‘Know everyone, these fellows,’ said a friendly voice at her shoulder, and she looked around and then saw Professor Cyril Lambert. ‘He had my name and “representing the St Vincent de Paul Society of Cork” before I opened my mouth. It’s a gift, I suppose. Wish I had it. I’m always offending people that I should know by passing them by on the street without even a nod. Does that ever happen to you, Reverend Mother?’ And then as Patrick joined them, he asked him the same question.
‘I can’t say that it ever does,’ said Patrick after a moment’s thought. ‘But there are a lot of people who should know me and who slide away without a nod the minute they see me.’
Professor Lambert laughed uproariously at this mild joke, throwing his large head back in amusement. Joseph Fitzsimon turned his head at the sound and looked across grimly and then quickly away in an embarrassed fashion. The professor put a hand across his mouth.
‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘That was rather insensitive of me. And yet, do you know, Reverend Mother,’ he said with sincerity, ‘I deeply mourn her, probably more than most who are here – not many girls of that age would spend such a lot of their free time helping the St Vincent de Paul Society. All the ladies subscribed for a wreath for her and we put a card saying “from the poor of Cork” on it. We felt that was appropriate. And I’ve written a letter to the Cork Examiner expressing my sorrow, and my appreciation of all that Angelina Fitzsimon did for those so much less fortunate than she. It should be in today’s paper.’
‘That was kind,’ said the Reverend Mother appreciatively. Everyone who was anyone in the city of Cork read the Cork Examiner from cover to cover. This letter would pay a fitting tribute to the girl who had everything, but still was moved to pity by those who had little or nothing. She looked at the professor, noticing how all that approached near to him tended to sidle away when exposed to the flaring pimpled skin across his face – it was, she acknowledged, hard to be natural with someone as disfigured as he, but nevertheless the effort had to be made. He was such a kind man who spent his inherited money on making life more bearable for the poor of Cork. She made up her mind. This was a man who could tell her some more about that elusive figure, Angelina Fitzsimon.
‘Do you think that I could beg a lift back to the house from you, Professor, if you are going there just now,’ she asked. Long years as a Reverend Mother had made her accomplished at asking small favours and he immediately and enthusiastically agreed and went off to fetch his car, telling her that he would wait for her at the gates to the cemetery. She sent a message to Dr Scher by Patrick – she could see him deep in conversation with a man whom she guessed, by his deeply tanned face, to be the tea-planter from India. Let him worm out the gossip about this projected marriage. She would indulge herself in understanding a little more about the personality of the dead girl.
Professor Lambert’s car was not in any way as comfortable as Dr Scher’s. Still, she told herself while edging irritably away from the ill-fitting window behind her neck, he was popularly reputed to spend most of his salary on charitable works. He was the president of the St Vincent de Paul Society and responsible for much of the fundraising initiatives, related to the Crawfords, she seemed to remember, but the Crawfords had been prolific breeders of large families, and old money doesn’t last as long as pride in family.
‘How did you first meet Angelina Fitzsimon?’ she asked as they drove away. At least he was a competent driver and they bounced along in his tinny little car at a sensible speed and remained on their own side of the road.
‘She came to see me, I had taught her brother and she made that an excuse when introducing herself. She came to my office in the university. She was a very nice girl, very serious, very determined. Clever, too, I would have thought, much cleverer than the brother.’
‘I suppose,’ said the Reverend Mother acidly, ‘it never occurred to anyone that she might have made the better doctor if she were the one to study medicine.’
He gave her a startled glance, but then nodded. ‘She may have done. You’re probably right. She was very interested in disease. In fact, she helped me a lot with my notes about tuberculosis in Cork. I was collating the sufferers into a house by house, and street by street …’
‘But she didn’t visit houses; you said that, didn’t you?’ Angelina, thought the Reverend Mother, had had the courage to defy her father and to visit her mother in that living hell to which he had consigned her. Surely a girl like that would not hesitate to meet the people who tried to live their lives while being ground down with such poverty.
Professor Lambert gave her an uneasy glance and then turned back to the road again. ‘Her father would have been very against anything like that,’ he said obliquely and she did not pursue the question – in fact, she was sorry that she had asked it and began to placate him with praise of the work done by the St Vincent de Paul Society, telling him about various pet schemes of hers to educate the poor of the city in order to extract them from the fate that seemed to be theirs from the moment in which they were born.
‘But, of course,’ he pointed out, ‘while this is wonderful for some, for the clever girls, you are omitting, on the whole, to change the fate of those who are not interested in education or who are unintelligent or light-minded. If they are a Crawford, or a Woodford, or a Barry, but they are not too academic, then they play tennis, listen to jazz, go to the cinema, to parties, but if they belong to the slums, then it is just the last straw in sinking them to their fate. Work needs to be set up for these people. Have you ever seen the line of dockers down on the quays, all queuing up, standing there from morning to night, hoping against hope that they will be the ones chosen for an unloading job …?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said, struggling against a feeling of irritation. She was used to praise, to people telling her how wonderful she was. No one had ever dared before to tell her that she was not doing enough. She thought of Nellie O’Sullivan and sighed. Nellie had got a job in a public house, but how long would that last, and what would it fit her for in the future?
‘Thomas Aquinas said justice should be for all – that to be part of the community meant that you were responsible for that community,’ she said, forcing herself to be fair to him – the odd girl, the one in a hundred, like Catty Cotter educated in cookery in the kitchen that she was so proud of, might get a job with someone like Mrs O’Leary, but what was she doing about the ninety-nine who could find nothing in their native city? She put the thought aside for the moment and said, ‘Tell me some more about Angelina – she seems an interesting girl.’
‘Angelina Fitzsimon was something special, you know,’ he said, and the gravity of his tone and the deep voice in which he uttered the words touched her heart.
‘Why?’ she asked, imbuing the monosyllable with a touch of indifference.
‘Well, how many young ladies of her background would concern themselves with the poorest of the poor?’ he said. ‘She was a wonderful girl. I don’t pretend to know of all of her thoughts, of everything that went on in her head – and I suppose like all of us she could have been easily led astray by a plausible tale, but she was a person of integrity and honour.’ His voice shook slightly and it was apparent that the idea of the murder of this girl had upset him greatly.
‘You make me sorry that I never made her acquaintance,’ said the Reverend Mother and her sincerity of tone slightly alarmed her.
Luckily, he saw nothing strange in her fervour. ‘Probably I, and my assistants at the St Vincent de Paul, saw the real Angelina,’ he said earnestly. ‘It was difficult to get to know her properly, though. She was a reserved girl and she – one should not say this, perhaps – but she was quite unlike either her father or her brother. I would not be surprised, Reverend Mother, if she wanted to get away from them.’ And then he stopped and she got the impression that he felt he had said too much as his lips closed tightly and he spoke of commonplaces until he reached the house where Angelina had grown to maturity.
H
e allowed her to get out by herself and she missed Dr Scher’s gallantry as she pushed open the awkwardly hung front passenger door and struggled on to the flagstones. They were among the many to return to the house from the funeral, but an efficient butler appeared almost immediately and ushered them inside.
The funeral meats were spread out on the large long table in the dining room and the folding doors were thrown open between that and the drawing room. She remembered that table, remembered meals at it when she was young girl, remembered the easy conversation, the deference with which Robert and his brother, Edmond, and Angela, also, treated her father and their fond indulgence of his motherless daughter and especially of Lucy, the pet of them all. This was over fifty years ago, she thought, but the Royal Navy patterned blue-and-white china had still survived and was piled high with small and delicately designed morsels which could be eaten with the hand. The table was lined down the centre with decanters of various types and blends of strong liquor and already the servants were bringing in steaming teapots and coffee pots.
‘Did Angelina’s father approve of her charitable works?’ she asked after accepting a hot cup of deliciously scented tea from a polite parlour maid, well outfitted in lace apron and cap. They withdrew into the alcove formed by a bay window and her question, she thought, would be unheard.
The professor gave her a slightly comical look, half mischiev-ous and half appraising.
‘Well, fathers have great notions for their daughters, especially when they are only daughters,’ he said in the diplomatic tones of one used to living with two cultures – those who have and those who have nothing and desperately need some charity from the first class.
‘I see,’ said the Reverend Mother, taking a cautious nibble from one of the sweetmeats enticingly displayed on the small table beside them. She could see, and the side of her that still remembered her own girlhood as the indulged daughter of a wealthy merchant could just imagine how Joseph Fitzsimon had not wanted his daughter to become involved in anything that might spoil her matrimonial chances. It was, she thought, trying to be fair, hard to blame him. These merchant princes of Cork city were practising and assiduous Roman Catholics to the man. There was none of this new and dangerous talk of birth control – families were large – fourteen or fifteen children that lived to maturity were not in any way unusual where there was plenty of money to feed the offspring and procure them medical attention in the case of illness. But of course, many of their sons had fought in the army and navy during the Great War and had been killed. This meant that there were plenty of girls in the matrimonial marketplace, to put it crudely.
Any girl that was different, that had odd interests like spending much of her free time and money in ministering to the poor, in collecting clothes for them, in talking to them, finding out their dreams and their aspirations – well, a girl like that might well not have found favour with the gilded youth of Cork city.
Like this boy, here, she thought as her eyes went to the figure of Gerald Fitzsimon as he entered the room. He would, she remembered, be about twenty-three years old. He was a handsome boy who had inherited the red-brown hair and the bright blue eyes of his father and was, perhaps, a good four or five inches taller. She had noticed that about the merchant princes of Cork – all of peasant origin. Generation by generation, good feeding had added inches to their offspring.
Professor Lambert’s eyes followed hers.
‘I wonder whether he mourns his sister,’ he mused and then looked at her as though slightly shocked at his own words. ‘Of course he does,’ he said eagerly replying to his own question. ‘It’s just that age. Sometimes, they make a point of hiding their feelings.’
There was no doubt that Gerald Fitzsimon was hiding his feelings – if, of course, he had any. He had a sullen expression on his face as he gazed haughtily around at the visitors who had attended his sister’s funeral and had been invited to partake of a meal, according to the custom, before they set off on the journey back to their own homes. He was a striking-looking young man though there were dark circles under his eyes and a few odd-looking lines of strain around his mouth. The few people who came up to him, murmuring the usual condolences, seemed to move away hastily leaving him gulping down his whiskey and staring morosely at the rain-sodden garden through the side window, near to theirs. The Reverend Mother made up her mind and, with a murmured excuse to Professor Lambert, she moved to his side.
‘You’re Gerald, Angelina’s brother,’ she said in the fatuous tones assumed by the elderly. ‘I knew your grandfather,’ she added and waited for his response to this. The boy’s nerves were on edge. Her attention was sharpened by the start he gave and the way he suddenly turned on her, spilling a drop of the whiskey he had just about lifted to his lips.
‘My grandmother,’ he stuttered and she wondered whether he just didn’t listen to elderly women, or whether his mind, at the moment, was focused on his Woodford grandmother and on the fortune that was now his. She didn’t bother to correct him, just gave him a warm smile. ‘You look very like your father, and your grandfather,’ she told him. ‘I would have known you anywhere.’
His eyes seemed to show a slight desperation and he looked around for an excuse to leave her, but she was too quick for him.
‘And where did you go to school?’ she asked, standing squarely between him and the window and keeping her eyes on him so that, without blatant rudeness, he could not get away from her.
‘At Clongowes, up in County Kildare,’ he muttered. ‘Would you like me to get you …?’
‘Clongowes,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘With the Jesuits – how you must have enjoyed that.’
‘Not really,’ he said abruptly. He had a slightly dissipated look around the eyes, though his skin was tanned and healthy, she thought, watching him tilt the last of the whiskey down his throat, and signal, abruptly, to the parlour maid for a fresh glassful. ‘I hated it, actually,’ he said in a tone of such rudeness that she guessed he had been drinking even before the funeral took place. ‘Don’t most people hate boarding school?’ he queried, taking another sip from the glass and facing her belligerently.
She left that question unanswered, though it was, she thought, a good one. It was interesting that Joseph had sent his son to boarding school just as he had been sent by his guardian, Robert Fitzsimon. What made them and others like them, who had wonderfully warm, comfortable, well-cared-for houses, library, billiard and table-tennis room, tennis court, everything to keep sons and daughters happy, send their children off to boarding school to be, in the main, unhappy there, while the children of the poor stayed in the miserable, overcrowded, damp, cold houses where homework and study was an almost impossibility?
‘You would have preferred to stay at home?’ she asked politely while he downed the rest of his whiskey.
He scowled at her. His inhibitions were fast vanishing with the alcohol that he was consuming. Soon she might see that real Gerald Fitzsimon behind the facade of young-man-about-town.
‘Not here,’ he said with disgust. He shook his glass as though to see whether there were any drops remaining and then looked at her defiantly. ‘I hate this place, too,’ he said. ‘There’s only one place in the world that I like and that’s Crosshaven – I’ve got a boat there, not a very good one – I’d like to buy myself a decent one, now …’
‘You like sailing?’ Like his grandfather, she thought. There was always a new and better boat that such men craved. Well, he would have had to make a great success of his profession or else marry money – sailing was an expensive hobby.
Now, of course, with the death of his sister, he was master of a good fortune. Woodford money was in a different category to the modest inheritance which would come to him eventually from his father.
‘I remember going out on a trawler for an all-night fishing trip,’ she said, chatting easily about the sea and telling him about her childhood holidays.
She had been talking in order to allow him to open up, but it almost se
emed as though the image was unbearable to him. He muttered something about getting her a sandwich and made his escape. She gazed after him thoughtfully. For a moment, the sullen, spoiled-boy look on his face had lifted and had been replaced by look of such yearning that it had almost hurt her to look at him. Was he thinking back into childhood holidays – was he remembering his sister, just two years younger than he? The look on his face had definitely been of longing, but then it had been replaced by a fixed mask of despair.
The Reverend Mother stayed where she was in the slightly withdrawn window alcove but looked straight across at Professor Lambert who was now wandering beside the laden table in the centre of the room and nibbling here and there like a pony put out to grass. He came as quickly and as directly as though he had been reeled in by her fishing line and once he had joined her she wasted no time.
‘You taught, or is it “teach”, the Fitzsimon boy – that’s right, isn’t it?’
He looked at her curiously. He was, she noted, quite unselfconscious about his terribly disfigured face. She supposed that over the years he had come to terms with the port-wine stain. ‘Gerald?’ he queried. ‘Yes, that’s right.’ He gave his booming laugh and then hushed himself quickly again. ‘Well, nominally, anyway. His name is down for my lectures. I’m Professor of Pathology – mainly I deal with diseases of the lungs and chest – these are my interests.’
‘But not Gerald’s?’
‘No,’ said Professor Lambert, ‘though, to be fair, I don’t think he attends many lectures at all.’
She absorbed this silently. Dr Scher had said more or less the same thing.
‘So why is he studying medicine?’ she asked. ‘Why not something that he is interested in? Is there anything that he is interested in?’ Probably, she thought, the boy’s record at school was poor and the medical course was too hard for him. It was, she thought impatiently, a stupid system where a boy of mediocre ability, pushed by his father into studying a difficult subject like medicine, would be accepted by the university and children with brains would be rejected because their parents did not have the money to pay the fees and to maintain them.
A Shameful Murder Page 15
