Blank.
Matilda snatched the paper from my hand, held it up to the sparse light creeping in from the hallway, then carefully placed it back on the stack. “Keep looking.”
I made my way over to the night table. Like the washbasin and bedpan, the oil lamp also appeared to be unused. The font was dry, and when I smelled it, not even a hint of oil was present, only a musty odor like that of a box sealed up and long forgotten, then opened for the first time in ages. I told Matilda, but she waved me off, lost in her task.
The newspaper was yesterday’s edition of the Saunders’s News-Letter. The headline was printed in bold black block letters—
FAMILY MURDER IN MALAHIDE
A barbarous and cruel murder was committed under circumstances most revolting in Malahide on Friday night about the hour of two o’clock a.m. The victims being Siboan O’Cuiv, mother of the deceased children, the eldest son Sean, five years old, and his sister Isobelle, a child about two years of age. The third child, a daughter, six-and-a-half-year-old Maggie, managed to escape the assailant, and it is she who alerted James Boulger, Constable in Charge of the Church Street Barracks, who happened to be passing convenient to the place, when their attention was attracted by a child fleeing the house.
Constable Boulger then entered the house and heard the moans of Patrick O’Cuiv, who was bleeding profusely from both arms. Constable Patterson entered the bedchambers to find a mother and two young, helpless children lying dead in their beds. Mr. O’Cuiv was near death himself, as he had lost a significant amount of blood. He was taken by carriage to the Richmond Hospital.
“Did you see yesterday’s paper?” I asked.
“No, but I heard Ma and Pa discussing it over dinner. They said the constable’s office believes Mr. O’Cuiv tried to kill his entire family because he couldn’t afford to feed them, then turned the knife on himself but was unable to finish the job. If not for little Maggie, he surely would have completed the task and they’d all be dead.”
“Where is he now?”
“The Church Street Barracks, I suppose. They patched him up. Should have left him to bleed to death in a bath of salt for such a crime,” said Matilda.
The O’Cuiv family had visited for dinner not more than a month ago. The meal had been anything but extravagant, yet they had been grateful nonetheless; little Sean helped himself to no less than three servings, and his little sister said few words, as she was too busy chewing on a cut of bread the size of her head dipped in Ma’s chicken gravy. His wife had been understandably quiet—accepting the graciousness of strangers was a most humbling experience, one many would not consider if not for the stomachs of their children aching for food. She had eaten in near silence, responding as Ma and Pa asked her various questions in the course of conversation, but she never offered more than a response to what was asked of her before returning to her meal, her eyes flitting from her children to her husband and back again. I tried to recall whether any tension had been evident between the two adults. Nothing came to mind, though; they seemed cordial enough, victims of the famine, nothing more.
“Do you think Pa could ever do such a thing?” I had asked the question before I realized I had allowed the words to actually pass from my lips, and I felt my cheeks flush.
“Oh, heavens no! First of all, Pa would always find a way to feed us. But even if he couldn’t, he is not one to give up, and what Mr. O’Cuiv did is nothing but giving up. Rather than find a solution to the problem at hand, he surrendered like a coward. Pa could never do that. If he tried, Ma is likely to smack him with a skillet.”
I knew she was right, but even at such a young age I also understood how easily a problem could envelop someone, isolate them from the rest of the world until it seemed nothing else existed. My own isolation had taught me so. “How do you suppose he did it without