A Shocking Assassination

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Very kind of you,’ he said. There was still a note of astonishment in his voice.

  Not particularly kind, she thought wryly. She was still quite shocked at herself for ignoring that incessant hard, dry cough that could be heard every time anyone went into the garden. It had taken Dr Scher on a visit to an elderly sister to take action and to insist on examining the man. Nothing to be done, he had said afterwards. ‘There’s no real cure for TB, just a faint hope that if he stays in the open air and eats well that his life might be prolonged a little. He’ll go quite suddenly, you know. I’d say that he is in remission now, wants to get his potatoes planted, but then he’ll probably sink.’

  ‘An old retainer of yours, is he?’ he added with a smile when she made no response. ‘Someone from a cousin’s estate, perhaps?’ There was something so falsely snobbish about this that she felt herself getting annoyed.

  ‘Mr Cotter has only been a gardener with us for a short time. He used to have a bicycle shop in a lane off Patrick Street until the night when it was burned down when the Black and Tans set fire to the city,’ she said aloud. ‘He and his son had run it together for years before the son’s death.’

  ‘Very kind of you to take him in,’ he said politely.

  ‘He’s a good gardener,’ she said. He had always liked growing things better than tinkering with a screwdriver and oiling cogs, he had told her, on one of the few occasions when he had volunteered any information. His son, she had thought, might have been the one more interested in bicycles, might have been the driving force in setting up the small shop for the repair of brakes and gears and the replacement of damaged saddles and handlebars.

  ‘That was an extraordinary business this morning, wasn’t it?’ said Captain Newenham, dismissing the subject of the gardener.

  Not interested in people, she thought, unlike Dr Scher who had offered his condolences before examining the man. Robert Newenham was interested only in events which had a significance for him personally.

  ‘Not the assassination,’ he continued as he took out the starting handle from the back of his opulent car. ‘Lord, no, we’re all used to that sort of thing. I often say that this place is like being back in Flanders again, just as dangerous; no, not that so much, but the fact that the man didn’t run for it. He could easily have done so, couldn’t he? If I took advantage of the lights going out and aimed a pot shot at a fellow, I’d make jolly sure that I was nowhere to be seen when the lights were switched on. I’d fly before anyone noticed me. There was time enough before the lights were switched on, even before the first candle was lit.’

  ‘You don’t think that it would cause a certain amount of talk if a prominent person like you were missing and a dead body was lying there on the pathway?’ queried the Reverend Mother. She cast a quick glance at him from under her wimple and then nodded her thanks as he held the door open for her. He had looked slightly taken aback at her sentence as if perhaps he thought that she had implied that there was a possibility that he could have done the deed and stayed on the scene. She would leave it at that.

  It was, though she was very sorry for his mother, a most unlikely idea that anyone other than Sam O’Mahony had fired the fatal shot.

  But, still, Robert Newenham had a point. Why just stand there? Why not run? It was a valid question and it did cast a slight doubt on the identity of the gunman. Moreover, there had been a look of genuine disbelief on Sam’s face.

  A very comfortable car, she thought, as she sank into the softly padded leather seat, arranged the folds of her black habit and straightened her veil and waited for him to crank up the engine. It started almost instantly. Of course, Rolls Royce had a great reputation. Even nuns in a convent knew that. How had he managed to buy as expensive a car as that? He was the youngest of a long line of sons and she had a notion that there had not been much money in that family. I must talk to Lucy, she said to herself as he swung himself into the driving seat. Her cousin usually knew all the ins and outs of the members of Cork society, especially those who were related to them.

  ‘Which regiment were you in during the war, Captain Newenham?’ she asked when he had pulled out into the road. She probably had known this at some stage, but she was anxious not to discuss Sam O’Mahony and his motivation at the moment. His despairing face as he was taken away by the city guards had upset her. All appearances were against him and there would be calls for vengeance against the killer of an important person such as the city engineer. And, of course, the town planner, Captain Robert Newenham, would be one of the first to call for the death penalty. His evidence would be taken very seriously by the court that tried the young man. A good-looking man, spoke well, and his height and broad shoulders gave him an air of authority.

  He wasn’t as pleased by her question as she had thought that he would be. There was a noticeable hesitation, almost as though he wondered how to avoid a straight answer. Eventually he said, rather abruptly, ‘The Dorsetshires,’ and then went straight on to remarking, ‘What a terrible thing that was to witness. That unfortunate man, James Doyle! Who would have thought such a thing would happen. That must have been a dreadful shock for you. Perhaps I should have got you a glass of brandy. Are you going back to the convent now? I hope you aren’t thinking of visiting your sick gardener first; surely one of your lay sisters can undertake that errand for you.’

  ‘No, I’m perfectly well,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘No one gets to my age without witnessing many deaths.’ She didn’t mention the fact that her sick gardener had, without her knowledge, set up home in the shed at the back of the convent gardens and was probably now working among the vegetables. ‘As, of course,’ she continued, ‘you, yourself, must have, doubtless, witnessed many deaths when you were in the Dorsetshires Regiment.’ The Dorsetshires. For some reason that is familiar to me. Perhaps a member of my family mentioned it, some other cousin, perhaps. But no, she was fairly sure that she had heard of that regiment in some different context.

  She relaxed as he competently turned his car in the wide space of the Grand Parade, drove down Washington Street and along Lancaster Quay and then crossed over the bridge that spanned the south arm of the River Lee and led across to St Mary’s of the Isle, that ancient island that had been the first settlement place on the great marsh of Munster, the beginning of the city of Cork when the monks had settled there, centuries before the invasion of the Vikings and then of the Normans.

  The Dorsetshires, she said in her mind as he pulled up in front of the convent and its school. She could hear a voice pronouncing that name. Now she remembered. It had definitely been Sister Bernadette, the lay sister who attended the door and welcomed visitors to the convent, who had mentioned that regiment, not recently, quite some time ago, and had mentioned them in terms of loathing and anger, also. But why?

  ‘Did the Dorsetshires serve here in Ireland some time?’ she asked, making her voice sound indifferent.

  ‘Good lord, no.’

  She saw his moustache stretch across his face as he grinned and she watched his face with interest.

  ‘No, no, Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘Ireland was the poisoned chalice. No, we served just in France; and after that we went out to India. I had just signed up for the war; I was barely eighteen then, lots of others also. Once 1918 came the regiment was reduced to its original size. I was lucky to get this job here in my native city. Lots of poor fellows were on the streets afterwards and had to pick up any work that was going. Selling bootlaces and kitchen brooms and worse. Taking any job that was offered to them.’

  That was it. The Reverend Mother now knew why Sister Bernadette had mentioned that English regiment. During the War of Independence when the Republicans had threatened and assassinated many of the police, the Royal Irish Constabulary, appointed by England to regulate Ireland, had trouble recruiting men, recruitment had fallen rapidly and resignations were on a daily basis. The English had supplemented the police force with ‘auxiliaries’, known locally as the ‘Black & Tans’ because
of their black jackets and their tan trousers. Many of them had been in the British army during the war. Were some of the ex-soldiers from the Dorsetshires Regiment employed as Black and Tans? Making a resolution to talk to Sister Bernadette, the Reverend Mother turned her attention to directing Robert Newenham where to find the convent.

  ‘Good thing that you are not walking along here, alone,’ he said looking through the window with disdain at some of the shawl-covered women and the shabby men who walked aimlessly around the streets and quays, spitting on the pavement from time to time. The Reverend Mother could not be bothered to argue with him, to tell him that she often walked along the quays in perfect safety and that the dock workers always stood back courteously to allow her to pass. As she had hoped the children were in the playground when the big car purred to a halt by the pavement. Her appearance from this magnificent machine caused a sudden rush to the railings.

  ‘It’s the Reverend Mother.’

  ‘In a Roller!’

  ‘Would ya take a sconce at that?’ Willie O’Sullivan’s voice was shrill with admiration.

  ‘PI 645. It’s two years old; Father O’Donnell’s car is 649 and he bought it in June. He told me that the 600 numbers started in January. The Father said that he never thought he’d see the day that six hundred cars would have been sold in the city of Cork. The city cars allus have PI on them, before their number. The country cars just have IF.’ Paddy Maloney was an altar boy and had once had the excitement of a lift in the parish priest’s car after a funeral and was now an authority on cars.

  ‘D’ya see the yoke on the bonnet, that’s on all them Rolls Royce cars,’ said Francie Murphy knowledgeably.

  The Reverend Mother decided that they needed longer to admire this rare apparition. ‘Do come in, Captain Newenham,’ she said hospitably. ‘You will allow me to offer you a cup of tea after your kindness in driving me home.’

  He looked slightly reluctant, but she did not wait for an answer. Sister Philomena, who was on playground duty, advanced, keys in hand, and unlocked the gate with a beaming smile.

  ‘They won’t touch the car, will they?’ he asked, lifting his top hat politely to the nun, but looking anxiously at the ragged and dirty-faced crew whose faces were stuck between the bars.

  The Reverend Mother could have told him that it was one of the strict rules of the convent that gates were kept locked while the children were under their care because Cork was not a safe place for the young and vulnerable, but decided that he was more interested in the safety of his immaculately clean car. ‘Perhaps you could tell Francie the name of the emblem on the bonnet,’ she suggested, concealing a smile as she saw him surveying the iron bars of the railings and watching anxiously until Sister Philomena had relocked the gate.

  He started and looked at the skinny, barefooted child almost as though he were some sort of strange animal with whom the Reverend Mother had eccentrically ordered him to engage in conversation.

  ‘It is called The Spirit of Ecstasy,’ he said awkwardly and then with a glance at the puzzled face, he added, ‘some people call it The Flying Lady.’

  ‘Ecstasy means excitement, wonder, delight – all sorts of things like that,’ explained the Reverend Mother. ‘And there might be a sweet for someone who can remember that word in a few days’ time when I pop into your classroom and ask you to tell me the grand name for the statue on the bonnet of the Rolls Royce car. Come and see our gardens, Captain Newenham. Sister Philomena, could you choose some sensible person to tell Sister Bernadette that we have a visitor and he would like a cup of tea.’

  ‘You believe in bribery,’ he said as she escorted him through the gate into the convent gardens, leaving the children excitedly memorizing the word ‘ecstasy’.

  ‘I believe in education,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Is it worth it, do you think, with children like those? What’s the use of knowing a word like ecstasy?’

  The Reverend Mother compressed her lips and made no reply. She thought of saying that she believed in children knowing and using words, she thought of saying that Inspector Cashman, to whom Captain Newenham had been obsequiously polite, had been a little ragged boy, with a thirst for information, in this same playground fifteen years ago, but she suppressed the words. The man was too stupid. In any case, Patrick would have a difficult job with this enquiry and she should be careful to preserve his dignity and his status while he had the task of cross-questioning many of the prominent citizens who had been present in the English Market this morning. And then she remembered her basket and diverted him away from the shrubbery and the ugly contorted monkey tree and the beds filled with ragged ornamental grasses and steered him towards the vegetable garden from where she could hear the sound of a dry cough.

  ‘Oh, Mr Cotter,’ she said. ‘Should you be out in the damp and cold planting those potatoes? Surely they could wait for a few days until your cough is a little better?’

  He straightened himself and looked at her reproachfully. ‘There’s a time for planting, Reverend Mother, and the potatoes won’t wait anyone’s convenience. See the little shoots coming out; they need to be got into the ground now while they are fresh and then someone will have to earth them up and then they’ll have to be picked in July or perhaps the beginning of August. Don’t let everyone forget about my potatoes, Reverend Mother, will you? These are good ones, they …’And then he stopped talking and bent down to place another tuber in the ground with the little white shoot, the hope for the future, pointing upwards towards the cloudy sky.

  He is thinking about the fact that he won’t be here to see these potatoes through to maturity, thought the Reverend Mother. Her mind went to the quotation from Ecclesiastes: ‘A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.’ Mr Cotter’s time to be ‘plucked up’ was, according to Dr Scher, fast approaching.

  ‘I’ll make sure about that, Mr Cotter,’ she assured him. ‘Look at those splendid cabbages, Captain Newenham; the convent never lacks for fresh vegetables. Ah, there is Sister Bernadette. I’m sure that she has a nice hot cup of tea for you. Don’t stay out in this damp air, too long, Mr Cotter, will you? You need to take care of yourself.’

  He made no reply and she did not press the point. Fresh air as well as good food were important for him, according to Dr Scher, and that reminded her of her errand so she handed over the basket.

  ‘And here is something for your midday meal,’ she said. ‘I remembered you telling me about the buttered eggs that your mother used to sell at the market and I got you some when I was in the market this morning.’

  He was taken aback by this and he stared at her. He would be shocked that she, in person, had done the shopping and she hastened to change the subject so that he was not embarrassed. She wouldn’t, she thought, mention the events of the morning. There would be enough talk about this later on and she disliked idle gossip. Better to focus his mind on eating a good lunch.

  ‘Tell Captain Newenham about how your mother used to prepare her eggs and about you and your brother going to the English Market to sell things from the farm. You used to bring in vegetables as well, didn’t you?’

  He made a poor effort at the story which he had told her a week ago with such animation, even imitating the sound of a hen laying an egg which had been the signal for one of the children to dash in and bring it straight to his mother so that it could be buttered while still piping hot. He muttered a few words awkwardly and he was as relieved as Captain Newenham when Sister Bernadette came out of the door and down the path with the news that tea was ready in the Reverend Mother’s room.

  ‘I mustn’t stay long,’ said the captain once he swallowed the tea and declined the cake. ‘I really need to get back to the office. There will be all sorts of things to be done. We will need to issue a statement for the Cork Examiner about this terrible affair and then I suppose that there will be a funeral to arrange after the police release the body. There should not be too much delay about that,
I suppose. It doesn’t need a doctor to tell that the man died of a gunshot wound, but I suppose they have to go through the formalities.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said rising to her feet instantly and handing him his hat from the windowsill where he had placed it. She was as glad to be rid of him as he was to go. The bell had sounded for the children to return to their classrooms so the small boys and girls would have had their fill of looking at the splendid car. ‘I’ll show you out,’ she said, but was not surprised to see that Sister Bernadette, alert for the opening of the Reverend Mother’s door, was already in the hallway. He took off his hat courteously to her once again when she accompanied him to the doorstep and pressed her hand, hoping that the morning’s events had not been too much for her and then hurried off down the path.

  ‘Sister Bernadette …?’ said the Reverend Mother once the door was closed behind him and then stopped. It would not do to blurt out her query straight away. Sister Bernadette was a kindly woman, but a terrible gossip and traded pieces of information with the local postman and lamp lighter. ‘Something terrible happened this morning,’ she substituted.

  ‘I know, I know! It’s shocking, isn’t it?’ Sister Bernadette was excited by the news. ‘The city engineer assassinated! And Sam O’Mahony to do a thing like that! After all that his poor mother has done for him! The messenger boy who brought the fish told me all about it. Said you were quite safe. He saw you go off in a gentleman’s car, that’s what he said.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Captain Newenham is a distant relation of mine. We had a nice chat. He was telling me that he fought in the war against Germany. He was in some British regiment. Something to do with Cornwall, was it? No, I’m wrong, it was the Dorsetshires, that’s what it was.’ She waited, her eyes on a vase of pallid daffodils in front of a statue of the Blessed Mother, but very aware of the sudden intake of breath from the lay sister. And then, in as casual a way as she could manage, she said, ‘Sister, you were telling me something about the Dorsetshire Regiment here in Cork city, weren’t you? Was that when you were a girl?’ She aimed the questions at the departing figure and Sister Bernadette turned around with her face full of interest.