Murder at the Queen's Old Castle

by Cora Harrison

  Aloud, she said, speaking softly and not looking at him, ‘“And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets”.’

  What had Dr Scher heard or seen in the course of his profession which had filled him with such anxiety?

  The Reverend Mother’s mind went to the shrill voice of that badly-used wife, exhausted by the unrelenting work of standing behind a counter for over seventy hours in the week. A woman to be pitied, certainly. Her lips tightened, however, when she thought of that accusation aimed at Brian Maloney. Brian was alone in the world and had been a pupil of hers. He was vulnerable. Children, in the Reverend Mother’s most sacred creed, had to be protected by the adults around them. She, the Reverend Mother, was bound by no Hippocratic oath and she would make sure that the innocent should not suffer in the place of the guilty.

  FIFTEEN

  Eileen MacSweeney did not know whether to tell her exciting news to her mother first, or to Reverend Mother Aquinas at the convent where she had been educated. The single stroke from the bell at the Holy Trinity Church told her that it was only quarter to five. Her mother would not be home for another half an hour. She would see the Reverend Mother first of all. And so she tucked her hair into her leather helmet, fastened it, opened the throttle of her motorbike and sped down the quays towards St Mary’s Isle.

  The Reverend Mother, for once, was not writing letters when Eileen was shown in by Sister Bernadette. She was sitting in front of a bare desk, in an almost dark room, her hands tucked into her sleeves, not reading nor writing, but just staring at the wall. She seemed, almost visibly, to bring herself back from some dark thoughts as Sister Bernadette bustled about the room, turned up the gas lamp, exclaimed at the state of the fire while emptying half a scuttle of coal upon the embers, and thrust a poker amongst them to accelerate the flames. Eileen took a seat and looked affectionately at her former teacher. She owed so much to the Reverend Mother who had taught her, stimulated her, praised her, challenged her and encouraged her to use her brains. She would be pleased to hear the news. It would cheer up the poor old thing. She even looked visibly better already, seemed to shake off whatever was worrying her.

  ‘So, Eileen, something good has happened,’ she said as soon as Sister Bernadette left the room.

  ‘I think it’s going to be quite exciting,’ said Eileen, noticing that her voice was slightly breathless. ‘There’s a professor at the university, a Professor Alfred O’Rahilly, and he’s got a notion of starting up a publishing company at the university, Cork University Press. It’s going to publish books that he and the other professors write. And …’ Eileen stopped. The news was almost too exciting to tell. ‘And he used to be a Republican and so when he was looking for a printer he came to see Mr Langford, at the Lee Press, and he recognized me and … and well, they were talking for ages and then Mr Langford came out to see me and I am going to be working at the university after Easter, in the Aula Max, Reverend Mother! Just imagine me there, in the library and … and … well, I’m going to be typing out the first books and getting them ready for printing, and be on the spot to explain to all the professors what we can do and what we can’t do. And Mr Langford told the professor that I was a clever girl and that I knew the printing business inside out and that these university professors would just have to listen to me and if I said something couldn’t be done, well they’d have to think of something different …’ Eileen ran out of steam and stared at the Reverend Mother. She could see how the gloomy, pre-occupied expression had now been replaced with a look of excitement. They looked at each other and Eileen knew that the same thought had flashed through both heads. There she would be, Eileen MacSweeney, sitting in that library, all of those books around her, with access to professors and to a scholarly life.

  ‘And, the Cork Examiner have offered me £2 a week if I keep sending in articles! I can live on that if ever I …’

  ‘Eileen,’ said the Reverend Mother solemnly. ‘When you were sixteen years old you made the decision not to try for a university scholarship, but to leave school and join the Irish Republican Army. I think now that you have a chance to reverse that decision. Your School Certificate marks were of the highest and there is nothing to prevent me registering you now to sit the Honan scholarship next June. I can easily put you on the school register,’ said the Reverend Mother, with a wave of the hand, which dismissed inspectors, bureaucrats and education offices from her consideration. ‘I can easily manage it; I’m sure.’

  ‘The Honan scholarship,’ breathed Eileen. ‘I’d work every hour of the day and night!’

  ‘That would be stupid,’ retorted the Reverend Mother. ‘Work a sensible amount of time and don’t forget to fit in some amusements and fresh air. Now go home and tell your mother and let me work out how I am going to slip your name back onto the school ledgers. For the Honan Scholarship, you will need to sit a paper in five subjects, so you will have to think what you will do other than English. Latin, of course. Your Latin was excellent. And History – that was excellent, also. Well, I’ll leave you to think about another two subjects.’

  She said nothing about the help that she would give, the books that she would obtain, the essays which she would correct, but Eileen was not fooled. The Reverend Mother’s eyes were gleaming with excitement and Eileen knew that whatever she needed would be forthcoming.

  Eileen was scanning her mind for long-buried Latin verbs when she turned into Barrack Street on her bike. She waved happily at Patrick who was standing outside the police barracks, looking preoccupied and worried. She felt sorry for him. Why hadn’t he worked a bit harder at school and tried for a university scholarship? Why get a boring job like being a policeman? Suspicious of everyone. Liked by few. Even now there was a young boy, ducking behind a wall as he passed on the far side of the road. Afraid of being nabbed for something, poor little geezer.

  Eileen chugged her way up the hill, sparing the engine of her elderly motorcycle by going at walking pace. She thought of Eamonn who had sold her the bike. She and he had been in that safe house belonging to the Republican movement but both had got sick of the never-ending violence. Eamonn was now back at university studying to become a doctor, financed by well-off parents. She would have to go around to his house tonight and tell him the news, she thought, as she turned into the side lane and then up to the back-garden gate of her mother’s house. Her mind was still on Eamonn, even after she had put her bike away and she was smiling slightly as she came around to the street again. And then she stopped. The boy whom she had seen earlier was now there, standing pressed tightly up against the front door. For a moment she was alarmed, but then she thought there was something familiar about the freckled face and the mop of flaming red hair.

  ‘Eileen …’ said the boy tentatively.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Eileen. ‘You gave me a fright. What are you doing there?’

  ‘Don’t you know me, Eileen?’ The boy spoke in a whisper and cast a furtive glance down the steep hill. ‘I used to be in the infants when you were one of the big girls, don’t you remember?’

  ‘I remember you now,’ said Eileen. ‘Brian Maloney. That’s right, isn’t it? Terrible little gutty you were too. Always fighting. I remember the red hair.’

  ‘Can I come in?’ Once again he turned his head to look down the hill. He flattened himself a little more against the door.

  Eileen hesitated. She was looking forward to talking over the future with her mother. She might even go out and buy a cake from the shop, she had thought. Make a celebration. Having young Brian Maloney would be a nuisance.

  ‘What’s the matter, Brian?’ she asked. He looked worried, she thought. Freckles standing out against a very pale face. Not as cocky as he used to be.

  He gave a hasty look around. ‘Wondered if you could get me in with the Boyos, Eileen. I could be a messenger boy or somethi
ng.’

  For a moment, Eileen thought he was asking for a job at the printing works and then she understood his meaning. The Boyos was used to describe IRA men when it was dangerous to speak their name. She frowned heavily at him.

  ‘You’d better come in, Brian,’ she said curtly. She produced her key and noted how he once more scanned the hilly street before tumbling into the dark little house. ‘Now tell me what is the matter,’ she said as soon as the door was closed and both stood face to face in the kitchen. Without waiting for an answer, she began to tear up some newspaper, crumpling the sheets up and arranging them in the fireplace. Always plenty of newspaper in the house as her mother would pick up used copies from the public house and bring them home once the floor was scrubbed and the glasses washed. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as she struck a match and then piled some loose pieces of turf onto the fire. A certain amount of smoke in the beginning, but she never minded that, liked the peaty smell in the kitchen. It was only when the fire was blazing vigorously and the damp chill of the room had begun to evaporate that she realized she had not received an answer yet.

  But when she turned around, saw how white he was and how there was a hint of moisture in his eyes, the sandy eyelashes dark with tears, she began to feel a bit ashamed of herself.

  ‘What’s the matter, Brian,’ she said gently. He hadn’t been a bad little fellow when he was seven and she was one of the big girls. A bit of a show-off and a bit of a fighter, but no real harm in him. ‘Sit down and we’ll have a cup of tea and then you can tell me all about it,’ she said encouragingly. He’d have a chance to dry his eyes and pull himself together while she filled the kettle from the tap in the back yard and got out the old biscuit tin where they kept their tea.

  ‘They’re all after me,’ he said when she had hung the kettle on the iron crane over the fire.

  Eileen turned around to face him. His voice had sounded quite steady now.

  ‘Who?’ she asked.

  ‘Everyone at the shop, at the Queen’s Old Castle; they all think that I killed Mr Fitzwilliam.’

  He sounded very upset and she remembered him very clearly now. A bit of a play-actor, a mammy’s boy. Trying to get attention; that was Brian Maloney when he was at the convent school. Been working as an apprentice at the Queen’s Old Castle. She remembered her mother telling her that. Very shocked Mam was that Mrs Maloney had gone back to her own people in Mallow and left Brian to look after himself. Went off with another man, too, and left her son behind. Missing his mam and a bit frightened, now, she thought.

  ‘Did you kill him?’ she asked in a nonchalant manner. Best to calm him down a bit.

  He was indignant. ‘Course, I didn’t. What do you take me for? What would I be doing sending one of the gas canisters up to an old man?’

  ‘But you didn’t, is that what you’re saying?’ she enquired. The fire was blazing up now, and she moved the long arm of the crane so that the kettle was hanging directly over the flames. Of course the death of Mr Fitzwilliam was the talk of the town. For a moment she felt a rush of pride when she thought about her article in the Cork Examiner. Everyone in the pub, according to her mother, had been talking about it for the last few days. No one particularly worried about the old man, of course. He had been a mean old cadger, by all accounts, but everyone was really interested in who had sent that gas cylinder up to him and poisoned the old git.

  ‘What would I be doing that for?’ It had worked. He sounded a bit better, not so upset. More indignant.

  ‘Well, why do they think you might have done it?’ she asked, pouring the boiling water onto the tealeaves. While he was here, she might as well find out as much of the truth as he knew. If she worked it out, she might make a present of the solution to Patrick. She suppressed a giggle at the thought of his face. He’d be furious that she was cleverer than he was. Always had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. That was Patrick. Anyway, she’d get another good article for the Examiner out of it. ‘So who did kill him?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘How do I know? But that crazy old woman, Mrs Fitzwilliam, is trying to pretend that she saw me send a gas thing up instead of a change barrel. She says that I did it from the empty counter, from Mr O’Connor and my counter, when Mr O’Connor was down in the basement stocktaking. And now Mr Robert and Miss Kitty are saying they saw me nip behind that counter, too. Nobody believes me. They’ll hang me!’ The boy’s face had whitened even more and there was a look of desperation in his eyes.

  ‘They don’t hang people of your age. You’d have to be sixteen,’ she said briefly. She had seen that in a law book.

  ‘I’d prefer to be hanged than stay in prison for the rest of my life. I’m not scared,’ he said with a swagger that reminded her of the time when he had been six years old. Always trying to act the big man.

  ‘You can stay here for the moment while I work out what to do with you,’ she said briefly. It was that or the IRA, she told herself and there was no way that she was going to hand over this young fellow to Seán Hurley. She wondered whether to send him out for a cake, but that might risk him being nabbed. An apprentice, she knew, couldn’t just walk out of a job. The Fitzwilliams might well have sent around for a policeman when he disappeared. She wasn’t going to leave him alone with her mother, either, she decided. He had a frightened look in his eyes and frightened people did violent things. She had seen enough of that when she had been a member of the IRA.

  ‘Turn your pockets out,’ she said then. Should have done it the moment he came into the house, she thought.

  ‘I never carry a gun when visiting friends,’ he said with such a grown-up air that she almost giggled. Still, the most unlikely people in Cork had guns, so she patted his pockets and felt his coat in a professional manner. The British army, especially the infamous Black and Tans, had been notoriously careless and when drunk had a habit of leaving guns behind them in public houses, or else dropping them in the street. Half of the IRA were equipped with stolen or lost British army guns and ammunition. ‘Now sit down by the fire and drink that tea, and behave yourself when my mother comes in,’ she said warningly as she heard the footsteps outside and the sound of a key in the door.

  Maureen MacSweeney, unlike her daughter, was delighted to see Brian, remembered him well, enquired after his mother and could hardly get out of her coat before sitting down to a nice gossip about the state of affairs at the Queen’s Old Castle.

  ‘So, Brian, tell me now, who do you think murdered the old man?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘They think that he did it,’ said Eileen drily. She thought at times that she and her mother had changed places. She felt elderly, distrustful and world-wise, whereas her mother was young and naïve and believed every word that even the greatest liar could tell her.

  ‘Get-away-out-of-that!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘As if! Look at the little innocent face of him! Here, I’ve a few biscuits that were left behind in the pub. Have one, Brian. You poor little fella.’

  Now what am I going to do with him, thought Eileen, as her mother was gasping enjoyably over the story of the gas canister inside the change barrel and what the old man looked like when he fell down from the sky-high balcony in the Queen’s Old Castle. He can stay the night. But what will I do with him afterwards? I know him. He won’t stay quietly hidden. He’ll be popping in and out like a Jack hare. Someone will spot him and then the guards will be up and they’ll arrest him and Mam will get into trouble over the whole business.

  ‘So who did kill him, then, Brian?’ she interrupted the story of Mrs Fitzwilliam’s mad screams.

  She thought he would say that he didn’t know, but he surprised her by hesitating a little, looking from one to the other, just like someone who was wondering whether he could be believed.

  ‘Me and the lads think that we might know,’ he said after a minute. ‘Henry Spiller got us onto it.’

  ‘Who is Henry Spiller?’ Maureen leaned forward, eager for a gossip.

  ‘He’s Miss Kitty’s apprent
ice. He’s old, nearly as old as you, Eileen, he’s sixteen now and he sees what’s been going on. She and Mr O’Connor, Mr Séamus O’Connor. He pretends to be doing a line with Miss Mulcahy in the Ladies’ Shoes, but he’s gone off her since she went to the pictures with Mr Robert. If he had a chance with Miss Kitty, he’d jump at that. Miss Kitty is always calling him over to give her a hand with the bundles of linen. She sends Henry off on a message and then she calls over Mr O’Connor to give her a hand. Henry told us all that he turned back once to ask her where he’d buy the lavender and he saw the two of them in the back room and they were kissing.’

  ‘G’wan out of that!’ said Maureen. The expression, in Cork, meant disbelief, but the huge enjoyment on her face turned it into an enthusiastic encouragement. Brian grinned widely. His colour had begun to come back, the freckles were not so noticeable and he had, noticed Eileen, finished up the half packet of biscuits that her mother had produced from her handbag. She’d have to get him out of here first thing in the morning. Someone was bound to have seen him on Barrack Street and the guards would be after him, cross-questioning her mother and confusing her into an admission of guilt. In the meantime, let him sing for his supper and tell the whole story about the strange happenings at the Queen’s Old Castle. Her own exciting news would have to wait, she thought, as she got to her feet and took out some bread and butter from one of those tin boxes that Maureen collected so as to keep their food safe from mice and rats.