we go with you?" a pair of leggy blondes from England wearing t–shirts and shorts asked a local member, a single thirtyish man named John with a modest demeanour. "Your badge says Clondalkin so we're sure to win."

Cara stifled a grin. She had asked John, a civil servant, to organise a pub crawl and he had replied,

"You know as much about Clondalkin's pubs as I do."

"But you live there," she'd protested, and he'd reiterated

"– And you know as much about the pubs as I do."

Therefore she'd driven to Clondalkin village, a pretty and historic cluster with a round tower, square tower and monastic settlement, strolled around and worked out a treasure trail which included some of the pubs. The hunters could stop for refreshment if they wished or could walk on past because the clues referred to items outside the premises. For instance:

'On Sunday my doors are shut no more

Inside you'll smell the hops and yeast.

If today held a birthday treat in store

How old would be my sable beast?'

The Black Lion had its date of origin on its painted sign.

John acquiesced, warning the girls that he couldn't promise anything. Cara gave them a sheet and sent them out to the bright sunshine.

The teams went off briskly and the foyer was soon nearly empty.

"I'm looking for the organiser," said a deep voice behind Cara as she finished directing the final team out the gate. Turning, she saw a uniformed garda eyeing her suspiciously. Perhaps it hadn't been wise for her to wear an X–Files T–shirt with a caricature of Agent Scully standing with folded arms. Or did everyone who found themselves facing the uniform immediately wonder what they had done wrong?

"That would be me. How can I help? And how are the people who were injured?"

"I'll come to that in a minute. Can I have your name please?" He was broadly built and sounded as though he was from Kerry. Cara gave it, pointing to the spelling on her badge as he wrote it down.

"I'm Garda Kennedy. And you're the organiser of Mencap, is that correct?"

"Ah – Mencap does wonderful work, but we're not connected. This is Mensa. The high IQ society," she added when the name didn't seem to register with him.

He looked her up and down again and wrote it in his notebook without comment.

"We're going to have to ask you a few questions," he announced. "Would you mind coming this way?"