A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Did the verger tell you about the cillín when you went up to the cathedral? Mr Mulcahy roused up a lot of ill-will when he built his tanning yard on top of the graves of those unbaptized babies.’

  He nodded, but said nothing and she was grateful for his silence. It was difficult for her, even within her own mind, to explain why the church put this additional burden on a sorrowing mother when they denied her a Christian burial for an unbaptized baby. To these poor women, these little cillín graveyards, always on the site of some ancient settlement, had to be very sacred places.

  ‘No need to answer, but I guess Bridie’s baby was buried in that little place,’ he said. Then he added, gently, ‘That would give a good motive in the eye of the law, perhaps a better motive than any that the young lad, in the cell, might have had.’

  ‘Yes, I had forgotten about Fred.’ The Reverend Mother roused herself. ‘Now, since we are in this confessional mode,’ she said, purposely introducing a tart note into her voice, ‘and since the door is shut and we have decided to trust each other’s discretion, perhaps you could tell me whether Fred Mulcahy has been able to tell the Civic Guards how he murdered his father.’

  ‘Well, strictly between ourselves, talking within closed doors and windows, and having complete reliance on your discretion, I can divulge to you that Fred Mulcahy killed his father by shooting him three days earlier. This accounted for the blood on the man’s coat front.’ Dr Scher kept a deadpan expression on his face as he gave the fire another poke.

  ‘But that’s nonsense.’

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it? First the boy empties his pistol into the man, saw the blood on the chest, I suppose. His young eyes would be sharper than yours, Reverend Mother. He probably saw it instantly, thinks that his mother or sister, perhaps, had killed the man, though where they would have got a gun, no one knows – still there are lots of guns floating around in this city of ours. In any case, he wanted to take responsibility.’

  ‘And not realizing that his father was killed by a blow to the back of his head.’ Talking and thinking about Fred took her mind a little off wondering whether the woman in the river was Bridie, and so she encouraged Dr Scher with an interested look.

  ‘He wrote a confession, as you know,’ said the doctor. ‘Wrote to the superintendent at the barracks. Told them that he had killed his father, but that by the time the letter was received that he would be on his way to America. That didn’t work out; this America business. The army arrested him and handed him over to Patrick, once they heard he was looking for Fred Mulcahy. Found him lying out in the marshes. Always difficult for them, I understand, to be sure who took part in a fight and who was just a bystander. Much easier to have him hung for the murder of his father, especially when he was so obliging as to confess to it in writing.’

  ‘I’ve been turning over in my mind the three women in the house,’ admitted the Reverend Mother, ‘but now I think that I have reduced that to two women. If Bridie had been responsible, there was no reason why she should not have told me how she killed the man.’

  ‘The mother and the daughter,’ mused Dr Scher. ‘Quite a hard blow, I would think. Not as easy as shooting a man. Would they have been strong enough?’

  ‘I understood that both did quite a lot of work in the tanning yard,’ said the Reverend Mother, thinking back to past gossip when Bridie had visited with the children. She stirred restlessly. Why, on earth, had she not quickly gone to the root of the matter with Bridie as soon as it was apparent that the woman had not been responsible for Mr Mulcahy’s death? That would have been the right thing to do. She tightened her lips with exasperation at the thought of Mr Hayes and his never-faltering flow of talk, and then Sister Mary Immaculate, another one where it was almost impossible to stem the flood of words. Restlessly, she got up and went to the window. The bell had sounded for dinner time. Some of the children would be collected by their parents to be taken home for a meal, while the nuns had their own meal, but others would be left in the school playground, the lucky few with a slice of bread and jam, the others hungry. By her orders a basin of potatoes from the convent garden were scrubbed and placed in the bottom of the kitchen range first thing each school day. By noon, they were hot and tasty and filled the empty stomachs of these thin children. She would have to go and see about the serving of them. She rose to her feet.

  ‘You’ve been very kind, Dr Scher,’ she said formally. ‘I mustn’t keep you any longer. I know that you are a very busy man.’

  ‘Sit down again, Reverend Mother,’ he said gently. ‘Sit down and let me go and see.’

  And then she heard what he had heard. Beneath the sonorous clang of the convent bell, calling the nuns to their meal, there was the lighter sound of the front door bell, fixed to ring in both the corridor and in the kitchen. She ignored his outstretched hand and went to the door.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Scher; I must answer that,’ she said.

  Sister Imelda was emerging from the kitchen when she went out, her plump young cheeks distended with food. ‘You go back and finish your meal, child,’ she said. ‘Oh, and Sister Imelda,’ she called after the girl, ‘would you ask Sister Bernadette whether you could distribute the potatoes to the children, today, when you have finished your own dinner, of course?’

  The front door to the convent was panelled with glass, garishly coloured and set in lead-lined, diamond-shaped panes. Nevertheless, she had seen the outline of the figure and of the cap that crowned it and she knew who it would be, and knew that she would be preoccupied during the next half hour or so. Little Sister Imelda would enjoy that task. Deftly she undid the lock and opened the door.

  ‘Come in, Patrick,’ she said. ‘I have been expecting you.’ She did not invite him to take off his coat, but took him straight down the corridor. Dr Scher was standing at the door and he stood back when he saw Patrick, holding the door open for them and then shutting it when all three were in the room.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Reverend Mother,’ said Patrick and she wondered how often he had to say those words to grieving relatives and friends.

  ‘You’ve found her,’ she said instantly.

  He bowed his head. ‘We’ve found her, we think. Just five minutes ago. A messenger boy on his bicycle. He came straight to us, sensible lad.’ He hesitated for a moment, looking past her at Dr Scher.

  ‘You want me?’ Dr Scher’s face was sombre.

  ‘I’d like you to look at the body before she is lifted from the river.’

  ‘The river,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Near us, Patrick, down our lane.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not there, Reverend Mother. She went over the top of the old weir, down near the brewery stables. The body …’ He hesitated looking from her to Dr Scher.

  ‘I’ll come immediately.’ Dr Scher was already buttoning himself into his heavy woollen coat.

  ‘You go back, Patrick. I must fetch the priest.’ She took down her cloak and put it around her shoulders and went to the door. The elderly chaplain would not be too pleased to be called away from his midday meal, but it would do him no harm. Like most of the chaplains that she had known in her years in the convent, he had put on a considerable amount of weight after a couple of years of easy living and an abundance of treats from the kitchen. ‘We’ll go with Dr Scher,’ she added.

  Patrick bowed his head obediently, but Dr Scher immediately protested. ‘No need for you to come, Reverend Mother.’

  She ignored him. ‘You go and get your car started up, Dr Scher. We’ll join you in a minute.’

  The chaplain was halfway through his dinner when she knocked at his door. He had a napkin tucked into his round collar and a slight smear of gravy at one corner of his mouth.

  ‘There’s been an accident, Father,’ she said. ‘It’s Bridie, a former member of our community, before your time, of course. She appears to have fallen over the weir.’

  ‘Fallen over the weir.’ He stared at her suspiciously. ‘Not suicide, I hope,’ he said with a longing glance at
his dinner which rather belied his expression of hope. There would be no need for prayers or for extreme unction for a suicide. Suicide was a sin against the Holy Ghost and would merit nothing but a place in hell; no priest could gainsay that.

  ‘Not for us to judge, Father,’ said the Reverend Mother coldly. ‘I would suggest that you wear a warm coat and take a scarf as well as your hat. It can be cold by the river. Dr Scher is waiting, so please be as quick as you can.’ And with that she turned her back on him. She did not return into the convent, but walked through the church gate and up the lane, passing the other convent gate, the one that led to the yard outside the back scullery and washhouse. Bridie had come out of there while she had been delayed with the auctioneer and Sister Mary Immaculate. The Reverend Mother found it hard to forgive herself for that, but quickly moved her mind onto other matters.

  Bridie had not gone down the lane, then, but had turned up and gone onto the main road, meaning, perhaps, to go up the hill to the barracks. And then, she thought, as she watched Patrick execute a neat turn, swivelling the Ford’s steering wheel before driving away, and then, perhaps, Bridie changed her mind. The woman had a mercurial temperament. Up one moment, down another. At one stage she would have persuaded herself that a merciful court would sentence her merely to a few months in prison, but, at another moment, darker thoughts would come and she would live through the horrors of death by strangulation.

  And so she had headed towards the certain death of throwing herself over the weir and into the river.

  ‘Hope that your car is going to start,’ she said to Dr Scher as he swung the starting handle with no visible effect.

  ‘Now, Reverend Mother, have faith,’ he panted.

  ‘Difficult when there is nothing to see or hear,’ she retorted. Her session with the chaplain had brought back her courage. She had failed Bridie, but failure, she had found, was a part of her life; had been as long as she could remember. Failure had to be overridden; had to be put aside. Now she had an ordeal ahead of her, but it was the least that she could do.

  ‘The point of faith is believing in things that you can’t see or hear,’ he pointed out and at that very moment, the engine spluttered into triumphant life.

  ‘I stand corrected,’ she said as the chaplain came panting up and then humbly chose the back seat for himself. She would have faith, she thought, have faith that Bridie was now to be welcomed by God to a heaven, have hope that it might recompense for the hard purgatory of her life on earth.

  But she found it very hard to find charity in her thoughts for those who had driven the poor woman to this last act of desperation.

  And then she moved her mind in a different direction, looking across at Dr Scher as he pulled out from the pavement and drove in his usual erratic style along the road and then turned down towards the river.

  Why had Patrick wanted the doctor to come to the river? The usual procedure, surely, was that the Civic Guards would take the body to the mortuary at the barracks. There must be something that he wanted a professional opinion about. She thought about it, looking down at her hands, puzzling over the problem and then was distracted by the vehement sounding of an angry horn. She looked up to see a van take evasive action, dodging out of the way of Dr Scher’s Humber and noticed, coming out of a hardware shop, Mr McCarthy, erstwhile partner of the dead man and potential suitor for the hand of Susan Mulcahy. Perhaps he had been sent by the family to make sure that Bridie went to the barracks. Otherwise, why should he be shopping for tools down here when Shandon Street had a perfectly good hardware shop of its own. Or could there be a more sinister reason for his presence down here on St Mary’s Isle?

  She got briskly out of the car when they arrived, not waiting for Dr Scher to come around and help her out. It was quite some time since she had been here and she thought that the place was even more derelict than when she had last seen it. The original wall, built from blocks of sandstone, was now half demolished by the action of water, wind and rain. There was a narrow path, overhung with willows, and covered in moss, leading out towards the weir. Patrick stood on it, but she did not go and join him. She could see from where she was and she did not want to get in the way.

  The weir beside St Mary’s Isle was an ancient structure, known, when she was young, as the salmon weir. Her father, who had been a great antiquarian with an enormous interest in the history of his native city, had told her that the weir had been built by the monks who had owned the island before the nuns had taken it over. They had been an industrious crowd of monks, of the order of St Dominic, and they had constructed near to their monastery a water mill as well as the salmon weir. But the weir was now the only trace of their habitation and that had lapsed into a state of dereliction, with rotting timbers of the gate hanging loose and moss-covered rocks tumbled in crazy abandonment beneath the stream that ran down the slope towards the fast flowing south channel of the River Lee. The fog had lifted and a few gleams of sunshine lit the scene very clearly.

  Amongst the silver foam of the tumbling water, the vivid lush green of the mossy stones and the broken chunks of water-worn wood, there was something red. Just a bundle, not like a person, just a crumpled shape. Quite near was a boat with a couple of civic guards. She could see how the sun caught the metal badges on their caps and the buckles on their belts, but they remained at a distance, resting on their oars and looking up to where Patrick stood.

  He came back to them now. A pair of binoculars were slung around his neck and he undid them, handing them to Dr Scher.

  ‘You’ll need to adjust them, doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m very long-sighted.’

  Dr Scher took a long look, twisting the centre wheel from time to time. And then he shook his head.

  ‘Impossible to tell anything,’ he said. He looked at Patrick. ‘Do you want me to go down there,’ he said.

  ‘Would it help? You know what I’m wondering.’

  ‘I suppose it would help,’ said Dr Scher with a sigh. ‘Time you got yourself an active young surgeon for this business. I could recommend you a few likely lads from the university.’

  Patrick did not reply, nor did he smile. He just raised one arm and beckoned to the boat. The men rowed back to the bankside with tremendous vigour, glad to be moving, she thought. There was another boat there, a boat with just two men in it. That stayed in its position.

  Dr Scher handed the binoculars to the Reverend Mother. It took her a moment or two of fiddling but then she was astonished at how the detail of the scene in front of her sprang up, almost causing her to flinch. She lowered the binoculars and looked back again. She had guessed at the truth without them, but now she knew.

  ‘Is it …?’ Dr Scher was looking at her.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Reverend Mother steadily. ‘Yes, that is Bridie.’ The colour of the coat had seemed to match, even without the aid of the binoculars, but the presence of a small dark object, crowned with an incongruous flower, wedged in between two rocks, had told the rest of the story. It was Bridie’s hat, or perhaps the hat that was lent to her, along with the coat, in order to make a decent appearance at the barracks.

  Dr Scher said nothing, just walked down the bank, and allowed himself to be assisted into the boat. The Reverend Mother raised the binoculars to her eyes again. The second boat, the boat that remained, now sprang into view in every detail. There was an ominous hook, a hook with a long handle and a tarpaulin stretched across the bottom of the boat. She controlled a shudder and forced herself to watch.

  The young Civic Guards pulled hard at their oars and Dr Scher was beside the body within minutes. One of the men in the second boat raised the hook, but then replaced it after a shout. They were not using oars to propel the bigger boat to a position close up beside the body. A rope had been thrown over a high water spar and two men hauled slowly on that while a third knelt in the bows and shouted orders.

  Bridie’s body had landed among a heap of fallen stone. Dr Scher half stood, and then sat down again quickly as the boat rocked violent
ly. Then he just sat while the men steadied the boat. Studying the body, studying the angle of the head, she thought suddenly. That was the point of this journey. She raised the binoculars again. Dr Scher had seen what he needed to see. She saw him sit back. Now began a slow and careful reclamation of the body. The Reverend Mother turned towards the chaplain.

  ‘You have your prayer book with you, Father?’ she queried in a steady voice and then took her rosary beads from her pocket.

  FOURTEEN

  Patrick raised his eyes from the page on his desk and looked thoughtfully across at Dr Scher. By now he was experienced enough to read between the lines of an official medical report of an autopsy.

  ‘You think that she might have had her neck broken before she went down the weir,’ he mused, returning again to his perusal of the summary. It was not a question. He knew that Dr Scher would not have welcomed a direct question on this matter. ‘Not enough for you to swear to in court, but enough to give me a few ideas.’

  ‘Possible’ would be a word that he would be looking for at this stage, ‘probable’ would be even better, but certainties, Patrick thought, were to be distrusted until tried and tested.

  ‘And the young fellow, young Fred Mulcahy, he’s still tucked up in his cell, is he?’ Dr Scher gave a half nod to Patrick’s words. He wore a slightly puzzled air.

  ‘Might as well stay there for the moment,’ said Patrick. He understood the doctor’s puzzlement. After all, Fred Mulcahy could not have been involved in this second murder, if the death of Bridie was a murder. And as for the first murder, well, that was a very strange confession. Nevertheless …

  ‘The superintendent wouldn’t like him released after a signed confession, not for something that can’t be sworn to, can’t be seen to be a certainty,’ he explained. ‘In any case, I would probably just have to hand him over to the lads up in the army barracks, and that while they’re all still angry about the skirmish in Douglas. No, I’ll keep hold of him. Officially, the woman went over the weir and broke her neck; that’s all we need for the moment. It will make the real murderer relax and that must be a good thing.’