information on his identity is asked to contact the coroner at Steevens’ Hospital.
Matilda unfolded the paper so I could view the photograph.
It was Patrick O’Cuiv.
* * *
? ? ?
I STARED DOWN at the page. “It cannot be him.”
“But it is,” Matilda replied. “Look at his arms.”
The man wore no shirt, and his arms were clearly visible, each lined with long scars from wrist to forearm.
“Six cuts on the right, four on the left. The exact same as those listed in O’Cuiv’s death records,” she said.
“This is a coincidence; there can be no other explanation.”
“The only explanation is the simplest one: this is Patrick O’Cuiv.”
“Perhaps a son or close relative.”
“The O’Cuivs were survived only by their daughter, Maggie. Patrick killed his only son.”
“A cousin, then?” I lifted the newspaper and held the photograph to the lamplight. The image was grainy, decidedly so, but I recognized that face. As much as I wished to deny it were true, the man staring up at me with death in his vacant eyes was Patrick O’Cuiv. I reached for the folder containing O’Cuiv’s death records and reread the documents. Then a thought occurred to me. “What if he faked his death?”
“The hanging?”
“Yes. Maybe he had help: someone, or a group of someones, who sympathized with him.”
“Who would sympathize with a man who killed his wife and children?”
“Perhaps someone grateful for the death of Cornelius Healy?”
“The land manager?”
I nodded. “Perhaps he had friends at Santry House or others who also harbored hatred for Healy and were grateful for the man’s death. If he wouldn’t grant O’Cuiv grain, I imagine there were others. It’s possible they faked his death and somehow snuck him from the jail.”
Matilda was shaking her head. “There are records of his burial.”
“The same people could have concealed that as well. A few shillings to the undertaker and he buries an empty coffin.”
“That is a conspiracy of grand scale, too grand. But let us say for a minute you are correct and all of these people helped him fake his death, fake the records at the constable’s office, then bribed the undertaker to fake his burial. If, after all of this, he finds a new life in Dublin and is killed again in a freak accident fourteen years later, how do you explain his appearance?” She reached into the stack of newspapers and pulled out the first one, which had a mention of him at the outset of the trial, and positioned it next to the paper from the previous day, pointing to both images of O’Cuiv. “He has not aged a day from this photograph to that. Fourteen years behind him, and these images seem to be taken a day apart.”
Again, she was right. The man in the paper from the day before actually appeared a little younger than the older image. I did not want to hear her say the words, but I asked anyway; I had no choice. “How do you explain the likeness?”
“You know how.”
“First, you tell me you saw our old nanny and she has not aged in fourteen years. Now you believe the same of this man. Who next? Old Mrs. Dunhy from the dairy? That drunkard Leahy, who used to wander the fields until all hours singing to the cows? People get older. They do not rise from the grave only to die again.”
“Yet, here we are,” she said, gesturing at the newspapers and paperwork littering the table. “And I’m certain that was Nanna Ellen I spied in Paris.”
I took her hand in mine and lowered my voice. “Matilda, you are an intelligent, beautiful, talented woman. You should not waste your thoughts or your time on matters such as these. These are the fantasies of children. Things of fairy tales.”
She squeezed my hand. “When we were children and you told me what you saw, I did not believe you. Even after witnessing Nanna Ellen walk into that bog and not come out, I did not believe you. When we found that disgusting dirt under her bed