A Shameful Murder

by Cora Harrison

  He stopped. ‘What made him do it, Reverend Mother – a man like him, so esteemed, so praised, what made him abuse young girls?’

  ‘I would imagine,’ said the Reverend Mother primly, ‘that if marriage was an impossibility, if a woman of his own class would never look at him because of his terrible disfigurement then in order to satisfy his male urges he turned to the young and the innocent and that,’ she said firmly, ‘I find unforgivable.’

  Patrick took in a deep breath and then jumped to his feet. There was a surging energy bursting up through him. He could not wait to get back to the barracks and to pick up a warrant and a pair of handcuffs. He would have to explain matters to the superintendent first, but all was now very clear in his mind and he knew that he could convince the man.

  ‘Thank you very much, Reverend Mother; I would never have got on to his trail if it were not for you,’ he said gratefully.

  ‘It might be a good idea,’ suggested the Reverend Mother, ‘to go to Nellie O’Sullivan’s place of work – the pub on Albert Quay – and get a statement from her. Perhaps take her back to the barracks with you.’

  ‘Will she be willing to do this, and to stand up in court, what do you think?’

  The Reverend Mother did not answer for a moment. She appeared to be contemplating a picture in her mind’s eye and when she spoke it was with her usual decisiveness.

  ‘I think, Patrick,’ she said, ‘Nellie O’Sullivan would give a very good performance in front of Judge Magner and his fellow lawyers. Go now, and do what you must do,’ she added.

  Did she, he wondered, as he went down the corridor rapidly, feel any sense of compunction about what might seem as a betrayal of a friend – at least he supposed that Professor Lambert might be a friend – he spoke in the same way, came from the same background, and perhaps more importantly, had also chosen to work among the poor of Cork. He shook his head impatiently. It was none of his business, he thought, and he had little idea of what went on behind the mask of that pale face and those heavy-lidded, luminous green eyes framed by the snowy white wimple – a face that seemed to have remained exactly the same since he had been a young child. The Reverend Mother was probably as old as time itself and as inscrutable. Patrick turned his thoughts towards the superintendent, marshalling his arguments, lining up the facts. It would be good, he thought, if the answer could have appeared to come from his superior, if he could manage the man in the same way that the Reverend Mother had led his thoughts towards the discovery of the truth. However, he had little hope of this and he had no time for stupidity this morning. A man who had killed once would kill again and pretty little Nellie O’Sullivan, at this moment, would be running gaily down the quays going to work at the bar. The murderer must be arrested and locked up before any further harm came from him. His fate after that could be argued out in front of the judge. He would take a cab to Paddy’s Bar on Albert Quay, he thought. The sooner he got there the better.

  It was still early when they arrived at the barracks, but the superintendent, according to Tommy O’Mahoney, was already in his office. Patrick left Nellie with Tommy, took in a deep breath, straightened himself, tapped on the door and went in.

  ‘Ah, Sergeant!’ The superintendent seemed in an irritable mood, fussing with the papers on his desk and frowning heavily. ‘I’ve just had the Cork Examiner on the telephone asking whether there was any news of an arrest in the Angelina Fitzsimon case. What’s going on with it?’

  Patrick took a seat without being bidden. He forced himself to sit very straight and to look the superintendent in the eye.

  ‘You’ll be able to telephone them back with the news by the end of the morning, Superintendent,’ he said confidently. ‘I think I’ve solved the case and with your consent hope to make an arrest within an hour.’

  ‘What!’

  Patrick ignored the exclamation. He would be very simple and straightforward, he decided. It was not a moment to pay tribute to the various helpers, indeed, it would seem like a fairy tale where a Reverend Mother had solved a murder and her minions from the Republican Party had rescued a girl from near-death.

  ‘This was a case of double identity and of blackmail,’ he began, speaking briskly and confidently. ‘Angelina Fitzsimon is alive, she was concealed in the lunatic asylum, on the point of death; her almost identical half-sister, a girl from Sawmill Lane, was the murder victim.’ He went on explaining the switch of girls at the Merchants’ Ball, glad that shock had robbed the superintendent of words and speaking rapidly in order that he could get through his report before being interrupted.

  ‘Mary O’Sullivan had been made pregnant by Professor Lambert, who had frequently visited the house to give charitable parcels from the St Vincent de Paul Society. I guess that she told him, at the Merchants’ Ball, that she was expecting a baby, tried to blackmail him and he panicked, gave her some ether and then took her from the ballroom, strangled her and dropped the body into the sewer in the basement of the Imperial Hotel.’ Patrick kept his voice neutral as he added: ‘He had been afraid that he would be unmasked in Cork society as an immoral man.’ He noted, without trepidation, that the superintendent’s eyes were almost popping from his head and waited for the storm to break.

  ‘You can’t prove any of this!’ The words were spluttered, but somehow they did not sound as outraged as he had expected. Was it possible, he wondered suddenly, that the superintendent might have heard some rumours about Professor Lambert in the past? In any case, he could not afford to lose time now, so he played his trump card.

  ‘Angelina Fitzsimon has been rescued from her incarceration at the asylum and the Reverend Mother of St Mary’s of the Isle is with her now,’ he said mildly, though suppressing the information that Angelina was still unconscious, and then he added, ‘and Nellie O’Sullivan, sister to the murdered girl, has made a statement. You can see that she names Professor Lambert as the cause of her sister’s pregnancy. She’s waiting outside in case you wish to examine her.’ He took the piece of paper from his pocket and passed it across the desk and then waited patiently for the warrant to be issued.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Iustitia vero sit quaedam rectitudo animi, per quam homo operatur quod debet facere in tempore quo eum.

  (Justice is a certain rectitude of mind, whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him.)

  ‘He committed suicide,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘He was found dead by the policemen who came to arrest him. He had an empty glass beside him. No doubt he had discovered that Angelina had been taken away from the asylum and guessed that his deeds would be exposed.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Lucy briskly. She ate one of the grapes she had brought for the invalid and, head on one side, appraised her bouquet of hothouse flowers. ‘Much the best way around things; I suppose that it will all be hushed up, now.’

  ‘Not if I can have anything to do with it,’ said the Reverend Mother firmly. Patrick had come into the hospital half an hour earlier with the news, looking angry and cheated. ‘Poor man,’ the superintendent had said when he heard the news, according to Patrick. There would be a closing of ranks, a silent conspiracy to shield a wealthy family from shame. She had tried to console him, thinking that Thomas Aquinas would agree with his ideas about legal justice being a necessity for society, but the murderer of poor Mary O’Sullivan might, she thought, now never be exposed. Unless, of course, powerful forces demanded that justice should be seen to be done …

  ‘Well, believe me, it’s best left alone,’ said Lucy, vigorously giving her reasons, while the Reverend Mother mused on the abstract concept of justice and tried to think of an influential ear, into which she would drop a hint. ‘Do you hear me, Dottie,’ she said sharply, and then with an exasperated sigh: ‘The trouble with you nuns is that you don’t live in the real world.’

  The Reverend Mother thought about her world, remembering her last morning before her accident when she had to break the news to si
x children in her school that their father had thrown himself under the wheels of a train and had sent instructions to the kitchen to make up a parcel of food for another family where the youngest child had complained of ‘a belly ache’ from hunger and then promised a distraught woman to contact a landlord about the terrible rat problem in one of the tenements in Cove Street. However, she bowed her head meekly and tucked her hands into her large sleeves and Lucy looked satisfied.

  ‘How is the girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Angelina is making good progress,’ said the Reverend Mother cautiously. ‘Her father and brother have been to see her. One of the nursing sisters informed me of their presence and I sat by Angelina’s bedside. She did not speak during their visit,’ she added.

  ‘Did you say anything to them?’ Lucy sounded a little nervous.

  ‘Just a greeting: I was saying my rosary,’ said the Reverend Mother blandly.

  They had been ill at ease, she had thought, watching them from beneath lowered eyelids as the black beads slipped through her fingers. Guilty-looking, both of them, she was sure of that, but was it guilt for the pressure they had put the girl under, or was there anything more than that to be read from their uneasiness? There was no doubt but that Angelina had felt threatened enough to stage a disappearance in order to escape from the threat that they posed. It was important that the girl’s future should be safeguarded.

  ‘You’re not my first or even my most important visitor, Lucy,’ she said mildly. ‘Yesterday the Bishop of Cork, the Reverend Daniel Cohalan, came to see me. He had some interesting news. Apparently the Bon Secours Sisters of the hospital in College Road are having a new Mother Superior, someone from France, someone who is known to both of us. She is, was, Sœur Marie Madeleine from Bordeaux, now, of course, Mère Marie Madeleine. I shall be meeting her at a diocesan reception next week, by the kindness of His Lordship.’

  The well-powdered, discreetly rouged face in front of her did not change and the blue eyes did not falter, nevertheless the tension in the air was almost palpable.

  ‘And …’ said Lucy, stony-faced. She looked across at her cousin and the Reverend Mother looked back at her resolutely. The young had to be protected. That had been her creed for over fifty years.

  ‘Edmund and Angela,’ she said, ‘were very nice people, but not, you know, people of a practical frame of mind. They both thought that once the baby was born then it was theirs, almost as though,’ said the Reverend Mother with an unaccustomed flight into poetry, ‘it had been bred of their bone, and born of their blood. But you and I, Lucy, know better. Joseph was not, is not the true heir to the Fitzsimon estate. He is the cuckoo in the nest, the interloper, and has no legal right to the property that he now uses as his own. They left no will, though I suspect that, in any case, the property was entailed, so a will would not have helped. Joseph’s birth was illegitimate and, as the law stands, this means that he could not inherit, even if Edmund and Angela were his real parents, even if they had married subsequently. The real truth of Joseph’s birth is known only to three persons who are alive today.’ She paused for a moment. ‘However, even one is enough and I propose to make use of that one.’

  Lucy broke her silence after a minute. ‘You would betray me,’ she said harshly. ‘There’s Rupert and the girls, my granddaughters …’

  ‘There will be no betrayal,’ said the Reverend Mother firmly, ‘just a simple statement, under oath, from a nun who presided over his birth, stating that Joseph Fitzsimon was not born of Angela and Edmund Fitzsimon, but was the illegitimate son of a young girl living locally in west Bordeaux. It will be made clear that no further steps will be taken while his daughter Angelina remains safe and unthreatened.’

  There was another long silence and this time it was the Reverend Mother who broke it.

  ‘I propose that a letter be written to Joseph Fitzsimon by a French lawyer from Bordeaux, stating that an affidavit about the illegitimate birth has been placed in his care and that it will remain under lock and key while reports that Angelina is well, sent by a respected person of the community in Cork, continue to arrive. That, I think,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘should probably do the trick, especially, if, as I imagine, an account of my meeting with the Mother Superior of the future Bon Secours Hospital is reported in the Cork Examiner. No doubt there will also be a photograph …’

  She would make sure of that, she thought. Let Joseph feel uneasy, let him wonder and speculate, let him envisage the loss of his property and be terrified by such a prospect. It would be best, she thought, planning for the future, if Angelina, once released from hospital, did not return to the house in Blackrock, but openly stayed as a visitor with her friend and former mentor, the Mother Superior of the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock. Between the two of them, Mother Isabelle and Mother Aquinas, they should be able to ensure the safety and the happiness of Angelina Fitzsimon and to get justice and proper medical treatment for her unfortunate mother.

  The Bishop, she remembered, had preached his annual sermon last year to the religious orders of Cork on the theme of the three churches: ecclesia militans, those Christians struggling on earth; ecclesia triumphans, those who had obtained the happiness of Heaven; and ecclesia penitans, those who repented in Purgatory. To these divisions of the church she would add a fourth. Joseph Fitzsimon would find that his every move was watched over by the ecclesia materna.

  After Lucy had gone, she relaxed in her chair, nursing her broken arm and planning her visit to Mère Marie Madeleine. Once she was discharged from here, she thought, she would get Dr Scher to order her into the Bon Secours for one of those new-fangled X-rays of her arm. No one in her convent would question a visit to a rival hospital with the money for superior facilities. And she would make sure that she and the new Reverend Mother had a long conversation together. The secret would be kept as it had been for over fifty years, but the safeguard for Angelina would be put in place.

  Next, the Reverend Mother turned her mind to the other girl, to Angelina’s half-sister, Mary O’Sullivan. Was it right that her violent death should pass unmarked just because her killer was a member of the leading family in the city? Patrick had done his best. It would be injurious for him to pursue the matter any further. But, who would be willing to take up this matter and pursue it?

  And then the door opened and a slim figure in a white coat, borrowed stethoscope slung around the neck, a clipboard in hand, sauntered in.

  ‘You’re going to get caught one day, Eileen,’ said Reverend Mother, sitting up very straight and feeling new hope running through her veins.

  ‘I’m rather getting to like this place,’ said Eileen airily. ‘Perhaps when all the fighting is over, and if Connolly’s vision of free education for all comes about, free education even up to the highest university degrees; that’s what he said, well, you might see me a doctor, Reverend Mother, what do you think?’

  ‘I think that you might make a very good doctor,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘but at the moment I was thinking of your occupation as a journalist …’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Cork Examiner, 24 March, 1923:

  The civic guard have thirty vacancies for a cadetship.

  Successful applicants will become high ranked senior officers in Southern Ireland’s police force.

  ‘I nabbed him on his way home,’ said Dr Scher, pushing Patrick ahead of him into the Reverend Mother’s parlour. ‘He’s looking cold and tired, isn’t he?’ he said over his shoulder to Sister Bernadette. ‘They work him too hard at the barracks. He could do with a nice cup of tea and perhaps a slice of your cake.’

  Patrick, thought the Reverend Mother, did not look well. She had not seen him for almost a week and it struck her that he might even have lost some weight.

  ‘Come and sit by the fire, both of you,’ she said hospitably. ‘What a terrible evening; still, at least it is a west wind so we shouldn’t get any flooding.’

  Dr Scher, she noticed, had a folded newspaper, stuck into his capacious pock
et of his overcoat. He allowed Sister Bernadette to take the coat, but extracted the Cork Evening Echo from it and held it like a baton in his hand while he bullied Patrick into relinquishing his coat and escorted him solicitously to the armchair that he normally took for himself.

  ‘I’m just a little tired,’ said Patrick, stretching out his hands to the fire. ‘I’ve been staying up late every night, studying for the cadetship examination – not that I have a hope of promotion to inspector, no matter how hard I work, or no matter how many marks I score. If the superintendent has anything to say in the matter, and I’m sure that he will, then I’ll be a sergeant for the rest of my life. I’m not in very high favour at the moment. Spoke my mind a bit too freely. Can’t help feeling bitter about it, all, can’t stop thinking about it. Poor girl!’

  ‘I always find it more rewarding to focus on one aim at a time,’ said the Reverend Mother crisply. ‘You’ve done your best for Mary O’Sullivan, now keep your mind on your studies and I’m sure that you’ll succeed.’

  ‘And here’s something that will cheer you up,’ said Dr Scher, unfurling the newspaper with a flourish. ‘Pretty good article here, written by someone who calls himself a patriot.’ He cast a sly look at the Reverend Mother and then began to read aloud: ‘“Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind,” said Joseph Addison. “And indeed, since Roman times, she has been depicted as the statue of a blindfolded woman, holding a sword, a balance.”

  ‘That’s probably as far as the editor read,’ said Dr Scher, lowering the paper to look at his audience. ‘And this is how it goes on: “But is justice impartial here in Cork city? Is there one law for those without friends in high places and another for those who belong to wealthy of the city? Do we hang the dock labourer who kills a man in a drunken fight and then turn a blind eye to the gentleman who murders the girl that he has impregnated?”