Murder in an Orchard Cemetery

by Cora Harrison

  ‘I think, if you will give me the address, I will go out to Tivoli and have a word with young Mr Musgrave,’ said Patrick, rising to his feet. He had the facts now and he needed to see the newly arrived man.

  ‘Yes, you do that.’ Rupert also got to his feet and accompanied him to the door. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he said as he opened it, ‘apparently Eileen gave him a lift back to Cork from Cobh – on the back of her motorbike! She was down in Cobh doing a piece for the Cork Examiner about the links between Ireland and Australia. If you see her, tell her to pop in and see me. I’d like to congratulate her on her brilliant results.’

  Patrick wrote himself a note ‘See Eileen and deliver message from Mr Murphy, solicitor.’ He placed the piece of paper into his attaché case and then made his way to the address in Tivoli.

  Nice house, was his thought as he parked the car outside the gate. Newly built, about six bedrooms, he guessed, looking at the rows of windows on the two upper storeys. Well-cared-for, neatly raked gravel covering the semi-circular drive and a pair of twin garages to one side of the house and a large greenhouse on the other side. There was a gardener mowing the lawn and he nodded briskly to him before ringing the doorbell.

  He had barely removed his finger from the doorbell when the door was pulled back. Not a maidservant, as he had expected, but two young men, carrying golf clubs, one well-dressed in typical golfing clothes, plus fours, ornate socks, waistcoat and immaculately shining brown shoes, while the other was very bronzed with shabby trousers, threadbare around the knees, no tie and jacket and cap that were bleached by the sun and ragged at the edges. It was obvious, thought Patrick, which was which, nevertheless, he addressed both and removed his own cap politely.

  ‘Inspector Patrick Cashman,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for Mr Peter Musgrave.’

  ‘And you’ve found him,’ said the man wearing the plus fours. ‘What’s he been doing? What have you been up to, Peter, my lad?’

  Patrick ignored that and addressed himself to the other young man. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk, Mr Musgrave?’

  ‘About my father? I’ve heard that he is dead.’

  Hadn’t lost his accent. No trace of Australia about him. Sounded very tense. He looked around indecisively and then said, ‘Could I pop into your police station later on?’

  Doesn’t want the other fellow present, perhaps, thought Patrick. ‘Better come now,’ he said briefly. ‘I’ve a car outside the gate and I can give you a lift.’ He did not wait for a reply, but went down the path, through the gate and opened the back door of the car.

  To his slight surprise, the young man followed him. Did not protest, did not make a joke, just followed in his footsteps, down the path, through the gate and neatly seated himself on the back seat. Patrick slammed the door shut and went around to the other side, cranked up the engine and then set off.

  ‘Had a good trip over?’ He asked the question in a fairly perfunctory way over his shoulder as he was busy steering his way out into the traffic and the Ford car, the pride and joy of the superintendent, was a very awkward one to turn. There was no answer from the back of the car, not even a perfunctory ‘thank you’.

  Well, play it that way if you like, thought Patrick, and concentrated on making his way through the traffic. Late risers, the people of Tivoli. No shop workers, stall holders or cleaners here, mainly office workers – managers, probably, he decided – assessing the houses as he steered a cautious path. One valuable thing that his training course in Dublin had taught him was how to drive well and how to be always in the right, no matter how many others were in the wrong. Too many people spent money on a car but grudged the money to pay someone to teach them how to use it properly.

  Not a word from the fellow in the back seat. As Patrick took the car onto the wide and straight stretch of the Glanmire Road, he began to wonder about him. A quarter of a million if your name is Peter and nothing if your name is Paul. And the one just born hours before the other. And if you had arrived a couple of weeks ago, the fortune would, after your father’s death, of course, have been divided between the three of you, with just some small legacies to relations. But, of course, if his father had not been murdered, then this young man might have had to wait, twenty, even forty, years before he got any money at all.

  The long, straight road gave him a chance to formulate some questions, but he had no intention of asking them until the young man was across the desk from him. So he said nothing more, until they reached the Garda barracks.

  Patrick parked the car neatly, got out and nodded to the duty constable who was standing at the door to keep an eye on some ragged children who were gazing hungrily at the window of a small corner shop.

  ‘Take Mr Musgrave into my room, Tommy, and tell Joe that I’m back,’ he said. He would have to see the superintendent and tell him the result of his conversation with the solicitor and about the complication of the will. Hopefully he could get through with it quickly on the grounds that the man himself was waiting in his room.

  When he left the superintendent still exclaiming about the money there was in stockbroking and declaring that he was in the wrong job entirely, he found that his sergeant, Joe Dugan, was standing by the window in the corridor waiting for him.

  ‘Just a word, Joe,’ he said curtly, and led the way into the sergeant’s room and sat on the corner of the desk. It wouldn’t hurt to keep that young man waiting; Tommy would have bestowed a copy of the Cork Examiner upon him. Patrick could hear the old man’s voice from within his room busily pointing out various articles of interest to a man from Australia.

  ‘Musgrave’s son has come back from Australia,’ he said abruptly. ‘His father has left him a quarter of a million pounds – that is, if he is who he says he is. The money goes to the eldest son and no one could ever tell the twins apart. Peter and Paul, apparently.’

  Joe’s eyes widened. ‘A quarter of a million! Interesting!’ And then after a moment’s thought, he said, ‘How long has he been back in Cork?’

  ‘My thought, exactly,’ said Patrick, though he wasn’t sure that it had come to him as quickly as it did to Joe. ‘So that’s the first thing that we’ll ask him. The solicitor said that he was in Cobh yesterday and that Eileen, of all people, gave him a lift back to Cork, but that doesn’t prove that he arrived yesterday.’ Patrick thought about that for a moment and then dismissed it from his mind. ‘What next?’

  ‘Well, I suppose this is more a matter for the solicitor, but I wonder whether he can prove that he is Peter.’

  ‘I wondered that, too, and I was wondering whether he or his brother or both of them, could have had any connection with the IRA, what do you think?’

  ‘We can ask,’ said Joe. ‘In fact, it might be a good idea to see whether you could get something like that out of Eileen. They’d be about the same age, wouldn’t they? A lot of youngsters were up to their necks in the IRA four or five years ago.’

  ‘I’ll think about that,’ said Patrick cautiously. He wondered whether to ask Joe to see Eileen, but then decided that was his job. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said abruptly. ‘Tommy will be running out of steam. He’s not exactly talkative, this fellow.’

  No tea in front of the visitor so he had declined it. Tommy never forgot to offer tea and to get out some biscuits if it looked as though the person was of some importance, but there was silence in the room when they entered and the Cork Examiner was lying on the side of the desk. Tommy snatched it up and retired. Patrick went to his seat behind the desk and Joe took his shorthand notebook from his pocket and sat at a low table out of the sightline of the visitor.

  ‘Just a few formalities, first,’ said Patrick. He was damned if he was calling this fellow ‘sir’, he thought and then rushed onto the first question. ‘Full name and date of birth, please.’

  ‘Peter Swain Musgrave.’ There was a slight pause and then he said with emphasis, ‘My date of birth was Friday the first of February 1907 and I was born at six a.m.’ He looked across at Patrick with an
air of expectation. Patrick was inclined to deny him the pleasure of commentating, but he knew that a good policeman gets all possible information.

  ‘Unusual to know the day and the hour,’ he said without any particular emphasis.

  ‘Well, when you are a twin, and an identical twin, these things are important.’ He looked expectantly at Patrick, but Patrick did not respond.

  ‘And you emigrated to Australia, you and your brother. When was that?’

  ‘A couple of years ago,’ said the young man carelessly. ‘Goodness, it must have been about three years ago, this summer.’

  ‘And your brother?’

  ‘We bought some land and tried out some sheep farming, didn’t go very well and then we tried some arable and that didn’t go well either and then I got a job in a hotel in Sydney and Paul cleared off. We both went to Broken Hill first, then he went to Melbourne, but then he moved on, apparently. Don’t know where he went.’

  ‘You didn’t write?’

  ‘Not too keen on letter writing. Sent a couple of wires. No answer.’ The man shrugged, but there was a watchful look in his eyes which didn’t seem to go with the carelessness of the gesture.

  ‘I see.’ Patrick eyed him sharply. He had never had a brother himself, but something about this didn’t ring true to him. After all, these were twins, identical twins. From what he had heard, this pair of brothers had been very close, as thick as thieves, amusing themselves and getting in and out of trouble, according to the solicitor, by playing on their likeness to each other. And then they go off to the other end of the earth and separate.

  ‘When did you arrive in Cobh, Mr Musgrave?’ By now he had perfected the technique of looking at his notebook as he asked the question and then looking up sharply to catch an expression.

  ‘Goodness, I’m not sure. Sometime yesterday afternoon, can’t quite remember exactly the time.’ His face had remained untroubled, but the hesitation appeared to be slightly forced. Patrick flicked a glance at Joe who immediately slid from the room. Good fellow, Joe. They had almost got to the stage where they read each other’s minds. Joe would check with the harbour master and with the lists of arrivals from the ship. There was a very efficient man down there in Cobh who kept his records tidy and accessible.

  ‘Have you been in touch with your sister? I believe that her name is Sister Mary Magdalene, is that correct?’

  A flash of anger at the name. But that was understandable.

  ‘She wrote to me,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Told me that she would be taking her final vows in the middle of June.’

  ‘So, she had your address, is that right?’ A bit strange that he was in touch with the younger sister, but not the twin brother.

  ‘Got it from my father, I suppose.’ There was a pause and then he said, with a slight struggle, ‘I wrote to my father asking for money, explaining that things had gone badly with me. You’ll probably find the letter in his desk, in the drawer marked “Family”, very methodical man, my father. The receipted bills from Clongowes Wood College are probably in there, too, and the ones from the Ursuline Convent. He probably looked at them from time to time, sighed over the sums of money that were spent and had brought no good results. I suppose even a successful stockbroker makes a few bad investments and my father wasn’t one to bury his mistakes. “Learn by your mistakes” – that was one of his little pieces of advice, but you know what fathers are like,’ he added with an obvious effort to lighten the tone of his voice.

  No, I wouldn’t, thought Patrick. Mine didn’t stick around too long. He did not respond to the self-pity in his head, though, but briskly asked, ‘And did your father send you some money?’

  ‘Just enough to get both of us home – enough for two single first-class tickets, he said.’

  The door opened quietly. Joe slid into the room, resumed his seat, took his notebook and indelible pencil from his pocket and gave Patrick the slightest of nods, just a lowering of head and of the eyelids. So, the young man was speaking the truth. It had been tempting to think of that fortune of a quarter of a million as an incentive to murder an unloved father, but the truth must lie elsewhere, if he had, indeed, only arrived from Australia yesterday. In the meantime, he could make some use of him while he was there.

  ‘As you know, your father was brutally murdered by a makeshift bomb made from a sack of fertilizer and probably some diesel,’ he said. ‘I wonder whether you could assist us with any recollections of enemies: business associates, social contacts, even relatives – anyone that might have a grievance against your father. Everything you say will be kept in strict confidence. Go with the sergeant and see if you can come up with a few names.’

  Joe was on his feet almost before Patrick finished speaking. He had read the signs and guessed that Patrick wanted to make a phone call. He ushered Peter Musgrave from the room with an air of firm friendliness and Patrick lifted the phone and dialled a number.

  ‘I wonder whether Mr Murphy is back from court, this is Inspector Cashman,’ he said, endeavouring to make his voice sound self-assured.

  ‘I’ll enquire.’ The standard answer. Would know, of course, but would want to ascertain that the great man wanted to take a phone call from a lowly police officer. Patrick waited, going over the interview in his mind. Something a little strange about the fellow. No sign of shock or horror, no enquiries, and then that quarter of a million pounds – a huge fortune, an almost inconceivable amount of money – even divided between the three children, still huge.

  ‘Patrick, Rupert here. Well, did you find our young friend?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, thank you. Just found him going off for a game of golf.’ And that, in a way, thought Patrick, was very odd. Didn’t the news come as a shock? Surely, he should have been on his way to the convent to see his sister. ‘I told him nothing, of course. He arrived yesterday in Cobh. We checked with the harbour master and the ship’s clerk. He doesn’t know where his brother is. They parted company. I wondered, Mr Murphy, whether you wanted to see him. I could get my sergeant to take him across to the South Mall.’

  ‘That would be really kind of you. Yes, I would like to see him. I shall have to see him. Thank you, Patrick, and good luck with the investigation.’ And then he rang off. No conversation about the identical twins and the problem that would afford. No promise to share any information gleaned from the young man.

  Perhaps I should have asked, thought Patrick, and why the hell did I call him Mr Murphy when he has told me to call him Rupert? Feeling dissatisfied with himself, he went into Joe’s office where the pair seemed to be chatting about Sydney and Melbourne and curtly told his sergeant to convey the man – he just stopped himself saying ‘the prisoner’ and changed it to ‘Mr Musgrave’ – to the office of Mr Rupert Murphy.

  Hard to read what the young fellow felt about that. One of those poker faces. Was he pleased? Anticipating hearing something to his advantage? Apprehensive? There was a look of tension on his face, perhaps. And if so, why?

  Patrick walked back into his own office, took out his list and went through the notes about Willie Hamilton again.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Reverend Mother woke early and her first thought, a happy one, was, ‘Last day, thank God!’ She was glad that it was all over. The last breakfast, the last sight of that terrible crater desecrating the beautiful orchard cemetery; the last couple of hours of enforced idleness, of making conversation, of listening to political speeches. Soon, her cousin Lucy would come to collect her and bring her back to where she belonged. The Reverend Mother thought of her school with a feeling of nostalgia.

  She had not enjoyed this year’s retreat, had found neither solace for the mind nor food for the soul. It was, she thought firmly, a huge mistake to mix politics with matters of the soul. It had been a poor excuse to talk about praying for guidance. Extraordinarily little praying, she guessed, had gone on either before or after all these tedious lectures and displays of power by the bishop.

  And, of course, the death of a
man had been a terrible affair. The Reverend Mother, at her advanced age, was well used to death and she did not fear it, neither for herself nor for those of her community who had finished long and useful lives. But the death of James Musgrave had been a dreadful carnage, a man blown to pieces by a bomb within the peaceful surroundings of the orchard cemetery.

  Lucy would not be late. She would undoubtedly know that her cousin would be anxious to get back to her convent again. The outbreak of diphtheria had not been a severe one; many children, she suspected, may well have been immune since an earlier pandemic a few years ago. Nevertheless, the Reverend Mother could not wait to be at the helm again.

  However, it was not just the prospect of getting back to her convent which pleased her. Between the two of them, she and Lucy had managed to manipulate the rather steely-hearted Mother Teresa to give permission for Lucy to take the orphaned novice home with her and to escort her to the funeral the next day. Of course, thought the Reverend Mother uncharitably, Mother Teresa had the consolation that otherwise the convent of the Sisters of Charity would have incurred a certain amount of expense and trouble of hiring a car so the girl could go to the funeral.

  Mother Teresa, thought the Reverend Mother with a certain amount of sympathy, must be anxious to get rid of them all, bishop, priests, nuns and brothers, not to mention those lay members, the candidates for high office on the city council.

  She dressed carefully, making sure that everything was in order, packed her modest suitcase and gave one last look around the room, which she had left neat and tidy, with a bed stripped of linen, towels added to the pile and nothing astray. Tonight, she would sleep in her own familiar room, but before that she would take up the reins of her responsibilities, would be welcomed back by members of the congregation – soberly, but with pleasure, she hoped. And, less soberly, but most enthusiastically, by the children of her school. Her lips curved into a smile as she imagined the eager questions. By now, all of the details of that bloody murder would have been spread through the city and her pupils, though coming from families who could not afford a daily newspaper, would have picked up all of the grisly details and be eager to hear her account.