A Shameful Murder

by Cora Harrison

  There was a looking-glass hanging opposite the window – an attempt to bring light into the dark parlour – and the Reverend Mother, under the cover of the noisy entrance of the tea trolley, crossed over to it. She fumbled in the top drawer of the chest below and surreptitiously studied her face in it while Sister Bernadette poured tea and cut cake and giggled at Dr Scher’s jokes and teasing. After a minute, she looked much the same as usual, she thought. Once past seventy perhaps you didn’t show feeling too much – the same pale, oval face beneath the encasing wimple that had looked back at her for over half a century, the same heavy-lidded green eyes, the straight nose of which she had been proud once, and the eyebrows, still dark, still arched with that slightly haughty expression.

  She glanced at an envelope from the drawer, closed it and resumed her seat, taking a cautious sip from the orange-coloured tea. She waited until Sister Bernadette, with an apologetic glance at Dr Scher, faded rapidly from the room.

  By now she knew that she could trust her voice so she asked casually: ‘What was her name? How old was she?’

  ‘Angelina Fitzsimons.’ That came out very quickly, but the answer to the second part of her question only came after he had meditatively chewed and then swallowed his slice of cake. ‘Apparently her father says that she is twenty, almost twenty-one,’ he said.

  She looked at him. It was an odd way to put something, she thought. She said nothing, though. Long experience with garrulous people like Dr Scher had taught her that words came quicker in answer to silences.

  ‘And that was odd,’ he said slowly. ‘The age, I mean. I could have sworn that she was only about seventeen. Very thin girl. Only a few months gone in pregnancy; not enough for it to show. She would always have been thin, I think.’

  The Reverend Mother bowed her head. He was right. She had thought at the time, when she had been standing guard over the dead body, looking from Eileen’s glowing, plump cheeks and sturdy frame to the girl at her feet, that the child of the slums looked healthier and heavier than the girl dressed in expensive satin.

  ‘She may not have been very happy,’ she said quietly and wished that she had kept more of an eye on the family.

  ‘True, true. You can put the food on a plate but if the girl doesn’t want to eat, then you can’t force it. Did you notice the teeth?’

  ‘No,’ said the Reverend Mother. She slightly scorned herself for indulging in gossip, but she needed to know about this Fitzsimon girl and she bowed her head when he said succinctly, ‘Small and crooked.’

  Like the majority of our girls, here, she thought – that was why she had noticed nothing. Teeth like that were familiar. The children that attended her school lacked the calcium for their bones, had consumed none of the thousands of tons of cheese and butter exported from the city – exports that had made the fortunes of many of the prosperous families of Blackrock and Montenotte.

  ‘What killed her?’

  Dr Scher cut himself another slice of fruit cake and took a quick bite before answering. He shrugged then.

  ‘They’ll wrap it up at the inquest, but it was suicide, I suppose.’ He frowned and she waited until he had finished chewing. ‘Young Patrick – the sergeant – well, he’s not too sure – thinks it may be murder – he’s young and ambitious, of course. To solve a murder would bring him a pat on the back, but a suicide is nothing but a sad, three-day wonder and people will say that the civic guards should keep their thoughts to themselves.’

  ‘Why does Patrick think it may be murder; was it because of the bruise on the throat?’ Patrick was no windbag. He thought before he spoke. She had faith in his integrity. He would not twist facts to fit his convenience.

  ‘It’s because I found something in the stomach that surprised him – surprised both of us,’ said the doctor reluctantly. He took another bite of cake and chewed it with relish and then said indistinctly: ‘It was ether – there was ether in the stomach.’

  ‘The stuff they give to get a tooth out?’ She was puzzled. Perhaps Patrick was right – perhaps the girl had been killed by this.

  Dr Scher had read her thoughts and was shaking his head. ‘Only enough to make her slightly woozy, slightly light-headed, a little sick perhaps. Medical students often steal this stuff, have parties with it, make cocktails with it, give it to girls – good as alcohol and cheaper. Someone gave it to her, perhaps, or she took it herself. Her brother is a medical student. He would have been able to get his hands on it. Well, I’d better be going.’ He got to his feet, dusting the crumbs from his hands on to Sister Bernadette’s elegant tray.

  ‘You’ll keep what I told you to yourself, won’t you?’ he said as she rang the bell for the lay sister to show him out. ‘Yes, of course, you will.’ He had answered his own question before she could say anything. ‘I dare say that you have half the secrets of Cork city wrapped up in that head of yours. Nothing like a nun to keep a secret – that’s what I always say.’

  She waited until she heard the voices cease. The heavy door slammed and Sister Bernadette’s slippers shuffled back to the kitchen. Only then did she rise from her chair, go out into the corridor, lift the phone and say into it: ‘Montenotte two, three, please.’ She would, of course, say nothing on the phone. The people at the telephone exchange had a reputation for eavesdropping on conversations and there was a strong possibility that Lucy’s opulent home would have one or two extensions to the telephone within it.

  I hope that Lucy is at home, she thought. At least her cousin’s husband, a prosperous lawyer, would be safely ensconced in his office on the South Mall at this time of the day. There would be no danger that she would have to exchange platitudes with him or wonder, all the time that she spoke, whether he was listening in the background.

  Lucy was at home – she would be on a miserable day of fog and floods, thought the Reverend Mother with amusement as she waited for the maid to summon her. Lucy was rather like an expensive white Angora, a well-fed, pretty cat with large blue eyes. Yes, she would definitely be by the fire today. She would not be anxious to be summoned forth. Well, it could not be helped.

  ‘Lucy, I want you to come over here this afternoon; I have something that I must talk to you about,’ she said crisply when the sleepy voice said her name.

  There was an enormous yawn, and then the objection. She had known that there would be one. ‘Oh, my dear, but the weather, and Rupert says that the whole city is flooded.’

  ‘Come around by College Road and then you should have no problems,’ said the Reverend Mother crisply and rang off before Lucy could suggest that it would be much better if her cousin could come out to Montenotte. To give Lucy her due, she would have offered chauffeur, car and everything, but the Reverend Mother had decided that a conversation in the convent could have much more privacy than in Lucy’s luxurious house with servants coming in and out and the possibility of an inquisitive ear pressed to a keyhole, or even of the master of the house returning early and joining in the conversation.

  In deference to her cousin, she gave orders for Sister Bernadette to build up the fire in her parlour and with her own hands placed an embroidered cushion and a warm rug on the easy chair in front of it. Lucy, she thought ruefully, had always been used to people cushioning her from the harsh realities of life. The tea, she hoped, would be perfectly to the taste of one who had sampled good food in most of the major cities of Europe. Rupert Murphy was not just a very successful lawyer, but he had inherited wealth from the great Murphy distilleries. It had been a very good match for anyone, especially for the orphaned seventeen-year-old, living under the protection of their cousins in Bordeaux.

  But then Lucy was pretty and men were attracted to her.

  When Lucy arrived the Reverend Mother was in the chilly front parlour, engaging in a polite battle with Mr Russell from the bookshop in Oliver Plunkett Street. He looked prosperous, and the word in the city was that the profits of his shop were good. The Reverend Mother dealt with him skilfully – assuming that he would be interested to g
ive her cut-rates, or even better, on some books for the advanced readers in her top class.

  ‘Of course,’ she said graciously, ‘I know the very high standards that you, and your father before you, have maintained and what I was about to suggest was that your assistants might possibly find on the shelves some shop-soiled articles that you could sell to us at a low price, or …’ She took a deep breath and at that moment heard the ring on the doorbell and Sister Bernadette’s ecstatic welcome to Mrs Murphy and Lucy’s light, lilting, still almost-childish tones. ‘Ah,’ she said, with a gracious smile, ‘Mrs Rupert Murphy has arrived. You know Mrs Rupert Murphy, I’m sure. She and her husband are so good about donating to our charities. But to go back to our business, I wonder whether there might be any possibility of even persuading you to donate some books.’ She put a query into her voice and moved towards the door.

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed!’ He was stammering with eagerness and she rewarded him by opening the door and saying aloud: ‘Oh, Mrs Murphy, how lovely to see you. And here is Mr Russell, who has just made such a generous donation to our school of some of his lovely books.’

  Lucy played her part as she had expected, offering a kid-gloved hand to Mr Russell, allowing him to inform her of the latest Galsworthy novel, just in and bound in red leather which she promised to tell her husband about, and then he allowed Sister Bernadette to usher him out once he had promised to send over a box of books that very afternoon.

  ‘How you do flirt with these men and you a Reverend Mother,’ said Lucy in an undertone. She peeped into the chilly parlour with dismay, but Sister Bernadette closed the door firmly on the bookseller and beaming with joy led the way into the Reverend Mother’s warm room, drawing out the easy chair and wheeling the trolley filled with refreshments over beside their guest before she managed to get herself out of the room. Lucy held out her well-creamed hands to the heat of the fire and then turned around sharply.

  ‘You’re looking at yourself in the mirror,’ she accused. ‘I haven’t seen you do that for a while.’

  ‘Just wondering if anyone would ever imagine that we were almost the same age – you’re looking well, Lucy.’

  Lucy preened herself. She had quite a cat-like face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her large blue eyes did not have the intensity of colour that they had when she was seventeen years old, but their lids had been touched with a dab of azure powder and her eyebrows were carefully pencilled. The Reverend Mother went across and turned the key in the door and then drew the heavy draught-excluding curtain over it. Lucy’s well-marked eyebrows went up but she said nothing, just turned her attention to the tea trolley. Carefully she poured out two cups of tea and added cream and sugar to her own.

  ‘Lucy,’ said the Reverend Mother, coming back and sitting down opposite her cousin, ‘a dead girl was found, washed up by the tide, outside the back gate here.’ She did not wait for a reaction and Lucy uttered none. She would know that there was more to come. The pretty, cat-like appearance always cloaked a keen brain. People said that Rupert Murphy took no step in any matter without consulting his wife and that inside that carefully tinted head of ash-blonde hair were most of the secrets of the wealthy of Cork.

  ‘Her name,’ said the Reverend Mother evenly, ‘was Angelina Fitzsimon. She was the daughter of Joseph Fitzsimon.’

  And then there was a very long pause. It was impossible to know what was going on behind the well-powdered face in front of her. Lucy sipped her tea; bit a small piece of icing from one of the tiny cakes arranged on the china plate. What was she thinking of? The images were passing through the Reverend Mother’s mind. Ballycotton, the road down to the harbour, Thomas’s sailing boat, the cliff walk, the caves, the two islands, one flat and rabbit-filled and the other tall and conical with the lighthouse crowning it. There must have been days of rain and fog, she supposed, but in her memory it was always sunny, the sea was always a dazzling shade of turquoise, the cliffs were covered in sweet-scented gorse and large blue butterflies thronged above the yellow flowers. Oddly, right through her life, that combination of blue and yellow always seemed, in her mind’s eye, to be the epitome of beauty. She heard a heavy sigh from her cousin and wondered whether Lucy’s thoughts had followed hers, or whether they had gone ahead to that time in Bordeaux with their cousins.

  ‘Do you see much of them – the Fitzsimons, of Joseph?’ she asked and for once she heard her voice, normally so decisive and calm, break in a timid fashion. She had often thought of asking that question, but had not liked to be the one to bring up the subject.

  Lucy had regained her composure. Her eyes hardened. She took another piece of cake and chewed it with what appeared to be genuine pleasure.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said decisively in clipped tones. ‘Nothing at all. Rupert doesn’t like him. There was a bit of a scandal about the way he treated his wife, you know, and not even the Woodford money could hush up that. Rupert thinks …’ She allowed her sentence to tail away and gave her cousin a sharp glance.

  ‘I see,’ murmured the Reverend Mother. Rupert, she thought, would do as his wife wished. If she did not wish for the acquaintance, then he would avoid the man. ‘Of course, you are up in Montenotte and he is down in Blackrock, so your paths wouldn’t cross too often,’ she finished.

  She had done her duty, had told her cousin the news. The Fitzsimons of Bordeaux, managing the wine part of the merchant business, had been the connection between them – just second cousins to them both. Edmund and Angela had been gentle and nice people, warm-hearted and generous, but they were both long since dead. She and Lucy had outlived most of their friends and relations. She studied her cousin’s determined face and decided that a secret would always be safe with her. But at least she had passed on the news.

  ‘It’s quite a mystery about this poor girl,’ she said conversationally. ‘It appears that she was at the Merchants’ Ball the night before …’

  FIVE

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Suicidium est contra inclinationem naturalem, et contra caritatem.

  (Suicide is against the natural inclination, and against love.)

  ‘Suicide?’ queried the Reverend Mother looking across at the young civic guard. She allowed the word to remain alone. She had no right to be cross-questioning Patrick. It had been politeness on his part that had brought him to the convent this afternoon to thank her for her help and to express a courteous wish that she had not caught cold while standing out in the freezing March wind and rain, waiting beside the body of the dead girl. He had, he was careful to explain, been just passing the convent after a visit to his mother who now lived, supported by her son, in a small cottage in the lane next to the convent.

  He gave a quick grin at her word. ‘You’ve had Dr Scher here, I see!’ And when she didn’t reply he said with a slight frown, ‘He’s keen on the notion – and so is the superintendent. So many of the girls that we fish out of the river are pregnant – and I suppose that some of them could be suicides – poor things!’

  It was the last two words that made the Reverend Mother take a step outside her normal caution. These words moved her. Patrick had not forgotten his origins and he had a look of someone who wanted an understanding ear. Like Thomas Aquinas, perhaps he thought that suicide was a reflection on those around the dead person, as each person ought to be able to love themselves – a sin against charity – but whose was the sin? A child had to be loved before they could feel love in return.

  ‘But you don’t agree with Dr Scher and the superintendent,’ she stated.

  ‘She was almost strangled,’ he said curtly. ‘Not enough to cause death, but even Dr Scher admits that it might have been enough to make her lose consciousness.’ He looked apologetically at her, but then stated firmly. ‘It would be a bit of a coincidence, Reverend Mother, if someone attempted to kill her and then she then went out and finished the job herself. Of course, the actual cause of death was drowning, but that doesn’t stop it being murder. If a man takes an unconscious girl and
throws her into the river, then he is guilty of murder.’

  The Reverend Mother nodded her approval of his reasoning. Patrick, she thought, with a trace of pride, would never take the easy way out.

  ‘Do you believe that the man thought he had killed her and then he threw her into the river?’

  ‘That’s very likely,’ said Patrick. ‘If we didn’t have an address for her – a name and address, we might think that perhaps he was walking her home. But the only way to Blackrock would have been to take a cab and to go east. The bad flooding only began at about two o’clock in the night – long after the ball finished at midnight. If she were someone else, then they might have gone along the South Mall and then across Parliament Bridge – the pavements were still above water at that stage. He might have thrown her over there. But, you see, Reverend Mother, this was a special night – the night of the Merchants’ Ball. We were prepared for a bit of trouble – that ball might be something that the Republicans would like to disrupt – anyway, we were ready for them. We had a few men patrolling Patrick Street, warning people of the flood that was expected, but at the same time keeping an eye open. And there was one of our men on duty outside the front door to the Imperial Hotel for most of night – until the ball was over – and he swears that no woman came out on her own – a few courting couples, he said, but that was all, until the main crowd left – and then there was a big swarm of them, all exclaiming about the floods. The girl must have been with someone who murdered her. I’ve got a couple of men questioning the taxis, but no one remembers her coming out. Her father and her brother were at the ball; the brother went off with friends from Blackrock who dropped him off at Bellamonte – that’s the name of the Fitzsimons’ place in Blackrock – and the father went home by his car – the chauffeur called for him.’