The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  ‘Thank you for your company,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You know, if you’re interested in seascapes you should come into the shop sometime. There’s an original by Van de Velde, and quite a few English and French works too.’

  For a moment she frowned slightly.

  ‘My father would always be glad to see you. In fact, at this time there is a matter that I think he would be happy to speak with a policeman about … a policeman he trusted.’

  Then she brightened again.

  ‘I would be glad to see you too. And since you’re not being fed by your landlady any more, I could make you a very good kosher dinner, you know.’

  FIVE

  Exchange Court was at action stations when Swallow walked in off Dame Street. A grim-faced Detective Pat Mossop came bustling out the main door, followed by two constables. Three police side-cars jostled for space in the narrow confines of the Court.

  Swallow winced to see the pencil-thin Mossop moving at speed. He was still under medical care, recovering from the gunshot wound he had sustained during the arrest of the presumed double-murderer, Simon Sweeney, just a few months previously.

  ‘You’re going like there’s a fire lit under your breeches, Pat,’ he called.

  Mossop turned, but hardly slowed his stride.

  ‘You’d better come with us. They’ve spotted Phoebe Pollock at the Northern Hotel. She must be making for the Liverpool packet.’

  Swallow laughed, uncomprehending. He knew Phoebe Pollock. Crime investigations had brought him many times into the pawn shop on Lamb Alley.

  ‘Why in God’s name are you chasing Phoebe Pollock?’

  ‘Come on,’ Mossop took him by the arm. ‘You mustn’t have heard. Ambrose Pollock was found murdered this morning above at Lamb Alley.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. What happened?’

  Mossop climbed aboard the first of the police cars and beckoned Swallow to the seat beside him. He snapped at the driver.

  ‘Northern Hotel, North Wall Quay. As fast as you can.’

  He leaned across the car as the driver flicked the reins over his horse.

  ‘It looks as if she’s robbed the place.’ He wheezed, drawing breath. ‘And she’s done for Ambrose. Stephen Doolan and a couple of bobbies from Kevin Street had to break in this morning. He’s been dead a week or more. Phoebe’s gone, and so is all the cash from the shop.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Swallow said again. ‘Who’s on the scene? Did they get Harry Lafeyre up there?’

  ‘Boyle’s in charge. Dr Lafeyre says the skull was crushed with an iron weight. They sent out an urgent ABC. A beat man down by the North Wall says he saw Phoebe going into the hotel there a couple of hours ago.’

  The police driver was skilful. The horse’s hooves sparked off the tram tracks as he weaved through Dame Street’s traffic. They flanked the Bank of Ireland on College Green, turning into Westmoreland Street and clattered over Carlisle Bridge to swing eastward along Eden Quay.

  Swallow gripped the handrail. His sense of excitement stirred as they picked up speed along the quay, the wind from the river whipping their faces. He liked this part of the job, the urgent challenge of the unknown, the almost childish delight at the prospect of adventure, danger perhaps. It compensated for the long days and nights of tedium and routine. Who could tell what might lie at the end of a dash like this?

  They passed past Butt Bridge and Gandon’s Custom House, the driver negotiating his way past the drays and delivery wagons that crowded the busy quayside. Swallow noticed that the first of the autumn leaves were dropping from the plane trees in the Custom House garden.

  They slewed to a halt on the cobbled quayside. The Northern Hotel was a drab, functional building, put up in dark red brick between the Dublin Port and Docks Board’s granite depot and the water’s edge.

  Its business was almost wholly based on feeding, watering and accommodating the passengers who travelled between Dublin and Liverpool. The cross-channel packet, Maid of Cumberland, was berthed at the quay directly across from the hotel, a wisp of grey steam hissing from the funnel.

  The waiting constable who had spotted Phoebe Pollock stepped forward to meet them. Swallow knew him by sight. A senior man. Reliable.

  ‘You’re sure it’s her?’

  ‘Ah sure, I know her well from me days in th’ A-Division. I checked that shop more times than I care to remember.’

  ‘How long since she went in?’

  ‘Comin’ up on two hours.’

  ‘On her own?’

  ‘Yes. Carryin’ two small cases.’

  ‘You didn’t think to arrest her?’

  ‘No grounds,’ he said sharply. ‘And how was I to know at that stage that you fellas wanted to see her?’

  ‘True enough,’ Swallow conceded. ‘Come on so.’

  They took the front steps together while Mossop went to the back of the hotel.

  A porter in a greatcoat that had seen better days hauled the front door open, bidding them good afternoon.

  The lobby smelled of old cooking. Swallow’s nose told him there was fish and vegetables and bacon fat in it. Two or three men sat reading newspapers or working on account books. An elderly couple were drinking tea at an alcove table.

  A middle-aged man in morning dress behind the reception desk came to alert as they strode across the lobby. A small brass plaque on the desk said: ‘JOHN L. BARRY, GENERAL MANAGER.’

  ‘Police,’ Swallow told him unnecessarily. ‘We’re looking for a lady on her own, seen coming in here maybe two hours ago. She was carrying two cases. Perhaps forty years of age. Respectable, but maybe a bit under the weather.’

  The man gave a little snort. ‘Lots of ladies come and go. It’s a hotel. I imagine you can see that.’

  ‘Less lip and more co-operation might be better if you want to keep your licence,’ Swallow snapped. He turned to a grey-haired clerk seated behind the general manager.

  ‘You there, you must have seen her,’ he gestured across the lobby. ‘Where did she go?’

  The clerk jumped. ‘She asked for a room. Said she was tired. So I told her she could sign the register later. She went upstairs. I gave her number nineteen.’

  Swallow glared at Barry. The general manager raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘I can’t see everything.’

  ‘Go and get a female member of your staff. We need her to go up there with us,’ Swallow told the clerk.

  The man scurried out through a door behind the desk. He reappeared after a few moments accompanied by a stout, unsmiling woman with black hair in a greasy bun. She scrutinised Swallow.

  ‘Youse want me to fetch down a guest?’

  Swallow nodded. ‘I’d be thankful. We need to speak to her on police business.’

  ‘I’m the housekeeper, not a bailiff.’

  ‘Jesus, we seem to be dealing with a full cast of smart arses here.’

  He affected an exaggerated politeness.

  ‘Your assistance would be greatly appreciated, Madam, if you can spare us a few moments.’

  ‘Am I riskin’ me life in goin’ up there? Is this individual violent?’

  It was not an unreasonable question in the circumstances.

  ‘Oh, not in the slightest,’ he lied. ‘And we’ll be right behind you. We just need a female for the sake of decency.’

  She led them along the first floor corridor and knocked at room nineteen.

  ‘Housekeeper … this is the housekeeper.’

  There was no response. She called twice more.

  She put a key in the door, turned the handle and stepped inside.

  ‘Youse must be practical jokers,’ she called. ‘There’s no wan here.’

  Swallow and the constable were through the door in an instant. The room was empty. Swallow got the smell of bitter almonds.

  ‘Prussic acid,’ he told the constable. ‘A tincture of that and nobody lasts more than a minute or two.’

  He scanned the room.

  A pool of water had for
med on the floor beside the bed with a shattered earthen pitcher and a wash bowl in the middle. Swallow surmised that they had probably been swept off the small dressing-table beside the window. The bed itself was at an angle to the wall, as if it had been pulled away. The coverlet was drawn half way up, creased and rumpled.

  ‘Somebody musta tossed the place. Or there was a struggle,’ the constable muttered.

  ‘That’s her bag anyway.’ He pointed to a small travelling case on the floor at the end of the bed.

  ‘She had it when I spotted her outside. But she had another one as well.’

  Swallow saw a small brown bottle on the mantle shelf over the fireplace.

  ‘Don’t go near that. It’s very likely the prussic acid.’

  The desk clerk and the housekeeper hovered at the door.

  ‘I’m closing off this room,’ Swallow called. ‘The medical examiner will be coming. Nothing’s to be touched.’

  By now, Pat Mossop had arrived, accompanied by Barry, the manager.

  ‘Get across to Store Street,’ Swallow told the constable. ‘Message Exchange Court. Tell the duty officer we have a suspicious situation here. We need the medical examiner and the photographic technician.’

  He lifted the small case to the dressing-table. Mossop snapped open the locks. There was a blue dress and a white blouse, a brush and comb set and a pair of shoes. Mossop reached into the case. He made a little whistle. When he withdrew his hand, he was clutching a bundle of money.

  SIX

  Dublin was a city where news usually travelled more quickly than the press could report it.

  By early afternoon, before the evening newspapers were able to publish any details, most of the population knew about the murder of Ambrose Pollock and the disappearance of his sister, Phoebe.

  It passed along the city streets from business house to business house. Passengers relayed it to cab men and tram drivers. It spread into the public houses and shops. It travelled through the courts and alleyways and into the tenement houses of the once-prosperous Georgian streets on both sides of the river. The prostitutes in the brothels around Gloucester Street and Mecklenburgh Street learned about it as they prepared to receive their early clients of the evening.

  Reports of outrages might briefly engage the minds of all classes. But the pawnbrokers, the jewellers, the silver and goldsmiths and the watchmakers across the city were particularly alarmed.

  Violent crime was not a frequent occurrence in Dublin. But if there were murderers and robbers abroad, any business that dealt in precious goods would be vulnerable. Their stock in trade, being portable, valuable and saleable, was highly prized by criminals.

  The business community would draw little comfort from the newspapers’ clichéd accounts of how the police were leaving no stone unturned. They knew the forces of law and order were preoccupied with the activities of extremists like the Fenian Brotherhood and its various splinter groups. Ordinary crime was very much a secondary concern.

  In contrast to the shopkeepers and traders, the murder of a pawnbroker and furniture dealer in a poor part of the city did not impinge greatly on the consciousness of the professional classes. These things happened. And indeed, they probably happened with less frequency in Dublin than in other cities.

  Although the scene of the murder was less than a quarter of a mile away from the offices of the legal firm Keogh, Sheridan and James, the news scarcely registered with the partners, or indeed with the apprentices or the legal clerks. They were absorbed in their own business.

  And business was brisk. The greatest transfer in property ownership since the clearances of the Scottish Highlands was under way across Ireland. Any half competent solicitor willing to do a little work could benefit from it.

  Government money was flowing into the country from Her Majesty’s Treasury to enable the smallholders to buy out their landlords.

  The property owners got their cash, while the farmers got to own the land they had worked for generations. And a whole class of middlemen was set to make their fortunes, drawing off their fees and percentages as the torrent of Treasury money lapped around their doors.

  Most of all, the lawyers did well. And the firm of Keogh, Sheridan and James did better than most.

  Every transfer of property from landlord to tenant involved legal work. Apart from simple conveyance of ownership, there were boundary issues, challenges over rights of way and queries about title. Solicitors’ offices in market towns across the country were crowded each morning with clients and supplicants, anxious to tie down the security of their new holdings.

  Firms like Keogh, Sheridan and James were the ‘town agents’ for the country solicitors. Every transaction, every stamping, every registration executed in the capital carried a fee, usually calculated on a percentage basis of the property value.

  As word of Ambrose Pollock’s murder spread across the city, it was business as usual at Keogh, Sheridan and James. A sordid police case across the river, however unfortunate, would not distract the firm’s partners and employees from their lucrative trade in deeds and affidavits.

  Arthur Clinton was an exception.

  Arthur recognised that he had some blessings. He was the senior clerk to the half dozen solicitors who made up the firm. It had been a long, hard road to get to this point. He had started fifteen years earlier as a junior clerk, working his way upward. But there was a world of difference between even a senior clerk and a qualified solicitor who held the parchment of the Law Society. In Arthur’s view, he worked harder than any of them for a fraction of the reward.

  He firmly believed he would make a suitable solicitor or even a partner, but the call never came. He had raised it with the firm, of course, but the partners were not inclined to the idea. Arthur remained a clerk.

  He was reliable and conscientious. In recent months, he had been assigned to work on the conveyancing of a dozen large estates in areas west of the river Shannon. In all, more than 30,000 acres were to be transferred from the ownership of their landlords to almost 1,000 of their former tenants.

  The discovery of the murder was reported initially in the afternoon editions of the Evening Telegraph.

  Arthur Clinton saw it when the mid-afternoon edition was dropped on the desk in the general office by one of the office boys. He always had a quick look through it. He liked to check the afternoon figures from the Stock Exchange in London, even though he had no investments of his own.

  He was interested in money. In truth, he was more interested in money than in the law, although he recognised that it was a vehicle through which the lucky ones could accumulate some wealth.

  When he went home in the evenings to his house on the North Circular Road near Phibsborough, he did not discuss such matters. He provided as well as he could for his wife Grace and their three young children, he reckoned. But what a man did with the money he made by his own exertions was first and foremost his own business.

  His heart thumped as he absorbed the three-deck headline.

  ‘MURDER AT LAMB ALLEY NEAR CORNMARKET’

  ‘MR POLLOCK’S BODY IS DISCOVERED BY POLICE’

  ‘Investigation started by Inspector Boyle’

  Arthur glanced around him. Nobody in the office seemed to have noticed his reaction. That was good. He folded the newspaper, his stock prices now forgotten, and walked slowly away to the shelter of his small office.

  He reread the report slowly and carefully. There was nothing more than the barest details, probably gleaned by some reporter just minutes before the newspaper went to press. There was not necessarily any reason to be alarmed, he reasoned.

  He went back to his work. When the offices would close later in the evening, he was due to meet a man who had more than a passing interest in the affairs of the late Ambrose Pollock.

  SEVEN

  To Swallow’s surprise, ‘Duck’ Boyle’s investigation into the death of Ambrose Pollock seemed to be running according to the book.

  There was still, though, no trace
of Phoebe Pollock. It was as if she had vanished into thin air. The constable who spotted her on the quayside was unshakeable in his identification, and the clerk in the hotel confirmed that he had allocated the woman a room, although he was hazy in his description of her.

  That there had been some sort of disorder or struggle in the room seemed clear, although nobody had heard anything. One of the two small cases she had with her was gone, but nobody had seen her leave. Logically, she had to be somewhere on the premises.

  First, every room in the hotel had been searched. Then they went through the kitchens and the pantries and the storerooms. They searched the staff quarters and the outhouses. There was no trace of Phoebe Pollock.

  Perhaps she had managed to make her way unnoticed to The Maid of Cumberland, on the quayside. The vessel was searched before it cast off, and all passengers carefully scrutinised. She was not among them.

  Swallow could make no sense of it. Had she been abducted? She would surely have taken both of her cases, with her clothing and the money, if she departed voluntarily. And what was to be made of the bottle of what he guessed would be confirmed by Harry Lafeyre as potassium cyanide – prussic acid?

  He was back with Mossop at Exchange Court as the first Angelus bells started to toll from the city churches. Boyle had organised a conference for 6 o’clock. Perhaps twenty uniformed constables with a scattering of G-men had assembled. Swallow and Mossop were in time to take chairs by the parade room windows. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and sweat after the men’s exertions of the day.

  Boyle had nominated Tony Swann to be his book man. The book man’s role in any investigation was crucial. He entered and recorded every detail reported by the men on the ground. He indexed each item of evidence. He timed and dated every statement.

  Boyle took the rostrum at the end of the parade room.

  ‘The essential facts o’ these tragic evints seem clear enough,’ he intoned.

  ‘The deceased, Ambrose Pollock, was done to death some days ago, mebbe as long as a week. It seems that his sister, Miss Phoebe Pollock, assaulted him with a heavy, blunt instrument and then tried to give th’ appearance that the poor man was alive be tyin’ his remains to a chair.’