‘I was very sorry to hear from Dr Scher about the death of your son,’ she began.
That startled him. A slight, very slight, tinge of colour came into his cheeks and he looked at her.
‘What was his name?’ she asked gently. It was good to remind herself of what had happened to that boy.
‘Frank.’
‘And he was your only child,’ she said.
He nodded, but did not reply. His eyes were on her.
‘And he was accused of killing the former RIC policeman.’
‘That’s right.’ He had a defiant look and his bloodless lips were compressed, but he did not, as he had done with Dr Scher a few weeks ago, protest the boy’s innocence of the crime.
The Reverend Mother allowed a few seconds of silence to ensue. He had not mentioned the hanging and neither would she. Her concern now was for another boy, another deeply loved son.
‘The man, the RIC man, had collected his bicycle from your shop. You had repaired it.’ She guessed that from the article. It had passed over this quickly, dwelling more on the poignancy of a man cycling out on the Lee Road, fishing rod strapped to his bicycle, sitting on the banks of the river, fishing peacefully on a sunlit afternoon, and then the assassin’s bullet. Nevertheless, Sam had mentioned it.
‘Frank was a patriot,’ said his father, getting the words out with difficulty as he gasped for breath. ‘He thought that he was doing this for Ireland.’
‘You felt that Sam O’Mahony’s article in the Cork Examiner stirred up feeling against your son; was perhaps instrumental in the verdict of guilty that was passed on him?’
He seemed about to deny it. She could see how thoughts flitted across his face, but then with an exhausted sigh, he said, ‘Yes.’
‘And then there was that terrible accident when the burned-out house next door to you tumbled down and smashed your premises, destroying the building and your tools and everything that had helped you to make a livelihood.’
This brought a flush of anger to his cheeks. ‘The place should have been rebuilt in a few weeks after the fire,’ he said bitterly, his voice rough and hoarse. ‘Too busy with all the big buildings on Patrick Street. No interest in poor people in the lanes.’ He choked and coughed agonisingly and the Reverend Mother held her breath. Dr Scher took a syringe from his case and injected something and then held a glass of water to the man’s lips.
‘You were understandably bitter against the city engineer,’ said the Reverend Mother. Her voice was calm and she kept it clear of any shadow of reproach. ‘And you felt,’ she continued, ‘very much more bitterly, that Sam O’Mahony had been responsible for the conviction of your son.’ She would not ask whether the murder of James Doyle and the attempt to get Sam O’Mahony hanged had been an impulse on the morning or whether this had been planned. The visit of the city engineer to the English Market had probably been trumpeted in the Cork Examiner days before. In any case, during this very late spring Mr Cotter would have been in and out of the market to buy his cabbage and carrot seedlings, his onion sets, and, of course, the all-important seed potatoes. She had seen the stall herself on that morning when she had gone to buy him the present of buttered eggs. No, looking at the sunken eyes and hearing the stentorian breathing, the Reverend Mother knew that there was little time left. She had witnessed death too often to be under any illusion. The most important thing was to ensure Sam’s release from prison. She took from her attaché case the statement that she had penned yesterday evening and began to read aloud: ‘I, Augustin Cotter, acknowledge that I fired the bullet that killed James Doyle, city engineer, and that I dropped the gun at the feet of Sam O’Mahony in order that he might be suspected of the crime …’
TWENTY-THREE
St Thomas Aquinas:
Ubi amor, ibi oculus.
(Where there is love, there is insight)
‘I’ve come to say thank you to you, Reverend Mother. Inspector Cashman said that you always believed in me.’
That was well put, thought the Reverend Mother. Patrick was acquiring diplomacy. She had no desire that her role in the solution to the murder of James Doyle would be made public. Aloud she said, ‘How are you, Sam?’
He didn’t look well, she thought. His skin had a greyish tinge and there were black circles under his eyes. He had lost weight, also. He didn’t answer her conventional question.
‘I wanted to ask you about the death of my mother,’ he said abruptly.
She bowed her head, taking refuge in the conventional nun-like pose, eyelids lowered, hands tucked into sleeves, veil and wimple shielding her face as she thought hard. There had been no mention of the death of Mrs O’Mahony in the confession that she had written out for Mr Cotter. She had asked him about it after he signed the confession, but it seemed to be a step too far for him. He had merely closed his eyes and lain very still. It was, she thought, a deed too evil for him to acknowledge before witnesses; she hoped afterwards that he had been able to acknowledge it to the priest who heard his deathbed confession.
But now Mrs O’Mahony’s son had come to her and had asked for the truth and she thought he deserved to know her thoughts on the subject. Patrick, as a policeman, could not speculate, but what she said to this unhappy young man, was, she thought, between God and herself. She raised her head and looked at him intently.
‘How old are you?’ she asked.
He looked startled. ‘Twenty-one,’ he said and then in a slightly childlike way, he added, ‘and a half.’
‘And in all of the years that you knew your mother, have you ever known her to take the easy way out? Did she ever say, “What’s the use?” Did she ever lie on in bed, instead of going to the slaughter houses, preparing her tripe and drisheen, being at her stall every morning, no matter what the weather was like, no matter what she felt like?’
‘No,’ he said. He flushed in a conscience-stricken way. ‘I should have been more help to her,’ he said.
‘You were the light of her life,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Don’t underestimate that. We all need a beacon towards which we strive.’ She was not given to poetical outbursts, but she felt a need to comfort this young man. ‘If your mother had committed suicide after that light was extinguished, then I might have believed it,’ she continued calmly, ‘but not while you were still there, not while you needed her strength, not while there was anything left that she could do for you.’ Even stand, like Mary, Mother of God, at the foot of the scaffold, she said to herself.
Mrs O’Mahony, she thought, had tried one approach with her, had tried to make her bear false witness, but when that had failed, she would have then turned her mind to that morning, to an endeavour to pinpoint the real murderer.
‘She may have been asking questions around the market, she may even have questioned the man himself,’ she said aloud.
‘Do you think that she suspected him?’ Sam clenched one hand into a fist.
‘No, I don’t. There were lots of people who bore a grudge against the civic authorities, and perhaps against James Doyle in particular, as he was known to be corrupt. There was no real reason why she should pick out a man who was a humble gardener. No, I don’t think that she suspected him. If she had, she would not have accepted an egg from him, but I do think that she was asking questions, was enquiring about anyone who might have been near to the gallery steps just before the shot was fired.’ Mrs O’Mahony would have remembered about Patsy’s little habit of popping upstairs with the superintendent’s keys. The door to the staircase was quite near to the drisheen and tripe stall.
‘An egg?’ There was an expression of puzzlement in his eyes.
‘I gave him six buttered eggs,’ said the Reverend Mother sadly. ‘I don’t think that he had much appetite, much will to live by this stage. He gave one of them to your mother, I think. People were giving her small presents, some little gifts of sympathy. There were still some traces of the rat poison in the shell. She fried it for her supper with some of her drisheen.’
She th
ought he might weep, but he didn’t. Colour flamed into his face and his fist clenched so tightly that she could see the knuckles whiten.
‘It’s a good job that he is dead and buried,’ he said explosively and then stopped.
‘Evil had entered his soul,’ said the Reverend Mother bleakly. ‘He had brooded on his revenge for too long.’
‘And all about an article that I wrote.’
‘Why did you write it?’ she asked gently. It was time to divert him from his mother’s terrible ending.
‘I didn’t intend anything against Frank Cotter,’ he said impatiently. ‘He had been arrested and charged by the time that I wrote it.’
‘But not convicted,’ said the Reverend Mother.
‘He hadn’t a hope of being found not guilty. He was a member of the Republicans, he had been seen cycling up the Lee Road on that afternoon, he had been known to possess a gun, had been suspected strongly of being involved in the murder of another former policeman, another RIC man. In any case, I never even mentioned his name. My article had nothing to do with his conviction.’
Nevertheless, thought the Reverend Mother, it had been published in the Cork Examiner and it was well-known that Cork people read every word of the Cork Examiner. No jury would have been unaware of that article, she guessed.
‘And what are you going to do now, Sam?’ she asked.
‘Going to England,’ he said briefly. ‘I’m off on the ferry to Holyhead tomorrow. I’ll get a job in London. The editor of the Cork Examiner has promised to write me a good reference.’
‘And Eileen?’ she queried.
She saw his face darken. ‘She won’t hear of it,’ he said. ‘She’s wedded to all those ridiculous notions. Working for those printing works on the South Terrace. They publish all those IRA pamphlets.’ His face darkened and he said, ‘I could write quite a story about that fellow who runs it, that fellow that Eileen thinks is such a marvellous person, he’s been involved in—’
‘Don’t,’ said the Reverend Mother.
She rose to her feet and held out her hand.
‘Well, I must say goodbye now, Sam, and I will pray for you and for the soul of your mother.’ She thought of giving him some advice about Eileen, she thought of quoting the girl’s favourite poet, William Butler Yeats, who had said so poignantly, “Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams,” but in the end she did neither, just shook him by the hand and wished him the best of luck in his new life in London.
Eileen, she thought, would tread a different road.
A Shocking Assassination Page 27
