by Dacre Stoker
“Was cholera worse than the famine?”
“I don’t know if one death is better or worse than another, Matilda. Both kill without prejudice.”
Matilda spoke, her voice thin and sheepish. “Is that what will become of us here? Is everyone going to die?”
“The famine is different, Matilda. There is sickness, yes, but nothing like cholera. Most of the ill you behold are suffering from starvation and dehydration, men drinking themselves into a stupor, having failed to provide for their families. It is horrific, to be sure, but a very different beast.” She patted our knees. “Enough of this talk; we have much to do today, and I have a feeling Nanna Ellen will not be offering her help.”
The three of us glanced down the hall to Nanna Ellen’s sealed door. Ma stood. “Matilda, be a dear and gather today’s eggs.”
My sister wrinkled her nose. “It’s Thornley’s turn!”
“Your father sent him to the Seaver cottage in Santry for a load of peat for the fire. We’re nearly out, you know, and the nights are soon to grow frigid with the approach of winter.”
Matilda eased off the bed and thumped down the hall without another word.
Ma placed her hand upon my forehead and smiled. “God has smiled upon you, my little man.”
My eyes remained fixed on Nanna Ellen’s door, the images of last night still playing in the theater of my mind.
* * *
• • •
SEVERAL HOURS LATER—“What is Nanna Ellen doing?” Matilda asked.
I stood on my toes and peered out my window to our backyard. “She’s taking down the laundry from the line.”
As I stood there, I realized I felt much better today. Although the telltale ache in my bones remained, my illness had somewhat retreated. Weeks would sometimes pass without my rising from bed. I remained in bed so much, I sometimes developed sores, and my muscles atrophied from lack of use. Ma often worried I would develop an infection and cleaned the sores as best she could, then dressed them in sphagnum moss she kept on a high shelf in the kitchen pantry, away from Pa’s eyes, a bit of folk medicine no doubt spurned by the modern doctors in our family. As for my muscles, there was little to be done. On many days, I was simply too weak to leave my bed. At Ma’s coaxing, I would try, but my body just didn’t possess the strength, and I would lie there, turning every few hours with her help to prevent the bedsores from getting worse.
Today proved different.
Much like the small marks left by the leeches, the bedsores that had riddled my pathetic flesh just yesterday were now dry and faded and itched like the dickens. Gone, suddenly, were the open, pustulating wounds that had been a part of my life for as far back as my memories went; they seemed to be fading as the day went on, healing with incredible dispatch.
I felt stronger, too. There was an energy present inside me now that had been absent in all the previous days, a real strength. At this point I had been out of bed for nearly two hours. Two hours on my feet! I begged to tell Ma of this, but Matilda told me not to; she thought it best to keep this secret between us.
I stood at my little attic window and watched Nanna Ellen as she worked her way down the clothesline, plucking the pins and carefully folding each article of clothing before depositing it in the basket at her feet. She had been down there for ten minutes now and was nearly halfway through the load. I searched for the signs of age Matilda mentioned, but I found it difficult to get a good look at her face. She wore a scarf over her head tied under her chin, and the green-and-white cloth shielded her from view. She seemed to be moving slowly, as if in pain.
“How long before she finishes?”
“Ten minutes,” I replied. “Possibly less.”
Thornley returned on the back of a wagon full of peat from the Seaver cottage, and both he and Pa began unloading the payload and carrying it down to the cellar while the driver eyed the thick storm clouds rolling in off the harbor. Thornley was covered in sweat, his face black with dirt and mud.
Matilda bounced off my bed and made her way to the door. She pressed her ear against the wood and listened to the hallway. “Ma and Thomas sound like they’re down in the kitchen. Richard must be sleeping.”
“If you go in Nanna’s room, he will wake, and Ma or Nanna Ellen will come running,” I pointed out.
“I won’t wake him; I can be quiet as a church mouse.”
“You shouldn’t go in there; she’ll know.”
“How will she know?”
Below my window, Nanna Ellen nudged her basket farther down the line with the tip of her shoe.
“She’ll know.”
“If she leaves the line, come and get me. You can be my lookout.”
I shook my head. “If you’re going, I’m going with you.”
“Come, then; enough of this lollygagging.”
Matilda twisted the knob of my door and pulled it into the room, moving just fast enough to keep the hinges from squeaking, something they were known to do. With a quick glance up and down the hallway, she crossed the threshold and tiptoed down the corridor, carefully avoiding the two boards near the stairs that always groaned underfoot. I followed only a few feet behind her when I realized this was the first time in nearly three months that I had left the room of my own volition. Pa sometimes carried me downstairs and perched me in the kitchen or on the sofa in the sitting room, but I rarely took these steps on my own. With my last attempt, I had made it only as far as the staircase before gripping the banister and dropping to the floor in utter exhaustion. Pa forbade me from leaving my room after that episode, fearing I might tumble down the stairs and break one or more of my already brittle bones.
As we passed the staircase, I realized I wasn’t the least bit tired. In fact, I felt the adrenaline surging through my body, a burst of energy. Every sight and sound seemed enhanced. I heard Ma speaking to Thomas in the kitchen, every word as clear as if they were standing in the very next room. Was this odd? I did not know. After all, Matilda had heard them from my room with the door shut. Still, this seemed peculiar to me.
Matilda reached Nanna Ellen’s door and pressed her ear to it.
“She’s still downstairs. Hurry.”
“I’m listening for Baby Richard.”
I closed my eyes and listened, too, envisioning the room on the other side of Nanna Ellen’s door, the tiny space she called home. “He’s sleeping. I can hear his breaths.”
Matilda eyed me for a moment, my claim suspect, before twisting the knob. This door did squeak, and both of us cringed with its retort. Downstairs, both Ma and Thomas laughed at something. My eyes met Matilda’s; if they heard the noise, they thought little of it, there being no break in their conversation. This was followed by the clang of pans. Matilda slipped through the door into the maw of Nanna Ellen’s room, her hooked index finger beckoning me to follow.
* * *
• • •
NANNA ELLEN’S room wasn’t large; in fact, it was smaller than mine. Rectangular in shape, with a ceiling that sloped down towards the window, it was no more than ten feet wide by eight feet deep. While I imagined the window looked out over the back fields, I could not be sure because the glass had been covered by a thick blanket, tacked to the frame at all four corners. Light attempted to squeeze around the edges of the blanket, but little penetrated, leaving the space in relative darkness. I could see the outline of Matilda standing over the small crib in which Baby Richard slept. She adjusted his blanket and held a finger to her lips.
I nodded. My eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
Nanna Ellen’s bedroom was sparsely furnished. A wardrobe stood against the back wall. There was a small desk to the right of the crib, upon which rested a few sheets of paper and a quill pen. On the left stood a lone table, with washbasin and towel. Her bed was neatly made, with a night table beside it, bare save for an old oil lamp and a newspaper. Upon close
r inspection, I realized the basin was dry as a bone. Dust had gathered at the bottom. “This is odd,” I whispered.
Matilda came over and ran her index finger along the inside edge. “Maybe she washes downstairs?”
I found a bedpan tucked in the far corner beside the basin; it, too, appeared unused. I moved it aside with the toe of my foot, revealing a ring of dust where the base had been. Matilda and I glanced at each other but said nothing. When Matilda tended the bedpans, Nanna Ellen always told Matilda she would see to her own.
It was then that I spotted our footprints on the floor, a simple trail leading from the room’s entrance to where we currently stood. A thin layer of what could only be dirt covered the hardwood, disturbed by our tracks. Although thicker in some spots than in others, it seemed to cover all of Nanna Ellen’s room; filthy, as if the room had not been swept in some time.
“She’ll know we were in here for sure,” I said, more to myself than to Matilda.
“Keep looking; we’ll figure something out.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know. She has lived here all this time, and we know so little about her.” She reached for the doors of the wardrobe and pulled them open quickly, attempting to surprise whatever awaited her inside. Five dresses hung neatly from hangers, and a small box of undergarments resided at the bottom and to the right. I turned away shyly.
Matilda giggled. “Poor little Bram, afraid of a few pairs of knickers?” She held up a pair and motioned as if tossing them to me. I took a step back, and she dropped them back in the box, then knelt down beside it and began rummaging through the rest of the contents. “A lady always hides her most precious of items amongst her knickers because no man would dare search such a spot.”
A moment later, she stood.
“And what,” I asked, “did you find amongst her knickers?”
“Nothing.”
I walked over to the desk and picked up the topmost sheet of paper.
Blank.
Matilda snatched the paper from my hand, held it up to the sparse light creeping in from the hallway, then carefully placed it back on the stack. “Keep looking.”
I made my way over to the night table. Like the washbasin and bedpan, the oil lamp also appeared to be unused. The font was dry, and when I smelled it, not even a hint of oil was present, only a musty odor like that of a box sealed up and long forgotten, then opened for the first time in ages. I told Matilda, but she waved me off, lost in her task.
The newspaper was yesterday’s edition of the Saunders’s News-Letter. The headline was printed in bold black block letters—
FAMILY MURDER IN MALAHIDE
A barbarous and cruel murder was committed under circumstances most revolting in Malahide on Friday night about the hour of two o’clock a.m. The victims being Siboan O’Cuiv, mother of the deceased children, the eldest son Sean, five years old, and his sister Isobelle, a child about two years of age. The third child, a daughter, six-and-a-half-year-old Maggie, managed to escape the assailant, and it is she who alerted James Boulger, Constable in Charge of the Church Street Barracks, who happened to be passing convenient to the place, when their attention was attracted by a child fleeing the house.
Constable Boulger then entered the house and heard the moans of Patrick O’Cuiv, who was bleeding profusely from both arms. Constable Patterson entered the bedchambers to find a mother and two young, helpless children lying dead in their beds. Mr. O’Cuiv was near death himself, as he had lost a significant amount of blood. He was taken by carriage to the Richmond Hospital.
“Did you see yesterday’s paper?” I asked.
“No, but I heard Ma and Pa discussing it over dinner. They said the constable’s office believes Mr. O’Cuiv tried to kill his entire family because he couldn’t afford to feed them, then turned the knife on himself but was unable to finish the job. If not for little Maggie, he surely would have completed the task and they’d all be dead.”
“Where is he now?”
“The Church Street Barracks, I suppose. They patched him up. Should have left him to bleed to death in a bath of salt for such a crime,” said Matilda.
The O’Cuiv family had visited for dinner not more than a month ago. The meal had been anything but extravagant, yet they had been grateful nonetheless; little Sean helped himself to no less than three servings, and his little sister said few words, as she was too busy chewing on a cut of bread the size of her head dipped in Ma’s chicken gravy. His wife had been understandably quiet—accepting the graciousness of strangers was a most humbling experience, one many would not consider if not for the stomachs of their children aching for food. She had eaten in near silence, responding as Ma and Pa asked her various questions in the course of conversation, but she never offered more than a response to what was asked of her before returning to her meal, her eyes flitting from her children to her husband and back again. I tried to recall whether any tension had been evident between the two adults. Nothing came to mind, though; they seemed cordial enough, victims of the famine, nothing more.
“Do you think Pa could ever do such a thing?” I had asked the question before I realized I had allowed the words to actually pass from my lips, and I felt my cheeks flush.
“Oh, heavens no! First of all, Pa would always find a way to feed us. But even if he couldn’t, he is not one to give up, and what Mr. O’Cuiv did is nothing but giving up. Rather than find a solution to the problem at hand, he surrendered like a coward. Pa could never do that. If he tried, Ma is likely to smack him with a skillet.”
I knew she was right, but even at such a young age I also understood how easily a problem could envelop someone, isolate them from the rest of the world until it seemed nothing else existed. My own isolation had taught me so. “How do you suppose he did it without waking the others?”
“Will you stop? We need to keep looking around. We haven’t much time.”
“He killed his wife and three of his four children before Maggie escaped,” I pondered.
“At two in the morning—they were probably all sound asleep.”
“But to sleep through it? Maybe the first victim, but the others? I find that hard to believe.” I returned to the paper and scanned the remaining front-page headlines. “Who is Cornelius Healy? I know that name from somewhere.”
“Mr. Healy? He runs a farm for the Domvilles, I think. Why?”
“Listen—”
LAND MANAGER KILLED IN ALTERCATION AT FARM AT SANTRY HOUSE
Possible Murder—On Friday evening, a man by the name of Cornelius Healy, the land manager for the Domville family of Santry House, was involved in an altercation with one of his employees. A fistfight ensued as a result of a dispute over the employee allegedly stealing grain to feed his family.
The worker was punished by a caning at the hands of Mr. Healy. Upon release from his bounds, the worker responded by attacking Mr. Healy with his bare hands. The other employees urged on the fisticuffs, as Mr. Healy and the punishments he meted out were apparently not popular with the other farm laborers. Witnesses were not forthcoming with the name of the worker but did tell the police that Mr. Healy slipped, fell, and hit his head on a rock, which caused his death and resulted in the attacker making his quick departure. A full investigation will follow.
“He doesn’t sound like a very nice person. What kind of man canes someone who is only trying to feed his family?” Matilda said.
“When was the last time there was a murder in Clontarf?”
Matilda shrugged.
“Now two murders in one day . . .”
“If you continue this, I’m going to take your copy of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and bury it out in the pasture. Focus your sleuthing skills on the task at hand; we haven’t much time.”
She was right, of course, but I told myself I would research this matter further when the time pres
ented itself.
Matilda leaned against the wall, peering behind the wardrobe.
“What are you doing?”
“I see something behind here, attached to the back.” She closed one eye, squinted the other, trying to get a better look.
I leaned in from the other side. I could see it, too. “Give me a hand; let’s pull the wardrobe a bit away from the wall.”
Together, we both wrapped our fingers around the right side and gave it a tug. The heavy cabinet groaned against the floor. Matilda froze. “Do you think someone heard that?”
I listened carefully. I could still hear Ma in the kitchen. “I don’t think so.”
Matilda returned her attention to the wardrobe, squeezing her hand into the opening at its back. “I think I can reach it.”
I watched the lower half of her arm disappear. It came out with a thin leather satchel.
“What is it?”
A worn string held the satchel shut. She twisted the fastening free and opened the flap, then reached inside and extracted the contents.
Maps.
“Put them here, on the desk.”
“They’re very old,” she said, spreading them out. “The paper is crumbling at the fringes.”
“How many are there?”
Matilda turned through the maps, careful not to damage them. “Seven. From all over Europe and the United Kingdom. There’s Prague, Austria, Romania, Italy, London . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“This one is Ireland.”
“What is that mark?”
She studied it closely. “Clontarf. The mark is at Saint John the Baptist.”
I turned through the others. “They’re all marked. The U.K. map has two—one near London and another at someplace called Whitby.”
