The Lazarus Bell, an Irish Murder Mystery

by Patrick Dunne

  ‘1348 – In July, Prior Thomas wrote to the Bishop: “The king’s loyal subjects in the town have petitioned me against installing the new reliquary (which, strangely, has found favour with the native Irish) at the Priory, saying that it was the image that had wrought miracles even before de Fay brought the relic from Jerusalem. There is great turmoil among the people and threats to destroy the reliquary by citizens and pilgrims whose devotion is to the image.” Bishop Geoffrey replied to Prior Thomas that the reliquary and the chief treasure of the shrine should be hidden for safe-keeping until the civil strife be ended, and that this task be entrusted to Johanna, Comitis Marchiae.’

  The next entry referred to the presence of strange pilgrims and the arrival of the Black Death.

  ‘Got it!’ I shouted, jumping up from the chair and waving the sheets in Finian’s face. His surprised expression made me laugh.

  ‘Hey, take it easy, Illaun,’ he said. ‘I always said history should be fun when I was teaching it – but not this much.’

  ‘This is so exciting! First of all, the month before the Black Death arrived in Castleboyne, there was a major dispute in the town over a new reliquary that had been commissioned for the shrine of Our Lady. To us, it reads like a difference of opinion about some abstruse ecclesiastical matter, but it wasn’t – do you see? It wasn’t!’

  Finian blinked like an owl.

  ‘I’ll explain. The result was that the reliquary and the chief treasure of the shrine that you mentioned last night were entrusted for safe-keeping to Johanna, Comitis Marchiae – in other words…’

  ‘Joan, Countess of March. Joan Mortimer.’

  ‘Correct. And guess what the reliquary was?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I believe it was the statue we found last week. It stands to reason that, for a reliquary to cause such a fuss, it had to be something out of the ordinary. That’s why Mortimer asked me if the statue was hollow. He hadn’t set eyes on it, but he already knew its function.’

  ‘Its function? I think of reliquaries as smallish containers made of metal and wood and maybe glass. But an entire statue? And to contain what?’

  ‘A relic brought back from Jerusalem by Lord Robert de Fay.’

  Finian was tugging the end of his beard – a sign he was puzzled. ‘But they already had a statue. Why get another one?’

  ‘That’s the crucial question. The dispute in the town was between those who believed in de Fay’s relic and those who believed it was the image of the Virgin, not the relic, that performed the miracles. The second lot obviously thought that if the relic in its new container – a life-size statue – was installed in the Priory, it would outshine the original, even negate its powers.’

  Finian was still tugging his beard. ‘I’m not in the picture just yet.’

  It hit me like a lightning bolt. ‘That’s it, that’s it! It all makes sense now. Oh, Finian—’ I hugged him where he sat. The man looked utterly bewildered.

  I sat back down at the window. ‘I noticed it the other night in the later entries, too – every reference is to the “image” of the Virgin. We automatically assumed it was a statue, but nobody ever says so. If the image came back from the Fourth Crusade – in other words, from the sack of Constantinople – then the chances are it wasn’t a statue at all: it was a Byzantine icon. Our Lady of Castleboyne was a painting!’

  Finian did his owl impression again.

  I continued, ‘And that would explain what was happening in the late 1340s in Castleboyne. Imagine the situation: the Bishop’s anxious to get a nice new reliquary to house de Fay’s relic in time for the Holy Year of 1350. Lots of cash is raised and goes overseas, with probably only a vague description of what’s required. The fashion on the Continent is for large-scale reliquaries, and a polychrome wooden Virgin and Child – a Maria Lactans, at that – is at the leading edge of what the workshops in Germany or France can produce. Back comes the reliquary, but – oops! – it’s not quite what some people expected. It’s going to put their beloved icon in the shade – a gaudily dressed, three-dimensional siren, versus a smoke-darkened painting the size of your average framed photograph… It’s going to interfere with the vibes that have built up over a century and a half. No, thanks – you can keep it!’

  ‘And you think this caused all hell to break out?’

  ‘Yes. And I think Joan Mortimer hired trustworthy people to hide away the statue and the “chief treasure” – whatever it was – but when the Black Death came to town, the trustees were wiped out and the places they’d chosen were forgotten. Or possibly the treasure was retrieved, but the location of the statue was lost. The plague had a hugely disruptive effect on society.’

  ‘Or perhaps the statue was deliberately left where it was,’ said Finian.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the conflict it had caused.’

  ‘But it was far too valuable to throw away. It could have been sold.’

  ‘Maybe there was something else about the statue that offended people.’

  Finian and I were on a roll. Like old times. I thought about what he had just said. ‘Hmm. I was thinking along those lines myself, and I wondered if possibly her resemblance to Mary Magdalene made people feel uncomfortable. But since the native Irish liked the statue, it’s unlikely to have been seen as unorthodox. Mary as the Mother of God was revered in Celtic Christianity.’

  ‘The extraordinary thing is that the original image, whatever it was – icon, statue, fresco – survived for another two hundred years.’

  ‘Yes. That is amazing.’ But that was another day’s work. ‘Let’s look at more of the things in these references just now. My Latin’s good, but I’ve never heard of starving someone to death ad dietam. What does it mean?’

  Finian locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. ‘It was a dire punishment administered with a macabre sense of humour. On his first day in prison, the unfortunate man would have been given three morsels of stale bread; the next day, three mouthfuls of water from a puddle; and that would have been the daily routine until he died.’

  ‘What a ghastly thing to do to anyone.’

  ‘Yes. Especially when there was a much more pleasant alternative – being pressed to death under heavy stone slabs.’

  ‘Very funny. You sound just like one of the jolly guys who came up with ad dietam. And who was Donncadh MacMurrough?’

  ‘Dermot MacMurrough’s daddy – Dermot was the man who invited the Anglo-Normans to come across from Wales and changed the course of Irish history. Donncadh was a nasty guy whose rule of Dublin was highly unpopular.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘The citizens murdered him during a meeting in the assembly hall. But he’s remembered more for what happened to his body. For a corpse to come in contact with an animal was taboo, so, as a sign of contempt, they buried a dead dog with him.’

  ‘Oh my God…’ Could it be?

  ‘Are you OK?’ Finian sat up straight, startled by my reaction. I had clapped my hand to my forehead without realising it.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just…there’s a chance that the remains we found in the lead coffin were Maurice Tuite’s. He was found guilty of robbing pilgrims – and, as well as being starved to death, he was sentenced to share the fate of Donncadh MacMurrough.’ I told Finian about the information that had come back from CRID.

  ‘Then why or how did the coffin beside him – if it was he – become the hiding-place for the statue?’

  ‘Are there any other references to him in there?’

  ‘Let’s take a look.’ Finian turned back to the computer. I remembered that the coffin with the statue was the smaller of the two – intended for a woman’s corpse, perhaps? Once again, I became aware of a telephone distantly ringing, which was odd: Finian’s extension was on the desk and should have been ringing too.

  ‘I can’t find anything about him per se. But there’s a reference to the death of his wife in 1362.’

  ‘What does
it say, exactly?’

  ‘Christmas: Fionnuala Ní Cheallaig, widow of Maurice Tuite, died, and was interred in the graveyard of the convent where she ended her days, doing penance for his sins.’

  ‘Well, well. I like the symmetry of it, I have to say. I think Maurice Tuite and the statue ended up in a vault, side by side in lead coffins, all of it paid for by the pilgrims he liked to rob.’

  Finian was fiddling with his beard once more. ‘Run it past me again – slowly.’

  ‘Maurice Tuite preyed on sick pilgrims visiting the shrine at Castleboyne, probably at the Magdalene hospital, where the weakest ones were nursed during their stay. For all we know, he might have even murdered some of them – it’s not unknown for that kind of thing to happen today, but in those days they didn’t have the scientific means to prove it. My guess is, he used some of the money he stole to build a vault and to install two lead coffins for himself and his wife. At the time, your tomb or mausoleum was becoming a way of expressing your place in the world. When he was eventually found guilty of robbing pilgrims – during a period when they were probably carrying a little extra money with them to donate to the Bishop’s Holy Year project – the crime was considered so heinous that he was sentenced not just to be starved to death, but also to have a dead dog buried with his corpse. And his wife – probably under suspicion of collusion – was forced into a convent, where she knew she would end her days and be buried, so she wouldn’t profit in any way from his theft.

  ‘Whoever was assigned by Joan Mortimer to hide the statue knew about this and decided to make use of the empty coffin in the vault. He or she broke in, installed the statue and sealed up the vault again. This arrangement had extra security: the cemetery was a no-go area, plus there was the taboo animal burial, which eventually got entangled with your legend of Lady Death.’

  ‘The hell-hound?’

  ‘Exactly. And possibly the statue had something to do with Lady Death’s part in the story. What we’ll never know is whether they intended to go back and retrieve the statue, or whether they deliberately left it there. But it’s safe to say that in time it was forgotten about, apart from a set of symbols that was passed on as a clue.’

  ‘And the “chief treasure”?’

  ‘I wonder if it might have been buried somewhere in the old cathedral – it ties in with the legend – and that’s what the window in the church is telling us.’

  ‘Hmm. Those symbols. There’s one thing that doesn’t quite fit in – that’s if all this happened when you think it did. It’s the fritillary, the lazarus bell. It’s unlikely to have been growing here at that time. I don’t think it was introduced to these islands until the sixteenth century. So whoever came up with it as one of the clues did so long after the statue was hidden.’

  ‘Miss Duignan! According to Father Burke, she was the benefactress who provided the funding for the window, and she was the last surviving member of an old Castleboyne family. She could have invented the clues.’

  ‘That would mean she knew where everything was hidden. But did she also know what was hidden?’

  ‘Maybe not. But she knew the secret would die with her unless she left some clues. That’s why she paid for the window dedicated to Our Lady of Castleboyne – it was an appropriate place to put the symbols, and as the donor she was able to insist that they be included in the design of the rose window.’

  ‘So let’s recap. You believe the statue in the coffin is a reliquary, that it was the cause of turmoil in the town around the time of the Black Death, and that as a result it was never installed in a church, but hidden in a vault in the Magdalene chapel, in a coffin intended for the wife of the guardian. At the same time the “chief treasure” of the shrine was hidden. Both of these operations were under the command of Joan Mortimer. Then came the Black Death, and things got forgotten or left alone. Come the Reformation, the original image – a Byzantine icon, as far as you’re concerned – was seized and burned. Three and a half centuries later, Miss Duignan donates funds for the window of the new Catholic church and instructs the workshop to include the symbols. A hundred years after that, the statue comes to light.’

  I nodded. Those were the essentials.

  ‘One question: why was it Miss Duignan and not the Mortimers who had the information?’

  ‘My guess is that she was a descendant of the family that the Countess put in charge of hiding the reliquary and the treasure. It was a well-known practice for religious artefacts to be placed with certain families for safe-keeping in time of danger – hereditary stewards, if you like.’

  ‘Hmm. You could be right. To the best of my knowledge, Joan herself died soon after the Black Death, so she mightn’t have had the opportunity to entrust the knowledge to her own family. And, now that I recall, the Castleboyne Mortimers petered out in the fifteenth century anyway.’

  ‘So Ross Mortimer can’t be a descendant.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Hmm…’

  ‘I know you’re suspicious of him, but I thought Gallagher had ruled him out?’

  ‘When it comes to being in my house, or stealing and driving the car – not guilty, sure. But he’s not the only one in on this. I think it began with Terry Johnston, it has something to do with Ben Adelola, and I firmly believe Darren Byrne is mixed up in it too. And it all has to do with finding the treasure, which they’ve now decided for some reason isn’t inside the statue.’

  ‘Or that’s what they want you to think. Have you any idea what this “chief treasure” is?’

  ‘Reading between the lines in what SIV’s thrown up, it seems to me the chief treasure of the shrine and the relic Robert de Fay brought back from Jerusalem are the same thing.’

  ‘That’s not very enlightening, Illaun.’

  ‘Maybe not. But it’s probably more than they know.’

  There was a polite tap on the door, then Arthur opened it.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you at your work…’ He looked at me. ‘People very anxious to talk to you…on the phone. Rang earlier too…’ He leaned one hand heavily on the door handle, the other on his stick, and turned himself around to go back across the hall. I stood up to follow him.

  ‘I had the ringer turned down,’ said Finian. ‘You can take it here.’ He reversed his chair and gave me the space to take the call.

  ‘Illaun, Matt Gallagher here. I’m at St Loman’s. Pete’s with me. There’ve been a couple of developments you should know about. There’s been another admission to the ICU. A man called Joseph Ngozi.’

  My heart thumped.

  ‘He’s the father of—’

  ‘I know – Aje. One of Stephen Bolton’s pals. Weren’t you questioning the family about the knife?’

  ‘Yes, and we’ve taken possession of one with dried blood on it. The kid found it in a tree and brought it home. Darren Byrne identified the family in the newspaper and there was nearly a riot outside the hospital this morning. Plus, Dr Abdulmalik’s gone AWOL.’

  ‘Gone AWOL?’

  ‘Yeah. Listen, Pete wants – hold on, he’s saying something to me here…’

  Finian nudged me. He mouthed the words, ‘What’s happening?’

  I shook my head. I was genuinely perplexed.

  Gallagher came back on. ‘OK. Pete thinks you should come to the hospital. It’ll make it easier to explain things. But he wants you to know he was right about the disease. I agree it would be helpful to have us all around a table, Dr Gavin included – if I can find her.’

  ‘Find her?’

  ‘Look – get here as soon as you can. We’re in the canteen. It’s the only place here that makes me feel like I’m not about to be admitted as a patient.’

  As I headed out of the house, I tried my best to explain to Finian what I’d heard. ‘And thank you so much for the research,’ I added, kissing him on the cheek at the door. At that moment, I was reminded of my father going out to work, thanking my mother for helping him with his lines. It gave me a weird sensation that I decided was best not
dwelt upon.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  This time there was no segmented carapace of vehicles lining the rise up to St Loman’s, but instead I could see what looked like ants massing around an oblong piece of chewing gum. As I got closer this puzzling picture resolved itself into an ugly scene – an angry crowd had surrounded an ambulance and weren’t letting it through.

  I drove up a side road and parked. What to do? There was probably another way into the hospital, but it would be locked, if not under siege as well. I took my courage in my hands, locked the Freelander and headed towards the entrance.

  The mob had set up a rhythmic chant – ‘Out! Out! Out!’ – and were rocking the ambulance back and forth. Suddenly they scattered and some of them headed in my direction. I ducked behind a parked car as several young men fled past. They were followed by a Garda in a riot helmet and stab vest, baton drawn behind his shield. He halted his chase on the road just beyond the car, turned and saw me. Baton raised, he approached. I instinctively crouched down, noticing that the windows of the car were smashed in.

  ‘Don’t! I’m trying to get into the hospital.’

  The Garda pushed up his visor. ‘So are all these fucking gougers,’ he said. His face was dripping perspiration. It was the same Garda who had been setting up the roadblock on Monday night. ‘What happened you?’ He was looking at my neck.

  ‘That’s not why I’m going to the hospital,’ I said. ‘I have a meeting with Detective Inspector Gallagher.’

  ‘Right. Come with me.’ He grabbed me by the upper arm and hauled me along with him. The road was strewn with stones, broken bricks, beer cans and shattered bottles. Up ahead the gates had opened to let the ambulance through. A line of no more than five or six Gardaí stood with their backs to it.