The Devil's Making (28 page)

My plan was to walk to Quattrini's, talk to the other servant, and take a look at the dead girl's effects. On the way I passed the Catholic church she had attended, a large barn-like building of clapboard. I knocked at the door of the priest's house, beside the church, made of the same clapboard. The door was opened by a boy in a cassock. I was shown into a parlour, where I waited for a few minutes below a picture of Jesus holding out a sacred heart with rays of light emanating from it, so that it looked like a bloody pin-cushion.

The priest entered. I had already seen him at McCrory's funeral, speaking church Latin. He introduced himself as Father McMahon. His accent was American or Irish. He was black haired, dark jowled, pale skinned, and smoothly plump.

‘I'm enquiring about one of your parishioners, Miss Kathleen Donnelly, whose body was found in the harbour this morning.'

‘Poor thing, poor thing, it's a tragedy so it is. I heard of it already.' He spread out his hands in an eloquent gesture of resignation to the will of God.

‘What did you know of the young lady?'

‘Self murder, if it be so – and I'm sure by the looks of it, it is – is a terrible thing, Sergeant. It cuts the poor girl off from her communion from God and consigns her to everlasting night. Alas, we cannot even lay her to rest among her own.'

I had forgotten about this particular Christian spite against suicides. I was almost tempted to remark, as John Donne had in an essay, that since Jesus Christ was God he must have planned his fate in advance and therefore was committing ‘self homicide' at the crucifixion. Instead I asked, ‘Did she ever come to you in trouble?'

‘Now, now, Sergeant, I take it you are a Protestant.'

‘An Anglican by upbringing.'

‘A Protestant then, so you'll not know that the secrecy of the confession is sacred. It may never be divulged – not even under the most terrible tortures.'

‘I realise that. I wasn't thinking about the confessional, but the possibility that she had asked your advice, or confided her worries to you.'

‘Sure these poor girls, they come from country areas – she was from Donegal – they don't confide their worries to any but their own kind, and that in their own language, the Gaelic, which I don't happen to speak. It is a language of wantonness and crudeness – without refinement.'

‘But she would have made her confession in English? Surely she spoke English.'

‘To be sure. I did hear her in confessional, of course. And I absolved her in Latin – which your church does not know. Apart from that I never talked with her.'

‘You don't remember, though, if she came to Mass with any particular friends, or…'

‘Sergeant, at Holy Mass my eyes are not on my congregation as individuals, but as a community of poor sinners come to receive the power of redemption.'

‘Thank you. I won't waste your time any further.' I turned to leave. But at the door I could not resist asking a question. ‘Father,' (although this word almost stuck in my throat), ‘may I ask if you are a Jansenist?'

Father McMahon seemed to swell with pride as he replied with a smile, ‘That's an astute observation, Sergeant. I suppose it's my devotion to my calling which elicits it from you. Of course I would not admit to being a Jansenist pure and simple. I am simply a priest of the Holy Roman Church. But my seminary, at Maynooth in Ireland, was directed by priests of a definitely Jansenist persuasion.'

‘I'm not sure,' I said, ‘what Dr Powell's statement on this girl's death may be. I imagine he may say she died by her own hand, or as a result of misadventure. Perhaps, since she was a religious girl, you can give her the benefit of the doubt.'

Father McMahon's smile vanished. ‘Of course it was self murder', he said sourly. They say she had a rock in her dress.'

‘They'll say all sorts of things', I said. ‘Who knows what happened?'

‘
God
knows', he said triumphantly. ‘It's not up to me to give her the benefit of the doubt. Do you think we can deceive the all seeing eye of God?'

Faced with the irrefutable, though circular, logic of this question, I gave up and merely said ‘Goodbye.' I went on my way feeling a puff of intellectual vanity that I had recognised Father McMahon's Jansenism. This Irish priest was not the kind of warm and accepting man I imagined caring for his flocks on the warm shores of the Mediterranean – whose clear light I had seen in paintings was like the light in Victoria now that Spring had come.

By the time I had reached Quattrini's house, on the edge of town at Hillside, my new self was back again. I enjoyed being a ‘detective.' After all my agonising about God's laws versus the cold inanimate laws of Darwinian Nature, I was content enough to enforce the laws of the world I lived in – which presented problems as ticklish as any in theology. Although Dr Powell had said there were no physical signs of foul play, a pretty young girl did not throw herself into the sea clutching a rock to her bosom unless there had been foul play of another sort than physical.

19

Quattrini's house was in fact a mansion, with a wide veranda and all sorts of wooden fretwork and design of the sort coming to be known as ‘gingerbread' – rare, as yet, in Victoria, but apparently coming into fashion in San Francisco. The bell was answered by a servant in a mob cap and apron, no more than a girl, of perhaps sixteen, dark haired and pale cheeked. She opened the door only a few inches and told me there was no one at home.

‘Are you Ellen? You're the one I'd like to talk to.'

She opened the door more fully and her eyes widened as she took in the fact that I was a policeman. ‘Is it about poor Kathleen?', she said, pronouncing it almost as ‘Catchleen', in a lilting, almost Scottish accent. She raised a pocket handkerchief, already in her hand, to her face and wiped her eyes. When she took it away it was clear she had been crying a lot. Her eyes were bloodshot.

‘May I come in?' I entered the house past the girl. Standing in the hallway, I said ‘I'd like to see Kathleen's room please. Can you show it to me?'

‘We shared a room, Sir. I'd be too ashamed to let you see it. It's up in the top of the house, and of course it's full of our things. It wouldn't be right.'

I had become used to Victoria's free and easy lack of procedural restrictions. I could insist on seeing the room right away and barge up there and ransack it if I wished. But I agreed, it would not be right.

‘Could we go and sit down then? So that I can ask you a few questions?'

‘Yes, Sir'. Looking frightened, Ellen led the way back along the hall to a huge kitchen, where there was a mass of freshly washed dishes set to dry in racks near a double sink. She asked me to sit down at the table on which were carrots and celery she had been peeling and slicing.

‘When did you hear of Kathleen's death?' I asked.

‘Just now, at lunch time. When Pino came he told me.'

‘Pino?'

‘Mr Quattrini's son. He sometimes comes home for luncheon.' Ellen blushed, then raised her handkerchief to her eyes.

‘Didn't you miss her in the morning? Or in the middle of the night?'

‘Indeed I did. When I awoke this morning she wasn't there. I thought maybe she'd gone downstairs early. But she wasn't here either.'

‘Did Mr Quattrini notice she wasn't here?'

‘Him? No. He's in such a hurry to get to work in the morning he'd not notice anything.'

‘And what did you think when she didn't come back later in the morning?'

‘Nothing. I never know what to think about anything.' This remark sounded plaintive.

‘Was anything missing from your room?'

‘Not that I noticed.'

‘All her clothes are there?'

‘Yes. Pino said she had her pink dress on, that she was wearing yesterday. He saw her at the warehouse. He said she was all blue and puffed up. It's horrible.' Ellen wiped her eyes again, and let out a little sob, then surprisingly broke into an abrupt wailing sound – ‘Ochone, Och a Chatchleen, mo vrone, mo vrone!' Or at least that is how I transcribe it. She paused and looked at me, wiping her tears. ‘I've seen drownded people', she said. ‘At home in Ireland. I never dreamed Katchleen would end up like that.'

‘Are you from the same place in Ireland?'

‘Och yes. Derrybeg – the Bloody Foreland, they call it. And aren't we cousins?'

‘And is she what you'd call a good girl?' I asked, feeling I must be sounding like Father McMahon.

Ellen looked at me in indignation. ‘Of course she was a good girl. None better. Guh mannee jeea air an anam.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘May God's blessings be on her soul.'

‘How about her stays?' I was suddenly fed up with getting nowhere.

‘What?' Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know that? They're up in the room, on the chair.

‘She wasn't wearing them. That's how I know.'

‘Did you see her undressed?' She looked at me in horror.

‘No. The doctor mentioned it to me. Did it strike you as odd that she should get dressed and leave her stays behind?'

Ellen now blushed hotly which, since the rest of her face was pale, gave a patchy clown-like appearance to her cheeks. She looked at the table. ‘Not really', she muttered.

‘How could she get dressed in the middle of the night and leave the room without you noticing?'

She continued looking at the table, saying nothing.

‘You
did
notice it!'

‘I was half asleep and I heard her getting up, but I didn't open my eyes. It's best not to notice things like that.'

‘Why?'

There was no reply.

‘Did you know any of Kathleen's secrets? After all, you were cousins.'

‘If I did, I wouldn't tell them', she said vehemently.

‘It seems she may have drowned herself. Do you think she did?

Ellen sighed. ‘She might have done.' She began crying again.

‘Why, Ellen?'

‘I can't say, Sir.'

‘Wouldn't she want you to?'

‘No, she wouldn't. She said to me once: ‘Aileen my girl, as you grow older you'll learn not to cry about your sorrows. You'll learn to take them into yourself and no one will ever know.'

‘Did she say that recently?'

‘Yes, Sir.'

‘So she was suffering from a sorrow. And you knew what it was.'

‘She never told me.'

‘Ellen – or is it Aileen? – I can see that you're very upset and you don't like to let down your friend. But if you think she has been badly done by, you should let me know. When a person commits suicide, we have to understand why. I believe you when you say Kathleen told you no secrets. But I think you must have guessed some of them, and I know you're hiding something.'

‘How can you know that?'

‘Because when you mentioned Pino, and when I mentioned Kathleen's getting dressed without her stays, you blushed.'

‘Well, about the stays I would, wouldn't I? It's not right for a gentleman to ask such things.'

‘And Pino?'

‘I
hate
Pino', she said, scrunching her handkerchief into a tight ball and squeezing it. ‘If I let him do what he wanted I'd be in the same fix as
her!
I'd be lying dead upon the shore, so I would. Like father, like son!'

‘You mean Mr Quattrini had relations with Kathleen?

‘Of course! The beast. She would go down and visit him at night. I knew it, though she would say it was for a walk in the back yard. Even when it was raining. I knew it! So this morning at first I thought she must still be lying in the bed of the pig, having slept in. Then I remembered she couldn't have been.'

‘You mean she was having her monthly?'

‘You know that too! Well, of course. And very happy she was to have it, too. She had waited, I guess, three months for it, and then when it came she weren't half relieved. But it lasted over three weeks, by my count. I guess it was one week for each missed month.'

‘How long had she been having this relation with Mr Quattrini?'

‘Coming on a year. Mrs Quattrini died not long before that.'

‘And it was a reluctant relation on her part?'

‘She never liked him! Sometimes she'd feign sick. Many a night she'd complain, in the old bull's – pardon me Sir – in Mr Quattrini's hearing, like: “Oh dear, Ellen, I believe I have a headache tonight – will you smoke that old Dudeen in my ear?” It's a custom we have, if a person has a headache or a cold, of blowing pipe-smoke hot into the ear. Mr Quattrini didn't like that, he thought it stupid, so he did. Maybe it put the old bull off his pleasures. Her heart was really with her young man.'

‘Who was that?'

‘She'd never tell me. Only she said he was a lovely young man, and quite the gentleman. When she had the day off – which wasn't often, let me tell you – she'd dress up like the dickens and off she'd go to see him, like as if she was going courting. But she would never tell me his name.'

‘Did you ever see her locket?'

‘Of course. Why, you know everything, don't you?' Ellen seemed by now quite perked up with talking. ‘She kept his picture in it. But danged if she ever let
me
see it.'

‘Didn't she worry about being gotten with child?'

‘You didn't know her! She was gay and lively, like. Only when her monthlies were late she grew thin with worry. Then she went away for the night, with Mr Quattrini's permission, would you believe it, to stay with a friend. Not a friend I knew of! And whether it was the travelling, or what, the next day her monthly came, and I guess because it had been backed up so long it kinda wore her out and she was more miserable than before.'

I felt somewhat confused by all this, and I realised that Ellen's knowledge of female physiology was not necessarily more detailed than my own.