The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  There was no better candidate for the job than ‘Duck’ Boyle. He was generally a non-starter in crime investigation. But his garrulous manner, especially when there were a few drinks to be had, could be turned to advantage in a situation like this.

  Boyle was in his office, a murderous look on his face. That was understandable, Swallow reckoned, after being humiliated by Mallon. Swallow raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened in there. It wasn’t of my choosing.’

  Boyle glared at him.

  ‘I’m not lookin’ for sympathy. Just a little respect for me rank.’

  ‘I want a bit of advice,’ Swallow said. ‘I need someone with experience to check on some intelligence we got on Phoebe Pollock.’

  Boyle shifted the papers on his desk in an attempt to look preoccupied.

  ‘I’m loaded with work, Swalla’. What is it you want?’

  Swallow recounted what he had learned from ‘Five Times’ Currivan.

  ‘We need someone to get into the public house, put a few drinks about and see if anyone can identify this fellow. It’ll take an experienced, senior man to do it.’

  Boyle’s eyes narrowed as he saw an opportunity to escape the drudgery of regular duty, perhaps gain some kudos and do some drinking on the G-Division expense sheet.

  He looked meditatively out the window.

  ‘Well, like I said, I’m at the pin o’ me collar here. But I recognise that ye need a reliable man on this. I’ll try to clear things so I could get down there over the night couple o’ nights. Mind you, I’m makin’ no promises as to results.’

  ‘That’d be great,’ Swallow responded. ‘I haven’t a doubt you’ll get them.’

  He walked down the corridor to the public office.

  Johnny Vizzard, just recruited from uniform as a trainee for G-Division, had been rostered as morning duty officer.

  He sat behind the high, wooden desk meticulously countersigning release forms for the members of the Downes gang who had been freed from custody. None of them had anything to do with the Pollock murder. Their alibis were perfect. In fact, two of them had just been released from Mountjoy Prison that morning.

  ‘Can you run a check on a name at the Post Office Savings Bank for me sometime during the day?’ he asked.

  Vizzard was already showing himself as a fast worker.

  ‘Sure, Sergeant. Give us the details.’

  A party of G-men worked each day and night at the General Post Office in Sackville Street. Their principal task was to intercept letters connected with suspected persons. These would be steamed open, and their contents copied or noted.

  But the G-men could also gain access to the records of the Post Office Savings Bank, which now administered well over 200,000 accounts in Ireland alone.

  ‘All I have is a name – Clinton – a Mrs Clinton, I think. She’d be a woman in her thirties maybe. I’m sorry I can’t be any more precise. I’d expect her to have a Dublin address.’

  Vizzard copied the details into his notebook.

  ‘Leave it with me, Sergeant.’ Swallow knew that he was flattered with the assumption that he was being brought in on a murder investigation.

  ‘I’ll have that for you by dinner time.’

  Swallow silently gave thanks for the enthusiasm of youth.

  EIGHTEEN

  The urgent message from Stephen Doolan at Lamb Alley came in the middle of the afternoon. Swallow had succeeded in requisitioning four more constables to assist at the pawn shop.

  The duty officer at Exchange Court climbed the stairs, and handed Swallow the note he had taken from a constable despatched from the search team.

  D/Sergeant Swallow, Exchange Court

  Some unusual items come to light here. Can you attend please as soon as possible?

  Stephen Doolan (Sgt) 22A

  The constable on duty at Pollock’s had been told off to watch for him.

  ‘Sergeant Doolan’s in one of the back rooms downstairs. He said to go on down once you got here.’

  Swallow descended the granite steps to the basement. The air was heavy with oil from the Bull’s-eye lamps. He found Doolan with his constable assistant, seated at a pine table in a brick-walled cellar with a dirt floor.

  Doolan’s beard was streaked with perspiration and dust. Two opened pint bottles of Guinness’s stout stood on the table beside a pile of ledgers and account books. A wooden crate, perhaps three feet square, stood on the floor with a Bull’s-eye flickering beside it.

  ‘That,’ Doolan said, pointing to the crate, ‘does not match anything I can find in the books here.’

  He tapped the uppermost ledger in front of him. ‘And when you see what’s in the bloody box you’ll understand why I thought you’d want to have a look for yourself.’

  He reached across the top of the crate, leaned in and drew out a long silver salver. Swallow estimated it was more than two feet from end to end. The bevelled edging was chased in what looked like oak leaves. The salver glinted like moonlight under the police lamp. In the centre, an engraved coat of arms showed a helmet and a motto.

  ‘Get the heft of that,’

  Doolan offered him the salver. It was heavy. Swallow saw that the handles were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He laid it on the table in front of Doolan.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘The Pollocks were dealing in quality merchandise then, weren’t they?’

  ‘Well, that’s just the point,’ Doolan said. ‘There’s no paperwork here to show where any of this stuff came from. And there’s crates of it.’

  He looked at his notebook. ‘So far we’ve listed 150 platters, plates, tureens, goblets, candlesticks … and we haven’t even started counting the knives and spoons and forks.’

  He tapped the salver on the table. ‘I’m not an expert. But I’ve done my share of duty around the pawn shops, and I know quality silver from dross. This is the best … or damned close it.’

  Swallow made a little whistle.

  ‘There’s nothing in the books to indicate where it came from or how it got here? Are you absolutely sure?’

  ‘We’ve checked every scrap of paper. There’s no invoice, no statement, no record, no pawn tickets – not that you’d be likely to have this sort of thing coming in here for pawn anyway.’

  As if doubting Doolan’s narrative, Swallow reached into the crate himself. His fingers fastened on a three-branch candelabrum wrapped in muslin. The silver shone dully through the translucency of the cloth. Underneath, in the crate, he could see a stack of servers, each individually wrapped.

  ‘There’s four o’ them boxes, Sergeant,’ the constable said helpfully. ‘You can take our word. It’s all the same stuff. We’ve been through every feckin’ dish of it.’

  Doolan slugged his stout.

  ‘Thing is, I wouldn’t believe it’s here all that long. There was a coating of dust on the crates, but you can see there’s hardly any damp. The floors here are saturated from the Liffey. If the boxes were here for more than a few weeks, you’d see the start of rot on the timber.’

  Swallow turned the salver to the oil light to see the crest and motto more clearly.

  ‘It’s a coat of arms. A helmet, an arrow, some kind of a dog and there’s a motto. How’s your Latin, Stephen?’

  ‘Ah Jaysus, Joe. How’s yer own?’

  Swallow chuckled.

  ‘You forget I was going on to be a doctor. I had to know a bit of it. This says, Sub Hoc Signo Morior – ‘I die under this sign.’ At least I think that’s what it means.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ Doolan muttered. ‘All I can tell you is that this stuff didn’t come in through the normal channels anyway. There’s not a sheet of paper here on any of it.’

  Every Dublin policeman knew that pawnbrokers were required by law to register each item received, the name of the depositor and the value accorded. Checking the pawn books was part of every recruit’s formation.

  ‘It’s a damned fine set,’ Swallow
said. ‘I suppose we could make a start in tracing it by trying to identify the coat of arms. If we can establish where it came from, then we might be able to find out how it got here.’

  ‘D’ye think maybe old Pollock was murdered over this?’ Doolan drained the last of his bottle of stout.

  ‘Maybe. But if that’s what happened, the killer or killers left the loot behind.’

  ‘It took us two days with half a dozen men to find it,’ Doolan answered. ‘Most criminals won’t hang around, especially when they’ve got a corpse to account for. Maybe they just couldn’t locate it.’

  Swallow made a simple sketch of the motto and crest in his notebook. He stepped to the door.

  ‘Damned good work, anyway. Will you copy me the full inventory of what’s here as quick as you can? I’ll try to get some sort of a fix on this coat of arms and where it might come from.’

  One of the oil lamps flared. In the brief, brighter light, Swallow could see that Doolan was exhausted.

  ‘Why don’t you pack it in for the day, Stephen?’ he said. ‘Put someone here to mind this stuff. Go home. Get a few hours’ rest.’

  When he got back to the crime sergeants’ office at Exchange Court, the young novice detective Johnny Vizzard stuck his head around the door.

  ‘I went down to the GPO over my meal break,’ he told Swallow. ‘There’s two possible matches on that query.’

  He opened his notebook on the desk.

  ‘We’ve got ten Post Office accounts in the name of Clinton: six men, four women. One of the women seems to be a widow, with a date of birth in 1828. So she’s around sixty. Her account was transferred five years ago from her deceased husband. Another has a date of birth in 1835, making her fifty-two years of age. They’re fairly well outside the range you mentioned.’

  ‘So far, so good,’ Swallow said.

  ‘That leaves us just two possibilities. There’s a Mrs Annie Clinton living out at Howth. Her details show a date of birth in 1860, so she’s twenty-seven. She has just over £80 on deposit. And there’s a Mrs Grace Clinton at an address on North Circular Road, near Phibsboro. Her date of birth is 1859, so she’s twenty-eight. She has £48 and 10 shillings.’

  ‘Can you find out the patterns of business, deposits, withdrawals, balance and so on?’

  Johnny Vizzard smiled with satisfaction.

  ‘I got those, Sir. No withdrawals over two years for the woman in Howth, and a lodgement every three months of between £9 and £10. The sum is converted from US dollars, so it must be coming in from America. The other one has quite a few withdrawals over the past two years, but there’s two deposits of £10, each in the past two weeks.’

  ‘That’s our woman,’ Swallow told him. ‘Mrs Grace Clinton. Now, here’s your chance to do yourself a bit of good for your police career.’

  He told Vizzard what he had learned from Ephram and Katherine Greenberg. The young G-man took swift notes.

  ‘I’ll get out to the house first thing once my tour of duty finishes here this evening. What’s the line of questioning?’

  ‘You can’t let on that you know anything about her Post Office account,’ Swallow reminded him. ‘You’ll have to say that she’s been identified as the seller of these coins and that you need to know where she got them from. If she asks why, just play dumb. You’re not at liberty to say anything more until you report back to your superiors.’

  ‘So what are we dealing with?’ Vizzard asked. ‘Did she steal them? Or is she fencing stolen property? Maybe it’s something bigger,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘How the hell do we know?’ Swallow grumbled. ‘We don’t make assumptions. We ask questions and we get answers. Then we think about the answers we’ve got.’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ Vizzard was instantly downcast. ‘I was wondering if any of this is connected with the murders. It’d be very big stuff for me.’

  Swallow felt a pang of guilt at putting down his enthusiasm.

  ‘Ah, you’re all right. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what this might be connected to. On the face of it, it sounds like stolen property. But it’s not the usual stuff. The coins are rare enough.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Sir.’

  ‘I know you will. That’s the annoying thing about detective work. You never know if there’s a pearl in all the shit until you’ve waded through it. And usually there isn’t.’

  NINETEEN

  Swallow left Exchange Court, and made for the Upper Yard to the office of the Ulster King-at-Arms.

  The Ulster office was the authority on Irish heraldry, issuing coats of arms and banners on royal appointment. Swallow had a passing acquaintance with some of the staff, and he knew the current ‘Ulster,’ Sir John Burke, by sight. With any luck, he might get an early identification for the arms on the silver hoard at Pollocks.

  The Bedford Tower that housed the Ulster office, though, was firmly shut. Swallow’s profanity was loud enough to draw a startled glance from the sentry at the Justice Gate.

  ‘Bloody civil servants, gone on the stroke of 1 o’clock on Saturdays,’ he muttered to himself. He had lost track of time at Lamb Alley.

  He wanted to kick the door. Only the reproachful eye of the sentry dissuaded him. Instead, he strode across to the Lower Yard and John Mallon’s house.

  Mallon was dressed as if to go out, with hat and cane in hand. Swallow caught a glance of Mrs Mallon crossing the half landing on the stairs, hatted and gowned. He surmised that they were bound for a social visit or perhaps to some official function.

  ‘I thought you’d want to be brought up to date on things, Chief.’ Swallow said. ‘Is it a bad time?’

  ‘I can take 10 minutes.’

  Mallon led him into the parlour.

  Swallow summarised. The leads were few and unpromising. The trawl of guests and staff at the Northern Hotel had yielded no result so far that might throw any light on the whereabouts of Phoebe Pollock. There was nothing coming in from the many informants the G-Division operated within the city’s criminal underworld.

  If there was any faint gleam of hope, it might be the possibility that when ‘Duck’ Boyle would have completed his inquiries at Currivan’s of Fishamble Street, they might identify Phoebe’s gentleman friend.

  ‘I can’t say I’m very impressed,’ Mallon said testily. ‘Forty-eight hours on, with the Security Secretary’s office breathing down our necks, we don’t even have even a suspect, unless we include Phoebe Pollock. And we don’t know if she’s alive or dead.’

  Swallow was unwilling to let the reprimand pass.

  ‘There’s no point in laying that on me, Chief. You handed the case to me twenth-four hours after the event. I’m doing my best.’

  Mallon sighed.

  ‘Don’t take it personally. Carry on.’

  ‘There’s been one other unusual development. It might be significant.’

  He described the cache of silver plate uncovered in Stephen Doolan’s search in the basement at Lamb Alley.

  ‘It’s a full set of silver, more than 150 pieces, I gather. I haven’t got any estimate on the value, but we’re talking about big money. It could be a very powerful motive for a robbery, or even murder.’

  He showed Mallon his sketch of the crest engraved on the silver, and recounted his fruitless attempt to find someone at the Ulster Office in the Upper Yard who might help him to identify it.

  Mallon gave a wintry smile.

  ‘You won’t find those gentlemen up there on a Saturday afternoon. It’s only a part-time thing for Burke anyway. He’s busy making money on his books about the peerage, pandering to the lords and earls.’

  ‘That means it’ll be Monday before I can get any fix on where this stuff might have come from,’ Swallow said. ‘If it’s connected with the murder, it could be a costly delay.’

  ‘I know that. But I wouldn’t advise disturbing any of the officials from the Ulster office over Sunday.’

  ‘Christ, I’d take great pleasure in rousing a few of those cosseted bastards an
d dragging them in to work.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Mallon said sharply.

  He scrutinised the sketch in Swallow’s hand.

  ‘If you’re right about the quality and quantity of this stuff, then Ambrose Pollock was way out of his league. When I was a young constable he generally traded in cast-off coats and bits of old clocks, that sort of thing. This wouldn’t be the normal sort of transaction over in Lamb Alley.’

  The parlour door opened slightly. Swallow knew it was a signal.

  Mallon moved to the door.

  ‘We’re in dangerous times, Swallow … problematic times. Policemen have to tread carefully. That’s why I wanted you to take these cases on instead of that clown Boyle. You do the detective work and let me look after the politics with the fellows in the Upper Yard.’

  Swallow bit his lip. If he was so damned good, why was it not recognised where it mattered? Why was ‘Duck’ Boyle at the rank of detective inspector while he was stuck at sergeant for more than a decade?

  He nodded.

  ‘I understand, Chief. I hope yourself and Mrs Mallon have a pleasant evening.’

  He was half way across the Lower Yard before he realised that he had not mentioned the business of the Greek coins that had been brought into Greenberg’s in Capel Street. In the ordinary course of events it would be a matter worth mentioning, but until young Vizzard came back from interviewing Mrs Clinton he knew nothing himself.

  With a murder to be solved and the disappearance of the chief suspect into thin air, it was not an immediate priority.

  SUNDAY OCTOBER 2ND, 1887

  TWENTY

  Sunday morning’s murder conference was low key. In reality, Swallow knew, there was little point in holding it at all. But even if there was no progress in the investigations, appearances had to be kept up to satisfy the higher authorities.

  The only man in uniform was Stephen Doolan. He had sensibly told his constables to take a rest day, leaving just one man to guard the pawn shop. Detective Mick Feore’s glum expression confirmed that the trawl of guests and staff at the Northern Hotel had not yielded anything positive. The two book men, Mossop and Swann, were pretending to cross check witness statements in case there were any potential connections that had been missed. There were none.