A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

‘But you went up yourself, didn’t you? When was that?’

  ‘Must have been a couple of days ago,’ said the auctioneer cautiously.

  ‘You keep a notebook, a diary, something like that, do you?’

  ‘Book of Sale,’ said Mr Hayes. ‘I’m never a one to scatter information into different nooks and crannies. Everything goes into the one book in date order. Now let me see, where did I put it.’

  The book of sale was lying conspicuously on the top of the bureau in Mr Hayes’s office, but Patrick allowed him to go through a little fiction of looking for it. The man was an actor and he had to be given his moment on stage. Prosperous business, he thought. From memory, there was a sale on there almost every day of the week, many of them going on into the evening when the cheaper goods were sold off.

  ‘What sort of commission do you take, Mr Hayes?’ he asked as with a cry of triumph, the auctioneer removed his hammer from on top of the book and brought it across the room.

  ‘Usually fifteen per cent. Don’t get much on the sale of a trunk for half-a-crown,’ responded Mr Hayes.

  Patrick said nothing, though it did cross his mind that, once the news got around, these rooms would be full of curious people wanting to see the exact spot where the body of one of their prosperous citizens reposed until it was despatched to the Reverend Mother at St Mary’s Isle. Fifteen per cent on the contents of Major Heffernan’s splendid house out in ‘Fota’ would amount to quite a sum. And he had a feeling that Mr Hayes had charge of the sale of the houses in Shandon as well.

  ‘Ah, here you are.’ The book opened neatly at the right page and a small scrap of torn paper fluttered to the ground, its function as a marker over and done with. ‘That’s right. Three days ago. I went up to the house on Tuesday evening. You see my system, inspector. All the information is kept on that one page. I put the total at the bottom once everything is wound up, once the houses are paid for and the furniture and fittings disposed of and then I take my cut and transfer the profit to my accounting book. Not much money in it, but we struggle on, inspector, we struggle on. If my poor father could see what the takings are, these days, well, he’d turn in his grave, poor old man. In his day there was big money coming in, but now all the wealthy people are leaving the country. Not that I’d take any side on politics, you know.’

  ‘And did you see Mr Mulcahy when you went up to the house on Tuesday evening?’ Patrick gave a cursory glance at the neat page but declined to be sidetracked into speculating on the profitability of an auctioneer’s business in these troubled days.

  ‘Yes, I did, but just for a couple of minutes. He had to go off. He wanted to get off to his new tanning yards. You know there’s been a bit of trouble about that land that he bought near the old dún. People don’t like it. They say that the dún is sacred, and of course, there is the cillín. Supposed to be bad luck to interfere with one of them. Superstition, of course, but when all is said and done, I suppose you have to say that there were a lot of poor little unbaptized babies buried there and it doesn’t seem right to some people that concrete had been spread on the little graves, and there are tons of hides and skins heaped up on top of it and the stink, of course. Have you ever smelled that stuff they use to soak the skins? He’d be used to it, of course, but when I saw him a couple of months ago, well, I told him straight. “Move the tanning yard, Mr Mulcahy, move it away from those houses if you want to sell them”. That’s what I said to him. I told him straight. “Jesus Christ himself,” I said to him, if you’ll pardon the expression, inspector, “well the good lord, himself, couldn’t sell those houses for a good price if that tanning yard at the back is still there. You’d hardly notice the smell now, I suppose; you’re that used to it. Well, that’s as maybe,” that’s what I said to him, “but someone coming new to the area wouldn’t like it. Wouldn’t like it at all.” Well, I told him straight, inspector and he took my advice. Got the piece of land beside the dún dead cheap. Belonged to the bishop. I arranged the sale with his lordship myself …’

  ‘So you didn’t speak to him, to Mr Mulcahy, for long. What did he say in that time?’ Patrick thought he should keep to the point with the auctioneer, but he was interested in the story of the local reaction to Mr Mulcahy’s new tanning yard. The man had stirred up enmity in Shandon.

  ‘Just the usual. Get it from all the clients. Telling me to get as good a price as possible for the furniture. As if I would throw it away! Well, I wished him a good evening and took myself off. I’d seen all that I needed. See, look here, I made a note. Look at it. A cross beside the word ‘stairs’ and a tick beside ‘windows’. That means that we’d be better taking the heavy furniture through the windows and lowering the pieces down onto the top of the lorry than trying to bring down that big heavy stuff around the bends of the stairs. Carpenter built, on the spot, the most of it, anyway.’ Mr Hayes ran down like a clockwork toy and collapsed onto one of his own chairs and looked interrogatively up at Patrick.

  ‘Who left the house first, you or Mr Mulcahy?’ Patrick made a note and then looked back at the man.

  ‘I knew you’d ask that,’ said Mr Hayes triumphantly, ‘but you know I can’t be sure and that’s the truth. I heard him shouting at his wife, or perhaps it was his daughter Susan. They were out cleaning up the yard behind. Have it smelling of Jeyes Fluid, and have the rat catcher in again; that was my advice to him. One of the houses had been sold; all the carpentry work done, but there was one still to go. We’d lost a sale on that because the wife didn’t like the smell in the outbuildings. He had some sort of idea of keeping this one as an office, but I knew he’d change his mind on that. Build himself an office up next to the tanning works – that was the thing to do. He saw sense in that.’

  ‘So you left the premises and came back down into the city and possibly Mr Mulcahy was still there when you left.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Hayes obligingly, ‘but I think, now that I get to remembering, I think that he was already gone up to his new tanning yard. I’ll tell you what you should do, inspector, you should go up to the cathedral and have a word with the verger, he’ll show you that tanning yard that the poor man bought, though I have to say that he hadn’t paid for it yet. I’m going to be in trouble with the bishop over that, I can tell you, but you go up there, inspector and then you can see for yourself, and who knows but the verger, Mr Sweetman, will be able to give you chapter and verse about seeing Mr Mulcahy on that evening. And you’ll probably find the poor wife and daughter up there, and some of the young lads, too. Ten of them, he had, and all of them fatherless now, and the two girls, the twins, of course.’

  Mr Hayes cast an agonized glance at the ceiling where some more bumps were to be heard and Patrick took pity on him. The man had probably told all that he knew. Patrick got to his feet.

  ‘Just one more question, Mr Hayes, do you think that the body was in the trunk when it arrived here, or was placed there some time yesterday, or even this morning.’

  Mr Hayes hesitated. He had been placed in a dilemma, of course. The notoriety would be enormous as rumours flew around the city of Cork. Patrick could see him falter. What if the man were actually killed on his premises? Would that bring the crowds? But the hesitation did not last for long. When it came to murder on the premises or off the premises, Mr Hayes’ instinct was to opt for the latter.

  ‘Not a chance of it happening here, inspector. I wouldn’t say it to anyone, but yourself, inspector, but the people of Cork are a light-fingered lot. I’ve always got one of my lads in these rooms, keeping an eye open. No, not a chance. That man arrived in a trunk and left in a trunk and I’m only very sorry that I didn’t check the contents myself and that it gave such a shock to the Reverend Mother. I must go and apologize to her as soon as I get a minute to myself.’ Mr Hayes gave an agonized glance at the antique grandfather clock that stood in stately splendour in the corner of the room. It chimed just as he finished speaking and Patrick took the hint, rising to his feet and thanking the man for his time. Once out
side, though, he did not hail a cab to take him up to the heights of Shandon, but walked rapidly across the South Mall and made his way back to the barracks. With a bit of luck, Joe, a conscientious and hard-working sergeant, might still be on duty.

  ‘You’ve seen Mrs Mulcahy, Joe. What did she say?’ He put the question as soon as Joe was seated in front of him and had to repress a moment’s impatience as the young man fumbled in his pocket for his notebook. He himself had trained Joe never to rely on memory, always to refer to his notes, so it was illogical to wish that he’d hurry up a bit.

  Joe looked at his notebook, frowned and then put it down. ‘Not a lot, to be honest. I asked her when she had last seen her husband and she told me that it was last Tuesday. Came out with that very quickly, as though she had the answer ready.’

  ‘Odd, that,’ said Patrick. ‘Didn’t she think to make any enquiry about him?’

  ‘Yes, I asked her about that,’ said Joe. ‘I just said, quietly, “And this is Friday, Mrs Mulcahy.”’

  ‘What did she say to that?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘She just looked stunned. But then I pressed the question and she told me that Mr Mulcahy, she kept calling him that, was living in the new house, keeping an eye on the builders, was how she put it and that she didn’t expect to see him because the tanning yard had been moved. Sounded an odd story to me, but I didn’t push it. She looked so distressed. She had her daughter with her, Susan, her daughter Susan, she’s—’ once again Joe looked back at his notebook – ‘she said that she was nineteen, but I’d have taken her for fifteen, tall, but very skinny and pale, rather spotty, usually girls are over that by nineteen, but she didn’t look too healthy. She just sat there, beside her mother and when I told them eventually that Mr Mulcahy was dead, they both just stared at me in a frightened way. And then Mrs Mulcahy said, “God rest his soul” just as though she had heard of the death of a neighbour or something, and then one of the boys, John, was his name, came in. Before I could say a word, she told him and he just looked at her and then looked at me and said nothing. And then, after a while, quite a while it seemed, she said to him that they would have to arrange the funeral and she asked him to go and see the priest and he said “Right-ho” and just went, just like that, without another word.’

  ‘Interesting family,’ said Patrick. Joe, he thought, should have questioned the boy before allowing him to follow his mother’s instructions, but he decided to say nothing. The mistake was his. He should have sent Joe to the auctioneer and tackled the grieving family himself. ‘Were they in shock, do you think, Joe?’ he asked.

  ‘Could be.’ Joe thought about that for a moment. ‘No, I thought they all seemed scared, that was my feeling. I didn’t think that they were shocked. It was more …’ Joe hesitated for a moment and then finished by saying, ‘more fear than shock, that’s what I thought, anyway.’

  Patrick consulted his watch. It was late, but not too late for a visit.

  ‘You go off duty now, Joe,’ he said. ‘Thanks for staying late. Any word from Dr Scher?’

  ‘He’s doing the autopsy first thing in the morning,’ said Joe promptly. ‘He came back to do that poor girl tonight.’

  ‘It will be interesting to see whether Mr Mulcahy was shot or stabbed. It would be one or the other as there was blood on the chest. That was a strange business about the son firing at the dead man. Well, off you go now, Joe. I’ll lock up here.’

  The superintendent had locked his own room and the keys of the police car were presumably inside it. Patrick gave a dubious glance out of the window. The fog and mist of the afternoon had now settled down into that soft rain, so familiar to the people of Cork, a rain that is as wetting as a downpour. It couldn’t be helped though. An umbrella would be nothing but a nuisance on the very narrow and busy pavements of Shandon Street. He locked the doors of his office, turned up the collar of his coat, settled the brim of his cap over his eyebrows and set off walking rapidly.

  The cathedral, first, he thought, as he climbed the steep hill. He passed the two houses owned by the dead man. There were lights in one of them. He would call in there on his way back, but he would see the verger first.

  He was barely in time. Benediction was over, the church was empty and an elderly man was quenching candles at the back of the church. Patrick watched quietly for a while. Very old, almost doddery, he thought with a feeling of disappointment. Probably doesn’t know the time of the day – a favourite saying of his mother’s and one that had great relevance for a policeman looking for evidence that would stand up in court.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Sweetman, I wonder whether I might have a word with you,’ he said stepping forward from the shadows. The hand that held the candle snuffer did not tremble at his sudden appearance and the old man went on methodically quenching until nothing but a few trails of smoke were to be seen, eddying sleepily around the statue of Saint Anne.

  ‘I hear that we’ve had a murder here in Shandon; that’s what brings you, I’ve no doubt.’ The voice also was quite steady. He glanced keenly around the church, his gaze sweeping up and down the side aisle, checking that all was well and then rubbed the candle grease from the snuffer until it was burnished to a high shine. Meticulously he replaced it in the exact centre of a high shelf in the cupboard at the back and then reappeared at Patrick’s side.

  ‘Come and have a cup of tea with me in my house; I don’t like talking about things like murder inside the cathedral.’

  Patrick suppressed a sigh. He was not over-fond of tea and these ceremonies did take up so much of his time. Still he couldn’t persist in asking questions if the verger did not feel they were appropriate to a sacred setting. He followed the man across the graveyard, but then stopped him.

  ‘Where is the land that Mr Mulcahy purchased from the bishop for use as a tanning yard?’

  The man gave him another keen glance and then pointed. ‘Over there, inspector, over by those trees, the only trees left in Shandon. No one dared to cut them down, you know. No one dared to interfere with a sacred place. Not until …’ Patrick looked back at him and saw the man shake his head. There was a look of fury in the old eyes and then he set his lips firmly and lowered his eyes to the ground.

  ‘I don’t know much of the history of Shandon,’ said Patrick apologetically. ‘I’m from the southside, myself. Could you tell me a little about that place over there?’

  ‘You young men have learned Irish, haven’t you? Sean Dún, you know what that means, the old doon, the ancient enclosure.’

  It was, when Patrick looked more closely, circular in shape. Even from a distance large rocks of dark red sandstone were visible, strewn around as from a collapsed wall. Here and there among the trees, he could see small hillocks, which probably contained more rocks, or perhaps parts of ancient buildings, monks’ places, perhaps. Patrick wondered about it and its origins. It was a small oasis in the busy built-up world of Shandon, part of the ancient history of the city of Cork. He had a sudden impulse to explore it before the light faded. Resolutely, he turned to the old man.

  ‘I won’t disturb your evening cup of tea, Mr Sweetman. I just wanted to know whether you saw Mr Mulcahy here on Tuesday evening. Did he come up here at all on that afternoon, or early evening? Did he have a word with you about that land over there?’

  He waited anxiously. The most likely answer was that the man could not remember and that would mean that he’d had a wasted journey. He hadn’t realized that the verger would be so old. However, the elderly man was shaking his head very firmly.

  ‘Not on Tuesday, inspector. No one came to talk to me on Tuesday. The bishop himself blessed the graves on that evening and I was leading the procession with the holy cross in my hands. When it was all over, I went inside and served tea and biscuits to the clergy and the choir and after that I went back to my own place. Didn’t see anybody until the next morning.’

  This was indisputable. This man certainly did not appear to be doddery, or in his second childhood. He was alert and quick-w
itted. There was almost no point in questioning him further. Still, Patrick never left a matter until every single stone had been unturned and so he persisted.

  ‘Perhaps when he saw you busy, he just slipped across to his new property. Would that be possible, do you think, Mr Sweetman?’

  The old man shook his head decisively. ‘Anything is possible,’ he said, his voice giving a lie to his statement, ‘but, you know, inspector, I keep a sharp eye out during these ceremonies. I’d be on the alert for anything.’

  ‘I’m sure that you would, Mr Sweetman. Thank you very much for your help. Now I’ll leave you to have a cup of tea and a rest.’

  It should be possible to find a few people in Shandon who were in attendance during the blessing of the graves and ask for their corroboration – I’ll get Joe onto that, thought Patrick as he walked away as rapidly as possible. As for himself, he was fairly satisfied that Mr Henry Mulcahy had probably met his death somewhere within his house. Why kill a man out here in a graveyard and then drag his body all the way down the hill, and into a house, just in order to place it in a trunk? Nevertheless, he was curious about the new site for the tanning yard and he made his way across to the ancient site.

  A slice of the history of old Cork, he thought, as he gazed around. There had been a fort there; that was still obvious. A few portions of the original rounded wall of the enclosure still remained, but that was not all. There had been a monastery, also. He was almost sure of that. In one corner of the circular site stood the remains of an arch, low and empty of its door, but the marks of the hinge were still there engraved into the stone.

  And everywhere he looked there were small mounds of earth, a few grieving parents had attempted to carve a name onto one of the stones lying around, some mounds had a wooden plank on them, the letters softened by the Cork rain and now indescribable. One or two had the remains of a few roadside flowers, a bunch of dandelions, now nothing but empty seed heads. One stone with the word, ‘Rosie’, scratched into it. Most were unreadable, thick with moss and crumbled with age, only a small number had a legible name, and one, heartbreakingly, he thought, just said, ‘my baby girl’.