Beyond Absolution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Let’s go through the notes again,’ said Patrick wearily. ‘Could it possibly be true that Peter Doyle murdered Father Dominic?’ he said. ‘The Republicans usually get their facts right – that is if that card isn’t just put there to mislead us.’

  ‘It’s like them, though, isn’t it? They usually like to claim responsibility. The whole city is up in arms about the murder of Father Dominic. And, of course, newspapers have been speculating about whether it’s a Sinn Féin atrocity. They would want that wiped off people’s minds. In any case, if the IRA execute the man who murdered a popular priest like Father Dominic, then it will boost their recruitment at a time when lots are falling away from them.’ Joe looked again at the card that Patrick had placed on the desk between them.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. I suppose we must take into account that there may be some connection between the two murders; that one resulted from the other. We should be able to solve Father Dominic’s murder. After all, that church was full of people. Surely, we can get some good evidence. Now, let’s see—’ he leafed through his notes – ‘yes,’ he said, ‘after the woman in the shawl, there was that little boy who said to his mother that the priest wasn’t talking. That wasn’t like Father Dominic. He was very kind to children. I remember going to confession to him myself when I was about that age and he was asking me to say a prayer for him and joking that he was a terrible sinner. This means that the last person to see him alive might well be the woman in a shawl,’ he finished.

  ‘Who has not come forward,’ said Joe.

  ‘A very big shawl, apparently,’ said Patrick, looking back at his notes. ‘Two or three witnesses described it as one of those old-fashioned shawls, not the newer kind of black or brown, but one of those big, plaid shawls, floor length. That was mentioned by everyone that I’ve interviewed.’

  ‘What about the evidence from the garage man about seeing Peter Doyle, small man with a moustache standing at the back of the church?’ asked Joe.

  ‘You’re thinking along the same lines as I am,’ said Patrick. ‘You’re thinking that Peter Doyle might have disguised himself as a woman in a shawl and killed Father Dominic.’ He brooded on this for a minute while Joe waited respectfully. The IRA were usually very accurate at assigning crimes and had a good knowledge of what went on in the troubled city, so it was certainly worth considering Peter Doyle as a possible killer of the priest. Joe, he thought, was sharpening up immensely and was becoming a very useful assistant. He resolved to make as much time as possible to discuss matters with him. ‘And you know,’ he continued, ‘nobody looks too closely at someone going into confession and if the shawl was pulled forward, right over the face, and perhaps across the mouth, no one would notice the moustache. The church is pretty dark, anyway, and that particular confessional is in the darkest part of the church. People said that Father Dominic chose it for that reason. He had lots of the Republicans coming to confess to him and he knew that some of them were shy of being spotted, especially if their faces were on posters around the city. Now let’s have another look through all of those statements. I don’t think there were any more mentions of the woman, if she was a woman, in the shawl, but I just want to check.’

  ‘Easy enough to fade out of sight,’ said Joe. ‘And if it was Peter Doyle who dressed up, well, remember he was an actor. I saw him in The Mikado. He was very good. Really looked as though he was enjoying himself, too. He’d have the confidence to do something like dressing up and joining the queue for confession. Did anyone give a good description of the woman in a shawl? Is that what you’re looking for?’

  ‘I’ve found it,’ announced Patrick. ‘Nothing like taking notes of everything said, Joe. Never be tempted to skip someone who seems to be going on and on. You never know what might be important. It was the woman, with the little boy, who said this. “A woman in a shawl came out. She seemed a very respectable woman. She didn’t smell like they usually do.” Do you see, Joe? They do smell, these poor things, don’t they? So if this woman didn’t smell, it seems likely that she wasn’t really what they call a “shawlie”, but someone dressed up, disguised. Could have been Peter Doyle, couldn’t it? He was quite a small man.’

  ‘Wonder what he did with the shawl.’

  ‘Dropped it somewhere. There’s always someone poor enough to pick up something like that. Or else it’s in the river. Wouldn’t tell you much, I’d say.’

  ‘I can guess where he got it, if it was Peter Doyle, or someone else who wanted to murder Father Dominic,’ said Joe. ‘The Holy Trinity have a charity for old clothes for poor people. And they send everything they get to the laundry, first. That shawl probably came from there. They leave a big box at the back of the church, near to the bell rope, out in the open there so that they can keep an eye out that someone doesn’t pinch the lot. But otherwise, I’d say that it would be fairly easy, if you had a bag, to just grab something and no one would notice.’

  ‘A respectable, well-dressed man like Peter Doyle?’

  ‘Well he could just hang around a bit and then snatch. Or, more likely, he could bring along something like a pair of old trousers, or a pair of shoes or a few things like that and make a show of unloading them and then just take a shawl when no one was looking.’

  ‘Of course. I’ve suddenly remembered. Someone actually saw him. It was that fellow from the garage on Morrison’s Island. Let’s see. Here it is: “… English fellow that runs the antique shop, Mr Doyle; I thought it was a bit odd to see him. Him being a Protestant. He was standing at the back of the church, just beside the bell rope. It was before the Novena began.” And he knew Doyle well as he filled his lorry with petrol.’

  ‘Well, that proves it,’ said Joe. ‘I was right! What an earth would a Protestant be doing hanging around just before the Novena started. He grabbed a shawl, most of these shawls are floor length – and he wasn’t a big man, was he? Then he went into the little room by the bell rope, the place where they keep the brooms, the buckets, and the polishes and put it around him. Took a bit of nerve, but I’d say that he had it.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Patrick absent-mindedly. He was leafing through the rest of his notes. The woman with a shawl had been noticed by a lot of people, but no one else had anything of interest to say about her. ‘Nobody remarked on how long she was in the confessional,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Doesn’t take too long to kill someone with a sharp knife through the ear,’ said Joe.

  ‘Not a knife, I think. A hat pin, I’d say,’ said Patrick. ‘The Reverend Mother showed me a hatpin that nuns use. It looked able to do the job, according to Dr Scher. Look at it.’ He took the pin from the drawer and laid it on the table. It exactly matched the pin that had fastened the card to the dead man’s jacket.

  ‘A reporter from the Cork Examiner to see you, inspector. Will I bring him in?’ Tommy put his head around the door after a perfunctory knock.

  ‘No, I’ll come out,’ said Patrick. These reporters had no idea of time. And if he were once ensconced in the office, he would expect a whiskey. The superintendent had got a lot of reporters into bad habits by producing a bottle automatically. Patrick had no intention of following in his footsteps.

  ‘They’ve got hold of the IRA involvement,’ warned Tommy, as Patrick rose to his feet, ‘and it wasn’t me that told them.’

  It probably was, thought Patrick. Tommy was a terrible old gossip and loved to drop heavy hints that would immediately be picked up by a sharp reporter. Five minutes and any young man worth his salt would get everything he wanted to know out of Tommy.

  ‘No harm,’ he said and was amused to see the look of relief on Tommy’s face. He stopped at the door. ‘Hand me that card found pinned on the man’s chest, Joe, will you and I’ll bring it out to show to him. We might as well get all the information we can.’ Virtually the whole of Cork city read the Cork Examiner, either a copy that they bought, or one that they picked up from a rubbish bin on the street, or found left lying on a seat of the tram. It was a good
way for the police to appeal for information.

  ‘Morning, Bob,’ he said when he came out to the desk.

  ‘Busy day, inspector.’ Bob would be slightly annoyed not to be taken into his office, but he couldn’t help that. ‘Start as you mean to go on’, had been his motto, when he had first been appointed as inspector, and he had kept to it. ‘Time is of the essence’, he had read in a law book and that applied to the solving of crimes and all other police business.

  ‘Tommy’s probably filled you in on the basic details,’ he said briskly, ‘but you might be interested to see this. Give me a piece of paper and a pencil, Tommy, and I’ll make a copy of it so that you can take it away with you, Bob. Any questions?’

  This part of the job was getting second nature to him, now. Best to tell rather than to allow them to guess; that had been his policy from his first days as an inspector.

  ‘The Civic Guards are very grateful for all the assistance that they have had about the tragic death of Father Dominic Alleyn,’ he said as he traced an outline of the card onto the piece of paper. ‘Now they are appealing for help with this second murder.’ And then, with a quick eye at the lettering, he began to print the words on the note found on Peter Doyle’s body. ‘We’d be grateful,’ he continued, speaking slowly so that Bob could keep up with him, ‘we’d be very grateful if anyone who was in the streets around Charlotte Quay, Morrison’s Quay or anywhere on Morrison’s Island yesterday night – between eleven o’clock and midnight, especially, could contact us,’ he said. The writing on the card was quite difficult to reproduce, he thought, with a glance back at the card. Whoever wrote it made their letters strangely. The letter ‘o’ in the word ‘found’ was a thin oval, whereas the ‘o’ in ‘order’ and the ‘o’ in ‘of’ were both fat and round. A disguised hand, he thought, but was careful to keep a blank face as he painstakingly copied the message, letter by letter.

  ‘You’d have a good camera at the Examiner offices, wouldn’t you, Bob?’ he said. ‘What about taking a picture of this and printing it on the front of the Evening Echo.’

  ‘Who knows, someone might recognize the handwriting,’ said Tommy wisely.

  ‘Ab-so-lute-ly,’ said the reporter enthusiastically. ‘Really appreciate this, inspector. Will give you a bit of a write-up, too, don’t you fear – “in the competent hands of Inspector Patrick Cashman” – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Send me a few competent witnesses and I’ll be happy,’ said Patrick sedately. The Examiner man, he thought, had done him a favour. The act of copying, letter by letter, had alerted him to something he had not noticed before. ‘I’ll leave you now, Bob,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit snowed-under this morning. Tommy will take care of you; will let you know if there is anything else.’

  ‘Dr Scher’s just arriving, inspector,’ said Tommy. ‘I know the sound of that old Humber of his.’ He beckoned to a young Garda. ‘Just mind the desk for me for a moment, sonny, while I show the reporter out.’

  He would be off to the nearest pub where the reporter would buy him a few drinks and put it down to the Cork Examiner’s account, thought Patrick, but it was no business of his.

  ‘Ask Dr Scher to pop in and see me if he has a moment,’ was all that he said as Tommy took down his coat and fished an umbrella from under the reception desk. Patrick did not enquire why a man going to the door needed an umbrella and an overcoat. The superintendent was in charge of the barracks and Tommy, like his superior, was a Protestant – left over from the R.I.C. Everyone knew that Tommy was privileged.

  Dr Scher, he thought, looked slightly worried as he ushered him into his room.

  ‘Can’t stay long. I’ve had a call from my housekeeper. She had a call from Reverend Mother Aquinas.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Patrick made up his mind instantly. ‘We can talk on the way.’ He took the card from the desk and, putting it carefully into an envelope, he placed it into his jacket pocket, put on his coat and popped his head into Joe’s room. ‘Be back in an hour, Joe,’ he said briefly and then followed Dr Scher.

  ‘Anything interesting about the autopsy?’ he enquired as he eased himself thankfully out of the rain and into the shabby front seat of the Humber.

  ‘Well, body of a man aged early twenties, well-nourished, fit, healthy, identified by friend and employee, Jonathon Power, as one Peter Doyle, aged approximately twenty-two, owner of antiques shop … Cause of death …’ Dr Scher delved in his pocket, made a pretext of studying his notes, but Patrick knew that the words were on the tip of his tongue.

  ‘The cause of death, Patrick, you will be interested to know, was, once again, a hatpin, this time left within the ear, a very long hatpin, just like the one that the Reverend Mother showed you, a hatpin with a black top, made from Bakelite, and a steel pin exactly nine inches long. Well, what do you think of that, Patrick?’

  ‘Strange weapon for the IRA,’ said Patrick. He looked out through the windscreen, the rain was still pouring down, but the sooner they got to the convent, the sooner they would find out what the Reverend Mother wanted with Dr Scher. ‘I’d have thought that it would be much easier to shoot him.’

  ‘I’ll get your old bus going,’ he said and plunged out into the rain again. It seemed almost a relief to put all his energies into swinging the starting handle and a source of great satisfaction to hear the engine roar in response. At least something was going right this morning. He got back into the front seat and waited while Dr Scher eased his bulk to an easier position behind the wheel.

  ‘I suppose that we’ll get a summer some time,’ he said, conscious that Dr Scher turned and looked at him closely before pressing the start button. He had sounded bad-tempered and irritable. He could hear the exasperated tone in his own voice.

  ‘I’m a bit puzzled about that card left on the dead man’s chest,’ he said in explanation as they swung out onto Barrack Street.

  ‘I’ve seen that,’ said Dr Scher. ‘I unpinned it from the chest of the cadaver, very neatly attached to the lapel of his expensive suit. Our murderer seems to have lots of hairpins. One on the jacket and another one in the man’s ear; pierced the ear and went through to the brain. A very good quality of hairpin, both of them,’ he added.

  ‘Anything else of interest?’ asked Patrick. He wished that someone had taught Dr Scher to drive properly. It was an unnerving experience to be in a car with him as he swerved from side to side of the narrow street. ‘Tell me later,’ he added hastily as Dr Scher turned to face him, shooting out from Barrack Street right into the path of the traffic on Sullivan’s Quay. Several horns blew angrily and Dr Scher laughed. Patrick braced himself and thought about the handwriting on the card.

  The Reverend Mother looked even paler than usual, he thought, when they arrived at the convent. She had been standing at the window of her room, looking out into the rain. When she turned around to face them, he could see, even in the bad light, that she had deep shadows under her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you, Patrick,’ she said gravely. I was going to write to you, but somehow I thought it might be easier to explain to you face to face. I have grave suspicions about this Peter Doyle who runs the antique shop and of those associated with him in the Merrymen Light Opera group.

  ‘You won’t have heard the news yet,’ he said, ‘but we had another murder last night. Peter Doyle was found dead some time after midnight. His body was lying just inside the doorway of a derelict warehouse. He had been pierced though the ear, into the brain, with a blacktopped hatpin. The body was still warm when the police arrived. The body was discovered by Eileen MacSweeney and her young man.’

  ‘After midnight,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘That’s strange. And Eileen …?’

  ‘Show her the card, Patrick,’ said Dr Scher.

  Patrick took it from his pocket and held it out.

  ‘“Found guilty of the murder of Father Dominic and executed by order of the Irish Republican Army”.’ She read aloud. There was a puzzled look on her face. ‘The Republic
ans,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Odd method to choose, wasn’t it? I would have thought that if one possessed a gun …’

  ‘True,’ said Patrick. ‘Unless, they thought that by giving him the same death as Father Dominic …’

  ‘Possibly,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘A difficult way to murder someone out in the open, I would have thought. Quite different in one of those terribly narrow cubicles in the confessional. There’s barely room for the priest’s shoulders. Father Dominic could not have got away. But a young, active man like Peter Doyle, and out in the open …’

  ‘Body was not moved, I’d say,’ said Dr Scher. ‘As far as I could tell, he was stabbed in the ear and fell to the ground and was not moved after that.’

  ‘Was Peter Doyle unconscious at the time of death, Dr Scher?’ She was focussing on the anomalies of this strange murder.

  ‘Ah, Reverend Mother, you have a sharp brain,’ said Dr Scher admiringly. ‘I think it is possible that he might have been unconscious, but I examined the body carefully and there were no bruise marks so it’s not possible to be sure.’

  ‘And there was no one else around on Morrison’s Island at that time of night, was there?’ she asked.

  ‘On the contrary, there were lots, just across the road. All the performers of the show, of The Mikado, except Eileen, who had gone off with her young man, but all the rest of them, they were all still there. All of their expensive cars were parked by the antiques shop and every one of them there, drinking wine and eating sandwiches. Eileen MacSweeney went across to the Imperial Hotel and got the porter there to call the guards. And her young man, Eamonn, stayed, according to himself,’ Patrick opened his notebook, ‘“to keep an eye on them”.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the Reverend Mother and Patrick nodded.

  ‘That’s what I asked myself. After all, if it were a Republican murder, why did the pair of them hang around? Why run a risk? Though my superintendent is wondering why I didn’t throw the two of them in a cell. Anyway, I sent the pair of them home and then went across the road to the antiques shop, told them of the death and interviewed them all. Not too much to show for it. Peter, apparently, had gone down to the back room for a bottle of red wine as he didn’t care for white wine. They thought that he was only gone for a minute or two, but …’