It would be a small wedding, Swallow had reckoned. But when they put the numbers together, listing the immediate relatives on both sides, it was not such a small affair after all. Both of Maria’s parents were deceased, but her father’s brother, her Uncle Paddy, would give her away.

Waiting for his bride to arrive, Swallow, out of professional habit, counted the numbers present. He made it twenty. Two of his uncles flanked his elderly mother, who had travelled from Kildare. John Mallon and his wife sat side by side with Pat Mossop and his wife. Mick Feore and Mrs Feore sat behind, accompanied by ‘Duck’ Boyle and Mrs Boyle. Maria’s two immediate business neighbours from Thomas Street, Tom Fallon the butcher and George White the cabinetmaker, were there with their wives. Tom Dunne, Maria’s head barman, sat with Mrs Dunne. Carrie, Maria’s housekeeper and cook, was widowed, but her son, Jack, who worked as a gauger in Power’s distillery on John’s Lane, escorted his mother.

Father Lawrence, as the celebrant, stood at the centre of the altar, taking quiet pleasure in his precedence, for once, over the Friar Superior, who hovered behind him. Another novice who would act as Lawrence’s altar attendant knelt beside him. As the bride-to-be started along the red carpet, the organist played the opening notes of the ‘Halleluiah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah.

‘It’s quite profane, of course,’ Lawrence later told Swallow. ‘Nothing sacred about it. But it’s beautiful, and sure isn’t it nearly Christmas?’

When Maria arrived on her Uncle Paddy’s arm she looked nervous, Swallow thought. But her wedding attire made her more beautiful than he had ever seen her. As befitted her widowed status she had eschewed the white lace dress that had been popularised by the young queen, Victoria, in her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. Instead she had chosen a sculpted gown in cream silk, stitched with pearls. The same pearls decorated a short veil in matching lace, and she carried a small bouquet of flowering cyclamen. Her blonde hair was styled in perfect ringlets that framed her face and graceful neck.

Swallow would have liked to have a new suit for the occasion, but with the inquiries into Alice Flannery’s murder there was no time for a fitting at any tailor’s during the week. His best option had been for Carrie to sponge, steam and press the dark-blue three-piece he wore for court appearances. Harry Lafeyre, taking his duties as best man seriously, had volunteered to collect a new silk shirt and bow tie for him. Swallow reckoned he was passable.