A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘You must bring that post office down to the infant classroom and show it to them, Mr Hayes; we’ll go straight away,’ said the Reverend Mother with admirable quickness of mind. She would introduce him, organize a chorus of gratitude, a great clapping of hands, something that the infants loved to do, and then leave him to Sister Perpetua and her lively class. Sister Bernadette could be trusted to show him straight out of the front door once he got tired of the little recipients of his charitable donations. In any case, it would be good for the children. The man’s enthusiasm would be catching; enthusiasm was always infectious and it was something that she wished, sometimes, that her teachers would show more of. He would get them all excited about the prospect of playing post offices, writing little letters and practising their handwriting.

  And, hopefully, no one would try to steal anything while he was actually on the premises.

  In the meantime, she would see Fred Mulcahy in the quiet privacy of her room.

  The story of the fire at Shandon Street had been in the Cork Examiner and everyone knew that Susan had been in the Mercy Hospital for the past week. Her flimsy nightwear had blazed up and she had suffered multiple burns. Eileen, wearing a leather coat, had escaped with only a few blisters on her hands, but Susan, wearing nothing but a linen nightgown had been almost at death’s door for a day or two.

  And it was of Susan that Fred spoke when she released him from the sombre waiting room where Sister Bernadette put unwelcome visitors in preference to one of the highly polished parlours, decorated with useless pieces of heavy old-fashioned silver, donated by the pious. Fred had followed her in silence up the corridor and through the door of her room, holding it open politely for her. She had expected him to be embarrassed. After all, on the last occasion when they met, he had pointed a loaded gun at her and advised her to keep out of his way. However, he seemed to have forgotten this. A few weeks are a long time for the young, nevertheless, she would have expected him to say something, to stammer out some sort of apology. Fred was always someone to rush into speech. Now, however, he seemed suddenly older, more mature, perhaps more self-assured. Had it taken the death of two parents to give him confidence in himself? The thought gave her a pang. Two very hard-working parents, with faults no doubt, but, on the whole, they had done very well for their enormous family. Still it was for God to judge.

  ‘Sit down, Fred,’ she said gently. She would not insult him with offers of tea and cake.

  ‘I’ve been to see Susan,’ he said abruptly, though he did not sit down, but stood facing her. ‘She is much better now. A bit dopey. Dr Scher has been giving her morphine for the pain. She asked me to go and see you. She said that you would not refuse to see me, she thought.’ And then, almost not drawing a breath after his last sentence, he said hurriedly, ‘Today is my birthday, Reverend Mother. I’m—’

  ‘Of course,’ she said cordially extending her hand. ‘Yes, of course, you are twenty-one today, that is right, isn’t it, Fred?’ Well, at least that was one problem solved. There would be a guardian for that large family. Was he now the inheritor of the large amount of property and cash left by his father? She didn’t really know the answer to that question and was rather annoyed with herself. Really she should study the laws of her country. In the meantime, she would have to ask her cousin’s husband about the position and hope that he wouldn’t go into too many complications.

  She sank down onto a chair, feeling exhausted after her session with Mr Hayes. He, also, took a seat, but said nothing. The phrase, ‘What can I do for you?’ trembled on her lips, but she bit it back. Let the boy tell what brought him to her.

  ‘I wanted to apologize for my behaviour on the night when my father’s body was discovered,’ he said. ‘You must have thought me very rude.’

  She swallowed a smile, though she felt the corners of her mouth twitch. ‘Rude’ was a slight understatement, she thought, remembering that gun pointed at her heart and hearing the sound of the shot in her ears.

  ‘I must have been mad!’ These words sounded more genuine. ‘It had been such … such a nightmare … I’d been like a criminal in my own father’s house, ducking away when I heard his voice on that last day, keeping out of sight of that oily auctioneer, slipping away, ashamed to be discovered lurking there up in the attic, until I could get out of the place … and then everything else going wrong. Being thrown into prison probably served me right.’

  She gave him a smile. After all, he was still very young and perhaps now he would grow up a bit.

  ‘I’m sure that you will never do such a thing again,’ she said encouragingly. It did sound a little like the usual postscript to a scolding of a badly-behaved pupil, but she could not help that.

  ‘What should I do now?’ he said, sounding, indeed, so like a small boy, that she felt her impatience returning. ‘I want to do my best for them all,’ he said quickly, almost as though he had sensed her thought. He hesitated a little and then said, ‘Susan is just thinking about getting the money to go to university, but I have to think of them all. Little Frankie is only six, after all, poor little fellow.’

  ‘And yourself, you wanted to go to university, too, didn’t you?’ It had been, according to Eileen, one of his bitter complaints against his father.

  To her surprise, he shook his head. ‘No, I’m going to give that up. We’ll have to keep the business going, that’s important. There’s all those children to see to. They’ll all have to have a decent education, clothes, books and toys. I never had toys. I used to envy boys in school who had toy trains. It’s just a matter of getting my hands on the money to look after them all.’

  ‘You could, perhaps, go to see the solicitor that Susan was going to visit before this fire, before she was burned so badly.’ Eileen had told her all about this solicitor, and Lucy had dropped in to see her with a message from Rupert.

  Fred’s face darkened. ‘Someone that Eileen MacSweeney found. I’ll hire my own solicitor,’ he said. ‘I’m accepting no charity. I was thinking that we might sell the house in Montenotte, Reverend Mother. The older boys can be weekly boarders in Farranferris. Susan agrees with me, but Sally doesn’t.’ His face softened at the mention of his second sister. ‘Poor old Sal,’ he said. ‘Everything has been messed up for her. She was going to have a big party in the new house, she had everything planned. She’s not a bit like Susan, you know, Reverend Mother, she is very easy to get along with, not always trying to prove that she is better than you, she just wants to have fun, new clothes, dances, all that sort of thing. She’s great with the little ones. She’s been like a mother to little Frankie and Jamie, too.’

  ‘I don’t think that I’ve ever met Frankie,’ said the Reverend Mother. She remembered Jamie, she thought. That’s if he was the one who tried to flood the back yard by blocking the drain with an old coal sack and then pumping violently until he was discovered. A bright boy, she thought, remembering his angelic expression as he had insisted to Sister Bernadette that he just wanted to be kind and to make a swimming pool for the wild swans who had flown overhead. ‘I remember Jamie,’ she said. ‘A clever little fellow, but I don’t remember Frankie.’

  His face broke into a boyish grin, which she thought looked very attractive.

  ‘You’re just as well off not knowing Frankie. You wouldn’t want to have him here in your school, Reverend Mother, I can tell you that. Real little monkey. Got a will of iron. He’s a chip off the old block; that’s a sure thing. Even yells like my old man did, if something doesn’t suit him.’ He was silent for a moment, staring towards the portrait of the sainted foundress of the order, not seeing it, probably, but visualizing a picture within his own mind. ‘Oh, well,’ he said with a half sigh, his face suddenly serious again, ‘I don’t suppose that he had too easy a life of it.’

  He was speaking, she knew, not of his six-year-old brother, but of the father that he had resented so bitterly. Perhaps Fred Mulcahy was beginning to grow up, beginning to see things from others’ viewpoint. She watched him turn m
atters over in his mind and waited while his eyes remained fixed on the ornate portrait of Mother Catherine McAuley. It was only when he turned back towards her that she asked the question that had been burning on her tongue since the moment when he had entered her room.

  ‘Why did you give your mother that gun, Fred?’ she asked.

  He looked at her with startled eyes for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘Eileen MacSweeney told you that, I suppose. She and Susan are great friends all of a sudden. Don’t know what she was doing in my house.’

  She looked at him sharply. Her mind was unclear about the laws of inheritance. Would it be Fred’s house? Fred Mulcahy was no heir to a baronetcy; would the house and all of his father’s possessions and wealth not be divided equally among his children, or did it all go to the eldest son. She wasn’t sure.

  Unless, of course, that Mrs Mulcahy had made a will. Unlikely, she thought. The woman had only been a widow for a week. During most of that time Fred had been in prison and would have been unlikely to be able to influence his mother into any rushed decisions. She decided to ignore this, though. She had a more important question to be answered.

  ‘Why did you give your mother a gun, Fred?’ she repeated and this time he answered readily.

  ‘She was scared; she wasn’t used to being in the house without him there – and, of course, he was off, playing the lord over in Montenotte, and she was left in Shandon Street with only Susan and Bridie for company. She told me she was worried about a break-in; that she was sleeping badly. She relied on me; that’s why she told me about her worries.’ The boy’s face softened.

  ‘But she relied on your father to keep her feeling safe,’ pointed out the Reverend Mother.

  ‘That was the way that he wanted it. She relied on him for everything, to do her thinking for her and to keep her safe. She was lost without him and so I gave her a gun and told her that would scare off any intruder,’ he said.

  ‘And then when you saw your father’s body, you were afraid that for some reason your mother had shot him, and so you emptied your gun into the dead body and later confessed to the murder.’ It seemed a senseless, ridiculously imprudent act, but then he was an odd boy, emotional, over-charged and impulsive. She had got a good picture of him from Eileen’s words when she had popped into the convent yesterday evening and they had enjoyed a chat together in the dim privacy of the empty chapel after the evening services.

  ‘You wanted to protect your mother, was that it?’

  ‘Or someone else,’ he said and lowered his eyes to study the polished oaken boards of her floor.

  She was immediately alert. ‘Bridie?’ she queried.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t think that Bridie had killed him, no more than I really thought that my mother had killed him once I had time to think, once I was in prison and I tried to imagine what might have happened.’ He hesitated for a moment and then leaned slightly forward. ‘I told you a lie, Reverend Mother, when I said that Susan suggested that I come to see you. It was my own idea. I was the one who wanted to ask your advice. To ask you about Susan.’ He stopped then and left a long pause, rubbing his hands together and looking at the ceiling as though for inspiration. But the Reverend Mother did not offer him any help. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and waited for what was to come.

  And then as the clock suddenly struck the quarter hour and she looked towards it with the automatic reaction of a very busy woman, he was spurred into action.

  ‘I’m very worried about Susan, Reverend Mother. She’s an odd girl. Very hard, very tough, very determined to get her own way. I’m worried about what that might have led to …’

  She bowed her head, that neutral gesture by which she signified that she was listening and he hurried on rapidly. ‘She’s always been like that. Once when she was ten years old they were having a test in school and she stayed up all night studying. She knew that she’d pass. She was always clever. But she wanted, not just to have the top mark in the class, but to have the highest mark possible. She was never content from that day on with less than a hundred per cent. Sally told me that. She used to get fed up with Susan keeping the light on for half the night.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Reverend Mother. It was one of those small remarks that she inserted to keep a conversation flowing, to move the speaker onto the next point and he reacted instantly.

  ‘She wanted to go to university, but my father wouldn’t agree. And so, it’s a terrible thing for a brother to say, but I think that Susan may have been the one who killed my father.’ He rushed at his second sentence rather like a man determined to plunge into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

  ‘Using your gun?’ she queried.

  He bowed his head.

  ‘Let me get this straight. You think that Susan shot your father in the heart and then placed his body in the trunk that was to be taken away by the auctioneer’s men that evening.’

  ‘I wish that I didn’t believe it,’ he said impatiently, ‘but if it’s true, Reverend Mother, would she, would she hang? Is there anything that I can do or say to help her?’

  The Reverend Mother thought about the laws of the land. ‘If Susan is found guilty of the murder of your father, then she would probably be hanged, unless she were to be found to be insane.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, suddenly as elated as though she had solved all of his problems. ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother, you’ve been a huge help to me.’ He got to his feet and picked up his hat. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Insanity. She’s always been a little odd. I could bear witness to that. And Sally, too. I’ll tell her what to say.’ He made for the door. She stopped him before he reached it.

  ‘Susan shot your father in the heart. Is that what you truly believe, Fred?’

  ‘That’s what I truly think happened, Reverend Mother. She had a terrible temper, even as a small child, poor Susan. Always terribly jealous of Sally who is so pretty and who was always my father’s favourite. And knowing my mother, she might well have handed my gun over to Susan to take care of for her. My mother would have been frightened that the gun might go off.’

  ‘And the murders of your mother and of Bridie. Was she also responsible for these?’

  He bowed his head. ‘“That way madness lies”, doesn’t it, Reverend Mother?’ And then he left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  A well-educated young man. That quotation from King Lear came readily to his lips. Not very well informed, though.

  Fred Mulcahy did not appear to know that his father had been killed, not by a bullet through the heart, but by a blow to the back of the head. The smear of blood over the breast of the coat and shirt had been caused when the murderer wiped clean the instrument of death, or so Dr Scher believed. Patrick had kept that information to himself for the moment and the coroner, under instructions from the superintendent of the Civic Guards, had merely given a verdict of ‘murder by person or persons unknown’. Fastest coroner’s court in the history of the city, had been Dr Scher’s verdict.

  Thinking of Dr Scher, she jerked the ornamental tassel on the end of the bell pull. By the time that Sister Bernadette arrived, she was sitting at her desk and writing a note.

  ‘Oh, sister, is Dr Scher still with Sister Assumpta?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he is, Reverend Mother. He says that it will be a long quiet farewell,’ said Sister Bernadette, crossing herself respectfully at the thought of the ancient sister’s ultimate demise.

  ‘Perhaps you could ask him to come and have a word with me on his way out,’ said the Reverend Mother. She picked up the envelope from her desk and handed it across to the lay sister. ‘And ask Sister Imelda if she would be kind enough to deliver this note to Inspector Cashman at the barracks. Tell her to be as quick as she can.’ Fifteen-year-old Sister Imelda found walking slowly with eyes on the ground to be one of the hardest aspects of life in the convent. She would be delighted to have official sanction to trot quickly down the street and perhaps even to break into
a run if there were not too many people around.

  In any case, she really did want to see Patrick as soon as possible. These murders had to be stopped.

  She hardened her heart with a memory of the three dead people, a hard-working ambitious man; his wife who had borne so many children and had loved and cared for them all, and Bridie, poor Bridie who should, perhaps, have been better cared for by the convent at a most vulnerable time of her life.

  The sooner this murderer in their midst was behind bars, the safer life would be for the Mulcahy family and their friends.

  TWENTY-ONE

  St Thomas Aquinas

  ‘Inter omnia vero hominum studia sapientiae studium est perfectius, sublimius, utilius et iucundius.’

  (Truly, of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is more perfect, more sublime, more useful, and more full of joy.)

  Patrick arrived with a promptitude which paid tribute to the speed of Sister Imelda’s young legs. She had then the fun of coming back to the convent seated demurely in the back of the police car, like a lady, according to Sister Bernadette’s surreptitious whisper. Dr Scher hospitably offered him some tea on her behalf, but he declined it with a shake of his head. He looked taut and had dark shadows under his eyes. There had been an article in the Cork Examiner this morning with a lot of criticism at the lack of progress on what they melodramatically called ‘The Shandon Street Killer’. Patrick, like all deeply insecure people, was a harsh critic of himself and this article would only reinforce his anxieties. He was, she thought, on edge in case yet another murder would occur. She had already spoken with Dr Scher and they had both agreed that Susan should remain in hospital under the care of a battalion of nuns until this case was unravelled.

  ‘I read your note, Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘I’ve gone through everything and I’ve got them all here, all in envelopes. May I use this table, Reverend Mother?’