Nellie, wearing a pair of staggeringly high-heeled shoes and a very short skirt, was walking arm-in-arm with another girl. The Reverend Mother, hampered by her dragging skirts and by her three score and ten years, envied them their youth, their companionship and above all the shortness of their very fashionable skirts. They were giggling together – she was near enough to hear the sound of their voices and though the shots overhead – something they had been accustomed to from their childhood – evoked screams, their cries seemed to be as much of excitement as of terror.
And behind them came a man wearing a large sack that had been slit down one side in order to form a hood and cape – a common form of dress for the dock workers, but somehow there was something familiar about this figure. Angelina had warned Mary to say nothing to any of her family about the swapping of identities, but Mary may not have obeyed. And it would, she thought, have been like Mary to confide the fact of her pregnancy to her younger sister. Whether or not; there was a great likelihood that the man who killed Mary would fear that she had done so.
‘Nellie,’ she called and the girl, by some miracle, heard her and swung back for an instant. Her eyes widened.
‘Reverend Mother!’ The words came out as a gasp and the next second the heaving crowd had swept on and around the elderly nun, carrying the two young girls away with it.
Had she done enough? Had she done too much? Had her presence, her intervention alerted a desperate man to the danger that he was in if she had managed to get hold of Mary O’Sullivan’s sister?
The thought, she knew, would torment her all night, until she could be sure that the girl was safe, and other girls, also, but now she dare not think of it. She drove her way through the crowd, desperately elbowing people aside, trampling on feet that got in her way,
The crowds between them shifted and changed as people quickened or slowed their footsteps. There was, however, one constant figure. It was the man, wearing the hooded piece of sacking. He walked behind the two girls. He never got nearer to them, and never dropped back, or went to the other side of the pavement. He followed them doggedly, a dock worker perhaps – certainly the heavy sack he wore over his head and shoulders and the over-large tweed cap beneath it seemed to indicate this. And yet, in her heart, she felt that this was no dock worker; she felt that she knew his name and that she knew his face, now hidden. The Reverend Mother struggled on, trying to catch up with the girls. Her presence would immediately act as a deterrent; she was certain of that. She spoke his language and she knew what would frighten him. Her eyes went to the river and she prayed that it might swallow up this evil man before another girl lost her life. If only she could catch up with him, could confront him with his crime.
But her legs were like lumps of lead and she had started to shiver violently. There was no energy left in her. She was old and useless, no spring left to give her an extra burst of speed when it was so badly needed. She tried to call out, to say Nellie’s name, but her breath sobbed in her lungs and the word was distorted and lost in the cries and shouts of warning and the flat bang of a bullet and the explosion of the sub-machine guns. More armoured cars were coming now, built high off the ground and with powerful engines they sped across the shaking bridge, firing wildly and indiscriminately while the people on the pavements shrieked and screamed.
The man was nearer to the two girls now. He was edging past them, moving them towards the quayside, just as a dog moves a herd of cattle. The Reverend Mother panted heavily, trying to catch up with them, bitterly despising herself for her age, her infirmities, and for her failure to keep herself as fit and as young as others around her. All her life she had believed in mind over matter, but now her faith deserted her.
The situation along the docks was extremely dangerous. In one long, continuous line the armoured cars from the army barracks on the top of the hill tore down the roadway sending up clouds of spray. The rebels on the walls discharged their sub-machine guns; the river in full spate thundered against the swaying bridge and sent long curling envelopes of water across the pavement, arousing shrieks and screams from the struggling pedestrians. The city police, the unarmed civic guard, with their distinctive uniforms covered with yellow oilskins, made an appearance shouting at the people to get under cover. The enormous twenty-foot-high steel gates of an empty warehouse on the quayside ground open with a rusty squeal which momentarily drowned the noise of the river, and the screaming pedestrians were channelled by the guards into the warehouse depths. For a moment the Reverend Mother lost sight of the two girls. They were young and energetic and had pulled ahead of her. They had vanished: and so had the deadly figure, in the guise of a dock worker, who had haunted their footsteps.
Pray God, she thought, they are in the care of the civic guard. She tried to see whether Patrick was amongst those oil-skinned figures, but her face ran with rain and the water from the river. Her body trembled and her eyes were dim with exhaustion. There seemed to be a momentary lull in the screaming, a cessation of the crossfire, perhaps even in the violence of the storm. It almost seemed that the wind was holding its breath; that it was holding back the surging waters.
Another minute and the river fought back. With almost deadly accuracy it flung a barrage of water at the people on the pavement. The Reverend Mother felt it hit her, and reeled beneath the force of its blow. She staggered, straightened herself and then shrieked aloud.
There was a gas lamp beside the quayside warehouse that still, miraculously, burned with a blue light amidst the tumultuous spray from the river. Beneath it she could see three figures. The man with the hooded sack over his shoulder had caught up with the two girls. They had turned aside from the river’s onslaught, their hands and arms raised to shield their heads from the deadly blow of the water. He had seized his opportunity. He had slanted his steps, had moved his body to divert them from the crowd that were now making for the safe haven within the empty and solidly built warehouse, raised several feet above the level of the pavement. Blinded, sick and giddy from the blows of the water the girls had staggered, the one had let go of the other and in that moment the assassin had acted.
Perhaps it was only the Reverend Mother whose eyes had been fixed upon Nellie, with her short skirt and her long legs, staggering along, screaming with a mixture of excitement and panic – perhaps she was the only one who saw what had had happened, but the man in the docker’s garb had succeeded in inserting a wedge between the two girls. The linked arms were driven apart for an instant, but an instant was going to be enough.
For a moment the Reverend Mother could not see what was happening. The water from the river blinded her. She turned sharply, raising her arm up to shield her face. And at that moment she felt her feet go from under her and an acute and terrible pain running down through her from her shoulder. She struggled desperately and then a man bent over her, helping her to her feet. She tried to thank him, but felt sick and giddy and he kept his hand on her arm.
‘I’ve broken my other arm,’ she gasped and wished that he would let go of her.
‘I’ll fetch a civic guard,’ he said, still keeping a tight grip on her. He steered her towards the wall and left her there, leaning against it, unable to risk trying to sit on it and cradling one arm within the other.
And then a familiar figure, in breeches and tweed coat with a beret pulled well down over the head, running lightly through the flood water, caught her eye.
‘Eileen,’ gasped the Reverend Mother. ‘Eileen! Look! Look at Nellie O’Sullivan. That man is following her!’
Eileen did not hesitate for one second. Her hand shot out, the pistol held high, pointing upwards, the noise of the shot sounded clearly above the roar of the water as she fired without hesitation into the air above the heads of the crowd. ‘Nellie O’Sullivan, mind yerself!’ she screamed and her young clear voice was startlingly loud.
And in a moment the man was gone. He had melted into the crowd. By the light of the gas lamp the Reverend Mother could make out the two faces of the gi
rls who turned back towards herself and Eileen.
‘Get inside there with the guards, ye pair of eejits.’ It was extraordinary how the Eileen’s voice rose so high above the thunder of the water and the frightened screams of the soaking-wet pedestrians. Nellie and her friend dived towards a civic guard in oilskins and a protective arm swept them into the warehouse. With that admonition to her young neighbours, Eileen tucked her arm under the Reverend Mother’s.
‘They’ll be all right now, but you’re going to go down with pneumonia,’ she scolded in a motherly fashion. ‘I bet that habit of yours is soaked through. Let’s see if I can get you a lift home.’
‘Eileen,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘I think that I have broken my arm. What am I going to do?’ She despised herself for her weakness, but there seemed to be a deadly faintness coming over her. She felt sick and giddy and black spots danced in front of her eyes. Eileen’s figure seemed to shift slightly and then to become blurred.
But then a shrill blast from Eileen’s whistle penetrated through the mist of her faintness. The Reverend Mother took in a long breath of wet, wind-filled air and bowed her head to below chest-level, waiting until the blood came back and throbbed against her eardrums. Dimly, she realized that a lorry had drawn up beside her, the smell of petrol strong in her nostrils. She heard Eileen saying something like, ‘No sign of the St Luke’s crowd yet.’ And then a man’s arm was around her, Eileen was saying something about a broken bone.
‘Let’s get her into the Crossley; the army are coming down from Luke’s Cross, I’ve just seen them.’
‘Go! You go quickly. Eileen, leave me, you must go!’ Her own voice sounded strange in her ears and she did not know whether she had spoken aloud, or just in her mind. She was less faint now, though; she could see the man, young, she thought, wearing a gabardine raincoat and a soft hat well pulled down, its brim dripping.
‘Be careful, Eamonn; she’s probably as old as the hills.’ Oddly enough, that sentence made her feel better, in fact, it almost made her chuckle. It was, she had discovered long ago, the lot of teachers to overhear candid opinions about themselves. Eamonn was the medical student, she thought, and hoped in a dazed way that he would not try to operate on her with a penknife, relying on his year at the university pre-med course.
Her next conscious thought came when she was sitting in the front seat of the lorry, sandwiched in between Eileen and the driver – Eamonn, apparently, who was competently revving up his engine and shouting comments over his shoulder. With a cautious glance she could see that the back of the lorry was stuffed with figures whose faces were almost covered by soft hats and that the space was bristling with guns held menacingly pointed to the sky.
‘Nellie,’ she said once, and Eileen immediately said, ‘Don’t worry. She’s safe.’
As her vision cleared the Reverend Mother could see by the gas lamps that the majority of people by now had been ushered into the warehouse by the oilskin-clad civic guard and she no longer feared for Nellie. Had she recognized that man? She didn’t know. Perhaps he had just been an innocent dock worker struggling through the flood, but perhaps not. He had melted away very quickly after that shot from Eileen’s pistol.
‘We’re taking you to the Mercy Hospital,’ said Eileen. And then, teasingly, ‘You’ll be able to tell the Bishop that you were rushed to hospital by a Crossley Tender.’
Despite her pain and her sick feeling, the Reverend Mother found her lips stretching into a responsive smile. The Crossley Tender was a lorry-like vehicle, used originally by the Black and Tans, but so many of them had been hijacked by the Republicans that they were now completely associated with the rebels. It would, she thought; make a good story over the genteel cucumber sandwiches and fruitcake gathering that the Bishop held for the clergy of the city every summer.
The next minute another huge Crossley Tender overtook them, racing through the flood water, sending up showers of spray, but with its large wheels managing to keep going until it reached them and paused momentarily, with its engine roaring loudly. There was a toot-toot from its horn and then it sped on ahead, swinging around to the left.
‘The Mallow crowd – useless shower they are, too. Can’t shoot,’ shouted Eamonn with contempt in his voice.
‘What do you expect from that pack of buffers?’ demanded Eileen with the city girl’s contempt for the country cousins. She had turned her head towards the young men in the back and was engaged in a spirited reconstruction of the raid on Albert Quay railway station. Somebody had been at university with the leader of the Mallow brigade and was giving a humorous account about how the fellow had blown up the science laboratory on their first morning there.
‘How’ya doing?’ It took a few minutes for the Reverend Mother to realize that the question was being asked in her ear, but she was saved the necessity of answering by Eamonn saying curtly: ‘Fractured humerus, shock, too, I’d say.’
And then she drifted off to the noise of what seemed like a lorry-load of medical students arguing over her case in the back of the Crossley Tender.
TWENTY-TWO
St Thomas Aquinas:
Vetustatem novitas umbram fugat veritas noctem lux.
(Old flees from the new, shadows from the truth, night from light.)
When the Reverend Mother came fully back to consciousness she realized that she was in the Mercy Hospital. She knew the place very well. It was staffed by a different branch of the order, but she had overall jurisdiction over both the teaching nuns and the nursing nuns.
She was lying in the best room of the hospital, one that even had its own closet opening off the bedroom; she had, she remembered, once visited the Bishop himself in this very place. Then it had been overcrowded with visitors, with bunches of flowers and gifts of fruit and dozens of cards, balancing precariously on windowsill and mantelpiece, but now it was empty and quiet.
Her arm, she realized, touching it first gingerly and then with more confidence, was now in plaster and from the faint smell of chloroform that hung around her, she guessed that she had already undergone an operation. She turned her eyes to the window, seeing that it was still raining, but that the day was advanced and then her eyes moved back to the door as she saw the knob turn cautiously and silently.
A figure in a white coat came in softly, a man; no, it was a woman; a woman with neatly shingled hair, wearing a white coat above the trousers, and a stethoscope hanging from the neck. It took a moment for the Reverend Mother to realize who it was and then she said nothing for a moment, waiting to make sure that the door behind her visitor was closed securely.
‘How are you feeling?’ Eileen approached the bedside in a businesslike manner. ‘Pity they had to put you in here; it would be easier to slide away if you were in a ward, but I suppose that they would want you to have the best room in the place.’
‘Where did you get the coat? If you don’t mind me asking,’ added the Reverend Mother, reminding herself that Eileen was no longer a pupil.
Eileen giggled softly. ‘Pinched a pile of them from a laundry basket last night,’ she said, her voice, lower than a whisper. ‘I brought them out to the lorry. Eamonn and Mick put them on and they went back in and brought a stretcher out and carried you into casualty. And I walked behind them. They just dumped you there beside the desk and strolled off. The lads went back to our place, but I thought I’d hang around and make sure that you were all right. They’re going to pick me up at nine o’clock tonight. How are you, Reverend Mother?’
‘I’m fine,’ said the Reverend Mother, endeavouring to make her voice sound resolute and strong. ‘Now, Eileen, I do think that you should go and hide somewhere until they come. I wouldn’t want anyone to recognize you.’ There were, she reminded herself, still posters up asking for sightings of Eileen O’Donovan, a girl with long black hair and grey eyes, aged seventeen years. The newly cut short hair, though, she thought, did alter the girl’s appearance and the white coat made her almost invisible in this large and busy hospital.
‘See you in a while.’ Eileen’s quick ear caught a sound and she had melted away as the noise of trolley wheels and the loud remarks of some nurses had come to the Reverend Mother.
Later in the evening after she had seen the consultant, had endeavoured to swallow some chicken broth, Sister Mary Immaculate arrived, full, as usual, of exclamations and of questions, which she ignored by the easy method of just closing her eyes and sighing gently, but she snapped them open when the nun said: ‘I have a note here for you, Reverend Mother, somewhere, in some pocket. Send by the Mother Superior of the Ursuline Convent, Sister Bernadette told me. Apparently the good Mother telephoned for you about lunchtime and was told of your accident. So she sent a note up by a boy all the way from Blackrock. Not important, I’m sure, or I would have brought it earlier – just her prayers for an early recovery, I suppose.’
She searched her pockets and eventually produced the crumpled envelope, addressed to ‘Reverend Mother Aquinas’ in a fine French hand. The Reverend Mother turned it over, cynically noticing signs of a small tear on the flap of the envelope. Sister Mary Immaculate would not have been able to hold her curiosity at bay.
The letter, however, might not have rewarded her greatly. It was a flowery effusion, written in French, bewailing the accident, rejoicing in the news that her arm had been attended to and that she was recovering in the arms of her sister nuns. Only the last paragraph revealed the reason for the telephone call and then the letter sent by hand.
Sœur Marie Goretti, she learned, had left the convent, quite unexpectedly and without a word at lunchtime today. A letter had been brought and she had been seen running down the avenue towards a waiting car with a man in it. Mother Isabelle finished with a few pious sentences and signed herself in English as ‘Yours in the bosom of Christ’. The Reverend Mother put down the letter and stared, unseeingly, at the wall ahead. She was no expert on obscure saints, but she had a notion that this Marie Goretti had been a virgin martyr, who had been killed while resisting the sexual advances of a young man.
A Shameful Murder Page 24
