blows that fractured her skull.
When Angelo climbed off his dying
wife, the babies were screaming and he
saw Jane vomiting in a corner of the
room.
“Don’t just stand there snivelling!”
he shouted at her. “Go and get me a
whiskey, and bring up a mop and pail
and some bandages.”
He was still shaking as he lifted his
wife’s warm body onto the bed. There
was a pool of blood on the floor where
her head had rested.
When Jane returned with the
bandages, he washed Rosa’s face and
head and carefully bound the three deep
wounds in her forehead. He changed
her into a clean nightdress and burned
the old chemise on the kitchen stove.
Jane mopped the vomit and blood off
the floor and went to wake Patsio, who
appeared to have slept through thewhole commotion.
“Tell Patsio to go and get the priest,”
said Angelo. “We’ll say Rosa killed
herself.”
When Canon Doorly arrived at
8.10, he found a grief-stricken Angelo
kneeling at his wife’s bedside, sobbing
loudly. Thinking he was too upset to
answer any questions, Doorly suggested
he leave the room while he anointed
Rosa. When he bent over to remove the
bandages – which had slipped down to
her eyebrows – he found she was still
warm.
Shortly after Doorly left, Inspector
Sullivan came to interview Jane and
Angelo. They seemed to have agreed on
some kind of story – however ludicrous- because Jane told him she had spent
a disturbed night with Rosa, but finally
dozed off in the early hours of Tuesday
morning.
Pinned to the floor
by Angelo’s bulk and
weakened by childbirth,
Rosa could do nothing
to defend herself against
the hammer blows that
fractured her skulloverwrought and restless and Jane
wondered whether she really had lost
her mind. She’d already told Angelo that
if she’d died in childbirth she knew he’d
have remarried within the month.
It was early morning when Rosa
finally fell asleep. The fire had gone out
and it was still dark as Jane rose quietly
from her chair, pulled a piece of cloth
from her pocket, and crept across the
room to where Rosa lay. Her mouth was
open and she was snoring lightly.
Balling the cloth in her hands, she
quickly stuffed it into Rosa’s mouth,
pulled a hammer from under the
mattress, and called out to Angelo. But
Rosa was up and fighting and spitting
out the cloth. She grabbed Jane’s
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hair and caught hold of the hammer,
pushing it away as Jane tried to strike
her with it.
The noise of the women grappling
in the darkness started the babies
howling and brought Angelo rushing
into the bedroom. Seeing that Rosa had
dragged Jane down on top of her and
was tearing out handfuls of her hair, he
pitched into the struggle, wrenching the
hammer from his wife, and throwing
himself across her chest. Pinned to
the floor by his bulk and weakened
by childbirth, she could do nothing
to defend herself against the hammer
Sligo railway station
in the 1950s. It was in
the waiting-room here
that Jane “confessed”
to murder