A June of Ordinary Murders (31 page)

‘A cab-man handed in a woman's bag he said he found down by the canal at Baggot Street Bridge on Monday afternoon. He says he stopped to draw water for his horse. He spotted it in the grass by the towpath. Our search parties hadn't got to that point on the canal by then.'

‘So where is it now?'

‘He handed it in at College Street. They're sending it over shortly.'

‘Baggot Street Bridge,' Swallow noted. ‘If it's Sarah Hannin's bag I suppose that could indicate the point at which she went into the water.'

Pat Mossop looked up from his desk. ‘I know that place from my time in the E District. There's a spot under the bridge that isn't easily visible from the street. It's a place where sweethearts can meet discreetly. But it's also a place where mischief could be done without being noticed. We always had to check it out on our beat, night or day.'

‘Is there anything else?' Swallow asked Feore.

Feore tapped at the pages of the book on the desk. ‘They have a few statements from people who think they might have seen the girl but there's nothing here that jumps out as being useful.'

When Mossop and Feore had departed to the police mess-hall in the Lower Yard for breakfast, Swallow spent an hour going through the paperwork on the three murder cases.

It was a depressing exercise. Other than the identification of Sarah Hannin, there was no real progress anywhere. It had almost invariably been Swallow's experience in serious crime investigation that motive emerged fairly quickly. Witnesses, even reluctant ones, could usually be pinpointed at an early stage. Similarly, the identification of victims rarely took more than a day or two when families or workmates came forward.

Six days into the investigation he still had no idea who the Chapelizod Gate victims might be. There was no clear way forward with the case. The reported sighting at Chester railway station and the questioning of the mail-packet crew might lead somewhere in time. Equally, it might be a blind alley.

And the immediate requirement in the Sarah Hannin case was to secure access to the house and the other servants.

Sarah had left Fitzpatrick's on Sunday evening. At some point after she had encountered some person or persons who took her life and placed or dumped her body in the canal. Was that meeting by arrangement? And if so, with whom was it? Or was it a chance encounter that ended in violence?

The chances were that some of the other servants were aware of her plans or who she was likely to meet. One or other of them could very likely throw some light on who might have done her violence and why.

The crime conference was scheduled to start at 10 o'clock. Stephen Doolan had allocated a junior sergeant from Kevin Street and half a dozen uniformed constables to attend.

As Swallow could have predicted, Feore had done a good job on setting up the briefing. The photographic prints from the scene at Portobello Lock were neatly displayed on the wall. Beside them, a sheet of white board set out the essential points that had been gleaned from the investigations to date.

Feore and Mossop returned from their breakfast. ‘We're ready to go, Sergeant,' Feore said.

Swallow took his place at the desk, and gave his short account of Monday's events and the recovery of Sarah Hannin's body at Portobello. Then Feore took the group through Harry Lafeyre's postmortem report.

Swallow resumed his narrative from the moment that the dead girl had been identified by Hetty Connors.

‘After the identification I visited the home of Sarah Hannin's employer with Detective Mossop. She worked as a housemaid at the home of Alderman Thomas Fitzpatrick at Number 106 Merrion Square. They didn't give us a great reception. There's an unhelpful butler at the house who goes by the name of McDonald. He's Scottish, I think. He's maybe 60 years of age, I'd guess. I had a confidential whisper giving me reason to believe his real name is McDaniel. I'd like inquiries to be made in the area if anything is known about him.'

He saw no advantage in identifying Hetty Connors as the source of his information about the butler's alias.

‘We know very little about the victim apart from her name, or at least the name she worked under at Fitzpatrick's. This butler and Mr Fitzpatrick himself say they don't know of any family or relatives. They say they don't even know where she was from. We know from Dr Lafeyre that she was sexually experienced so there must be a male somewhere with whom she was intimate. But McDonald says they don't know anything about a gentleman friend either.'

‘I'm seeking a search warrant for the Fitzpatrick house,' Swallow told the group. ‘She was killed some time before she was put into the water, so the murder site may be within the house. At the very least, we need to examine her quarters and her personal effects. I'd ask you to assemble back here at 2 o'clock. I should have the warrant by then and we can proceed to execute it.'

There was bravado in this, he told himself silently. Fitzpatrick had made it clear he wanted nobody poking around in his house or questioning his servants. And he probably had enough clout with the powers in the Upper Yard to get his way. It might require a more unorthodox approach to find out about Sarah Hannin's life and why it had been ended so violently.

He stood from the desk. ‘Are there any questions?'

The young sergeant from Kevin Street drew a folded morning newspaper from inside his tunic and placed it on the desk in front of him.

‘Not so much a question as an observation. This sort of stuff doesn't help to keep the lads' spirits up, does it?'

He tapped the open page with his finger and turned the newspaper for Swallow to read.

It was the main news page of the
Daily Sketch.
Much of the space was devoted to the Jubilee events of the previous day, but the editors had not forgotten about Dublin's three gruesome murders. Crime always sold newspapers, Swallow reflected ruefully.

He read the descending headlines:

‘YET ANOTHER DUBLIN MURDER'

‘POLICE HAVE NO CLUES'

‘EMPLOYEE OF ALDERMAN FITZPATRICK'

‘SERGEANT SWALLOW THREATENS THE PRESS'

Swallow's heart sank as he read the report. He recognised Irving's racy, sensational prose describing the scene on the canal bank, the identification of the dead woman and his warning to the reporters to stay back from the scene.

‘Well, you'll all be famous by the end of this. Nothing like a bit of publicity to make you feel appreciated,' he grimaced.

The sergeant nodded. ‘Ah sure, it's only a rag,' he said unconvincingly.

When the uniformed officers had left, Feore set about updating the murder book. Swallow gave him his instructions.

‘Contact the office of the Army Paymaster in London to see if we can get a trace on McDonald or McDaniel. See if they can find any details of an old soldier, maybe a deserter. He might have continued to use his first name, James. People often do, even when they adopt a different surname. He'd be perhaps 60 years of age, so his date of birth would be in the '20s with enlistment maybe in the late '30s or '40s. His discharge could be 20 years ago, maybe longer. And they could start with the Scottish regiments.'

Feore noted the details.

‘I'll get a telegram off. Their records are good. And they're usually fast on this kind of thing, especially if the fellow is in receipt of a pension. You mentioned that you got a whisper. Is that why we're interested in him?'

‘I got a confidential word that he may be living under an alias. There might be nothing to it, but it's worth checking.'

Feore nodded. ‘It wouldn't surprise me if he's got a record behind him. He's a shady old bastard. I didn't like him from the moment I saw him. The bad ones have a way of letting a bobby know they think he's just a bit of dog shit.'

Mick Feore sometimes had a way with words, Swallow reflected. It had to be the teacher in him.

The second crime conference of the morning – for the Chapelizod Gate murders – was set for 11 o'clock. Swallow had time to spare before that, and he had a useful purpose in mind for it.

He walked down to the Lower Castle Yard, making for a grey-bricked building similar to the detective office at Exchange Court. His destination was the Board of Educational Charities. Among many other functions it supervised the operation of more than 200 orphanages, endowed schools and institutions of care which were spread across Ireland.

The chief clerk was a Welshman called Rankin. Swallow knew him from encounters in various public houses around the Castle and he had rendered him more than one policing favour. If a man working in one Castle office could do a good turn for someone working in another, why not?

In particular, Mr Rankin had reason to be grateful for the inexplicable loss somewhere in the system of one particular police file. Had it been progressed to a conclusion, it could have led to a conviction for attempting to perform a lewd act in a public place, to wit, the precincts of a brothel in Bull Alley.

The chief clerk greeted him by name. ‘Well, Sergeant Swallow, this is an unexpected pleasure. Come in, take a seat.'

He gestured Swallow to a chair beside his desk. ‘What can we do for the G Division this morning?'

‘A little information, Mr Rankin,' Swallow echoed the Welshman's mock formality. ‘I'm trying to find about an institution in which you might have an interest.'

‘Quite a few of those,' Rankin grinned, showing dark, stained teeth through his beard.

‘This one is in Queen's County. It's called Green something-or-other. Green House, or something like that.'

Rankin scratched an expansive stomach and nodded. ‘Only institution there with a name anything like that is Greenhills House. Would that be it?'

‘It could be. Tell me about it.'

Rankin looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.

‘It's a few miles outside Maryborough. Greenhills is a small institution by our standards … maybe 20 or 25 female children. It's been endowed through the estate of a Roman Catholic lady now deceased … provides accommodation and training for young girls of respectable families come on hard times. Some will be adopted. Mostly they're prepared for domestic service … housemaids, ladies' maids, governesses, that sort of thing. Quite well run, when last I heard about it. Although their endowment is running down and they'll need a new benefactor if they want to carry on. Why do you ask? Is there some problem there?'

Swallow shook his head. ‘No, I'm just trying to put some details together about someone.'

‘It's nothing to do with that damned business at the Chapelizod Gate, I hope. A dreadful, shocking affair that.'

‘No, not at all, I assure you,' Swallow told him, not wholly untruthfully.

Rankin crossed the room to the set of filing cabinets that lined the wall. He opened a drawer in one of the cabinets and lifted out a dark green file.

‘Greenhills House. Latest report is 1885 – two years. That's acceptable. Although one of our inspectors should be through there again soon, I'd imagine. Unusually, this place isn't in the hands of one of the Roman Catholic religious orders. The guardian is an individual named Pomeroy – Richard Pomeroy. 22 inmates at last count. No infectious or notifiable diseases. No complaints. No disruptions or absconding.'

He looked up from the file. ‘It all seems a well-run operation. It would be a pity if it doesn't find a new benefactor to fund it.'

‘Would you have files on past inmates, children who were accommodated there?'

‘No, they wouldn't be here. Those files remain with the individual institutions. We just deal here with overall numbers. But the files are confidential in any event. We can't have people trying to unpick arrangements that have been made for their own good. You couldn't run a system like this if you didn't lock down all the information.'

Although the registration of births, deaths and marriages had been compulsory in Ireland for more than 20 years, the bureaucratic arrangements for dealing with illegitimate children were designed by the authorities to be inflexible and impenetrable. Swallow nodded his understanding.

‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Sergeant?'

‘I don't think so, Mr Rankin.'

Rankin walked back to the filing cabinet and replaced the file.

In the moment that his back was turned, Swallow reached across the Chief Clerk's desk and slipped three sheets of the Board of Educational Charities' headed notepaper into his own file.

He thanked Rankin and retraced his steps across the Lower Yard of the Castle to the detective office.

TWENTY-FIVE

Inspector Duck Boyle was late. There were puffy bags under his red, watery eyes. Swallow guessed that after he had finished his tour of duty the previous night he had perhaps entered a little too enthusiastically into the spirit of the Jubilee celebrations. He glared at Swallow.

‘I've been thinkin' about that business with Charlie Vanucchi yesterday. You've a funny way of lookin' at things, Swalla'. Yer colleagues put their skins at risk. We arrest a murderer. We have th'opportunity to put one of the city's leadin' gangsters behind bars – and you're arguin' we have no case.'

‘The dying declaration was useless, Inspector,' Swallow said. ‘We'd have been thrown out of court. You should be grateful that I saved you the embarrassment.'

Boyle waved a pudgy finger.

‘You could have kept your mouth shut. There wasn't no need for anyone to know that the damned nurse told McKnight he'd be all right. If Mcknight thought he was goin' to die then the declaration would have been valid. A damned bad day's work you did.'

Swallow shrugged. There was no point in arguing. Boyle was impenetrable. If Vanucchi had been charged and brought to trial, the nurse's evidence given in court would have immediately undermined the case.