Police business had brought Swallow to poor homes like this on many occasions. Flannery’s rented cottage would not be classified among the lowest grade of Dublin housing, but it was far from palatial. The earthen-floored room in which the dead girl was laid out served as kitchen and living space. To left and right of the open fireplace, rough wooden doors led to two small rooms that comprised sleeping quarters. Ideally, one would be for males and one for females. There would probably be a small yard behind with a dry privy. Less fortunate families living in the city’s courts and lanes might have to share such a facility among forty people.

He took in the sparse furnishings. A deal table, covered with a cheap oil-cloth. A wooden dresser with some simple crockery. A few boxwood chairs. A wicker basket, laden with turf sods taken down from the boggy hills behind the city. A crucifix hung on the wall over the fire. On the opposite wall there was a faded paper portrait of the young patriot Robert Emmet, executed in Thomas Street for his abortive rebellion against the Crown. Swallow smiled inwardly at the familiar image: it was one of a series published some years earlier in the pages of The Nation newspaper, edited by Thomas Davis, who had initiated the Young Ireland movement. His mother had another in the series, depicting the rebel pikemen of 1798, which she hung behind the bar of Swallow’s public house in Newcroft.

His mother’s father and two of her uncles had been ‘out’ in the rising of ’98, fighting the redcoat yeomanry in the flat countryside where Kildare borders on Queen’s County. Only one of the three brothers, Swallow’s grandfather, had survived.

Swallow’s mother remained staunchly rebellious even as she advanced in years. But notwithstanding her insurrectionary instincts, she had no qualms about selling drink to the soldiery of the nearby Curragh camp, said to be the largest military installation in the empire. Swallow’s of Newcroft had the reputation of being a good house, frequented by senior NCOs as well as private soldiers. Payday at the Curragh was also payday for the adjacent public houses.

He looked around the room. Half a dozen or so books occupied a small shelving space built into the wall beside the fireplace. He strained to see the titles. The Holy Bible. A copy of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. A heavy volume telling the story of the supposed apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at Knock in County Mayo. Two cookery books. A compilation of Moore’s Melodies. Incongruously, there was a battered copy of Blackstone’s Discourse on the Study of Law.