A Gruesome Discovery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘And the proposed marriage with Susan, did he mention that?’ asked the Reverend Mother.

  ‘I asked him about it. He brushed it aside, said that it had been an idea of the father, but he didn’t think that the girl was keen. He said that in a completely indifferent way.’

  ‘Had he anything to gain from Mr Mulcahy’s death, do you think?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘Get rid of a rival businessman. Possibly, probably, buy the business off the widow.’ Patrick began to count on his fingers. ‘Expand his own business. He may have been the one who persuaded Mr Mulcahy to build a new yard quite near to his own yard and the two businesses could now be very easily amalgamated into one. Nothing to stop that, once he persuaded Mrs Mulcahy to sell. And it wouldn’t take too long an acquaintance with that poor woman to see that he could name his own price. There would be nothing stopping him.’

  ‘Except Susan,’ said the Reverend Mother and she felt a qualm as she said the words.

  Patrick looked across at her.

  ‘Susan, the girl,’ he queried.

  ‘Women aren’t the same as they were when you and I were young, Patrick,’ said Dr Scher shaking his head sadly. ‘Shortening their skirts, cutting their hair, riding motorbikes, toting guns, as our friends the Americans say.’

  Patrick ignored Dr Scher’s teasing. His face darkened a little. ‘I know,’ he said. And then, after a moment, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Susan had something to do with her father’s death. Is that what you were thinking, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘I was thinking that she might be in danger. The young can be very confident, very sure of themselves, very sure that they can outwit enemies. Dr Scher is right. Freedom, to a certain extent, is rushing in very rapidly for these young girls. I often think of it. I see a big difference between the older girls that we have here in our school and their mothers, not so long ago. These girls speak their mind more readily, make more judgements, take more risks, ask advice less of the older generations.’

  Patrick thought about this for a moment. He had an enormous respect for the Reverend Mother’s judgement, but her words only made grow an inner conviction that Susan Mulcahy might have something to do with her father’s death. Her stony face had held no sorrow when looking down on the dead body of the poor unfortunate woman who had been her nurse. A pity he could not confront her with her father’s corpse, but it was a bit late for that now. The man was dead and buried.

  ‘It might be good to keep an eye on her, Patrick,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘She’s had a big struggle throughout her life to get her brains acknowledged. It has probably made her value intelligence rather too highly. Myself, if I had a few fairy godmothers under my rule, I’d prefer them to hand out the gift of common sense to the little princesses of the future.’

  Dr Scher laughed, but Patrick thought that the Reverend Mother had spoken with her usual good sense and felt obscurely comforted by her words. He took out his notebook again and scrutinized it.

  ‘The women in the kitchen saw Mr Hayes leave, he came in and said goodbye to them and then they saw him go out, heard him crank up his car, so he did leave about half past four, and Mr Mulcahy was certainly alive then, but there is no real evidence of when McCarthy left the house, is there?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Didn’t he leave shortly after Hayes?’ asked Dr Scher. ‘I thought that he said he saw him.’

  ‘He said that he saw Mr Hayes’s car. I’ll send Joe to check, but I don’t suppose that Mr Hayes saw him. Mr McCarthy would have been on foot and well behind the car. You don’t go looking over your shoulder when you are driving.’

  ‘The women heard Henry Mulcahy stump up the stairs, though. You said that, didn’t you, Patrick. Wouldn’t they have noticed a second pair of footsteps?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Patrick slowly. ‘Mr Mulcahy was an elderly man and he was also very heavy. I remember noticing his weight in your autopsy report, Dr Scher. Mr McCarthy is thirty years younger and a much lighter man, very agile, I thought. If he went upstairs with Mr Mulcahy, behind him, probably, up those very narrow stairs, I think that the noise of one set of footsteps would have blocked out the other set. The question is, did he have enough of a motive for murder.’

  ‘With a blow like that, I would, personally, never rule out either self-defence or accident,’ said Dr Scher. ‘Different with poison, different on the whole with a bullet or a knife. We’re all more primitive than we think. It comes easily to a man to snatch up a stick, after all it’s what people have been doing since back in the Stone Age. Whenever you see a picture of a man from those days, what do you notice about him? He’s dressed in animal skins and he has a club in his hand. And, now that we’ve progressed beyond the Iron Age, well that club or stick might well be an iron bar.’

  ‘So the two men might have an argument, a fight, tempers were lost, a blow, a fatal blow and then McCarthy, Mr McCarthy, decided to cover his tracks. He put the body into the handy trunk, slipped out into the back yard, fetched some skins – though perhaps they might have been in a bag, ready to be taken up to the tanning yard – anyway, he wedges the body in with them, closes the trunk and then slips quietly away, probably through the back door, would you say?’ Patrick brooded on that for a moment, gave a nod and made a few notes, headed with the word ‘CHECK’.

  ‘What did you think of him, Patrick, when you interviewed him?’ Dr Scher asked.

  ‘I thought he was a good-looking fellow. Smart, too. One of those fellows that like to guess why you’ve asked the question, almost before it’s out of your mouth.’ It had been quite an unpleasant interview. Patrick very much disliked being rushed and this man McCarthy had seemed to be rushing him, continually interrupting his question before he finished and continually saying, ‘I know why you asked that.’ He had wished to find a reason to detain the man a bit longer, but had run out of questions.

  ‘Quite good-looking and quick of wits.’ Dr Scher seemed to muse over that for a moment. ‘Odd that Miss Susan was so against the match that her father made for her, wasn’t it? What do you think, Reverend Mother? You know a lot about these young girls.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think of Susan Mulcahy as a young girl, more of a woman,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘She’s nineteen years of age, almost twenty, intelligent and determined. As to why she did not acquiesce to her father’s choice of husband for her; well, there are two reasons against it. The first should be sufficient. She didn’t love, didn’t even like the man, if she spoke the truth, and the second is that she has a different vision in front of her.’ The Reverend Mother thought about this for a moment, tried to put herself in the place of Susan Mulcahy and then shook her head firmly.

  ‘Marriage: to be a wife, under the complete power of a husband; children, perhaps one baby after the other for the next twenty, twenty-five years. Like her mother she could end up with a very large family. And her other choice …’ The Reverend Mother paused for another moment. Patrick wondered whether she was thinking back to over fifty years ago, to her own choice. Had she ever regretted it? The answer, he thought, was probably no. And somehow it seemed impossible to even think of St Mary’s Isle and the south side of Cork city without her presence. He listened respectfully as she continued firmly, ‘Her other choice was to use the gifts that God had given to her, the gifts of intelligence, tenacity, perseverance and to train these gifts so that they could be used in the service of mankind. Susan would, I feel, make a successful doctor and the world needs doctors of all sorts, women and men, all people who can empathize with their suffering brothers and sisters and who can help to alleviate their pain.’ She finished firmly, feeling slightly amused at the two respectful faces before her.

  ‘Doesn’t mean that she didn’t murder her father, though, does it?’ said Dr Scher breaking the moment’s silence. Patrick looked dubiously from one elderly face to another. What would the Reverend Mother say to that?

  ‘That, indeed, is quite possible,
’ she said calmly. ‘She may well have thought that it was her only way forward. She may have become desperate. What do you think, Patrick? Does desperation play a part in murder, or is anger more of a factor.’

  Patrick thought carefully about this, reviewing in his mind the murders that had occurred during his time in the Civic Guards. ‘I think that the murders committed because of anger are usually easier to solve,’ he said slowly. ‘Murders where someone is frightened, fear and anger, these ones are done without too much thinking about it.’ He struggled to express his feelings in the clear, succinct form that the Reverend Mother valued. He remembered when he was a child how she had told the class that he had something important to tell them about ants and how good he had felt, standing out there in front of everyone and seeing her go to the back of class and stand there, looking so interested. He had never forgotten that.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘a lot of deaths occur after closing time of the public houses. People drink and then … but, often when someone is desperate, they brood on things for a long time and they plan. Especially women. Women are great planners. Poison, mostly, that’s the easiest way to get rid of someone. Very hard to know who gives poison. They could be out of the house at the time, it’s a difficult one to convict on. Some murderers are very clever, some are stupid; some plan and some do it on the spur of the moment.’

  The Reverend Mother, he thought, was thinking hard, but she said nothing.

  ‘And this hitting a man on the back of the neck with a heavy club of some kind, or an iron bar, what would say about that, Patrick. Does it seem like a “spur of the moment” murder or a planned murder?’

  ‘I’d say “spur of the moment” murder,’ said Patrick. Suddenly his mind seemed to have cleared. ‘It all fits,’ he said. ‘The man said something, refused something, perhaps Susan asked again about going to university. Her father said no, told her to put it out of her head, once and for all. He turned aside, that would fit the character of the man, wouldn’t it? He said no and then turned aside to show that he was not even going to discuss it any longer, perhaps he went to pick up something from the floor, after all they were cleaning the place out, getting it ready to be auctioned with vacant possession, so he could have bent down to put something in the trunk or to throw it into the fireplace and she was so furious that she snatched up a bar or a stick of some sort and hit him hard, may not even have meant to kill him. But she’s a cool type. Once she saw that he was dead, perhaps felt his pulse, well, then she decided to cover up the murder, get rid of the body. Mr Hayes had told them that the men would be around in half an hour to collect the stuff for the auction so she would have to work fast.’

  ‘What about the skins packed around the body? Where did she get them?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘From the yard, of course. They were clearing up there, herself and Bridie. If she is as clever as you seem to think, Reverend Mother, then she would work out that she couldn’t afford to have the body roll or move in the trunk. So she rushed down, got a few skins, crept up the stairs again and then packed him in solidly, wrote a label saying “Old School Books” and then went back downstairs again to join Bridie and her mother.’

  ‘You’ve questioned the mother, of course?’

  ‘Joe did that, on the first evening. According to their report, they stayed together, all three, in the kitchen, until the auctioneer’s men arrived. Then Susan took them upstairs and showed where everything was. It had been all labelled.’

  ‘And the handwriting on the trunk label?’ asked the Reverend Mother.

  Patrick shook his head, glad that she had asked that. It reminded him of how thorough he had been.

  ‘That’s the trouble. That doesn’t fit. Doesn’t match anyone’s handwriting. I’ve taken samples from the five people who were in the house at the time. But it looks like an assumed hand. That very fancy full stop with an empty space in the middle of it.’

  ‘And the dead man, Henry Mulcahy, himself?’ asked Dr Scher. ‘Could he have written it?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t his. There are plenty of account books in the office in the front room. No resemblance at all. I’ve even sent Joe down to the auctioneer’s place to get samples from him and his foreman. It doesn’t match any of them, no resemblance.’

  ‘And the brother, young Fred?’ the Reverend Mother put the question in an absent-minded way. She appeared to be thinking hard.

  ‘No, Reverend Mother, no, it wasn’t Fred’s either. It’s a strange, fancy sort of handwriting and that full stop, like a little circle, with a dot in the middle of it. You’d think that handwriting like that could have been identified, but we haven’t managed to do it. None of the women remember any talk of school books, in fact …’ Patrick leafed through his notebook again. ‘Yes, here it is, something Joe told me, he asked about the label and Bridie said the master would never have sold them school books with all the young ones still to be educated. “Never, in a month of Sundays”. That’s what she said to Joe.’

  ‘You said something like that to me, didn’t you, Reverend Mother?’ said Dr Scher.

  The Reverend Mother said nothing. Her face bore the expression of someone who is thinking hard, thought Patrick. Perhaps she was impatient at all this talk about labels. What did the label matter? What mattered was hard evidence. He had a moment’s regret that so far his conclusions, his gut instinct, seemed to be leading him to Susan. He would have much preferred it to be McCarthy. He didn’t like having a woman found guilty of murder. There was something horrible about it.

  Still, as the superintendent often said to him, he wasn’t there in the Civic Guards to pick and choose, he wasn’t there to be popular either. First thing to get out of your head, the superintendent told him cheerfully on his first day at the barracks, was that you’ll keep any friends. He was there to make sure that the law of the land was kept. And when there was a crime, he was to gather evidence, ‘without fear or favour’ was the superintendent’s expression. He was to weigh up that evidence carefully and then hand it all over to the lawyers and forget about it. Give his evidence and let the judge make the decision.

  Nevertheless, he thought, he would once again send Joe up around Shandon Street and try to find evidence that McCarthy had been seen coming out of the house at a later hour, then he had said. Not half past four, but later, even five minutes later, would be enough to cast suspicion on him. The women, all three of them, had said that they heard Mr Mulcahy go upstairs, almost straight after the auctioneer had closed the front door behind them. None of them had heard the door close again, but they had reckoned that Mr McCarthy had gone out with Mr Hayes. That had not been his story, though. And Mr Hayes said that he had been alone. And, according to Mr McCarthy, himself, he stayed behind for a few minutes to have a quick word with Mr Mulcahy and then he had left. He had seen the Ford car turn a corner, that’s what he had said.

  ‘About two minutes to start up the car and get it going up that steep hill, what do you think, Dr Scher?’ he said aloud.

  ‘More or less. Yes, you could say that,’ said Dr Scher after a moment’s thought.

  Patrick turned over to a fresh page.

  ‘Mr Hayes leaves at half past four, according to the evidence of the three women, the solicitor leaves a few minutes later, Mr McCarthy, by his own evidence, leaves about twenty-five or twenty to five, the three women in the kitchen go on scrubbing out the cupboards and wooden presses, and the big table, all ready to be taken to the auction. They say that they were busy and they didn’t hear anything after they heard Mr Mulcahy go upstairs. Susan said that there was a lot of noise going on. They were in the washhouse, off the kitchen, pumping up water from the old well so as to scrub the place out. I suppose that there would have been the noise of scrubbing brushes and the sound of the water filling up. They have a pump to an old well in that washhouse, although they have running water in the kitchen and upstairs. It’s an old house. All three of them were built about a hundred and fifty years ago. Susan sai
d that.’

  ‘And what time did the auctioneer’s men arrive?’ asked Dr Scher.

  ‘A bit late,’ said Patrick. This time he did not bother going through the ritual of consulting his notes. ‘They didn’t come until about ten minutes past five and they went straight up to that front room, the one where the trunk was lying and they took out the windows. They had ropes to lower the furniture and the trunk, of course, down onto the lorry. They were about an hour at it, in and out of the house.’

  ‘So the murder took place between half past four, approximately, and about quarter past five. And this means that one of four people must have done it. It must have been either one of the three women in the kitchen or Mr Richard McCarthy,’ said Dr Scher. ‘You’re very quiet, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘I was just thinking about handwriting,’ said the Reverend Mother.

  SIXTEEN

  Patrick Pearse

  ‘The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities of all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally …’

  Eileen knew who it was as soon as she came into the outer office of the printing works. She couldn’t see the face very well as the room was very dim and the windows covered in grime. When Eileen had first started work, in an excess of enthusiasm and determination to make a success of her first job, she had offered to wash the windows, but had been greeted by a shocked refusal. Later she understood. Many strange people came to the printing works, some smelled as though they had been lying out in the fields, some had a noticeable revolver bulging out a pocket, but all approached the door with great caution, wore their hats well pulled down over their eyes and did not remove them. Even when safely inside, they continually gave furtive glances over their shoulder. None of them wanted to be seen through a crystal clean, well-polished window. Nevertheless, she immediately recognized this visitor, the dowdy, old-fashioned skirt, the long hair bunched up behind the neck. At the funeral, she had thought that Susan was dressed as if she were one of her mother’s generation.