The Death of Love (5 page)

Butler, the superintendent from the Kenmare Barracks, had moved toward them too.

Gladden pushed past Frost, and in the bedroom went on with undiminished alacrity. “As I was saying, Superintendent, Paddy fell here and managed somehow to get the cap off the bottle and one in his mouth and little else.” He pointed to the spray of small yellow pills on the carpet. “The problem is that the remedy for the tachycardia he thought he was experiencing is digitoxin, and by taking that pill he as much killed himself as the person who switched bottles on him committed murder. But, of course, they—or, rather,
he
, the murderer—knew that.” Again with the exaggeration worthy of a character in an
opéra bouffe
Gladden turned and eyed Frost.

“In some torturous way, I’m sure, Paddy got himself up on the bed,” the covers of which were wrinkled and still bore the imprint of Power’s small, squat body. “And there our poor Paddy must have tossed and turned, lying in agony as his heart beat faster and faster still. Finally the disorganization of impulses became so complete it involved the entire heart, which
locked
”—Gladden snapped his fist up into a tight, white ball—“in a complete, quivering, mechanical paralysis.

“This, this”—he shook the fist, searching for a term—“
heart cramp
hit him with such force and produced such pain that he was literally knocked from the bed.” With his odd, pigeon-toed gait the large man shambled around the bed. “And he landed here.” Gladden pointed down at the black face of the corpse that was grinning up at him with a hilarity that seemed no less real and therefore appropriate to the bathetic dithyramb.

“His final, desperate act was to reach for his note cards, the ones Paddy used to jot down matters of import to him. The ones he was assembling—he told me—for a memoir, and he kept under lock and key there in that case. But there again, the murderer had taken advantage of his trusting, kindly nature and had used his hospitality foully. The case was empty, the lock—see there—had been forced and the contents stolen sometime earlier in the day or afternoon.

“Paddy had time only to snatch up one of the recent
cards that bears the date of Friday, when he flew in from London.” Bending at the waist, Gladden twisted his head so he could read the handwriting on the card. “Apart from Paddy’s opinion of Chairman Frost, it’s worthless really, just some observations about life in Kerry and Ireland. This one describes how I shoot the wild jackals that prey on my sheep. Travelogue and literary stuff. Paddy always fancied becoming a writer one day when he got the time.”

Gladden straightened up. “The others”—he pointed to the other cards scattered over the carpet and the only remaining card on the nightstand—“are mostly the same. Maybe if you conducted a search of the rooms in the hotel, Inspector, you might come up with the rest of them.” Gladden obviously meant Frost’s room. He stepped back from the corpse and folded his hands in front of him like two tanned spades.

McGarr concluded he was finished.

IT WAS A demotion of several complete ranks—chief superintendent to inspector—and revealed Gladden’s opinion of McGarr’s abilities or his importance in the matter.

McGarr glanced from the toilet to the bottle of pills that had been scattered on the floor, to the rumpled bed, to the ghastly corpse, and asked himself what he was seeing. Was it a death by natural cause, as Commissioner Farrell, Shane Frost, and (McGarr assumed) the O’Duffy government would have it? Or was it, as Gladden was charging, a classic locked-door murder with the difference that, even if unknowing, Power had died by his own hand, which made it more cunning still?

Certainly the postmortem would substantiate or deny Gladden’s analysis, from the particles of glass in the wound on Power’s forehead to the amount and type of digitalis in his blood. A complete absence of quinidine might further support Gladden’s contention, but what was there to suggest that the man’s death was anything more tragic than the simple misadventure of his having chosen the wrong medicine bottle?

The theft of the note cards?

Perhaps, if in fact they had been stolen. Power might have lost the key and forced the lock himself. He might have stored the cards in some other place or have decided to abandon his memoir project and destroyed them him
self. Also the theft, if that, could have been an act separate from and unrelated to the would-be murder.

McGarr turned to Gladden. “You touched the bottle in the toilet?”

For the first time that McGarr had noticed, Gladden’s conspicuous hazel eyes blinked.

“Did you also touch the notecase?”

Again.

“What about these cards here? Did you touch those as well?”

With wide-eyed wonderment Gladden snorted dismay. “Don’t I be the shame of the South Kerry Mountains. You mean to say I might have destroyed the, like, fingerprints of whoever—”

And added his own, perhaps all too conveniently, thought McGarr.

“I had to pick the thing up and turn it over in me hands to see it was empty. Same with the bottle and the cards. I held them to the light, the better to see. Murth-er was the furthest thing from my mind until it, like, struck me. The pieces, don’t you know. And the whole”—he swirled a hand—“scene. Exactly. Surely you’re the man who has experienced
that
, Inspector. The bolt of recognition.”

But of what? McGarr wondered. Of opportunity? And “murther”—if “murther” indeed—was by no means exact, even were the autopsy to corroborate Gladden’s suspicions.

Superintendent Butler cleared his throat. “May I say something, Chief Superintendent? If that happened, if Dr. Gladden touched anything here, it did not occur while I—”

But McGarr raised a hand, quelling him. Catching sight of Jim Feeney, the Parknasilla manager, who had discreetly taken himself into the sitting room, McGarr motioned that he should join them. “Were you here when Dr. Gladden examined these objects?”

Feeney nodded.

“How is it that news of Mr. Power’s death reached Leinster House before the Garda was notified?
Was
the Garda
ever
notified?” By “Leinster House” McGarr meant Taosieach O’Duffy.

Feeney turned his head to Shane Frost.

Said Frost, “Paddy had asked me to meet him at seven in the dining room for breakfast. He wanted to review our strategy for presenting his plan to the conference, step by step.”

“Bullshit, mister, and you know it,” Gladden interrupted. “Paddy wouldn’t have discussed the details of his conference with
you!
”

Yet again Frost ignored him. “When by seven he hadn’t arrived, I decided to come up here and see what was keeping him. On the stairs I could hear Mossie here”—he nodded at Gladden—“literally raving bloody murder. I decided that in the interests of the conference, the hotel, and Paddy’s friends and relatives, I’d try to keep a lid on speculation.”

“Will you listen to him? Shpeck-oo-
lay
-tion,” Gladden said in a thick brogue. “If to anybody other than me, Paddy would have revealed his plan to Gretta, and Gretta only.”

Frost sighed. “Honestly, Mossie, you have me on the wrong foot, so you do. I have an idea what you’re up to here, and let me say this. Two years ago or five or fifteen, this country could afford to indulge you and your quaint, peculiar bombast. Not now. This is a serious business Paddy and I were…
are
engaged in, where posturing and ego count for naught. ’Tis the future that’s at stake, and nowhere in it does your Twilight socialism have a place.” Frost meant the Celtic Twilight, which was a late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century movement that advocated returning Ireland to an idealized notion of its ancient past.

To McGarr, Frost said, “Gretta was there too at breakfast. I’m sure she’ll corroborate everything I’ve said.”

“Look who’s speaking for the country now,” Gladden said. “And what country? Drogheda to Naas to Wicklow Town. Behold the Pale rider.” Gladden pointed at Frost’s silver hair and expelled a mouthful of air in a kind of sardonic laugh. The Pale had been an area around Dublin where had lived the most obdurate of early English invaders.

“And the Guards?” McGarr prompted. “Why weren’t the police called?”

Frost’s eyes met McGarr’s with cold, clear purpose. “It could be I acted hastily to protect a whole host of things—Paddy’s memory, his family, the conference, maybe even Ireland itself—but I think not. If
his
story gets out, the cry of (I hardly dare breathe the word)
assassination
might be raised, and word of that sort never heals, most especially in this country with its love of martyrs.
That
’s what I was trying to avoid by phoning Leinster House first. And that only.

“I understand you’ve been placed on notice. I’d take it seriously, were I you. You’re to keep a low profile here. The lowest.” Frost turned, as though he would leave the room.

Threat number three, or was it four? O’Duffy, Quinn, Harney, Frost, and company evidently had much to lose. What could Paddy Power have been about to propose that they viewed as such a threat? “Not so fast, Mr. Frost,” McGarr said. “I have a few more questions.”

Frost kept walking.

“Unless you’d prefer me to ask them at dinner or in the bar.”

Frost stopped. He turned his aquiline profile to them.

Again McGarr could picture Frost stalking the monumental granite lobby of the new-scheme financial center that Eire Bank had erected in Dublin.

“I’d mind your tongue, man. Dublin will hear of this.”

McGarr hoped exactly, word for word.

“The note cards. Do you know about them?”

“Is the raven acquainted with the worm?” Gladden chimed in. “Of course he is. Tip to tail.”

McGarr turned to Gladden. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been most helpful. Good day.” He nodded to Butler, who moved forward to escort Gladden from the room.

“More Dublin, have we? Pity, reptile that he is, O’Duffy couldn’t find the backbone to call round himself. He could have wrapped our poor murdered Paddy and his stillborn conference in a serpent’s caul, sealed them off from the light of a new day.”

Frost turned to him. “Why—haven’t you heard, Mossie? Is there no wireless in your mountain aerie? Oh, that’s right you’ve eschewed materialism and the accoutrements
of your former life, as well as given your back to your old friends and colleagues. Taosieach O’Duffy
will
meet with the conferees Thursday. It’s been all the news this morning.”

“
Now
that he can be assured of its result,” Gladden said through the doorway, “we’ll see about that.” Butler pulled him toward the sitting room.

McGarr turned to Frost. “This conference—what is it about?”

“The national debt.”

McGarr waited for him to say more. “The
Irish
national debt?”

“I don’t think Paddy was much interested in any other.”

McGarr wondered if Frost was leading him on. He tried to imagine what about the national debt—beyond its size, which he knew was substantial—could possibly be of such moment that Paddy Power would use it as an issue from which to launch a political campaign, if Mossie Gladden could be believed. Or would warrant the continuance of a conference in spite of the death of the man who had set it up? Or, now, the visit of a taosieach? “
What
about the national debt?”

“Everything. Its structure, its longevity, its retirement. Paddy was nothing if not a creative banker. He had a little theory about lending being like love.”

McGarr waited.

“You know, people have to love you or at least love your prospects to invest in you. All the more so on the state level. In spite of Ireland’s indebtedness, banks, financial consortiums, and wealthy countries still seem to love Ireland, and Paddy thought he might turn that affection to our advantage.”

McGarr blinked. He knew nothing about state financing. “How will the conference continue without him?” And why?

“Tell me the debt passed away with him and I’ll call it off this instant. Paddy would have wanted his work to continue, and I’ll make sure it does.”

“But what will you say to the”—what was the word Frost had used earlier?—“conferees?”

“That Paddy was lucky even in death, and what will happen to us all happened to him in his sleep.”

Death by the natural cause of heart failure, McGarr thought. “Who are the other participants?”

“Bank chairmen, senior investment officers, executives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and significant Irish debt holders—German, French, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Irish. Some Yanks. Some Japs.”

“All assembled at the behest of Paddy Power?”

Frost nodded. “Paddy made most of them a great deal of money at one time or another. He had…
clout
.”

“And what did he wish them to do?”

Frost shook his head. “You’ll have to get that from Gretta, if she’ll tell you. I wouldn’t want her to think I was the source of any leaks.” His slight smile bared a row of even teeth and was not pleasant.

“Gretta who?”

“Osbourne. His”—Frost also seemed to have trouble nominating her position in Power’s life—“colleague.”

“Did Mr. Power have any next of kin?”

“Five children. The eldest lives in Los Angeles. The others—they rather sided with the mother in Paddy’s divorce. I’d say speak to Gretta about that too, but, you know, it’s not as though they care much for her either.”

McGarr had his notebook out now. “The son in Los Angeles—do you have his full name and address?”

“His name is Sean Dermot. The address you’ll have to get yourself.”

McGarr looked up. “Named after Sean Dermot O’Duffy?”

“They go way back, the taosieach and Paddy. If the truth be known, they were the best of friends.”

Not according to Gladden or the press; on more than a few occasions Power had condemned O’Duffy—a man “…sensitive to the needs of only the rich and powerful,” was the phrase, McGarr seemed to remember.

He again glanced down at the note cards, on which—it now seemed—so much depended. “What can you tell me about these?”

Frost moved toward the corpse but cautiously, his step hesitant; he turned his head slightly, as though trying to
read the few on the floor. “Paddy began the cards after the first crisis with his heart. It wasn’t actually a coronary, just a—how was it phrased?—an ‘event.’ But it was then that his condition was diagnosed, and he went on the quinidine and digitoxin and so forth. Formerly he had used the cards for sums. You know”—he glanced up at McGarr—“loan rates, hedges, options, futures, and the like. It was before computers. Paddy was a wizard with figures, which was part of why he did so well in finance.

“But, you know, he kept the key to that box on his key ring.” Frost pointed to a bulge in the right pocket of Power’s trousers. “Had he the key, there would be no reason for him to have damaged the lock.”

McGarr stepped around Frost and bent to the corpse. He had to tug to pull the key ring from the pocket, and the stiff body with its arms thrown back rocked like a gruesome Halloween effigy.

Frost moved back.

“Can you tell me which key?” McGarr fanned them on his palm, and Frost pointed to the smallest, which would have fit the lock. McGarr did not try. Perhaps Gladden had not touched the case everywhere, although, if it was murder, it had been a clever murder indeed, and he doubted the murderer would have left prints.

“Frost, the chemist in Sneem. He’s your—”

“My aged father.” Yet again Frost shook his head. “Jesus, McGarr. I don’t know, maybe I began wrong with you. I’ve threatened you, I’ve asked you, and now I’m
begging
you not to stir things up. Parknasilla is served by people from Sneem. Sneem is a small town in a small county in a small country filled with people who, like Mossie Gladden, have small minds and little better to do than stir things up. We—you and me—serve them at our peril. Don’t add to the burden.” He left.

McGarr lit a cigarette. Even as chief superintendent of the Murder Squad, his own opinion of the people of Ireland was better than banker Frost’s. If nothing else before he left Parknasilla, McGarr wished to know in detail how Frost thought he
served
the people of Ireland, apart from the usual capitalist rhetoric that bankers gave out to justify double-digit interest rates. McGarr too had a mortgage,
which monthly reminded him of who to the exact penny was serving whom. As far as he was concerned, there was no love between them, either way. It was business, strict and uncompromising.

McGarr slipped Power’s key chain into his own coat pocket and squatted down beside the corpse. Had he missed anything? The Tech Squad would go over the details of the suite with a thoroughness that he could not hope to emulate, but they ignored all else: correlations, feelings, atmospheres, sympathy. McGarr noticed for the first time that Power’s hands had been burned some time in the past. The palms and fingers were disfigured with plated scarring. Tabs of flesh had been gathered into rough ridge lines.

Also, his knees had begun to pull in as his stomach bloated, and in all—flat on his back with arms and legs raised and his blood-darkened face—looked like a large, unexpected road kill, a kind of giant, clothed badger or marmot.