‘Then he started buyin’ her books. He bought a few books about cookery for her. But then he’d have novels, and he’d ask her to read these out loud for him in the parlour at the parochial house. He said it was to help her improve her speakin’ manner.’

‘Seems fair enough,’ Mossop observed. ‘Your sister was an ambitious girl.’

Flannery shook his head again.

‘No. He told her he wanted to work on her voice projection. He told her she had to loosen her clothin’. He had to put his hands on her, holdin’ in her stomach, pressin’ her back and all that. But it was just an excuse. She knew it was wrong and made him stop. That’s when she told me about it.’

‘What did you do?’ Swallow asked.

‘I told her that what was happenin’ was displeasing to God. I told her to stop the visits and to warn him that she’d complain to the monsignor, Feehan, if there was any more of it. It seemed to work for a while. Then a couple of weeks ago he started turnin’ up on the Rathmines Road at night when she’d be comin’ home from work.’

‘So what would happen on those occasions?’

‘He’d just be there, usually around the bridge, and he’d walk with her to the top of the laneway. She said he told her he was protectin’ her.’

‘But you suspected his motives?’ Swallow said. ‘You went out to intercept him?’

‘Yes. She said that he was going on about the evils of sin, the importance for a girl to maintain purity and so on. She didn’t need that guidance. She was a good girl from a good home. He was usin’ her to get his own bad thoughts out into words.’

‘But you never actually spoke to him or met him about all this? Not even on Friday night?’

‘No.’

‘So what do you think happened to Alice? Who killed her?’

‘I won’t point a finger,’ Flannery raised his voice and brought his hands crashing down on the tabletop, ‘but you must be blind if you can’t see it! Or is it that the police are afraid to take on a priest?’

‘No,’ Swallow said. ‘The police will do their duty. But we need something more than assertion. We need evidence.’

‘Well, you have my information for a start. And I’ll stand over it.’

‘That’s a start,’ Swallow told him, ‘but we’ll need a formal statement. But I have other questions.’

‘Such as?’

‘The medical examiner found a mark, perhaps a burn or a scald, on her left side. He estimated that it might be a year old, maybe two. Do you know how she got that?’

Flannery nodded.