A Shocking Assassination

by Cora Harrison

  And to there, Eileen would not follow him.

  She felt tears prick at her eyes. Why had she kept him back? If only he had been out of this misfortunate, strife-torn city before that fatal shot was fired. She knew Tom Hurley well enough to know that he would deny firing that shot and would go on denying it, even to his colleagues. Aoife had said enough for a man as astute as Tom Hurley to guess how matters lay. He would not trust her, or any of the other young members of the group now.

  FOUR

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Lex mala; lex nulla

  (Bad law is no law)

  ‘Well, I’ve been to see your gardener, again,’ said Dr Scher as soon as Sister Bernadette closed the door behind her, promising to bring some tea and fruitcake. Sister Bernadette was devoted to Dr Scher and made sure that there was always fruitcake available when he called.

  ‘And?’ queried the Reverend Mother. Then she added hastily, ‘That was good of you to come in so late, especially with all that you will have to do today. I suppose you have had to conduct the autopsy on the dead man?’

  ‘I’ll be doing that tomorrow. We had to wait for the coroner to authorize it. The usual business; he was in court for most of the afternoon. Imposing fines on men who can’t feed their own families just because they obstructed the pavement. That’s the law for you! Couldn’t expect him to exert himself any more, of course, could we? Talk to him in the morning; that was the message. Anyway, there shouldn’t be too much to do. Won’t be much to find out if all the witnesses, including yourself, are telling the truth. I’ll find a bullet in his chest, somewhere in the ribs, perhaps, dig it out, present it to the police, turn up in court and tell the judge that the man was shot and died of his wound. Strange business, wasn’t it? I suppose they will hang that boy. What possessed him? I know he lost his job because of James Doyle, but that’s months ago. Why suddenly shoot him now? Though perhaps he was getting more desperate and he couldn’t resist the opportunity. He could be a very unpleasant fellow, Doyle. Might have said something to the lad, sneered at him, what do you think? You were there.’

  The Reverend Mother thought about the matter. ‘Personally, I didn’t see him approach, but I wasn’t taking much notice. I did see Sam with a notebook in his hand, but he seemed to be writing, not asking any questions.’

  ‘Could have said something to him beforehand, though, couldn’t he? The late, lamented James Doyle could be a fairly unpleasant sort of person. Tried a few sneers at me, to be frank with you; though I don’t take too much notice of that sort of thing, learned how to ignore it when I was a lad in Manchester. By the way,’ he said hurriedly, ‘what took you to the English Market this morning? Got a surprise when I saw you. You didn’t bring a pistol concealed in your basket, did you?’

  ‘I was buying buttered eggs for our gardener,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘And how is he?’

  ‘Nothing much that I can do for him,’ said Dr Scher bluntly. ‘He has tuberculosis and I would reckon that he is in the final stages of it. The lungs are very bad. There’s nothing really that I, or any other doctor, can do for him. I brought him a bottle of a new kind of cough mixture this evening – they always like to have something – but it’ll do no more than soothe his throat. A pity I didn’t see him months ago, sometimes it works if you get them at the first few coughs, depends on the state of health.’

  ‘I see.’ The fault was hers more than others, she thought. She had been listening to the gardener coughing for months. It had been usually the first sound that came to her ears when she walked from the convent to the street gate or through the gardens to the chapel. She should have done more about him, should have asked Dr Scher to have a look at the man a couple of months ago. She had not even enquired as to where he was living, believing that, as the poor did, he had found refuge in one of those crumbling tenement houses in the lanes as his bicycle shop and home had been burned down. The convent had given him a job as a gardener after that. They paid him a small wage, enough to feed him and pay his rent. But she should have thought about his health. She had noticed that he was getting thinner and thinner, but had done nothing about it until today when she had gone to buy him a small present. A ridiculous errand, buying buttered eggs for a dying man, she thought angrily.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Dr Scher, reading her mind as usual. ‘I’d say that you couldn’t have saved him, even a few months ago, and how were you to know what was wrong with him? Three quarters of people in this city are suffering from tuberculosis. It’s in the air that we all breathe. Nothing to be done for that poor man; I’d give him only a few weeks, Reverend Mother,’ he added. There was an unusual degree of brutal frankness about him – his nature was a cheerful one and usually he smoothed out the bad news as much as possible. She sensed his unhappiness. She could understand his frustration and anger, though. The deadly disease was permeating the wet, fog-ridden city of Cork, wiping out scores of men, women and children every month, most of them from the slums.

  ‘He must be moved into hospital; we must make arrangements for him. He can’t go on living in that shed. I never realized that he was doing that.’ She was ironically conscious of the energy in her voice. What good would it do the poor man, she thought? It would have to be the Union – the renamed workhouse – and most people hated that.

  Dr Scher shook his head. ‘I mentioned the possibility to him and he took fright. As I said to you, he’s no risk to anyone out there in the fresh air and that shed with its stove is a better place to live in than many others that I’ve seen. Anyway, he was dead against hospital, said it wasn’t worth his while. One place was as good as another, he said. He didn’t want to move, just to end his days peacefully.’

  ‘So you told him – told him that he was dying. I thought that you had done so.’ She thought back to the man’s words about caring for his potatoes.

  ‘Best to tell the truth; he took it well. Said he had guessed, that he had thought for the last few months that he was going the way of his brother. Didn’t seem to mind too much!’

  ‘He had been a countryman; he told me that once,’ said the Reverend Mother to fill in the minute. She wanted to talk about Sam, but that subject could wait until Dr Scher had received his tea. She could do nothing for poor Mr Cotter, but perhaps she might be able to do something for Sam. And for his mother. Soon she would hear the shuffle of the lay sister’s feet in their large slippers that helped to polish the convent’s shining wooden floors. And then in another minute the tea would appear. There would be scones, fruitcake, sugar and cream, all for one overweight, middle-aged man, while outside the walls of her convent the poor starved and died of wasting diseases.

  ‘Is that right?’ Dr Scher sounded animated and interested in this. The people of Cork city loved gossip and had an inexhaustible curiosity about fellow Corkonians and the doctor was no exception. ‘He’s quite a big tall fellow, isn’t he, big shoulders and chest? You could see that he might have been brought up in the country,’ he went on before adding, ‘the son, too, the one that was hanged for the murder of the R.I.C. man; Frank was his name, wasn’t it? Frank Cotter. That’s right. I remember thinking that he had a big frame. Terrible waste of a young life! These Republicans have a lot to answer for. Well, here comes Sister Bernadette.’ He leaped to the door and opened it with a flourish and exclaimed loudly about the delicious and tempting morsels, neatly arranged on doily-covered plates.

  Dr Scher would probably have attended the hanging of Frank Cotter, she thought as she watched him go to the door to help Sister Bernadette with the tea trolley. He would have been there to pronounce the body dead when it was cut down. Once again she thought about Sam and about his mother’s tragic face as she stood there with blood haemorrhaging from her nose. There was an awful finality about the death sentence. No mistaken verdict could ever be remedied. A law that judicially murdered people could not, she thought, with a sudden memory of Thomas Aquinas’ words, be a good law.

  ‘Pity he didn’t stay in the count
ry; himself and his son. Keep the young fellow of his out of mischief.’ Dr Scher opened the door and stood there beaming.

  ‘Oh, Sister Bernadette is that all for me! You spoil me, you know. I won’t be able to eat a bite for my supper and then my housekeeper will be furious. Look at that fruitcake! Makes my mouth water! Let me push the trolley. And I can just smell that tea! Lovely! Some people make tea so weak – might as well be coloured water.’

  ‘Tea isn’t tea unless the spoon can stand up in it, my mother used to say that. She was a great woman for her cup of tea. Lived until she was ninety years of age and never sick, either.’ Sister Bernadette took the lid from the teapot and gave the tea a quick stir.

  ‘Well, there you are. What better proof could you have of the good medicine in a strong cup of tea? Still, Sister Bernadette, we’d better keep that to ourselves or we doctors would starve for lack of patients.’

  They bantered together in the customary way while the Reverend Mother brooded on Sam and wondered whether there was anything that she could do. It was none of her business, of course, but it was hard to keep his face and the face of his mother out of her mind’s eye. Once Sister Bernadette, pink with pleasure, had backed herself out of the room, she turned an expectant face towards Dr Scher as he poured himself a cup of tea and cut a generous slice from the moist fruitcake.

  ‘Well, what about this business this morning, what did you make of it?’ she asked.

  ‘That young fellow, Sam O’Mahony, don’t you think that he assassinated James Doyle, then?’ he enquired and she knew from the sharpening of his gaze that he had realized how many doubts she had. ‘You were there, weren’t you, when the shot was fired? What do you think, yourself? Was it Sam? Or did someone “pull a fast one on him”, as they say in Cork?’

  ‘He looked shocked,’ said the Reverend Mother after a moment’s thought. ‘Shocked and bewildered,’ she added.

  ‘Hmm, doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s innocent. It must be a bit of a shock to kill a man for the first time.’

  ‘That is correct, but if the intention was to kill, if he had been chosen as the assassin by the Republicans, then I would imagine that he, or someone else, would have worked out an escape route.’ Once again the Reverend Mother thought about the man in the belted raincoat. He had slipped away almost as quickly as though he had already assessed his escape route. Who was that man, she wondered.

  ‘True for you. Making martyrs went out once they hanged Connolly and Pearse in 1916. Nowadays they look after their assassins, keep them safe for another day’s work. He surely could have slipped away in the crowd.’ Dr Scher sipped his dark orange tea with a thoughtful air.

  ‘Perhaps that was what happened. Perhaps the real assassin escaped and dropped the pistol on Sam’s foot. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sam had a notebook and pencil in his hand when I last noticed him, just before the lights went out.’

  ‘Odd thing to do, though,’ argued Dr Scher. ‘It would be different if the assassin had just picked a knife from the stall. He’d want to get rid of something like that quickly, but a pistol is a valuable thing to the Republicans. I’ve heard that they are very short of weapons. Most of the ambushes these days are to get supplies of bullets and guns. I can’t see one of them, or one of their agents, throwing a pistol away. Still, I suppose that the fellow could have lost his nerve. That’s always possible. I don’t suppose it’s easy to kill someone. It’s bad enough to stand by their bed and know that you can do nothing to save their life.’ He waited for a moment, frowning slightly at his tea cup, and then when she didn’t reply, he looked up and said, ‘There’s something troubling you, isn’t there, Reverend Mother? Not just the waste of a young life – you think it might not have been Sam, that it might have been somebody else, don’t you?’

  She could see him studying her face, but she took her time before replying. She had always prided herself on having a detached and an unemotional approach to life’s problems. When she spoke she was glad to hear that her voice sounded calm and dispassionate. After all, if Sam O’Mahony did, in reality, kill James Doyle, if he were guilty of taking a life, it was perhaps only just that his own life should be forfeit. Although everything within her cried out in protest, she could not deny that was the teaching of the church and was the law of the country in which she lived.

  But did he do it?

  ‘I saw a man,’ she said evenly. ‘He was at Michael Skiddy’s soap and candle stall. I saw him about five minutes before the shooting took place. I noticed him because he had his hat pulled down to one side of his face, the brim completely covered his face; he had his head tilted to one side – the brim cast a shadow from the candlelight and it hid him; he could have been anyone. At some stage, I’m not sure whether it was before, or after the lights above in the gallery went out, but at some stage the man blew out a candle and when I looked for him as the superintendent was telling everyone to stand still, well, there was no trace of him. I suppose he melted into the crowd at some point when I was not looking in that direction. I don’t even know whether he blew out the candle, or whether it was Michael Skiddy himself. But somehow, I fancy that it was not Michael. He probably keeps that candle lit in order to draw attention to his stock.’

  Dr Scher nodded. ‘Could be a Republican from your description,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t necessarily mean that he had anything to do with the murder, though, does it? He might have been there for quite an innocent purpose. The Republicans have to buy their groceries like the rest of the world. I’ve heard that they are holed up in some empty cottages in west Cork. They would need candles out there in the countryside. Or he may have been there to make sure that the assassination was carried out and then he just melted away when he saw that young Sam was frozen with terror. They have to learn to be ruthless, you know.’

  The Reverend Mother nodded sadly and he gave her an understanding look.

  ‘You’re thinking about your young Eileen, your star pupil, aren’t you? You’re afraid that she might be mixed up in this. Have you heard from her recently?’

  The Reverend Mother shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. She didn’t add that she prayed nightly that Eileen would extricate herself from the dangerous way of life that she had chosen. It was probably unnecessary to say this. Dr Scher had shared her secret when the girl, wounded in the arm, had come to seek refuge in the convent chapel. He knew the dangers and guessed her anguish.

  ‘Well, I suppose the man with the raincoat and the slouched hat is safely back in some place in west Cork now,’ he said. ‘And I suppose it is possible that he is someone that your girl Eileen knows. She would be out there in west Cork, wouldn’t she?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer to his question, just told her that Sam O’Mahony would come before the court in a week’s time. By then the police would have had time to gather the evidence against him.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said soberly, ‘that there is no chance that one of the Republicans will come out with their hands up, saying, “It wasn’t him; it was me”. They get hard, even the most idealistic ones of them. No, these lads will probably keep their distance. There’s a pretty good case against Sam O’Mahony, you know. He had the motive; James Doyle had insisted that he be sacked from the Cork Examiner, threatened to sue them if they didn’t get rid of that impudent reporter, so I’ve heard. And of course, he had opportunity, was standing near, would you say near?’

  The Reverend Mother thought back. ‘About twenty feet, I’d say.’

  ‘Near enough for an accurate shot. So he had opportunity, but of course the thing that will damn him will be the fact that a crowd of Cork citizens, including Reverend Mother Aquinas, actually saw him standing there with the pistol in his hand and the body on the ground with a bullet through his back.’

  ‘His poor mother,’ said the Reverend Mother sadly as Dr Scher rose to leave.

  FIVE

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Bonum est integra causa, maulum ex quocunque defectu

  (An act
ion is good only if each element in it is good; it is bad if any one of those elements is bad)

  ‘Mrs O’Mahony to see you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Bernadette looked apologetic. ‘I told her that it was fierce early in the morning and that you’d only just swallowed your breakfast, but she just stood there and said that she would wait.’

  The Reverend Mother raised her head from her account book and looked through the window. It was raining in that dreary way that it did in Cork, almost as though it would never stop, water falling from the sky, mist rising up from the river trapping the smells from the drains and from the nearby gasometer beneath the low clouds. She could guess that Mrs O’Mahony had had a sleepless night, listening to the patter of raindrops hitting the slated roof of the attic where she and her son lived. She would probably have waited as long as she could possibly endure the inaction before coming to see her.

  She would have to see her.

  ‘Show Mrs O’Mahony in, Sister Bernadette,’ she said aloud. ‘Oh, and bring in some tea and cake. She’s probably had nothing to eat this morning.’

  Mrs O’Mahony had rehearsed her apologies and started on them almost before the door was closed behind her. She was still apologising as she obediently sat on the armchair by the fire. And then she broke down, hiding her face in her hands, her head bending lower and lower until her forehead was touching the old black handbag on her lap. The Reverend Mother allowed her to weep. She would be strong and tearless later on when she went to see her son and it would be best for her to let her feelings of despair and terror surface now. She went to the door when she heard the sound of Sister Bernadette’s slippers and took the tray from her and carried it over to the table, firmly shutting the door behind her with a practised jerk of the elbow. She waited for a few minutes and then fished out a large clean soft cotton handkerchief and pressed it into Mrs O’Mahony’s hand.