A Shocking Assassination

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Where were the keys?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘In his pocket, apparently,’ said Patrick. He looked towards his former headmistress and she nodded a confirmation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I saw him take them out, quite a big bunch, he hauled them up and selected the right key and then handed them to Patsy.’

  ‘So we’re back to the crowd around him; I suppose that it must be one of them.’ Dr Scher looked exasperated. ‘I had forgotten about the gallery, but of course that would have been ideal. A perfect angle.’

  ‘It might have cleared Sam O’Mahony, too,’ said the Reverend Mother sadly.

  ‘Perhaps, though, the door to the gallery wasn’t locked,’ said Dr Scher hopefully. ‘Patsy may not have bothered to mention this. There was so much going on.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘No, I checked. I went to see Patsy and she was certain that the door was locked. She said the lock was stiff and she had a bit of a struggle to get it open. We had a little chat about it and it appears that the superintendent of the market is very particular about locking the door when the gallery is not in use. I checked on that, too.’

  Patrick, thought the Reverend Mother, always would check. He was that sort of boy. She looked at him with approval.

  ‘And the keys …?’ There was a question in her voice. In her mind’s eye she remembered the size of the bunch as the superintendent had dragged it from his pocket on that Friday morning. Surely the man did not lug them around in his pocket every day.

  ‘I found out about that, too.’ There was a faint smile of appreciation on Patrick’s lips and she knew that he had read her mind. ‘Normally,’ he said, looking directly across at her, ‘the keys are kept in the weighmaster’s office, but this morning he knew that the city engineer would be likely to want to go upstairs, perhaps talk to him in his office, look at the original 1790 plans and so he kept them in his pocket. I checked on the position of the weighmaster’s office. It’s in the Grand Parade section of the market. There is always someone there, unless the office is locked. The superintendent said he took the keys out of there before the market opened for business on that Friday morning. “Off the hook and straight into my pocket”: these were his words.’

  ‘Pity,’ grunted Dr Scher. ‘I was beginning to fancy myself as a bit of a Sherlock Holmes. I could just hear my evidence in court. “The bullet, m’lord, sliced through the man’s flesh and entered the heart at an exact angle of forty-three degrees. Having borrowed a …” What’s it called, you know, the thingamajig that engineers use to calculate angles?’ He appealed to Patrick, but it was the Reverend Mother who answered.

  ‘The word you are seeking is theodolite, Dr Scher,’ she said crisply and enjoyed momentarily the respectful look in both men’s eyes before adding, ‘but the same angle could have been achieved, could it not, if the man had bent down and was just straightening himself?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ admitted Dr Scher. ‘But wouldn’t someone have noticed that? I wasn’t there myself, but surely someone would have noticed him bending down.’

  ‘No one mentioned that,’ said Patrick. He had, guessed the Reverend Mother, been over and over the evidence gathered during the last couple of days.

  ‘Well, I was present,’ she said, ‘and I certainly don’t remember him bending down, but then I don’t suppose there would be any reason for me to remember such a trivial matter – a man retying a shoe lace, picking up a dropped pencil, perhaps even flicking a thread of lint from his trousers.’

  ‘I still think that the assassin was above him, perhaps standing near a stall, or even behind a stall,’ said Dr Scher.

  ‘Or the assassin was someone very much taller,’ said the Reverend Mother. Her mind went to her cousin. He was an extremely tall man, probably about six foot four inches high, she reckoned. Her eyes went to Dr Scher and he nodded reluctantly.

  ‘The corpse measured five foot four inches,’ he said with precision. Once again he picked up the two teaspoons and moved them further and nearer apart, raising one higher than the other. She watched him indulgently. There would have been a sixth of a difference in height between Robert Newenham and James Doyle, the one the product of rich feeding for three or even four generations, the other the son of a struggling tailor from a basement.

  ‘I suppose it might be possible, what do you think, Patrick?’ Dr Scher manipulated his spoons under Patrick’s eye. But then he threw them both down with disgust.

  ‘Yes, but why would a man raise his hand and point downwards towards his victim? Surely he would aim at the heart. It’s not possible. It’s insolvable, this crime.’

  ‘Not insolvable, surely. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that insight, or light, is always with us, but we don’t always see it; he used the analogy of a blind man standing in sunlight, probably aware of the heat, but yet absent from a real understanding of the sun, of its shape, colour and size,’ said the Reverend Mother mildly and then bit back a smile as Dr Scher gave a snort of annoyance. It was, she thought privately, possible that Robert Newenham had raised his gun in order to shoot over the head of a bystander. This would account for the angle in which the bullet entered the man’s back.

  ‘Interesting,’ murmured Patrick. He took out his notebook, licked the tip of the indelible pencil which all policemen, working in the wet streets of Cork, invariably carried. ‘Just a note to myself to check on the heights and the positions of everyone who may have had an interest in the death of the city engineer,’ he explained without raising his eyes from his page. And then he looked up and straight across.

  ‘Reverend Mother,’ he said respectfully, ‘what’s your memory of Sam O’Mahony’s position?’

  The Reverend Mother paused, but only for a second. ‘Sam O’Mahony, when I noticed him, was standing in front of his mother’s drisheen and tripe stall,’ she said.

  ‘And when you heard the pistol ring out?’

  This time she did not pause. ‘I was not aware of Sam O’Mahony at the moment of the shot,’ she said.

  And then the die was cast. She could not go back on this statement. There had, she thought, never been any doubt in her mind. She could not – would not – lie under oath and that being so there was no point in prevaricating at this stage. Sam O’Mahony she sincerely believed was innocent, but he could not be cleared of this crime by false witness.

  And certainly, she thought, picturing his face when he was aware of the gun in his hands, he had looked bewildered – and innocent. The word came to her mind and she retained it. If Sam was innocent, then his name had to be cleared and he had to be released from prison. She looked across at Dr Scher still gazing at his two spoons.

  ‘The nearer the two lines, the greater the angle,’ she said crisply and then as they both looked at her in a puzzled fashion, she crossed over to a small table near to the door and picked up a child’s copy book. It had been sent up to her by Sister Philomena in the hands of a tearful Tommy O’Reilly who had been guilty of defacing a book meant for neat sums by drawing a tank with guns and enormous wheels, on the back page. It had been a remarkably good drawing for a six-year-old and the Reverend Mother had been torn between backing up Sister Philomena’s discipline and admiring the child’s skill and compromised by retaining the copy book and decreeing that he had to do his work on pieces of paper for the whole of the following week. Now, without compunction, she tore out the middle page and drew an upright line, five squares high and then a series of lines at regular intervals across the page, joining them to the taller line.

  ‘You can see,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘the nearer the position, the steeper the angle.’

  ‘And, of course, the man may have held the gun quite high,’ said Patrick rapidly. ‘I understand from everyone that the place was quite dark and full of shadows. Some of the stallholders had lit candles, but only some of them, is that right, Reverend Mother?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘As far as I remember, the only well-lit area in the Princes Street Market was Michael Skiddy’s soap and
candles stall. The goods themselves were lit up, but behind the stall it seemed even blacker than elsewhere. In fact, there was, I think, one gas lamp burning on the rail of the gallery on the other side, just above Mrs O’Mahony’s drisheen and tripe stall and it made that side of the market less dark.’ She hesitated for a moment and then reminded herself of the necessity to establish the truth. ‘I told you, Patrick, about the man there, at Michael Skiddy’s stall, the one who caught my attention. He wore a belted raincoat, and a soft hat, pulled well down to hide his face. I noticed him because he did not appear to be shopping. He had no basket, no bag with him. He spoke with Michael Skiddy for a moment or two and then he stepped back.’ The Reverend Mother paused, seeing the scene on that dark, foggy morning and then added, ‘He stepped back into the shadows behind the stall. That’s about all that I can tell you, Patrick.’

  He jumped to his feet. ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother, and you, Dr Scher. You’ve both given me plenty to think about. I’ll go around to the market and see Michael Skiddy tomorrow morning. And I’ll get Joe onto checking heights and positions of everyone who could have had any interest in this murder.’

  ‘You could do as the Emperor Napoleon did,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘He, I understand, used to have models made of his courtiers. And then before each grand event he had the models dressed in clothing of his choice and he used to move them around and check how they looked in groups around him. One of the facts that I picked up in an expensive education,’ she added.

  ‘And I have to make do with teaspoons,’ said Dr Scher sadly, but Patrick was already at the door. The Reverend Mother touched the bell for little Sister Mary Angela. Let the child have the excitement of showing out her hero. The neighbourhood around the convent was very proud of Patrick, and though slightly built, his dark eyes and curly hair made him quite a good-looking boy. The would-be lay sister might well change her mind about immuring herself in a convent if she realized that there was a world out there to explore, and that she would do well to know what it was all about before renouncing it.

  The Reverend Mother shook hands with them both and allowed Dr Scher to linger for a few minutes while Sister Mary Angela fetched Patrick’s coat and fussed about removing a smudge of limewash from its navy blue surface.

  ‘Conscientious boy, isn’t he?’ said Dr Scher in a low voice and with a nod towards Patrick. ‘There’s not many a policeman would look twice for another suspect after the evidence against young Sam O’Mahony was dished up to him on a plate.’

  ‘Did you know Sam?’ enquired the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Seen him around,’ said Dr Scher briefly. ‘Good lad. Bright, too. Interviewed me about the body of that man found in the limekiln. Asked all the right questions. Produced a good report afterwards, too. Made me sound quite intelligent. Pity he ever got above himself and criticized the city engineer.’ He looked at her enquiringly, but she did not respond. Dr Scher would, she suspected have, with any encouragement, lingered longer, but now she needed to get back to work.

  And to sort out her thoughts about the murder of James Doyle in full view of fifty Cork citizens. Sam O’Mahony, she thought, had learned to use the power of the pen. She wondered whether anyone who had experience of that sort of a weapon did readily turn to the cruder weapon of pistol and bullet. He had made no effort to escape, relying on words to protest his innocence and to keep him safe.

  ELEVEN

  Alan Ellis

  Reporter on Cork Examiner:

  ‘The Auxiliaries and Black and Tans, supported by some regular troops, many wearing scarves over their faces, were firing shops in Grand Parade and Washington Street. A jeweller’s shop in Washington Street had been looted, as well as shops along Marlboro’ Street. Witnesses saw soldiers carrying away kitbags full of booty. Murphy Brothers, the clothing shop, on Washington Street was also looted and set on fire and there was a danger that the fire would spread to the Church and Priory of St Augustine, next door.’

  Michael Skiddy’s wrecked shop had been situated in Berry’s Lane, behind Washington Street. He had been unlucky, thought Patrick as he surveyed the charred timbers and the empty windows of the roofless building. The shop had been tiny, just a place for the people of the marsh to buy their candles to illuminate the houses where no one even thought of bringing gas. And a place to buy their bars of Sunlight soap to scrub clothes and children. The Black and Tans would never have dreamt of wasting petrol on such a humble place. Unfortunately it had backed onto a prosperous menswear shop on Washington Street and the fire had spread to its decaying timbers. Patrick spent a few minutes surveying it. A neat little shop in its time, he thought. A steady trade, without too much expenditure. The candles, he remembered them well from his mother’s cottage, would have been made from tallow, and in Cork where there was a continual export of beef to England, the tallow was a by-product – most butchers were delighted to get rid of the lumps of fat and seldom charged more than a couple of pence. In a city where there was either rain or fog on most of the days in the year, candles were a necessity.

  ‘Are you looking for Michael?’ The voice was aggressive and Patrick turned carefully towards the speaker. The guards were not popular in many of these small lanes. There was great support for the Republicans around here and many a man on the run was hidden in one of the small tumbledown cabins, or in the rooms above the meagre shops.

  The question was asked by a woman with a shawl drawn over her head. Not old, he thought. One side of the face showed smooth young skin, but the other side was marred with puckered scars. She saw his eyes go towards it and pulled the shawl a little further forward and repeated her question angrily.

  Patrick pulled himself together, deliberately turning his gaze from the ravaged face and looking back at the building. ‘Does he still live here?’ he asked.

  He sensed rather than saw the shrug. It was a wet morning and the shawl would be heavy with rain.

  ‘Where else?’ she answered and there was a sarcastic, angry tone to her voice. ‘Where else? We haven’t got a country mansion, you know. Just this one place that was belonging to Michael’s father and his father before him. And I suppose this dump of stone and plaster will be the birthright of his son.’ She was, Patrick noticed, heavily pregnant under the all-concealing shawl.

  ‘Are you Michael’s wife?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want him for?’ she said without answering his question.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said. He wondered what Michael Skiddy must feel about the failure of the city engineer to rebuild the houses and shops of the poor, despite the large sums of money paid by the British government in compensation for the burning of Cork by their troops. With a pregnant wife and only a burned-down hovel to shelter her and a newborn baby, his fury might have spilled over into direct action. Or, perhaps, a word in the right place had brought a killer to his stall that morning. ‘I just want to ask him a few questions about the shooting at the English Market,’ he continued. ‘Someone mentioned that he was talking to a man in a raincoat and a soft hat who suddenly disappeared at the moment of the gunshot.’ From experience he kept his voice as neutral as possible. Walk slow and talk soft. The superintendent had said that to him on his first day at work and although the man was a pompous fool he had nearly fifty years of policing the rebel city behind him and his advice was sometimes worth listening to.

  The alarm in her face was perceptible and her hand went to her mouth with an instinctive gesture of terror. With an effort she pulled it away and locked her fingers together.

  ‘Man, what man?’ she asked aggressively. ‘Michael talked with no man.’

  ‘You weren’t there, were you?’ he asked, making sure that his voice was unthreatening.

  ‘No, of course I wasn’t. Otherwise you would have my name down, wouldn’t you?’ She snapped out the words, but he could see from how she bit her lip that she realized she had made a mistake. They had discussed the matter, she and her husband. This was obvious.

  ‘The strange th
ing was,’ he went on smoothly, ‘that this man disappeared after the shot was fired and before the superintendent closed the two entrances from the Princes Street market. A witness saw him and then he vanished. I’d like to have a word with Michael and get his name.’

  ‘He didn’t know him from Adam,’ she snapped.

  ‘So he spoke of him to you,’ said Patrick gently.

  She paused for a moment, searching, he thought, for the words to avert his suspicion.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Michael told me that he had just sold a bundle of candles to a man that he had never seen before in his life, a stranger, them were his words, and at the very minute that he had taken the money, the lights went out and then he heard the shot. And when he looked again, the man had disappeared. Michael had never seen him before in his life,’ she repeated. ‘He thought he might have been from the country because of the way he spoke.’

  Her own sing-song Cork accent reached a high pitch as she watched him anxiously and he nodded gently. He could guess that Michael Skiddy was already at work in the market and he could find him there. He would not distress this poor pregnant woman any longer.

  ‘I see,’ he said. He looked again at the ruined house, at the broken roof, the chimney leaning at an angle, the boarded-up windows. ‘You and Michael manage all right in there?’ he asked with a nod towards the patched and still scorched front door.

  She shrugged, the shawl falling open and revealing the enormous mound of her pregnancy – the unborn baby seemed almost as big as herself.

  ‘We’ve still got the dipping wheel and the boiler for the wax; we must stay here,’ she said fatalistically.

  He found a shilling in his pocket and slipped it into her hand. ‘Buy the baby something nice with this,’ he said with a smile and was relieved when she fastened her fingers around it.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Sorry if I sounded a bit rough-like. Me nerves are bad.’