‘Mother Isabelle thinks that I can trust you.’ Her voice was not as exaggeratedly well bred as some of her class – just pleasant and low. The blue eyes were full of steadfast courage. She went across and poked the smouldering fire with an air of assurance, remarking that she hated being cold.
‘You joined the St Vincent de Paul Society. Professor Lambert told me that.’
‘That’s right; they do good work.’ Her voice seemed to be quite at ease now, but she still looked into the fire.
‘You took some food parcels to the families?’
‘Occasionally. Professor Lambert wasn’t keen that I should do so. I think he was afraid that my father would make a fuss. I was supposed to work at the shop, to sort clothes, put them in bundles for various ages. But I did get out sometimes. It was quite an eye-opener.’ She gave an unsteady laugh. ‘You will think me very ridiculous, Reverend Mother, but before I started that work, I was unaware of prostitution. I didn’t know that men paid women to … to have sex with them,’ she said firmly, but the Reverend Mother could hear from the note of strain in her voice, how much it cost her to say the words. She honoured the girl for her straightforwardness.
‘And sometimes these girls are very young, very hungry and very cold,’ she added softly and left a silence after her words.
The Reverend Mother, though concerned to show the girl that she was not shocked by her outspokenness, guessed that she would have a limited time before Mother Isabelle tapped on the locked door and so she pressed on. ‘And you met a girl who looked just like you,’ she prompted.
‘Yes, I met Mary.’
‘And when was that?’
‘It must have been about six months ago, probably September. I know there was terrible flooding – Professor Lambert had left a message for me not to go down Sawmill Lane or anywhere like that because the water had come into the houses and there was typhoid there, but there was a food parcel to be delivered so I went.’
‘And did you go on seeing Mary O’Sullivan?’
‘No, I didn’t see her for months after that, not until a few weeks ago.’ The girl’s voice had become hesitant. ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ she said. ‘The first time that I met her I didn’t really notice the resemblance so strongly, though I did notice her eyes, but then the second time, in the shop, as a matter of fact, I had just come in, had brought in a bundle of clothes and she was crying and one of the other women there told me that she was in trouble. I tried to cheer her up, took out a dress, out from my bag, it was one of mine, one that I had always liked, the colour matched my eyes. I held it up against her …’ Angelina hesitated for a moment. ‘There was a bathroom upstairs where we sometimes allowed the women to wash their children, wash themselves, so I took her up and I washed her hair. It was almost like having a doll again, but she loved it. She sat on a chair while I towelled it and combed it with a fine comb and when it dried and was clean – it just looked so like my hair. I was astonished. There was a small mirror there and I let her look at herself. And then she put on the dress and she did look so like me that we both laughed. We stood there, peering at ourselves in the mirror and laughing. I didn’t think anything of it then, but later that night I began to wonder.’
Reverend Mother said nothing. The next bit had to come from Angelina herself.
‘I wondered,’ she said with some difficulty, ‘whether we might actually be … whether my father … you know that my mother is in the asylum, so …’
‘I think your father had a name for seeking out prostitutes in these areas, in Cove Street, Douglas Street, Sawmill Lane, even well before your mother was taken off to the asylum,’ said the Reverend Mother in a straightforward fashion and felt a little sorry when she saw her wince. However, Angelina deserved the truth and she could not prevaricate in the face of the girl’s courage and her honesty.
She recovered quickly though, and said almost immediately: ‘So that’s where Mary O’Sullivan comes from; I suppose that I had an instinct that she was my sister – she has a mother, lots of sisters and brothers – no father, I think, and I’ve seen some of her younger sisters and they did not have the same hair or eyes as Mary.’
‘She was a pupil of mine, once,’ said the Reverend Mother.
‘Once …’ There was a minute’s silence before Angelina said sadly, ‘So it was poor Mary who was killed, wasn’t it?’
‘If she is the girl to whom you gave a ferry ticket, ten pounds, a bag full of clothes – well, yes, she is dead,’ said the Reverend Mother and bowed her head when Angelina said instantly:
‘And the police are trying to find out who wanted to kill her – kill me, I suppose?’ She did not sound too distressed or too surprised either. A girl of high courage, thought the Reverend Mother.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘They don’t suppose that the death of Mary O’Sullivan from Sawmill Lane would benefit anyone.’ She thought about Angelina’s brother, Gerald, and the fortune to inherit and wondered whether the girl’s mind was travelling along the same lines as was Patrick’s. Perhaps speculation about her father might be a step too far even for a girl of such courage.
‘Poor Mary,’ said Angelina pityingly, ‘you know, she was as excited about the dance as she was about going to England and trying to find her sister in Liverpool. We had been practising the waltz in the back room of the shop; she was very good at it. And she had been practising what she called a “posh” accent.’
‘So her resemblance to you gave you the idea.’
She nodded. ‘It’s difficult to explain to you why I wanted to disappear.’
‘I think that I can guess most of it,’ said Reverend Mother in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I know about your mother, met Dr Munroe from the asylum, and I know about Mr McCarthy, the tea-planter, so I think I can guess that you were having problems,’ she added.
‘I see.’
‘What was the purpose of her going to the ball that night?’ asked the Reverend Mother.
‘I had to lead suspicion away from the convent, away from Mother Isabelle; she was willing to shelter me, but if my father found out he could compel her, by law, to hand me back – much better to have been seen at the Merchants’ Ball and then when enquiries were made it would be found that I, or at least my double, had travelled on the boat to England. I bought the ticket openly in my own name – just the day before in case anything got out about it. They were welcome to search Liverpool for me. They would not be searching in the places that Mary or her sister would be living. I coached her in the part to play, told her to pretend to have a sore throat, to whisper, and if anything bothered her, just to go and hide in one of the cloakrooms.’
The Reverend Mother nodded, but then there was a tap on the door and a voice said softly: ‘It is I.’
‘That’s Mother Isabelle,’ said Angelina.
It would be – anybody else, thought the Reverend Mother resignedly, would say: ‘It’s just me.’
She went to the door instantly, unlocked it and admitted the nun, then relocked it. Mother Isabelle gave her a hard look, but made no comment.
‘One more question, Angelina,’ she said coming back to stand close beside the girl. ‘Was there any possibility that your father knew of your friendship with Mary O’Sullivan – had he ever seen her with you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I only met Mary in the shop. He never went there.’
‘Or your brother?’
She shook her head again, and then said shortly, ‘Gerald would not concern himself with anything like the St Vincent de Paul charity.’
‘And did anyone except Mother Isabelle know of the plan that you and Mary made?’
Angelina shook her head decisively. ‘Not from me. And I warned Mary. Not even her mother or her sisters, or anyone in the shop, not even Professor Lambert himself was to know of our plan.’
‘I must go,’ said the Reverend Mother rising to her feet, ‘but before I do, I must warn you that you may be in danger. The police are fairly sur
e that you were the intended victim.’
Angelina picked up the wimple and veil and reassembled it with practised fingers. ‘This is my safeguard,’ she said.
The Reverend Mother felt sorry to see the glowing chestnut hair once more smothered by the veil, but even more sorry to see the bleak look that had come over the girl’s face. Did she, like the police, suspect her brother of the killing of the girl who had taken her place at the Merchants’ Ball?
Angelina did not say goodbye, but slipped silently away, her eyes on the ground like a model postulant nun. The Reverend Mother stared after her regretfully for a moment, but there was no more to be done here just now. The killer had to be uncovered and Angelina had to be made safe before she could resume her place in the world.
‘I’ll get someone to telephone for your taxi, Reverend Mother,’ said Mother Isabelle.
She accompanied her visitor to the door, waved away the lay-sister, took the massive bunch of keys into her own hand and then strolled beside her down the avenue towards the gate. When they reached it, the taxi had just arrived. Both nuns stopped and looked at each other.
‘You will look after her carefully, won’t you?’ asked the Reverend Mother.
‘You really do think that she is in danger, do you?’
‘If it comes out who is buried in the Fitzsimon tomb down at Blackrock – well, yes, she could be; no,’ she corrected herself, ‘not could be, will be. Even without that, the murderer may suspect something. May have noticed at the time that he killed the wrong girl. I have known both girls. The resemblance was strong, but they were not identical. Angelina may have been the intended victim, but at the last moment the murderer may have realized that a mistake was made.’ The Reverend Mother didn’t bother asking Mother Isabelle to keep silent. Like all nuns, she would be a safe repository for secrets.
‘I see you think as I do,’ said Mother Isabelle, speaking now in French, but nevertheless giving a quick look around, before saying softly in a low voice whose resonance was lost within the folds of her veil, ‘I suspect her brother; he’s a bad lot. I’ve heard plenty about him.’
The Reverend Mother bowed her head in response. She could not comment on this and she knew that she was not expected to.
‘No one will have access to her without my permission,’ said Mother Isabelle firmly and dangled in her face the massive ring of keys by the biggest one of them all before exchanging the ritual kiss – an approach, mid-air, of cheeks sheltered from human contact within the starch of the wimples. Then she waited until the Reverend Mother was in the back seat of the taxi before raising her hand in farewell and turning to go back up the avenue.
‘The police barracks, first, if you please,’ said the Reverend Mother as soon as she had disappeared.
‘You don’t mind if I drive quickly,’ said the taxi driver as he handed her a rug. ‘You chose a bad day for your visit, Reverend Mother. I’m afraid that it’s flooding badly in the city; we’ll have a job to get past the quays.’
TWENTY-ONE
St Thomas Aquinas:
Sed secundum ius naturale omnia sunt communia, cui quidem communitati contrariatur possessionum proprietas.
(But according to the natural law all things are common property, and the possession of property is contrary to this community of goods.)
The taxi driver was right. As soon as they arrived in the city, the car slowed down to a crawl as the wheels sloshed through the water. After a few minutes of this the engine spluttered and died. The driver muttered something and got out, flinging up the bonnet.
‘I’ll walk, it’s not far,’ said the Reverend Mother as she joined him. She produced her purse and paid him quickly before he could argue, and set off down Albert Quay, making more progress on foot than the car had done. She kept to the middle of the pavement, well away from the waves that were rising above the quayside and avoiding the water that came bubbling up from the drains and the sewers and was now rapidly spreading across the roadway. There was, she thought, an odd atmosphere about the place. It was going-home time so that it was natural for streams of people to be moving along – the professional class and their children who went to city schools, or worked in banks and offices, were all making for Albert Quay station, bound for Blackrock or the seaside villages of Carrigaline and Crosshaven; the others were going to their houses on Anglesea Road or Copley Street. But there was a strange unease abroad. People walked fast, looked nervously over their shoulder, wasted little time in greetings and continually surveyed the rooftops of the houses. It wasn’t the flooding – Cork people were used to flooding, and this flood, despite the heavy rain that fell, would probably not reach its height until after midnight.
And what was even stranger was that people seemed to be pouring out of the public houses and the bars that lined Albert Quay. Even to someone like the Reverend Mother who did not have much knowledge of the ways of these inns and taverns, it did seem a bit early in the evening for drinking to cease. She suspected that there might be going to be a raid; the news of that would spread soon and there was an air of apprehension about the people.
The River Lee split into two just at the beginning of Albert Quay. The Custom House stood there, facing down-harbour; the north channel and the south channel went on either side of it and then proceeded on their separate ways. The Reverend Mother had thought of crossing the street at that spot, but the roadway was just a river, with more water welling up from the drains every minute, so she went on down Albert Quay’s pavement, keeping beside the south channel. The pavement also was very wet; her shoes, stockings and the lower five or six inches of her black habit were all soaked, but she ploughed bravely on among the crowd. And it was the crowd that worried her. Where were they all going? They seemed to be hurrying along, few of them talking or laughing or indulging in the usual Cork backchat. Some were women, some were men, but most of them were urging on companions, holding the slower or the weaker of the two by the hand. One man even touched her on the arm as she faltered for a moment and said hastily, ‘Come along, Sister, get yourself home quickly.’
And at that moment the shooting started. It seemed to originate from Albert Quay railway station. She could hear the guns exploding and the cries ringing out. An armoured car tore down Albert Quay, sending a shower of water over the pedestrians on the pavement.
‘Bloody Republicans,’ said someone behind her and a moment later she heard the words, ‘Murdering bastards, those Free-Staters.’
‘There’s a raid at the station,’ shouted one man across the road to a man close behind her.
‘Don’t worry; once they take the cash box from the ticket office they’ll be off.’ The man at her back sounded bored and irritable – used to these raids, no doubt. The Republicans kept themselves in funds like this, though they were, on the whole, scrupulous about stealing only from the rich, or government concerns. It was definitely a raid. There was a sporadic sound of firing from the railway station and then the roaring of machine guns.
Realizing then that she was about to be caught in the crossfire between the two warring factions, the Reverend Mother hurried on, swept along by the crowd trying to get away from Albert Quay station as fast as it possibly could. Everyone wanted to get indoors and away from this almost nightly exchange of bullets which seemed to happen in one or another part of the city. A second vehicle came sloshing down the street and a spat of fire from a sub-machine gun, aimed by a daring lad perched on top of a garden wall, skimmed over the Reverend Mother’s head. Her heart beat fast, and although she slightly despised herself for it, she breathed a prayer of appeal that she might not be shot tonight. She had so many things to see to, she added to the end of her prayer. She remembered that Sister Bernadette was a great authority on which saint to pray to at a moment of emergency or need: St Agatha against fire damage, St Agnes against a threat to purity (rape, no doubt), St Denis against headaches (St Denis had his head chopped off so was presumably immune from that problem) and then there was St Michael for strength. It wa
s only when a second shot hit the pavement in front of her that she remembered that St Jude was the patron saint of lost causes. He did seem rather appropriate at the moment, what with the river on one side with its rising flood waters and the battle to gain control of Albert Quay station raging on the other side and over their heads.
By the time that the Reverend Mother had reached Parnell Bridge she had begun to get worried. The river was battering the arches and a barrier had been placed across it, shutting it to traffic. There were ominous creaks and groans coming from the stonework as a few heavy coal barges that had been swept loose from their moorings and snatched up by flood waters crashed against the arches. In the distance she could see that South Mall Street had disappeared and that a flowing sheet of water spread down between the offices and warehouses, lapping at the steps that led up to the front doors. The Grand Parade and Patrick Street would be just as bad, and the lanes that had been built on the western marsh, beyond the North Main Street and the South Main Street, would now be all under water. It would be impossible for her to get to the barracks.
She tried to ease her fears by telling herself that if the city was flooded then the murderer was unlikely to try to do anything tonight. Angelina was, almost undoubtedly, clever and resourceful, and was well guarded by Mother Isabelle. Nevertheless, it was important to catch this man before he did any more harm. Just as a dog that has killed one sheep will go on to kill, again and again, so, in the same way, she reckoned, a man who has killed once will kill again, especially if there is any threat to his safety.
It was at the moment that the bell from the Church of the Holy Trinity on Morrison’s Island sounded for the seven o’clock benediction service that she saw a familiar figure and she immediately forgot how soaking wet, cold and slightly frightened that she was. It was definitely Nellie O’Sullivan.
A Shameful Murder Page 23
