Murder at the Queen's Old Castle

by Cora Harrison

  And then there was Household Linens. The other daughter, Miss Monica Fitzwilliam, was in charge there. She said that the apprentice, Tom Donovan, had loaded the change barrel and sent it off on its journey. The apprentice, remembered Patrick, had not contradicted that, but had looked scared and uneasy while being questioned. And Patrick, himself, had questioned the lad. Not a confident type. Very thin, very pale face, hollow chest, bent over like an old man. And Miss Kitty had stated loudly and positively that apprentices were never allowed to touch the change barrels. Had looked accusingly at her sister. Not much love lost between them, had noted Joe. So why, if the truth had been spoken, had it come about that on this occasion Tom Donovan had been entrusted with the task – or had he? Patrick made a mental note to see the boy again. He couldn’t ignore Eileen’s story, but he always suspected her of exaggerating.

  And then there was Millinery: Mrs Agnes Fitzwilliam. Well, she was in a right state. Impossible to question her properly. He had talked with the apprentice, but the boy had just repeated ‘Dunno, sir’ over and over again. Patrick inserted a mental question mark about young John Joe Burke’s evidence. Was the boy stupid, or was he just frightened? The latter, probably. The city was full of bright lads, all looking for the prospect of a permanent job, plenty of them available for an apprenticeship. From what he had heard of Mr Fitzwilliam, he would have been unlikely to take any boy who didn’t have a good reference from his school and didn’t appear to be bright as well as willing. A boy as stupid as John Joe Burke appeared to be now, would never have got an apprenticeship if he had been like that three years ago. More likely the boy was frightened. He wondered whether he could see those apprentices again in a more private setting. He made a note about that. ‘Word with Joe’, he wrote.

  And then there was the Ladies’ Shoes counter: Miss Maria Mulcahy. Her apprentice was a new boy, Christy Callinan. Twelve years old. A nice little boy, blond curly hair, blue eyes and a mouthful of large, rather buck teeth. Christy had been the chattiest of them all and still new enough to be fascinated by those change barrels. He said that Miss Mulcahy had explained everything to him. She seemed a kind, almost motherly woman. Shame if someone didn’t marry her before she became too old to have a child of her own. He thought about Séamus O’Connor and then about Robert Fitzwilliam, which one of the two did Miss Mulcahy favour? That was an easy question to answer. It was obvious that Robert would be the better match. But then, he said to himself, Séamus O’Connor would be much more likely in the end. Robert was not the type to take a chance on infuriating his father. He dismissed the matter from his mind and went back again to the problem of the gas canister.

  Six barrels queued up and awaiting change and receipts. These had been all sent up within minutes of each other. And five of the six were innocent, but the sixth carried death. How was it not spotted that one barrel carried a different canister.

  After all, there was an apprentice at each counter. That was the shop’s practice. But, of course, apprentices were continually sent to and fro with errands, or occasionally told to escort a customer to the door, to carry parcels to a waiting car or taxi. The pages of notes that he had accumulated had convinced him that any one of the five counters: Ladies’ Shoes, Household Linens, Curtains, Millinery or Haberdashery could have sent the fatal barrel.

  And one of those six counters, Séamus O’Connor’s Gents’ Shoes, should have had no one there as the man himself was busy in the store room, and his apprentice had accompanied the Reverend Mother as she filled her basket full of gifts for the poor and the needy.

  The most likely thing was that the gas canister was sent from there as no one had admitted sending something from the Men’s Shoes’ counter.

  Patrick looked at the clock on the wall and compared it with the watch that he had taken from his pocket. Abruptly he got to his feet, took down his coat, cap and umbrella and proceeded.

  ‘I’m going out, Joe; be back in an hour,’ he called through Joe’s open door as he went down the corridor.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the well-trained Joe, hardly raising his eyes from his desk.

  ‘Going out, Tommy, be back in an hour,’ he said to the man at the entrance desk.

  ‘Where shall I say that you are going, inspector, if anyone asks’ said Tommy as Patrick made for the front door.

  ‘Say you don’t know,’ said Patrick. But he said it very low and was out of the door before Tommy, who was sensitive about his deafness, could make up his mind whether to ask him to repeat his answer or not. Tommy could be a dangerous enemy; very well in with the superintendent. Both of them Protestants, and Protestants tended to stick together in the city of Cork.

  In any case, he was a bit ashamed of himself. Not for anything would he have told the inquisitive Tommy where he was going. Why, on earth, should an inspector want to consult with an elderly nun?

  ‘Just wanted to check on a few matters, Reverend Mother,’ he said ten minutes later. And then wondered what he had wanted to ask. He was a bit disconcerted to discover that Dr Scher was there also. For form’s sake, he pulled out his notebook and made a pretence of looking through it. There was the Reverend Mother’s evidence. All very clear. He tried to formulate an intelligent question, but his worries kept intruding into his thoughts.

  ‘Join me in a cup of tea,’ said Dr Scher hospitably. ‘They make it very well here. Best place in the whole of Cork. And look who’s here now! Come in, Sister Bernadette, come in. Ah, thank you, Sister Bernadette. You’re an angel. Look at that, Patrick! Fresh tea and some more cake. Enough for all. Didn’t fancy those cakes at the funeral. Not up to your standards at all, Sister Bernadette.’

  Patrick put away his notebook, sat back, relaxed and waited until Sister Bernadette had left the room.

  ‘I’ve been listening to the reading of the will,’ he said then, sipping his tea.

  ‘Stale news, lad, stale news,’ said Dr Scher. ‘The major gets it all. The whole of Cork knows about the will.’

  Patrick hesitated for a moment and then told himself that the information about the other wills would soon be all over Cork. After all, wills were public property once the man or woman was dead.

  ‘The latest will. He made ten wills,’ he said mildly. ‘This was number ten.’

  ‘And told his family about it every time, I suppose,’ said Dr Scher. ‘That type always do. Keeps the family on their toes. What a pity that I don’t have a large family gathering around me, each and every one of them hoping desperately to inherit my collection of Cork silver. What fun I would have, changing my will every month or two. What do you think, Reverend Mother? Would you like a mention in my will? I could leave you a Georgian silver teaspoon.’

  The Reverend Mother smiled discreetly, but said nothing. Patrick felt her eyes on him, full of interest and waiting for what he had to say.

  ‘I’m not sure who were the earlier beneficiaries,’ he said, feeling somewhat comforted by her belief in him, ‘but I can tell you that the two daughters appeared to be very upset to be left only a couple of thousand pounds each, so I would imagine in the past that they had received much more. However, I think that the most interesting thing that I learned today was that old Mr Fitzwilliam rang his solicitor for an appointment on Friday and unexpectedly, because of a cancellation, he was able to come straight in on that very morning, whereas in the past he would usually have had to wait for a few days, or even a week.’

  ‘So,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘when he announced to his family that he was going to change his will, it would be expected that it wouldn’t happen immediately, at least not for a few days. And if there was a murderer among them, they would think that they had to act relatively quickly while the old will was still valid.’

  ‘Or, on the other hand,’ said Dr Scher, ‘my friend the major, having been told that he was to inherit, and perhaps knowing that his father had gone to see the solicitor … who knows he may even have driven him into the South Mall, they appeared to me to be on excellent terms when I met the
m in the Imperial Hotel at lunch time last Friday. As I say, the major might think, Well, if my father drops dead over the weekend or even on Monday morning, then I inherit a fortune, but then, by Tuesday Robert and the girls might be back in favour again and I will be out there in Palestine with nothing but my salary to live on and I will have an old age of living on an army pension. Can’t you hear him saying that? Well, I can. These army fellows. Life is cheap to them.’ Dr Scher sat back and looked defiantly from the Reverend Mother to Patrick.

  Patrick nodded. ‘He might even have told one of his sisters. He seems to be very close to his sister Monica. The will seems as though it was the important factor in this killing. I can’t see what else could have motivated anyone to kill Mr Fitzwilliam.’ Patrick mused through his recollections of the notes in the policeman’s handbook. Greed, Anger, Lust, Fear, Blackmail … ‘Though the man Dinan,’ he said aloud, ‘the man who was sacked, might have hated him, but somehow I can’t see that he would have killed him. And I think that he blamed Robert more than he blamed old Mr Fitzwilliam. But I have had an informant who tells me that she thinks one of the sisters, Miss Monica Fitzwilliam, was blackmailing the major into buying her a large amount of clothes in Dowden’s. According to my informant it would have cost her a year’s salary to buy these garments.’ Patrick looked at both elderly faces and saw interest, but not surprise.

  ‘Her?’ hinted Dr Scher.

  ‘Eileen, I suppose,’ explained the Reverend Mother and Patrick felt himself flush with embarrassment.

  ‘She has a theory that Miss Monica might have been the one to kill her father in the hope that her generous brother would reward her.’ Patrick shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What about Robert Fitzwilliam?’ asked Dr Scher and Patrick nodded with relief.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Somehow he fits the picture, better, although he did not, in fact, benefit, he may have hoped to. And certainly he had opportunity, whereas the major certainly had none.’ He went into some detail about the evidence from the parlour maid at Glenville Place and the major’s breakfast and the evidence from all at the Queen’s Old Castle that the major had barely arrived through the door when his father fell from on high. ‘So all in all, if it were one of the family, I would favour Robert, but he did not benefit from the murder. He had been disinherited completely. Not a penny left to him.’

  ‘But then we can twist it in another direction,’ said Dr Scher, ‘and say that Robert says to himself, “My father is talking of changing his will. It will take him a week or so to do that and I cannot afford to allow him to leave me destitute. I just have a few days to act. How do I do it? Well, what about one of those gas capsules that my big brother has brought back from the war. If one of those is used, then he will be the one to be suspected.” What do you think, Patrick? Sounds possible, doesn’t it?’ Dr Scher sat back with an air of one who has successfully acted a part. He looked from one face to the other. The Reverend Mother pursed her lips, though Patrick nodded, but then glanced through his notebook again.

  ‘I’m not just thinking of the family, though,’ said Patrick. ‘There were a lot of people in the city who disliked old Mr Fitzwilliam. As I mentioned before, certainly one of his employees, the man who was facing the sack at the end of the week, the man called Michael Dinan, he would certainly bear a grudge. And there may be others among the counter staff, or even the apprentices who hated the man. He was not, by reputation, a pleasant man to work for.’

  ‘It was an unusual way to murder anyone,’ said the Reverend Mother thoughtfully. ‘And unless the person was witnessed deliberately inserting the gas canister into the change barrel, it would be almost impossible to pin it on anyone. It is also, perhaps,’ she went on, ‘an easy way to murder someone. Quite unlike sticking a knife in someone, or hitting them over the head with an iron bar, or even emptying a revolver into a man’s heart. But there is something else to take into account. This sending up of a gas cylinder would have a strong element of chance in it. After all, Mr Fitzwilliam could have spotted the difference, could even have recognized one of his son’s gas canisters. He could, in fact, have gone straight to the door, thrown the cylinder away and allowed the gas to float harmlessly away in that huge building. It must be about forty feet high, at least. According to the young apprentice who helped me, all of the staff had witnessed these gas cylinders being used to take the smell of damp away from the goods in the shop. I think that the murderer could not have been sure that it would have worked, even if opened.’

  ‘Or else old Mr Fitzwilliam might have recognized it for what it was and simply not opened it. After all there was a shelf load of these things down in his cellar. He must have been familiar with its appearance. Apparently he took a great interest in these gas cylinders, actually asked the major to bring some back with him as they had so many flood-damaged goods. Yes, you are right, Reverend Mother. It was a very chancy, very unsure way to murder someone. And though it looks most likely that the change barrel was sent up from the unmanned counter, that’s not certain either. One of the apprentices might have been passing and been unable to resist the fun of whizzing one of these things up. I know, when I was a boy, I used to think that I would love to do that,’ said Patrick, looking rather embarrassed as he confessed to such wild ideas in his boyhood.

  ‘Oh, I meant to ask you whether there were any fingerprints on it, Patrick?’ asked Dr Scher. ‘I thought of that, you know, thought of it immediately and I picked it up with my handkerchief,’ he said proudly to the Reverend Mother as he helped himself to another piece of cake. ‘I’m a great fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Have you ever read them, Patrick? No, well, you should. I’ll lend you some. The Sign of Four has a lot about fingerprints. You’ll enjoy that.’

  Patrick thought about his usual daily work. He thought about the overnight shop raids, the drunken fights down the quays, the wives with broken arms, the terrified children where both parents were almost permanently drunk, the ever-present threat from the IRA. And he thought about his biggest worry at the moment, the gang that managed prostitutes and were reputed to be actively recruiting twelve-year-olds of both sexes. He reviewed his daily workload which often stretched well into the night, sometimes almost to midnight, and could not see himself sitting by the fire with a novel about an amateur crime investigator in his hand. And he did not think that Sherlock Holmes’s methods would work well in the troubled city of Cork. Nevertheless, Dr Scher meant well, so he nodded and smiled and hoped that the doctor would forget about his offer.

  ‘And the fingerprints?’ Dr Scher leaned forward eagerly.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that we couldn’t get too far with them,’ said Patrick apologetically. ‘Joe had a go with this powder that we got from Dublin. Sprinkled it all over the canister. But, to be honest, you couldn’t see much. It was all messed up, loads of different fingerprints, different sized fingers, I’d say. Looked as though half the shop had handled it.’

  ‘They would have been a great novelty when the major brought them into the shop,’ said the Reverend Mother thoughtfully. ‘I understand that he brought a suitcase full of them. They would have been passed from hand to hand. The young apprentice, Brian Maloney, spoke to me very enthusiastically about them and how they got the smell out of the river-damaged goods.’

  ‘They had a shelf load of them in the basement,’ said Patrick. ‘All standing up there, ready for anyone to help themselves. Of course they weren’t considered particularly dangerous. And they wouldn’t have been if Mr Fitzwilliam had any ventilation in that office of his. But he didn’t. He was a man who felt the cold very much, according to his son. My sergeant, Joe, said the place was very hot and airless, even though Robert Fitzwilliam had turned off the gas fire by the time that he had got up there.’

  ‘And so,’ said Dr Scher thoughtfully, ‘we might get a picture of our murderer. A man who grabs an opportunity.’

  ‘Or a woman,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Remember this murder took no strength, no special knowledge, an
d probably could be done with very little risk to the murderer. You may not get a conviction with this, Patrick. It’s possible that the murderer will go undiscovered and unpunished.’

  Dr Scher shrugged his shoulders. ‘Would that be a bad thing? After all he wasn’t a particularly pleasant old man.’

  ‘Murder, the deliberate taking of human life, is a very bad thing, Dr Scher,’ said the Reverend Mother severely. ‘And once someone, whether man or woman, has successfully committed one murder, he or she may commit another one. It may become a habit, an easy way to get rid of an enemy, to get rid of someone whose death will benefit you. No, Patrick, I don’t think that you should accept that the murder may be unsolvable. Or, indeed, that it may be desirable to leave it unsolved. That’s dangerous thinking. I am just warning you that it may be very difficult.’

  There was, thought Patrick, an unusual atmosphere in the Reverend Mother’s room. Almost as though she and Dr Scher were at odds with each other. Usually they were the best of friends and the Reverend Mother, he knew, relied on Dr Scher for his friendship, for his common sense as well as for his medical expertise. And had there been, he wondered, a slight emphasis on the word ‘woman’ and on the use of ‘he’ or ‘she’. For himself he did not really suspect either of the daughters and nor the mother either. In fact, one look at that poor woman would tell anyone that she would be totally unable to plan something like sending up a gas canister to her husband’s office and if by any chance she did do that, well, then her sons would act quickly and she would find herself in one of those private mental hospitals before the police could even draw up a warrant for arrest.