Murder in an Orchard Cemetery

by Cora Harrison

  She sat down, only noticing as she did so that a new grave had been dug, last evening, she presumed, just behind the bench where she now sat. It did not disturb her. An elderly nun, she guessed, had reached the end of her days and like the dead leaves and twigs from the apple trees, her remains would go to enrich the soil. Well over half of the trees, she reckoned, still flourished, and though now over seventy years old they were, she had heard, still productive so that the living sisters could enjoy their fruits. She sat for a moment, drinking in the atmosphere, and inhaling the scents from the blossom. It was the middle of June, but the cold wet spring had delayed the flowering season and only now were they in full bloom, covered with pale pink, faintly perfumed flowers, and hovered over by numerous bees. She placed a hand upon the warm stone of the bench with a sigh of relief. The almost everlasting fogs and rain through the last nine months had got into her bones and rheumatism and neuralgia had troubled her through the latter part of the winter.

  Briskly she reminded herself that this was a retreat, a time for focusing upon matters of the spirit, and she cast her mind over the bishop’s sermon this morning. Quite a secular sermon, she thought, and acknowledged a certain degree of surprise that had made her raise an eyebrow when she had listened to his lordship. A rigid, and uncharitable man, she had secretly, in the depths of her mind, classified him, but that sermon which he had just preached had startled her. He had spoken, not emotionally, but soberly and emphatically, and in a worried fashion, of the troubles of the poor in their native city and had urged all who listened to him to bear their troubles in mind; and his eyes had wandered over the row of laity in the front row and then had remained upon them, asking those who proposed a life serving the people of Cork, that if they were elected to high office to remember his words and pray for the strength to serve the poor of that city.

  Most unlike the bishop, she thought, as her mind flickered over various meetings chaired by his lordship or services held by him where his sermons related to lofty heights of religious observation and obscure points of doctrine and rarely touched upon any practical work to be done in the city to make the lives of the citizens easier to endure.

  She was turning these matters over in her mind when the gate to the orchard cemetery clicked and she realized, to her annoyance, that she would no longer be alone and this bench built for two would invite company since she could not, unlike James Musgrave, stretch her legs along the seat. A nun was coming through the gate. Rapidly the Reverend Mother slid her enormous rosary beads from the capacious pocket at the side of her skirt, but then something about the sweeping movement of veil and habit as the nun turned to close the gate reassured her and with a half-smile she pocketed the rosary and awaited the arrival of Mother Isabelle.

  Mother Isabelle, though French born and bred, had spent the last twenty years of her life in the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, a suburb of Cork. Well-to-do women and men of the city and its surrounds, whose daughters attended her school, spoke of Mother Isabelle with awe and reverence. Her sweeping movements, tendency to lapse into her native language at a moment’s notice, when she could stun any parent with a fluent outpouring in the French language and above all, her utter assurance that she always knew best, would quell the most difficult parent.

  ‘C’est moi,’ she announced unnecessarily and closed the gate carefully behind her, then waited for a few seconds gazing back at the pathway. Pat Pius, distinguished by his multicoloured tweed cap, had followed her, making a few tentative steps in their direction, but to the Reverend Mother’s amusement, Mother Isabelle stayed there at the gate, very still, gazing at him with an air of frozen astonishment which would have done credit to any actor on a London stage. Pat Pius removed his cap hastily, looked all around with the air of a man who is seeking to recollect an errand and then hastily turned and retraced his steps. Mother Isabelle remained stationary until they heard his voice greeting someone else coming out from the church and then she crossed the verdant swathe of grass and gathered her skirts carefully before taking her seat beside the Reverend Mother.

  ‘Ah, ma chère, que c’est ridicule!’ she said with a gesture that encompassed the convent chapel from which they had just emerged, and perhaps also the bishop, whose sonorous voice could be heard and almost certainly the pathetic effort of Pat Pius and his fellow candidates to curry favour with the clergy of the city.

  They would, decided the Reverend Mother, continue to speak in French. She had spent a year in France when she was a young girl, and during the last few years had resolutely set herself to read some French every day, if possible. If they were conversing in French then the bishop, who was touchy and ill-at-ease with Mother Isabelle, would not approach, nor would he, though doubtless fluent in Latin, be able to pick up anything from their conversation.

  ‘Rather a surprising sermon. Not like him,’ she said in conversational tones. The use of the pronouns ‘il’ and ‘lui’ for the bishop was a convention that was well understood between herself and Mother Isabelle. She watched with amusement as her sister in Christ flung out her arms and discoursed fluently on the bishop’s secret aims and desire to manipulate his audience. Apparently his lordship was worried, feared a great danger from one who was not only a ‘terroriste’ but who had the additional failings of being a ‘socialiste’, and worst of all in the opinion of ‘lui’, according to Mother Isabelle, this person had the temerity to be a female looking for high office in the state.

  The Reverend Mother nodded. No names would be used between them. That would be dangerous. The description obviously referred to Maureen Hogan. She raised her eyebrows in a query and that was enough for Mother Isabelle to break out again into a fluent speech in rapid French. Times, she said, had changed. There was fear in the city. The bourgeoisie, as she designated the merchant princes of Cork city, were intimidated. The ‘Jacobites’ – by which term the Reverend Mother understood her colleague to be referring to Sinn Fein – were spreading the word, by letters, phone calls, and casual conversations, promising that under the pretext of Liberté, Unité, Égalité, to be present at voting halls in order to check on each ratepayer’s vote.

  Was it possible? Just about, she decided, and in any case enough of a threat to intimidate, and to cause those courageous people who turned up, to think long and hard about where to place their votes.

  ‘Et lui, que veut-il dire?’ she queried, her mind going through the quite socialist sermon to which they had just listened.

  According to Mother Isabelle, lui was very fine. The initial f of the French word for ‘devious’ and ‘cunning’ was hissed by her. ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join them’ thought the Reverend Mother, translating the bishop’s intentions from fluent French into good, honest, Corkonian speech. A hint was being passed to all the candidates that they would be wise to preach a socialist doctrine, said Mother Isabelle who always had means of finding out the gossip about the wealthy and powerful in the city. The speeches, no doubt, would be couched in vague terms, she thought cynically. Aspirations rather than firm promises. Probably already the bishop’s chosen candidate, Robert O’Connor, ‘Bob the Builder’, was being coached in how to deliver a very carefully prepared talk to the collected heads of the schools in Cork. The Reverend Mother smiled, nodded and stored, in the back of her mind, Mother Isabelle’s information. She was just about to ask a question when footsteps, coming up the gravelled path, made her stop and look in the direction of the gate. Not the bishop, she thought. The sound was of heavy boots, so not the gentlemanly stockbroker, James Musgrave, either. She had made up her mind that it was probably Pat Pius, coming to express a hope that she had not encountered any problems in cashing his cheque, when a broad-shouldered tall figure opened the gate with assurance.

  It was Bob the Builder, himself. Sent by the bishop, doubtless, and that would have added an extra layer of self-confidence to his normal air of cool aplomb. A fine figure of a man, she thought, thinking about the well-endowed Kitty O’Shea. Had been brought up in the country, someo
ne had told her. His father had been a small farmer in the rich land of north Cork. It was obvious that he had been well fed. And an eldest son, she seemed to remember. No money spared on him. Had even been sent to secondary school, though had not been much of a scholar. In any case, the custom among farmers in Ireland was to set up the older boys in some trade or business and then, when the father eventually grew too old to manage the farm, it was handed over to the youngest son who had obediently stayed at home and worked on the land. Would the builder win the hand of the wealthy widow, or would she opt for the more well-bred stockbroker from the Musgrave family?

  Bob the Builder had the look of a man who was sure of a welcome, but Mother Isabelle was a match for him. Instantly she launched forth a stream of words and the Reverend Mother tightened her lips to make sure that her face remained blank and expressionless as she listened to the fluent French.

  At an interesting stage of the narrative, Mother Isabelle decided to notice the invader. ‘Oui, you search someting …?’ she said with a very strong French accent.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing, nothing, lovely day, isn’t it?’ The builder cast a hasty glance around the blossoming apple trees and the neat graves of long dead nuns, examined the excavation for another grave and then, with an air of a man who has taken all possible notes for a job to be done, he retreated hastily, closing the gate with care and marching down the gravelled path in a determined fashion.

  ‘Qu’est-ce que je voudrais dire?’ said Mother Isabelle placidly and waited for another few seconds until the sound of the footsteps died away and she had recollected the train of her thoughts and proceeded to explain the bishop’s reason for that unusual sermon.

  The Reverend Mother listened with dismay. Nothing had changed, she thought, nothing had been learned. This election, like others in the previous years, was going to be stage-managed by violence on one side and corruption upon the other. Was there any chance for Ireland if this went on? And yet there were people around who wanted to steer this newly formed country in a direction where the poor and the powerless could be given the means to lead peaceful lives in decent housing, to have jobs which paid the rent and fed the families, for their children to be educated and medical care given to all. It was, after all, she mused, promised to the people by those visionaries in the 1916 uprising where a guarantee of ‘religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens; a commitment to universal suffrage’, a phenomenon limited at the time to only a handful of countries, not including Britain; and then there was that promise of ‘cherishing all the children of the nation equally’. It has not happened, she told herself. And why not? Because of self-interest, because of fear, because of corruption and because of greed. Most of the well-off and the professional classes were trying to ensure the same standard of living for themselves and their families as they had observed in the ruling class of the British, others, like herself, threading a diplomatic path between warring interests.

  Had the time come when it was no longer right to be diplomatic? Should she and others like her speak out? She listened in silence to Mother Isabelle discoursing scornfully on the candidates and their inability to express themselves with the fluency which one might expect from those seeking high office and wrestled with her conscience for a few minutes until she decided thankfully that she was probably too old to change. She was about to indulge in a comfortable chat with Mother Isabelle about the bishop’s secretary and his inability to understand how much it costs to run a school, when she suddenly realized that they were being listened to, not from the gate which they faced, but from a hedge at the back of the original field where the apple cemetery had been planted. She recognized the man even before he had removed the bowler hat which he wore. His size made him easily recognizable. A small man, almost dwarfish in size, he had been introduced in a rather stony fashion by the bishop on the preceding evening, but he had spoken well, she thought.

  ‘Il y a quelqu’un qui nous écoute,’ she said quietly and in a warning tone to Mother Isabelle.

  ‘Sorry if I startled you, ladies, but I saw that big hole and just wanted to tell you that I found out from the gardener that there isn’t going to be a funeral to disturb us. He just had a few hours on his hands with nothing to do and there are a couple of very old ladies, elderly nuns, I should say, here in the convent and he thought he might as well get the soil loosened and a hole dug, just in case, you know!’ He laughed pleasantly and the Reverend Mother looked at him with interest. His name was William Hamilton, but he was known by all, as ‘Wee Willie’. He came from Northern Ireland but was of the Roman Catholic faith. A few years ago, he had left Northern Ireland, presumably because he was uncomfortable and possibly found himself discriminated against. And so, he had moved away from Northern Ireland right down to the county of Cork and had set up a factory for the manufacture of women’s stockings in a small town on the eastern side of the city of Cork. A genial man, she had thought him to be and he had been good company the night before when they had all met over an evening meal. An enterprising one, also. He had visited her convent quite soon after his arrival and brought with him a present of a few pairs of stockings, medium size, jet black in colour and in every way suitable for a convent. He had adroitly gleaned from her the number of sisters and lay sisters in the convent, had quickly worked out how long a pair of stockings would last a nun walking these endlessly corridors and pacing hard-floored classrooms, discoursed on the waste of time spent mending old stockings, on the shocking price of darning wool and had offered her a fair discount and had immediately secured her as a client.

  Wee Willie, she thought, had a healthy air of confidence about him and showed little deference to the bishop when the candidates had been forced to introduce themselves to the gathering of nuns, priests and brothers before dinner on the first evening. No respecter of dignitaries. She rather admired his cavalier fashion of ignoring Mother Isabelle’s attempts to freeze him from their company by continuing to speak in French and with his strong, harsh Northern Ireland accent, declared his intention of shepherding them back to the flock.

  ‘And ye’ll let the gardener finish that job; the poor, wee fellow had in his mind to cover the hole with a few slabs of timber and a tarpaulin, but then you ladies arrived. He’s worrying that it’s dangerous to have an open hole like that,’ he said with an assured manner, standing sturdily in front of them with one arm crooked, ready to give them assistance to rise if needed, but not looking as though he minded one way or another. Out of politeness she took his arm, though she prided herself on being able to rise readily from any chair or seat. Mother Isabelle made use of the back of the bench and with a quick farewell, still in French, went on her way in stony silence towards the gate. The Reverend Mother cast a glance at the depth of the grave that was awaiting the next death in the convent and then thanked Wee Willie for coming to tell them about the gardener. He gave her a friendly smile.

  ‘Good idea, this,’ he said with a nod towards the neat row of gravestones. ‘Great place to put the bodies. I wonder would it work in the city, Reverend Mother? Would the trees take up too much room? High death rate here in Cork – in fact, it may be something the council should be considering. You wouldn’t believe it, Reverend Mother, but the death rate in Cork is twice the rate of the Belfast death rate. Now what do you make of that?’

  The Reverend Mother considered the matter for a moment. The statistic horrified her, but he was a sober northerner, Scots-Irish and would be unlikely to pluck a figure from the thin air like his more mercurial counterparts here in Cork city.

  ‘The river?’ she queried.

  He smiled up at her with a congratulatory nod, but then held up one finger. ‘Ah, but you see, Reverend Mother, we have a river in Belfast, the Lagan, flows through Belfast, but it’s a clean river and the sewage was dealt with over forty years ago, doesn’t come near the city. Fifty years ago they built a treatment centre well away from the city and you’d be surprised how few cases of cholera and poli
o and these sort of things they have in Belfast these days, but down here in Cork we’re living in the past, spilling it all into the River Lee. We need to treat the sewage and keep it away from the river. I had polio myself as a wee child and it didn’t do me much good,’ he said without a scrap of self-pity, but with a determined nod.

  ‘I suppose there is no other solution other than the river and then sea,’ said the Reverend Mother.

  ‘There’s always a solution if you dig deep enough,’ he said briefly. ‘They manage better in the country than they do in cities. Everything gets dug back into the soil.’

  Cities, she thought, were not good places. And, of course, he was right about the countryside. People were spread out and could dispose of their own sewage – probably like the orchard cemetery – in a useful and productive as well as safe fashion. When she had first embarked upon having hens in her convent garden she had been worried about comments from her deputy, Sister Mary Immaculate, about the pollution from their droppings and the smell they would cause, but her gardener, a country man, reassured her. ‘It all goes back into the soil, that’s nature’s way,’ he had told her, and the Reverend Mother, when Sister Mary Immaculate enthused about the fresh taste from their runner beans, had difficulty in restraining herself from mentioning that the flavour came from a liberal amount of hen droppings dug into the soil before planting time.