Murder in an Orchard Cemetery

by Cora Harrison

  The matter of the use of the word ‘person’ by the dead man was, he thought, extraordinarily important. However, one started a conversation about someone, by using the word ‘person’, surely it was only human nature, soon or later to slip into using the word ‘he’ instead of a gender neutral – as they used to say in his Latin classes – a word like ‘person’. There could perhaps be an urgent necessity which would have made Mr Musgrave very scrupulous about his speech – and that was because he was at that stage discussing something relating to four people, only one of whom was a woman. Until he had made up his mind to divulge all, presumably with certain safeguards offered to him by the bishop – until he felt that he could tell what he knew without risking a shot in the dark or even, perhaps, more fancily, a bomb at midday – then Mr Musgrave might not have wanted to particularize the sex of the person he was accusing of a murder.

  And the lack of pinpointing a religion for the murdered man was also possibly of significance. Patrick’s brain, behind a calm and expressionless face, was racing through the possibilities. Only one person of the five had any overt connection with a military organization, and that was Miss Maureen Hogan. And only one person from the five was not from this part of Ireland, in this place where people liked to know who you were and where you came from: breed, seed and generation.

  The name of Wee Willie Hamilton had come to his mind, and with it a certain question mark which had always clung to that person since he had arrived in Cork. Who was he really? And why had he come from the prosperous city of Belfast in the north, down to the extreme south, to live among people who did not speak as he spoke, who had no decent reserve like the people of the north and more important still did not have the money to buy the product which he was marketing? Yes, it was understandable that a Catholic might wish to leave the north, but why not go to Monaghan or Cavan, two counties just over the border from the north of Ireland?

  I must see Wee Willie, thought Patrick as, with a nod, the bishop left him and went to join a group of Christian Brothers.

  However, standing by the door of the church was Joe, making conversation with Bob the Builder, and the turn of Joe’s head in his direction sent an unmistakable signal and Patrick went across to join them.

  ‘Mr O’Connor has something rather interesting to say, Inspector, and I thought you would like to hear it for yourself,’ said Joe with his usual politeness.

  Patrick turned an enquiring glance upon the builder. A big bruiser of a man! Rich, of course, but how did he get to be as rich as that in a time of recession? Was there something dodgy about him? Come to think of it, thought Patrick, put side by side with the mild-mannered Willie Hamilton, most people would choose Bob the Builder as a more likely killer.

  ‘Very good of you to assist us, Mr O’Connor,’ he said, and watched the man preen himself.

  ‘It’s just this, Inspector,’ said Bob. ‘You see, builders know a fair amount about digging – a site has to be prepared, drains put in, foundations laid, before ever you start building walls. You mightn’t know about that, Inspector.’

  Patrick nodded curtly. He had no intention of allowing this big brute of a man to patronize him.

  ‘And, of course, I was brought up the hard way, brought up on a farm, buried many a stinking dead corpse of a sheep, you have to bury them deep, you know, once they start to smell. Get disease on the farm otherwise.’

  Patrick nodded again.

  ‘I’m telling you all this, Inspector, so that you know I’m a man who knows what I’m talking about,’ said the builder with the air of a man who is willing to go on and give multiple examples of his competence.

  ‘Mr O’Connor made an interesting observation about the hole which was meant for a grave,’ said Joe. ‘He thinks that—’

  This was too slow progress for Bob the Builder, and he took the story out of Joe’s unqualified hands.

  ‘I’m telling you this, Inspector, and I’m a man who knows what I’m talking about, but that was an almighty big hole for one man to dig by himself, in an evening, too.’

  Patrick nodded impassively. Was it? He didn’t know. He had been brought up in a tiny cabin with a road in front of it and a lane behind. Had never put a spade in the earth as far as he could remember. He relied on Joe, though. A man who had been brought up in a house with a garden in the front and at the back. Joe would have got rid of Bob if he had not thought there was something in what he had to say.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘What would it be? Six by six and six foot deep. That’s a couple of hundred cubic feet of soil – a hell of a lot to shift in one evening, Inspector, pardon my language.’ Bob cast a guilty glance at the church door.

  ‘He might be good at digging,’ said Patrick mildly. There was more to come; he knew that. Geometry had been his favourite subject in school, but the Christian Brothers were not ones to waste time on practical work. He had not the faintest idea of what a couple of hundred cubic feet of soil would look like.

  ‘Well, let’s say for argument’s sake, that the skinny young lad is a world champion at digging,’ said Bob affably, ‘but why were there two heaps of soil, one at either end? Looks like two men dug that grave – if it was intended for a grave …’ Bob allowed his voice to tail off artistically.

  ‘Got the sun in his eyes,’ suggested Joe.

  The builder smiled at him. I was waiting for that one, his expression said. ‘One heap on the north side and one on the south; take my word for it, that hole was dug by two men on that evening. Take it or leave it, but I’m telling you that I had a good look at that hole before anyone put a bomb into it.’ He finished with a nod at both policemen and went off.

  ‘I suppose he knows what he’s talking about,’ said Patrick reluctantly. ‘Know anything about digging, Joe?’

  ‘Dug out the odd dandelion for my mam,’ said Joe. ‘And I must say that I wouldn’t like to shift a couple of hundred cubic feet of solid earth that hadn’t been dug for a hundred years or so.’

  ‘We’d better have a word with young Martin,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Saw him go into that shed of his a few minutes ago. Saw one of the nuns bring a cup of tea and a slice of cake out to him,’ said the observant Joe. He led the way and Patrick followed reluctantly. If anyone other than the IRA had to be accused of this murder, he would have preferred that it would have been someone like the self-assured Bob the Builder.

  A nervous lad, he thought a minute later, allowing Joe to do the talking while he eyed the thin face. Not tall, narrow chest and shoulders. Wouldn’t feed them too well in those orphanages like Greenmount, healthy looking, otherwise. And they did have a lot of energy at that age, nevertheless, there had been a decisiveness about Bob the Builder that had convinced him.

  Time to take over, he thought.

  ‘So, who was it helped you?’ he said quietly. ‘Not one of the nuns, was it?’

  Joe smiled at the feeble joke, but the boy’s face went white.

  ‘Just tell us the truth,’ said Patrick gently. ‘No sin in getting a bit of help. How did it come about?’

  The boy hesitated for a moment and then, as if suddenly coming to a decision, he pointed to the plate on the wooden bench. He had taken a few bites out of the enormous hunk of cake, but the rest remained untouched. ‘It’s Sister Mary Agnes,’ he said. ‘She keeps giving me all that food, thinks that I’m too thin and that she must fatten me up. I don’t have the stomach for it. Give it to the birds sometimes, but there was this fellow standing on the road, looking over the wall and he asked me if I could spare a few crusts because he had been tramping the road for days. Had a funny sort of accent, he had. So I took him in here and showed him the plateful of food and told him he’d do me a favour if he’d finish it up so that I could bring a clean plate back to the kitchen. Finished it up in a flash!’

  ‘About your age, was he?’ asked Patrick.

  The boy thought about that. ‘A few years older, big fellow. Big broad shoulders, nearly as tall as that window there
.’

  About six feet, thought Patrick. Some of those IRA men were fine fellows.

  ‘I asked him if he’d like some more of the fruit cake and he said he’d love it, so I went back with the empty plates and Sister Mary Agnes was so pleased when I asked for more cake. She had a lot left over – a bit soggy, I thought it was. So I brought a big hunk of it back and Franz, that was his name, was so pleased that he asked me if he could help me with any job, said he was very good at digging and that he enjoyed doing it. And it was then I thought about the digging of the hole for the grave and he was dead keen. Knew a lot about soil, too. Went around with the pickaxe, testing places, chose a good site, too. Never saw a man work as hard as he did, loosened the whole piece of earth as soon as I had marked it out. I was following him with a shovel, but he kept on with the pick until he loosened all of the top soil. I can tell you he had some muscles, that German lad. Wish I had.’

  ‘You’ll grow them,’ said Joe in a friendly way as Patrick shut his notebook. ‘Did he stay the night?’

  ‘Naw, I wouldn’t do that, not without permission. Don’t think the mother superior would think much of that,’ said the gardener hastily. ‘Had to have all sort of references before I got the job here. Nuns are very fussy. You won’t tell on me, will you? There was no harm in it. I saw him go up the road when he left.’

  ‘So, he went up the road, not down towards the city where he might get a night’s lodging,’ said Joe, once they were outside the small hut. ‘That’s interesting. Sounds as though he has friends in the neighbourhood. Or else he doesn’t mind sleeping rough in the fields. I’d choose that myself rather than down there in the city.’

  ‘You noticed that he was alone in the shed when the young fellow went off for more cake. He had plenty of opportunity to see where the fertilizer was, and probably the old metal downpipe as well.’

  ‘And to see that there was a key in the door,’ said Joe.

  ‘I looked on the shelf, to see if there was a spare key, but I didn’t notice anything. I think that I’ll have a word with the Reverend Mother about references and things like that for a new gardener, and I’ll ask her whether she might have noticed that lady solicitor talking to a young fellow, about six-foot high, at the gate or over a hedge, or anything like that,’ said Patrick. ‘You could wander around and have a word with anyone you meet and ask the same questions. We won’t make too much of a fuss. I must say that there are more than Miss Hogan who want the job of city council alderman and I’m not ruling them out by any means. And, of course, we have her link with the IRA, but then the IRA might have had a reason to kill the man that has nothing to do with Miss Hogan. They are responsible for a lot of murders in every city and town of Ireland. But at the moment, between ourselves, Joe, my money is on the lady.’

  THIRTEEN

  When, on the following morning, the green Bentley appeared again at the convent gates, the Reverend Mother was hugely relieved to see that, this time, Lucy was in the back seat of the car. She had feared that something serious had happened to a very beloved little great-grandchild.

  Angela was the eldest of Lucy’s grandchildren and, Reverend Mother always suspected, the favourite. After the death of her own mother in a late pregnancy, Angela had taken her position of eldest daughter to her grandparents. She was of huge importance to Lucy and to Rupert, caring in her efficient way for her grandparents as well as her own sisters and for her own child. Something serious must have happened to cause her to summon her own elderly grandmother to her aid and the Reverend Mother scanned Lucy’s face anxiously as the chauffeur helped her out of the car.

  ‘All is well. It was not diphtheria, after all. Angela panicked. Not like her, but this little one is very precious to her.’

  ‘What was it?’ The Reverend Mother was not surprised. The dreaded word diphtheria was probably in every mother’s mind.

  ‘Just tonsillitis – tonsillitis and a temperature. I felt I had to go to her. Her sisters all have concerns of their own. None would want to run the risk of bringing diphtheria into their homes. Poor Angela!’

  Lucy’s face was, as always, delicately and carefully made-up, dusted with a faint pink powder which mimicked perfect health and a slight flush of rouge on the cheekbones. Normally, Lucy would pass for a woman twenty years younger than her real age, which the Reverend Mother, as they had been bought up together, knew as well as she knew her own. Today though, she thought, Lucy looked her full age. She slipped an arm affectionately around her cousin’s waist and leaned forward to kiss her.

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Lucy, answering the unspoken sympathy. ‘It was a bad night, though. Terribly high temperature. Angela kept on taking it and getting whiter and whiter every time. In the end I persuaded her to try the old-fashioned remedy and put the poor little mite into a cool bath. Worked well – she fell asleep afterwards. Makes sense to me – cool the blood – but nowadays the mothers want everything scientific and she could not be at rest until the doctor came back again. To give him his due, he turned up at eight o’clock in the morning. Shone a torch down her throat, said he was sure now that it was just tonsillitis, said that we had done the right thing to cool her down, prescribed some medicine or other. Everything is very technical, these days, not like when you and I were young, but I slipped down into the kitchen and luckily the cook had some carrageen moss, so I got her to boil it up with some brown sugar and squeeze a few lemons into it. The poor little thing drank it down, said ‘werry good’ and off to sleep she went. Did her far more good than the doctor’s medicines, I’d say, but of course, you try anything. Her temperature was down by the time I left. I told our man to drive me straight over here in case that you wanted to get out of the place.’

  ‘You should have waited, gone for a sleep,’ said the Reverend Mother, touched at her cousin’s concern for her.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Lucy, looking across at the devastation in the orchard cemetery. ‘But how are you? Terrible, isn’t it! I’m so upset about James Musgrave. Such a nice man. You would have liked him so much when you got to know him. He was so religious, went to mass every morning, early mass and took communion, very strict with the children about it also. Thinking of getting married again, too, poor fellow. Mind you, I’m not a fan of Kitty O’Shea, but there’s no doubt that she’s extremely rich. He met her when giving advice about buying stocks and shares with her spoils from her first marriage.’

  The Reverend Mother smiled at the acid note in Lucy’s voice and wondered fleetingly whether the extreme religiosity of the late Mr James Musgrave might have been instrumental in driving his sons to exile in Australia.

  ‘Be careful what you say,’ she said in a low voice, seeing the rigid form of Mother Teresa emerging from the convent door. ‘The lady is a relation of the mother superior.’ She nodded in the direction of Mother Teresa. ‘Visited her cousin twice during the first couple of days of the retreat,’ she added.

  ‘Sixth cousin once removed, if you ask me,’ said Lucy tartly. ‘Come to play one off the other, is my bet.’

  ‘I’m sorry you went to the trouble of coming all the way over here, Lucy,’ said the Reverend Mother, lifting her voice slightly. ‘I’m afraid that you’ve had your journey in vain. I would have liked to go back to St Mary’s of the Isle, what with this outbreak of diphtheria and the unpleasant affair of the bomb, but the bishop is adamant that nothing should be allowed to interrupt the progress of our retreat. However, I do need your help, so I am glad to see you here.’ Lucy, she noticed with amusement, had raised her tidily plucked eyebrows in a silent dissension from the bishop’s verdict, but before she could say anything more, they were interrupted.

  ‘Mrs Murphy!’ The harsh tones, the over-loud voice, was immediately recognizable as the builder’s and Reverend Mother said, ‘Good morning, Mr O’Connor,’ without even turning to face the intruder. She looked with concern at the dark shadows beneath Lucy’s eyes and knew that her cousin had probably spent most of the night away, supporting poor Angela as she h
ung over the precious child and kept feeling the hot forehead. However, she needed Lucy. It was important to have her cousin with her when Patrick made another attempt to question the unfortunate daughter of the dead man. Lucy was used to girls, had her own daughters, then her granddaughters and now, despite her age, was the first port of call when a tiny great-granddaughter was in peril. She would handle Sister Mary Magdalene with her own unique mixture of coaxing and firmness.

  There was, however, no stopping ‘Bob the Builder’ once he got going.

  ‘So glad to see you, Mrs Murphy, and looking so well, too. You’ve heard of the terrible business here. The IRA, of course. Will we ever be free of them? A scourge on this distressful land, that’s what they are, a scourge. No other word for it,’ he said, his eyes looking significantly across at the tall slim figure of the lady solicitor and resting there long enough to make it plain that this scourge on the land had even found its way into the hallowed precincts of a convent graced by the bishop’s presence.

  ‘Well, if you’ll excuse …’ began the Reverend Mother, but Mr O’Connor was not to be dissuaded.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you, Mrs Murphy. I was going to pop in and see your husband, but I know what a busy man Mr Murphy is – has all the cares of the most important people in this city of ours – has all the cares resting on his shoulders. Yes,’ he said emphatically, ‘I said to him one day, “What you want, Mr Murphy, is a nice little conservatory built onto the south side of your house and then you could sit out there in the sun, stretch out and enjoy yourself and even have a nice little nap, and with proper glazing you’d be able to use it winter and summer.” And he said to me, “You are quite right, Mr O’Connor!”, and you should have seen the way that his face lit up at the very thought of it – you should have seen it, Mrs Murphy, and you too, Reverend Mother. Poor man, God love him, he works too hard.’