The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  Swallow attended Mass at 8 o’clock at the Franciscan church on Merchants’ Quay. He liked the Franciscans and the Carmelites at Whitefriar Street, preferring their humility to the sense of high authority exuded by the parish clergy of the Dublin Archdiocese. That enabled him to be at Exchange Court to chair the conference at 9 o’clock.

  The duty man handed him a note as he arrived. It was from Vizzard.

  Sergeant Swallow, G-Division

  Sir,

  I wish to report that I visited the address of Mrs Grace Clinton at North Circular Road at 7.15 last evening. There was no response at the front door and there did not appear to be anyone present in the house.

  I identified myself to a neighbour, who advised me that Mr Clinton, Mrs Clinton or their children hadn’t been seen that day. Sometimes on a Saturday they went to visit relatives, he said. He advised me that Mr Clinton works as a clerk in a solicitor’s office in the city centre. He was unable to state the name of the firm.

  I will revisit this address again tomorrow (Sunday).

  I remain your obedient servant,

  John Vizzard (Constable)

  Nothing much of benefit there either.

  He had felt increasingly tetchy since the previous afternoon. The closure of the Ulster office continued to rankle, and Mallon’s insistence that the civil servants should not be disturbed annoyed him more.

  With no leads and no new developments, the conference was going to be little more than a formality.

  ‘Would you tell the team about the silver in Pollock’s, Stephen?’ he asked Doolan. ‘It’ll take the bare look off the morning’s work.’

  Doolan described the crates of silver plate in the basement at Lamb Alley. Eyebrows were raised. G-men scratched details in their notebooks.

  ‘I’m trying to get an identification for the coat of arms,’ Swallow said. ‘But the Ulster office is shut until Monday.’

  ‘But there’s nothing to link it to the murder, beyond the fact that it’s well out of the range of ordinary trade at Pollock’s,’ Pat Mossop interjected.

  Doolan shook his head.

  ‘Look, there has to be a connection. This silver isn’t recorded anywhere in the books, so it’s got some sort of a story to tell. Ambrose Pollock is dead. The sister is missing. It links up some way, I’ve no doubt.’

  At that moment, ‘Duck’ Boyle arrived. He installed himself on a chair beside the door, looking somewhat the worse for wear.

  Swallow allowed himself a smile. ‘That must’ve a tough night, Inspector, drinking with the select clientele across at Currivan’s.’

  Boyle attempted a countering grin.

  ‘Well now, Swalla’, the pint in Currivan’s isn’t too bad. And when you’re spendin’ official money and not your own it’s even better.’

  He leered around the room with a satisfied look.

  ‘I can reveal that Miss Phoebe Pollock has been in the habit recently of repairin’ to Currivan’s o’ Fishamble Street in the company of a gentleman.’

  There were expressions of surprise. One or two G-men giggled.

  ‘In consequence, I took up duty in the said establishment last night. And, as the sayin’ goes, I spread me bread upon the waters to see what would happen.

  ‘In the evint, I think the Chief Commissioner’s money wasn’t entirely wasted.’

  Boyle paused momentarily for effect. ‘I might’ve got a name for Phoebe Pollock’s gentleman friend.’

  Heads jerked up in sudden interest.

  ‘Tell us more,’ Swallow said.

  Boyle opened his notebook.

  ‘There wasn’t any point after a while in trying to present myself as anythin’ other than a G-man. I just moved around from one client to the next and asked did anyone remember Phoebe Pollock drinkin’ in the place in the past few weeks.’

  He grinned.

  ‘I offered a fair share of drinks, and they weren’t refused, I can tell you. I pressed one or two fellows fairly hard because they told me they were regulars – every night in there. And sure enough, I got two witnesses who said they remembered her, always in the snug, comin’ in wid yer man, maybe half an hour before closin’ time.’

  ‘So who is the bloody man?’ Swallow interjected, impatient at the laboured narrative.

  Boyle glanced at his notebook.

  ‘I didn’t get a full name. But I got a good description. Well dressed, comfortable lookin’. The two fellows said they heard her call him ‘Len’ at one stage and ‘Lennie’ at another.’

  ‘Len,’ Stephen Doolan said. ‘That’s all?’

  ‘She didn’t exactly introduce him around to the social circle in Currivan’s,’ Boyle said defensively.

  ‘Len,’ Swallow repeated bleakly. ‘Or maybe Lennie.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose we’ll have to try to work on it.’

  The ever-optimistic Pat Mossop fell into role again.

  ‘Ye’re right, Skipper. Work on it we will. Isn’t it better to light one candle than sittin’ here cursin’ the feckin’ darkness?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The aroma of roast goose permeated the upper floors of Maria Walsh’s house on Thomas Street.

  Swallow had taken a corner chair in the parlour directly above Grant’s public bar. A turf fire burned in the grate, sufficient to take the edge off the chill of the October evening. Harry Lafeyre had poured him a Tullamore, to which he had added a dash of soda water, giving it a nice lift. In other circumstances, he reckoned, he might be happy to relax and enjoy a sociable gathering. This, though, would be an evening fraught with peril. It would be his first extended encounter with Maria since he had taken up the rented house at Heytesbury Street with Harriet.

  The interval of three months had done little to clarify his thinking, whatever about Maria’s. She declared that she’d had enough of the uncertainty and unpredictability of his job. He had been hesitant about making a commitment that he felt he might not be able to sustain.

  ‘We can’t go on indefinitely like this,’ she had told him reasonably, two years into the relationship. ‘Your work makes terrible demands, and you say yourself that it’s not acknowledged. You could make all the difference to this business if you were prepared to do so. And we could plan for some sort of a life together.’

  If she found the situation this evening in any way stressful, it was not showing, arranging herself with her back to the windows that faced the street. Her fine, blonde hair was stylishly shaped in her customary French roll. It contrasted classically with a green silk dress, stitched with small pearls at cuffs and neckline. When she laughed, the evening light caught her strong, high cheekbones. Swallow had not forgotten how strikingly attractive she was.

  Lily and Lafeyre, along with another guest, were already seated in the parlour when Swallow arrived. Lafeyre introduced the stranger.

  ‘I’d like you meet a friend of mine from my Cape Colony days, George Weldon.’

  Swallow had heard Lafeyre mention him, and that he was connected to a landed family in the South of Ireland. He knew that Weldon was now a civil servant, acting in some sort of a liaison role between Whitehall and one of the Chief Secretary’s departments in Dublin.

  Weldon dressed well, and there was a faint scent of an expensive cologne. Swallow estimated he was in his mid-thirties. He smiled broadly and his handshake was firm

  ‘Mr Swallow. I know you do a lot of work with Harry.’

  Swallow was about to sit with his whiskey when Harriet arrived, accompanied by a delicate looking young man with longish hair and gold-rimmed spectacles.

  She introduced him to Maria and then to each of the others.

  ‘This is my elder brother, Joseph,’ she said when it was Swallow’s turn. ‘And this is Mr William Yeats.’

  Swallow extended his hand.

  ‘Mr Yeats. Very nice to meet you. My sister has told me about you.’

  ‘Now,’ Harriet said, taking her guest by the arm, ‘we’ll have Harry get you something to drink.’

  Weldon took a chair besid
e Swallow.

  ‘I read in the newspapers that you’re a busy man,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’re glad to get away for a few hours from that murder case.’

  Swallow realised now that had seen Weldon on occasion at the Castle. The body of officials controlling the country from within the walls of the Castle, and in the various government offices around the city, numbered no more than a few hundred. But each cohort guarded its privacy. A policeman and a civil servant might recognise each other. A bureaucrat might identify an army officer out of uniform. They might even know each other’s names. But they would rarely socialise.

  Swallow wondered if Weldon had been invited to dinner because of his association with Lafeyre, or as a not-so-subtle attempt to remind him that other men might come into Maria’s line of sight.

  ‘Detective work doesn’t follow the clock, Mr Weldon,’ he smiled. ‘You have to fit your social life around it.’

  He shot a sidelong look at Maria, but she had turned to talk to another of the guests, the Franciscan, Friar Lawrence from Merchants’ Quay. The elderly friar was seated across the room from Swallow.

  ‘Will you say Grace for us, Father, when we go across to the dining-room?’ Maria asked.

  Lawrence smiled and raised his glass of whiskey, well-filled earlier by Harry Lafeyre.

  ‘Of course, Mrs Walsh. That lovely smell of cooking coming up from below is almost sinful, you know. We’ll need a prayer.’

  ‘Oh, you must think of this dinner as a religious occasion, Father,’ Maria laughed. ‘We’re celebrating Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael. It’s a tradition to eat a goose. At least, I’m making it a tradition now.’

  ‘I understand in Scotland it’s called a “stubble goose” because at this time the fowl are feeding in the harvested fields,’ Yeats said knowledgeably. ‘Although why it should have any relationship to St Michael, I don’t know.’

  Maria smiled. ‘I don’t know either. It was a custom in my late husband’s family.’

  Swallow saw the slight sadness in her face, and he picked up the catch in her voice. Jack Walsh had gone down with all his fellow crew members when their ship foundered off the Welsh coast five years previously, leaving Maria widowed at twenty-five.

  He was still a presence in her conversation when Swallow first came as a lodger to Thomas Street. Once their relationship developed into intimacy, though, she rarely spoke of Jack afterwards.

  ‘I believe it’s time to go to table,’ she said. ‘I think I hear Tess on the stairs.’

  The party of eight arranged themselves around the mahogany dining-table. Maria sat at the end nearer the door. Some swift choreography by the other guests obliged Swallow to take the seat to her right. He had no doubt that it was contrived. Weldon sat opposite. Friar Lawrence sat at the other end of the table, between Harriet and Yeats.

  He tucked back the sleeves of his habit, and made a benediction with his hand.

  ‘May the Lord bless us all, bless this food we are about to eat and bless those who have prepared it.’

  They had a chicken broth, and then a warming vegetable soup, followed by steamed cod in white sauce. Then Carrie, Maria’s cook, brought in the goose on a blue platter. Lafeyre carved, while Tess the maid ferried platters of the meat along the table. There was Hock and Claret. Swallow stayed with the claret, a velvety Château de Pez from Saint-Estèphe.

  ‘You’re a poet, Mr Yeats, I understand,’ Maria said. ‘Is that something that one can be trained to? Or is it a natural gift?’

  ‘It is a gift given to some, Mrs Walsh,’ the young man answered. ‘Often it is part of a larger gift, the gift of vision, of being able to connect with worlds that exist elsewhere.’

  ‘Like the Moon, or Mars?’ Swallow knew he was being provocative.

  ‘You know very well that Mr Yeats is not talking about the Moon or Mars,’ Harriet said icily. ‘He is referring to the spiritual dimension. It is a matter of vision.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ Friar Lawrence said, raising his glass approvingly. ‘We must not allow our horizons to be bounded by the material world.’

  ‘Would you have any vision of where a missing person might be, Mr Yeats?’ Swallow asked. ‘I’m trying to find a woman who might have been murdered. Or maybe she just ran away with a lot of money.’

  ‘Oh for Heaven’s sake, Joe,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Don’t be upset,’ Yeats told her. ‘No, Mr Swallow, I don’t think I could help you there. But I might know somebody who could.’

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘Have you heard of Madame Blavatsky?’

  Swallow knew of the Russian mystic, who had followers in many countries across Europe. G-Division knew that such a group had formed in Dublin. In police circles, it was considered harmless if eccentric.

  ‘No, who’s she?’

  One never knew what might come up with a bit of fishing.

  ‘Those of us who are interested in the mystic believe that she has powers of sight, vision if you like. And she can draw out those powers in certain others who may have them too. There are several people, followers of Madame Blavatsky, in Dublin who could probably tell you where to look for your missing woman.’

  Swallow resisted the urge to be sarcastic again.

  ‘I think I’ll rely on more conventional methods just for the present, Mr Yeats. If they don’t work, maybe I can make contact with your Madame Blavatsky.’

  By the time Lafeyre offered second helpings of the goose, and notwithstanding the wine, the atmosphere at Swallow’s end of the table had grown frigid. Maria had not addressed a single word to him. Weldon too seemed to have picked up the sense of unease.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Swallow,’ Weldon asked, ‘what message might I bring to my superiors in London about the state of Ireland? Do you think the government’s land policy can bring peace around the country? The police must have a good sense of whether it’s working.’

  ‘Outrages are down. But how much of that’s due to the land policy, I wouldn’t be able to guess. So I wouldn’t want you to base your report back in London on anything I say.’

  Weldon laughed.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t have you held accountable. But I can speak with some personal experience. My family has – or had – land in County Limerick.’

  He laughed again.

  ‘Unfortunately, I’m on the poor branch of the tree. The inheritance laws worked against us. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be labouring as a civil servant. But the Weldons have been there since Cromwell. Never a night’s peace with shootings, arson, cattle being driven off, until my cousin decided to accept the government money and sell out to the tenants. It’s a peaceful as an English meadow down there since.’

  ‘You were probably wise to choose a civil service career, Mr Weldon,’ Maria said, casting a reproving eye at Swallow. ‘I’m sure it’s much more pleasant than being shot at by Land Leaguers and Fenians.’

  Weldon smiled.

  ‘To tell the truth, I’d never have had any interest in the land even if I had the opportunity. That’s why I went to Africa for a spell. But my background gave me an understanding of issues in the ownership and the management of property. So the government in the Cape Colony put me in charge of the office that dealt with land transfers. Now I’m doing something similar for Ireland.’

  ‘Quite a few of the Dutch in the Cape wanted to sell out to English farmers,’ Lafeyre explained. ‘Each wanted the business done according to their own legal code. And Dutch law and English law are very different. Then the Xhosa people had their own claims on the land too. George acquired a reputation as a skilful negotiator.’

  ‘So what exactly do you do now, Mr Weldon?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Like any other Irishman, I want to see the land issue settled once and for all. If the people secure ownership of the farms, their grievances are taken away. My task is to advance that process as completely and as rapidly as possible.’

  ‘Rightly so,’ Friar Lawrence said. ‘Down in my own county of Cork,
the tenants are taking up the scheme in their thousands. Mind you, there’s a few of the big landlords who won’t budge for love or money. They’ll hold on for spite, I think. ‘

  Harriet clanged her knife and fork noisily on her plate.

  ‘We’d be very foolish to think that Ireland can be pacified simply by giving the land back to the people from whom it was taken in the first place. We need to break the connection with England, to rule ourselves and to make our own destinies.’

  ‘Miss Swallow is a Home Ruler,’ Lily Grant said to nobody in particular.

  ‘I agree with her,’ Yeats interjected. ‘Ireland must find its own soul. Home Rule may be part of that. But we have to reach back into our history, into the spirit of the nation and reclaim the days when a race of giants, heroes ruled our country.’

  ‘I’d hate to think of us being ruled by a race of giants,’ Lafeyre laughed. ‘They’d probably eat us.’

  ‘You don’t think I mean giants in the biological sense, Doctor?’ Yeats said irritatedly. ‘I mean in the intellectual sense, in their capacity for imagination, thought.’

  Lafeyre shrugged. He disliked abstractions.

  ‘So you’re a follower of Mr Parnell, Miss Swallow?’ Weldon said amiably.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Lily said.

  Harriet’s eyes lit with anger.

  ‘I can answer for myself, thank you, Miss Grant. I consider Mr Parnell to be a compromiser. He negotiates with England as if she had rights in this country, which she does not. Mr Parnell’s objective of Home Rule, secured on England’s terms, is a selling of Irish nationhood, nothing less.’

  Swallow groaned inwardly. He heard Lily’s sharp intake of breath at the far end of the table. Lafeyre sought to dispel the chill. He leaped to his feet.

  ‘Maria, would you like me to serve more wine?’

  She nodded and smiled nervously. ‘Please, Harry.’