In Dublin's Fair City (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #6)

Another thought struck me. “And her luggage?” I asked. “My hotelroom is full of her trunks. I won’t be keeping on at this hotel. I plan to go tramping all over the countryside, and I certainly can’t take them with me.”


He fished into his pocket and produced a piece of paper. “This came for you separately,” he said.

It was a telegraph, addressed to me, care of the Cork police.

HAVE BAGS SENT SHELBOURNE HOTEL DUBLIN UNDER YOUR NAME. WILL ARRANGE TO HAVE COLLECTED. THANKS. EXTRA FEE. OS.


I looked up at the inspector. “She doesn’t express any regret at what happened to Rose or what I had to go through,” I said.

“You pay by the word for a telegraph,” the inspector said dryly.

“She wants me to send her trunks to Dublin,” I said.

“So I observed. Were you planning to go to Dublin yourself?”

“Hoping to. I’ll have to see where my search takes me. I was thinking of setting out tomorrow to start searching. I may be away overnight if I can’t find transportation. You’ll not need me before then, will you?”

He shook his head. “The inquest won’t be until the end of the week, I’m sure. It takes time to set up these things, arrange for an autopsy, and to find a court date. If you can tell us where you’re going?”

“I wish I knew. I’m looking for someone whose last known address was in a hamlet beyond Clonakilty, at the time of the Great Famine.”

“About thirty-five miles from here,” he said. “Wild country out there. You’ll take the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway. Change at Clonakilty Junction after Bandon. The branch line will take you into Clonakilty. Then I suspect you’re on your own.”

“I’m glad to hear there's a railway line,” I said. “I thought I might have to use my own two feet all the way.”

“We’re not that primitive in Southern Ireland, you know,” he said, smiling. “Did you know that fish delivered to those South Coast ports in the afternoon makes it to Billingsgate Fish Market in London next morning? That's what that railway was built for—carrying fish. No doubt you’ll get a good whiff of it.”

“Nothing worse than the smells I’m used to in New York City,” Isaid. “I’ll hope to be back in a few days then. By then I should know my plans, one way or the other.”

“I wish you luck,” the inspector said. “I think you’ve got quite a task ahead of you.”

I thought so too. I went back into the hotel and made arrangements for someone to pick up those trunks and ship them to the hotel in Dublin, under my name. I hoped that I’d seen the last of them and that I was finally getting Oona Sheehan out of my life.





Thirteen


Istarted for Clonakilty early next morning. News vendors at the station were hawking their wares, calling out loudly, “Girl murdered on transatlantic liner. Famous actress involved. Read all about it.” I glanced at them in horror and hurried past.

There was a quite a group of travelers boarding the jaunty green-and-yellow train with me at the terminus. Most of them seemed to know each other. I thought this boded well for my search—maybe news had traveled when a baby girl was left behind in the care of a priest all those years ago. As we pulled out of the station with much huffing and puffing I listened to the lilting accents of Cork and the discussion about things that seemed so remote to me now—harvests and stolen pigs, fishing boats and men lost in storms, deaths, and babies born. The tapestry of simple life outside of big cities, where nothing changed but the seasons.

Green countryside slipped past us: fields and cows and horses, and now and then a fine house among the trees. This was still the tamed part of Ireland, where nature was at the service of man and the ground yielded good harvest. Out where I came from, it was all peat bogs and mountains, and you’d have been lucky to grow enough potatoes to feed the family at the best of times. Often it wasn’t the best of times, and during the famine the entire potato crop had failed.

A road ran alongside the rail, and I wondered if this was the very road that the Burke family took from their croft beyond Clonakilty tothe famine ship in Queenstown harbor. I didn’t think they’d have taken the train, if the railway was indeed up and working back in 1848. People only left their homes when they had no money and no hope and could only take what they could carry. I pictured the road very different from its current air of prosperity, lined with a ragged column of starving people, some pushing everything they had managed to salvage in a wheelbarrow, some falling along the way and being left behind to die. Had Mary Ann Burke been left to die, or had she recovered and been taken in by a kindly family? Tommy had been told that she had been left in the care of a priest, and I scanned the road, making a note of any churches we passed.