Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (26 page)

‘Poppy will powder his wig and lead, you know.’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ Neville said. ‘If a coroner’s jury brings home a verdict of murder what hope will Bloom have in High Court?’

‘Can’t you persuade him to plead to a lesser charge.’

‘He won’t plead to any charge,’ Neville said. ‘It’s acquittal or nothing. And now we know why. Five hundred pounds will provide his daughter with a head start in the marriage stakes. How long Bloom will hold out, though, remains to be seen.’

Fork poised, Sarah said, ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Bloom bought a joint policy in the first place. Mercury Assurance is hardly where one would begin to look for special life cover.’

‘How did your father find out where the policy was housed?’

‘Poppy? Knowing how devious my father can be, he probably narrowed the field just as we’ve done and took an educated guess that happened to be right.’ Sarah scoffed the last shrimp, delicately licked dressing from the corner of her lips and pushed the dish away. ‘The other point that’s interesting is why Bloom took out the policy in December?’

‘Perhaps,’ Neville said, ‘he thought
he
might die.’

‘Oh, you mean that someone might try to kill
him
?’

‘Yes,’ said Neville. ‘But who?

‘The lover, what’s his name? Boylan.’

‘Even in a darkened room it’s highly unlikely anyone would mistake Molly for Leopold. He hates Boylan, you know. Bloom, that is,’ Neville said. ‘He thinks Boylan’s after Milly, his little girl.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘I agree,’ said Neville. ‘Boylan will be even keener on Milly when he finds out she has five hundred pounds in her account. Of course, for that to happen Bloom will have to walk free.’

‘What are his chances, Neville? Fifty-fifty?’

‘Better than that,’ Neville said. ‘The police have no other viable suspect so far. In terms of prosecuting the case through the courts the Crown is faced with trying to prove a negative, not so much that Bloom did it as that no one else could have.’

‘Except the phantom intruder.’

‘Who,’ Neville said, ‘may be a figment of Bloom’s imagination.’

‘And then again may not,’ Sarah Tolland said.

TWENTY TWO

F
rom the police station in Store Street a short walk across Talbot Street carried you to Montgomery Street and the heart of the district known to every Dubliner as the Monto, where girls and their pimps plied the oldest trade. Kinsella had nothing but sympathy for the girls, but the madams were another matter, for even the lowest among them rarely suffered a black eye or broken nose, let alone the welts and bruises that the girls endured to keep their mistresses in gin and jewellery and their sons at fancy English schools.

Over the years the tide of fortune had shifted forth and back across the streets of Monto. The flash houses now were not in Purdon or Gardiner Street but a few hundred yards to the west where, in Upper Tyrone Street, squeezed between the Penitents’ Retreat and Byrne’s Square, three high-class brothels vied for trade.

If your taste ran to a spanking by henna-haired girls in sailor suits then plump Bella Cohen would make you welcome. If you fancied something a little more exotic involving girls from foreign climes then Ida Freemantle would see you right. If, however, all you wanted was a buxom lass from County Clare or a wicked wee witch from Sligo to sing you a ditty and pour you a glass while you waited to take her upstairs, then Nancy O’Rourke’s was the place to go.

The door was polished oak with gleaming brass fittings and the light in the transom outlined the owner’s name: A.G. O’Rourke. Once you knocked on that door there was no pretending you’d mistaken it for a house that catered to lascars and navvies. The boys who guarded the hall admitted you on the strict understanding that you would not only behave like a gentleman but pay through the nose like one.

Mrs O’Rourke was not above inviting uniformed constables into her kitchen for a glass or two but the appearance of a G-man on her doorstep brought a frown to her powdered brow. She was enough of a realist to acknowledge that the servants of the Crown could close her down for any one of a dozen reasons and having ‘One-Lamp’ Keelie Martin or granite-jawed Joe Forgan refuse a detective entry was just begging for trouble.

On Keelie’s muted whistle Nancy rushed from the parlour and scooted across the wood-panelled hall. Unlike her neighbour, Bella, Mrs O’Rourke was slim, pretty and fairly well preserved. She wore a pale blue tea gown with a high lace collar to hide the first signs of turkey neck and carried in her hand an ivory wand with which she directed her girls hither and thither without having to raise her voice.

‘Inspector Kinsella. What a delight it is to see you again. How many years has it been? Too many, I fear. Now, tell me, is it business or pleasure brings you here this dreary evening?’

Her topknot barely came up to the middle of Kinsella’s chest and the tilt of her head upward and the upward roll of her sea-green eyes made her appear winsome. She tapped his shoulder playfully with the tip of the wand and Jim Kinsella, in spite of his antipathy to whoremongers, was courteous enough to take off his hat.

‘Business, I’m afraid, Nancy, just business.’

The tip of the wand transferred itself from the G-man’s shoulder to the madam’s less than imposing bosom. ‘With me? What have I been up to that brings a handsome fella from the Castle knocking on my door?’

Behind Kinsella, Joe of the granite jaw chuckled, amused by his employer’s oratory. Keelie Martin had already slipped outside to warn off potential customers who may not wish to come face to face with an officer of the law.

‘Is Blazes here tonight?’ Kinsella asked.

‘Blazes? I don’t believe I know anyone of that name.’

‘Oh, Nancy,’ Kinsella chided, ‘how can you have forgotten Blazes Boylan? Big chap with a straw boater and a fat wallet.’

Nancy’s chesty laughter had much the same effect as a giggle. She wagged the wand and said, ‘How remiss of me to forget Mr Boylan. Ay, of course, I remember him now. No, he’s not here tonight. Just the other evening Claire was saying we hadn’t seen Mr Boylan for quite some time.’

‘How long is “quite some time”?’

Before Nancy could reply a young bare-legged blonde clad only in a shift appeared on the stairs that led down to the hall. She was followed by a portly middle-aged gentleman whom Kinsella recognised as an alderman from the Mansion House ward. On seeing the detective the girl faltered, the alderman piled into her and, for a second or so, it seemed that the pair might come tumbling down to land in a heap at Kinsella’s feet.

‘The other stairs, girl, the other stairs,’ Mrs O’Rourke yapped, then, snaring Kinsella by the belt of his raincoat, dragged him after her with all the force of a small shunting engine. ‘We’ll be more comfortable in the parlour, I think,’ she said and hauled him into the front room.

Velvet curtains draped the windows. A glass-fronted cabinet held bottles and glasses and a glittering chandelier hung from the ceiling. In the window alcove a young woman in an evening gown and elbow-length gloves was seated at an upright piano, playing a lovely old Irish ballad. Her complexion was as white as milk, eyes dark as brambles, lips red as cherries. She smiled and continued playing and, for a wistful moment, Jim Kinsella almost forgot that he was happily married, the father of three daughters and an officer in the Dublin Metropolitan.

‘She’ll give you anything your heart desires,’ Jack Delaney said. ‘Her repertoire is remarkably extensive.’ He glanced at the sheet on the music scroll, reached down and turned the page. ‘What will it be, Inspector? Bach, Chopin or “The Leg of the Duck?” You know that one by heart, don’t you, Alicia, my love?’

However refined Alicia might appear, when she opened her mouth there was no disguising her Ulster accent. ‘Sure an’ do I not now,’ she said and, grinning, chanted a few bars of the bawdy song.

There was no one in the parlour apart from the girl and Jack Delaney. The room contained two leather armchairs, a long sofa and a chaise longue upon which was draped a snake-like black stocking and a pair of French knickers, a tasteless addition to the décor. Nancy, darting, stuffed the offending garments behind a cushion in the hope that the copper hadn’t noticed them, which, of course, the copper had.

Jim Kinsella wasn’t particularly surprised to encounter the
Star’
s
reporter and had an uncomfortable feeling that Delaney already had the answers to the questions he’d come here to ask.

‘Alicia,’ said Nancy O’Rourke, with a twitch of the baton, ‘take Mr Kinsella’s coat then make yourself scarce.’

Alicia rose gracefully from the stool and closed the piano lid.

‘Thank you, Alicia,’ Kinsella said, ‘but I’ll hang on to my coat. I won’t be stopping long.’

‘What about you, Jack?’ the girl asked.

‘I am stopping,’ Delaney answered. ‘So keep the custard warm.’

The girl laughed and left the parlour via a curtained alcove that screened the dressing-room and main stairs.

Jim Kinsella seated himself on the sofa and, with a rueful shake of the head, said, ‘You seem to pop up everywhere, Delaney. Is this one of your regular haunts?’

‘Singing lessons twice a week. Isn’t that right, Nancy?’

‘Keen as mustard on his doh-ray-mees,’ the madam confirmed. ‘Will you be having a glass of something, Inspector?’

‘Claret, if you have it,’ Kinsella said, adding, ‘Isn’t that Mr Bloom’s tipple?’

‘Come now,’ Delaney said. ‘Nancy isn’t going to fall for anything as obvious as that. Why don’t you just ask her if she knows Poldy Bloom?’

Nancy opened the cabinet, took out a decanter and three glasses, filled the glasses and delivered one each to Delaney and Kinsella, who waited until she returned to sit by him before he said, ‘Tell me about Leopold Bloom.’

The woman glanced at Delaney who said, ‘It’s the man’s job, for God’s sake. Gird your loins, Nancy. Tell him what he wants to know. I mean, Jesus, it’s not as if you’re betraying your country.’

‘Bloom,’ Nancy O’Rourke said, frowning. ‘That blackguard. He shattered a chandelier in Bella’s house next door.’

Delaney said, ‘Bloom didn’t smash Bella’s crystal. It was that idiot Dedalus, Simon’s lad. Bloom offered to pay for the damage.’

‘All I know of Bloom I got from Bella,’ Nancy said. ‘Sly, Bella thought him, and mean. Said he’d pay for the broken chandelier but never a penny has she seen. She’ll not get a farthing out of the beggar now, him being in prison and all. Is the wine to your liking, Inspector?’

‘It is,’ Kinsella said tactfully.

‘Only the best for my gentlemen,’ said Nancy.

‘Bloom wasn’t one of your gentlemen?’

‘Certainly not. Old miser.’

‘Unlike Mr Boylan.’

‘Oh, yes, my ladies do like
him
.’

‘All the ladies like Blazes,’ Delaney put in. ‘It’s rumoured he has the biggest appendage in Dublin. Would that be true, Nancy?’

‘How would I be knowing a thing like that?’ the woman said without the flicker of a smile. ‘The girls like him ’cause he slips them a few pennies extra behind my back. Anyhow, what do you want with Blazes, Inspector? I thought you were after Bloom?’

‘Boylan was putting it to Bloom’s wife behind Bloom’s back.’

‘That Tweedy bitch. I don’t know what he ever saw in her,’ Nancy O’Rourke said. ‘The baby, was it his?’

‘I doubt if the woman herself knew who the father was.’

‘Blazes put two of Bella’s girls up the spout. He admitted to nothing, of course,’ Nancy said, ‘but he paid for one to lose it.’

‘I thought Mrs Cohen took care of that sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing?’ said Nancy guardedly.

‘Terminations.’

Beneath the powder her cheeks reddened as if the word offended her. ‘That’s women’s business.’

‘But Boylan made it his business, didn’t he?’

‘I do not discuss my gentleman’s affairs.’

‘Bloom’s not one of your gentlemen.’

‘That’s a fact,’ said Nancy. ‘Bloom wanted to rent a room for an hour or two. One of my rooms, I ask you. Does he think I run a boarding house here? He wanted a room to be with his fancy woman, I expect.’

‘Did you see Bloom with a woman.’

‘I did not.’

‘I want you to think carefully before you answer,’ Kinsella said. ‘Bloom and Boylan had a barney just outside your door. When did it take place?’

‘Last Wednesday.’

‘At what hour?’

‘What, do you think I was standing in the street?’

‘What time, Nancy?’

‘About half past eleven, I think.’

‘Not midnight?’

‘No, earlier.’

‘How drunk was Boylan?’

‘He was half seas when he turned up here. I had a full house and he was angry at that. He had one drink then I asked him to leave. He went quiet enough. I saw him out myself. Bloom was waiting in the street.’

‘Bloom wasn’t with Boylan in the house then?’ said Kinsella.

‘I told you, Bloom isn’t one o’ my gentlemen,’ Nancy O’Rourke said. ‘He dropped in on Bella now and then but after she kicked him out I don’t know where he went for his fun.’

‘Did you see either Boylan or Bloom again that night?’

Nancy shook her head. ‘Never saw either of them since.’

‘Why did Bloom want a room in the Monto when Dublin’s filled with hotels and boarding houses?’ said Delaney. ‘If Bloom had a woman on the side then this is the last place he’d want to bring her. And what was Bloom doing in the Monto apart from the obvious. Will you fetch Boylan to the witness stand?’

‘That’s not for me to decide.’ Kinsella finished his wine, handed the glass to Mrs O’Rourke and, to the woman’s relief, got to his feet.

‘Oh, are you leaving us?’ she said, rising too.

‘I won’t outstay my welcome,’ Kinsella said, ‘particularly as Alderman Keogh will be anxious to get home to his wife.’

She looked up at him, winsome again, and smiled.

‘Ah, you’re a sharp tack, Inspector, so you are now.’

‘That I am,’ Jim Kinsella agreed. ‘That I am,’ and, with a nod to Delaney, allowed the skinny little whore-mistress to show him out.

If it hadn’t been for the gout he’d have caught her by the hair but the table was between them and the best he could do, summons in one hand and stick in the other, was bring the stick down on the table and send the dishes flying. Her mother let out a scream. Her mother knew what was behind the summons.