Page 54 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

The kitchen was smaller than Lottie had been expecting. She had an image in her mind of what a priest’s housekeeper’s domain might look like. This tiny cramped room didn’t cut it. It smelled of lemon, which she figured was used to dampen down unpleasant odours.

She wondered how many kitchens she’d been in over the course of her career.

Too many. Delivering bad news. Interviewing family members.

Arresting suspects. Interfering in people’s privacy, their past, their future.

Upending everyday lives. Part of the job.

But today she wasn’t on the job, and she felt a slight tinge of guilt for disturbing the arthritic housekeeper.

‘I’ve been keeping house for priests for nigh on…

well over thirty-five years. I worked in another parish before here.

I know I must look eighty to a young one like you, but I’m in my sixties, as far as I know.

’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘I’ve had a hard life.

And my arthritis is chronic.’ Brigid thrust a small black-handled knife towards Lottie.

‘This here is the knife I use for peeling the spuds. I can’t manage those scraper yokes.

Not that I can manage this too well either. ’

Lottie took the knife and squeezed her way towards the work counter in silence.

A red plastic basin with a few small potatoes sat in the sink.

A saucepan on the draining board held two already peeled potatoes.

She was stunned to think Brigid might only be in her sixties.

The woman had the body and demeanour of a much older woman.

A hard life did that? Or a cruel one? She summoned up her voice. ‘How many more will I peel?’

‘Whatever fits in that pot. Only myself here for dinner today. Father Lyons is home tomorrow.’

‘Take a seat, Brigid, and when I’ve these finished, I’ll make you a cuppa.’

‘I’m not an invalid, you know.’

‘I know, but there’s not much room for the two of us to stand here.’

‘The kitchen used to be bigger, but Father Lyons got builders in to divide it. He wanted a separate dining area. For who or what, only God himself knows, because no one uses it and the place was fine the way it was. Men.’

Lottie smiled, keeping her back to her. ‘Has Father Lyons been here long?’

‘Must be fifteen years or more. Due a move soon.’

‘And Robert, Father Robert. How long was he here?’

‘Probably for around the same length of time. But my old brain isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Before that, where was he based?’ She took her time peeling the potatoes, now that she had Brigid talking.

‘He was out in the field. That’s what he used to call it.’

‘Oh, what does that mean?’ She took a quick look over her shoulder.

‘He was a chaplain to the Sisters of Forgiveness. He was a young man then. Oh, he was also chaplain at Knockraw at the same time.’

‘Really?’ Lottie scraped her thumb with the knife in shock. Shit. She kept peeling. Slowly. Concentrating on the words as well as the knife. Brigid’s revelation connected Robert Hayes to the murders in Galway, albeit historically. A man who was also Kirby’s suspect. ‘How did that work out for him?’

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘Nature of my job.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m telling tales, because if you ask anyone from that era they will tell you the exact same.

Folks around here weren’t one bit pleased when he moved in as parish priest. Lock up your daughters and sons became the mantra.

Mass numbers dropped off. The bishop left him here for too many years.

Probably didn’t know what else to do with him.

Father Lyons is a breath of fresh air. We’ll be sad to lose him, when he’s moved on. ’

Lottie dropped the last of the potatoes into the pot and turned around, drying her hands on a tea cloth. ‘I’m assuming from what you’ve implied that there were rumours about Robert’s time at Knockraw and the convent. Can you tell me about them?’

‘I don’t like to gossip, but…’ Brigid blessed herself, as if asking forgiveness for what she was about to say, ‘it’s said that he interfered with the youngsters.’

Sitting on a wooden chair, Lottie folded the cloth onto the table. ‘And he was allowed into a parish after that?’

‘They were only rumours. I never heard any hard facts. But there’s hardly smoke without fire, is there? He did something bad. Mark my words.’

Wondering how she could elicit more information, she said, ‘Both the convent and the industrial school closed down. Where did their records end up?’

Brigid shook her head. ‘You’ll discover nothing in them, even if you find them. I’m a good Catholic, a God-fearing woman, but I can tell you this with absolute certainty: if there was anything untoward in those records, it’s not there now.’

‘Even so, where could I have a look at them?’

‘You might want to talk to the bishop.’

Lottie had had previous dealings with bishops, so she was inclined to believe that there was no use searching the records. ‘Why did Robert leave the priesthood?’

‘I told you, he had to leave. Complaints were made, by some of the parishioners whose kids went to the youth club he ran. Inappropriate behaviour, I heard. I think the bishop persuaded the parents not to make a formal complaint to the guards once he agreed to get rid of Father Robert.’

‘Where did Robert go after that?’

‘No idea. And I can tell you this, I don’t want to know.’

‘Was he good at cooking?’

Brigid raised an eyebrow as if asking how she knew that. ‘Couldn’t get him out of the kitchen. Always asking me to buy fancy veg, stuff I’d never heard tell of. Concoctions, I called what he cooked. Tasty, I have to admit, but I never told him that. The kitchen’s my domain. And he invaded it.’

‘You were glad when he left, then?’

‘I was, and I’ll be more glad when you boil the kettle for my cup of tea. There’s a fruit loaf in the cupboard and butter in the fridge.’

Lottie set to work and laid the table. Brigid’s face appeared grey and drained, as if talking about Robert Hayes had sucked the life out of her.

‘How did you come to work as the housekeeper here?’

‘I was born in the laundry. My poor mother was raped by some bastard – that’s the story I heard from the nuns, which may or may not be true.

’ Brigid blessed herself. ‘What is true is that she worked herself to the bone in that horrible place. Fought tooth and nail so that I wouldn’t be taken off her.

She died in there. I don’t even know where they buried her.

The nuns made me cook and wash and sew for them.

Eventually they sent me to work for parish priests.

Housekeeping’s the only job I’ve ever known.

’ A solitary tear escaped her eye and tracked a lonely trail down the crevices in her drawn face.

‘She was a good woman, my mother, and the nuns treated her like a criminal.’

Lottie poured the tea. ‘And still you have your faith. How do you do that?’

‘I have nothing else. I used to pray to be saved, to have a life. That didn’t happen.

Now, I pray for all sinners, especially those bitches who professed to be daughters of God, sisters of forgiveness.

Give me strength. They were hard and mean and cruel.

I often wonder if that’s how they were brought up.

If they knew no different. But then I think, evil like that lives in the soul.

It’s rooted there by the long claws of Satan. I was one of the lucky ones.’

‘Brigid, I wouldn’t call what happened to you and your mother lucky. I think it was cruel.’

‘Worse fates befell children in those places. No, I was lucky, but my mother wasn’t.

They called her names. Those upright religious bigots said she was a whore and a sinner.

No mention of the man who got her pregnant.

Was he absolved of his sin? The sin of impregnating a teenager?

What about the sin of her parents for abandoning her in her hour of need?

The sin of the nuns keeping her captive, working her as a slave in a laundry?

No. My mother paid the price for others’ sins.

’ She stopped, breathless, then sipped her tea.

Lottie knew Brigid was not the woman Bryan had asked her to find, but she still wanted to know more.

‘What was your mother’s name?’ she asked.

‘I only knew her by the name they gave her in the convent. They called her Paul.’

‘You never found her grave?’

‘No. They said she was buried in a pauper’s grave, but they probably threw her in a septic tank, like they did all the little babbies over in Tuam. Unfortunate women didn’t survive the hardship meted out.’

Lottie felt a deep sense of remorse and pain at the memory of what had happened to her own brother in such a place. ‘Who were these people who treated humans so much worse than animals?’ She discovered her voice was choked with tears. She put her hand on Brigid’s. The woman squeezed hers back.

‘Satan’s brood,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what they were. Each and every last one of them. Not a decent bone among them.’

‘Do you know where any of the nuns are today?’

‘Rotting in unmarked graves, I hope.’

‘Can you recall any of their names?’

‘They’d all be dead now.’

‘The more recent ones, from Robert Hayes’s time there?’

‘You can ask him, if you find him.’

‘I believe he became a chef and worked in Ragmullin for a time. A woman was murdered there this week and Robert has disappeared.’

‘The other guards who called here mentioned something about that. What was the woman’s name?’

‘Edie Butler. She was a hairdresser in Ragmullin.’

Brigid’s face drained of all colour.

‘What is it? Do you want some water?’ Lottie thought the older woman was about to pass out. ‘Put your head between your knees.’

Brigid gave a strangled laugh. ‘I would if I was able to.’ Then she sobered. ‘What do you know about Edie Butler?’

‘A colleague is investigating her murder. He asked me to see if anyone could locate Robert Hayes. I don’t have all the details, but I think he was her boyfriend at one stage. Other than that, I know very little about her.’

Brigid took a gulp of tea. ‘I remember Edie from the laundry.’

Lottie felt her heart lurch. Edie’s murder in Ragmullin must be connected to the two in Galway. Brigid was still talking.

‘I was assigned to housekeeping in the convent and Edie was in the laundry. I remember her well. She was much younger than me. Her real name stood out when I first met her. Not many Edies in my time. They were all Marys, Anns, Ruths. Bible names, and the nuns gave saints’ names to those whose own names they deemed not holy enough.

There was one young lass they called Gabriel after the archangel.

Poor little thing couldn’t understand why she had to bear that name.

They called Edie something like Joseph, or maybe James.

Yes, I think she was called James. Dear God, do you think Robert killed her? ’

‘I don’t know, Brigid, but one thing is certain. He has to be found.’