Michael Sheridan - Death in December. The Story of Sophie Toscan du Plantier

This book is dedicated to the memory of

Sophie Toscan du Plantier
28 July 1957 23 December 1996

And to her family and extended family who share with my mother Patsy and her friends Maxie and Cissie Dooley the essence of good, which will always triumph over evil and restore our faith in humanity.

This story would have been incomplete without the unprecedented co-operation of Sophies family, Georges, Marguerite and Bertrand Bouniol and Marie Madeleine Opalka. How they and Sophies son, Pierre Louis, younger brother Stephane and cousins Alexandra and Patricia have survived the grief is beyond my comprehension. My admiration for their courage is unbounded. I am also very grateful for the time, support and co-operation of Daniel Toscan du Plantier.

The book could not have been published without the help of a large number of people, many of who, for professional or personal reasons, prefer to remain anonymous. I am greatly indebted to them for their time, consideration and expertise. I would like to thank the people of Schull who have been unfailingly welcoming during my time there researching the story. Special thanks to Val Duffy, his wife Vera and his staff at the East End Hotel for their generosity and co-operation.

My gratitude also to Bill Hogan, cheesemaker extraordinaire, for his time; to Josephine Hellen, Leo Bolger, John Montague and Elizabeth Wassell, and to master photographer John Minihan for his great company and unerring eye. To Bill Crozier and the committee of the Schull Arts Festival for an inspired opening, and to local historian Michael OCarroll for his enviable knowledge of centuries of happenings in the area. And to the many other people of the area who wish to remain anonymous.

My thanks to retired DI Gerry OCarroll for an entre to a world that previously had been entirely foreign to me, and to his wife Kathleen and daughters Ellie and Mags for providing a stimulating world of love and fun for Cian and Fionn, for which I also owe a big thank you to my daughter Sarah. Thanks to Ger for putting up with the impossible and irritable author and his manifest insecurities. To Marty and Maria for the same over the years. A special thank you to my nephew, Sheridan Flynn, for his assistance.

I am grateful for the continuing support and the commission for the article that inspired this book from Aenghus Fanning, Anne Harris and Willie Kealy of the Sunday Independent. I will not forget the support and spiritual assistance of songwriter supreme Jimmy McCarthy, and the wise counsel of Hugh Duffy. And last but not least to the editorial help and wisdom of Mary Webb and de n Laoghaire, all at The OBrien Press, and Billy Ryan for words of advice and encouragement.

Monday, 23 December 1996

It was just two days after the winter solstice and dawn came late to the valley of Toormore. As the first streaks of colour lightened the sky, the full moon lost its potency and the five-second flash of the Fastnet lighthouse over Roaring Water Bay dimmed.

Lights began to come on in the houses scattered throughout the remote parish in West Cork.

Only forty-eight hours left in the countdown to Christmas Day. Although the townland was outwardly peaceful sheep grazing unconcernedly on the rough, salt-tanged grass of the sloping fields, the valley still and quiet in the chilly morning air the sense of excitement and anticipation that precedes the biggest feast day of the year was palpable. In every house the final preparations for a traditional Irish Christmas were fully underway: presents were being wrapped surreptitiously while the children slept, jelly was setting for the trifle, beds were being aired for returning family members. And soon the shops in Schull, Skibbereen and Ballydehob would be open.

Like almost everyone else, Shirley Foster still had things to do for the holiday. Shortly before 10.00am she closed her front door behind her and sat into her car, intending to drive the eight miles to Schull. She eased the car past the neighbouring house, around the S-bend and down the steep, gravel laneway that led into the valley and out onto the main road. As she neared the gate at the bottom of the lane, something caught her eye.

A piece of white material fluttered on the low barbed-wire fence, just inside the open gate. Then she saw the crumpled form lying at the base of the fence. Shirley put her foot on the brake and stopped the car. Her heart racing, she opened the drivers door. There was blood, a lot of blood. She turned and ran back up the laneway to her house.

* * *

The bloody, lifeless body was that of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a beautiful thirty-nine-year-old Frenchwoman. Sophie was a frequent visitor to the converted farmhouse that she had bought five years earlier as a retreat from her busy life in Paris. In a phone call to her husband the previous night, Sophie had told him that she would be leaving Toormore the following day, 24 December, to return to Paris and spend Christmas with him at their country home in Ambax, near Toulouse.

She never made it home.

She would never celebrate Christmas again.