Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (31 page)

‘Mother o’ God,’ said Gandy. ‘Look what you’ve done to yourself now, Mr Boylan,’ and swiftly downing the rest of the stout and all of the gin, dragged the dandy outside to swab him down before court time.

‘I don’t know who’s going to pay for all this,’ Milly said. ‘I can’t possibly repay you for all you’ve done for me.’

‘I’ll take it out of your salary if it’ll make you feel better,’ Harry Coghlan said cheerfully. ‘Penny a week for twenty years.’

Michael Paterson had steered her safely through the crowd of reporters and spectators who had gathered outside the courthouse to catch a glimpse of the villain’s daughter. Michael had sent Harry Coghlan out to find a cab and bring it to the steps of the courthouse for the express purpose of whisking Milly away from the vicinity of Store Street. He said, ‘In the light of what you heard this morning, Milly, may I assume you no longer wish to lodge with the Boylans?’

‘No, I do not. I can’t bear to look at the man.’

‘Then the quicker we get you out of there the better,’ Michael said and instructed the cabby to drive to the Rechabites’ Hall.

In spite of her shock at the latest revelations, Milly remained convinced of her father’s innocence. What riled her wasn’t that her father had found himself a sweetheart or that her mother had given herself to Blazes Boylan but that she, Milly, had been stupid enough to fall for Hugh Boylan’s wiles. Her anger did not lessen during the short journey across the Liffey and, if it hadn’t been for Michael Paterson’s restraining hand, she would have thrown herself on Daphne Boylan as soon as Blazes’s sister opened the door.

‘Milly? What? Is it over?’ Daphne said.

‘No, it isn’t over. I’ve come for my clothes,’ Milly snapped. ‘Out of my way you … you cow.’

Daphne wore a canvas apron over a black day dress and had swept her hair up in a bun and pinned it with a comb. She made no move to close the door but allowed Milly to stalk past her and flounce down the hall while Dr Paterson, politely removing his hat, introduced himself.

‘What is it?’ said Daphne. ‘What’s wrong with the child?’

Somewhere in the depths of the building Milly tossed furniture about. Harry remained with the cab.

‘Milly just found out about your brother, Miss Boylan,’ Michael Paterson said, ‘and what he did to her mother.’

‘Oh, God in heaven! Maude should never have lied.’ Cocking her head like an inquisitive parrot, Daphne said, ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To arrest me?’

‘I’m a doctor, not a policeman,’ Michael said. ‘However, Miss Boylan, in the light of what you’ve just told me it might be no bad idea to put on your coat and hat and accompany us to the courthouse.’

‘Maude told me to do it,’ said Daphne plaintively. ‘Maude told me to say Hughie was here that night.’

‘And he wasn’t,’ Michael said, ‘here that night?’

‘He didn’t come in until nearly six.’

‘Do you believe in God, Miss Boylan?’ Michael said.

‘What? Yes, of course I do.’

‘And anything you say under oath would be sacred?’

‘I can’t let Hughie down,’ Daphne said. ‘No matter what he’s done, he’s still my brother. Please, don’t force me to lie for him.’

Milly marched up from the depths of the building, lugging her suitcase. Her hat was askew, her mourning dress dishevelled, her temper undiminished. She swung the case and thumped Daphne Boylan’s shins. ‘Out of my way, you … you deceiver.’

Milly swung the case again but Michael deflected it.

‘Go to the cab and wait there, Milly,’ he said. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

He watched Milly stalk down the steps to the pavement, the suitcase bouncing behind her, saw Harry open the cab door, put the case inside and help Milly up into the cab. He felt sorry for Daphne Boylan. He couldn’t force her to accompany him to court, let alone betray her brother, but he couldn’t ignore the probability that her sister intended to perjure herself.

He said, ‘Is that a comb in your hair, Miss Boylan?’

Her hand shot to the bun. ‘What … what does …?’

‘Give it to me.’

‘I’ll do nothing of the kind.’

‘Give me your comb and you may stay here,’ Michael Paterson said. ‘Otherwise, I’ll leave my friend to look out for you while I fetch a policeman. It’s your choice, Miss Boylan: the comb or the courthouse.’

She might be weak but she wasn’t stupid. She reached up and separated the comb from the bun, fastidiously picked a few fine grey hairs from the teeth and held it out to him. ‘What will happen to Hughie if Maude turns against him?’

‘I really have no idea.’ Michael Paterson slipped the comb into his overcoat pocket. ‘Whatever it is, I’m sure he’ll get his just desserts.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Daphne Boylan said.

TWENTY SEVEN

‘O
f course,’ Leopold Bloom said, ‘I might tell you that Molly asked me to kill her and, being used to pleasing her, I caved in.’

‘Surely you don’t expect us to believe that she asked
you to beat her to death with a teapot?’ Poppy Tolland said.

‘What do you know of it?’ Bloom said. ‘You turn up out of the blue, sit there like a great panjandrum and expect me to confess. Are you here to prepare for a trial at the Assizes, is that it?’

‘No, Mr Bloom,’ Poppy Tolland said. ‘I’m here to see to it, if I can, that judgement is not – repeat not – carried forward to a higher court. By the by, I may not have put in an appearance before now but rest assured I’ve read every word of the transcript with’ – a little bow towards his future son-in-law – ‘a degree of perspicacity that’s not yet given to my partner, due, I might add, not to his lack of application but simply his lack of experience.’

Bloom cocked an eyebrow. ‘Would you care for a sandwich?’

‘What’s the filling?’

‘Chopped egg and onion.’

‘No,’ Poppy Tolland said, ‘thank you all the same. I’d be obliged if you’d answer my question, Mr Bloom. In somewhat less than an hour Slater will begin questioning witnesses. We have a valid line of defence based on wrongful arrest or, rather, failure to proceed with sufficient caution to afford you the protection of the law. Slater is aware of this and will do his level best to obscure procedural bungles in his summing up. However …’

‘Yes,’ Bloom said, ‘I thought there’d be a “however”.’

‘However,’ Tolland continued, ‘to secure our defence we must have the truth. Now, once again, why did you kill your wife?’

‘Molly begged me to put her out of her misery.’

‘Assisted suicide?’ said Neville. ‘Utter balderdash!’

‘You didn’t strike her, did you, Mr Bloom? You didn’t smash her mouth and gouge out her eye with a teapot,’ Poppy Tolland said. ‘Some other person attacked her and left her to die and you seized the opportunity to finish the job.’

‘That’s not how it was at all,’ Bloom said.

‘Tell me, Mr Bloom, what did Benson Rule miss in his examination?’ said Poppy Tolland. ‘How did you do it?’

‘I smothered her with a bolster.’ Bloom wiped the corner of his eye with his thumb. ‘Given the state she was in, with her face smashed and her looks ruined, it was an act of mercy.’

‘An act of mercy that freed you to run off with another woman,’ Neville said. ‘There isn’t a jury in the land would believe what you’ve just told me. It also begs the question who struck her down in the first place. If I put you into the witness box with that tale, Slater will tear you to shreds.’

‘What I find puzzling,’ Tolland said, ‘is why if she was conscious and able to speak she didn’t tell you who attacked her? Are you protecting someone, Mr Bloom?’

‘Of course I’m not protecting anyone.’

‘Were you even present in Number 7 Eccles Street when your wife was attacked?’ Neville asked.

‘I’ve told you a dozen times, no, I wasn’t.’

‘Oh, I believe you, Mr Bloom,’ Tolland said. ‘But it wasn’t eight o’clock in the morning or anywhere near it. What time was it when you found your injured wife? Three? Half past three? No later than four, I’ll wager, and still dark, which is why no one saw you at that hour, why there are no witnesses.’

‘Half past three would be about the size of it,’ Bloom admitted.

‘Where were you until that hour?’ Neville said. ‘Skulking in Nancy O’Rourke’s?’

‘I went to O’Rourke’s looking for Blazes Boylan, if you must know,’ Bloom said.

‘For what purpose?’ said Tolland.

Bloom hesitated. ‘To tell him I was leaving Dublin.’

‘Are you saying you were running off with MacDowell that very night?’ Tolland asked.

‘That was my intention,’ Bloom answered. ‘Gerty – Miss MacDowell – was waiting for me in Sandymount. I’d booked passage on the boat to Liverpool. I planned to wait in the coffee shop on the North Quay until boarding. I didn’t want to risk going to a hotel.’

‘But instead you went back to Eccles Street,’ Tolland said. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

‘To warn Molly. Blazes wanted Molly to get rid of the baby,’ Bloom said. ‘He’d gone as far as asking Nancy O’Rourke to put him in touch with one of the women who deals with such mishaps.’

‘An abortionist?’ Neville said.

‘Yes.’

‘Surely your wife would never agree to that,’ said Tolland.

‘I think Molly thought she might still keep Boylan and the baby,’ Bloom said. ‘And if Boylan threw her over she was counting on me to stand by her.’

‘Only by then it was too late,’ Tolland put in. ‘By then you had another woman waiting on the quayside. However, you didn’t leave Miss MacDowell on the quayside, did you, Mr Bloom? That’s not the kind of fellow you are. You took her with you to Eccles Street. What did you do with MacDowell while you were smothering Mrs Bloom? Did you hide her downstairs?’

‘Upstairs in one of the empty rooms.’

‘Was Boylan still in the house?’ said Neville.

‘If he was, I didn’t see him.’

‘But MacDowell did,’ Poppy Tolland said. ‘That’s why you waited so long to report the crime, to give MacDowell a chance to flee the scene in the hope that you might keep her identity secret. I can readily understand why you would do that but what I can’t understand is why you didn’t tell the police about Boylan. It must have been obvious that Boylan had done the deed.’

‘It never occurred to me that the police would arrest me,’ Bloom said, ‘and when Mullen refused to dismiss the charge it was too late to change my story.’

‘Did you think Boylan would harm MacDowell if he knew she’d been with you in Eccles Street that night?’ Tolland asked.

‘I did and I still do,’ Bloom answered. ‘Now do you see why I don’t want you to put her in the witness box?’

‘It’s out of our hands,’ Neville said. ‘Thanks to Kinsella, all the evidence is neatly laid out. Your sweetheart no longer has anything to fear from Boylan.’

‘If I plead to manslaughter, you mean,’ Bloom said.

‘In which case your daughter will lose her inheritance,’ Poppy Tolland reminded him. ‘You took out a special policy to provide for your daughter because you thought something might happen to you and you didn’t want your wife getting her hands on the money or, rather, Boylan getting
his
hands on your money. It’s quite ironic that your wife died before you did. This I will say for you, Bloom, by your own lights you behaved quite honourably.’

‘Honourably?’ Neville said. ‘Dear God, Alfred, he killed his wife. There’s nothing honourable in that.’

‘Did he kill his wife?’ said Poppy Tolland. ‘We
don’t know that. According to Rule’s expert testimony Mrs Bloom died as a result of injuries received after an assault with a teapot. For all we know – and for all Bloom knows – his wife was dead when he found her and what he heard was not speech but the last gasp of breath escaping from her lungs.’

‘He confessed, Poppy. He confessed.’

‘Poppy?’ said Alfred Tolland.

‘I’m sorry. I mean …’

‘You spoke in the heat of the moment, Neville, which is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. May not we assume that Mr Bloom also spoke in the heat of the moment? I, for one, have heard nothing approaching a confession, merely the ramblings of a man who’s been treated shabbily by the law. May I remind you, Neville, that we deal only in facts,’ Poppy Tolland said. ‘The fact is that Mrs Bloom was attacked by an unknown assailant and died of her wounds; a fact endorsed by medical evidence already sealed by the coroner. If the unknown assailant turns out to be Hugh Boylan, as is very likely the case, then bear in mind that Boylan doesn’t know what happened after he left Eccles Street. He doesn’t know what went on in the bedroom. In other words …’

‘Boylan thinks he killed her,’ Neville said.

‘Exactly. He is, in his own eyes, guilty. Our task now is to help the coroner prove it,’ Poppy Tolland said.

‘How will you do that?’ Bloom asked.

‘By silence and cunning,’ Tolland answered. ‘Your silence, Mr Bloom, and our cunning. Do you understand?’

‘I do,’ Bloom said. ‘Indeed, I do.’

‘Come then,’ said Poppy Tolland, pushing back his chair, ‘let’s off to the courtroom, Neville, to lay out our papers and see what Mr Blazes Boylan has to say for himself, bearing in mind that the gentleman in question is the guilty party and our client, Mr Bloom, nothing more than a victim of circumstance.’

‘Even if he’s not?’ said Neville.

‘Even if he’s not,’ said Tolland.

Local reporters could hardly be blamed for failing to recognise Blazes Boylan’s sister, the hermit of Rechabites’ Hall. If Mr Cunningham had been in court he would have identified Maude at once for he knew everyone across the length and breadth of Dublin. Mr Cunningham had decided he’d had enough of Bloom, however, and had elected not to request another day off work to watch the tragedy of love, lust and betrayal reach its sordid conclusion.

Having sent Milly off with Harry Coghlan to find a cupboard in which to store her suitcase, Michael Paterson stationed himself below the staircase that led to the public gallery to wait for Maude Boylan to emerge from the ladies’ lavatory.

Ignoring the pleas of the females queuing outside the cubicle, Maude squatted on the pedestal, smoked a small cigar she’d filched from Hughie’s case that morning and wrestled with what remained of her conscience. Hughie had warned her that if he was summoned to the witness box then she would surely be called from the public gallery to support his claim that he was flat out drunk in bed at home in the wee small hours of March 9th and in no fit state to say boo to a goose let alone murder a big, strapping woman like Molly Bloom. But Hughie hadn’t returned home that night. Daphne and she had sat up until well after midnight and his bed had still been empty when she’d looked in on him at half past four o’clock.