Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (19 page)

‘You didn’t buy them in any pub, did you?’ Miss Dunne said.

Temper rising, he said, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Fearing for her job, she backed down. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just not myself these days, Mr Boylan.’

‘None of us are, none of us are,’ said Blazes. He held up the letter. ‘To read or not to read, Miss Dunne?’

‘I think … no, it’s not for me that sort of thing.’

‘Too hot for you, is it?’ said Blazes, anger giving way to complacency. ‘Right-o, right-o. Type up the Battley letter and then you can go home.’

She held her ground for a few seconds longer. He could read nothing into her expression through the convex lenses that made her brown eyes seem so large and trusting. He felt foolish for even considering that she might be Bloom’s mysterious lover. Surely not even Bloom would be desperate enough as to take up with a woman like Maureen Dunne.

‘Will that be all, Mr Boylan?’

‘Yes,’ said Blazes. ‘That will be all for now.’

She placed the gin bottle on the desk, the tumbler too, switched on the electrical lamp and with one last glance at the letters waddled off back to her Underwood.

SIXTEEN

S
arah Tolland could not understand why her intended found her father so intimidating. He was and always had been sweet natured, considerate to clerks and servants and patient to a fault with her mother who, Sarah had to admit, could be a little capricious now and then. He doted on her, his daughter, sole product of his loins, and had made it abundantly clear that any man who sought her hand would have to match her in wit and intelligence but if he fulfilled those criteria he would be treated as a surrogate son and drafted into the firm to give it a much-needed boost.

Roper, at eighty, was well past his prime and he, Alfred Fitzgerald Tolland, while not exactly decrepit, was knocking on somewhat. In a city that housed more lawyers than rats in its sewers, competition for legal business was fierce and stamina and zeal were required to keep the fees rolling in, points made plain – in the nicest possible way, of course – to young Mr Sullivan as soon as Sarah decided that he was the man for her.

The desk in Poppy Tolland’s chambers was larger than a papal sarcophagus, a great slab of dark mahogany polished to reflect light from the box window or, at this hour of an evening, the glow from the lovely old oil lamp that Mr Tolland still retained, though the building had recently been wired for electricity.

A lesser man might have used the desk as a prop to power, but that wasn’t Poppy Tolland’s style. He was, in size and shape, no Great Dane, no wolfhound or husky but more like a little fox terrier trained not to hop about and snap, a comparison that went by the board, however, when he donned his robes and squared up to opposing counsel.

The oil lamp cast reflections not only upon the desk but also on the glass-fronted bookcases that lined the walls, cases filled with calf-bound volumes in which were recorded every jot and tittle of the statutes of English law and the decisions rendered there under. The lamp’s glow also shone in Poppy Tolland’s pince-nez
,
an affectation intended to make him appear more affable, which, at least in Neville Sullivan’s view, it singularly failed to do.

‘Toast,’ said Poppy Tolland, after listening to Neville’s account of events in the coroner’s court. ‘You realise you have him on toast.’

‘I didn’t, um, no, I hadn’t quite realised that,’ Neville confessed. ‘I take it you mean Bloom?’

‘Heavens, no. Slater.’

When conducting interviews in his office it was Mr Tolland’s habit to hunch behind his desk and show the client or, in this case his protégé, just the glint of his eye-glasses and a crown of gingery hair. He spoke from behind his hand and you rarely saw his lips move, a habit that made his pronouncements, however prosaic, seem profound.

‘The coroner,’ said Mr Tolland, ‘done wrong.’

‘Beg pardon?’ said Neville.

‘Not to put it too finely, Roland buggered up.’

‘Oh?’ said Neville. ‘Really? I mean,
really
?’

It was possible that Poppy Tolland allowed himself a dimple of self-satisfaction at this point but if he did it was hidden by his hand. He said, ‘Do you suppose I’d send you into battle armed with nothing but a slingshot and a pebble? Bloom should not be in prison. Indeed, he shouldn’t have been charged in the first place. Any magistrate other than Paddy Mullen would have dismissed the case instanter. Now, can you tell me why?’

‘Lack of evidence,’ Neville suggested.

‘Forget evidence. Apply your knowledge of the law at its most fundamental level.’

‘The arrest?’

‘Precisely. Go on.’

‘The police from C Division turned up without a medical examiner,’ Neville said, ‘and the detective from G Division, Kinsella, arrived before the coroner. Some time before the coroner according to the logs. Slater took it upon himself to issue an arrest warrant, which he’s qualified to do, of course, but by that time Bloom had been in police custody for the best part of an hour.’

‘Doing what, do you suppose? Playing whist?’

‘Being questioned before he’d been charged,’ said Neville.

‘Or, I suspect, without being cautioned.’

‘How can I extract that admission from the policemen, let alone Slater, when I’m not permitted to cross-examine?’

‘It’s simple, Neville. Feed your questions through the coroner on behalf of the jury. Didn’t you pull that one today?’

‘I did,’ said Neville, surprised. ‘Yes, come to think of it, I did.’

Poppy Tolland’s head rose and his smile became visible. ‘There you are. Irregularities in the manner of arrest. Questioning before charge and without caution. No medical examiner brought to the scene. Paddy Mullen must have been in a state of torpor not to dismiss or, so a little bird told me, furious at Bloom for doing in a well-built soprano.’

‘I shouldn’t have agreed to an adjournment, should I?’

‘No, you made the right decision, Neville,’ said Poppy Tolland. ‘Kinsella’s no fool. He knows you’ve high cards in your hand and can play them at any time. He wants our client off stage for a reason and I’m curious as to what that reason may be. Has Bloom requested parole to attend his wife’s funeral?’

‘Oddly, no.’

‘Does he know he’s entitled to apply?’

‘I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t,’ Neville said. ‘I’ve come around to thinking that Mr Bloom is at least one step ahead of us.’

‘Has he raised the matter of our fee?’

‘I told him what you told me, that there’s no fee for our services in the coroner’s court.’

‘Did he seem relieved?’

‘He didn’t seem bothered one way or the other.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

‘Sells advertising for the
Journal
,’ Neville answered. ‘Rather hand to mouth if you ask me.’

‘Yet Mr Bloom appears to have no concerns about money. What, Neville, might that suggest to you?’

‘Either a nest egg or a windfall.’

‘And what might the nature of that windfall be?’

Neville stroked his flowing locks for several seconds to encourage inspiration and then, sitting upright, said, ‘Life insurance. A policy on his wife’s death. Good God!’

‘Upon which,’ said Mr Tolland, ‘he can make no claim until he walks out of court free and clear of all collusion in her death.’

‘If he does stand to profit from her death,’ Neville said, ‘it’s small wonder he won’t plead to manslaughter. Is there anything we can or should do to clarify this situation?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Poppy Tolland. ‘Find the bloody policy and find it bloody quick.’

Conveniently situated for trams, omnibuses and Abbey Street’s commercial offices, the Sunnyhill Hotel had become an affordable refuge for professional women of a certain age. It currently housed a nest of self-supporting typists who, best efforts notwithstanding, had so far failed to find a man willing to take them on.

None of the ‘girls’ who gathered in the parlour while waiting for supper to be served would ever see twenty-five again. Spinsters to a man, they weren’t committed to the single life on principle but, like Boylan’s Miss Dunne, had slipped gradually into what might best be described as an illogical state of ever-hopeful resignation.

Maureen Dunne and her friend, Anne-Marie Blaney, who worked in the head office of the Hibernian Bank, had adjacent rooms on the Sunnyhill’s second floor. They each had a room with a window that looked out on the drying green, each an identical bed, dressing table, wash-stand and chamber pot, for Mr Flaherty, proprietor of the hotel, had purchased the furnishings in a job lot from the now-defunct Harp of Erin Club in Kildare Street.

It was left to the ladies to decorate the rooms according to taste and wherewithal, to add the feminine touches that softened the general institutional frowziness and made the shabby old place seem like home. Miss Dunne, for instance, had adorned her bedroom with a cheery floral print bedspread from Clery’s basement sale and a baize-covered draught screen that Mr Boylan had found for her to which she’d attached postcards from far-flung places that she knew she would only ever visit in her dreams.

Miss Blaney, a year or two older than her friend, had settled for Moroccan-stripe curtains and, in lieu of postcards, had strewn the narrow mantelshelf and every spare inch of her dressing table with gewgaws presented to her, usually on parting, by a covey of discerning gentlemen who having sampled the starter had, as it were, no wish to order the entrée.

It was not that Miss Blaney was ugly or had allowed her figure to run to seed or even that she lacked an aptitude for the easy congress that gentlemen found appealing in a companion. Anne-Marie’s flaw, if such it was, was eagerness, a passionate eagerness that some men found alarming and others positively terrifying. Whatever you desired, Miss Blaney hinted, she was willing to provide, asking nothing in return save a wedding ring and a lifelong commitment to pander to her every whim, an offer that even the sappy lads who drifted in from the country did not consider a bargain, no matter how you sliced the pie.

The burnt-toast smell of the gas fire was comforting, the bedroom warm. A gas mantel in a scrolled glass globe suffused a cosy glow and threw upon the wall the bulky shadow of the typewriter that for the best part of seven months had been Anne-Marie’s lifeline to Henry Flower. She’d purchased the machine at auction and had lugged it back to the Sunnyhill by cab for the blessed thing was bigger than the Blarney Stone and weighed a ton but, for half a year, had seemed like the best investment she’d ever made and worth its weight in gold.

Planted on a stout knee-high table the machine took up a great deal of space. The only way Anne-Marie could operate its keys was to kneel before it and, in that prayerful position, woo her hesitant correspondent, Henry Flower, with ever more racy promises. In letter after letter she had exposed her longings without inhibition or fear that Henry would think ill of her or, when they finally came face to face, that he would necessarily hold her to the more
outré
aspects of their paper relationship.

After half a dozen letters had been exchanged, c/o the Post Office in Westland Row, Anne-Marie had come to regard ‘Henry’ as more of a father confessor for sins not yet committed than a potential husband. In any case, he’d made it plain from the first that he was married – no deception there – and that what he wanted from ‘his Martha’ were all the things his staid and ailing wife would not countenance, which admission, naturally, set Anne-Marie’s mind racing and fired her imagination.

She had first encountered Mr Flower via an advertisement in the
Irish Times
in which he’d called for a smart young lady typist to aid him in his literary work. She, though she knew it not, had been but one of forty-four women to respond – three from the Sunnyhill alone – and had been flattered, nay, ecstatic, when Mr Flower had personally answered her pseudonymous application. Literary work had gone by the board, never mentioned, and Mr Flower had soon become her guardian angel and bashful lover and, when the mood was upon her, shivering in her shift, a swarthy, unscrupulous brigand who would stop at nothing to have his wicked way.

Secure behind her
nom-de-plume
, Martha Clifford, she’d sent him pressed flowers, then motto cards with hearts stencilled on the back and at length, at his request, a small lock of hair snipped, she broadly hinted, not from her head but from elsewhere on her person. The hair, it seemed, had done the trick though whether, by then, she really wanted the trick done was another matter altogether.
‘Meet me
,’ he’d written,
‘at the north corner of Merrion Square at half past twelve o’clock on Wednesday. If this time is not suitable to you, my darling, tell me one that is, and where
.’

Running then like mad along Nassau Street past the College Park and the Gallery in her half hour dinner break, jumping up to see if he – who? – was there and finding no one, no man loitering expectantly. Throughout the afternoon, pecking at her typewriter in the bank managers’ office, she’d blamed herself for arriving five minutes after the half hour, and that night in the Sunnyhill she’d knelt on the rug and rattled off page after page of apology begging Henry’s forgiveness for her tardiness.

Seven long days she’d waited for a reply. Convinced that Henry had gone forever and she would never hear from him again she’d taken her friend, Maureen Dunne, into her confidence, seeking not so much reassurance as sympathy.

And then:
‘Do not berate yourself, my sweet girl. It was my fault or should I say the fault of my employer who sent me out of town on an errand at the last minute. I am sure you will understand. I could think of no means of letting you know. How hurtful it must have been for you to find me wanting in my promise. It is I who must beg your forgiveness. Shall we say Sunday at one o’clock at the Poolbeg Street entrance to the Theatre Royal, off Hawkins Street? I will be wearing a grey suit and will carry a flower to show you who I am
.’

‘Don’t go,’ Maureen Dunne had advised.

‘Oh, but I must. I must.’