At the end of the second day, the inspector told the constable to go home and leave the written report to him. The young man was too hot-headed and inexperienced to know what to put in and what to leave out, so it was less complicated to do it himself – the last thing he wanted was a big chief from Dublin being drafted in, on account of Lord Waldron’s importance and notoriety, to take over the investigation, waking up sleeping dogs at the same time.
No mention was made in his report of his friend’s son, Manus. Best not bring that name to the attention of Dublin Castle, whose British administration was eager to discredit any suspected member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Like many of his fellow countrymen, Christy worked for the Crown – he wished it were otherwise but he had to live and feed his family. However, he prided himself on acting as honourably as was possible to his own people under the weight of colonial rule. If he were ever questioned about the omission he would say, seeing as Manus and Lady Blackshaw were together when the child disappeared, there seemed little point in replicating her evidence.
Much against the grain, he had to include the little chambermaid’s sighting of Teresa Kelly on the day in question seeing as Lady Blackshaw was making no secret of putting a sinister construction on it. He had to keep reminding himself that Her Ladyship was so overcome with grief (though to look at her dry eyes no one would guess, so well did she disguise her feelings – all those centuries of breeding) she needed to clutch at straws. Or save face, the memory of the voice of the unimpressed young constable chimed in. One small consolation: Teresa, on the other side of the world, need never know her name had been blackened. She hadn’t left an address with her brother or anyone else as far as he knew, so if she chose to stay out of touch, which he suspected she would, there would be no way anyone could get word to her, thank God.
After he had transcribed Lady Blackshaw’s initial account of her daughter’s disappearance, dated it the day before – 7th July 1917 – and signed and stamped the report, he re-read all the interview notes and felt proud, as a fellow villager and neighbour, of the high regard in which Teresa was held.
No one had had a bad word to say about her. Considering the short time she had been employed at the Park, she had left a good impression. What particularly interested him, and what he didn’t include in his report, was how each servant said more or less the same thing: the only person who would really, deeply miss Victoria was Teresa Kelly. Not Lady Blackshaw, who hardly ever saw her daughter, certainly not the absent Lord Waldron who had seen her briefly only once, and not Nurse Dixon who, according to quite a few servants, wasn’t very nice to the girls when she thought no one was looking.
This last observation was disbelieved by the young constable, who immediately spoke up in the nanny’s defence. The remarks were inspired by jealousy of the nanny’s good looks, he argued. When Nurse Dixon was being interviewed, she had shown so much patience with the uncooperative Charlotte, and had been so kind to her, that he was sure she was genuine – no one could put on an act as convincing as that if they were pretending – and the inspector wrote a note to that effect on the report.
Edwina’s neighbours reported back from Queenstown. Only one passenger boat had departed from there during the last four days, and none was due to depart for the next week. The number of sailings was reduced because of the war. When they asked about passenger lists, they were told the authorities weren’t at liberty to disclose any information about them. And no, they hadn’t seen a middle-aged lady with a child or a middle-aged lady on her own anywhere near the port on or after the 7th of July.
The search continued. Families spent their Sundays after Mass walking along the banks of the river or beside the harbour walls on the south coast, staring into the Atlantic. Bathers sifted the sand along the shore. Fishermen scrutinised their nets. Sid concentrated on the outbuildings on the estate. Manus continued to search the seven miles of river, now returned to its normal depth, in the early morning and late evenings, tending to the horses in between times.
Nothing was found – not a fragment of flesh, bone, hair or white linen fabric, nor any part of a porcelain doll with red hair or any shred of its emerald-green dress.
Those who knew Teresa Kelly well were outraged by Edwina’s kidnapping theory, though as time passed many came to entertain it, more from hope than conviction.
Edwina had written to her husband three days after the disappearance. Waldron wrote back from London to say how frightfully sorry he was, but at such a critical time there was no question of his taking leave from the War Office, even for a short period. She must, as a member of a military family with a long and proud history, appreciate the fact that the loss of one small girl, no matter how significant to one personally, was of little consequence compared to the welfare of a million soldiers, all under his jurisdiction.
Edwina had expected exactly that response.
Alone, she continued to puzzle over the anomalies in the Teresa Kelly story.
Every day she contacted the inspector to see if there had been any response to the circulated description, to be told each time with regret there was none.
This brought up another quandary for Edwina. Could she trust the police, port authorities, villagers or even Manus to relay information about Teresa, one of their own, to her, an interloper? Her friend and neighbour, Lady Beatrice, a woman in her sixties, had laughed at the astonishment on Edwina’s face when she told her that the Blackshaw family might have lived in Tyringham Park for over four hundred years but they would never be considered the rightful owners. Those who had to labour out of economic necessity as tenants on the Big House estates around the country regarded the land they worked on as their own – it had belonged to their forebears, and one day they would drive out the imperialists and reclaim it.
“It is something you should be aware of, especially with Waldron’s position in these troubled times,” Lady Beatrice had warned.
Edwina presumed she meant his position in the British army.
She came to the conclusion that concern for the missing child was as genuine as the dearth of information about Teresa’s whereabouts was deliberate, and if she wanted results, she would have to obtain them herself.
The steward accompanied her and a maid to Dublin to question the port officials there but, as in Queenstown, passenger lists for sailings were classified and no amount of argument produced them. The clerks were sympathetic, but they had to be especially vigilant after the Easter Rising of the previous year. A trip to Belfast produced the same negative response, and she returned to Cork frustrated and downhearted.
The search was officially called off.