Murder in an Orchard Cemetery Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Cora Harrison from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Also by Cora Harrison from Severn House

  The Gaslight mysteries

  SEASON OF DARKNESS

  WINTER OF DESPAIR

  SUMMER OF SECRETS

  The Reverend Mother mysteries

  A SHAMEFUL MURDER

  A SHOCKING ASSASSINATION

  BEYOND ABSOLUTION

  A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

  DEATH OF A NOVICE

  MURDER AT THE QUEEN’S OLD CASTLE

  DEATH OF A PROMINENT CITIZEN

  The Burren mysteries

  WRIT IN STONE

  EYE OF THE LAW

  SCALES OF RETRIBUTION

  DEED OF MURDER

  LAWS IN CONFLICT

  CHAIN OF EVIDENCE

  CROSS OF VENGEANCE

  VERDICT OF THE COURT

  CONDEMNED TO DEATH

  A FATAL INHERITANCE

  AN UNJUST JUDGE

  MURDER IN AN ORCHARD CEMETERY

  Cora Harrison

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © Cora Harrison, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Cora Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-9040-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-809-2 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0547-6 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Reverend Mother Aquinas had finished reading the bishop’s letter when a knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘It’s just Pat Pius; do you want me to tell him that you are busy,’ said Sister Bernadette, inserting her head into the room through as small a space as possible. As usual, she correctly read the expression on the Reverend Mother’s face and was willing to protect her from intrusion.

  ‘No, you’d better bring him in,’ said the Reverend Mother reluctantly. She knew full well why the man had come; would have been able to sum up his request in three words: ‘Vote for Me’; knew also that he might take about twenty minutes of her time before she managed to get rid of him. Nevertheless, she was there to serve the community and Pat Pius was part of the parish. Carefully, she put the bishop’s letter into a drawer and turned to welcome her guest. Judging by the speed with which he appeared, he had followed Sister Bernadette down the corridor.

  ‘Reverend Mother!’ he exclaimed. ‘At last!’ Theatrically, he sank down upon the nearest chair and placed his hat upon the floor. ‘You won’t believe this, Reverend Mother,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been meaning to drop in to see you for the last six months. You wouldn’t credit how busy I am, Reverend Mother. I think of you every time that I pass the convent, but there’s always something on my mind, something that needs to be done immediately. But don’t think that I’ve forgotten you. I know the good work that you do in the parish. I know that money doesn’t grow on trees. I was brought up hard. Now, before I waste any more of your time, I’ll just write you a cheque.’

  He did not, though. He had something to say first. He had to tell her in detail about his deep concern for the city, how he was brought up hard, and now wanted to help others in the city, enterprising people like himself, people who looked to the newly elected Aldermen to back business and cut the obstacles to making profit. Rates, he declared, were going to be his target, didn’t want excessive rates to be a burden on people like himself who were struggling to build up a business, thought people should not have to pay through the nose for all sorts of things that had been dreamed up by the city manager: like wages, so much; material, so much; footpaths and crossings, so much; a new refuse destructor, if you please; and what was wrong with ‘make-do and mend’, he would like to know; and all this nonsense about taking people out of perfectly good houses and building mansions for them … He ran out of steam, eventually and looked at her with an expression of a hopeful terrier. It was evident, she thought, that he wanted a word of encouragement, a hint as to her intentions.

  The Reverend Mother had a short struggle with her conscience and allowed him to wait while she looked at him thoughtfully. A true educationist, she thought, would endeavour to argue with the man; to explain the concept of social justice to him; that all matters to do with a community are the concern of that community; perhaps even to quote her patron saint, Thomas Aquinas on that subject. ‘Manifestum est autem quod omnes communiter pertinet ad omnes partes communitatis habet.’ She murmured the words below her breath as she eyed a pile of bills awaiting her attention and he flicked a rapid and practised sign of the cross in answer to what weekly attendance at the Latin Mass led him to guess that the words were probably some holy prayer.

  Pat Pius’s name was Murphy and he had been christened Patrick, like another quarter of a million boys at the time. However, a highly religious mother had pulled her son from the obscurity of being yet another Paddy Murphy and had borrowed his middle name from the reigning Pope Pius XI, so that when he attended the Christian Brothers at the age of five he had been rechristened Pat Pius and with this distinctive name had, when still only fifteen years old, set up a business in Crawford Street, first to repair shoes and then after a few years, to sell shoes and boots. ‘Good as new!’ says Pat Pius! was his slogan and many a small boy of the neighbourhood got a start in his factory, as he named it, beginning with door-to-door collection of ol
d shoes and graduating to polishing, repairing and rebuilding old shoes into shining and new-looking products. ‘Worth a packet, that man!’ had stated Sister Bernadette, who got her information from the butcher and baker and various message boys and relayed it all to the Reverend Mother in between cooking meals, organizing cleaning, shopping, answering the door and collecting old shoes for Pat Pius. A clever man, she thought. Had seen a gap in the society of Cork where the rich happily discarded not-so-old shoes and the poor desperately needed footwear for themselves and their children. Had profited from his short years in the Christian Brothers, was reputed to be able to add up simultaneously five columns of figures: pounds, shillings, pence, half-pence and farthings. She watched him as he wrote a cheque fluently, filling in the date with practised ease and writing ‘Reverend Mother Aquinas’ with a flourish, but then he hesitated, glanced up at her and she pretended to busy herself with her diary. She did not look at him. She was not prepared to give any encouragement or in any way to hint that her vote was for sale.

  Even when the scratching of the pen had ceased, she did not look up, but when he came over to her, and deposited the cheque with a flourish under her eyes she could not forbear to thank him enthusiastically and as she rose to her feet to usher him out, she promised that a mass would be offered for his intentions in the convent church.

  Five pounds! It was an enormous sum, and in a slightly conscience-stricken way she suspected he had only meant to write five shillings and was nudged towards the larger sum by her silence.

  He seemed, thankfully, to be quite satisfied with that promise, perhaps read more into it than she had intended: Cork people were past masters at innuendo, and he took her offer of a mass to be celebrated for his intentions to imply more than she had intended. His face was wreathed in smiles when she left him at the door, and she went back to her desk wishing that she had his simple faith. ‘Ask and it shall be given to you,’ had said St Matthew, but that didn’t happen too often in her experience. Carefully she tucked into an envelope the cheque and a filled-up paying-in slip, addressed it to the manager of the Munster Bank and placed a stamp upon it. Sister Bernadette would post that off as a glorious offset to the many bills that called upon her scanty resources.

  Then she turned again to the bishop’s letter.

  Every year the bishop conducted a retreat for the religious superiors of the Cork schools: the Christian and Presentation Brothers, the Presentation Sisters, Ursuline Sisters, Sisters of Mercy and of Charity all gathered together to spend seven days in prayer and meditation. Absolute silence had been the rule during those seven days of retreat from the normal world. In the past, the Reverend Mother, though slightly irritated by the prospect of seven rather fruitless days taken from her busy life, had welcomed this silence as a time for new ideas to spring into her active brain, but this was now to be changed. The bishop had decided to invite the six candidates for the office of mayor in the city to join them in the annual retreat. And in order that they could profit from the spiritual advice of his brothers and sisters in Christ, he proposed to rescind the usual order of complete silence and wanted his brothers and sisters in Christ to help to guide the five candidates in their search for divine blessing on their work for the city. And, thought the Reverend Mother, in an exasperated moment, probably help his lordship to make up his mind which candidate he would back. She could imagine the surreptitious, little confidential conversations which would take place throughout these seven days.

  The bishop, of course, had huge influence in this pious city and whosoever he favoured would probably win the vote of the ratepayers. The Reverend Mother compressed her lips and tried to avoid looking at the stamped envelope addressed to the manager of the Munster Bank, but despite her good intentions, she could not help wondering how many bribes came into his lordship’s bank account and then, rather more cheerfully, whether someone else other than Pat Pius might think her influence would be worth a donation. She held the bishop’s letter in her hand and stared through the window at the fog and mist that hid almost all the convent vegetable garden from view. But not even the sight of the verdant green of her sprouting potatoes and the frilled leafy clumps of carrots would have been enough to lift her spirits and dissipate the sense of annoyance. Those seven days were going to be wasted and there was something in her which rebelled at the idea that the influence of one man, though he be a bishop, was so considerable in this poverty-stricken city.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, in answer to a tentative knock, and then as the door was pushed open very hesitantly and a rather anxious face appeared at the door, she was conscious that her voice had had been curt and unwelcoming and tried to rearrange her features. It was Eileen, and Eileen might be bringing good news, or it might be bad news, but in any case, she had once been a pupil and her sorrows and joys were of the utmost importance to the Reverend Mother. Hastily she put the bishop’s letter aside and welcomed her visitor.

  Eileen had been one of the cleverest girls whom she had ever taught, but unfortunately at the immature age of fifteen she had been seduced from her studies by the IRA who had recruited her, taught her to shoot as well as any soldier and imbibed her with a passionate desire for the complete freedom of her country and a worship of Michael Collins. That had been over seven years ago. Michael Collins was now dead; his rival, de Valera, was leader of the country and Eileen had gradually been weaned away from a dangerous lifestyle, had got a job and had been induced by the Reverend Mother to go back to her studies. Three years ago, she had won a Honan Scholarship to Cork University.

  ‘The results are out.’ Eileen’s voice was excited.

  ‘And you failed, of course!’ said the Reverend Mother, trying to sound detached, but with a relieved smile. Eileen’s face was easy to read and today it glowed with excitement and pleasure.

  ‘Wrong!’ said Eileen triumphantly. ‘First honours in every subject! Top of the year in English. I thought you might like to know,’ she added with an effort to appear indifferent and then, casting pretence aside, she laughed triumphantly. ‘I knew you’d be pleased! And, what’s more, my Honan Scholarship can be extended for another three years if I care to go on studying.’

  The Reverend Mother waited. She could see from the shining eyes that Eileen had an idea in her head. It was no good asking her to sit down; when Eileen was thinking hard, she strode up and down the room, so she sat at her desk and watched the girl.

  ‘I’ve got it all worked out!’ said Eileen, almost breathless with excitement. ‘I had a little secret hope, you see, but I didn’t want to say anything. And I did need that scholarship. I can’t have my mother working in that pub for the rest of her life. I want to pay her back a little, but I don’t want a job in an office or a bank or anything. I want to be a lawyer, a solicitor first and then perhaps a barrister, so I’m going to go on studying. I want to do an LLB.’

  ‘You’ll need to be apprenticed if you are to be a solicitor,’ said the Reverend Mother, her brain busily scanning through the solicitors in Cork from whom she might, perhaps, ask a favour. Eileen, she thought, would have little idea of the cost of such an apprenticeship!

  ‘I know! I’ve done it! Did it immediately I saw the board up in the Aula Max and saw my name up there at the top and saw “Honan Scholarship” opposite to it. Just went straight out, ran all the way down to North Main Street and talked to a solicitor that I know,’ said Eileen with a visible effort to reduce her excitement to a businesslike manner, ‘and she said “yes”, said that she would take me on for nothing and that I could pay her, bit by bit, when I qualified and got a good job. I know her, you see. She’s one of the Hogans, Maureen Hogan. Her father is a solicitor and so is her uncle. I knew her brother. He was in the hideout with me a few years ago – he went off to America when he was wanted by the police – so I’ve heard! Maureen’s a member, though she keeps it very quiet, represents the lads in court, though …’

  She didn’t say what Maureen Hogan was a member of, or who ‘the lads’ were, but the Re
verend Mother’s lips tightened a little. She had hoped that Eileen would break all connection with the IRA and all those who rebelled so violently against the signing of a compromise treaty which allowed the six counties of the north to remain British. Their aim was for a united and a republican Ireland and all links to be broken with the United Kingdom, a legitimate aim, but their weapons were still the gun and intimidation. However, the treaty provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the community of nations known as the British Empire, a status the same as that of the Dominion of Canada. It also provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, with an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which it immediately exercised. The agreement was signed in London on 6 December 1921, by representatives of the British government (which included the English Prime Minister David Lloyd George) and by representatives of the Irish including Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. And then a bloody civil war broke out and the seeds that it sowed were still appearing above ground from time to time.

  Eileen, studying at the university for an LLB and working in a solicitor’s office would, hopefully, have little time for illicit action, but an office in the slum precincts of North Main Street rather than in the traditional South Mall did not argue for much of a practice. Eileen would learn little, she suspected from this Maureen Hogan. Nevertheless, now was the moment for congratulations.

  ‘Well done,’ she said quietly. ‘So, you are all set now for a good career. And a very worthwhile career.’

  ‘There was something else,’ said Eileen with a trace of nervousness in her voice. ‘You see, when I said to Maureen that I was popping in to tell you about the results, she asked me to … well, you see, Maureen, she’s very ambitious, you see, and she thinks women should be running the country and I agree with her and … well, she’s going up for election as an alderman and she asked me to have a word with you, to persuade you, to sort of suggest that you might have a word with the bishop – you know he’ll be the one who decides in the end – and when they elect a lord mayor again – when they get tired of that manager – well, she’d have a very good chance of being lord mayor of Cork city – that’s if she can get to be an alderman now …’ Her voice faltered and her expression grew more tentative as she eyed the Reverend Mother’s face. ‘I shouldn’t have promised to ask you that,’ she said hastily, and the Reverend Mother smiled at her.