The Convictions of John Delahunt (38 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

I was brought to a holding cell in Store Street and placed in manacles and shackles. They only allowed for a half-stride, so I shuffled around the cell like a hobbled horse. The irons were heavy and cold to the touch. When I was first escorted in, the fetters were in a heap in one corner. The guard picked them up and cursed. He struggled for a while to untangle the chains, but only managed to pull one leg-iron and one handcuff free. I offered to hold them while he unravelled the rest. After considering a moment he placed them in my hands. With a bit more unpicking he managed to get the chains loose, and he thanked me while slipping them on.

After that I was left alone. I sat at the table, placed my hands beside an oil-lamp and waited. After the initial shock of my arrest, I realized it was vital that I be allowed to make a statement, to tell the police what Lyster had done. But one thought began to weigh on me. These were the cells to which Devereaux had been brought when he fell foul of the Castle. And he didn’t survive a day.

Throughout the afternoon, footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, but each time they’d pass my door and begin to fade. As the light declined outside it began to sleet. Small grey flecks swirled against the glass, melting as soon as they struck. I turned down the lamplight so I could see better. It was the first hint of snow in a mild December. The Christmas before had been particularly cold. Helen and I pushed our seats beside the window, huddled beneath a blanket and watched a blizzard fall on Grenville Street. Cartwheel tracks that criss-crossed the empty roadway slowly disappeared, and several inches built up on the windowsill. The next morning she woke me by dropping a handful of snow down my nightshirt. I sat up to see the sash window ajar. She smiled at me while kneeling on the bed. That was before she became unwell. Her cheeks were pink, tousled hair fell across her face and over her shoulders, and her nightdress hitched up so one knee was uncovered. And I was annoyed with her.

The warder came in before nightfall with a mug of water and a chamber pot.

I said, ‘I need to make a statement.’

He said people would come from the Castle in the morning to deal with me.

‘Can I not give an account to someone here?’

But he took the oil-lamp and locked the door without another word.

In the dark, I folded my arms on the table and rested my head. During the night it became so cold that I had to fetch the blanket. It was difficult to draw over my shoulders because of the manacles. A few times I heard a metal door closing and conversations in the hallway, and I was convinced that they had come for me. But dawn broke and I was undisturbed.

Later that morning, the peephole slid aside and a key scraped in the door. A young man entered. He had dark hair parted at one side and swept behind both ears. His thin eyebrows were set in a furrow, as if someone had said something to vex him. Without looking at me, he brought the other chair to the table, opened a satchel and laid out a sheaf of blank paper stamped with the Castle seal. Then he went to the wall, placed his satchel by his feet, and stood with arms folded.

I’d never seen him before. Maybe he didn’t belong to the Department. I said, ‘Are you here to take my statement?’

He remained silent. Did he mean for me to write it out? The sheaf faced towards the empty chair. I was going to speak again, but then the door opened and Lyster walked in.

He stood in the threshold and regarded me for a moment. Any lingering hope that I had ebbed away.

He strode to the table, placed a thick file on top and looked at the manacles on my wrists, as if judging the reach of the chain. Then he took his seat.

I said, ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

There was a thin gash along the top of his little finger. He twisted open the lid of an inkpot, turning it twice more than needed, then placed it ink side down on the table. ‘We’ll see.’

He turned his face in profile. ‘William, I’m going to speak to Delahunt alone. Wait for me upstairs.’

The young man leaned forward and hesitated. ‘But … Mr Sibthorpe told me to stay and observe.’

Lyster stared at his assistant with a face devoid of expression, as if he examined the mortar between the bricks. William only withstood the gaze for a few seconds. He picked up his bag and left the cell.

Lyster turned back to me. ‘One of Tom’s new recruits. I don’t think he’ll last.’

We were left alone and sat in silence for a few moments. I gathered up the slack of my chains and let them spill on the table so they wouldn’t weigh on my wrists.

‘There’s a problem.’ Lyster dipped the nib of his pen in the inkpot, then laid it flat on its rim. ‘It seems the DMP don’t know the meaning of discretion. I told them exactly where you’d be, and that you were on your own. But still they went with six men and a battering ram.’ He squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘Your name was out before noon yesterday, and printed in the evening papers.’

I thought of Helen reading the reports, or Cecilia. I couldn’t think of anyone else. Really, a man my age should hope to disappoint more than two people.

‘Then some journalist recalled that you were Crown witness in the Cooney trial and awkward questions were asked.’ He spoke in a wheedling voice. ‘How could one man be involved in two murder cases? How much had the Castle paid him during the trial of the Italian boy?’ He pulled a watch from a fob pocket and checked the time. ‘Journalists can be very trying. Otherwise we’d have arranged an accident for you last night. But if we did that now, it would just confirm suspicions.’

Some hope was rekindled. If I could make it to trial, I’d have the opportunity to speak about any number of things the Castle wished to remain secret. They could deny whatever I said, of course, but once the truth is revealed, it’s always hard to cover up again.

My musing may have played on my face, for Lyster regarded me with a half-smile.

I said, ‘Can the Department get me off?’

‘No. Most of the city saw you with the boy. Then there’s the knife. I’m afraid you’re going to be convicted.’ He pulled the folder closer to the edge of the table but didn’t open it.

If my guilt was already assumed then the best I could hope for was a lenient sentence. I wasn’t sure I could survive breaking stones in Van Diemen’s Land for twenty years, but what was the alternative?

‘You’ll have to arrange that I get transportation and not the gibbet.’

‘We have no sway over the judges. Besides, there’d be a riot if you escaped the noose.’

‘You’ve got to do something, Lyster, unless you want your name to be widely known.’

He opened the folder, picked up a few pages fastened at the top by a metal pin, and placed the document on the table before me.

‘I took the liberty of writing you out a confession last night. You just need to sign it.’

I looked down at the front page. The first words were
I, John Delahunt, state positively
, written in Lyster’s angular, noncursive hand.

He said it simply set out my original plan: that of killing the boy and blaming it on his mother, solely for the purpose of receiving a reward. I read over a passage:
I do now confess that the hope of getting again into the pay of the Castle was my strong motive for committing the deed. If I had succeeded I don’t know but I might have done a similar deed again had my conscience yielded to a similar temptation
.

I looked across at him. ‘I don’t even speak like that.’

He shrugged. ‘It was late when I wrote it.’

‘Lyster, why would I sign this? What difference to me if I’m killed in a holding cell this week, or hanged in a few months?’

He began to rummage in the file again, then stopped. ‘You know, our original plan wouldn’t have worked.’

‘Why not?’

‘We couldn’t have blamed Thomas’s mother. She had an alibi beyond reproach.’

He waited for me to ask, but I began to read again from the confession.

‘She went into labour the same afternoon. A month early.’ He laughed. ‘It’s hard to credit. You must be cursed, Delahunt.’

I recalled the woman standing in her doorway in Plunket Street, the way she held her stomach, and the strands of hair that clung to her pallid face.

Lyster said, ‘I had to break the news to her in the Coombe.’

‘You told her?’

‘Someone had to.’

An image of Lyster at her bedside came to my mind: lightly gripping her fingers above the covers, his face solemn.

‘Did the baby survive?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

He took a single dog-eared sheet from the file. It contained a list in spidery, uneven writing – a roll of about ten women’s names. One of them in the middle had been struck through. The bottom one was ‘Helen Delahunt’.

‘What’s this?’

‘Do you remember giving us some information a few months ago on Mrs Redmond, the abortionist?’

Four of the women had Mary as a first name.

‘She was picked up at the end of November. And just like you, she was eager to avoid the drop. We told her we’d go easy if she gave the names of her most recent clients.’

I scanned through the names. To work as an abortionist was a capital offence, but the police hardly ever went after the mothers.

‘But why? You’re not going to arrest these women.’

He seemed genuinely bemused by the question. ‘Because it’s what we do.’ He noticed a spot of ink on his thumb, licked his forefinger and began to rub it off. ‘Mrs Redmond is being tried next month. And that list can be made public or not. It’s up to you.’

Helen was already dogged with scandal. If she was cast out again she wouldn’t survive. It would be hard enough for her in the next few months with reports of my trial. I looked again at the sheet. My surname was affixed to her like a millstone.

I pointed to the name on the list that had been crossed out. ‘What happened to this one?’

‘She died.’

I glanced up at him.

‘Nothing to do with us.’

He took the sheet from my hands. ‘But this would just be the start, John. We know you spoke to Helen about the Department while you were cooped up in the tenement. We can’t have it.’

‘She wouldn’t say anything.’

‘There’s only one way we can be sure. And if she’s abandoned by her family, well, she’ll be that much easier to get to.’ He scratched his chin. ‘We could find out where she lives and supply her with cheap laudanum.’

If it was anyone else, I might have deemed that an empty threat. I turned the confession over and read from the other side.
I kept him nearly half an hour in the lane. He twice asked me was I coming home soon, as his mother would be beating him. I said that I was waiting for a jaunting car
.

‘What’s to stop you going after her whether I agree to this or not?’

‘I suppose you’ll just have to trust us.’ Once again he let his face became devoid of expression: no curl of the lip or furrowed brow, no flicker of sentiment in his eye. ‘But you can be assured, John, that if you mention any aspect of the Department on the stand, I’ll deal with Helen personally.’

There was space for a signature beneath the last block of text.

His back was then to me, and at that moment, while he was in that position with his head drawn back, I cut his throat and threw him from me. He fell on his face; he uttered no cry, nor did he make any noise whatsoever. On getting about three yards from him I looked back, and saw him on his feet again, going in the direction of a cottage in the field. I was about to follow, but then he fell and ceased moving.

It would be painful to put my signature to a statement with such poor style. I reached for the pen, and held it for a moment. It felt unnatural to write with a weight on my wrist. I placed the nib down, and a tiny circular blot began to expand on the page. I began to write. As soon as I crossed the ‘t’, Lyster took the statement back, blew on the ink and placed it in his file.

He folded a crease in Mrs Redmond’s list just above Helen’s name, then tore it along the corner of the table and handed the scrap to me.

I watched him as he tidied the sheaf and made ready to leave.

‘Why didn’t you just let Thomas go, Lyster?’

He tucked the folder beneath his arm and stood up. ‘You’ve done the right thing, John.’

‘How much did you get for turning me in?’

‘You know,’ he said. He stepped behind his chair and pushed its legs beneath the table, before he paused and held my eye. ‘The usual.’

When he left the room, I regarded the scrap of paper in my hand. Then I tore it in the middle and tossed the second half away. The piece that remained simply said, ‘Helen’.

There is a silence that falls over Kilmainham in the hours before dawn. Shouted conversations between the cells quieten. The noises of warders on their rounds become less frequent. Even the sobs and moans of the most distraught inmates fade in the smallest hours. I’ve heard the hush descend for three nights while working by candlelight, filling every page with handwriting as small as I could make it, with no margins, or space between lines, or paragraph breaks. If a sentence at the top drooped at the end, then all subsequent lines did the same, as if they followed the contour of a bound page.

As the nights wore on my hand would become stained and cramped, and at times I’d stop to flex my fingers, the way my sister used to when she pretended to cast a spell. I’d look out of the window for the first sign of dawn, always surprised at how suddenly it would arrive. One moment the window is black, unseen against the wall. Then I write a paragraph, look again, and a pale sheen has infused the night sky, as if someone parted a curtain. This morning, I held my sheet against the candle in order to better see the daybreak, and realized the next time I saw the sun rise, I wouldn’t see it set again. The page glowed like a paper lantern, with the flame flickering behind, the writing shown up like a votive offering.

A plate of stringy mutton and suet pudding lay untouched by my feet. I’ve stopped taking food these last two days. I dislike the idea of lying forever with my last meal half-digested.

I remember reading once of an ancient body found in the Bog of Allen, so well preserved that at first the police had been called to investigate a possible murder. Those that witnessed the bog body were amazed to see stubble on the chin, pores in the tanned skin, and cracks in the fingernails. They say his face was calm and solemn, as if he had just fallen asleep, and he lay with his legs drawn up and his hands clasped before his chest. But when he was brought to Dublin, some antiquarian removed his stomach and rummaged within to catalogue details of his Iron Age diet. They won’t find anything in me.