Murder in an Orchard Cemetery Read online

  ‘How on earth could you be blamed for it?’ asked the Reverend Mother and caught a warning glance sent from Sister Mary Agnes to the young gardener, almost a maternal glance. He was probably young enough to be a son of the middle-aged lay sister, she thought and knew a moment of regret that these lay sisters were pushed into the convent at the age of fourteen when they were really far too young to make a decision about their future. Many of them later, she had learned, regretted that they had not been wives and mothers. Families, in her experience, could be quite cruel about getting rid of a few of the extra mouths to feed and the older ones were often sacrificed for the sake of the younger ones, the parents salving their consciences with platitudes about the will of God.

  ‘Time you were getting back to work. They might be looking for you,’ said Sister Mary Agnes. Her words were roughly spoken, but her glance at the young man was certainly quite maternal. The Reverend Mother, however, had been intrigued by the question of blame and she got to her feet.

  ‘Will you walk back with me?’ she asked. The gardener immediately seized his cap and escorted her, walking ahead and opening a door that led into the yard.

  ‘Why on earth should anyone blame you if a bag of fertilizer is missing?’ she asked again, once they were out in the open.

  ‘It’s the Shinners,’ he explained. ‘The Sinn Fein, you know, Reverend Mother. They steal fertilizer. I should have kept the shed locked, but, you know, I didn’t think that they’d steal from a convent.’

  ‘What on earth would they want fertilizer for?’ The Reverend Mother was genuinely puzzled. An image of the banned members of Sinn Fein hiding out in the hills and growing potatoes with the aid of stolen bags of fertilizer came to her, but she rejected it. Ever since she had had the inspiration of rooting up the useless shrubs of Portuguese Laurel, hydrangea and rhododendron in the convent garden, she had taken a keen interest in growing potatoes to feed hungry children at lunch time. Potatoes, she knew, should be planted as near to St Patrick’s Day on the seventeenth of March as possible, not in June and in any case, these warlike young men were more likely to steal potatoes than go through the long drawn-out process of growing them.

  His eyes widened at her ignorance. ‘They makes bombs out of it,’ he said.

  ‘Bombs!’

  ‘That’s right, Reverend Mother. They use fertilizer and diesel sometimes.’ He was enjoying her ignorance. ‘You can even make a bomb out of fertilizer and sugar, you know.’

  ‘Never!’ she exclaimed, and enjoyed the expression of pleasure on his young face. She scanned her mind for information. Had she ever seen a bomb? She couldn’t remember. ‘What does a bomb look like? Is it like a big metal ball?’ she asked cautiously as they made their way around the house.

  He laughed heartily. A child of the troubled times, she told herself. His growing-up years would have been marked by explosions, gunfire, raids and executions.

  ‘You get yourself a bag of fertilizer and a can of diesel and a match, Reverend Mother, and you have a bomb,’ he said with an air of huge enjoyment at instructing her. And then, as they rounded the corner and confronted the paraphernalia of violent death – the ambulance, the fire brigade, and the police car – his assurance fell away from him and he came to a full stop.

  ‘You wouldn’t tell them about the bag of fertilizer, would you, would you do that for me, Reverend Mother?’ he pleaded. ‘You could explain that I didn’t think that the Shinners would raid a convent. You see, I’m awful busy just now. No time to be talking to the guards – have to see to earthing up the potatoes. Can’t waste any more time, today.’

  She nodded. Wrong of her, perhaps, but she doubted that he could have had anything to do with the theft. There had been very little Republican activity in recent months, and she could not see why the convent would have been a target. The whole matter was very strange, and she was relieved to see the familiar figure of Inspector Patrick Cashman beside the throng of vehicles at the entrance to the convent.

  It was only then that she suddenly thought of Maureen Hogan – a very respectable professed solicitor, but also a prominent figure among the ‘Cumann na mBan’, the women’s branch of Sinn Fein.

  And now Maureen Hogan was a candidate for the position of alderman in the city of Cork.

  FIVE

  Inspector Patrick Cashman was leaning on the roof of the Garda car with a pair of binoculars held to his eyes. Beside him was his assistant and at a little distance some ambulance men, shrouded in protective clothing and wearing large gloves. An ominous stretcher and a large body bag were on the ground beside them and they stood very still, looking at the scene of ruin ahead of them.

  For the moment, only a couple of members of the fire brigade were within the orchard cemetery enclosure, and these were heavily protected with helmets, masks, leather coats and thigh-high boots. Wouldn’t do them much good if another bomb exploded, thought the Reverend Mother, but she was too accustomed to the casual bravery of the city services to comment on the matter, as she silently came and stood beside Patrick.

  ‘Like to have a look, Reverend Mother?’ Patrick handed over the binoculars and went to have a word with his assistant, Sergeant Joe Dugan. The Reverend Mother put the binoculars to her eyes and instantly the whole scene sprang to life in magnified detail. The bench was gone; one piece of jagged stone protruded from the trunk of a distant apple tree but otherwise there was no sign of it. And the neatly disguised grave, with its tarpaulin covering and its decorative pots of plants, was now an enormous and gaping hole in the ground. As the Reverend Mother watched, holding the binoculars as steadily as she could, one of the firemen bent down and picked something up, turning back towards the laneway and shouting something. In a second Patrick was back beside her and immediately she returned the binoculars to him. His eyes were fifty years younger than hers and this was police business. He gazed for a moment, lifted an arm in acknowledgement and then lowered the binoculars and turned to his assistant.

  ‘Piece of metal, an alarm clock, perhaps,’ he said, and Joe nodded in casual acceptance, while the Reverend Mother suppressed her instinct to exclaim or to question. What was an alarm clock doing in the neatly cared-for rows of apple trees and of graves? She asked herself that question and was puzzled about the relevance of this find. She, herself, had spent much time there in the orchard cemetery during the last two days and had not seen anything other than well-mown grass and an immaculately raked gravel path. Certainly, no rubbish. It definitely had significance, though. Already Joe was noting the discovery in his notebook, looking up from the position of the afternoon sun to the church behind them and with a pointed pencil estimating a position for the find, still held up in the air by the fireman’s arm. How useful it was that every church had its altar on the eastern side of the building! Wherever there was a church within sight, no one needed a compass to check a location, even on a foggy or cloudy day, but today the sun helped to ensure an accurate location and Joe nodded with satisfaction and, in his turn, held up an arm. The fireman came forward now to the gate. Joe delved in his bag and advanced to meet him with a small cardboard box in his hand.

  ‘Doesn’t look like anything,’ he said. And from what the Reverend Mother could see, it certainly did not. Just a lump of twisted metal.

  ‘Bet you that it will turn out to be a nice little alarm clock. Handy to get you up in the morning, Joe. No more excuses from him if he is late to work, isn’t that right, Inspector,’ said the fireman with a wink at Patrick, and he and Joe laughed with no appearance of strain. These young men would have attended many scenes like this and would have watched as firemen and ambulance men risked their lives. The Reverend Mother stood at one side and hoped that the pale and rather impassive face, which she saw in the mirror every morning as she straightened her veil and wimple, would not betray her feelings of horror and, she had to admit, a slight frisson of fear. What if there were another bomb? Or if, for some reason, part of it had not exploded. She had known of such happenings in the streets
of Cork, the most violent and heavily bombed city in the country of Ireland.

  And then came the moment which she awaited. One fireman beckoned the two ambulancemen and they came forward with the stretcher and the body bag. The Reverend Mother forced herself to stand her ground and, for once, was glad of her fading eyesight. She had seen plenty of death during her time as superior of a convent of aging nuns, but solemn careful routine had no place here. The men first picked up the leg which she had seen originally and then moved here and there, bending from time to time, picking up something and placing it in the bag. They wore large white gloves and as she watched the gleam of this immaculate colour faded and the gloves became stained and dark. She remained there, as impassively as she could and, in her mind, she said, If they can bear it, so can I. Death for the elderly should be a matter of custom; for the young it was an abomination.

  When they came back with their burden, she raised her hand to her forehead and made the sign of the cross and murmured a prayer. One of the men said, ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’ But the other looked embarrassed. The first, she had an impression, may have been a pupil of hers. The boys she knew less well than the girls. They left at the age of seven and moved onto the Christian Brothers. As had Patrick Cashman, now Inspector Patrick Cashman, and to him she turned with more practical aid.

  ‘It was a bomb, was it not?’ she queried, and then, not waiting for the obvious reply, she said, ‘The gardener has missed a bag of fertilizer from his shed.’

  That startled him. ‘Fertilizer!’ he exclaimed. Then: ‘So, it was a Sinn Fein operation. They make them sometimes from fertilizer and diesel.’

  She waited. He was experienced and astute. It was for him to ask the questions, to weigh up the evidence and to guess what might lie behind this terrible slaughter. She would help him with any piece of information that he required, but for now she would be silent and allow him to consider what lay behind this strange event.

  ‘Who was the victim?’ he asked after a moment, looking at her very directly.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. That was the truth, but, of course, there was more to it than that and she forced herself to go on. ‘The principal teacher from each school in Cork city was invited to come to this convent for our annual retreat, Patrick,’ she said and saw him nod. He had known that.

  And he probably knew also of the bishop’s strange decision for this one year.

  Nevertheless, she went on with her explanation. ‘For once, this year, we were joined by the five candidates for the post of alderman on the city council. You know who they are, Patrick. Mr William Hamilton, who has a stocking factory; Mr Pat Pius Murphy, seller of shoes; Miss Maureen Hogan, the solicitor; Mr Robert O’Connor, the builder and …’ She stopped for a moment and then forced herself to go on while silently uttering God have mercy on his soul. ‘And Mr James Musgrave.’

  His eyes went to the stretcher, which had been cautiously edged into the ambulance, inserted with such care that no individual part of the body would roll from beneath the cover which had been placed on top of it.

  ‘And the victim,’ he repeated. ‘Could you hazard a guess, Reverend Mother?’ His eyes, like hers, were fixed upon that stretcher. The door had not yet been closed. The ambulance men had done their part and now they awaited instructions.

  ‘I think that it may have been Mr James Musgrave,’ she said after a moment and tried to ensure that her voice remained as steady as did his.

  ‘The stockbroker,’ he said. There was a note of astonishment in his voice and once again she was conscious of a feeling of surprise that he knew so much of the ins and the outs of Cork society. It was, she herself had thought, most unlikely that someone of James Musgrave’s breed and lineage had anything to do with Sinn Fein or the remnants of Protestant resistance. He belonged, from what she knew of him, to one of those old Roman Catholic families in Cork city. People who kept their Catholic religion, obeyed the law that, until almost a hundred years previously, forbade Catholics to engage in the professions, but who used their brains and their ingenuity and their family influence to engage in commerce and when the time of Catholic Emancipation arrived, those accumulated fortunes served to educate their sons, and recently their daughters, to take their rightful places in the professions of the country – doctors, lawyers, accountants and university lecturers. No, she agreed with Patrick’s unspoken comment; no, there was little chance that James Musgrave could have been a member of either faction, of those who followed Michael Collins and his pragmatic moderate compromise which involved losing control of the six counties of Northern Ireland, nor of the de Valera revolutionaries, who had never accepted the divided country and the remaining link with Britain. Many violent deaths in the city these days resulted from this enmity. But it was, she felt, most unlikely that James Musgrave had taken part in any of the sporadic fighting and military conspiracies that were behind most sudden and violent deaths in the city.

  However, if that were the case, how had it happened that, when sitting peacefully in a convent garden, he had been blown up by an amateur bomb made from garden fertilizer and diesel? Perhaps, she thought suddenly, I might be wrong. Why should it be James Musgrave? Perhaps the man had finished his trawl through his documents, had put everything back into his case and then had gone for a walk. Judging by the time that it had taken the ambulance men to search through the bomb-strewn lumps of flesh, the body might be indistinguishable. Identification would have to be made. The man was a widower; his twin sons had emigrated to Australia. The only near relative was the young novice here in the convent and she might have to give a formal identification, but in the meantime, something needed to be done and the Reverend Mother nerved herself to make the offer.

  ‘Is there any possibility of identification now, at this moment?’ she asked in a steady tone of voice and then added, ‘the daughter, a young novice here in the convent, is the only near relative and I would like to spare her if possible. It may not be James Musgrave,’ she added, but was conscious that her words lacked conviction.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Patrick left her and went towards the ambulance. She waited, watching the conversation. They spoke in low tones, too low for her to make out what they were saying, although they were quite near to her. But she could read their faces, read their body language. They were uneasy, unwilling. She guessed at what they were saying, but stayed there, very still. The responsibility was theirs, but she suspected that they would leave it up to Patrick now to make the decision.

  And Patrick had known her since he was a four-year-old boy. She hoped that he would feel able to trust her.

  The men had turned back to the stretcher. Fresh gloves on their hands, she noticed. They had thought their grisly task was at an end and that others in the morgue at the hospital would take over. She waited calmly, breathing a quick prayer to her patron saint to give her courage and when, after a couple of minutes, Patrick turned and came back, she asked no questions but moved towards him, following him with a steady step and doing her best to make this as easy as possible for the unfortunate ambulance men who were being forced by her to revisit the corpse which they had covered so neatly.

  It was, however, impossible to distinguish any features from the hollowed out and blood-clotted head. She gazed at it long enough to make sure that there was no possibility of any identification. She was just about to make the gesture which they awaited, her permission to cover the pieces of what once had been a body, when her eye was caught by a pile of what seemed like raw meat but had on top of it a strip of material. It was heavily stained with blood, but some portion had escaped. A strip of blue and silver, with a bloodstained circle – a badge, she thought and pointed at it.

  ‘Is it possible to wipe the blood from this – I think it might be a badge, don’t you?’ she asked, looking back at Patrick. His had to be the authority for doing this.

  He nodded, but it was left to one of the ambulance men to take a soaked swab from a bucket and delicately wipe the object. It was as she
had thought.

  ‘It’s a pioneer badge,’ she said aloud. ‘I noticed that the man I mentioned to you had a pioneer badge, inspector, I noticed him wearing it during our lunch.’

  Everyone received that remark respectfully and in silence, although she noticed that two of the ambulance men exchanged glances. It was left to Sergeant Joe Duggan, Patrick’s assistant, to venture a doubt.

  ‘Very popular, in Cork, these pioneer badges,’ he remarked.

  ‘Knew a man who wore one, day in and day out, and only took it off when he went to the pub of an evening,’ said one of the ambulance men, emboldened by that remark from the police.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘You’re quite right. Yes, many men would have been wearing a pioneer badge. It’s just that the tie is the same, also. Luckily, there is a fragment that hasn’t been soaked in blood.’ She leaned over the body, beginning to feel more at home with the situation and concentrating hard upon saving poor young Sister Mary Magdalen from having to identify her father from these awful remains. ‘You see, inspector,’ she said addressing Patrick, ‘I recognize that tie. It would only be worn by someone who had been to a particular school near Dublin, a school called Clongowes Wood College, a boarding school, a most expensive school, indeed,’ she added. ‘Mr James Musgrave, the stockbroker, wore this tie at lunch and I noticed that it was pinned to his shirt by a pioneer badge.’

  ‘Not likely anyone walked in off the road wearing a posh tie with a pioneer badge stuck into the middle of it, Jim,’ said one ambulanceman to the other.

  ‘Ruin a good silk tie,’ said the other. ‘Funny he didn’t pin it to his lapel.’

  The Reverend Mother gave him an approving nod. Cork people, she thought, with a moment’s pride, had sharp wits. She had thought the same thing herself at lunch time and had come to the uncharitable conclusion that it had been placed in the centre of the tie in order to attract the attention of his lordship the bishop.