A Shameful Murder

by Cora Harrison

  A touch fanciful, perhaps, to equate Angelina with this unfortunate girl, but it was probably the best that Mother Isabelle could do on the spur of the moment.

  She put down the letter and turned her head towards the window. It was, by now, completely dark and a glance at her watch showed her that it was already seven o’clock in the evening – almost exactly twenty-four hours after her fall yesterday. She had been drifting in and out of sleep throughout the day, but now she was wide awake.

  As soon as Sister Mary Immaculate had left, she went through it step by step: Angelina, according to Mother Isabelle, had ‘departed’ – not been snatched, had left of her own free will, had been seen alone running down the long avenue to the gate. She had got into a car there and no more was seen of her. So it was a man, and a man with a car. The Reverend Mother thought through the possibilities. A man that Angelina knew, a man that she trusted, a man who had brought a message so urgent that it had made her immediately leave the convent.

  And where did he take her?

  The thought of the flooded river came to her, of the drains, the sewers and the manholes. Did Angelina Fitzsimon end up in one of those this morning, after all?

  The Reverend Mother moved impatiently. If she were right, then this man could not afford to have another enquiry into the death of yet another blue-eyed, chestnut-haired girl. No, this death was to be a statistic, a death from natural causes.

  ‘Eileen,’ she said softly, ‘Eileen, are you there?’

  The door to the closet opened and Eileen emerged. In her white coat and with her stethoscope around her neck she looked every inch the young professional.

  ‘I thought I’d wait for a while to make sure that she was definitely gone,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘She was always a great one to go out of the room and then to tip-toe back in again just to catch us talking about boys.’

  The Reverend Mother ignored this slur upon her assistant.

  ‘Eileen,’ she said, ‘do you remember that you talked of doing an article about the lunatic asylum one day?’ She saw the girl’s eyes widen in surprise and rushed on: ‘I think that Angelina Fitzsimon, the girl who looked like Mary O’Sullivan, I think that she may have been taken there, taken against her will and I think that she could be in deadly danger.’ If she is still alive, she thought, but then tried to buoy herself up with the conviction that this would be a murder intended to look like natural death – death that would occur at night. ‘I wondered whether there was any possibility – I would not want you to run any risks,’ she tailed off, but remembering these tough young men in the back of the Crossley Tender, with their rifles in hand, she thought it was unlikely that the over-worked medical staff in the asylum could stand up to them. ‘You said something about them coming back tonight at nine o’clock,’ she tailed off, feeling guiltily that she should not be suggesting a thing like that.

  ‘Let’s hope that Eamonn and Mick have remembered their white coats,’ said Eileen and then she gave a sudden grin. ‘Well, if I’m caught I can always say that you made me do it, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘Save Angelina and you can say what you like,’ said the Reverend Mother recklessly. She watched while Eileen peeped up and down the corridor and then sauntered out with her stethoscope swinging jauntily.

  Would the Bishop of Cork designate this irresponsible sending out of a lorry-load of armed men, and women, members of a proscribed and excommunicated organization, by the Reverend Mother of St Mary’s of the Isle Convent, to be a ‘reserved’ sin, to be pardoned by the Pope alone and only if one knelt in contrition at his knees in the Vatican City in Rome?

  But she found that she did not greatly care as long as Angelina was rescued. It was time, she thought, for old age to hand over the quest to youth.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Countess Markievicz, 1921:

  ‘But while Ireland is not free I remain a rebel, unconverted and unconvertible.’

  The Eglinton Asylum was such a huge place that there was something about it that made one deeply uneasy, thought Eileen, as the Crossley Tender sped along the flooded Western Road. Even through the dark and the rain, the vast gloomy, ugly structure, its roof studded with the long line of over a dozen triangular facades jutting up at regular intervals, menaced the city beneath. Almost every window in the enormously long building seemed to be illuminated, and it loomed above them as they crossed the bridge. Eileen peered through the rain-striped windscreen as the Crossley Tender struggled up the almost perpendicular hill. The road was empty of almost all traffic and she was not surprised.

  ‘Built to house five hundred patients but now, someone told me, it has a thousand patients in it,’ said Eamonn knowledgeably. ‘You’d want to bring that out in your article, Eileen. They started off by having separate houses and joining them with little fenced-in yards and then when it started getting over-crowded they put roofs over the yards and built some sort of accommodation beneath. It’s a terrible place. Can you imagine trying to care for thousand people in that building? Time we put this country on its feet again,’ he remarked. ‘Only lunatics would build a place in a long line like that, making it impossible to heat.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not good for mad people to be shut up away from others – ever read Freud?’ said Liam. A furious argument started up in the back about Freud and then someone asked what was the significance of a whole lorry-load of them to be going up to the lunatic asylum in the first place – was it just the final proof that that they were all mad as hatters and this caused a huge laugh, but Eileen did not laugh or join in the conversation. She was studying the building intently. Wish I had a good camera, she was thinking, remembering the American editor that the Reverend Mother had talked about who said one picture is worth a thousand words. Still, she thought, a thousand words is not a lot and I can bring my own feelings and impressions into my article.

  But first, and foremost, this poor girl had to be found.

  A building one thousand feet long. Could anyone be found quickly in a building of that size – a building that was the size of dozens of ordinary large houses?

  A building where every door was locked.

  And then she glanced over her shoulder at the guns held by the pack of loudmouths, as she and Aoife called them, and grinned. One gun is worth a thousand words, she told herself. Nevertheless when the Crossley Tender drew up in front of the huge establishment, she felt her breath come in quick, short pants.

  Once inside the driver swept the lorry around in a wide semicircle to face the open gate and he did not switch off his engine; that was their practice, always. No matter where they went in the city, they would always have to have their exit ready. Charlie slipped into the driver’s seat while Eamonn and Liam got out and pulled on their white coats. I’m in charge, Eileen told herself. She waited effortlessly until all was silent except for the sporadic roar of the engine. The men in the back were pressing up against the partition and she turned to face them.

  ‘I want no gunfire,’ she said sternly. ‘Unless I authorize a warning shot,’ she hastily amended her instructions, thinking how effective that could be on occasion. ‘Wait to hear my whistle. I’m looking for a young woman – I’m the only one who will know her so Eamonn goes with me, and we’ll leave Liam by the desk. Liam, you whistle if you need back-up.’

  ‘Why don’t we just go in, full-strength, and out again quickly?’

  Charlie always had to argue, thought Eileen.

  ‘Because there are a thousand patients and we can’t examine every single one of them. I’m not going to cause too much of a fuss. The Reverend Mother told me to find a Dr Munroe if I can and he will know the girl – used to be sweet on her, that’s what I think, anyway. Let’s go.’

  Somewhat to her surprise, the front door stood open. There was a young nurse at the desk, but her head was lowered on to a pile of papers and she was soundly asleep. Eileen nodded silently at Liam who took up his position beside the telephone on the desk and she and Eamonn looked at one another and then ti
ptoed creakily past the nurse.

  The fog and damp from the incessant rain and flooding seemed to have got into even this building, erected high above the marsh and the river, thought Eileen, imagining how she would describe this place. They went down a long corridor whose oil-painted walls dripped with moisture and where the tiled floor was as slippery as if a film of grease had been spread over it. Here and there on the ceilings patches of fungus sprouted and the few windows were opaque with streams of water drops sliding down their ornate patterns of stained glass.

  Eamonn in his white coat marched stiffly down the corridor keeping his back stiff and his head high and Eileen strolled at his side. A couple of nurses passed them, glanced at them, but none spotted the pistol that was in each pocket, or if they did they were too tired to worry. These were war-like times and no one saw fit to ask too many questions.

  ‘Dr Munroe?’ Eamonn asked the question abruptly and the nurses looked at one another uneasily. Eventually one pointed to a door and began to sidle away towards the front desk.

  ‘No telephoning, now, ladies,’ said Liam to them. He came out of the shadows, coming forward, swinging his rifle carelessly. ‘I’ll keep these girls company, and the telephone,’ he said with a grin, and Eileen looked at Eamonn and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Let the little boy play at being a soldier,’ she said.

  ‘There’s Dr Munroe,’ said one of the nurses and a young man in a white coat came out of a room marked ‘Doctors Only’. He looked very tired and very drained. A man pushed beyond his limits, thought Eileen and imagined how she would describe him. Every effective article needs a human face as well as facts and figures, and, Dr Munroe, she thought, would be her hero.

  ‘The Reverend Mother at St Mary’s of the Isle sent me,’ she said in a low voice, and then, just to make him feel at ease, she added: ‘I used to be one of her pupils.’

  He shrugged his shoulders, a man used to emergencies, she thought with approval. His eyes went to her armed guard but he made no comment, just stood very still, his hands hanging loosely by his side, conspicuously non-threatening.

  ‘I need your help to find a girl who was brought in here,’ she said quietly in his ear and he nodded.

  ‘By her will, or against it?’ His eyes were still fixed on the man by the desk with the rifle.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the Eamonn, joining in the conversation and then, recklessly, Eileen said, ‘The Reverend Mother Aquinas is afraid for her; thinks that she may have been brought in here drugged, perhaps unconscious.’

  He looked puzzled and she wasn’t surprised. It was a strange and a fanciful notion. She looked at him with a hint of impatience. ‘I must make sure,’ she said and then he nodded.

  ‘When did she come?’

  ‘Today, I think.’

  ‘Up here,’ said Munroe and turned a corner and then began to climb the stairs. The staircase was enclosed with iron bars from top to bottom, giving a curiously caged impression. She kept a cautious hand on the bars as she climbed. The architect who had designed this impressive building had not known about the fogs of Cork and perhaps had envisioned his building having a better heating system – the walls dripped water and the marble tiles of the steps were as slippery as the corridor had been and, she thought, must be very dangerous for the patients.

  ‘Here’s my office,’ said Munroe, over his shoulder, producing an enormous key from his pocket and unlocking the door and they went in with him.

  Once it was securely shut behind them, Dr Munroe lit the gas lamp and then threw a careless leg over one corner of the table and rested his hip on it. The room was icy cold, but the young doctor did not seem to notice. His eyes were on them both.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘We haven’t time to explain everything,’ said Eileen impatiently. ‘We have to look for her.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For Angelina Fitzsimon.’

  ‘I was told that she was dead.’ He had started violently at the name, and then quietened himself with an obvious effort.

  ‘They thought she was, but …’ Eileen gave an impatient movement and a jerk of the head. The impossibility of explaining everything, the elaborate disguise of one girl, the murder – a dead girl who had been identified as Angelina Fitzsimon, but had been, in reality, poor, stupid Mary O’Sullivan … A death whose consequences seemed to have ended with the interment in the Fitzsimon tomb in a cemetery in Blackrock. But now? Once Angelina appeared again, then the other death would be investigated and the murderer would be located. The important thing was that Angelina, according to the Reverend Mother, was in deadly danger from a man who knew that he faced death by the noose if caught.

  ‘You’ll have to trust me, Dr Munroe,’ she said imperatively and with all of the authority that she could throw into her voice. ‘This is a matter of life or death – we may be too late, but I don’t think so. The Reverend Mother thinks that the murderer will probably strike in the night; she says that is the time when most deaths naturally occur. All you need to know for now,’ she finished, ‘is that we are looking for Angelina Fitzsimon and she will be locked up somewhere – in a ward or in a private room.’

  ‘Drugged?’ Dr Munroe looked terribly tired. He ran his hand fretfully through his red curls and then looked across at Eileen, almost as though appealing for help. She edged the butt of her pistol from her pocket and stared back at him stonily.

  ‘Yes, undoubtedly, and we intend to find her.’ There was a warning note in Eamonn’s voice.

  ‘You’d know her, wouldn’t you, Dr Munroe,’ urged Eileen. ‘The Reverend Mother told me that you had played tennis with her.’ He had admitted the girl to see her mother, had gone so far as to steal a nurse’s uniform for her – well, certainly he should have been able to recognize her.

  ‘Could have the head shaved.’ Dr Munroe seemed to be slightly invigorated by that energetic voice. ‘Don’t expect to recognize her by the chestnut hair – it’s probably all gone – all shaved off – they do that to the poor things– makes life easier for the nurses. Let’s go. Stick by me. We don’t want any disturbances. Once you’re with me, no one will take much notice. Take that lamp. They’ll have the lights low at night. Keep that fellow with the rifle out of the way, for God’s sake.’

  They went down a different set of stairs; this time Eileen found the bars caging them in to be less intimidating. Her eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dim light. As well as that she was now filled with the sense of a mission. Come what may, she would rescue Angelina Fitzsimon from an almost certain death.

  But then she heard something, something like a distant thunder or rumbling. For a moment she could not think what it could be and feared that the building might be collapsing with damp, but the sound swelled and grew higher and she realized that it was the sound of human voices, of sobbing or hopeless wailing, of shrill cries and half-formed words. She looked at Munroe with horror, but the doctor appeared to notice nothing, just went on down the stairs, each marble tile ringing from the sound of his swift footsteps. The noise of human voices swelled as the three walked silently, shoulder to shoulder, down the broad corridor.

  ‘In here,’ said Munroe, fitting a key to the lock and turning it with a loud click.

  The room that they entered was a long one, floored with huge slabs of limestone, its brick walls whitewashed – some time ago, judging by its yellowish appearance and by the innumerable and disgusting stains that spattered the surface. At the top of the room was a tall window, divided by limestone mullions into three sections, each of the three finishing with a sharply pointed arch. The city lay down below and she could see the yellow glow of gas lamps piercing the fog at regular intervals. Down there the people of Cork would have finished their day’s work at office or warehouse and would be endeavouring to get back to their homes. Up here was a place for the damned.

  The two long walls of the ward were lined with small iron-framed beds, set at regular intervals,
and on each bed lay a woman – some of them half-naked, others lightly covered with stained yellow blankets that looked thin and frayed. A padlocked chain was attached to both the top and the bottom of the bed and she could see that most of the inmates were chained by wrist and ankle. The stench was appalling and at their entrance the noise rose to a deafening level.

  ‘You check that side and I’ll check this. There’s no nurse here for the moment so be quick.’ Munroe seemed to be unaffected by the scene that struck the Eamonn motionless and dumb for the moment. He was already moving rapidly down the row, scanning the faces, even stopping to write some instruction on the slate which, with its stick of chalk, hung from string at the bottom of each bed. Eileen stayed by the door for a moment and then joined him. Eamonn strolled around, looking for all the world as though he had completed the last four years of his medical course at the university.

  Eileen’s mind was in a whirl. I must do something about this if I come out of this place alive, she thought. She forced herself to put the suffering out of her mind and to concentrate on the faces. Surely none of them could be Angelina. She tried to remember the face of the girl in the satin dress that she had seen that morning lying on the flood water in the laneway on St Mary’s of the Isle.

  By the time that she had reached the window, Munroe was already standing at the door beckoning to her impatiently. He had instantly realized that she was not here, while she had lingered, trying to discover a trace of humanity in the faces of these unfortunates.

  Still, she endeavoured to be speedier as they traversed the second ward – a mirror image of the first one. It was, he knew, only a matter of time, before they were discovered. There might be a pitched battle in this terrible place. That wouldn’t help the unfortunate patients.

  ‘How many more of those wards?’ she whispered to Munroe when they were in the corridor once again.