A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  She didn’t look enquiring, he thought. Didn’t look as though she were going to ask a question of him. The fleeting look was appraising, the look one gives when summing up the opposition.

  Joe came to the door of his room once he heard the voices in reception.

  ‘Key to the morgue, please, sergeant,’ said Patrick. He saw old Tommy at the desk shoot up his eyebrows at this abruptness. Usually witnesses to identify dead bodies were handled with kid gloves, spoken to in soft, reassuring voices. The word ‘morgue’ was never mentioned in the normal way of things.

  Patrick, however, said no more. Just cocked an eyebrow when Joe came back. His assistant responded with a slight inclination of his head towards room eight and Patrick was satisfied that his third victim awaited his interrogation. But first of all he would see what the women had to reveal.

  ‘Come this way, please,’ he said and led them down the passageway towards the building at the back of the barracks.

  There was one gas lamp lit when he pushed open the door. It shone down on the table beneath it and the rest of the room was in darkness. Dr Scher must have left it on, not liking, perhaps, that the dead woman be left in the dark. A white sheet covered the body and Patrick moved across to the stone table and then stood and waited for the two women to come also. They tried to stand next to him and adroitly he moved to the opposite side and then pulled the sheet down from the woman’s face.

  Mrs Mulcahy gave a gasp and turned her head away, but Susan looked steadily and silently down on the body. The neck had been made visible by his action and he thought that he could see her look there. He moved the sheet just a little lower and watched her carefully. She bent slightly forward, scrutinizing the dead woman. He saw her nod.

  ‘She broke her neck,’ was what she said and he was repelled by the almost interested tone in which she spoke the words.

  ‘You are not surprised?’ he asked. Mrs Mulcahy had pulled out a handkerchief and held it in front of her face. He had not heard a sob, though, and the handkerchief, under the white light of the gas fitting, seemed to his eyes to remain dry. Susan did not answer his question. Her eyes were on the dead woman and he wondered whether she was praying, or whether she was thinking of what to reply.

  ‘I’m interested in anatomy,’ she said stiffly and the mother drew a little to one side as though to dissociate herself from her daughter’s answer.

  ‘Anatomy!’ he echoed the word. It had been unexpected.

  ‘I suppose that the act of striking against the water might be enough to break the bones of the neck,’ she said, half to him and half to herself.

  They mostly die with their lungs filled with water, thought Patrick, thinking of all the dead bodies that he had seen in his time in the Civic Guards, and of all the coroner’s court hearings that he had attended. He said nothing, however, just stood very silent, as though waiting for the women’s next move.

  ‘Poor Bridie. She wouldn’t have known what she was doing. She’d be thinking of something and then she’d step into a puddle without even seeing it ahead of her. Do you think that she could have just fallen in?’ Mrs Mulcahy ventured that supposition. Her daughter gave her an exasperated look, but Patrick seized on the remark. Get them talking and you’d never know what they’ll come up with. That had been the superintendent’s advice to him when he had first become a sergeant.

  ‘You would think that it might have been an accidental death, Mrs Mulcahy, would you?’ he asked.

  Her gaze avoided his. ‘Well, what else could it be? No one was putting any pressure on her; I can swear to God about that, inspector.’ And then she said no more, silenced by a quick swing of her daughter’s face towards her. The interested, contemplative look on the girl’s face had changed to a look of almost savage exasperation. She controlled herself with an effort, though. A clever one, thought Patrick. Her mother had recourse to the handkerchief, again, but Patrick thought that he would push the question a little.

  ‘Putting pressure on her?’ he queried, looking directly at the older woman.

  ‘It wasn’t any of my doing?’ Mrs Mulcahy sounded defensive, almost belligerent.

  ‘Who do you think was the one that put the pressure on, then?’ The girl made a sudden, impatient move and Patrick felt slightly ashamed of himself. If there had been a solicitor present he would have been forced to withdraw this question.

  ‘Not me,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Who else was present then, Mrs Mulcahy.’

  ‘My husband’s friend. Mr McCarthy. He came about the will.’

  ‘And he tried to persuade Bridie to confess to the killing of your husband?’

  ‘I’m not saying anymore,’ she said then and turned to her daughter, clutching at the girl’s sleeve as though for comfort.

  ‘You’ve said enough,’ said Susan grimly. She faced Patrick angrily. ‘Should you be asking her those questions in here, beside the body?’

  He decided to ignore this. If this was murder, murder of an unfortunate defenceless woman, it was his duty to get at the truth as quickly as possible. There was nothing in the police handbook which forbade what he was doing. He kept his voice soft and meticulously polite as he said, ‘This is something that you will be asked in the Coroner’s Court, Mrs Mulcahy. Was there, in your mind, any reason why Bridie might have wanted to commit suicide?’

  She gave a little shriek, but said nothing, just looked sideways at her daughter. After a moment she began to get a little courage. ‘She was a bit upset, like, wasn’t she, Susan, that Fred was being blamed for the death of his father, that’s right, isn’t it, Susan?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Susan and closed her lips firmly on the monosyllable.

  ‘I think that I should tell you, Mrs Mulcahy, that Bridie visited Reverend Mother Aquinas shortly before we found her body,’ said Patrick. ‘She told the Reverend Mother that you, your daughter and Mr Richard McCarthy had persuaded her that if she confessed to the murder then it would be judged to be self-defence and that she, Bridie, would only get a very short sentence, “be out in a few months” were the words that she used, I understand.’ Patrick waited for a response, but Mrs Mulcahy had recourse to her handkerchief again. ‘Perhaps you could answer that question, Miss Mulcahy,’ he went on with an even more marked degree of politeness in his voice. He saw the girl look at him with intense dislike but stayed very still and kept his eyes fixed on her. I wonder did she do the two murders, she has that look about her, very sure of herself, very sure of her own cleverness. She thinks that she is going to get away with this. These were his thoughts, but he knew that his face would remain inscrutable.

  ‘Both my mother and I were fairly sure that Bridie killed my father,’ said Susan in a clear, confident tone. She looked at him across the dead body, but did not glance down at the inert form. ‘She had gone upstairs after him. We heard a bit of shouting and then no more. And when Bridie came downstairs eventually, she said that himself had gone back to Montenotte and so we could all have a bit of peace. These were her words, inspector.’

  ‘I see,’ said Patrick. ‘And why did you not tell me that before now, Miss Mulcahy?’

  ‘I didn’t want to get Bridie into trouble.’ The words came very readily to this young lady. ‘I thought that justice would prevail, that it would be found out that my brother had nothing to do with the murder of his father. But time has gone on, inspector, and my brother has now been four days in your custody. If Bridie had decided to confess, then all we could do was to make the best of it and hope that our evidence of mistreatment, of provocation, would be taken into account.’

  ‘Well, in that case, Miss Mulcahy, I’ll take a statement from you in my office. And then, Mrs Mulcahy, I’m sure that you could do with some tea and my assistant will look after you.’ He bent over and drew the sheet back to hide the poor battered face again and escorted the two women from the room.

  FIFTEEN

  Michael Staines, First Commissi
oner of the Civic Guards

  ‘The Garda Síochána, (guardians of the peace), will succeed not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people.’

  ‘Strange girl, that Susan Mulcahy. Do you know her at all, Reverend Mother?’ For once Patrick helped himself to a cup of tea. He looked worried and frustrated, thought the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Just a little,’ she replied. ‘I knew her as a child, of course, when Bridie used to bring the children to see Sister Bernadette. But yes, I met her recently.’ She thought about it for a moment, but could not see any harm in divulging the reason for Susan’s visit to her. ‘She came to see me, she is keen to attend university and to study medicine,’ she said. ‘I think that there might be some argument over whether finances are sufficient for that. She is very keen. She had a first-year university student’s book on anatomy, Dr Scher. She bought it second-hand and she said that she had memorized every word and every drawing in it.’ She decided not to bring up her own offer to the girl. That, she felt, had probably been turned down and she was glad of it. Let Susan Mulcahy make her own way without hindrance of religious or family expectation.

  ‘She should do well at university, then, this Susan Mulcahy,’ commented Dr Scher. ‘Most of these rascals just pick that book up a few weeks before the exams and as for memorizing the drawings! Well, you should see their efforts in the exam papers! And she wouldn’t be the first woman to become a doctor from Cork University; we’re much more liberal here than they are in England. It’s only recently that they have admitted women to a medicine course in Oxford and we had our first woman doctor nearly twenty years ago. Yes, she should do well, any girl that can plough through that book on anatomy on her own and without the benefit of my illuminating lectures or instruction must be very dedicated and want to become a doctor very badly.’

  ‘Badly enough to get rid of her father who was standing in her way,’ said Patrick quietly. He sat back and looked at them both.

  And then when the Reverend Mother and Dr Scher looked back at him, both slightly startled by his words, he said, ‘Didn’t care for her much. I talked with her for a long time. Joe fed the mother with tea and cake and I talked with Miss Susan Mulcahy. She gave nothing away that would in any way incriminate either herself or her mother, but she struck me as very clever, very determined. A bit-coldblooded, not at all moved by the sight of the dead body of a woman who had brought her up, very fluent in quoting Bridie’s words now that the woman is not around to contradict her. I’m not sure whether she had any feeling for her or not, but there’s no doubt but that she had a glib tongue in her mouth, as they say,’ added Patrick. He had a slightly shame-faced aspect after that outburst, thought the Reverend Mother. She knew him well. A girl like that would bring all Patrick’s insecurities about himself to the surface.

  ‘You didn’t like her, Patrick.’ Dr Scher made the statement while pouring himself a third cup of tea. He held the pot aloft, but Patrick shook his head impatiently.

  ‘It’s not a question of like or dislike. It’s a question of who might seem likely, who might fit the pattern of a secret killer. I didn’t think that the mother would have had the nerve, to be honest. She might have picked up an iron bar or a pole and knocked her husband on the head, by all accounts he was fairly unpleasant, both to her and to Bridie, but I think that she would have gone to pieces afterwards. I can’t see her shutting the body in a trunk and calmly allowing the auctioneer’s men to cart it off to the auction.’

  ‘Unless that was Susan’s idea,’ put in the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Perhaps. Well, yes, I did think that she was a devoted daughter, to her mother. But putting Susan aside, and thinking about Mrs Mulcahy …’ Patrick thought hard for a moment and then shook his head. ‘She is certainly a possibility if she had been badly treated and was filled with resentment against her husband. But no, I don’t see her killing him, I don’t think so. But in any case, I’m pretty sure that she wasn’t the one who followed Bridie down to the convent and then knocked her over the weir, breaking her neck first. Mrs Mulcahy might be quite strong, but I didn’t get the impression that she was too agile. She stumbled a few times going down Shandon Street, and after all, she must know that place like the back of her hand. I was walking behind them and I noticed that. After a while Susan took her arm and seemed to support her. The weir, that slippery path, all those tumbled stones; that would have been difficult, whether she had a live woman, or a dead woman with her. No, I don’t see Mrs Mulcahy as the person who killed Bridie. After all, the woman had twelve children, one after the other, and I wouldn’t say that there was much care taken of her, either.’

  Thirteen children, at least, thought the Reverend Mother, and a motive, she supposed, for hating her husband if he had built a tanning yard on top of her dead unbaptized baby’s grave. Still Patrick was right, it took a certain amount of quick-wittedness to have popped the man’s body into the trunk and closed the lid over. Even the macabre business of packing the body around with old skins showed a measure of forethought. And, as for the murder of poor Bridie, well that took strength as well as quick-wittedness. Mrs Mulcahy, she thought, recalling that prematurely aged, black-garbed figure that she had met in Shandon Street, Mrs Mulcahy was not a likely suspect.

  ‘Could it have been both?’ asked Dr Scher. ‘The wife killed him in a fit of rage and the daughter, protective of her mother, engineered a cover-up. Hoped that the recipient of the trunk would be blamed.’

  ‘Possibly even the auctioneer,’ put in Patrick.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Dr Scher and the Reverend Mother allowed a thought to cross her mind of how the interrogation of Mr Hayes would progress between a laconic young policeman and the very fluent auctioneer.

  ‘Perhaps, Miss Susan Mulcahy only thought of the involvement of Bridie when the news of her brother’s capture and incarceration arrived at Shandon Street. She seems from what you say, Patrick, to be a very cold-blooded young woman, but possibly she is fond of her brother.’

  ‘It’s possible.’ The Reverend Mother brooded on Susan. Was she cold-blooded enough to have carried out this murder of a woman who had brought her up and lavished affection on her and her brothers and sisters?

  ‘Yes, indeed. She’s a very cool young lady, indeed,’ said Patrick, almost as though he had read her thoughts. ‘I was taken aback when I pulled the sheet back from the body and all that Miss Susan was interested in was in looking at the neck for signs of broken bones. I must say that I mistrusted her. I couldn’t see an ounce of horror or even of ordinary mourning in her.’

  ‘How did you get on with Mr McCarthy, Patrick?’ asked Dr Scher. The Reverend Mother heard him, but was more interested in turning over her thoughts about Susan, while Patrick gave an account of his interview with the man who called himself a business partner of the late Mr Mulcahy. Patrick would have found the cross-examination of Mr McCarthy easier than interrogating Susan. An intelligent girl, a girl who was clear-minded about her own potential, her own possibilities. Possibly a gifted girl. The gifted, she had often thought from her reading of lives of great men, were often single-minded, determined on a goal and ignoring or obliterating all obstacles that got in the way of that goal. Could the removal of a father, determined to reduce her to a servant or a pawn in his business matters, could that, for Susan, have been merely a matter of removing an obstacle to her goal of qualifying as a doctor? She had been in the house, she had been one of three people still remaining within the house in the late afternoon, when her father, it was presumed, had been killed. Unless, of course …

  ‘What time did Mr McCarthy say that he left the house, Patrick?’ she asked. She had been watching him while her mind sifted through the evidence against Susan. Patrick had taken out his notebook and was scanning through its contents. He read it through carefully, twice, she thought, before putting it to one side. Even as a child, in the infant classes of the convent school, he had been the fortunate possessor of an excellent memory. That, and his
tenacity of purpose had been his two gifts and they had carried him further than others who had possessed more brains. The Reverend Mother thought fleetingly of Eileen and all her gifts, and heaved a slight sigh. But then she turned her attention back to Patrick.

  ‘Mr Richard McCarthy said that he left about half past four,’ said Patrick, ‘and that he was, to quote himself, on the heels of Mr Hayes. He saw the auctioneer’s Ford car go up Shandon Street and turn down one of the lanes. He went home then to have his supper. He lives up on top of the hill, himself, alone, he is unmarried and does not have anyone living with him, so there is no evidence that he did as he said. I got Joe, my sergeant, on to it, but it’s a busy place and he’s a man that goes up and down the street, quite a bit, so people don’t take notice of his presence in the way that they would if a stranger passed them. No one could remember seeing him or they were so unsure that they would be no use to us or to him in court. His manner,’ said Patrick, ‘was very belligerent and aggressive. I made a note of it at the time. He kept emphasizing what a busy man he was and that he had spent a lot of valuable time assisting the Mulcahy family during the last few days.’