The Convictions of John Delahunt

by Andrew Hughes

  He noted my misgiving and added, ‘For a medical opinion.’

  I said, ‘Of course.’

  He picked up a small paper-bound ledger, and began to leaf through the pages, as if he had no more to say.

  ‘I’d better return to our guests.’

  In the drawing room, Helen and her father were speaking to each other in bright voices. I showed them the bottle and said, ‘Here we are.’ The fire-side table was still bare. ‘Has Miss Joyce not brought the glasses?’

  Helen’s mother said there had been no sign of her, with a note of disapproval.

  ‘I’m sure she won’t be long.’

  I went over to the bureau, rummaged beneath my college notes and found an old corkscrew with a well-worn handle and tarnished worm. I held the bottle by the neck and twisted it in.

  ‘My father is delighted with the news, of course.’

  I wrapped my fingers around the handle and began to pull. ‘Unfortunately, he told me to say he’s not feeling well enough for visitors.’

  Mr Stokes said that was a pity.

  Bits of cork were coming loose, but the stopper wasn’t easing from the neck. ‘It is, but there’ll be many opportunities to meet over the coming weeks.’

  I clamped the bottle between my thighs and tugged. The Stokes family watched my efforts keenly. The cork finally came loose with a loud pop. ‘Now,’ I said. The wine was rather musty so I put it on the desk. ‘We’ll leave it there to breathe.’

  Helen was listing some of the people they would have to contact about the engagement: old friends of the family, and relatives in Scotland. Her gaze drifted over the mantelpiece while she thought of them, as if she imagined they were standing before the hearth.

  She looked at me and smiled. ‘Wait till Arthur hears.’

  Indeed.

  ‘And you’ll have to visit Cecilia, and try to send word to Alex.’

  Alex wouldn’t be able to come, of course. I mulled over whom else I could invite. Some cousins on my mother’s side of the family still resided in Antrim, but we had lost touch since her death. My mother would have been pleased.

  Behind me, the door to the drawing room opened. Mr Stokes looked over my shoulder and frowned. Helen and her mother craned their heads to the left with puzzled expressions.

  I shifted in my seat and glanced back. Ned Holt stood in the doorway, blinking in the lamplight. One hand was on the doorknob; the other held behind his back. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his coat had dark stains beneath the elbow.

  He seemed relieved when he saw me. ‘Delahunt,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d come to the wrong house.’

  I couldn’t pretend not to recognize him. ‘Edward. I didn’t hear you come in.’ No one moved for a moment, and the silence grew uncomfortable. The loose cork rolled from the tabletop on to the floorboards with a soft patter. I said, ‘Let’s speak in the hall.’

  Holt looked at the others and nodded, then stepped back out of the room.

  Mrs Stokes said, ‘You know him?’

  ‘That’s Ned, a local handyman.’

  ‘He appears to be in some distress.’

  ‘He always looks like that. A poor heart. I’ll go and see what he wants.’

  Mr Stokes stood up. I waved to him and said it was probably nothing, but Helen’s father remained standing. I took the lamp and went into the hall, closing the door behind me.

  Holt had gone further into the passage. When I got closer, I could see his other hand was covered in grimy streaks of blood.

  I regarded him sternly. ‘What did you do to Miss Joyce?’

  He frowned at me for a second, then said, ‘The woman downstairs? No, she’s helping.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s Sibthorpe, John. He’s in your basement now, unconscious. He’s been badly hurt.’

  ‘Sibthorpe?’

  ‘I was reporting to him in Hogan’s pub and someone must have spotted us. We were set upon in Baggot Street. Tom’s been stabbed.’

  It was odd to think that Sibthorpe could be just as vulnerable as anyone else. ‘But why did you come here? Just send word to the Castle.’

  ‘This was the nearest safe-house.’

  I watched his tongue lick at the flaccid corner of his mouth. ‘This isn’t a safe-house. It’s my house.’

  He took my arm. ‘You have to go to the home of Mr Gorman, the surgeon in Mount Street. Tell him it’s Castle business. Say it’s an emergency, and bring him here.’

  I declined to say one of Dublin’s pre-eminent surgeons was in the next room. ‘You’re not thinking this through, Ned. Get a message to the Castle and they’ll send all the help that’s required.’

  ‘Listen, Delahunt—’

  ‘I can’t, Holt. Not tonight. If you want, you can get Miss Joyce to fetch someone. But I’m going back to the others.’

  The door opened and Mr Stokes came out. Helen and her mother had also risen, and they peered past him.

  Holt let go of my arm and placed his hand on my shoulder, staining my good jacket.

  ‘Sir, I must apologize for the alarm I’ve caused. A friend of mine’ – he nodded to me – ‘a friend of ours has been attacked. He’s downstairs now in dire need of medical treatment. John has kindly agreed to fetch a surgeon.’

  Stokes hesitated. He looked at us both in turn. ‘But I am a surgeon.’

  The hand on my shoulder tightened. ‘How fortunate.’ Ned wasted no more time. ‘Please come with me.’

  I thought Stokes would refuse, but his instincts as a doctor prevailed, for he followed Holt into the black stairwell. I went after them to provide some illumination.

  In the kitchen, Miss Joyce knelt over the unconscious figure of Sibthorpe. His mutton-chop whiskers were neatly trimmed, but his face was pallid and lifeless. His jacket had been removed and his waistcoat unbuttoned. The white shirt he wore was sodden and red. Seeing him there in that state, he no longer seemed quite so intimidating.

  A scuffed trail led to the back-yard door, where Holt had gained entry. Miss Joyce must have received quite a shock. Four wine glasses were placed on the hearthstone; one of them had tipped over and shattered. There wouldn’t be enough for the toast.

  Stokes only had to glance at Sibthorpe. ‘That man will have to go to hospital.’

  Holt said that was impossible, for Tom’s assailants were still looking for him.

  ‘You mean he wasn’t just mugged? What did he do?’

  ‘Not a thing, I assure you.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Mr Stokes regarded me as he began to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. He removed his wedding band, placed it in a fob pocket, and asked Miss Joyce to prepare some basins of water.

  I tried to explain who these men were, and why they’d come to the house, but he told me to be silent.

  He used a knife to cut away Sibthorpe’s shirt, then bent down to examine the blood that seeped from a gash beneath his ribs. He told Holt that his friend wasn’t in immediate danger of bleeding out, but he could not yet close the wound. The chest cavity had been pierced, and he would have to explore the length and angle of the stab to determine if any viscera had been punctured, or if any foreign bodies remained.

  He asked Miss Joyce to fetch a needle – a bone needle if she had it – and some cotton or hemp thread. Then he instructed me to hold a candle above the patient while he carried out his examination.

  First he soaked a cloth and cleaned away the filth on Sibthorpe’s chest. Without the lumps of coagulated blood, the wound looked quite neat: just a three-inch-long slit, with fresh blood continually percolating. Without dithering, Stokes inserted two fingers very gradually to the depth of his knuckles. I couldn’t help but wince, though Sibthorpe was completely senseless and didn’t stir.

  Stokes asked me to bring the light closer and I lowered the candle. In the moment’s silence I said to him, ‘These men are actually with the police. I only know them—’

  ‘Mind.’ His other hand came across and caught three drops of molten wax before they touched the wound. I tilted
the candle upright.

  He withdrew his fingers, which clutched at their tip a small fragment of Sibthorpe’s shirt that had entered the wound. He held the gory scrap to the light and examined it. ‘That was the only thing I could feel, but I can’t say for sure there aren’t any other pieces.’ He said the cut was relatively shallow, and by its angle the knife probably missed the vital organs. Miss Joyce returned with a needle and thread, and Stokes expertly created a suture to close over the wound.

  After a final check of the patient’s breathing and pulse, Stokes spoke to Holt. He said his friend would certainly die if he wasn’t soon brought to a hospital. Ned said that would be arranged.

  Stokes cleaned his hands in a basin; his clothes remained unstained. When he bent back up, his attention was drawn to the door. I turned and saw Helen standing on the threshold. I didn’t know how long she’d been there, observing. Stokes came over and stood before me, folding out his white sleeves to button the cuffs.

  I said, ‘I can explain.’

  But he had already turned his back. His boots clicked on the flagstones as he walked to the door. Then he took hold of Helen’s wrist and led her away.

  Holt said, ‘John.’

  Miss Joyce stood in front of me, her face in a scowl. ‘How do you know these men?’

  I heard Mr Stokes say something to his wife on the landing above, then the front door opened and banged shut.

  ‘Delahunt, bring down some blankets. Tom is shivering.’

  I said, ‘All right.’ But when I went upstairs, I retrieved the bottle of wine from the drawing room, brought it to my chamber and locked myself in. Miss Joyce rapped against the door for a while, but I refused to answer.

  Holt must have made contact with the Castle during the night, for when I came down the following morning, both he and Sibthorpe were gone. The kitchen was spotless; there was no indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred the night before. Two pennies had been left on the table with a note saying, ‘To replace the broken glass.’

  I wrote to Mr Stokes that afternoon, apologizing for the turn the evening had taken, and saying that Sibthorpe and Holt were police agents from Dublin Castle. I first came into contact with their department during the bother with Arthur and James O’Neill that spring, so I couldn’t refuse them aid.

  The mention of his son may have had an effect, for he wrote back saying he would look into the matter. A week later another letter arrived. Stokes said there was a problem. He had written to the constabulary in the Castle, but they had no record of a Ned Holt or Thomas Sibthorpe in their employ. Was there any way to explain this discrepancy?

  I replied at once, that naturally there was no record since their department was a clandestine intelligence agency, but I had been in contact with them several times, and could assure him that they, and it, were genuine.

  This time his answer was prompt. He wished to thank me for the aid I had rendered to his family in the past, but in the circumstances he could not grant permission for me to marry his daughter. He said the consequences of my association with the Castle could not be predicted, and he would not allow anything to imperil Helen. He wished me well, but this was the last I would hear from him on the matter.

  The door to the Stokes house remained closed to me. Helen no longer walked in Merrion Park, even in the presence of her governess, and I wondered if she had been sent away.

  I wrote her a long letter, setting out how I’d come to be involved with the Castle, first by helping her brother, and then by searching for the attackers of Captain Craddock, but I didn’t mention anything about the man in the yellow cravat. I wrote that I was sorry not to have told her these things when we were together, but I had been afraid of what she might think.

  I took the letter to our secluded meeting-place in the garden, and placed it on the bench beneath a thin piece of black shale. Over the following week I checked on it several times, until one day I noticed the stone had shifted to the other end of the bench. There was an envelope underneath addressed to me, its lettering smudged where rainwater had seeped beneath the stone.

  Helen thanked me for my letter. She said she understood why I had chosen not to tell her those things, but from now on I should always confide in her – for she would take my side in any matter. She was still willing to marry me, and if I accompanied her to Scotland, we could exchange vows and return to live in Fitzwilliam Street. But she made clear that if we did so, she would be disinherited.

  Elopement conjures ideas of romance and excitement, but for Helen and me it consisted of monotonous journeys by stagecoach and steam-packet to Portpatrick on the Scottish coast. During the crossing, we sat together on deck with a plaid blanket over our knees, and watched the dawn break over the approaching headland. Afterwards, Helen always kept that woollen coverlet in the bottom of her trunk as a memento. Maybe she has it still.

  She came to live with us in Fitzwilliam Street, where an odd atmosphere pervaded the house for several days. Our marriage had caused a scandal, and Mr Stokes sent demands for Helen to return home to Merrion Square, even threatening legal action.

  Miss Joyce did her best to ignore Helen and me. She counselled my father to expel us from the house, and at the start I thought it likely he would. But Helen went to speak with him privately soon after she arrived. When she came down to me, she smiled and said he would allow us to stay.

  ‘How did you persuade him?’

  ‘I simply said that I love you, and am willing to look after you.’

  I pursed my lips and nodded. ‘I’d have never thought of that.’

  One morning Mr Stokes and Arthur came to the house, and we spoke to them in the front parlour. Her father said that this silliness had gone on long enough, and that if Helen returned home with him, they would put the unfortunate incident behind them. But Helen said our marriage was legitimate, and showed him the certificate from a church of the established faith in Portpatrick. Arthur asked did she realize what she was doing to their family. Helen said if only they would give our marriage their blessing, life could return to normal. But Mr Stokes got angry. He said he would never approve of this union, because she had so blatantly disobeyed his wishes. He gave her one last chance to return home with him, or face the consequences. In the silence that followed, Arthur pleaded with his sister to see sense, but she rose from her chair, and said if that was all, she wouldn’t detain them. When her father and brother left the house, Helen wept for hours. The next day, a large trunk containing her clothes and belongings was left on our steps.

  We were only married a few weeks when my father finally succumbed to his illness. Miss Joyce said it was the anxiety about my activities in the previous months that had finished him off. I was going to say that it was the useless tonics of her homeopaths that did the trick, but I didn’t bother. I just sacked her.

  We buried him in the graveyard of St Mark’s on Brunswick Street, next to my mother in the family plot. Not many people attended the service, though Cecilia and Captain Dickenson were there. It was an awkward meeting. Cecilia and Helen did their best to make small talk, but it was clear my brother-in-law wished to have nothing to do with us. As soon as the ceremony was over, he whispered to Cecilia, and they soon departed. My sister hugged both Helen and me, and said that she would try to visit.

  Before he got into his coach, Dickenson came up to me. ‘Who’s looking after the will?’

  I said I’d get in touch with the solicitor.

  ‘Because I’d be happy to look after the arrangements on behalf of the family.’

  There was no need. I’d take care of it.

  He smoothed his moustache with gloved fingers. ‘Just make sure to contact me when the contents are known.’

  I went to visit my father’s solicitor in his office on Ely Place. Samuel Adair was a portly man in his fifties with a full grey beard. His desk was surrounded by shelves of leather-bound legal tomes with their spines unbroken. A dishevelled wolfhound lay curled up in a corner. He poured me a drink from
a decanter of whiskey, then opened a drawer and withdrew a metal strong-box.

  ‘I’ve been going through the items your father deposited here. It’s all rather straightforward.’

  Inside the box, there were bundles of letters, account rolls and ledgers. He took out a thin membrane of parchment folded on itself, opened it on his desk and cleared his throat.

  ‘Let’s see. This is the last will and testament of Maurice Delahunt, dated December 1839.’

  I considered the date. Only six months ago; which was after Cecilia’s marriage and Alex’s first deployment.

  ‘He appointed his eldest son Alexander Delahunt as his executor, to discharge all debts attaching to the estate and manage the bequests.’ He looked at me. ‘As we discussed in our letters, that duty has descended to you because your brother serves abroad.’

  He continued reading. The only beneficiaries were the three children. My father noted that Alex had become an officer in the army, praised the gallant career path he had chosen, and left him the contents of a certain savings account in the Bank of Ireland. He wished Cecilia a long and happy marriage, and implored Captain Dickenson to care for his only daughter. After taking account of the value of her dowry, he left her some stocks and shares in the Ulster Railway Company.

  Adair fixed his spectacles. ‘The final paragraph deals with you.’

  I sat up in my chair.

  ‘He writes, “In recognition of the fact that my son John remained to provide companionship and care in my declining years, I bequeath him the house at Number Thirty-five Fitzwilliam Street.”’

  A warm feeling crept through me as I imagined the life I could have with Helen in our own family home. Though it might have been the Jameson’s.

  Adair retrieved another document from the box. ‘There is, however, a substantial charge attached to the estate. Do you know of a person named Ruth Meehan?’

  I placed my glass on his desk. ‘She was our governess several years ago. But she left soon after my mother died.’

  ‘Ah.’ Adair handed me the document: a statement of affairs with La Touche’s Bank, detailing a loan extended to Ruth Meehan eight years ago for the sum of £2,000, guaranteed by Maurice Delahunt.