Beyond Absolution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘What did your friends think? If they knew that it was not anything to do with your organization, who did they think did the deed? Who did burn down Shanbally House?’

  ‘We thought that it was probably that Anti-Sinn Féin gang, do you remember that I told you about them, Reverend Mother?’ Eileen eyed her former teacher anxiously. The elderly nun was still very pale, but to Eileen’s relief, a sparkle of interest had come back into those very intelligent eyes.

  She was silent for a moment, but then spoke. ‘So you would be fairly sure, Eileen, that it was not the Republicans who burned down Shanbally House,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Eileen decisively. ‘Tom Hurley was always one to boast of something like that, and since the house was in Cork, his district, he would know all about it.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. Do you know anything else about the antiques shop, the one that Peter Doyle and Jonathon Power run?’

  The question was unexpected and Eileen knitted her brows, her interest had deepened. The Reverend Mother never gossiped or chatted. Every question would have a reason behind it. Perhaps she also had heard a rumour that these people had something to do with the Anti-Sinn Féin gang.

  ‘I think it’s owned by Peter Doyle,’ she said slowly, ‘but I get the impression that they all have something to do with it. Rose O’Reilly helps there, nearly every day. And Miss Gamble and Robert Beamish were looking at some sheets of typed-out figures that Peter Doyle showed them. They looked like something from the bank, bank statements. I see statements like that at the printers where I work. First, I thought that it was something to do with the Mikado show, but it wasn’t. They had the name of the shop on them. Morrison’s Island Antiques. And then Tom Gamble came along and he was having a look and he was sort of chuckling with delight. They didn’t hear me. I wear very soft shoes so I had a quick look …’ Eileen stopped. The Reverend Mother might well disapprove of her sneaking up and reading papers that were nothing to do with her. ‘It’s for the cause, Reverend Mother,’ she said earnestly. ‘Eamonn asked me to join. You see this lot are suspected of being in the Anti-Sinn Féin Society’

  ‘Sinn Féin,’ said the Reverend Mother meditatively. ‘Well, my Irish isn’t good. It wasn’t taught when I was young, you know, but it means something like “Ourselves”, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, but I prefer to call myself a Republican,’ said Eileen earnestly. ‘I want Ireland to become a republic, not just a little island on the western side of Great Britain.’

  ‘I think you are right to prefer the term “Republican”,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘There is something that I don’t like about a slogan that seems centred on ourselves. The world would be a better place, wouldn’t it, Eileen, if people weren’t just concentrating on ourselves. Perhaps your friends in the Merrymen association may be doing just that, concentrating on themselves.’

  Eileen looked at her with surprise. There was something significant about the last utterance. The Reverend Mother sat up very straight, her eyes gleaming with concentration. Eileen could almost see the sharp brain behind those eyes, working away, slotting facts into their place, weighing up alternatives. There was a long silence for a few moments and then the Reverend Mother sighed. ‘Now go, child,’ she said, ‘and I wish you all the luck in the world. Who is the young man outside?’

  ‘That’s Eamonn, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘Ah, the medical student. I remember him from the time when I broke my arm. Bring him greetings from me and say that I am glad he is looking after you. I hope that one day he will resume his studies.’ And with that, the Reverend Mother rose to her feet, vigorously blew out the candles on the altar and walked down towards the porch door, holding it open.

  ‘God bless you, my child,’ she said, and leaning over, she signed a small cross on Eileen’s forehead.

  ‘The Reverend Mother sends you her greetings and hopes that one day you will resume your medical studies,’ said Eileen as she climbed onto the seat behind Eamonn and tugged down her fashionably short skirt.

  ‘What did she want?’ asked Eamonn curiously. She guessed that he didn’t want to discuss the question of resuming his studies. For all of the Republicans, life was on hold until Ireland gained complete freedom from England and until the remaining six counties were signed over to them.

  Eileen gave a glance around the lane. The fog had risen, and it hung in dense soft clumps around the buildings and lane. But although it would not be sunset for another hour, the gas lamp outside the convent back gate had already been lit and cast its hazy light for about twenty feet around them. Anyone lurking in the background would be visible. As long as she spoke low, she could not be overheard.

  ‘She wanted to know whether our lot burned down Shanbally House,’ she said in his ear.

  ‘What!’ He gave a long low whistle. ‘So she’s onto something about that. Well, that’s interesting.’

  ‘And she probed a bit about the gang in the Merrymen. Don’t know why, but she was very interested that they were all looking at the bank statements for the antiques shop, and looking very pleased over them.’

  ‘I often wondered myself who did that job at Shanbally House.’ Eamonn had ceased revving the engine of the motorbike and was staring ahead, twisting the handle of his bike absentmindedly. When he spoke again it was in a low voice and just into her ear. ‘The burning down of that place, and some others over the last few years, is a bit of a puzzle. Not our crowd, I know that. I must go and have a chat with your Reverend Mother. Clever woman. Perhaps we could recruit her to the cause.’

  ‘Let’s go. I’ll be late. Mam will worry.’ But Eileen, too, was intrigued. The Reverend Mother had a very sharp brain, she thought admiringly. If not the Republicans, then who would do such a thing? The Anti-Sinn Féin crowd were, when she thought about it, fairly unlikely – why burn down the houses of their friends and supporters? She knew that Eamonn was also thinking hard as he sat for a long few moments while the engine ticked over. Perhaps between the two of them they could come up with an answer to the Reverend Mother’s question.

  Eileen’s mother, Maureen, was at the door when they roared up the steep slope of Barrack Street. There was something tense about the shawl-wrapped figure as she peered down the steep incline and Eileen was off the bike and running up to her as soon as the bike slowed to a halt by the entrance to the small lane that ran behind the block of terraced cabins.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘There’s a man in there.’ Her mother jerked a thumb towards the open halves of the front door to her cabin. ‘He says that he knows Eamonn. Walked in as bold as brass. Made himself at home.’

  ‘Oh, it’s probably one of the lads.’ Eileen’s rapid heartbeat slowed down. Probably Eamonn’s friend, Bernard, she thought, but her mother shook her head.

  ‘Not a lad,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a man. A middle-aged man. Don’t go in. Don’t let him see you. We’ll wait until Eamonn comes.’

  Eileen’s heart missed a beat. Neither she nor her mother would be in danger, but Eamonn was. She sprinted as fast as she could up the narrow lane between and behind two blocks of terraced cabins. Eamonn was still struggling with the stiff bolt to the back yard when she caught up with him.

  ‘Don’t go in, Eamonn. There’s a man in there. In my mam’s kitchen. A middle-aged man.’

  ‘One man? Not army or police or anything like that.’

  ‘That’s what she said. A man, but not one of the lads. A middle-aged man,’ repeated Eileen. ‘Don’t go in. You know you are wanted.’

  ‘Wouldn’t send one man to arrest me,’ said Eamonn confidently. He wrenched open the gate, took his pistol from his pocket and walked straight through the yard, silently lifted the latch and then violently kicked the back door open.

  ‘Well, well, that’s a nice welcome for a man.’ The accent was strange, softly spoken, not sing-song like the Cork accent. West of Ireland, thought Eileen. She edged her way around E
amonn’s left side. Middle-aged certainly. Old, she would have said. A soft round face with a flat nose, bald, short in stature, but with a large pair of hands.

  ‘You can put the gun away,’ he said. ‘Don’t like those things, much. I’m a lawyer, not a fighter. Young Bernard gave me this address. He said that you could tell me some more.’ He nodded in her direction. ‘You must be Eileen,’ he said. ‘Bernard told me about you.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. She felt slightly better. Eamonn had a gun and the stranger had made no move towards a pocket.

  ‘All the way from County Mayo,’ he said. He sat back down onto the settle, leaned over the fire, moved the crane holding the kettle over the warmest spot and then smiled with a cordial display of tobacco-stained teeth. He bent down and pulled a canvas bag from under the seat. It looked like a carpenter’s tool bag, though it seemed to contain mainly large heavy books, and he took out a cake box marked ‘Fullers’. By the time Maureen appeared, after timidly looking over the half door from the street, he had opened the box and produced an iced sponge cake.

  ‘My old mother used always say that it was manners to bring a cake if you invited yourself to someone’s house,’ he said in his soft western accent.

  ‘And you invited yourself because …?’ Eamonn still held the gun, but Maureen, reassured by the appearance of the cake, now sitting on its paper base on the table, cheerfully produced the teapot, ladling in a generous few teaspoons. She looked quite excited. Eileen felt a slight pang. Her mother led such a dull, dreary life. Only fifteen years older than Eileen herself, she had few friends and even fewer amusements. Now she was smiling hospitably at the stranger who seemed so much at ease and she had an air of excitement about her.

  ‘Because of this Father Dominic business.’ The Mayo man stretched his hands to the fire and looked around. The two halves of the door to Barrack Street were now closed. ‘It’s a bit of a long story,’ he said.

  ‘Then save it for the moment while I get my bike into the yard,’ said Eamonn. His voice was still curt and he handed over the gun to Eileen before going out through the back door, but she felt that he believed the man’s story. Maureen watched the singing kettle, from time to time looking hungrily at the iced cake. She sorted out the contents of the drawer and produced her sharpest knife.

  ‘Would you like to cut it, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Maurice, call me Maurice,’ he said and rose immediately, taking the knife from her. He held it poised over the cake. Eileen steadied the pistol, her eyes on that razor-sharp knife and he gave her a grin. ‘Careful with that thing,’ he said. ‘You don’t want it going off by mistake and breaking your mam’s cups.’

  ‘I wonder what Maurice from Mayo has to do with Father Dominic from Cork,’ she said, refusing to return his smile. She felt by the cold breeze behind her back that the door to the yard had opened. Eamonn had returned, but she did not turn around. A Republican woman was as good as any man once she had a pistol in her hand. Countess Markowitz had taught that lesson to her fellow countrywomen. ‘Explain yourself,’ she said crisply.

  ‘My brother was part of the Macroom crowd that killed the British spies after they threw a woman over the head of the stairs during the civil war,’ he said. ‘He was captured and condemned to death. Father Dominic visited him in the Cork gaol and gave him the last sacraments before they hanged him.’ His voice was unchanged, still soft and western, but his eyes were very hard, as dark grey as limestone paving on the wet Cork quays.

  ‘But you stayed up in Mayo?’ Eamonn took over the questioning.

  ‘I’m by way of being a judge at the Sinn Féin courts. Only a solicitor, really, but needs must when the devil drives. You’ve heard that expression, ma’am, haven’t you?’ He addressed himself to Maureen who looked hesitantly from him to the pistol in her daughter’s hand.

  ‘I thought that the Sinn Féin courts had finished,’ said Eileen. She had begun to believe him, though. She got up, still keeping the pistol pointed at him and kicked open the flap of his soft canvas bag. As she had half-noticed, the books were law texts and the title of one was Blackstone’s Commentaries.

  ‘We’re a bit behind the times up in Mayo,’ he said in an easy-going fashion. ‘We still see the need for the Sinn Féin courts up there. Sent a man to a deserted island off the coast last week for being continually drunk and disorderly and letting out what he should keep buried. He’ll stay there, too. No guards, no locked doors, but we won’t see a sign of him until his sentence is up. The people respect our judgements. Most of us in Mayo don’t think much of these people in power who have thrown away the six counties in the north or much of their law, either. We still want a united republic of Ireland, as you do yourselves.’ He looked from Eileen to Eamonn. Rapidly and efficiently he sliced the cake into four and then eight slices.

  ‘First one for the lady of the house,’ he said and offered the plate to Maureen. And then without a change of voice he said, ‘So who did kill the good priest? Do you need help in judging and sentencing? Have you got a likely suspect? Don’t worry. They get a fair trial. We always give a lawyer to the accused as well as to the Free State.’

  Eileen looked across at Eamonn. He gave a slight nod. She handed his pistol back to him and made up her mind.

  ‘You could be useful to us, I suppose,’ she said, purposefully introducing a doubting note into her voice. She allowed that sentence to sink in before adding, ‘There’s been something funny going on here. There’s been about thirty big houses, belonging to Protestants, burned down in County Cork during the last couple of years and we, the Republican movement, have had nothing to do with more than half of them. It’s been a puzzle. I think it’s possible that Father Dominic’s murder might have had something to do with these burnings.’

  ‘We thought it might be the Anti-Sinn Féin movement,’ put in Eamonn.

  ‘Anti-Sinn Féin! Seems unlikely. Why burn down the houses of their own people?’

  ‘Tom Hurley thought it might be to discredit our movement.’ Eamonn sounded dubious.

  ‘What do you think, Eileen?’ Maurice looked straight across at her.

  Eileen thought about her conversation with the Reverend Mother.

  ‘I was talking with someone who seemed to be thinking that some people who run a musical society and an antiques shop might have something to do with it. She seemed very interested in them and she cross-questioned me about them. Wanted to know everything about them …’ Eileen tailed off and waited for the next question.

  ‘Well, tell me. Go through them one by one.’ From his canvas bag he took a notebook and pencil. As she went through the members of the musical society one by one he made some notes, writing in shorthand, she thought as she saw the squiggles on the page.

  ‘So this fellow, James O’Reilly, takes drugs?’ He had a sharp way of questioning that annoyed her.

  ‘Eamonn heard a rumour about that,’ she said briefly.

  ‘Never like drug takers. Would murder their own mother to get supplies. Bank clerk, isn’t he? He won’t last long if this gets out. Wonder if he confessed to Father Dominic and then got the jitters. Might have murdered him to keep him quiet.’

  ‘If he told it under the seal of confession then Father Dominic could not have told anyone,’ pointed out Eileen. She wondered whether he might be a Protestant.

  ‘Drug takers worry about flies on the wall. But go on, who’s this person that you were talking to? She? So who is she?’

  ‘She’s the Reverend Mother of a convent where I went to school,’ said Eileen defiantly. ‘She knows everyone in Cork.’

  ‘Got her finger on the pulse, has she?’ If he was amused, then at least he concealed it. ‘And who do you think that this Reverend Mother of yours might suspect of the murder of Father Dominic? Not this James O’Reilly, I gather.’ His soft voice still held that undercurrent of hard steel.

  Eileen thought back to the conversation. ‘I think,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, mind you, but I had a feeling that
she might suspect Peter Doyle, the owner of an antiques shop just near to the church. He’s an Englishman and he runs a musical society. I think that she might suspect him and his friends of having something to do with the burning down of the big houses.’

  ‘So, Peter Doyle, owner of an antiques shop. Any evidence, so far, that he went into a confessional box and murdered Father Dominic?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ Eileen faced him defiantly. It occurred to her that she had seen James O’Reilly go into the Holy Trinity.

  ‘Well, keep working,’ he advised and held the plate with its remaining four slices towards Maureen, before helping himself to another piece. ‘Go and talk some more to the Reverend Mother of yours. She probably knows more than she’s telling you at the moment. Why should Father Dominic be involved? That’s what we have to find out. A good priest like that to be killed by an Englishman. Well, I don’t like the sound of that. I think I’ll start collecting some evidence for the prosecution. I’ve my eye on a couple of lawyers. Nobody has been appointed yet, but I’ll persuade one of them to do judge. The man I have in mind has plenty of long years of experience. He’ll make a good job of it. I would myself, of course, but when it comes to Father Dominic’s murderer, I’d prefer to step down from the bench and be the prosecutor.’ He tossed the remainder of his slice of cake into his mouth, chewed for a few seconds, and then said in a low voice, ‘Doesn’t really matter who is on the bench as long as he can sum up well. It will be for the prosecution team to find the evidence. Once we have that, there will be only one possible sentence. And that will be death.’