by Maidhc Dain
He hit her again and went to the bottom of the kitchen. He took the bowl from the top of the dresser and shoved his hand into it. He took out two pounds.
‘What’s this?’ he bellowed. ‘Or do you think you are married to a stump of a fool?’
Then he smashed the bowl on the floor. He put the money into a pouch that was already bulging with notes. Lucinda burst into tears.
‘It was my mother who gave me that bowl for my first marriage,’ she sobbed.
Sly caught another bowl and smashed it. Lucinda could bear this no longer. She went down to the dresser, took four mugs that were in the house before she married Sly and smashed them on the floor.
‘Any fool, woman or man, can smash ware on the floor,’ she cried, walking away from him.
At this, Sly’s face turned the colour of a turnip.
‘As soon as I get a chance,’ he fumed, ‘I’m going into the attorney to take your name off my will and, if there’s any sight of you when I come home tonight, I’ll make a skillet of your head.’
He rushed out to the stable, saddled his horse, put headstalls on the two young horses he was ready to sell at the fair, jumped on his horse’s back and tightened the reins he had on the two horses.
‘Go on,’ he bellowed in a voice so harsh that the horses ran as fast as they could down the boreen.
It was hunger that reminded John Dempsey that it was time to head for the house. Lucinda had boiled a pig’s head and a pot of potatoes. As soon as he came in the door, she got a fright.
‘Oh, God save us,’ she exclaimed, ‘I thought it was Walter who was there.’
She turned her back to him as if she were concealing something.
‘What’s the big secret you are hiding from me at the table?’ Dempsey enquired.
‘You won’t believe this,’ Lucinda began, ‘but before Walter left he lost his head with me. He hit me a few times with his fists and broke some of my delf on the floor. And he found the money I was hiding in the bowl. I have seen him mad many times but I have never seen white froth coming from his mouth until today. He said he would make a skillet of my head when he came home … Oh, John,’ she sighed, ‘I will be got dead in the morning.’
Dempsey saw a wooden box on the floor.
‘What’s in the box?’ he asked Lucinda.
‘When Walter was beating me,’ she told him, ‘I saw something falling on the floor. I thought at first that it was some sort of pin. I stayed where I was until he had gone for a while. I picked it up from the ground. What was there but a key. I hadn’t the courage until now to find out what the key would open but it is suitable to open this box that was under the bed. You won’t believe what is in the box.’
‘Upon my soul,’ Dempsey observed, ‘from the state of your eye, it wasn’t a slap you got but the fist.’
Then he walked to the side of the table.
‘Oh my!’ he exclaimed taking a gun from the box. ‘I wonder which one of us he was going to kill with this … Yes, and it is ready for use.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lucinda asked him, trembling.
‘What I mean is that there is a bullet in the gun. A person couldn’t be more prepared than that.’
They looked at each other and then at the gun.
‘But we have the gun now,’ said Lucinda with fire in her eyes.
‘Ah Lucinda,’ Dempsey pleaded, ‘didn’t I tell you before to put those thoughts from your mind?’
She turned on him. ‘John Dempsey,’ she began, ‘have you any backbone? Look! It’s very simple. We will both stay up tonight until whatever time he comes home. He will be blind drunk as usual. When he is seated in the chair and fast asleep, then we will do the deed.’
Dempsey wasn’t too happy with the plan but Lucinda explained to him that there were horse dealers who weren’t too happy with Sly and were out to get him for a long time and that it was he, Sly, who circulated that story. They would both take Sly’s body out to the haggard and she would go looking for the neighbours’ help.
‘What will we do with the gun?’ Dempsey interjected.
‘We will put it in the box and back where we found it,’ Lucinda told him animatedly.
‘This is our last chance to get rid of suffering and a bad marriage at the same time. Aren’t we the two who would work this farm together,’ she coaxed him.
‘It’s as well for us to have a bite of food first before I lose my appetite,’ Dempsey replied.
When she heard this, Lucinda knew that she had a partner who would do the deed with her.
The horse fair in Carlow town was on 8 November 1834, and it was the biggest horse fair in the county. Buyers and men selling horses came from all over Ireland. Walter Sly knew most of them well from travelling from fair to fair. The horse buyers were big spenders and big drinkers and they knew their business.
It is said that the day you buy an animal is the day you sell it. Let me explain – if you buy a good animal, you will be able to sell it later on even if the price is high. The November fair in Carlow was the one where every breed and kind of horse was for sale from the work horse to the hunter, not to mention cobs, mules, jennets and donkeys. Everyone, from the highest gentlemen to the tinkers of the road, was at the fair and if a particular buyer didn’t know enough about buying an animal, an unscrupulous one would quickly fool him up to his eyes.
Walter Sly tied the two horses he had for sale to a ring outside Langstrom’s. He stabled the horse that would bring him home in Langstrom’s stable and put an armful of hay under his head.
Frances Campbell had a couple of horses for sale too. She was the wife of a man who held a seat in the House of Lords in England. They had stables in counties Carlow and Kildare. Before he married, Sly often had a drink with Frances and they would go home together when her husband was away in the House of Lords. Nothing much was made of it as they went home the same road or most of it anyway. But it used be said that Sly went the extra mile to her house with her for fear she would be attacked by tinkers. Some of Langstrom’s customers remembered her advising Sly against marrying Lucinda Singleton some years previously.
Frances was standing beside the two horses she had for sale as Sly was coming back from the stable. ‘Let’s go into the tavern, Frances,’ Sly invited her, ‘and we’ll wash down the dust of the road.’
Frances only wanted the word. They both went in. They went into the card room at the back of the bar because women weren’t allowed to drink in the main bar at that time. They drank each other’s, and the King’s, health.
‘I haven’t seen much of you this past while,’ Sly began.
‘I spend most of the year in London now that my husband has been promoted in the House of Lords and, since he got his new post, my heart is broken,’ Frances said with disdain.
Sly looked at her.
‘Is it how you don’t like the city life?’ he asked her.
Frances shook herself.
‘I hate that city,’ she volunteered.
‘And what takes you over there so?’ Sly persisted.
‘Because it came to my ears that he was getting fond of a floosie who works as his secretary,’ she informed him.
When he heard this, Sly burst out laughing.
‘Isn’t he entitled to satisfy his desires?’ he laughed. ‘It’s only human nature – and look who’s talking! You’re no angel yourself.’
Frances smiled when she heard this.
‘It wasn’t that he was playing around with his secretary that bothered me,’ she confided in him, ‘but when he wasn’t eating supper at home, I was worried that he would give me the road. That is very common in England at the moment. Then how would I be, without a title or a shilling in my pouch? I’d be like a tinker’s wife. But it’s not that but this. How are you getting on since you got married?’
Sly shook himself and looked around the room in case anybody but Frances could hear him.
‘You gave me good advice,’ he complained, ‘and I didn’t take it. I thought I was
marrying an angel of a woman. Oh! She is far from an angel. An out and out bitch. I’d be as well off with an oak plank beside me in bed. She is cold, quarrelsome, headstrong and she thinks she is wearing the trousers. Upon my soul, it would take me the rest of my life to explain.’
Frances and Sly didn’t leave Langstrom’s until the afternoon.
‘Right,’ said Sly stretching himself, ‘if we don’t go about our business, we will have to take our animals back home again.’
Out they went.
It was late in the evening when Sly sold his two yearlings to a buyer from a stable in Kildare. He headed for the tavern along with the buyer. That is where he would be paid for his horses and he would give the buyer a small sum for luck. He met other buyers he knew. Without a doubt he would have to take a few drinks in their company. It was the tradition at the fairs.
It was some time later when Frances Campbell came in. She had to spend more time out in the street before a buyer approached her. Ned Radwell, a neighbour of Sly’s, joined them. Sly was very drunk but Frances wasn’t quite as bad. It was about five o’clock and already it was dark outside.
Frances was the one with the most sense at the end of the evening.
‘Walter,’ she said, ‘don’t you think it is time to be going home?’
The three of them left when they had finished their drinks. They went out to the stable and harnessed their horses for the road home. They took the road out by Graiguecullen and up towards Bilboa. When they reached Bilboa the three of them stopped for a last drink before they parted. They had a drink with Thomas Singleton, Lucinda’s son who was in charge of the police station there. After a short time Frances and Ned left for home. Sly had only two more drinks with Singleton but, during that time, he let him know that Lucinda was becoming very cantankerous. Singleton told him that she used to be like that when he was young and that it would be better for Sly to take no notice of her. Singleton observed that Sly was blind drunk.
‘Maybe I should harness my horse and go as far as your house with you,’ he suggested when he saw that Sly was intent on going home.
‘Ah, I pity your poor head,’ Sly spoke in a slurred voice. ‘Put me in my saddle and the horse will go to the house himself.’
Singleton kept his eye on Walter on the horse’s back as they went off in the direction of Oldleighlin until they disappeared from sight at the turn of the road.
Lucinda was seated on a chair with John Dempsey opposite her on the other side of the fire and they had piled on extra turf as they weren’t expecting Sly home until midnight. They were both nervous as they weren’t sure that their plan was without fault but, as Lucinda said, it would be better to be in prison than to live the life she had with her blackguard of a husband. For a while Dempsey would be willing and, half an hour later, he would be in favour of abandoning the plan. But when Lucinda told him that she would take the full blame if things went wrong, he relaxed. He was a reasonably young man with his whole life before him. He was very fond of Lucinda but there is a great difference between being fond of somebody and being in love.
They had no lamp lit and they were depending on the fire to cast sufficient light around the kitchen. Lucinda told Dempsey that if Walter saw a light in the kitchen late at night he would become suspicious as she usually went to bed at nine o’clock during the winter. At twenty past ten they heard the sound of a horse’s hooves coming down the boreen. They both jumped out of their chairs.
‘You know what you have to do,’ Lucinda spoke with a tremor in her voice. ‘Go into the back kitchen and I’ll go into the bedroom. Give him twenty minutes after he sits down in his chair. He should be sound asleep by then. Put your head out the door and if he is asleep come to the room door and you know the rest.’
From the humming they could both hear, they knew that Sly had drunk more than his fill. He always returned from the tavern humming and talking to himself.
The horse stopped in front of the stable. He tried twice to dismount but he nearly fell to the ground.
‘I’ll knock him off the horse,’ Dempsey suggested to Lucinda.
‘Do not,’ she said, shivering with fear.
Sly succeeded in dismounting at the third attempt. They heard him coming in the door not without difficulty. Dempsey had a clear sight of him as he had left the door of the back kitchen ajar. In a short while Sly staggered into the chair. In a few short minutes he was snoring.
Lucinda and Dempsey went into the kitchen. Lucinda walked towards the axe that was standing against the wall. She gave it to Dempsey. He went up to Sly and raised it over his head but lowered it slowly towards the ground and moved back three steps.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said in a low voice.
Lucinda took the axe from him and walked towards Sly but she couldn’t do it either. Suddenly Dempsey found the courage and changed his mind. He took the axe from Lucinda’s hand and landed a fierce blow on the side of Sly’s head. He fell from his chair in a heap on the ground. Lucinda took the gun from her apron and gave it to Dempsey. Without hesitating he put a bullet in Sly’s brain. They each caught Sly by an arm and dragged his body out into the haggard. Dempsey fired another bullet at the wall of the house. They would tell the police that the murderer fired that shot so that neither of them would come out until he had escaped. They both went into the house leaving Sly’s body in the haggard. That is where it would be when the police arrived.
Neither of them slept that night but sat in front of the fire waiting for the eastern sky to brighten.
‘I wonder if any of the neighbours heard the noise of the bullet when I fired that shot,’ Dempsey said.
‘We will soon know,’ Lucinda answered looking at the axe with which he struck the fatal blow.
Dempsey got up out of his chair, took the axe, walked over to the fire and examined it in the light of the flames. He wanted to find out if there was any trace of blood on it. He got an old rag and wiped the axe with it. Then he put it back in its usual place.
‘In the name of God, Lucinda,’ he cried, ‘what have we done? We will both be hanged surely.’
‘We will if you open your big mouth,’ Lucinda warned him. ‘Shake yourself, man … Wasn’t it one of Walter’s enemies who followed him home from the fair that shot him? I can tell you that Walter had a surplus of enemies in this parish not to mention throughout the county. About three years ago didn’t he evict a family down the road – you know, the Brennans. Yes, and what about the horse buyers? Half of them are the breed of the Sheridans and of the tinkers. Some of those would kill you at the turn of a penny.’
That eased Dempsey somewhat.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You are right without a doubt. Did you put the gun back into its box?’
‘I didn’t yet,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll get the box. There’s a half dozen bullets at the back. Put two of them into the gun and I’ll put it back under the bed in our room.’
‘I know nothing about guns,’ Dempsey said, opening the back of the gun while Lucinda gave him two bullets.
He put them into the chamber, eased the hammer back and replaced it in the box.
They put no more turf on the fire – maybe there would be questions to be asked if a big fire was lighting when Lucinda called the neighbours. She put a couple of potatoes roasting in the embers and she asked Dempsey if he would eat a few. But he had no appetite after what he had done.
They spent the night sitting there looking across at each other and neither of them had much to say. Every minute was like an hour and every hour was like a week until at last the eastern sky began to brighten over the land.
‘We will let day dawn and then I’ll go for help. You stay with the body,’ Lucinda said.
They waited another hour and by that time it was bright enough for Lucinda to take the short-cut through the field to her nearest neighbours.
She began to cry and shout when she was within fifty yards of Ben Stacey’s front door. As soon as she got to his house she began to beat the door like a m
adwoman.
‘Walter is dead! Walter is dead!’ she shrieked. ‘Get up, Ben, and help us!’
The door opened and there stood Ben in his drawers.
‘In the name of God, woman, what’s up with you?’ he demanded.
‘Somebody murdered my husband last night,’ Lucinda wailed.
‘Wait a few minutes,’ Stacey replied, calming her. ‘Draw your breath and tell me the whole story.’
‘I was sitting by the fire late last night,’ Lucinda sobbed, ‘and waiting for Walter to come home from the fair. Dempsey had gone to sleep. I heard the horse trotting down the road. He stopped outside the stable door. I was just about to get up off my chair to put some food on the table for him. Then I heard another horse running at speed down the road and into the haggard. I heard a sound like the sound of a gun. I had reached the door by this time. I saw Walter falling from his horse. The rider of the other horse fired another bullet in the direction of the house and told me to go indoors and not to move until morning or he would put a bullet through my head as well. I ran into the kitchen. Dempsey had just gotten up and was standing beside me. I told him there was a madman on horseback outside in the haggard and that he had murdered Walter. He threatened that he would shoot anybody who put their head outside the door until morning. Go to the house – John Dempsey is there and I will go to the other neighbours for help.’
‘Do not,’ Stacey replied in panic. ‘Go home and we will be with you without delay.’
Ben Stacey woke up the rest of the neighbours and, when he had done that, he went straight across the field to Walter Sly’s house. When he reached the fateful place he saw Lucinda standing at the stable door staring at Walter’s body. Dempsey was taking the saddle from Sly’s horse and he released the animal out into the field near the house.
‘Would you go to his body, Ben,’ she begged him, ‘and see if there is any spark of life in him. There should be a fistful of notes in one of his pockets and a pocket watch and chain in his waistcoat pocket.’
‘I won’t for a few minutes,’ he replied with caution. ‘The neighbours are coming. I’ll wait for somebody to be beside me when I go through his pockets.’