A Shameful Murder

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Like it?’ she asked with a nod around the room.

  ‘No,’ he said uncompromisingly. ‘If there’s a raid, they’ll know that some prissy nancy boys from the city have been living here.’

  ‘And girls,’ murmured Eileen with a lift of her eyebrow. In fact, there were five girls and five young men in this unit. People like Tom Hurley laughed at the Cumann na mBan, the women’s unit, saying that the girls were recruited to make the sandwiches, but the head of their unit, Constance Markievicz, was a better shot than any of the men. Eileen, Aoife, Máire, Kitty and Susie didn’t allow any of this sort of talk in the house.

  ‘One should take a pride in one’s surroundings,’ she said loftily. ‘Remember what McDonagh said: “The fierce pulsation of resurgent pride that disclaims servitude …”’

  ‘Come on, make your report,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Body of a girl – probably about eighteen – been strangled – no notice on her – nothing. It’s nothing to do with us.’ Eileen rattled out the words in a brisk, businesslike manner and removed her beret and gloves.

  ‘How do you know that someone didn’t move the notice before you arrived – the civic guard, for instance?’

  ‘I spoke to the person who found the body; she used to teach me, Reverend Mother Aquinas of St Mary’s of the Isle.’

  He nodded at that. He was a Cork city man – had heard of the Reverend Mother.

  ‘So, it’s nothing to do with us, in your judgement?’

  ‘No,’ said Eileen decisively. ‘Nothing to do with us. She was posh – wearing a satin dress.’

  ‘Better get something out to the papers.’ He nodded towards the typewriter sitting on a newly polished table by the window. ‘We need to put our side of the story – did you see that long bit they published from the Bishop – seems to think that we are worse than Satan. Put something like: “The Irish Republican Army utterly deny any involvement in the murder of a young girl,” etc., etc., etc. – you know what to write.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Eileen eyed him with disdain. ‘And you don’t think that the Cork Examiner is going to print stuff like that, do you? I’m going to make a good story out of it – a mystery, like Sherlock Holmes. “Who killed this beautiful young girl, dressed in a satin ball gown, a girl on the threshold of life? What scoundrel put his hands around that delicate neck …?”’

  ‘All right, Dr Watson.’ He got to his feet with a sudden grin. ‘And get a few cows in here to shit in this prissy place, make it authentic, for God’s sake,’ he said over his shoulder.

  EIGHT

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Hominem unius libri timeo.

  (I fear the man of one book.)

  Bellamonte, the house in Blackrock, was just as the Reverend Mother had remembered it. Fifty-two years ago, she thought, as Dr Scher set the brake on his Humber in the covered-over space where, in the days of her youth, the carriages used to wait: it is fifty-two years since I have visited this house. It had been owned by Robert Fitzsimon, Edmund’s elder brother, in those days. There had been a couple of sons, both killed in the first Boer War, a fortunate circumstance for Joseph who had inherited not only the Bordeaux property from Edmund but also the Cork property from Robert. It had been a great place for parties, she remembered. She and Lucy had always been invited, even while they were still at school, and she remembered both of them climbing carefully out of the carriage and balancing their crinolines in the draught that always blew up from the river. How many changes had there been to the world since that time!

  Dismounting nimbly from the petrol-smelling car, she wasted no time in nostalgia, merely noting that everything was in excellent order, the white paintwork on the windows, the gleaming black paint, the polished chrome knocker and knob on the front door were perfect and that, although it was only March, already a gardener was hard at work in the hillside gardens which had been sculpted into six wide terraces, dropping one by one, down to the edge of the River Lee.

  Inside was the same as it had been in her youth. White marble stairway, adorned with a crimson carpet, the same carpet, but no, it must be new, she thought – no carpet could have lasted over fifty years and still shimmer under the gas lamps with quite such an opulent gleam. She could have sworn, though, that there had been a crimson carpet there when she had been eighteen years old. They were shown into the library – and the serried ranks of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, all bound in red leather and edged in gold, were just the same – all still in perfect order, as though they had not been touched since the day when they were delivered to add a touch of colour to the north-facing room. She had teased Edmund Fitzsimon about them, she remembered, once when he had been staying there with his brother, had threatened to set him an examination on their contents – he had been very tolerant of her schoolgirl sense of mischief. A nice man, she thought – very good to his wife, Angela, very understanding of her sorrow when she failed to conceive a child.

  Just standing here in the library brought him back vividly to her – and yet he had been dead for over twenty years, dead and left his entire retail empire to Joseph.

  The man who entered a few minutes later was different, though. Edmund Fitzsimon had been lean and tall, dark-haired, slightly aristocratic-looking – fitting in well with the landed gentry to whom he sold his wines, spices and teas. This man, Joseph he had been named, had a different look – short, stocky, intensely blue-eyed – unlike the almost navy colour of most blue-eyed, white-skinned Irish people, this man had eyes that were china-blue in shade and hair that was not of the usual light golden red, but was still, despite his age and a sweep of silver over the forehead and just above the ears, as richly red-brown as the hue of a horse chestnut. It should have been a shock to see him, but oddly she was now more concerned with the fate of the girl, Angelina. What had happened to that girl, she asked herself? And why was her father not looking more concerned, not looking more devastated?

  And, of course, this was where the chestnut hair and china-blue eyes had come from – and perhaps explained her feelings of recognition when she had looked down into the dead girl’s face, before she had noted the expensive gown and shoes.

  And yet, no young girl closely resembles a middle-aged man with an aggressively bristling moustache and heavy bags of flesh beneath his slightly protruding eyes. He must be, she calculated, about fifty-three now. He had married well, Joseph Fitzsimon, she had heard that. He had wed a wife, one of the Woodford family, with a large dowry, who had presented him with two children within years of the wedding. An unfortunate marriage, though, in other respects.

  Quickly the Reverend Mother banished these thoughts and rose to her feet holding out her hand. Dr Scher had made the introductions well and Joseph seemed flattered by her visit.

  ‘We haven’t met before,’ he said pressing her hand slightly before relinquishing it, ‘but I take it very kindly that you have gone to the trouble of coming to call on us. I understand that it was you who found my poor daughter.’

  He hadn’t shown much signs of sorrow about that poor daughter, according to Patrick and now she found herself scrutinizing him with interest. It was true that she had, in the past, avoided encounter with this man. Somehow, in her gathering of subscriptions for her various projects, she had always skipped the offices of Joseph Fitzsimon, slightly despising herself for cowardice, but at the same time knowing that anything which brought the past back and deflected her from her concentration on her chosen way of life would only serve to weaken her and make her mission less of a triumph.

  ‘And your son?’ she queried. ‘How is he? This must have been a terrible shock for him, also?’

  She did not mention the girl’s mother. All of Cork, she understood, knew that she was in the lunatic asylum across the river, rumoured to be completely mad. How could this man have condemned his wife to eternal imprisonment with no family face to watch over her?

  ‘I remember this library,’ she said in a friendly way. ‘It looks just as
it was when I used to visit here, over fifty years ago.’

  ‘Ah … yes,’ he said, his gaze passing over the well-dusted rows of books with the appearance of one who did not know or care for them. St Thomas Aquinas, she knew, was reputed to say that he feared the man who had just one book, and she understood what he meant about the narrowness of outlook that could give. However, she thought, perhaps a man with one well-loved book might be a more rounded individual than the man who possessed hundreds and never opened any of them.

  ‘Come into the drawing room,’ he invited expansively. ‘We are just having tea. Your colleague, Professor Lambert, is here, Dr Scher. He came kindly to sympathize with us when he heard the terrible news.’

  The drawing room, also, was as she remembered it. Just as cosy as ever. Well-stuffed couches, and four armchairs – each with a padded foot-rest in front of it – all expensively upholstered, covered in red velvet to match the curtains that hung on the tall windows and in front of the door to the hall and ranged in a line in front of the fireplace. She remembered that marble fireplace, too. It was still as immaculately clean as she had always noted it to be – and a coal fire was glowing in its grate, sending out its heat to banish the cold and chill of this March day with its leaping flames reflected in the white stone.

  For a moment she thought that the room was empty and then saw that one tall-backed chair was occupied by a figure who rose to greet them, brushing aside Joseph’s effort to introduce him.

  ‘The Reverend Mother and I are old friends,’ he boomed in that voice which always seemed to be too big for his frame. He was a smallish man, rather overweight, and every time that she met him she forced herself to gaze straight into his eyes. Too many people looked away when confronted by the terrible port-wine stain that covered more than half his face and twisted the mouth out of shape. They met at various charitable committees and she thought him far more sincere and more dedicated than most who attended those affairs often in a spirit of condescension and for the sake of seeing their names on the newspaper. Professor Lambert was an immensely benevolent man and did great work for the St Vincent de Paul Society, distributing food, clothes and coal for fires among the poor of the city. It was rumoured that he had spent most of his inherited wealth and of his salary from the university on his charities.

  ‘Ah, Lambert,’ said Dr Scher, not too pleased, she noted with amusement, to have another medical man already in position and, judging by the few scraps of pink-iced cake on the silver tray, to have already consumed much of the afternoon tea provided.

  When Joseph had installed the Reverend Mother in the chair by the fire and went to fetch his son and to order fresh supplies of tea, Professor Lambert seated himself beside her, and she knew that he would, in the oblique Cork way, explain his presence in this house of mourning.

  ‘A terrible business,’ he said in a hushed voice and she agreed, murmuring the conventional, ‘May God have mercy on her soul.’

  ‘You found her, I heard,’ he said, and added, ‘Slipped into the river, I believe,’ but he didn’t appear to want an answer to this and went on, ‘I still can’t believe it. I saw her last night, you know – saw her at the Merchants’ Ball.’

  The Reverend Mother’s interest was immediately engaged. She breathed a quick prayer that Joseph Fitzsimon would take his time about fetching his son and asked with an appearance of conventional politeness, ‘How was she, Professor?’

  ‘Seemed in good spirits,’ he said; ‘not that I could hear much that she said. Terribly loud band – that new-fashioned jazz – can’t stand it – would split your eardrums.’

  ‘How did she look?’ Dr Scher moved away from the silver tray and came to join them. ‘Did she look depressed in any way, Cyril?’

  Depressed? If the man were to infer from Dr Scher’s words that Angelina could have committed suicide, well, that didn’t matter, thought the Reverend Mother. The essential was to get to the truth and now that Sergeant Patrick Cashman had been told by the superintendent to shelve the case for the moment, then she, Reverend Mother Aquinas, owed it to the dead girl to find out as much as possible about her last hours.

  ‘I didn’t notice anything much,’ said the professor reflectively. ‘Mind you, people will tell you that it’s hard to get a word in when I start talking.’ He laughed good-naturedly. He seemed unself-conscious, but that disfigurement must have given him a very unhappy childhood. She began to feel rather sorry for him and allowed him to fetch her tea, much to the annoyance of Dr Scher. He re-seated himself beside her and resumed his memories of Angelina’s last night on earth.

  ‘What was she like – I never met her,’ explained the Reverend Mother, inviting him to expand.

  ‘Angelina was a quiet, reserved sort of girl,’ he said and his voice was warm with sympathy. ‘She was never one who said too much, you know. And of course it was very, very noisy, there. Drums, saxophones, trombones and all sorts of discordant musical instruments. No,’ he reflected, ‘I can’t remember anything that she said, that I actually heard … It was only when I received the terrible news that I thought back and I realized that she was very quiet that night; I could hardly coax a word out of her. I handed her over to one of my young students, nice lad, one of the Spiller family; I thought to myself that I was getting a bit old for the dancing game so I went upstairs and joined her father at pre-dinner drinks at his table and then moved on to one of my colleagues’ tables, spread my company around, didn’t go downstairs again until later on!’ He smiled slightly at the memory of the convivial evening and then hurriedly re-arranged his face to the decorous lines of sorrow.

  ‘Terrible, terrible thing,’ he said.

  ‘What was she like, as a person, I mean?’ asked the Reverend Mother, sipping her tea and feeling impatient with the way most men seemed to repeat themselves.

  ‘A nice girl,’ he said mechanically and then with great sincerity, ‘She was a very nice girl, Angelina Fitzsimon, a very good girl, Reverend Mother. You would have liked her, would have approved of her. Most girls of her age, these days, think of nothing but dancing and parties, but she put a lot of her time, and her money too, into the St Vincent de Paul. Worked in our shop in the Grand Parade, made up bundles of clothes for poor families … Her father wouldn’t allow visiting their houses, of course, but she gave up two days a week to the shop and lots of poor women used to come in and she’d always find something for them – was really nice to them, too – she’d say things like – “I think this would suit you – you have such lovely blue eyes” – just as if she was a shop assistant, not someone doling out charity. I appreciated that. Brought in bags of her own out-worn clothes, and persuaded lots of her friends to do the same.’

  Bags of clothes, thought the Reverend Mother, her mind going to that well-worn leather bag, with the slightly dowdy clothes inside it that Patrick had shown her. Angelina had checked it into the cloakroom at the Imperial Hotel – but why? And the ticket to Liverpool – the father had thought that the girl was eloping, but, if so, why not bring her best clothes, her silver hairbrushes, not the cheap, brand-new toiletries that had been in the oilskin bag.

  She was still pondering this when Joseph Fitzsimon came through the door abruptly, almost dragging his son behind him. Both looked angry. There was a high flush in the two faces that were so alike. He muttered something when introduced to the Reverend Mother and she replied, giving him a gracious smile.

  And yet, while she was expressing conventional phrases of sympathy and regret, she was thinking hard. She had seen that face before – not a masculine face – a face like Angelina’s, a face with smooth white skin, blue eyes and chestnut hair – a face that was alive, not frozen and swollen into a death-mask. And yet she knew very few young ladies of the monied merchant princes’ class, so it should have been easy for her to have identified it. Her troubled mind just could not recollect where she had seen it and this bothered her. Many of the elderly sisters in the convent during her reign had lost their memories and dwindled from occas
ional forgetfulness into senility. In no way did she want this to happen to her. She frowned slightly and saw the young man’s startled eyes upon her. There was an odd guilty look about him, like a child caught out in a lie.

  She would ask no questions, she decided. That would be straying beyond her role as conventional visitor. Instead she turned the conversation to her recollections of the house fifty years previously, to the dinner parties that she had attended.

  ‘You must come and look over it,’ said Joseph, instantly seizing a way of entertaining his guest while waiting for fresh tea. ‘Cyril, I’ll leave you to look after Dr Scher. Gerald, see what’s happening about the tea, won’t you? Will you come with me, Reverend Mother?’

  Patiently he showed her the dining room, the library and the study and then led the way up the stairs towards the first-floor lobby.

  ‘I remember the lobby,’ she said with a smile. ‘We used to leave our cloaks there.’ She laughed a little. ‘That was over fifty years ago,’ she said and was pleased to hear that there was no nostalgia, just a note of triumph in her voice. What a useless life she and Lucy had been leading then, she thought, looking back. Useless, stupid and pointless, when it came down to it. Competing with each other to ensnare some rich young man. What she had made of her life after that had been so much more worthwhile, so much more interesting. The decision to enter the convent had been the right one for her. And as for Lucy, had she made the right decision? Probably, she thought.