The Eloquence of the Dead (15 page)

‘I understand in Scotland it's called a “stubble goose” because at this time the fowl are feeding in the harvested fields,' Yeats said knowledgeably. ‘Although why it should have any relationship to St Michael, I don't know.'

Maria smiled. ‘I don't know either. It was a custom in my late husband's family.'

Swallow saw the slight sadness in her face, and he picked up the catch in her voice. Jack Walsh had gone down with all his fellow crew members when their ship foundered off the Welsh coast five years previously, leaving Maria widowed at twenty-five.

He was still a presence in her conversation when Swallow first came as a lodger to Thomas Street. Once their relationship developed into intimacy, though, she rarely spoke of Jack afterwards.

‘I believe it's time to go to table,' she said. ‘I think I hear Tess on the stairs.'

The party of eight arranged themselves around the mahogany dining-table. Maria sat at the end nearer the door. Some swift choreography by the other guests obliged Swallow to take the seat to her right. He had no doubt that it was contrived. Weldon sat opposite. Friar Lawrence sat at the other end of the table, between Harriet and Yeats.

He tucked back the sleeves of his habit, and made a benediction with his hand.

‘May the Lord bless us all, bless this food we are about to eat and bless those who have prepared it.'

They had a chicken broth, and then a warming vegetable soup, followed by steamed cod in white sauce. Then Carrie, Maria's cook, brought in the goose on a blue platter. Lafeyre carved, while Tess the maid ferried platters of the meat along the table. There was Hock and Claret. Swallow stayed with the claret, a velvety Château de Pez from Saint-Estèphe.

‘You're a poet, Mr Yeats, I understand,' Maria said. ‘Is that something that one can be trained to? Or is it a natural gift?'

‘It is a gift given to some, Mrs Walsh,' the young man answered. ‘Often it is part of a larger gift, the gift of vision, of being able to connect with worlds that exist elsewhere.'

‘Like the Moon, or Mars?' Swallow knew he was being provocative.

‘You know very well that Mr Yeats is not talking about the Moon or Mars,' Harriet said icily. ‘He is referring to the spiritual dimension. It is a matter of vision.'

‘Quite right too,' Friar Lawrence said, raising his glass approvingly. ‘We must not allow our horizons to be bounded by the material world.'

‘Would you have any vision of where a missing person might be, Mr Yeats?' Swallow asked. ‘I'm trying to find a woman who might have been murdered. Or maybe she just ran away with a lot of money.'

‘Oh for Heaven's sake, Joe,' Harriet said.

‘Don't be upset,' Yeats told her. ‘No, Mr Swallow, I don't think I could help you there. But I might know somebody who could.'

‘And who might that be?'

‘Have you heard of Madame Blavatsky?'

Swallow knew of the Russian mystic, who had followers in many countries across Europe. G-Division knew that such a group had formed in Dublin. In police circles, it was considered harmless if eccentric.

‘No, who's she?'

One never knew what might come up with a bit of fishing.

‘Those of us who are interested in the mystic believe that she has powers of sight, vision if you like. And she can draw out those powers in certain others who may have them too. There are several people, followers of Madame Blavatsky, in Dublin who could probably tell you where to look for your missing woman.'

Swallow resisted the urge to be sarcastic again.

‘I think I'll rely on more conventional methods just for the present, Mr Yeats. If they don't work, maybe I can make contact with your Madame Blavatsky.'

By the time Lafeyre offered second helpings of the goose, and notwithstanding the wine, the atmosphere at Swallow's end of the table had grown frigid. Maria had not addressed a single word to him. Weldon too seemed to have picked up the sense of unease.

‘Tell me, Mr Swallow,' Weldon asked, ‘what message might I bring to my superiors in London about the state of Ireland? Do you think the government's land policy can bring peace around the country? The police must have a good sense of whether it's working.'

‘Outrages are down. But how much of that's due to the land policy, I wouldn't be able to guess. So I wouldn't want you to base your report back in London on anything I say.'

Weldon laughed.

‘Don't worry. I won't have you held accountable. But I can speak with some personal experience. My family has – or had – land in County Limerick.'

He laughed again.

‘Unfortunately, I'm on the poor branch of the tree. The inheritance laws worked against us. Otherwise, I wouldn't be labouring as a civil servant. But the Weldons have been there since Cromwell. Never a night's peace with shootings, arson, cattle being driven off, until my cousin decided to accept the government money and sell out to the tenants. It's a peaceful as an English meadow down there since.'

‘You were probably wise to choose a civil service career, Mr Weldon,' Maria said, casting a reproving eye at Swallow. ‘I'm sure it's much more pleasant than being shot at by Land Leaguers and Fenians.'

Weldon smiled.

‘To tell the truth, I'd never have had any interest in the land even if I had the opportunity. That's why I went to Africa for a spell. But my background gave me an understanding of issues in the ownership and the management of property. So the government in the Cape Colony put me in charge of the office that dealt with land transfers. Now I'm doing something similar for Ireland.'

‘Quite a few of the Dutch in the Cape wanted to sell out to English farmers,' Lafeyre explained. ‘Each wanted the business done according to their own legal code. And Dutch law and English law are very different. Then the Xhosa people had their own claims on the land too. George acquired a reputation as a skilful negotiator.'

‘So what exactly do you do now, Mr Weldon?' Maria asked.

‘Like any other Irishman, I want to see the land issue settled once and for all. If the people secure ownership of the farms, their grievances are taken away. My task is to advance that process as completely and as rapidly as possible.'

‘Rightly so,' Friar Lawrence said. ‘Down in my own county of Cork, the tenants are taking up the scheme in their thousands. Mind you, there's a few of the big landlords who won't budge for love or money. They'll hold on for spite, I think. ‘

Harriet clanged her knife and fork noisily on her plate.

‘We'd be very foolish to think that Ireland can be pacified simply by giving the land back to the people from whom it was taken in the first place. We need to break the connection with England, to rule ourselves and to make our own destinies.'

‘Miss Swallow is a Home Ruler,' Lily Grant said to nobody in particular.

‘I agree with her,' Yeats interjected. ‘Ireland must find its own soul. Home Rule may be part of that. But we have to reach back into our history, into the spirit of the nation and reclaim the days when a race of giants, heroes ruled our country.'

‘I'd hate to think of us being ruled by a race of giants,' Lafeyre laughed. ‘They'd probably eat us.'

‘You don't think I mean giants in the biological sense, Doctor?' Yeats said irritatedly. ‘I mean in the intellectual sense, in their capacity for imagination, thought.'

Lafeyre shrugged. He disliked abstractions.

‘So you're a follower of Mr Parnell, Miss Swallow?' Weldon said amiably.

‘Yes, she is,' Lily said.

Harriet's eyes lit with anger.

‘I can answer for myself, thank you, Miss Grant. I consider Mr Parnell to be a compromiser. He negotiates with England as if she had rights in this country, which she does not. Mr Parnell's objective of Home Rule, secured on England's terms, is a selling of Irish nationhood, nothing less.'

Swallow groaned inwardly. He heard Lily's sharp intake of breath at the far end of the table. Lafeyre sought to dispel the chill. He leaped to his feet.

‘Maria, would you like me to serve more wine?'

She nodded and smiled nervously. ‘Please, Harry.'

But if Weldon was offended, he cloaked it well, even elegantly, Swallow thought.

‘Well put, Miss Swallow. In a way I agree with you about the man,' he said pleasantly. ‘For my part, I see him as a traitor to his own, the Protestant landowning people, the backbone of this country.'

He looked up the table at Yeats.

‘I think they're your people too, Mr Yeats.'

‘Protestant, yes,' Yeats replied. ‘But landowning, no, except in a very small way. My father is an artist and my mother's people have a business in Sligo'

Weldon nodded.

‘From my background, I could say Mr Parnell is a compromiser too. So are the politicians in power at Westminster. They'll not defend my family's right to their land, and they'll sell us out to some Dublin parliament where we'll have to bow and scrape to Parnell's cronies. That much being said, I have my job to do, and I shall do it to the best of my abilities.'

This was a point, Swallow recognised, at which a sensible policeman should say nothing. He gratefully extended his glass as Lafeyre went around the table with the claret.

Now Friar Lawrence's face glowed with agitation.

‘The backbone of this country, Mr Weldon, are the loyal Catholics on their farms and in their villages. They're the true Irish, descended from the noble Celts. Many of the people you speak of are no doubt upright and God-fearing. But they're planters and usurpers. They have no business here at all.'

Weldon snorted derisively.

‘The Celts? Are you telling us the Celts were Catholics, Father?'

He turned again to Yeats.

‘You'd better come to my aid here, Mr Yeats. You know about such things. Do you think the Celts were Catholics?'

Yeats frowned.

‘I think they were far too wise to have anything to do with our kind of religion, in any of its branches.'

Swallow thought Weldon's riposte to the old friar was unnecessarily brusque.

He caught a glance of alarm pass between Lily and Lafeyre. If the Michaelmas dinner had been a ploy to bring Maria and himself back into harmony, it was not going to plan. It was turning into a heated evening of political argument.

Maria decided to exercise her prerogative as hostess.

‘We'll have an end to this. The dinner-table isn't the place for a political debate. We're here for a pleasant evening. It's time for pudding. Carrie has prepared one of her specialties. It's a special compote. So I propose that we move on to the next course and talk about more pleasant subjects.'

As if on cue, Carrie bustled through the door supporting two big dishes of her fruit compote, one on each hand. Lafeyre began to say something about the current programme in the city theatres, falling in with Maria's injunction against further talk of politics.

‘I apologise,' Harriet said. ‘I shouldn't have been so outspoken. Please forgive me everybody.'

Swallow plunged his spoon into Carrie's pudding.

His sister was right, he knew. But if Parnell could be kept in place for a while longer, the chances of transition to a peaceful, new order on the land would be greater. There would be fewer shootings, fewer arson attacks, fewer deaths.

The compote was good. Lafeyre refilled the wine glasses. Outside, the October evening had turned to night.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Trainee Detective Johnny Vizzard travelled out to Grace Clinton's house on the North Circular Road for the second time on Sunday evening, at about the hour that Maria Walsh was showing her dinner guests to the table.

The possibility that his assignment might touch upon the investigation of the Lamb Alley murder had given an added edge to his zeal. He would show enthusiasm and thoroughness, two qualities that were highly prized in the Detective Office.

He left Exchange Court at the end of his duty shift, and took a tram from Sackville Street to Phibsborough. On a Sunday evening, Vizzard reckoned, most families would be gathered at a meal or around the fireside. Even if they were religious to the extent of attending evening service, they would be home by now.

If the husband were present, he knew, he would have to be explicit about the reason for his visit. And Arthur Clinton, working in the law, would know the limitations of a police officer's powers in a private house. He would be more likely to get honest answers from a woman on her own. But the likelihood was that the husband would be at home on a Sunday evening.

Ideally, he would put off the visit until Monday, but Sergeant Swallow wanted answers as quickly as possible.

The lamplighters had been along the North Circular Road before he stepped down from the tram, but not long before. The gas lamps were showing a thin, lemon-white. It would take a while before they strengthened to their full luminescence.

The lights were coming on in the houses too. Here and there, through laced windows, he could see families reading or in conversation. In one front sitting-room he saw a tall, full-bearded man, a woman and several young children around him. It was a cameo of comfortable suburban life.

This was respectable, God-fearing Dublin; streets and avenues in which a policeman could not only feel safe but actually be welcome. These were the homes of a striving middle class, with the occasional professional or middling business family. Vizzard felt a pleasant reassurance from these illuminated glimpses of domestic order as he made his way towards his destination.

But when the novice G-man reached the Clinton house, there were no lights burning. His hauling on the bell and his hammering on the door knocker echoed through silent rooms. He bent down and pushed his fingers through the letter-box, forcing the flap back on its spring so that he could peer into the hallway. He could see only darkness.