A June of Ordinary Murders (37 page)

‘And I'm supposed to be the attending officer at the burial of Sarah Hannin this afternoon. As you know, they have to have a police officer present, and you can be sure that none of the fellows from Smith Berry's squad will demean themselves to it.'

Boyle was momentarily checked. Procedure required that a police officer be made available to ensure compliance with burial requirements. The ordinance went back many years to a scandal involving the burial of paupers' bodies in waste ground so that unscrupulous contractors could pocket the small cemetery fee payable by the Coroner's Office.

‘All right,' he acknowledged, ‘you can get Mossop to stand in for you when you're doin' that. But remember you're not the investigatin' officer on that case any more. Ye're just there to put a signature on the burial form.'

If the Assistant Under-Secretary's team of detectives was doing any work on the Sarah Hannin inquiry, Swallow picked up no news of it from any of the G-men. Since he was off the case he was unable to inquire officially what the status of the investigation was, or even who was involved.

An hour later, he chaired the fourth crime case conference on the Chapelizod Gate murders.

Pat Mossop and Stephen Doolan arrived at the crime sergeants' office simultaneously. Only four uniformed constables were present. Stephen Doolan's face was healing nicely after his hurling incident. He gestured apologetically to Swallow.

‘The superintendent at Kevin Street wasn't willing to let me keep all the boys on this case without any progress. I did well to get these few.'

‘So, have we any good news?' Swallow inquired.

There were glum expressions around the room. It seemed as if nobody had the heart to venture anything.

‘I'm afraid not,' Doolan said. ‘There's nothing come out of questioning the mail-packet crews. We haven't found anything in Hutton's records that might help to identify the carriage. There's nothing coming off the streets about this woman that Vinny Cussen is supposed to have had his boys out looking for. We're not really any further on than we were nearly a week ago.'

Swallow had weighed the advantages and disadvantages of briefing the team on the information he had gleaned from James O'Donnell about the woman and child who had visited the Fitzpatrick house.

On balance he decided against it, at least for the present. He would share the details with Pat Mossop because it would be worth having his experienced opinion on it. But if it became generally known among the G Division that there was a possible link between the Chapelizod Gate murders and Thomas Fitzpatrick's house at Merrion Square it would only be a matter of hours before he would be taken off that case too.

There was a knock on the door of the crime sergeants' room. Pat Mossop opened the door. Swallow saw a constable hand him a large, brown envelope.

‘It's from the photographic technician for Detective Sergeant Swallow.'

Mossop handed the envelope to Swallow. He slit the gummed paper seal and took the topmost picture from the bundle of prints. The photographer had softened the exposure so that the artificiality of plaster and paint on the face was minimised. The waxy sheen that glazed the improvised skin had disappeared. The features of an identifiable woman with somewhat prominent eyes were now clear.

He turned the photograph towards Doolan and the others.

‘Now, gentlemen, here's something you might have read about in some of the morning newspapers. But you haven't seen it before.'

Suddenly alert, the policemen stared at the picture, a mixture of curiosity and amazement on their faces.

‘Jesus, Joe. What is it? How did you do that?' Stephen Doolan exclaimed.

‘It's thanks to Dr Lafeyre,' Swallow explained. ‘It's a new technique devised in Germany. He's used a system that reconstructs the features on the basis of muscle and bone.'

‘How accurate do you think it is, Boss?' Pat Mossop asked.

‘Dr Lafeyre thinks it's probably a good likeness. I'm getting a poster with the image printed on it across in Ship Street. It gives us something to start asking questions about, doesn't it?'

Doolan nodded.

‘It surely does that. Give us a few copies and we'll start showing them around the city. We'll do the cabmen's shelters, the public houses and so on.'

Mossop distributed the photographs, retaining the master copy. Once he had finished, the conference broke up. The constables moved with a noticeable spring in their step.

The office was quiet. ‘Do you want tea, Boss?' Mossop asked. ‘I'd say you could do with a cup o' tea.'

When Pat Mossop made a ceremony of brewing tea, Swallow knew he had something he wanted to say. He sat down, accepted the offer and waited while the Book Man poured him a mug of black liquid that looked as if it had been stewing for a week.

‘I had an idea about something,' Mossop said, drawing his own chair closer. He added milk to the tea from a pewter jug and dolloped more into Swallow's mug.

He swallowed a mouthful. ‘This railway policeman says that the man – or the woman – that he spoke to at Chester gave an address in Dublin at Abbey Street. He said it was ‘St Brigid's, Abbey Street.' Now, we know there's no such place, don't we?'

Swallow tasted his own tea. It was bitter and heavy.

‘Sure. It doesn't exist.'

‘But supposing the policeman got it slightly wrong? Supposing that's just part of the address? Or supposing he mixed up the words…'

‘What have you in mind, Pat?'

‘Well, Boss, I've been thinking, it could be St Brigid's Abbey. He could have misheard, or maybe he got distracted by the noise of a train or something going on at a busy station. Do you know there's a place called St Brigid's Abbey just beyond Chapelizod, maybe half a mile from where the bodies were found?'

Swallow felt a surge of interest. He had never heard of St Brigid's Abbey.

‘Go on, Pat.'

‘Well, it's a convent. It's run by an order of nuns. I checked in the Catholic Directory. That's a complete list of all the religious houses in every diocese. These sisters at Chapelizod are what they call “semi-enclosed.” They don't have much contact with the outside world, and they don't have many visitors. I've no record of it being checked out in the inquiries.'

‘You say this abbey is beyond the village. So it's probably out of the DMP area.'

‘Yes, Boss, I checked it on the map. It's in the RIC Dublin County Division. And maybe the RIC would have reckoned that a community of enclosed nuns wouldn't have anything useful to tell them, so why go to the trouble of disturbing the holy sisters?'

Swallow considered Mossop's theory. No trace of the victims had been found in any hotel or boarding house. Door-to-door inquiries had been equally fruitless. Yet they had stayed somewhere in Dublin, probably for two nights. Why not in a convent? A convent just a few minutes' walk from where they had been found …

He forced himself to swallow another sip of Mossop's bitter tea.

‘I've followed less promising leads in my time,' he said. ‘It's worth a drive out to Chapelizod. But first, I've a bit of information I want to talk through with you. I didn't want to spread it around at the conference because there'd be repercussions. And for the moment I don't want you to put it in the murder book either. It touches on the Sarah Hannin investigation, and that's off limits to us, as you know.'

‘Righto, Boss.' Mossop shut the book. ‘I understand. Tell me.'

‘The business at the Royal Hibernian Academy on Sunday night threw up an unexpected dividend. I questioned this fellow, James O'Donnell, who got caught up in the ruckus there. He's in the Hibernian Brothers, but he's a martyr to drink. So I frightened him, told him we'd pay for good information, and I let him out. But as he left here yesterday evening he saw the picture of the “Chapelizod Gate Woman” in the
Telegraph.
He told me he recognised her. He'd been watching Fitzpatrick's house on the previous Wednesday and he saw her going in, along with the boy.'

Mossop was sceptical. Swallow expected that. It was what made Pat Mossop an excellent colleague on a complex case. He doubted. He challenged. He searched out flaws and infirmities like a ferret.

‘Maybe he only wanted to get a few quid, Boss,' Mossop ventured. ‘From what you say he has a bad story with the drink. Fellows like that will tell you anything they think you'd like to hear if they can see the price of a few whiskies in it. And even if he wasn't scrounging he might just be mistaken.'

‘That's true,' Swallow acknowledged. ‘But whether he's right or wrong I think he believes what he told me. He says he saw the woman and child going into Fitzpatrick's. The description of the boy's clothing tallies. It also tallies that the woman had unusually protruding eyes. It's a long way off being conclusive, but it's a possible sighting.'

Swallow stood. ‘I'm going over the the Coroner's Court for the Hannin inquest. Then I'm going along to the burial as the attending officer. Will you hold the fort as duty officer for me?'

Mossop grinned. ‘Ah sure, I'll use the day to build up my reputation with Detective Inspector Boyle. Don't worry. He'll be very impressed to find me with my nose here in the books all day.'

THIRTY

Sarah Hannin's small funeral cortège made its way in the midday heat through the walkways of Mount Prospect cemetery. Thomas Fitzpatrick's murdered housemaid was to be buried in a newly opened grave of the third class, well away from the grand avenues along which the burial sites of Glasnevin's wealthy deceased are located.

The cortège was not on the scale of Cecilia Downes's obsequies three days earlier, but neither was it the pauper's burial that was accorded to the woman and boy whose bodies had been found at the Chapelizod Gate on the previous Friday morning. The coffin was inexpensive but respectable, made of plain deal with cast-iron handles. It was transported from the Dublin City Morgue by a commercial undertaker in a closed hearse, drawn by a single horse.

There was one mourning car. In addition to a young priest attached to St Andrew's Parish Church on Westland Row, it carried James McDonald and two of the women servants from 106 Merrion Square. The only member of the party who appeared to exhibit any grief was the younger of the women, who sobbed at intervals into a blue cotton handkerchief.

A Dublin Metropolitan Police open car followed the mourners. Swallow sat beside the driver. At the graveside, he dismounted and handed an official form to the foreman gravedigger to sign, then he countersigned it, fulfilling officialdom's requirements in respect of the deceased. The form confirmed the burial of the remains of Sarah Hannin, ‘spinster of Merrion Square, in the Parish of St Andrew's, Dublin.' He put the completed form in an inside pocket and joined in with the responses when the priest started the prayers.

At a Coroner's Inquest in Marlborough Street earlier, Swallow had given evidence of seeing the body of Sarah Hannin taken from the Grand Canal. He then read the report of the medical examiner, which stated that the woman had died from injuries to the brain and skull, caused by a heavy, blunt weapon or instrument. The jury had returned a verdict of unlawful killing by a person or persons unknown.

When the prayers had finished, the mourning party started back along the dry, dusty pathway to their car. Swallow saw James McDonald approach the priest and press a white envelope into his hand. The young priest looked duly grateful. He anticipated that the funeral stipend offered by Alderman Fitzpatrick for the obsequies of a member of his household staff would be generous.

Swallow climbed back on board the police trap. His eyes and James McDonald's met as the drivers wheeled their vehicles around to make for the cemetery gate. There was no other sign of recognition. But Swallow thought he saw, perhaps, something akin to distress in the older man's face.

Friday June 24th, 1887

THIRTY-ONE

‘I'll be spending a bit of time with Mossop to check out a lead he got last night on the Chapelizod Gate murders,' Swallow told Duck Boyle after the morning parade at Exchange Court. Yet again, every available G-man was on security duty, anticipating the royal visit, now little more than 72 hours away.

‘Well I'll be puttin' Detectives Feore and Swift back on general surveillance duties,' Boyle responded. ‘They'll be better employed on some proper police work for me instead of runnin' around in circles with you.'

There was no benefit, Swallow reasoned, in publicising Mossop's theory about St Brigid's Abbey. It would probably draw derision from Duck Boyle and it would only serve to distract the team. If it yielded a result, there would be time enough to bring them into the picture.

As the shift of G-men left the office, Swallow remembered his commitment for the theatre in the evening. He thought briefly about cancelling, but it would not be worth the grief, he reckoned. Maria was looking forward to the outing, and Lily and Lafeyre would be disappointed.

The morning newspapers again carried pictures or sketches of Harry Lafeyre's ‘Chapelizod Gate Woman' along with reports about the new identification technique. By mid morning, though, no firm leads had come back to the detective office either from Doolan's constables or from members of the public.

Swallow had decided that there would be no point in mounting another crime case conference unless something substantial by way of new information had come in.

Mossop had arranged for a police side-car to be available at Exchange Court for the journey to St Brigid's Abbey. As he exited the detective office, Swallow checked up and down the alley to see if he was still being followed, but he could detect no sign of any surveillance as he and Mossop climbed on board the vehicle.

The police driver was skilful and fast. He took the car along Lord Edward Street and under the Christchurch Arch spanning Winetavern Street. Then he turned west along the Liffey Quays.