Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (3 page)

‘They smell blood, that’s all.’ Tom Machin shrugged. ‘We don’t have too many murders in our fair city so naturally the press are all agog. I wouldn’t want to be in Bloom’s shoes if and when he’s brought to trial.’

‘Even if he pleads guilty,’ Kinsella said, ‘the Crown will still have to prove the case. It’s not open and closed, by any means. If Bloom elects to stick by his story we’ll be expected to collect enough evidence to convince a jury he committed the crime. On the other hand if we ignore the obvious and take Bloom at his word, the sooner we begin a search for an intruder, the better. I take it you’re hastening back to the station?’

‘I am. I’ll have to rake up a jury for the inquest for one thing and that’s never easy.’

‘Please have your Super make formal application for G Division assistance. I doubt if there will be a problem on that score. I assume you’ll put a constable to guard the premises but I’d be obliged if you’d let me have Jarvis as my runner for an hour or two, if, that is, he’s willing to do an extra turn after night patrol.’

‘Why Jarvis?’

‘He’s young enough to be keen.’

Tom Machin laughed. ‘Oh, we’re all keen here, Inspector. Do not be fooled by our side-whiskers and ruby red noses. Will one officer be enough for you?’

‘For the time being,’ Kinsella said. ‘I’m going to poke about here while your whiskered loons are checking what passes for Bloom’s alibi.’

‘Precisely what are you hoping to find?’

‘Evidence of motive,’ Kinsella said. ‘I gather from Slater that Mrs Molly Bloom was not as pure as the driven snow.’

‘She did have a certain reputation for being – how do they put it – “game”. How game is a matter of conjecture.’

‘Game enough to take on Blazes Boylan?’

‘Hmm,’ Tom Machin said. ‘Now if I were a detective …’

‘That’s where you’d start?’ Kinsella jumped in.

‘Yes, that’s where I’d start,’ said Machin.

THREE

A
n interview with Blazes Boylan would have to wait. Jim Kinsella’s first problem was to locate the house key. When he brought Constable Jarvis in from the step and took another look at the front-door lock it dawned on him that the key was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t hanging on the little hook by the coats in the hall or anywhere obvious in the kitchen.

Kneeling, he examined the tin draft-plate at the bottom of the door and, swinging the door forth and back, listened to the loud click-clack the plate made against the sill of the step. He went into the bedroom at the hall’s end, closed the bedroom door and called out to Constable Jarvis to do the same to the street door, close it and then open it again from the outside.

The sound was plainly audible, click-clack, in the back room.

He went out into the hall again, frowning.

‘Mr Bloom did say he’d left the door unlocked, sir,’ Constable Jarvis reminded him. ‘Maybe the key’s in his pocket still.’

‘I expect that’s it,’ the Inspector said. ‘If, however, Mrs Bloom was awake and heard the door plate rattle …’

‘She’d think it was Mr Bloom going out.’

‘Or coming in again,’ Kinsella said.

‘If it wasn’t Bloom, though,’ Jarvis said, ‘she wouldn’t know the difference. Do you wish me to look for the key, sir?’

‘No, you’re probably right and Bloom still has it. Besides, there’s something else I need you to do for me,’ Kinsella said. ‘Is there a man on guard on the step?’

‘Constable Fegan, sir.’

‘Have the journalists gone?’

‘I believe they have.’

‘Good,’ Kinsella said. ‘I want you to find out where the woman who used to be Bloom’s day maid lives. Her name’s Fleming. Someone around here is bound to know her. If the worst comes to the worst try the greengrocer.’

Constable Jarvis grinned. ‘Ay, Mrs Moody knows everyone’s business and she’s not shy about sharing it. When I find Mrs Fleming shall I be fetching her back with me?’

‘No, I only need to know where she’s living now.’

‘Right, sir,’ said Constable Jarvis and so far forgot himself as to deliver a salute.

Kinsella watched the constable leave, then, closing the street door, stood alone in the hall and let out his breath. He’d been a Metropolitan copper for twenty-two years and a G-man for fifteen of them and he still couldn’t shake off the excitement that possessed him at the start of an investigation.

He took off his hat and overcoat and hung them on the hook by the door, sharing for a moment the habits of Mr Bloom, then, rubbing his hands, he headed eagerly downstairs to the kitchen.

Fishwives had nothing on policemen when it came to gab and gossip and it was a rare treat for the lads of Store Street to entertain a genuine felon. It was all Superintendent Driscoll could do to deter them from sneaking down the corridor to the cells to peek at a prisoner who was already on the road to becoming famous.

Opinion as to Bloom’s guilt was divided. Some of the lads were of the view that the suspect must be out of his nut to dispose of such a tasty armful as Mrs Molly Bloom who, if she’d been their wife, would have been brought to heel by nothing more drastic than a clout on the mouth followed by a damned good cocking. Others, more charitably inclined, argued that Bloom could hardly be blamed, morally at least, for blowing his top at his wife’s goings-on.

It was given to Sergeant Gandy, a man of many talents – not least of which was his ability to sink four pints of black stout in under five minutes – to empty the prisoner’s pockets, remove the prisoner’s necktie, belt, scarf and boot laces and, while he was at it, check that Mr Bloom’s clothing wasn’t blood stained, though a few spots here and there would surely not detract from his claim of innocence.

On his return from the cell, Sergeant Gandy handed the items to Superintendent Driscoll who examined them carefully and found nothing more damning than a dribble of what smelled like mayonnaise on the necktie. Bloom’s belongings, including a pocket watch, a house key, four shillings and eight pence, a picture postcard of Galway Bay, with no address or message on the back, and two soiled handkerchiefs, would be returned to him before his court appearance first thing tomorrow.

Slumped on a straw mattress on an iron cot with his collar sprung, waistcoat unbuttoned and trousers bunched in his fist, Mr Bloom resembled a tramp rather than a respected employee of the
Freeman’s Journal
, for which newspaper, apparently, he sold advertising space. When Sergeant Gandy brought him a plate of buttered bread and a mug of tea, he stood up, then, to preserve his dignity, promptly sat down again. He put the mug on the floor between his feet and, pressing his knees together, balanced the plate on his lap and hungrily attacked the bread.

He chewed, swallowed, then, glancing up, said, ‘Someone had better tell Milly.’

‘Milly? Who’s Milly?’ Sergeant Gandy said.

‘My daughter,’ Bloom said. ‘Someone had better tell her that her mother’s dead.’

‘Is Milly your only child?’

‘The only one alive.’

‘Where will we find her?’ Sergeant Gandy asked.

‘Mullingar,’ Bloom answered. ‘Coghlan’s photographic shop in Castle Street.’ Then, with a curt little nod, as if that was another item neatly ticked off his list, he folded a second slice of buttered bread and pushed it, whole and unbroken, into his mouth.

The doors on the top half of the kitchen dresser swung open at a touch. Plates, saucers and cups were arranged on the lowest shelf, together with egg cups, a salt cellar and a small jar containing black pepper. The middle shelf supported proprietary brands of tea and cocoa, a canister of lump sugar, a wicker basket cradling two wrinkled apples, a box of Beecham’s pills and, towards the back of the shelf, a china milk jug and a sugar bowl, both decorated with tiny painted flowers.

Kinsella lifted out the jug and bowl, placed them on the apron of the dresser and, resting his hips against the table’s edge, studied them thoughtfully. If, as seemed likely, the shattered teapot had been part of a set, who had taken it from the cupboard and why had he carried it upstairs? If the perpetrator of the crime
had
been consumed by a monstrous fit of rage, why would he trot all the way downstairs and select an empty teapot – a teapot, of all things – to serve as a murder weapon?

Stirring himself, Kinsella opened a dresser drawer and rattled through an assortment of forks, spoons and knives. A second drawer contained a carving knife with a serrated blade, two small knives of the sort used for coring fruit, a brass letter-opener and, scattered around the cutting implements, an assortment of buttons and bits of ribbon and a pair of vicious-looking pinking shears: weapons, in other words, galore.

He closed the drawers, placed the jug and bowl in the centre of the table and, pulling out a chair, hoisted himself up to fumble on the dresser’s top shelf where he found nothing more incriminating than a bottle of brandy, unsealed, and a half-empty bottle of white port of the sort recommended for invalids and expectant mothers.

He climbed down from the chair, checked the cupboard in the base of the dresser – a pail, soap, wash-clothes, scrubbing brushes and a tousled old mop head – then, pausing only to light a cigarette, took himself upstairs to the living room.

The living room was cluttered with furniture; chairs, sofa, sideboard, bookshelves, two tables, a pier glass and a piano. He opened the piano lid and tapped two or three white keys. Unlike his wife, Edith, and all three of his daughters, he had no ear for music and couldn’t tell if the piano was in or out of tune. On the scroll were three or four music sheets: ‘Love’s
Old Sweet Song’ was the only one he recognised. He closed the piano, crossed to the bookshelves and, pushing back the sofa, examined Bloom’s library.

The books were mostly of the sort you might buy from the hawkers’ carts down by the Merchant’s Arch. They covered a queer old range of subjects, though: geology, astronomy, history, science, several works by J.A. Froude, ‘Photography in a Nutshell’, Shakespeare complete and illustrated, Dante ditto, Cosgrove’s ‘Dictionary of Dublin’ – almost new that one – and a well-thumbed copy of Thom’s massive Directory for 1901 with ‘Property of the Freeman’s Journal: Not to be Removed’ stamped on the title page. Slotted horizontally on the top shelf were several novels of a sentimental sort and one title, ‘The House of Shame’, that looked as if it might be more to Marion Bloom’s taste than her husband’s.

Inspecting his books, Kinsella experienced a fleeing affinity with Leopold Bloom, for his head too was filled with ill-assorted scraps of information about how the world had come into being, how nature functioned and what role man had in shaping his own destiny.

He left the living room and crossed the hall to the bedroom.

The bed, minus a top sheet, and the fragments of the ornamental teapot had not been much disturbed.

The fireplace was flanked by a wardrobe and a wash stand with an empty cut-glass vase propped on its shelf. A chamber pot with a healthy quantity of urine in it was tucked half under the wash stand. The rackety old commode against the inside wall was no longer fit for purpose, it seemed. He moved to the dressing-table, the woman’s domain: powder bowl, sable brush, tweezers, a jar of vanishing cream, a perfume spray with a puckered red rubber bulb, a pack of playing cards resting on a shoddily printed booklet entitled, not without irony in the circumstances, ‘Your Fate’.

On a chair by the bed were stockings and stays and on top of a trunk at the foot of the bedstead other items of female clothing, including a petticoat. Kinsella pinned the clothing with a forearm and opened the trunk, which contained only blankets and sheets.

He turned his attention to the bed.

It was a very unusual bed, large and ugly, with metal rings along the rail that rattled when, knee on the mattress, he leaned to examine the stains on the wallpaper; stains made not by blood pumping from a wound but more likely from the weapon, the teapot, being brought down in a slashing arc.

Above the bed hung a framed, luridly coloured print of half-naked nymphs frolicking by the shores of a lake. Now, Kinsella wondered, did Bloom insist on hanging the titivating picture over Mrs Bloom’s objections or did Mrs Bloom willingly capitulate in the belief that the picture was ‘artistic’? One or other or both of the Blooms had, it seemed, a vulgar streak.

Something was missing, though. Bloom’s nightshirt: there was no sign of Bloom’s nightshirt. Stooping, he peered under the bed, then, on all fours, reached under the sagging springs and fished out a bolster which, at first sight, seemed unmarked save for a few dust balls adhering to the material.

He sat back on his heels and turned the bolster over to reveal a few faint patches the size, say, of a florin, and one larger patch not just damp but wet. With the bolster across his knees, he dipped a finger into the blood patch and brought out something hard and shiny which proved to be not a fragment of china but a broken tooth. He put the bolster on to the bed, removed a clean white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, opened it out and carefully transferred the chipped tooth to the centre of the linen square. He folded the handkerchief in on itself, corner by corner, tucked it back into his breast pocket, gave it a pat to make sure it was snug, then, letting out his breath, got to his feet.

He had something, though he didn’t quite know what just yet.

He would instruct one of Machin’s men to collect the bits of the teapot in an evidence bag and take it to the station, but the little piece of Molly’s tooth he would keep to himself for now.

Constable Quinn had the steadiest hand not just in Store Street but, by repute, in the whole of the Rotunda Division. He had been trained, by a knuckle-rapping aunt, to write a fair imitation of copperplate at high speed because the old bitch thought she was going to make a lawyer of him; an ambition that young Quinn, as well as his five brothers, three sisters, and his Da, a veteran of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Kilkenny, knew was laughable, though they were all too scared of old Auntie Nula to say so out loud.

Harsh though his aunt’s instruction had seemed at the time, Constable Quinn was glad of it now. As the Superintendent’s chief clerk he had a front row seat at all the dramas that were played out in the wood-panelled office with its plaques and photographs and the Division’s collection of sporting trophies in a glass-fronted case behind the prisoner.