Murder at the Queen's Old Castle

by Cora Harrison

  Robert Fitzwilliam, floor manager, son of the dead man, wasn’t going down to greet them. Not straight away, anyway. He had gone back into the little office. Eileen heard the click of the door as he opened it and she paused, holding on to the inner railing and turning back to look. The office was made almost wholly of glass with windows on three sides, and she could see the shiny texture of Robert’s frock coat. What was he doing? Bending over the desk? Rearranging the change barrels? She thought that she saw a wire flicker. And then she heard footsteps coming up the steep steps and hastily she turned around. She knew that head of hair. It was Joe, the sergeant from the police barracks.

  He looked taken aback to see her when they met at the halfway point of the stairs.

  ‘Just delivering some additional posters for the sale,’ she said, instantly seizing the advantage. ‘What’s up, Joe? What’s happened? Why have they shut the shop?’

  He pulled out a notebook. She knew he would. Very predictable, these policemen. Went along the same lines all of the time. Name? Address? Business? As if he didn’t know everything about her.

  ‘There’s a fellow up there in the office and I’d lay you a substantial bet that he’s interfering with the evidence, Joe,’ she said in a loud whisper.

  He looked at her, unsure, torn between the two duties, but then a twang from the wire overhead galvanized him into action.

  ‘Stay here,’ he ordered and set off with long footsteps that made the flimsy passageway rock.

  She followed him. After all, she said to herself, I have an article to write. In any case, I’d like to know what Mr Robert is up to. Underhand individual if ever there was one. She stayed at the policeman’s heels until they reached the office and then taking advantage of a momentary hesitation, she stepped in front of him and wrenched the door open.

  ‘Sergeant Joe Duggan, Mr Robert Fitzwilliam,’ she said with a flourish as though she were an official introducer.

  Robert swung around instantly. There was a dark red flush on his face and a look of fury in his eye.

  ‘Could I trouble you to come downstairs, sir?’

  It was amazing how polite these policemen were. Didn’t mean anything, of course. Everyone knew that. Robert had an ugly look of disappointment and frustration on his face. Nevertheless, he had to do what he was told and he went silently to the door, allowed the policeman to lock it with the keys that were stuck in the doors and then went down the stairs with his head bowed. What had he been looking for? Or was there something that had to be hidden before the police came and if so, had he managed to achieve that? Eileen wondered how she could work this frantic search of Robert’s into her article – perhaps a series of mini snapshots of what everyone in the shop was doing? She did not look at him again and kept her head demurely lowered until she reached the floor of the shop.

  ‘I’ll be off now,’ she said as soon as she was within sight of the front door. ‘You know where to find me, Sergeant Duggan, but I’ll be of no use to you. I’d only just come into the shop when it all happened. Just delivering another set of posters. Mr Robert will tell you all about it.’

  She did not wait for an answer from either man, but went quickly towards the door and slipped through it. Once outside she began to run up Patrick Street. Get there before they managed to send a reporter, she told herself as her side ached.

  No excitement in evidence in the Cork Examiner office when she burst in through the door. Everyone calmly typing, or talking on the phone, or discussing last night’s new film. Eileen paused dramatically inside the front door, holding up her notebook and only speaking once everyone’s attention was on her.

  ‘Hold everything! Stop the presses! I’ve got a scoop of a lifetime!’ She waited for a moment and then walked across the floor towards the desk of the chief editor.

  ‘How would you like an eyewitness account of the murder of a prominent citizen?’ she enquired as she seated herself in the chair beside him.

  THREE

  The Reverend Mother looked across at Dr Scher. He was kneeling on the ground beside the hysterical woman. He still kept his finger on the pulse of the woman, but now in the sudden quiet that had ensued after his injection, the Reverend Mother knew that Dr Scher was now aware of the many curious glances that were sent in the woman’s direction. This story and the account of her words would go all around the city of Cork. He looked deeply worried. The Reverend Mother wondered how strong a sedative he had administered and whether he could guarantee that there would not be another outbreak. Judging by his anxious expression she thought not. His eyes had gone to Major Fitzwilliam, the most authoritative figure around him.

  ‘Close the shop, Major. What do you think?’ His apologetic, tentative tone made a suggestion rather than an order out of the sentence but the major nodded. He immediately took his hand from his mother’s arm, moved well away from her and then climbed upon a chair behind the nearest counter.

  ‘Thank you all for your concern for my father,’ he said. His voice, accustomed to the parade ground, rang from the rafters and seemed to be heard by all. ‘I’m afraid that this shop will now have to close immediately.’ He left a silence after this, but then went on, giving directions about which doors to exit. His voice was firm and without emotion. A man used to emergencies and well able to keep his feelings under control.

  ‘And do please put any unpaid-for goods that you are carrying back onto the counters,’ shouted his younger brother, Robert. His tone, in an effort to make his words understood by all, had a harsh, rather unpleasant sound and it was resented by the people standing around. A murmur, that had an indignant note in it, rose up as people turned their backs on the dead man and went towards the doors, dumping baskets as they went. Poor things, thought the Reverend Mother, giving a thoughtful glance at her own basket full of treasure. They had hoped to secure some bargains this morning. Prices, she had noted, were all extremely low.

  After a few more harshly spoken words from Robert, the staff began to usher the customers out. The Reverend Mother wondered about the loss of witnesses, but decided that there were enough staff present to answer any questions that the police might pose. She thought about asking Brian to replace her own items, but he had wandered away from her and was standing near to Dr Scher, gazing at the corpse with an exaggerated air of ease, belied by the whiteness of his face. She decided to leave him there. He would have a wonderful story to tell all of his one-time school friends on Sunday afternoon, his one holiday of the week, and she could not grudge it to him, given the dullness of his life. Despite the pallor of his face, he had a thrilled and excited look about him. Death of an elderly man for a boy of that age meant little and something as bizarre as this death could make an action-packed recital and ensure his popularity among his friends. She doubted whether he had been particularly well treated by the dead man. Sixpence a week did seem to be a very poor reward for work which lasted from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock in the evening; that must be over seventy hours a week, she calculated. She then failed miserably in an effort to divide up that sixpence into an hourly rate. How much of the hysterical woman’s accusations had he taken in, she wondered. They had been almost incoherent and punctuated with gasps and sobs. Nevertheless, they had clearly accused Brian of being the person who sent up the barrel filled with gas.

  The shop was now emptying rapidly. Robert Fitzwilliam was turning down the gas, moving rapidly from bronze pillar to bronze pillar. An odd idea, but perhaps a reflex action on his part to the departure of the customers. The wife of the dead man seemed to be coming back to herself, blinking her eyes, standing up and then, gently urged by Dr Scher, had sunk back down on a chair, holding hard to the hand of one of her daughters. She still shook her head to the major’s suggestions that she might go home. Dr Scher patted her hand in a kindly way, but then left her in order to open his attaché case from which he gave the major a piece of paper with a scribbled telephone number. ‘Ask for Inspector Cashman’, she heard him say, and the major gave
a nod and sped off towards the telephone, looking relieved at having something to do. The two plain-faced sisters wept silently, but their mother sat on her chair and stared stonily ahead.

  Dr Scher had asked for the police. Did that mean this affair was a murder?

  ‘A prayer or two, what do you think?’ said Dr Scher in the Reverend Mother’s ear and she nodded understandingly. There was a lot to be said for prayer, she thought. It punctuated tragedy and joy, gave the voice and the mind something to focus on when mental probing for answers to almost unanswerable questions would prove unbearable. The Latin words, Profiscere, anima Christiani, de hoc mundo, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, came to her mind, but she rejected them for the vernacular. She sank to her knees, joined her hands and lowered her head.

  ‘Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord,’ she prayed, ‘and let perpetual light shine upon him.’

  Patrick, she thought, as the words flowed smoothly from her lips, would take at least five minutes to come speeding down from the police barracks, through the traffic of South Main Street and then to the back entrance of the Queen’s Old Castle on North Main Street. Dr Scher would want that five minutes to be filled in a decorous and calm fashion and so when she had run out of prayers in English she embarked upon the De Profundis. She could only recollect it in Latin, but Latin was, she thought, a sound familiar to all Roman Catholics. She was, however, pleased and touched when young Brian, probably an altar boy at some stage of his time with the Christian Brothers, chimed in with the response: ‘Et lux perpetua luceat eo.’

  The traffic must have been worse than she had anticipated, or else Patrick had been out when the call came for him. In any case, he was longer than she had expected. Still, she kept the prayers going and while they lasted no one moved or spoke. Robert, flourishing a bunch of keys, had ushered all of the customers out and now the shop seemed bare and empty, filled only with the staff and with the family of the dead man. Her voice echoed from the high ceiling and against the plastered walls and there was an odd uncomfortable atmosphere with no voices to support her prayers. She had finished the De Profundis and had launched into Dies Irae and then in desperation had begun on the rosary by the time Patrick arrived.

  Patrick, she thought as she finished the last ‘Glory Be to the Father’, had like young Brian once been a pupil of the Reverend Mother’s school. He had come from a much poorer background than Brian, but had been a far harder worker, both at the convent school and at the Christian Brothers from where he had managed to win a scholarship to the North Monastery Secondary School and subsequently pass the examinations which qualified him for a place in the newly formed unit of the Garda Siochána. Once there he had continued to work hard, gaining a reputation of being a careful, accurate and industrious young policeman who spent his evenings studying in order to pass further examinations. He had risen in the ranks to become first a sergeant and then an inspector. The Reverend Mother was proud of Patrick and admired how he had matured into a confident, though quietly spoken, young man.

  He came in unobtrusively, followed by his sergeant, Joe, and brought with him a stretcher and some junior members of the force to carry it. He nodded at Dr Scher, well known, of course, as the police surgeon, gave a respectful half bow towards the Reverend Mother, and had a quick glance around at the assembled members of the dead man’s family. Despite Major Fitzwilliam’s efforts to remove her, and suggestions that she would be better off at home, the widow had stayed there, flanked by her two middle-aged daughters. Her eyes were empty and almost unfocussed and the Reverend Mother wondered how much she understood of what was going on. Her son, the floor manager, Robert, hovered uneasily, making an effort at lining up the numerous sales staff in a position, according to rank, where they could be questioned by the police. Brian, noticed the Reverend Mother with a twinge of amusement, had decided to attach himself to her shielding presence and had ignored the signals from the floor manager to take his place beside the other apprentices. In any case, his eyes were fixed eagerly upon the major, who, as the eldest of the dead man’s family, had taken charge and was explaining the situation fluently to Patrick. The words, ‘a fit’, she noticed with interest, had appeared in the major’s account with such frequency that even the dimmest police officer would be expected to take the hint. And yet the major had not been present during that crucial time before his father had fallen to his death. He had definitely come in through the Grand Parade entrance just at the very moment of him falling. In fact, she had seen his car pull up in front of the main doors just seconds before the tragedy. So far as she could hear, the major had not brought up the matter of the discarded change barrel. Nor of his mother’s strange accusation. The Reverend Mother looked anxiously at young Brian Maloney. The boy must have heard and his face did still look rather white. A strange accusation.

  FOUR

  As soon as Inspector Patrick Cashman came through the door of the Queen’s Old Castle, the first thing that he heard was the voice of an elderly nun reciting the rosary. It was a familiar sound to Patrick and instinctively he hesitated for a moment before proceeding. His first three years of schooling had been spent under the guidance of the Reverend Mother and he was still deeply grateful to her for encouraging his efforts, fostering his natural disposition to be accurate, conscientious and hard-working and always to pursue a line of enquiry to its utmost. He remembered how she had stood patiently beside him when he had taken it upon himself to count the number of ants going into a crack in the pavement wall. Sister Philomena had smacked him, but he had still refused to leave the playground until he had finished the task. Once the Reverend Mother had arrived she had shown a deep interest in his task and allowed him not only to finish, but also to bring his results into the rest of the class. Later that week she had accompanied his class to the library and had requested the librarian to find him a book about ants. It had been a good beginning for the careful meticulous work of a police inspector.

  ‘Inspector Patrick Cashman and Sergeant Joe Duggan,’ he said to Séamus O’Connor who was standing at the door and produced his badge for inspection. Unnecessary, of course, but that was the procedure and Patrick always followed procedure. It saved any awkward questions afterwards if no exceptions were ever made. The man, of course, didn’t bother looking at it, but that was up to him. Séamus O’Connor, he thought as he walked into the shop, must have worked at the Queen’s Old Castle for a good twenty years. He was already a counter hand when Patrick had been a boy.

  ‘Who’s that, O’Connor?’ A harsh voice called out an unnecessary question. Always one to throw his weight around, Mr Robert Fitzwilliam. Patrick knew him and he knew Patrick. He doesn’t need any introduction to me, thought Patrick. The police had been sent for and so they would have been expected. Nevertheless, the man never missed any opportunity to pretend to everyone that he was the boss.

  ‘Inspector Patrick Cashman and Sergeant Joe Duggan, sir,’ called out Séamus O’Connor. Heads turned in his direction and the quiet voice of the Reverend Mother in the background held a note of finality as it enunciated, ‘Glory Be to the Father, to the Son and the Holy Ghost’. Patrick made his way towards that voice. The body would be there, he thought as he listened to the voices gabbling a response. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’

  By the time he reached them, the Reverend Mother was on her feet and Dr Scher was standing beside her.

  ‘Took your time, didn’t you, inspector!’

  Always found something to grumble about, that was Mr Robert. Always something to complain about. Patrick had had a few dealings with this man. Regarded any shoplifting as a failure on the part of the Gardaí rather than of the shop procedures where the goods were laid out on tables in a fashion that was very tempting to the poor of the city. Now Patrick ignored him. It wasn’t a real question. A question had to be answered. A comment could be ignored or greeted by a polite nod. He had made that rule for himself a long time ago and had always managed to retain a comp
osed face and calm manner. He looked across at the group around the body of the old man, saluting the Reverend Mother and exchanging a quick glance with Dr Scher, but not rushing forward, deliberately taking his time and waiting to see who was now in charge here. Séamus O’Connor also hesitated, looking from one to the other, but when he broke the silence, it was to the major, not to the floor manager, that he spoke.

  ‘Inspector Cashman from the barracks, Major,’ Séamus said, deliberately turning his back on Robert. He didn’t introduce Patrick’s assistant, Joe, but that was not intended as a snub, thought Patrick. The man was tense and worried. He wore a half belligerent, half frightened look on his face as he glanced from one of his master’s sons to the other. There was a conflict there. Who was in charge? Major James Fitzwilliam was the eldest son, but his younger brother, Robert, had worked in the shop since leaving school. James had gone to university, qualified as a barrister and then joined the English army. As far as Patrick knew, James had never shown any interest in the department store. Seeing him in the shop this morning he initially assumed that he was merely spending a holiday in his parents’ home. Joe, also, glanced from one to the other of the Fitzwilliam sons, as though he, too, wondered which one was in charge. But now, after Séamus O’Connor’s selection of the older brother, Patrick watched with interest to see how Robert Fitzwilliam would react. Take it easy, he told himself. Feel your way. First things first. Deal with the body and then start the questions. Robert, he thought, looked angry, but neither surprised nor affronted by Séamus O’Connor’s choice.