A Shocking Assassination

by Cora Harrison

  Carefully, Eileen arranged her shawl over a low, squat blackthorn bush and then seized Sam’s hand. He seemed to be mesmerized by the sight of the soldiers on the hill.

  ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Quick, while they are searching on the other side of the hill.’ He muttered something, but she ignored him, ducking through a gate and setting off in a different direction, moving in a semi-circular fashion around the side of the hillside. If they saw the shawl they would go straight up, she reckoned. They would not expect them to have gone back down the hill and then in a different direction. It was taking a risk, but she had to get them off the trail of Eamonn and Liam. She and Sam would have the perfect hiding place once they reached the field with the tunnel hatch.

  And luck was with them. By the time that they had reached the far side of the field, it had begun to rain, a steady, heavy drizzle which would reduce visibility to a matter of yards. Quickly she found a cow-sized gap in the hedge and edged her way through the sprouting brambles. She was chilled through, but a feeling of triumph was beginning to rise within her. If they could get safely to the top of the field in the dense shelter of this untidy hedge, then they could turn back again and go into the shaft that led down to the tunnel. She could feel beneath her feet the vibration of the train. That must be the one that had closed the road to them.

  ‘Wish that I had never taken part in this tomfoolery,’ muttered Sam from behind her. She turned around sharply and saw him stop to clear the rain from his glasses. She thought of saying something, of retorting that they all had risked their lives for him, that two valuable motorbikes would now probably be lost and possibly their safe house be discovered. Tom Hurley would be rightly furious if he found out how they had put everything at risk for someone who was not even a member of their organisation. It was not the moment for a row, though. The job had to be finished, the mission accomplished. Without another glance at him she went on moving fast, but keeping her head down to below hedge level. She hoped that he had the sense to do likewise.

  In the distance she heard a shot. And then another and another. Were the soldiers firing at a moving target, or just firing out of frustration? There was talk that the army was quite untrained, quite undisciplined. There had been an article in the Cork Examiner and in the Irish Times saying that once the civil war was over their numbers would be cut.

  All of the crowd at Ballinhassig had cheered wildly at that announcement. The army were a nuisance to them, too trigger-happy, said Eamonn disapprovingly. The police were more predictable and could be relied upon to keep the law.

  A few more shots – no, she doubted that they had managed to capture Eamonn and Liam. These shots sounded random. ‘Give yerselves up,’ shouted a voice in a strong Kerry accent, but there was no reply and a moment later a few shots again. They hadn’t seen her shawl, she thought. They were still occupied over at the far side of the hill. They must have sighted Eamonn and Liam going up the hill. Thank God, she thought as she turned around to make sure that Sam was following her, thank God that Fred was not with them, a chase across a hillside in the rain would be no place for a man with a bullet in his arm. Danny, she thought with admiration, had been quick thinking and decisive when he had overtaken them on the road and had courageously sped through the closing barrier. She glanced back at Sam, who had once more stopped to wipe his glasses. A man for peacetime, perhaps, but he appeared poor-spirited, now, in comparison with Eamonn and the others.

  ‘Come on,’ she said shortly. ‘We can’t hang around. We might as well get you safe.’

  He didn’t respond and she gave him an annoyed glance. Did he realize how much she had sacrificed for him? And how she had induced four idealistic nationalistic young men to hazard their lives, which they had sworn to devote to the ideal of a free Ireland, to risking all to liberate a young man who did not sympathize with their views, who was against all they stood for. And who had little sympathy with their conviction that only an armed struggle would obtain a republic where there would be justice for all, rich and poor. She swallowed hard. The enterprise had been planned and dictated by her; her friends had agreed to it out of affection for her and she had to bring it to a successful conclusion.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ she said gently. ‘It’s not too far now. Do you see that blackthorn bush over there? We must get across there without being seen.’

  Important, she thought, not just for Sam’s safety, but for the future of her unit at Ballinhassig.

  ‘Bend down,’ she said urgently. ‘Make sure that you stay down. Don’t betray us, will you?’

  She saw him look slightly taken aback, but she said no more, just set an example by getting down upon her hands and knees and beginning a slow and careful crawl across the field. For a few yards, she was imbued with energy, but then the wet, prickly rushes and thistles abraded the skin on her knees and the palms of her hands and the muscles in her thighs ached fiercely. From time to time she glanced back at him. He was lagging dangerously behind her, but she dared not call out to him. They might be within sight and hearing of the soldiers and she was determined not to be instrumental in betraying their hiding place.

  By the time she reached the blackthorn bush, every muscle was trembling. However there was no sound from the soldiers, not even a shot, now. Perhaps they had gone back to their lorry, had given up the chase. If there really is a God then He should look after Eamonn and Liam, of course. But Eamonn was a very good boy. He had a fierce and burning love for his country and great plans for its future. He had obtained first honours at the end of his first year at university, had come top of the whole class but had thrown away the prospect of a happy and successful and prosperous life, in order to sacrifice himself to the goal of Ireland’s freedom as a republic. Liam, too. None of them was from as poor a background as she. All of them had made far more sacrifices than she had done.

  ‘Keep down,’ she hissed back at Sam. He had stopped and tried to straighten up. It was unlikely that he would be seen with his dark prison uniform, now thoroughly soaked through, and his black hair. Nevertheless, she was not willing to run any risks. They had all sworn to keep this tunnel shaft a secret and only to use it in the case of a dire emergency.

  There was still no sound when they reached the blackthorn bush. Eileen longed to stand up for a moment and to stretch, but she dared not do it. She wriggled across the wet grass, keeping her head down, until she was lying full length beside the open mouth of the shaft. A smell of smoke came up to her nostrils, but there was now only a distant rumble to be heard. The train was speeding on its way to Ballinhassig Station and from there would go on to Bandon. There would not be another one for a whole hour. They had timed these trains, she and Aoife, lying up there, tucked snuggly into a tarpaulin with Eamonn’s watch and a piece of paper and a volume of Yeats’ poetry to pass the time.

  The ladder had been well fixed to the wall and was easy to climb down. The bloomers were still clammily wet and it was a relief to be able to move as quickly as she wanted to go. Eileen was down it in a flash and then waited impatiently as Sam fumbled his way down, occasionally missing a step and once dangling for a moment by his arms. Eileen’s heart skipped a beat. If he fell, he would break a leg, or even his neck. Had he never swarmed up and down gas posts when he was young, she thought impatiently. His mother, she supposed, kept him indoors and away from rough boys of the neighbourhood. He would have been mocked. Going to a posh school, wearing a smart blazer and, of course, the glasses would not have helped.

  ‘Is this place safe?’ he asked when he got down. She could hear him, but not see him. The tunnel was quite dark to her just now, but she knew that after a few minutes her eyes would adjust and the faint circle of light that came from the top of the shaft would help to illuminate their surroundings. She made no reply. It was, she thought, a stupid question. What’s safety, she thought. She didn’t think that she had ever felt safe. Perhaps when she was a baby. But once she had reached the age of five or six, she could remember worrying with her mother whether
they had enough money, in the vase on the mantelpiece, to pay the rent man at the end of the week and the anguish when a rat had stolen half a loaf of bread that had been left to her care. She had been terrified of rats and been unable to compel herself to defend the bread. And, of course, she could remember the terror of coming from school and finding street battles going on, men with machine guns blocking her way home.

  ‘How long will we have to stay here?’ There was a petulant note in his voice and once again she did not reply. There was a lump of disappointment, heavy as lead, within her. Fred had been injured. Eamonn and Liam may have been caught, their safe house may have been imperilled and worst of all, Sam, for whom she had done everything, seemed to be angry, almost as though he wished that she had left him in peace within his prison.

  And then a shot rang out, and then another and another. They were coming nearer, the sound was magnified by the tunnel. And then a voice shouted out, ‘We can see you. Come out with yer hands above yer heads.’ Sam made a restless movement, but she touched his arm and stayed very still, her back against the wall. The men were bluffing. They had not seen the tunnel with its protective screen of blackthorn.

  They were firing into the bush, though she guessed they would not see the entrance hole to the shaft as the thorny branches that she and Aoife had so carefully monitored covered it completely unless you were beside it. Nevertheless, a bullet struck the side of the stone-lined shaft and fell at their feet, rolling over and striking the iron rails of the line below the narrow safety platform. More bullets overhead. Eileen made up her mind. Sooner or later the soldiers would tire of this and then they would do one of two things. Either they would go off to search another field, or else they would investigate the bush to see whether there might be a dead body there, which would undoubtedly mean they would discover the shaft and its ladder. She and Sam would be sitting ducks once that happened. She glanced around. Her night vision had come to her. The tunnel was now palely grey. It was, she remembered, reputed to be nine hundred feet long and the shaft was about halfway along it.

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ she whispered in Sam’s ear.

  SEVENTEEN

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  … maius est contemplata allis tradere quam solum contemplare

  ( … it is better to convey your thoughts to someone, rather than merely to contemplate)

  ‘Have you heard the news, Reverend Mother?’ Sister Bernadette was bubbling over with excitement as she brought in the monthly butcher and baker bills for her superior to enter the amounts in her accounts book and to write cheques. The last Tuesday evening in the month was known throughout the convent as the time when the Reverend Mother paid bills, added up the running costs of the convent and of the school. Tuesday evening was when she was shut up in her room and was not to be disturbed unless for some serious reason. Sister Bernadette, however, stood her ground, despite a frosty look from the Reverend Mother.

  ‘The postman told me all about it when he brought the letters this afternoon whilst you were out,’ said Sister Bernadette undeterred. ‘It seems that Sam O’Mahony was a member of the Republicans, after all. They sprung him from the gaol. That’s what the postman said,’ she finished, hastily disclaiming responsibility for the slang expression which might incur the displeasure of the Reverend Mother. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘his own mother committed suicide. Or so the butcher told him. She took rat poison, so they say.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister Bernadette.’ She waited until the lay sister had gone off, leaving untidy sheaves of bills lying on her desk and then she sat back.

  And so that suicide was unnecessary. The woman’s son had now been released from prison. Did Mrs O’Mahony know that Sam was a member of the Republican Party? If she did know, then it would have been strange that she despaired so quickly. The Republicans had a reputation for daring releases. There had been a few already from the gaol and many from the police station. But did she know? Had Sam kept this a secret from her? He may have done, but after all, they were very close, mother and son. According to Dr Scher they shared one small, two-roomed attic, the mother sleeping in the kitchen/living room and Sam in a small closet-like bedroom. If he were a member, it would seem almost impossible that a bright, intelligent woman like Mrs O’Mahony would not know such a thing about her son.

  But was he?

  Disregarding the pile of bills on her desk, the Reverend Mother opened a drawer and took from it the three copy books that Mrs O’Mahony had wrapped up for her not long before her terrible death. She had never met Sam O’Mahony but she had before her the fruits of his brain. He conveyed his thoughts clearly and well, she thought. The articles started with the conventional writing up of funerals, though even with these there was a flavour of his personality, and then moving on rapidly to more individual expressions of beliefs and opinions. The Reverend Mother’s eye lingered over an article about the murder of an RIC man, a policeman working for the English instituted Royal Irish Constabulary, but a Cork man born and bred. Sam had written movingly about the man’s last morning, about his walk down St Patrick Street, about the last recorded conversation with a friend when he had chatted about collecting his bicycle, about his visit to the English Market to buy some drisheen for his supper that night. About his trip out to catch fish from the River Lee. It was well done, thought the Reverend Mother. She remembered Shylock’s passionate outcry in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. ‘Hath not a Jew eyes … if you prick us, do we not bleed?’ Sam, a well-educated young man, had used the same plea for this murdered RIC officer. A man, he seemed to say in his article, a man like others; a man who was part of humanity. Why had he to lose his life for the sake of a doctrinaire philosophy? She mused over the article for a moment. Was it likely that a man who wrote this, and wrote it with passionate sincerity, would be a member of the Republican Party? She thought it unlikely.

  Abandoning her accounts she went swiftly down the corridor and dialled a number.

  Dr Scher’s housekeeper was sure that he would want to speak with the Reverend Mother. No, he was not seeing a patient. He was, confided the housekeeper, just having a cup of tea and sitting beside his stove, reading the Cork Examiner. She was back two minutes later with the message that Dr Scher had been meaning to visit Sister Assumpta and could be at the convent in ten minutes, if that would suit her.

  The Reverend Mother went back into her room and with sudden decision, gathered all the bills into a neat pile, slipped a rubber band around them and tidied them, and her accounts book, into a drawer. Then she went back to reading those pasted-in articles, a tribute to a mother’s love, but also a window into the son’s mind. She read through them all with her usual speed, from time to time marking ones of special interest. She had just finished when she heard Sister Bernadette in the corridor, responding gaily to Dr Scher’s mellow baritone. And then a lower, deeper voice said something and the Reverend Mother raised her head. Patrick, also, had come.

  ‘Patrick has a message for you,’ were Dr Scher’s first words once Sister Bernadette had left the room leaving the two visitors behind. ‘He wanted to bring it himself.’

  ‘There was no full stop after the word “on” in the message, that’s right, isn’t it?’ said the Reverend Mother. Her mind was full of sombre thoughts, but she could not resist a slight smile at the disappointed expression on Dr Scher’s face.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you, Reverend Mother, that this habit of yours of always knowing everything is extremely annoying? Patrick, of course, is too polite to say so, but I’m sure that he is very disappointed after coming all the way over here at my request and then not even being allowed to deliver his message. And he an inspector in charge of this case.’ Dr Scher patted Patrick’s shoulder with heavy-handed sympathy.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said and then said gravely, ‘it is, as I am sure that you both appreciate, an extremely important point. “I cannot go on”, followed by a full stop might indeed be interpreted as a suicide note, but “I
cannot go on” without a full stop could be followed by any number of phrases.’ She gazed thoughtfully at him. Dr Scher was looking a little puzzled, but Patrick’s eyes were alert and speculative.

  ‘In this case,’ she went on, ‘I venture to think that these words could have been followed by something like “reading these articles over and over again”. Yes, I think that would fit quite well with the fact that she had already packed up the three copy books with the articles pasted into them.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it, that she sent these to you? Why do you think that she did that?’

  The Reverend Mother paused. Not even to Dr Scher, and certainly not to Patrick, would she disclose the proposition that the dead woman had made to her. That was between her and God now, she thought.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘she assumed that I would be interested.’

  ‘More likely she thought that one of the articles contained a key to a possible murderer, to someone other than her son. What do you think, Patrick? She was a smart woman, so they say. She may have felt that you would be a good person to advise her, may have been interested in your opinion, in whether you, also, had picked out the article that had taken her attention. If she didn’t commit suicide, then she would be trying desperately to do something to help her son.’ Dr Scher’s eyes were bright with this new insight.

  ‘It’s possible,’ admitted Patrick. ‘Which is the book with the latest articles in it?’

  The Reverend Mother picked up the top copy book on the little pile. ‘This one begins in last May, and, of course ends in October when Sam was sacked from the Cork Examiner.’

  ‘Well, this will be the one,’ Dr Scher said with conviction. ‘What do you think, Patrick? It should show us what way her mind was working.’ He turned to the last page and looked up at the Reverend Mother. ‘I suppose you’ve read the article that got Sam fired from the Cork Examiner, any clues in that?’