The superintendents of the DMP’s six uniformed divisions worked their men hard in the weeks that followed the murder of Ellen Byrne, alias Nellie Sweet, in her room at Chapel Court.
Hundreds of individuals were stopped, searched and questioned in the hours of darkness under the provisions of the Dublin Police Act in the winter hunt across the city. Most of them were known to the constables and the sergeants as petty criminals, vagrants, beggars or layabouts. All were questioned closely. Some, who were unable to give a full account of themselves, or who aroused suspicion for some other reason, were arrested and handed over to G-Division detectives for further interrogation. But the interviews yielded nothing more than a few tip-offs about stolen property and petty crimes in the planning.
The policemen worked double shifts, putting in four hours of day duty before or after the eight-hour night shift. Then the workload started to take its toll in the bitter weather. Older men went down first, with chills and chest colds. Then some of the less robust younger men started to succumb. Two cases of frostbite were reported from the C-district, where the freezing east wind whipped across the streets from the bay. The depot hospital at Kevin Street quickly filled with the sick and the exhausted.
There were some gains. Larcenies and housebreaking were reduced with the extra policing presence on the streets. Criminals stayed at home at night or drank in the public houses, unwilling to risk being grabbed none-too-gently out of the darkness by ill-tempered DMP men, only too glad to have an excuse to return with a prisoner to the warmth of their station.
Teams of G-men and buckshees interviewed all of Ellen Byrne’s known associates and clients. None of the working girls on Gloucester Street had seen anyone who might match the description given by Constable 35C of a tall man, much less one who looked like a policeman. None of her regular clients could be placed anywhere near her address on the night she died.
Pat Cummins, the C-Division constable who had encountered the man fleeing from the scene of Ellen Byrne’s murder, had been admitted to the hospital at the Kevin Street depot on Lafeyre’s recommendation. Swallow and Mossop went to interview him in his hospital bed.
‘So you think the man you saw was a policeman?’ Swallow said. ‘But you didn’t recognise him.’
Cummins’s face twisted in anguish.
‘I know I’ve seen him before. I just can’t say where or when. Just for some reason I thought to myself, he’s a “polisman.” But don’t ask me for a name.’
‘Describe him, then,’ Mossop prompted him.
‘He was big, athletic. Maybe thirty, maybe thirty-five years. Very agile.’
‘Clean-shaven?’ Swallow asked. ‘Or bearded?’
‘Hard to say in the darkness. It was more an impression.’
‘Fair enough,’ Swallow said doubtfully. ‘Look, when you’re rested and feeling better we’ll ask you to visit the various divisions around the city. It might be that you’ll spot your man.’
Swallow and Mossop were present for Ellen Byrne’s funeral Mass on the Tuesday at St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street. It was well attended by working girls from the brothels around Montgomery Street and Gloucester Street, perhaps a score in all. There was no sign of any family. The other girls told detectives that her parents were dead, but that she sometimes spoke about a sister who lived in Wicklow.
Later in the day, after that information had been passed to the RIC, who policed the countryside out of Dublin, the sergeant at Roundwood, a small village in rural County Wicklow, made the connection, identifying the sister. A constable had been despatched to the smallholding in the Wicklow Mountains, where she lived with her sheep-farmer husband and a string of children. When the constable stated his business and disclosed his grim news she told him that she did not want to know about her sister and showed him the door.
The funeral Mass was swift and without trimmings. The elderly celebrant mumbled his way through the Latin prayers. There was no distribution of Communion and no homily. Swallow surmised that the decision not to distribute Communion was dictated by the assumption that many among the congregation, and certainly all of the working girls, were sinners and not in the state of grace. At the end of the Mass the priest descended from the altar, hurriedly sprinkled the coffin with holy water and retreated to the sacristy.
The only funeral attendee of professional interest to Swallow was Charlie Vanucchi, the acknowledged leader of the Dublin criminal fraternity since the death of Ces ‘Pisspot’ Downes, who had run her crime ring from her house on Francis Street. She had earned the unflattering soubriquet from her lethal use of a chamber pot on her mistress’s skull when the lady discovered her stealing silverware from her fine house on Merrion Square.
In the custom of policemen who need to see and note any significant attendees, the G-men took a vantage point from where they could survey the entire church. Vanucchi nodded agreeably as he passed their pew. The unmistakably Neapolitan features of the young man by his side marked him as being another family member. He wore the same fine woollen coat as the older man. Swallow noted that they wore similar, finely crafted shoes.
‘The youngest of the brood,’ Mossop whispered unnecessarily in Swallow’s ear. ‘Tony’s supposed to be the best pickpocket west of Liverpool.’
The working girls from around Montgomery Street and Gloucester Street had collected enough money to give Nellie a decent burial at Mount Prospect cemetery at Glasnevin, sparing her the indignity of a pauper’s grave. The day was cold but dry. After the elderly priest had concluded the graveside obsequies, which were as perfunctory as the requiem Mass earlier, Charlie Vanucchi and his son walked across to where Swallow and Mossop stood on the gravel pathway. There were no unnecessary introductions.
‘What brings you here, Charlie?’ Swallow asked. ‘I didn’t know you were connected.’
‘I’m not, Mr Swallow. Nellie was good to Ces.’
‘Nellie? Good to Ces?’
Vanucchi shrugged.
‘She stayed with her over in Francis Street when she was close to the end. Ces couldn’t have had better care if she was her own daughter. I’d have set her up, looked after her, like. But she was too proud. So . . . here’s where she ended. I’m just here out of respect to Ces.’
‘This girl didn’t work for Ces in Francis Street using the name Nellie Byrne,’ Mossop said knowledgeably. ‘We knew everyone in that house. No Byrnes.’
Vanucchi grinned.
‘Very thorough on the detail as usual, Mr Mossop. You’re right. She was Helena Moyles when she came into the city from Wicklow. She started callin’ herself Mrs Byrne after she took up with a soldier of that name out of the Royal Barracks. They weren’t married, and he cleared off to India leavin’ her in the family way. The child died anyway.’
Swallow nodded. He could fit scores of young women’s names to the same story.
‘Helena Moyles,’ Mossop said thoughtfully. ‘I remember that name all right. She must have been the only person ever in that house without a criminal record. Any word out on the streets who might have done it?’
Vanucchi shrugged again.
‘Some disgruntled client. A maniac. Maybe some fellow who’s imitatin’ this Jack the Ripper character across the water.’
‘You making any inquiries, Charlie?’ Swallow asked. Not infrequently in his experience, the city’s criminal network was ahead of the police intelligence system.
‘Sure. First thing I did when I heard. But it’s got nothin’ to do with any o’ my lads. She was just a poor girl makin’ a livin’.’
‘If you hear anything, you’ll let us know.’
‘Of course, Mr Swallow. Apart from likin’ the girl, it’s a terrible thing for Dublin to have this sort of thing happen. God knows, there’s enough trouble down on this poor country as it is.’
Vanucchi was an occasional informant for Swallow. His criminal motivation being purely financial, he viewed all Fenians, Land Leaguers, Home Rulers, Gaelic revivalists and the like with something between bafflement and contempt. When information came his way, as it frequently did, on their activities, he considered it a commodity readily tradable for favours from G-Division. A blind eye turned here. A charge overlooked there. Charlie Vanucchi’s runners and bagmen sometimes wondered how he seemed to be able to get them out of difficulties with the police, at least on occasion, and generally on less serious charges.
‘You’re absolutely right, Charlie,’ Swallow agreed. ‘We have enough troubles as it is.’