David Dickinson: Death of a Pilgrim

‘The second murder was another apparently motiveless crime. So, it seemed, was the third. So, it seemed, was the fourth. They did have one thing in common. This was a murderer who operated on the spur of the moment and at lightning speed. If he saw a chance to lure one of his victims away from the rest of the party, a walk by the river at night perhaps, a look at the upper chamber at Moissac cloisters maybe, he would seize his moment the instant it appeared. Out would come the knife or the blows against a pillar and the deed would be over in a matter of minutes. There was one possible interpretation that did present itself to me from this modus operandi. It seemed to me unlikely that the victims were pre-determined. There wasn’t a plan to kill Patrick MacLoughlin or Stephen Lewis or Girvan Connolly. The victim could as easily have been any one of you here, if you had been in the right place for the killer to strike. If the opportunity arose, the nearest pilgrim would do. If this theory was right, there were two possible explanations. One, that the man was a serial killer in the manner of Jack the Ripper, that he killed at random because he enjoyed it or derived some strange satisfaction from the act of murder. The other was that the victims were all killed because they were Delaneys, that the murderer had a huge grudge against every Delaney he could find. You might ask why, in that case, he didn’t kill Michael Delaney himself and have done with it. My answer, and this, I have to say, is supposition on my part, is that he did intend to kill Michael Delaney, but as his last victim, not his first.’

Powerscourt paused to take a sip of his coffee. The pilgrims sat spellbound. Jack O’Driscoll was taking notes. Christy Delaney was scribbling away too, though Powerscourt felt it might be a love letter rather than an account of his theories.

‘All along, all through this case, I have thought that the answer lay somewhere in the chequered past of Michael Delaney. I did, of course, ask him if there were any skeletons in his cupboard. He denied it. So I have had inquiries made in both Ireland and America about events in Michael Delaney’s past. Let me tell you about them in chronological order. The first of these events took place during the worst years of the Irish famine. Most of the Delaney family in County Cork were starving. Their potatoes had failed, like everybody else’s, they had no savings and no crops to plant for the future. Their only option was the workhouse. And almost everybody who went into the workhouse at that time never came out again. But, not far away, there was a family of more prosperous Delaneys. They had money and food to spare. Time and time again various of the poor Delaneys made appeals for help to their richer relations. Time and time again they were refused. Twenty-four Delaneys went into the workhouse. Only one, a boy of about twelve, survived. All the rest perished. The richer Delaneys subsequently emigrated to America. Was it possible that the lone survivor, or his sons, traced Michael Delaney as a descendant of the family who had let their relations die? It seemed to me that this was a very long shot. There were too many variables and too many unknowns. And the time scale was too long. Corsicans or Sicilians might be able to sustain a vendetta over a period of over sixty years, but I doubted if the Irish would be able to manage it.

‘Maggie Delaney mentioned a book written some years ago about the organizer of this pilgrimage called Michael Delaney, Robber Baron . Delaney was so alarmed at the prospect of this book being published about him and his alleged misdemeanours that he bought up every copy and had them all pulped. Nobody ever got to read it. What Delaney didn’t know was that four copies had been sent to England. Johnny Fitzgerald managed to track one of them down and it is now on my bedside table upstairs. There were two pieces of deception that could have given rise to a mighty hatred of Delaney. On the first occasion he pretended to form a joint railroad company with a man called Wharton. Only it wasn’t a joint company at all. Delaney put all the shares in his own name, cutting the other man out altogether. The company prospered but Delaney’s so-called partner did not. His other ventures failed. Wharton took to drink. He failed to service his debts. His wife left him. Then he killed himself, leaving one small son as survivor. This son would now be in his thirties. But there were doubts in my mind as to whether he could have been the murderer. Why had he waited so long? Why take the trouble to come all the way to France when he could have hired a couple of killers in New York City to murder Delaney? And surely such a killer would begin with Michael Delaney himself? Why go to the trouble of killing all the other pilgrims? The same objections, I thought, applied to the children of the other people Delaney supposedly swindled in an oil prospecting business.’

Lady Lucy had been casting surreptitious glances at Michael Delaney as her husband ran through the chronicle of his crimes. His fingers were drumming nervously on the table in front of him. His face remained impassive. He might, she thought, have been sitting through a rather disagreeable board meeting where the results were not as good as had been expected. She wondered if he guessed at what was to come. Johnny Fitzgerald winked at the pilgrims and took an enormous draught from his wineskin. Then he passed it over to the pilgrims. Thirsty work, he felt, listening to Powerscourt describing his theories.

‘It was only very recently that I came across the most promising line of inquiry. It transpired that thirty-odd years ago Michael Delaney had been married for the first time. He was then living in Pittsburgh. They had a son and then when Delaney’s wife was expecting their second child he walked out without warning and without leaving any means of support for his family and went to New York, where few questions are asked about newcomers. The wife died in childbirth and the baby, a little girl, was stillborn. The little boy, aged only two, was an orphan. The priests and nuns who looked after him tracked down every relative they could find and asked them to take on the lost child and bring him up as one of their own. Suffer the little children to come unto you. They wrote to Delaneys in America, in Ireland and in England. The Delaneys all refused. Every single one of them said no. The little boy was adopted and took on the surname of his adoptive parents.’

Powerscourt paused and took another sip of his coffee. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Michael Delaney was totally still, as if he had been turned to stone. Father Kennedy had his head in his hands. The wineskin was circulating regularly among the pilgrims. They could just hear another band striking up on the street outside.

‘Here, in this news from Pittsburgh,’ Powerscourt was speaking softly now, ‘at last was a motive for killing as many Delaneys as you could. They, or their families, had, after all, refused to take you in. Here was a motive for killing Michael Delaney, the father who had abandoned you and caused the premature deaths of your own mother and sister. This was not Oedipus killing his father when he did not know who he was. This was a son deliberately setting out to murder his own father. There was a person of the right age in the pilgrim party and that was Waldo Mulligan, born Waldo Delaney, son of Michael. He tried to kill me at the running of the bulls this morning. Just before that our eyes met, and I knew and he knew that I knew that he was the killer. He confirmed as much in the hospital before he died.’

Powerscourt sat down. There was a rumble to his left and Michael Delaney rose to his feet. For a moment Powerscourt wondered if he was going to defend his conduct, but he merely asked Father Kennedy to accompany him. There were, he said, things he wished to discuss with the priest. The pilgrims watched him go, his bearing still erect, his head held high. Nobody spoke. Delaney’s departure seemed to leave a hole, a vacuum in the room, as if some of the air had been sucked out. It was Jack O’Driscoll who broke the silence.