A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Good evening, Reverend Mother.’ Patrick sounded fairly breathless. ‘Not in his office,’ she could imagine Miss Clayton telling her fellow workers.

  ‘Good evening, Inspector,’ she said formally. Face to face, she called him Patrick and still saw him fondly as an earnest, hardworking, determined six- or seven-year-old boy in her school, but in public she always addressed him as ‘Inspector’ and the telephone exchange, she often reminded herself, was a public place. ‘I was wondering whether you could spare the time to come here to the convent, if you are in the neighbourhood,’ she continued feeling unable to invent an innocuous reason as to why he should come swiftly and perhaps bring the police doctor with him.

  ‘I’m on my way down there just now and will drop in, Reverend Mother,’ he said obligingly and his speed of response made her realize that there had been a slight shake in her voice. She carefully hung up the receiver, touching it to make sure that it was in position. Her cloak was a light one. No doubt that was why she was shivering and so she went swiftly to her room and donned a heavier cloak over the top of it. It and the heat from the fire gradually warmed her. Sister Bernadette, she was touched to see, had not only brought in her tea, but had placed the teapot, with a fancily knitted woollen cosy protecting its swelling sides, on the hearth just in front of the glowing fire. She poured a cup from it, not bothering to add milk, but conscientiously taking some sugar, although she loathed the taste. Sugar is good for shock, her old friend, Dr Scher, had told her that. It would keep her going until Patrick took the responsibility from her hands.

  And then she thought of something else, something puzzling. She braved the icy corridor again and went purposefully down towards the back door. Once again she unhooked the receiver from its hook beside the telephone and spoke into it after the immediate greeting.

  ‘Oh, Miss Clayton, I wonder would you be kind enough to get me the telephone number of Mr Hayes, the auctioneer.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Reverend Mother.’ Miss Clayton sounded unsurprised. Probably knew all about the trunk-load of books already, thought the Reverend Mother, too shaken to smile to herself. She took in a deep breath and set herself, while she waited, the task of counting backwards in sevens, starting at one hundred. This, she knew, required concentration and kept other images from her mind, as it traversed the lines of numbers from 100 right back to 2. She had just reached 23 when a series of clicks brought the auctioneer onto the line.

  ‘Reverend Mother! I was just about to phone you to make sure that the books arrived safely.’ Probably Mr Hayes was going to do nothing of the sort, but he was an excessively polite man and would not like even to hint a surprise at hearing from her. Still he had confirmed that the trunk had been meant for her and that was something that she had wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, indeed, and thank you very much for sending them over,’ she said. Were they a ‘left over’ when the sale had finished, or did someone deliberately send that trunk to her? She had only to wait expectantly and Mr Hayes, as usual, would fill the silence with his fluent, rapid delivery.

  ‘Not at all. It’s a pleasure, Reverend Mother. I hope you find them useful.’ He gave a little chuckle. ‘Grist to the mill, eh! They were left to the end of the sale of Mr Mulcahy’s goods, the stuff that he wasn’t taking with him to the new house. You know Mr Mulcahy, “Mulcahy the Skins”, Reverend Mother? Well, he’s moved to a fine new house in Montenotte and he had a lot of stuff in those houses of his in Shandon Street that he wanted cleared out – good stuff, you know, but a bit battered. Twelve children grew up in those two houses, ten of them boys and you know what boys are like, Reverend Mother! They will tilt their chairs, and kick the legs of the tables and slam the doors of the cupboards. Not that it wasn’t good, serviceable stuff. Quite a few bargains, there, for those who had an eye for a well-made piece of furniture. Yes, we had a nice dining-room set, some wardrobes, be as good as new if a carpenter did a few repairs, one of those big, old tables, sand it down and you’d have it looking good, quite a few oak presses, a couple of trunk-loads of curtains and cushions, an old clothes horse, that sort of thing. Good stuff, but not what the man wanted in his new house in Montenotte and not what the new owners wanted either. You know the way it goes, Reverend Mother. New house, new furniture! That’s what—’

  ‘And the trunk that you sent to me.’ Mr Hayes, as a true auctioneer, was able to cram ten words into each second, and would, like a wound-up clockwork toy, go on with great fluency until interrupted.

  ‘Well, your cousin, Mrs Murphy, was still there from the sale before, bought herself a lovely old croquet set, the young ladies will enjoy that if we ever get a summer; that’s what I said to her. So I tipped her a nod when it came to the trunk of school books – I knew that you would like them, Reverend Mother, so as soon as Mrs Murphy said, “half-a-crown”, well, I brought my hammer down and said “sold!”.’

  So it was her cousin, Lucy, who had purchased the books. For a moment, the Reverend Mother wondered what to say. Mr Hayes, when he heard the truth of the contents of the trunk, sold for half-a-crown to Lucy, would be disconcerted and angry, perhaps, that she had said nothing. However, Patrick had to be the first to know about the grisly contents of the battered old trunk.

  ‘Well, Mr Hayes,’ she said eventually, ‘you’ve solved one puzzle for me, and now here comes Inspector Cashman to solve another. Goodbye, Mr Hayes, and thank you, again, for thinking of us.’

  And then decisively she hung up the receiver. Despite the events of the past hour, she felt a smile begin to warm her lips as she pictured Mr Hayes’s machine-like brain rapidly shuttling reasons for any connection between a trunk-load of old books and the arrival of a senior member of the local Guards. ‘Tommy,’ he would say to his assistant, ‘did you take a look inside that trunk, at all? It was never a load of dirty books that we sent over to the Reverend Mother in St Mary’s Isle. Would you tell me, Tommy, was there any chance of that, at all?’

  The Reverend Mother went straight towards the front hallway once she had replaced the telephone receiver. Patrick had said that he was on the way down – those had been his words – and so he would not be long arriving. He was probably on his way to pay a visit to his elderly mother, she thought with some compunction. Now his evening would be filled with activity, people to see, orders to be given, reports to write. She waited by the front door until she saw the lights of a car illuminate the garishly coloured glass of the convent front door. She checked, as was automatic with her, that her bunch of keys were still in her pocket, and then stepped over the threshold, pulling the door shut with the softest of clicks in order not to disturb Sister Bernadette at her evening meal.

  But it was not the brand-new, shining black Model T Ford, the property of the Cork Police Barracks, which drew up at the edge of the pavement, but a battered, old, grey Humber with a large dent on the mudguard of its front wheel. And the man that climbed out from the driver’s door was not a slim, young police officer, but a rotund and elderly figure. The Reverend Mother went to the gate.

  ‘Dr Scher, how nice to see you. In fact, I am expecting Patrick. Did he telephone you?’

  Dr Scher took a little time to slam a recalcitrant front door into submission and then shook his head.

  ‘No, I was with him when you telephoned. He said that your voice was shaking. I came along as support.’

  ‘I’m perfectly well,’ said the Reverend Mother sharply and then she relented. ‘Well, I have had a rather unpleasant experience. Something most unexpected has happened. But where is Patrick?’

  ‘Well, we were on our way when Patrick must have spotted a man that the police were looking for, young fellow, standing outside the door of a van, leaning on the bonnet, smoking a cigarette, young fool. Patrick stopped his car, just in front of me, miracle that I didn’t go smack into him. He jumped out to arrest this young fellow. Young fool pulled a gun on him, but it didn’t do any harm, no bullet in it, hadn’t been reloaded after the last shot, according to Patrick who took i
t off him. And then along comes another lad on a motorbike, drives straight at them, shouting “Jump, Fred!” Patrick stood back to save himself and the young fellow jumps on the back of the motorbike and off the pair of them went. Patrick went after them, though I don’t think he has much chance of catching up with them. Those motorbikes weave in and out of the donkeys and carts, the cars, and the pedestrians. I’d say that he wouldn’t be here for an hour or so, but in the meantime, you’ve got me. Cold out here! Shall we go inside?’

  ‘I want to show you something first,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘but tell me who was arrested? What was his name? The young man with the unloaded pistol. Who was he?’

  ‘I heard Patrick say his name. I bet that he was mixed up in that raid up Douglas Passageway. They seized a barracks just beside the harbour. Something in the Cork Examiner about it this morning. There was a lot of shooting went on. A couple of soldiers killed, so I heard. I think that the young fellow’s name was Mulcahy, that’s it. I remember Patrick saying that name. He said, “I arrest you, Fred Mulcahy, under the suspicion that you were involved in the raid on the barracks in Douglas and in the death of two members of the Free State Army”.’

  TWO

  W. B. Yeats

  ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity’

  Eileen had spotted Fred Mulcahy immediately. She had been happily riding down the quay on her brand-new motorbike – at least it was brand-new to Eileen. It had been sold, second-hand to her, by her friend Eamonn, when his wealthy parents had bought a new model for their only son. Eileen adored it, had cleaned every inch of it, repainted it a shiningly austere black and rode it all over the city, wearing a leather helmet, a tweed jacket, a pair of breeches, and her beloved knee-high leather boots.

  And now there was Fred, just about to be arrested. He had his hands up in a helpless fashion and a proud, suffering look on his face. Only one policeman, there, thought Eileen scornfully, as she accelerated noisily. Why doesn’t he make a run for it? Everyone knows that the guards were unarmed, except for a truncheon. Why is he so stupid, always posing? He seemed to be forever trying out the role of martyr, another Patrick Pearse who would be shot by the British.

  Still, when it came down to it, Fred had been one of the six young men and two girls that had shared a house, shared danger and daring exploits, when she had lived in a Republican hideout in Ballinhassig, south of the city of Cork. He was a show-off and a nuisance, but she could not let him down now. Rapidly she illicitly overtook a lorry on the left-hand side, skidded to a halt in front of them and shouted in her gruffest voice, ‘Jump! Fred, jump!’ and then to cause more confusion she palpitated the horn rapidly with her thumb, filling the quayside with the alarming sounds.

  It galvanized him into action, anyway. He flung himself onto the back of her bike, riding pillion and she kicked the accelerator quickly. There was a satisfying roar from the engine and then she was off. She overtook the lorry again, again sliding past on its left side and pulling out ahead of him. The lorry driver blew his horn and she blew hers back with a jolly little beep-beep. She could hear, from behind them, the civic guard, poor eejit, blow his whistle but that wouldn’t help him much. The Garda Siochána, the guardians of the peace, were thin on the ground and by the time that he got to a telephone box to summon the army from Victoria Barracks, then she and Fred Mulcahy would be well out of the way.

  ‘Where do you want to go, Fred?’ she yelled back at him.

  ‘Douglas,’ he said into her ear and she gave a nod. Douglas was a good choice. They would be in Douglas village in under ten minutes and she would not have to go through the town and risk meeting a lorry-load of soldiers coming down from the Victoria Barracks, summoned by a policeman who had lost a suspect. She was a little surprised that Fred had not wanted to get back to the safe house in Ballinhassig, but she was also relieved. If she drove fast, she could drop him off at Douglas and be back at the printers, where she worked, before they shut for the evening. She had been sent out to a shop to get details of some posters that they wanted printed and had promised to return with the instructions before the end of the day. Her job was important. She wanted to do well, to be regarded as reliable. She liked the money that she earned and liked that she was involved in printing propaganda leaflets and Republican arguments.

  ‘What did the guard want you for?’ she shouted over her shoulder to Fred when they had climbed to the top of Douglas hill and were well on their way to the village.

  ‘The raid on Douglas Barracks, this morning,’ he shouted back and she nodded. Pretty stupid to be hanging around after that. But then Fred was a bit like that. Always wanted to be the centre of attention. She slowed down to a stop in order to wait for the Cork to Douglas tram to get out of her way.

  ‘That fellow took my gun,’ he said petulantly into her ear.

  ‘Jesus, you didn’t shoot one of the Civic Guards, did you, Fred? All hell will break loose if you did that.’ She looked around at him in alarm and saw that there were tears in his eyes. Embarrassed, she looked away.

  ‘The gun was empty. There were no bullets in it.’ His voice was choked with emotion. She guessed that he was crying and so was careful not to turn around again.

  Stupid, though, thought Eileen. If you are going to shoot, well, shoot. Don’t go around trying to fire from an unloaded revolver.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Fred,’ she said. ‘It’s just as well that you didn’t shoot one of the guards. That causes no end of trouble. They’d go through the city with a fine comb looking for you.’ And then her curiosity got the better of her. ‘Why was it empty? Did you fire at someone else? What did you have a gun for, in the first place?’

  ‘There was supposed to be a trunk-load of guns, unloaded from a Kerry trawler. They came from America and were picked up near Cape Clear Island by some of our men. They were supposed to commandeer a trawler. I was supposed to be the armed escort.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said impatiently. He had only answered one of her questions.

  ‘Well, I met a Kerryman, couldn’t understand him very well, speaking in Irish, he said something about Douglas Sawmill and then I got hold of a donkey and cart, took them from an old fellow, told him I was requisitioning them. I thought it would look … I thought …’

  ‘Tell me afterwards.’ Douglas Sawmill? She had often wondered why Douglas Street and Douglas Sawmills was in the city, not in Douglas village, itself. Rich people lived in Douglas and they had managed to get this nuisance of a tramway set up between the city and their rural village.

  ‘Watch out for tramlines,’ Eamonn had warned her when he was teaching her to ride the motorbike. ‘You can easily come a cropper if you get a tyre stuck in one of them,’ he had said and so she went carefully, determined not to injure her beautiful bike. The tram had trundled on, so she accelerated again, adroitly weaving her way in and out of the traffic. For a few minutes she concentrated on her driving, taking great pleasure in her skill and she put thoughts about Fred to the back of her mind. Time enough for that when they reached the village of Douglas.

  Douglas seemed quiet when she arrived. There was a civic guard on duty outside the Douglas Barracks, but he was chatting to a woman and so she sped past, hoping that Fred had the sense to turn his face away. By now there were pictures of most of the active Republicans stuck on the walls of the barracks throughout the city and its suburbs.

  ‘Down here, down this street, stop by the post office,’ he said in her ear, and obligingly she turned off and drew up to a halt.

  ‘You’re not going in there, are you?’ she asked in alarm. Post offices, also, had pictures of wanted men stuck up in them. She turned back to look at him. He had that expression again, that noble hero look which had often annoyed her. He took no notice of her words, now, just slipped off the back of her bike and strode into the post office, looking, she thought, with his belted raincoat and his slouched hat, every inch a wanted IRA man. She kept the engine running, glancing appr
ehensively around, but all remained quiet until he came out again. Looked terribly white. Should she make an effort to get him back to Ballinhassig where he would be safe?

  ‘Down that road, there. That leads to the shoreline,’ he ordered, climbing back on to the bike. He had been a long time in there. What on earth was he up to?

  Eileen kicked the bike to a start but restrained her impulse to roar down the street. It would relieve her annoyance, but it was dangerous to draw attention to oneself in a small place like Douglas.

  ‘Next left.’ Fred seemed to gulp out the words, and she had an uneasy feeling that he might be crying again. She followed his muttered directions again and to her surprise came to what was obviously a harbour. Not the river, but the real sea. Waves crashed on the shore and she thought she could smell salt on the damp air. She had not known that Cork harbour came right in as far as Douglas. Shows you how much I know of my own city, she reflected and planned, now she had a job and a motorbike, she would go on trips all around the city and even down to the sea.

  ‘Stop here,’ Fred said in her ear and she pulled up just beside a pier and got off the bike. He didn’t move, though, just sat there, staring out at the water with a frozen expression on his face.

  ‘What’s wrong, Fred?’ Eileen suppressed the word ‘now’ and listened with annoyance to the church bell sounding the half hour. Half past five. Would she be able to get back to the printing works in time? The compositor worked late on a Friday and liked to get the week’s jobs finished if possible before he went home.

  ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘That trawler from Kerry is gone. I’d know it. It had a repaired mast, a piece of wood of another colour nailed to it.’ He scanned the boats bobbing on the water, moving in and out of the harbour. ‘Curses! I wanted to get out to that American ship. It’s probably still moored out there near Cape Clear Island. I have to see those men from the trawler. I was going to ask them to take me with them, to bring me to the American ship. I wanted to go to America.’