A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘I’m interrupting you, Reverend Mother. I should have telephoned,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t planned. I just met Dr Scher and he told me that he was going to drop into the convent to see Sister Assumpta and so I thought, well, I thought that I might come along and perhaps …’

  ‘You are very welcome, Patrick,’ said the Reverend Mother. He didn’t look well, she thought. There were dark shadows under his eyes. This case was a difficult and unpleasant one and had huge coverage in the papers who were running permutations of lurid headlines ranging from: ‘GRUESOME DISCOVERY’; ‘MACABRE FINDING’; ‘BODY IN TRUNK’; ‘CORPSE DELIVERED TO CONVENT’, according to the style of the newspaper or periodical. She felt very sorry for Patrick. Life had not been easy, never was easy for these children from the slums. Many slipped into despair, dissolution, prostitution and crime; some emigrated and some ended up drowned in the River Lee; very few struggled through to success in their native city. And those who did, in her experience, mostly bore the scar of insecurity and took life with intense seriousness. Would there be a new world now that Ireland had got its freedom? So far, there seemed little sign of it. She sighed and turned her attention to this puzzling case. There was, as she often reminded herself, limits to what she in her convent could achieve, but sometimes a listening ear could be important.

  ‘And what about Fred now, Patrick?’ she asked.

  In answer, he took from his pocket an envelope. He smoothed it carefully and then handed it to her.

  ‘Read that, Reverend Mother,’ he said.

  The envelope had been professionally slit with a sharp paperknife and she edged the sheet out carefully. It had rough edges and looked as though it were torn from a child’s school jotter. She held it for a moment, listening to the voices outside in the corridor and then turned to Patrick.

  ‘It’s Dr Scher,’ she said. ‘Have you any objections to him seeing it?’

  He shook his head. He looked more relaxed when the door opened and the small, round figure bustled in, placed his bag on the windowsill and went straight to the fire, holding out his hands to warm them and then fiddling with the damper, and embarking on a vigorous riddling of the smouldering coals. Somehow the atmosphere in the room had lightened with the arrival of Dr Scher. Patrick was, she thought, completely at ease with him and trusted him implicitly.

  ‘Just been having a chat with Sister Bernadette, Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘Fear not, you haven’t been forgotten. Sister Bernadette had delayed your tea because she knew how much you would like to share it with me.’

  Probably been stewing the tea on the stove to get it strong enough for Dr Scher’s taste, thought the Reverend Mother, but aloud she said, ‘How is Sister Assumpta?’

  ‘Passing gently and slowly to a better world,’ he said with the kindness that she admired in him. It had often taken her aback that such a bustling, energetic man with a sharp tongue could show such compassion and patience towards elderly and senile patients.

  She bowed her head and allowed a moment to pass before turning to the letter in her hand. ‘Patrick wishes us both to read this letter,’ she said. ‘Shall I read it aloud?’

  She read it carefully, first to herself and then to both of her listeners.

  To whom it may concern: I, Frederick Mulcahy, wish to inform the Civic Guards that I was the one who killed my father. I swear that no other person was involved in this deed. By the time that you read this confession I will be on my way to a foreign place and will be beyond the reach of the justice system of the corrupt government which has betrayed its citizens, the people of Ireland.

  ‘A confession. Well, these lads and lassies of the IRA do like to make life easier for you lot at the barracks, don’t they? Up the Republic,’ said Dr Scher flippantly.

  ‘A confession is not too much good without an arrest,’ said Patrick grimly.

  ‘Doesn’t go into any detail about the actual means of death, does he?’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘What is the position about that, Patrick? Who does know how Mr Mulcahy was killed?’

  ‘Only myself, the superintendent, my sergeant, Joe and Dr Scher.’

  ‘And God in his heaven, and, of course, his deputy down here, the Reverend Mother,’ said Dr Scher.

  She gave him a reproving glance before saying, ‘I find it of significance that Fred did not say how he killed his father.’

  ‘Do you think he is really on his way to foreign parts, Patrick?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘There’s been a bit of violence in Douglas,’ said Patrick. ‘You may have heard of it. The Republicans smuggled in some guns and a gang came over from Passage West. The army were over there pretty quickly. Came down from the Victoria Barracks, five or six lorry loads of them. Took a few prisoners, though not Fred Mulcahy. But I’m not sure about this “foreign parts” business. There’s been no sightings of any foreign ships as far as I know. The navy put a barricade across the mouth of the harbour, down there by Carrigaline.’ He hesitated for a moment and a tinge of colour crept into his pale cheeks.

  ‘There’s something else, too. I was at the funeral of Henry Mulcahy this morning and a friend of Fred Mulcahy turned up. Apparently she is also a friend of Susan Mulcahy. This young lady came up to me. You know her, Reverend Mother; she came to school here; it’s Eileen MacSweeney from Barrack Street, well, she spoke to me of Fred Mulcahy, tried to persuade me that he had nothing to do with the murder of his father.’

  ‘Sweet on him, is she? Pretty girl, that little Eileen.’ Dr Scher gave a sentimental sigh.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’ Patrick’s flush grew to a deeper red. ‘All I know was that I got a strong impression that she felt he was in danger of being arrested by me. I don’t think that she would have bothered if he were on his way to America. I certainly got the impression that Fred Mulcahy was in hiding somewhere and that she was trying to persuade me to take up a different line of enquiry, that she was trying to see whether it would be safe for him to come out of hiding.’

  ‘So you think that, when he wrote that confession, wrote that letter that he “jumped the gun” as our American friends would say. What do you think, Reverend Mother?’ Dr Scher looked from one to the other and then his head swivelled and he looked expectant as there was a sound of trolley wheels from the corridor. He went across to the door, flung it wide open and stood there, beaming.

  ‘You’re an angel straight from Heaven, Sister Bernadette. I’m just dying for a decent cup of tea. You should taste the stuff that they dole out in the police station. Not fit for man or beast.’

  ‘A very melodramatic young man, Fred Mulcahy,’ said the Reverend Mother, taking care to pitch her voice beneath the clamour made by Dr Scher, so that her words were heard only by Patrick. She returned the letter to him and tucked her hands into her sleeves while she brooded on this strange confession, accepting the cup of tea from Sister Bernadette, but shaking her head to the offer of cake.

  ‘I’ll help myself to some bread and butter in a little while, sister,’ she said and Sister Bernadette, taking the hint, vanished from the room.

  The Reverend Mother swallowed a little tea and then looked across at Patrick.

  ‘I suppose you sometimes get false confessions at the barracks, don’t you?’ she queried, a tentative note in her voice.

  ‘Occasionally, perhaps.’ Patrick sounded dubious. ‘There’s a drunk old man who keeps coming and asking if we want him for a shooting. He spent a night in the cells once and he liked the breakfast that they gave him – the superintendent didn’t fancy his fried egg and rasher that morning and so they gave it to the fellow in the cell and he’s never forgotten how good it tasted. But apart from that …’

  ‘I see,’ said the Reverend Mother. Her cousin had lent her a few of the Sherlock Holmes novels by Conan Doyle. There seemed to have been many false confessions in them, but perhaps the people of Cork lived such dangerous lives that they did not run unnecessary risks for the sake of drama.

  But for the sake of a very dearly loved m
other? That was possible. And Fred Mulcahy had seemed like a very melodramatic young man. What was it that the boy had muttered so savagely? Once again she recalled his words. He had felt that his mother had led a life of slavery. Had he feared that she had lifted an iron bar in a moment of desperation or a fit of anger and had struck her husband with it? And, in a state of panic, had hidden the body in an old trunk. Had that fear, that suspicion, worked on him to the degree that he had written out a confession before leaving the country?

  ‘You think that Fred Mulcahy might have suspected someone else of doing it? One of his young brothers, his sisters or his mother even?’ Dr Scher chewed vigorously on the currant cake which Sister Bernadette made every week to feed important convent visitors, like the doctor, the bank manager, and, of course, the bishop or his secretary. ‘Who was in the house that afternoon when Mr Mulcahy was last seen alive, Patrick?’ he said, once he had swallowed his mouthful.

  Patrick produced his notebook.

  ‘Well, apart from Mrs Mulcahy and Susan, there was the servant, Bridie and Mr Hayes the auctioneer. He and Mr Mulcahy went from top to bottom of the house – it was crowded with furniture as the two houses that the family had formerly occupied had been cleared out once the sale of one had gone through.’

  ‘Must have been a lively set of houses with twelve children running around upstairs, crossing from one attic to another,’ commentated Dr Scher with a smile while the Reverend Mother brooded on some of the numerous children from her school, occupying only one room or two rooms, but where the family was often as large. The Mulcahys were lucky that their father’s business successes enabled him to purchase first a three-storey house and then a second house as more children came along. She wondered whether Fred Mulcahy had ever thought of that.

  ‘And then when they had looked at everything and notes had been made, Mr Mulcahy went into his office with the auctioneer. That was just about when a man knocked on the door and said that he was Mr O’Sullivan, the solicitor. Bridie, apparently, showed him into the office and she overheard something about a will. By the way,’ said Patrick, looking up, ‘all of this was corroborated in my interview with Mr O’Sullivan, the solicitor, when I saw him this morning, before the funeral.’

  ‘O’Sullivan, I haven’t heard of a solicitor of that name. I thought that I knew all of the South Mall crowd,’ said Dr Scher.

  ‘Pope’s Quay,’ said the Reverend Mother briefly. ‘Go on, Patrick.’

  ‘And Mr Richard McCarthy arrived soon after the solicitor. The will was signed and the signatures were witnessed by the servant and by Mr Hayes the auctioneer.

  ‘How long did they stay?’ she asked.

  ‘Apparently at that stage, Mrs Mulcahy sent the servant, Bridie, to ask if they wanted a cup of tea, but that was refused. Soon afterwards Mr Hayes, the auctioneer, left. They thought the solicitor, Mr O’Sullivan, perhaps accompanied by Mr McCarthy, went about five minutes after that, but they were a bit vague about whether they had heard the door slam or not. They did think that when the three men had gone, that Mr Mulcahy went upstairs by himself and that was all Mrs Mulcahy knew. She said she was sure that it was just one set of footsteps on the stairs. She imagined, when she didn’t see her husband later on that he had gone back to Montenotte. Oh, and a neighbour gave evidence that she thought that young Fred Mulcahy had been there earlier, but she knew nothing about when he had left. She said that he often came to see his mother at times when he knew his father would not be there. So he may well have been around the house earlier, but would probably have slipped out when his father arrived.’

  ‘So when Mr Mulcahy met his death only the three women were present. Is that what you’re saying, Patrick?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘Well, that’s the way it looks,’ said Patrick. ‘But if I’ve learned anything over the last couple of years, it is that people are very unreliable about this sort of thing. These three women, the mother, the daughter and the servant, were all very busy. They were sure about Mr Hayes, as he came into the kitchen to say goodbye and to tell them that the men would be around in about half an hour for the furniture. They actually heard him go out of the hall door and heard it close behind him and Susan heard him cranking up his car, and drive off, but they were a bit vague about the solicitor and about Mr McCarthy.’

  ‘And, of course, they said nothing about Fred, I suppose, did they? Poor things! Well, the mother and the sister, anyway. I don’t suppose the servant would be too bothered lying for him, though, would she, Patrick?’

  ‘That’s where you are completely wrong, Dr Scher,’ the Reverend Mother put in. ‘Bridie had a lot to do with the upbringing of Fred. His mother had four other children by the time that he was six years old. There were the twins, Susan and Sally. And the two next boys, John and Robert. Bridie loved all of the children, but Fred was her darling. She would,’ said the Reverend Mother with great deliberation, ‘give all to shield him, at all costs.’ Even life itself, she thought and hoped that she was not becoming melodramatic in her old age. Her mind went back to Bridie and the poor dead baby, who had died even before it could be baptized. Fred, she had often thought, had almost taken the place of Bridie’s own child.

  ‘And he loved her, did he?’ asked Dr Scher. ‘I suppose that he did. It cuts both ways, usually. If she adored young Fred, then he probably kept a great affection for her, even when he had grown up. And, he hated his father. No one empties a revolver into a dead man’s chest unless there is a lot of pent-up anger. If he had seen this Bridie pick up an iron bar and strike the man across the head, he might have helped to hide the body and then wrote that false confession when he knew, or thought he knew, that he was on his way to America, is that what you’re thinking, Reverend Mother? You have to admit that there is something rather fine about a young man making a false confession in order to shield a servant in his parents’ house.’ There was a note of enthusiasm in his voice. A very sentimental man, Dr Scher, she thought, but she shook her head.

  ‘No, I don’t think that he knew anything about the body in the trunk, even if he had known that his father had been killed a few days earlier. I think that he genuinely thought that it would be full of guns. I was present and I know that once I lifted the lid that he shrank back. He gasped. He said something. I think it was, “I know nothing about this, nothing whatsoever.” I may not have got the words quite right,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘but the tone of utter horror in his voice is engraved on my mind.’

  ‘And the shot, the way that he emptied his pistol into the body of his father?’ Patrick, on the other hand, had no trace of sentimentality in him. Life had been too hard a struggle. He had never, even as a small child, liked stories. Sums, numbers and facts, these were what interested the seven-year-old Patrick Cashman.

  ‘Pure melodrama,’ scoffed Dr Scher. ‘That didn’t kill the man. Might have relieved the boy’s feeling, but it didn’t kill his father. Didn’t even draw an ounce of blood from him. The man was already dead, for a couple of days at least.’

  ‘And what about the blood on the breast of his coat?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about that, Reverend Mother. But the answer is that I’m not sure. It was old blood, a few days old, but it didn’t come from the fatal blow which cracked the man’s skull. That was the back of the head. Whether it was his blood, or someone else’s blood, well, I can’t tell you that. Someone else’s, I would hazard a guess, but that is only because there seemed to be no opened wound on the man. Lots of old scars, but nothing that recent. Of course, he could have had a nosebleed and then cleaned up his nostrils carefully, afterwards. I did look, but saw nothing to indicate a nosebleed. Still, it’s not something that I can rule out. And noses do bleed a lot.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Reverend Mother, thinking of the school playground and the nosebleeds which resulted from children running into each other or crashing against railings. ‘I still think that Fred did not know his father was dead, or at least knew nothing about his body being put in a
trunk. It might, of course, have been possible that he knew of the death, but did not know of the disposal of the body and that was what gave him the shock. However, if you were to ask my opinion, I would say that my impression was that he knew nothing of the killing of his father until that moment.’

  This was greeted by a respectful silence which made her feel slightly conscious-stricken. Not a good thing for her to be so assertive. Patrick had to make up his own mind. She finished the tea in her cup and brooded on this murder. She hoped that the obvious solution was not the true one.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Dr Scher suddenly. ‘Came to me in flash as soon as I had finished that second cup of tea. Great stuff, that tea. Well, this is what happened. After the three men had left the house, old man Mulcahy started throwing his weight around, shouting, being abusive to, say the daughter, Susan. She picks up an iron bar, hits him over the head, he falls to the ground, young Fred, who was hiding in the attic or something, comes running into the room to find his father stretched on the floor. His mother, protective of her son, as mothers are, tells him to get out, to get out quickly or he will be blamed. He goes, not knowing whether his father is unconscious or dead, perhaps believing that he is unconscious. He’s what? About nineteen or twenty? It’s an optimistic age. I see nineteen-year-olds up at the university who believe that they can cram a year’s work into a week of black coffee and all-night study. As soon as the boy is gone, the three women examine the body. They find that he is dead. They don’t know what to do. They lift the body into a trunk that that is lying there, wedge it in with skins and then allow it to be taken away by the auctioneer’s men.’

  ‘And, of course, nothing was heard for three days until the auction took place when it was sold and delivered to the convent,’ said Patrick. He looked thoughtful. ‘It’s possible,’ he admitted.

  ‘Possible; it’s brilliant,’ said Dr Scher. ‘And now I am going to have another finger of cake to revive me.’

  The Reverend Mother handed him the plate. It was, she had to admit, a possible explanation. Fred was young; Dr Scher was right. The young are optimistic. He could have told himself that his father had a hard head, would wake with nothing but a headache and, hopefully, no memory of what had happened. In any case, he might have been hustled out of the house before he had a chance to even touch the man.