A Shameful Murder

by Cora Harrison

  ‘A disguise, you mean?’ Eileen had immediately grasped the point, but then she giggled again. ‘I don’t think I could ride pillion on a motorbike, or in the back of a Crossley Tender in all that rig-out.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ said the Reverend Mother and she saw Eileen look at her curiously.

  ‘You’re thinking of someone else, not of me, aren’t you?’ she said with all the quickness that had made her the most rewarding pupil that the Reverend Mother had ever taught.

  ‘That’s right, I’m thinking of someone else.’

  ‘Someone in danger?’

  ‘I think,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘that she might be in deadly danger.’ Her mind went to the man who had given the ether to Mary O’Sullivan, was on the point of strangling her when he had spotted the drain cover in the cellar under the Imperial Hotel and who had sent her to a certain and terrible death down there in the flooded sewers. If this man realized that he had murdered the wrong girl, then Angelina Fitzsimon was a living threat to his life and to his liberty. She looked thoughtfully at the intelligent face in front of her. A girl who not only had brains, but who had learned to keep a secret, learned to hold the lives of her friends within her hands.

  ‘And you want to hide her? Are hiding her already?’ Eileen was certainly quick.

  The Reverend Mother shook her head. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she admitted.

  Eileen leaned back on her chair, tilting it dangerously, and put her be-slippered feet on to the edge of the range.

  ‘They’ll burn,’ pointed out the Reverend Mother, sniffing the slight smell of scorch that rose about the aroma of steamed pudding. She was about to tell Eileen not to tilt her chair, but stopped herself. Their relationship was not now that of teacher and pupil, but more of fellow conspirators, she thought with a qualm of conscience.

  ‘It’s all right – not as if they’re my boots,’ said Eileen absent-mindedly and then a minute later, in a different tone of voice, ‘Do you remember the time when I was in your chapel and you were pouring that communion wine down me, and then later on, in your study, you asked me whether that girl reminded me of anyone?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, ‘And I thought, later on, when my wits were coming back to me, that you wouldn’t ask me that for nothing.’ She smiled a little and looked across at the nun. ‘You always used to do that,’ she said with a certain note of affection in her voice which surprised the Reverend Mother. ‘You used to prompt us to find something out for ourselves by asking a question, by acting dumb. It was one of your little tricks. Well, you’re right, of course. Yes, she did remind me of someone. It was Mary O’Sullivan, wasn’t it? I remember her eyes – eyes like a doll’s I used to think. I remember when we were little kids, in second class, I’d say; well, some of us were doing Pana, going down Patrick Street – it was Christmas time and we saw this doll in the window of Dowden’s and I said to Mary: “That doll has eyes like you.” She was ever so pleased.’

  The Reverend Mother was conscious of a pang. The display in Dowden’s shop window would probably be the nearest that Eileen and her eight-year-old friends would ever have got to a doll. She remembered a doll of her youth that had come from Dowden’s – a lady doll with a magnificent wardrobe of clothes. She had never liked it much.

  ‘Funny, when I was young I always wanted blue eyes,’ said Eileen in a nonchalant fashion that seemed to indicate that now, at the age of seventeen, she was quite satisfied with her own grey eyes. The tone in which she made the remark was slightly absent-minded, though, and after a short silence, in which she shifted her steaming feet to the bar of the range, she said thoughtfully: ‘So was the dead body Mary O’Sullivan’s?’ And then, when the Reverend Mother didn’t answer, she said with professional breeziness: ‘Anything that we discuss will be private. I promise not to give the story to the newspapers until you give me the word.’ Her eyes were sparkling with interest – no doubt she would make a great story of it all eventually. It was somewhat sad that she could contemplate the death of one of her former classmates so easily, but many had already died from tuberculosis or other diseases or disappeared without trace.

  Eileen had always been a trustworthy girl and the Reverend Mother decided to follow her instincts.

  ‘It must be kept secret because it’s important that the man who murdered the girl, whoever she was, is caught before he does the same thing again,’ she said and Eileen nodded emphatically.

  ‘The story will be none the worse for the keeping,’ she said and then, quite quickly, ‘so, if the murdered girl is Mary O’Sullivan, where’s the other girl, where’s Angelina Fitzsimon?’ There was another silence. The Reverend Mother kept her eyes fixed on the stove and waited. And the response came with lightening quickness.

  ‘You have her hidden at the convent; she’s wearing a veil and all the rest of the rig-out.’

  ‘Not my convent,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘She wasn’t one of my girls, Eileen.’

  As soon as she got back to the convent, the Reverend Mother lifted the phone. ‘Montenotte two, three,’ she said into it, grimaced slightly as the woman at the exchange recognized her voice and she had to endure several minutes’ conversation before being put through. However, a moment later Lucy answered the phone.

  ‘Your granddaughters all went to the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, Lucy, didn’t they?’

  There was a silence at the other end of the phone. Lucy, thought the Reverend Mother with amusement, would be trying to work out what her cousin really wanted. She put her question and got a cautious answer.

  ‘Difficult woman – French, you know. I don’t know why the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock has to go to France to choose a mother superior.’

  ‘You don’t care for her?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that – most of the parents find her difficult to deal with. Even you would find it hard to bring that one around your thumb.’

  The Reverend Mother smiled to herself in the darkness of the back hallway and then asked the important question.

  ‘What’s she like with the girls, with her pupils?’

  Lucy’s voice became more enthusiastic. ‘Oh, as to that you couldn’t fault her. She’s very good with them and they respect her advice immensely – would listen to her more than to their mothers and fathers, according to Susan. She takes a great interest in them, even when they’ve left school. Why do you want to know, anyway? She wouldn’t take one of your girls, you know. She’s very much of the aristocrat – she would have no interest in one of them, no matter how clever they are, or how much you think that they would benefit from a boarding-school education.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said the Reverend Mother vaguely.

  ‘About that matter we were discussing the other day,’ said Lucy, her voice changing subtly. She seemed to choosing her words carefully – no doubt, there were some listening ears. ‘It was likely that the story we were talking about is entitled “The Lawyer, the Doctor and the Man who Needed Money” – an unholy trinity, don’t you think?’

  ‘I see,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘Thank you, Lucy. Sounds like a good title for a crime novel.’

  So, if she understood Lucy’s words correctly, there definitely was a conspiracy to get control of the former Anne Woodford’s money – her lawyer and her doctor had gone into alliance with her husband. No doubt Rupert had picked up the story at that gossips’ marketplace, the golf club, and had entrusted it to his wife under a veil of secrecy.

  TWENTY

  St Thomas Aquinas:

  Idea est regula cognoscendi et operandi.

  (An idea is the rule of knowledge and of action.)

  The Reverend Mother sat very upright in the back of the taxi on the way to the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock and listened indifferently to the driver’s prediction of what the high tide of midnight would bring to the city. She had more important matters on her mind than worrying about floods, she thought, but allowed him to continue while she pondered ov
er the idea that had suddenly come to her.

  ‘A few missing streets in the morning,’ he said gloomily. ‘That’s what I’d guess, Reverend Mother. We’ll find the South Mall a river and the Grand Parade will be no better. As for Patrick Street, well, that’s already gone under water. You’re all right there on St Mary’s of the Isle, aren’t you? And of course, anyone outside the city and on the hill – well, it’s just a day off work for a lot of them, isn’t it. Though I have heard tell that Ford’s factory is going to dock the pay of those that don’t arrive at work at eight o’clock in the morning, did you hear that, Reverend Mother? But of course not everyone is like Ford’s – Americans they are. Still perhaps you can’t blame them. All very well for them that can stay at home nice and warm and dry, but people like myself have to be out and about. Flooded my engine the last time, it did. Filthy water, too. Had to have a day at the garage where they took everything out and dried it. Cuts into the profits, that sort of thing, Reverend Mother.’

  The Reverend Mother made a suitable and automatic rejoinder to all those predictions of gloom and doom and thought her own thoughts. She was going over her reasoning, sure that she was right but determined to check the evidence. And remembering the young reporter from the Cork Examiner on the day of the funeral and his assiduous work in noting names, she thought that she probably was correct.

  He had written her down as representing the community at St Mary’s of the Isle, but that was not all. There was a long line of names in the paper the following day representing all of the great and good of Cork: civic guards; the Lord Mayor; the town council; the breweries – all three of them, Murphy, Beamish and Crawford; wool merchants; butter market group; importers of tea; corn merchants; the professor of medicine representing the university (a compliment to Gerald, or to his father who paid the fees); Professor Lambert representing the Society of St Vincent de Paul; Canon O’Connor representing the injured Bishop of Cork and so on.

  But there had been one notable absence.

  Angelina Fitzsimon, the girl who had been buried, who had been born and brought up in Blackrock, had been a pupil at the Ursuline Convent in that village – at least during her teen years – the photographs in the lobby of her father’s house testified to that.

  And yet there had been not a single representative of the Ursuline nuns present at the funeral. The Reverend Mother was sure of that. She had been the only nun present.

  And she could think of only one reason to account for it.

  The Reverend Mother of the Ursuline Convent was a relatively young woman, she thought, in her forties – of French origin, though she spoke English with the slightly sing-song intonation of the people of Cork city. Reverend Mother Aquinas had met her on a few occasions and formed the impression of a woman of very strong faith, rather partaking of the Jansenist movement, with its fanaticism and its rigidity: a woman to whom truth would have been of the utmost importance, a woman who would not have told a lie, or allowed herself to seem to condone a lie. And although a woman who, according to Lucy, was devoted to her pupils’ interests, in the circumstances, Mother Isabelle would not, could not, have attended that funeral – an act which, to her, would seem to have sanctioned an untruth.

  The Reverend Mother mused upon this as the taxi passed Ballintemple, went on down to Blackrock, turning up the road towards the castle and then swinging around and driving through the ornate gates to traverse the avenue that led up to the Ursuline Convent where the nuns boarded and educated the young ladies of Cork city and those from its county. She herself had been at school here more than fifty years ago and she felt that she had received a good education for the era.

  The convent nuns were at supper when she arrived. Refusing the seclusion of a chilly parlour, Reverend Mother Aquinas opted to wait near to the front door. She strode up and down the long corridor and examined the photographs, neatly labelled and arranged in calendar years, and hanging in groups on the walls.

  Angelina Fitzsimon featured prominently in most of the photographs of three years previously. Starring in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta; holding a silver cup presented for excellence in mathematics; lined up in the centre of the lacrosse team as their captain; and looking businesslike in goggles, standing behind a row of Bunsen burners in the new science laboratory for the school. Yes, Angelina’s years at the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock had been happy and successful. Reverend Mother began to hope that her hunch, based on Eileen’s impulsive action of seeking refuge from her former school and headmistress, was going to prove true. She began to plan her strategy. The woman, Reverend Mother Isabelle, she guessed from what she knew of her, would not lie, so the way forward should probably be a direct one.

  Mother Isabelle was no easy opponent, though. She professed herself overwhelmed with pleasure to receive the Reverend Mother from St Mary’s of the Isle, insisted on sending for refreshments and taking her in to sit by the fire. When the question about whether she had seen or had any knowledge of the whereabouts of a missing girl was put to her, she became very wary. She took refuge in a whole series of vague statements, emphasizing her respect for the law and her strict adherence to its dictates and talking so fluently and at such length that it was difficult to edge in another question. When pressed a little too hard she took refuge in her supposed lack of English and pretended not to understand so the Reverend Mother, who had profited from that year spent in Bordeaux with her cousins when she was seventeen, immediately switched into fluent French and put the question again.

  ‘I was surprised not to see you at the funeral,’ she said, and approved the challenging note in her voice.

  Mother Isabelle sat a little straighter at that and there was a spark of anger in the fine eyes. ‘I don’t understand you, Mother,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘I remarked on the fact that you did not attend the burial service for Angelina Fitzsimon,’ said the Reverend Mother affably. ‘At least that was what the Canon of Blackrock called it. But you and I know differently,’ she added. ‘Perhaps I should give you a few facts before inviting your confidence in me,’ she continued after the silence between them had stretched beyond normality. ‘As far as I am concerned, Miss Angelina Fitzsimon has a perfect right to live here if she found her father’s house to be unpleasant, or even threatening. I can speculate about her reasons for disappearing. There might have been things said, efforts to force her into a marriage that was not to her taste, threats to interpret her natural distress and anger as a sign that she was going insane – and she had her mother’s fate of being incarcerated in an asylum before her,’ she finished in a low voice. She was not sure whether Mother Isabelle knew about Angelina’s visits to the lunatic asylum, but she guessed that she probably did. Her face had changed when she mentioned the asylum and her bloodless lips had tightened.

  ‘What is it you want from me?’

  ‘Two things: two things only. I want to know that Angelina is safe with you and, if possible, to speak with her.’ She said the words firmly. Mother Isabelle was not a woman for weaknesses, or one who would respond to pleading. She had to earn her respect.

  ‘But first let me tell you what I think happened,’ she continued. ‘Angelina Fitzsimon, in the course of her charitable work for the St Vincent de Paul Society, came across a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, almost her double.’ She eyed Mother Isabelle and saw the spark of interest in the woman’s eyes.

  ‘So much so …’ continued the Reverend Mother and then paused delicately. Mother Isabelle was nodding.

  ‘Just what I thought myself,’ she murmured obscurely. ‘Could almost have been twins apparently – it does happen sometimes, that the sire’s prepotency …’

  ‘Just so,’ said the Reverend Mother briskly. The French, she thought admiringly, no matter how genteel, how religious, do seem to know the facts of life.

  ‘Angelina had reasons to hide from her family for a few months, until she reached the age of twenty-one and had control over her own life and over her fortune,’ she sai
d bluntly and was rewarded by another nod.

  ‘And you were fond enough of her to help her in this. Perhaps,’ she said, feeling her way, ‘perhaps, indeed, you were the one who suggested it.’

  The statement seemed to melt the resistance. Madame Isabelle threw out her hands in a very theatrical movement.

  ‘I said to her, “Ma chérie,” I said to her, “why not make a little retraite – take the veil for a few months, no one will know, here you will be a postulant sent from another convent, sent for your health to be near to the sea. None of the sisters will question this.”’

  It was well thought of. The Reverend Mother had to admit that. A postulant took the veil for a maximum of six months – after that they either left the convent or made preliminary vows and became a novice – and the excuse about being near to the sea was a good one, not that, she imagined, any of Mother Isabelle’s nuns would dare question their superior on any point.

  ‘It was very cleverly arranged,’ she said with sincerity. And then, ‘Could I speak with her, Mother Isabelle? I mean her no harm, but there is some information that she can give. You understand, this other child, the girl who was buried in her place, her name was Mary O’Sullivan; well, she was one of my pupils and …’

  ‘I will fetch her myself,’ said Mother Isabelle graciously.

  It was the nun’s robes, she thought as the woman entered, closed the door behind her and almost instantly turned the key in the lock. The uniform made sure that they all looked the same. Angelina was probably almost forty years younger than Mother Isabelle, but for a moment she had thought it was the same woman. And then she raised her eyes and even in the dimness of the one meagre gas lamp the Reverend Mother could see that they were of a rich blue, the colour of bluebells.

  With one swift movement she removed veil and wimple, both together, took out a couple of pins and tumbled her chestnut hair around her shoulders. And there was now no doubt that the two girls were almost identical in appearance, but not, she thought, close up, and not to someone who knew Angelina well. The eyes might be the same colour, but their direct gaze, their intelligence was not shared with the girl’s half-sister, if her former teacher’s memory of Mary O’Sullivan was correct.