Beyond Absolution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘That’s right.’ The Reverend Mother gave him a nod of approval. ‘I don’t know that I could ever prove this, but I think that in some way, Tom and Marjorie Gamble encountered Peter Doyle and Jonathon Power in London and between them this scheme was hatched. The Gambles, who had once owned all of Morrison’s Island, would know that there were plenty of underground places where stolen goods could be hidden, until the memory of them had begun to fade. It was a clever plan. Jonathon, I’d say, already worked in antique restoration. Peter Doyle, his friend since the army days, was passing himself off as the grandson of landed Anglo-Irish gentry and was an enterprising man of business. I can imagine the plan being hatched in some smart hotel in London, the sort of place where Marjorie Gamble, and her brother, enjoyed a holiday.’

  ‘And once they got going, it proved to be immensely lucrative,’ said Dr Scher.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘We never realized it when we were young, but these houses were filled with treasure. They were probably cautious in the beginning, opened the shop. The Gambles, between them – and perhaps Judge Gamble may have been in the enterprise also – financed the fitting out of the warehouse. Then, bit by bit, they recruited members. They told Patrick that it was a barman who suggested they set up a singing group. Well, that’s as maybe. In any case, they recruited Robert Beamish, a young man with plenty of brawn, few scruples and a great desire for easily earned cash.’

  ‘And James O’Reilly?’ queried Dr Scher.

  The Reverend Mother’s face grew grave. ‘James O’Reilly was a victim,’ she said. ‘Eileen told me that he was a drug addict and I would be surprised if that were not a deliberate act on the part of his new friends. He was useful to the group because he could manage the bank accounts, could prevent any questions being asked about a business account which had no outgoings and a continual stream of income.’

  ‘And James O’Reilly was the only Catholic in the group, was the only one who would know that there was an iron mesh between penitent and priest, the only one who would know how small the space was. But somehow, he seems to me to be an unlikely murderer. I saw him in the bank one day a few weeks before all this happened and I thought that the man was a bag of nerves. But you think that he was the murderer, do you? You think that he thought Father Dominic betrayed him.’

  The Reverend Mother suppressed an impatient movement. She remembered her words to Eileen: a country divided by their belief in a common Deity. The one half believes that the other half must understand.

  ‘No Catholic would fear that a priest would betray him, Dr Scher.’

  ‘I’m sure that you are right. I’m a bit outside these sacred mysteries.’

  ‘“Odi profanum vulgus”. If you remember your Horace, Dr Scher, you will know that our English word “profane” means being outside the inner circle of worship. But of course there is another inner circle, another sanctity and that is marriage. Both of us are outside of that circle, but one can imagine that information is continually exchanged. Very easy for a wife to ask a husband questions.’

  ‘A wife!’ Dr Scher looked startled and incredulous. His eye went to the folded newspaper.

  The Reverend Mother nodded. ‘It seems to me,’ she said in a conversational tone, ‘that this country does a grave injustice to the female sex when it forbids married women to practise their profession, such as teaching or nursing, as soon as the wedding ring is on their finger. Rose O’Reilly was an excellent nurse with a thirst for medical knowledge; I have spoken to a sister in our Mercy Hospital and she made that remark. But as soon as she married she had nothing to do. No children arrived, and after four years of marriage, would be unlikely. So because she was bored, she took a job in the antiques shop.’

  ‘I saw her there myself.’

  The Reverend Mother nodded. ‘Yes, you told me that she was there on the fatal day when poor Dominic visited the shop and saw the ceramic hawk. That day when he tried, without breaking the seal of confession, to avert any more raids, any more deaths.’

  ‘And James O’Reilly came to hear of it. Rose must have told him. He must have got a fright when Patrick went to see him in the bank, went to question him. Do you think that he had already told his wife that he had been to confess to Father Dominic?’

  ‘Of course! It is impossible to know all the secrets of a marriage, but I would guess that he did tell her.’

  ‘And that frightened her.’

  ‘Being a Protestant, she did not realize how sacred the seal of confession would be and immediately feared that her husband would be arrested, and perhaps executed for his part in the arson and murder of that poor gardener who worked for the Wood family.’

  Dr Scher frowned. ‘If she were a Protestant – and I bow to your knowledge of the ins and outs of families of Cork – but if she were a Protestant, how did she know what the confessional was like? How would she know about the grid?’

  ‘I imagine that her husband told her – she may have asked him what it was like. Protestants, I find, are fascinated by the idea of confession,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘And, of course, being a Protestant she might not have known how Father Dominic was so dearly loved by all Republicans, how his defiance of the bishop when he ministered to the dying hunger strikers had touched their hearts. In this distressful city of ours, sudden violent deaths are usually laid at the door of the Sinn Féin movement. She would assume that the Republicans would be blamed. But there is a more important question about the means of murder which I would expect someone like you to fasten upon?’

  ‘The hat pin?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I would never have thought of a hat pin being able to inflict death though I and my sisters handle them every day. But the murderer knew. And, that I found to be significant. Who knows but some teacher, some professor, standing in front of a class of trainee nurses, might have pointed to a picture of the brain and showed how near it was to the ear. Once I thought of that, my suspicions began to be roused. Rose was the only one among those connected with Morrison’s Island Antiques, who had medical knowledge. And the murder itself had to be swift, efficient and carried out by someone who had been trained to know that hesitation could be fatal.’

  ‘And why Peter Doyle? Why kill him?’ Dr Scher, she thought, was not wholly convinced by her reasoning. To a medical man, she supposed, it would seem obvious that the brain was so near to the ear, obvious that a person who would set out to jab through the ear could carry out the action swiftly and efficiently. She set herself to convince him. The right person had been executed. She was certain of that. The killing had to be stopped. But justice must be seen to be done. Eileen had come to see her yesterday. Together they had prayed before the small coffin, and laid the little book within it, resting it on the child’s heart.

  ‘Because Peter Doyle guessed what she had done,’ she said. ‘Remember, Dr Scher, Peter Doyle was the only one who knew for certain that he himself had not been in the church before the Novena prayers began. You will recollect that Patrick told us – “a small man, wearing a black suit and a moustache” had been witnessed in the church. The description was given by a man who owned a garage on Morrison’s Island and who filled the lorry with petrol for Peter Doyle and Jonathon Power.’

  Dr Scher nodded slowly. ‘So when Patrick questions him, Peter Doyle knows it was not he, and starts to guess who it was. She dressed up, I suppose that you are going to say, but would that have been easy?’

  ‘Well, Eileen told me that there was only one female part in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury and that was taken by Anne Morgan – she was the plaintiff. So the other two women, Marjorie Gamble and Rose O’Reilly must have been dressed up as men – probably members of the jury, if I remember the play correctly. Peter Doyle donated a few old suits to the dressing-up cupboard; so Eileen told me; no doubt there were false moustaches in there as well. I imagine that Rose, having seen you in the shop that day when Father Dominic asked to see the manager, wanted to throw suspicion onto someone other th
an her husband or herself. And, of course, like a lot of young women these days, she wears her hair shingled, as short as any man’s hair. And she had dark hair.’

  ‘I would never have thought of her,’ said Dr Scher. ‘Though, I suppose, a hat pin is a woman’s weapon.’

  ‘Peter Doyle, of course, was a more difficult subject than Father Dominic.’ The Reverend Mother was conscious that the slight nausea was hovering over her again and she resolutely quelled it, focussing on the problem of conveying days of thought in a compact and comprehensible way. ‘Nevertheless, he was, according to Eileen, a great flirt, a ladies’ man and had flirted with all of the girls. I suspect that Rose invited him out to sit in his car, she probably pretended she had something to show him, a present for him, or something like that, and then once they were in the warehouse, probably him ahead and she behind, she threw her arms about his neck, as though to embrace and then throttled him.’

  ‘Again using her medical knowledge,’ said Dr Scher.

  The Reverend Mother nodded. ‘I would imagine that it would be easy for her to use just enough force to render him unconscious. She inserted the hat pin – there were, of course, a large supply of them in the costumes’ cupboard, very necessary to pin the roses to the girls’ wigs – so the hat pin was neatly and quickly slipped in through the ear, while she held him. She laid the body down, added the prepared card, and she went back the way she came.’

  ‘Without anyone seeing anything?’

  ‘You forget my stories about Morrison’s Island,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Flooding destroyed the original foundations of the Holy Trinity Church and of the early warehouses. The whole of the present day island is a platform built on piers of stone and concrete. There are underground passages everywhere. Rose O’Reilly would have known all about this. My little Jimmy …’ She stopped for a moment, stared across at the raindrops running down the window. With an effort, she steadied her voice. ‘My little Jimmy told me about these passageways and that he had found an underground room full of treasure, all the silver and gold …’ She stopped again, unable to go on.

  ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ said Dr Scher. ‘I’m a stupid old man, but I understand what you are saying. They could all come and go underground. The murderer could probably get from the shop to the church with no bother, could have found the shawl, concealed it in a broom cupboard, come back … in fact, if you are right, and I begin to see that you must be, then this murdering nurse could have made the journey between the shop and the church by an underground passageway and somewhere like a broom cupboard would have been an obvious place to emerge. A woman with short hair and glued-on moustache might have passed for a man in the dark at the back of the church. Harder out of doors, I’d say.’

  The Reverend Mother recovered herself. ‘When I was thinking about it originally, I found it hard to work out why the murder of Father Dominic and the murder of Peter Doyle were not carried out by the usual method in this city, where there is a gun in eight out of ten households, or at least they know where to get hold of one. And remember that all of those connected with the nefarious traffic in Morrison’s Island Antiques, and I do believe that all must be connected – all of the men, anyway, Peter Doyle, Jonathon Power, Tom Gamble, Robert Beamish and James O’Reilly, remember all of these men had guns. The evidence for that is undeniable. Every raid was carried out by masked men holding rifles.’

  ‘And, of course, the Gamble and Beamish families would be out shooting unfortunate birds as soon as the boys emerged from their nursery,’ put in Dr Scher.

  ‘And the two young Englishmen had served together in the war. They would be able to handle a gun. Remember someone shot the Woods’ gardener. Why not shoot Father Dominic? He went everywhere, all over the city. He would have been an easy target. And Peter Doyle, also, if the necessity arose. Morrison’s Island is full of derelict warehouses. Why not shoot him from an upper storey as he walked out towards his car. People in Cork tend to close their doors and windows when they hear gunfire.’

  ‘But the women would not have guns. Would not be used to handling them, would be unlikely to be able to be accurate enough to kill a man.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘And of the women, only one had medical knowledge, had the training that would make her fast and accurate at piercing the eardrum, rendering a man unconscious, and …’ Her voice faltered again, but she took in a deep breath and added, ‘And would be able to strangle a young boy. She has been tried and found guilty by the Sinn Féin court.’

  The Reverend Mother sat back, re-opened the newspaper and read through the article again.

  The Cork Examiner

  Monday July 2, 1923:

  ANOTHER APPALLING ATROCITY!

  The body of twenty-five-year-old Mrs James O’Reilly, whose husband is an employee of the Cork Savings Bank, has been found shot, outside her home in Pope’s Quay. Republican involvement is suspected. Superintendent Hayes tells us he is hoping that a card left beside the body will lead the Civic Guards to her murderers.

  Mrs O’Reilly was the daughter of Mr and Mrs John Burke, retired manager in the Queen’s Old Castle, and was an only child. She trained as a nurse when she left school and worked in the Mercy Hospital until her marriage four years ago. She was a talented actress who took part in the much acclaimed Gilbert and Sullivan operas in the Father Matthew Hall, including the recent performance of The Mikado.

  Messages of sympathy are pouring in for the grieving husband and the parents of the lovely young woman whose life has been cut short by dastardly scoundrels. The Cork Examiner would like to extend their deepest condolences to the family.

  And then she put the newspaper aside. Noli respicere post tergum, she said to herself as she picked up her time-worn copy of St Thomas Aquinas.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to all who have helped me with ‘Beyond Absolution’. First, as always, my agent Peter Buckman who is such a source of inspiration, encouragement, and practical help to me. My editor, Anna Telfer, who spots any weaknesses and is liberal with praise. My publisher, Edwin Buckhalter, who shows a keen interest in the books and all of his staff for their hard work on my publications. Sister Anne Cahill who investigated the confessional stalls in the Holy Trinity Church on my behalf. Last, but not least, my daughter Ruth, who was of great assistance in a redraft of the first half of this book.