Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (13 page)

Inside the piano, inside the stool? Far too obvious. He cast his gaze around the room from mantelshelf to armchair to sideboard. No, not the sideboard. He heard the front door open and Milly’s heels tapping on the hall floor. Not the sideboard but perhaps the bookcase. He vaulted the arm of the sofa and began hauling the books forward, tipping them down so that he could peer into the tight-packed pages from the top.

Bloom’s books, bound black and brown, bruised blue and acid green, thick and dull, closed and impenetrable as far as Molly was concerned. How often had he heard her sneer at Bloom’s books? Dust-catchers, she’d said, full of useless knowledge without a good story in any one of them, sneering because she was intimidated by all the things her husband knew that she didn’t.

Blazes had no more affinity with books than Molly had had. Dumpy little volumes of M’Call’s
Racing Chronicle and the annual records of bloodstock sales lined his office shelves and his bedside cabinet at home was crammed with nothing more substantial than boxing magazines and theatre programmes.

In the hall, voices: Milly’s shrill; the copper’s soft, male, and placatory. Dante, no. Shakespeare, no. Spinoza, dense as a doorstep, no.

Four or five volumes at a time, he worked down the shelves, irked by his own conceit in thinking that he could outsmart crafty old Bloom. Astronomy, geology, J.A. Froude’s – whoever the devil he was –
Nemesis of Faith
and
English in Ireland
and
The English in the West Indies
and … there! He tugged out the volume and pushed the others hurriedly back on to the shelf. Four thin sheets of paper, typed upon, were folded between the pages.

My dearest, naughty darling
.

My own, my one true love
.

Martha
.

Martha? Never mind Froude, who the devil was Martha?

‘You all right in there, sir?’ the constable enquired.

Blazes shook the sheets from between the pages and stuffed them into his inside pocket just as the copper appeared in the doorway, Milly, the cat in her arms, behind him.

‘I’m looking for a book to keep Mr Bloom amused over the weekend,’ Blazes said. ‘No law against that, is there?’

‘None as I know of, sir,’ the copper said. ‘Have you found one?’

‘Hmm.’ Blazes displayed Froude’s volume on the West Indies. ‘This should take his mind off things.’

‘He’s read that one,’ Milly said.

‘Then,’ said Blazes, ‘he can read it again.’

‘Are you finished here?’ the copper asked.

‘I am,’ Blazes said. ‘Milly, how’s puss?’

‘She missed me, can’t you tell?’ He watched Milly hug the scraggy creature. ‘Olly says he’ll feed her until Papli comes back.’

‘Olly?’

‘Oliver, from next door.’

Bending, Milly released the animal who shot off through the half open front door as if, Blazes thought, she couldn’t get out of this haunted place fast enough. ‘Is there anything you need from your room?’ he asked. ‘I mean, clothes or shoes?’

‘I’ve nothing black,’ Milly answered. ‘Not a thing to fit me.’

It was on the tip of Blazes’ tongue to suggest that some of her mother’s clothes might be trimmed and taken in but he realised just how heartless that would seem and, with a smile, said, ‘Well, sweetheart, we’ll just have to go shopping, won’t we?’

Bloom’s clothes were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string like a parcel ready for the post. Blazes took the book and wedged it securely under the string.

‘Do you have everything you came for, sir?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Boylan. ‘I think we’re all done here.’

There being no hacksaws, rasps or sticks of dynamite concealed in the parcel, Mr Driscoll gave Sergeant Gandy permission to take Bloom’s clothes, minus wrapping paper and string, down to his cell, together with the book that inspection had shown to be free of poison pills and coded messages.

It was still broad daylight, a pleasant, if gusty, spring afternoon. Patches of blue sky showed amid scudding white cloud in the high barred window of the holding cell.

Bloom was seated on the side of the iron cot. His bits and pieces had been returned to him after his appearance in the magistrate’s court but, having no reason to feign respectability, he had left off his boots, coat and collar and with hands on his knees and face angled up to the light from the window looked, Gandy thought, more like a dirty Hebrew than ever.

The plate on which his midday dinner had been served had been licked clean and placed, with his tea mug, on the floor by the cell door where Gandy kicked them on entering.

Bloom looked up.

‘Clothes,’ Gandy said. ‘Keep ’um clean for Monday.’

‘Monday?’ Bloom said.

‘Coroner’s Court, Monday.’

‘Oh!’ Bloom said. ‘Right you are.’

‘Where do you want them put?’

‘Here on the bed will do.’

Smirking, Gandy held out the neatly folded bundle and dropped it deliberately to the floor.

Bloom, without apparent irony, said, ‘Thank you.’

Gandy stood before him, big belly thrust out, and, gripping Bloom by his shirt, hoisted him, unresisting, to his feet.

‘I thought I told you to keep ’um clean,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Bloom said. ‘My fault entirely.’

‘Then pick ’um up.’

‘By all means,’ said Mr Bloom

Stooping, he scooped up his clothing from the floor. He knew what would happen next and was prepared for it but the force of Gandy’s knee ramming into his rump caught him by surprise. He pitched forward, the bundle clasped to his chest, then, drawing up his legs, scrambled on to the mattress before Gandy could strike again.

‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I won’t be so careless next time.’

‘See you don’t then,’ Gandy said, nonplussed by Bloom’s lack of reaction. Picking up the plate and tea mug, he went out of the cell and closed and bolted the door.

Bloom groaned, kneaded his backside and examined the bundle of clothing that Milly had fetched from home. He lifted the drawers and held them to his nose, smelling the fresh aroma of the wash upon them, a smell that Molly had loved. He could see her still, his drawers pressed to her nose as she inhaled, not his smell, of course, but the clean odour of soap suds. Then, he noticed the book. He let out a cry, snatched it up and thumbed frantically through its pages. He leapt to his feet and, gripping it by the spine, shook it so violently that the binding ripped.

Dropping the book, he hurled himself against the cell door and pounded on it with both fists.

‘Gandy,’ he roared. ‘Machin. Get me a lawyer. Quick.’

PART TWO

The Lawyer

ELEVEN

F
ar and wide had Councillor Nannetti travelled in the company of Mr McCarthy, the City Architect, to study Anglo-Saxon methods of dealing with the dead. He had no interest in burial mounds, quaint country churchyards, sprawling urban cemeteries or newfangled crematoriums which were still, thank God, prohibited in Ireland. What Councillor Nannetti hoped to build, to Mr McCarthy’s design, was a mortuary of which Dublin could be proud.

The site of the old city bakery and flour mill had fallen vacant. Here, according to the Councillor’s way of thinking, was an ideal location not only for a mortuary but also for a coroner’s courthouse. In no time at all, by Dublin standards, bakery and mill were gone and a dignified sandstone building had sprung up in their stead, conveniently close to Store Street police station. In fact, the cell in which Mr Bloom presently languished was separated from the place where his wife lay, though Bloom knew it not, only by a horse doctor’s yard and short stretch of pavement.

Inspector Kinsella, together with the coroner, his deputy, a clerk, an anonymous medical officer and Miss Milly Bloom, entered the mortuary building in Store Street on a cloudy Monday morning a couple of hours before the courtroom opened its doors to jurymen, reporters and those members of the public who had queued since dawn to secure a seat in the gallery.

Miss Bloom had exchanged her redbreast coat and tam for a black tailored coat and skirt and a hat of similar material, worn without a veil. Whatever pretty penny it had cost Blazes for the outfit had been money well spent, Kinsella reckoned, and whoever – one of the sisters, perhaps – had dressed Milly’s hair had done a grand job, for Miss Millicent Bloom, pale as a lily and hollow-eyed, was no longer a girl but a woman full-blown in her grief.

There was a brief but rancorous altercation with Mr Boylan who had expected that he too would be allowed to view the body of the deceased. Dr Slater was having none of it. It fell by default to Jim Kinsella to offer Milly his arm, which, rather to his surprise, she accepted without protest.

Tense but otherwise composed, Milly followed the official party along the echoing corridor and down a short flight of steps to the plate glass window beyond which, discreetly slotted in chilly pigeon-holes, the bodies of Dublin’s dubious dead were filed.

Dr Slater, hatless for once, paused.

‘Are you prepared, Miss Bloom?’ he asked.

Resolute and mature, Milly answered, ‘I am, but I’ve no intention of saying goodbye to my mother through a sheet of glass like she’s an item in a shop window.’

‘Fair point.’ Dr Slater nodded to his deputy who knocked upon the window and signalled to the mortuary attendant to open the door and allow Miss Bloom, with Jim Kinsella at her side, to enter the mortuary proper.

It was all very cool and antiseptic in the gelid light from the skylight. Molly had been placed on her back, every part of her, save her head, covered by a spotless sheet. A saddle of polished wood raised her head at a slight angle, as if she were watching the door for her daughter’s arrival.

Against the nether wall, a second draped table supported the body of a young man, identity unknown, who had been fished from the mouth of the Liffey only that morning. In a nook left of the door was a deep stone sink and a trolley bearing cutting instruments and coiled rubber tubes which, Kinsella thought, showed a degree of carelessness on someone’s part, for mortuary and post-mortem room were, or should have been, chambers separate and distinct.

Milly tottered forward to the table and looked down on her mother’s face. Clerk, medical officer, and mortuary attendant positioned themselves behind the table facing Miss Bloom while Dr Slater, his deputy, and Jim Kinsella stood by her side.

The post-mortem had been carried out by Dr Benson Rule, a qualified demonstrator in St John’s teaching hospital and recently appointed pathologist to the County and City of Dublin. He would be summoned to appear in court later that morning to explain his findings to the jury.

Rule or his assistant had done a first-class job of repairing Molly’s damaged features. The thin black lines of stitches were visible, of course, blemishing her beauty, but her eyeball had been replaced, nostril and lip sewn up and a pad of lint inserted in her cheek to fill out her sunken mouth. With eyelids closed and her long, dark lashes covering the worst of the scars she appeared almost serene.

‘Miss Bloom,’ said Slater gravely, ‘is this your mother, Marion Tweedy Bloom?’

‘It is,’ Milly answered. ‘My mother, yes.’

‘There is no doubt in your mind?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Have you seen enough, Miss Bloom?

‘A moment longer, if you please,’ Milly said then leaned over and kissed the corpse on the brow. ‘Mummy,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Mummy, what have they done to you?’ In tears, she let Jim Kinsella lead her away.

Mr Bloom had barely downed a last spoonful of lumpy porridge and still had flecks of oatmeal adhering to his moustache when the door thumped open and a young man in a narrow four-button morning coat, striped trousers and spats burst into the cell with glad-hand extended. Bloom’s first inclination was to pass the lad his empty bowl but in spite of his flamboyant appearance there was about the stranger something that discouraged levity.

Glossy brown locks rimmed his collar and bounced softly when he dipped his head and invited Bloom to shake his hand. ‘Bloom?’ Before Mr Bloom could answer, he rattled on with his introduction. ‘Neville Sullivan, partner in Tolland, Roper and Sullivan. I believe you have need of our services.’

Bloom put down the bowl, wiped his fingers on his trouser leg and shook the lawyer’s hand.

‘I’m not sure I can afford your services.’

‘Um, yes, the matter of cost is always a concern.’ Sullivan brought up a shiny new valise and propped it on the cot. ‘I’m here only to offer advice, to ensure that your interests are protected in the coroner’s court. No more, sir, no less and, for the time being at any rate, no fee.’

Bloom, still standing, said suspiciously. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Did you not ask for a solicitor?’

‘Yes, on Friday.’

Mr Sullivan flipped the tail of his morning coat, seated himself on the bed, and reached for the valise. ‘We are, relatively speaking, but piglets in the legal sty, Mr Bloom. It occurs to me, shamelessly mixing my metaphors, that Tolland, Roper and Sullivan may have been the last port of call or, to put it another way, the bottom of the hopper. Sit, do, please sit.’

Bloom lowered himself on to the bed beside the solicitor who, still talking, opened his valise and pulled out an accordion file.

‘Superintendent Driscoll, I believe, cornered our senior partner, Mr Tolland, after church last evening and suggested we might assist in your defence. I have’ – he let the file spill from his hands – ‘barely had time to scan your statement and the list of witnesses the coroner intends to examine.’

‘Are you sure Boylan didn’t hire you?’

‘Boylan? Great heavens, no. Now, about your statement …’

‘Which one?’ said Bloom.

‘Oh!’ Mr Sullivan paused. ‘You made more than one statement to the police, did you?’

‘Two.’

‘How many did you sign?’

‘One … the second one.’

‘Um.’ Mr Sullivan shook his chestnut locks again, a habit vain enough to be irritating. ‘I don’t have a copy of the original and, since it wasn’t signed, the police are under no obligation to give me sight of it. Do you recall what you said in it?’