The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  But if Weldon was offended, he cloaked it well, even elegantly, Swallow thought.

  ‘Well put, Miss Swallow. In a way I agree with you about the man,’ he said pleasantly. ‘For my part, I see him as a traitor to his own, the Protestant landowning people, the backbone of this country.’

  He looked up the table at Yeats.

  ‘I think they’re your people too, Mr Yeats.’

  ‘Protestant, yes,’ Yeats replied. ‘But landowning, no, except in a very small way. My father is an artist and my mother’s people have a business in Sligo’

  Weldon nodded.

  ‘From my background, I could say Mr Parnell is a compromiser too. So are the politicians in power at Westminster. They’ll not defend my family’s right to their land, and they’ll sell us out to some Dublin parliament where we’ll have to bow and scrape to Parnell’s cronies. That much being said, I have my job to do, and I shall do it to the best of my abilities.’

  This was a point, Swallow recognised, at which a sensible policeman should say nothing. He gratefully extended his glass as Lafeyre went around the table with the claret.

  Now Friar Lawrence’s face glowed with agitation.

  ‘The backbone of this country, Mr Weldon, are the loyal Catholics on their farms and in their villages. They’re the true Irish, descended from the noble Celts. Many of the people you speak of are no doubt upright and God-fearing. But they’re planters and usurpers. They have no business here at all.’

  Weldon snorted derisively.

  ‘The Celts? Are you telling us the Celts were Catholics, Father?’

  He turned again to Yeats.

  ‘You’d better come to my aid here, Mr Yeats. You know about such things. Do you think the Celts were Catholics?’

  Yeats frowned.

  ‘I think they were far too wise to have anything to do with our kind of religion, in any of its branches.’

  Swallow thought Weldon’s riposte to the old friar was unnecessarily brusque.

  He caught a glance of alarm pass between Lily and Lafeyre. If the Michaelmas dinner had been a ploy to bring Maria and himself back into harmony, it was not going to plan. It was turning into a heated evening of political argument.

  Maria decided to exercise her prerogative as hostess.

  ‘We’ll have an end to this. The dinner-table isn’t the place for a political debate. We’re here for a pleasant evening. It’s time for pudding. Carrie has prepared one of her specialties. It’s a special compote. So I propose that we move on to the next course and talk about more pleasant subjects.’

  As if on cue, Carrie bustled through the door supporting two big dishes of her fruit compote, one on each hand. Lafeyre began to say something about the current programme in the city theatres, falling in with Maria’s injunction against further talk of politics.

  ‘I apologise,’ Harriet said. ‘I shouldn’t have been so outspoken. Please forgive me everybody.’

  Swallow plunged his spoon into Carrie’s pudding.

  His sister was right, he knew. But if Parnell could be kept in place for a while longer, the chances of transition to a peaceful, new order on the land would be greater. There would be fewer shootings, fewer arson attacks, fewer deaths.

  The compote was good. Lafeyre refilled the wine glasses. Outside, the October evening had turned to night.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Trainee Detective Johnny Vizzard travelled out to Grace Clinton’s house on the North Circular Road for the second time on Sunday evening, at about the hour that Maria Walsh was showing her dinner guests to the table.

  The possibility that his assignment might touch upon the investigation of the Lamb Alley murder had given an added edge to his zeal. He would show enthusiasm and thoroughness, two qualities that were highly prized in the Detective Office.

  He left Exchange Court at the end of his duty shift, and took a tram from Sackville Street to Phibsborough. On a Sunday evening, Vizzard reckoned, most families would be gathered at a meal or around the fireside. Even if they were religious to the extent of attending evening service, they would be home by now.

  If the husband were present, he knew, he would have to be explicit about the reason for his visit. And Arthur Clinton, working in the law, would know the limitations of a police officer’s powers in a private house. He would be more likely to get honest answers from a woman on her own. But the likelihood was that the husband would be at home on a Sunday evening.

  Ideally, he would put off the visit until Monday, but Sergeant Swallow wanted answers as quickly as possible.

  The lamplighters had been along the North Circular Road before he stepped down from the tram, but not long before. The gas lamps were showing a thin, lemon-white. It would take a while before they strengthened to their full luminescence.

  The lights were coming on in the houses too. Here and there, through laced windows, he could see families reading or in conversation. In one front sitting-room he saw a tall, full-bearded man, a woman and several young children around him. It was a cameo of comfortable suburban life.

  This was respectable, God-fearing Dublin; streets and avenues in which a policeman could not only feel safe but actually be welcome. These were the homes of a striving middle class, with the occasional professional or middling business family. Vizzard felt a pleasant reassurance from these illuminated glimpses of domestic order as he made his way towards his destination.

  But when the novice G-man reached the Clinton house, there were no lights burning. His hauling on the bell and his hammering on the door knocker echoed through silent rooms. He bent down and pushed his fingers through the letter-box, forcing the flap back on its spring so that he could peer into the hallway. He could see only darkness.

  He heard the scrape of an opening door from the adjoining porch. The neighbour, of whom he had made inquiries on his previous visit, poked his head out and then stepped out into the evening gloom.

  ‘You won’t find them here now. You’ve missed them again.’ The man wagged a finger reprovingly.

  ‘They were all away out of here in a big cab first thing this morning. They took an amount of stuff with them too, cases, bags, boxes. Even the poor children were carrying their luggage.’

  ‘Did they say where they were going?’

  ‘Mr Clinton said he had to go away on business. But it didn’t look that way to me. The wife was in a bad way. You could see the tears. And the children were upset too, what with being taken out of their beds at that hour.’

  A slow, queasy realisation of what had happened began to form in Vizzard’s head.

  ‘You didn’t tell them I was looking to talk to them, did you?’

  ‘Of course I did, as soon as they came back last night.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said there was a G-man here, wanting to see them. Sure what else would I tell them?’

  Vizzard understood with a sinking heart that his quarry was gone. And he knew that the situation in which he now found himself was of his own making.

  It was a lesson that would stay with him for the rest of his career. In later years, when he had risen high in the G-Division, he would caution novice officers when they were going about inquiries. ‘Pretend you’re looking for a stray dog. Pass yourself off as a salesman. Say you’re giving out bibles in order to save souls. But, never, ever say you’re a polisman and that you’ll be calling back tomorrow.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  The house had settled into quiet after the guests had gone. Maria heard Tom, the senior barman, lock the front door downstairs. She followed the sound of his departing footsteps along Thomas Street. Then she heard Tess climb the stairs to her room at the back of the house.

  Carrie’s dinner had been a great success. St Michael’s stubble goose had been reduced to a clean carcass. The last of the fruit compote had been cleared off by Friar Lawrence. The wines had been well appreciated. Port, whiskies and brandies had followed when the party repaired to the parlour. But the evening had left her drained.


  Maria did not believe in the custom of ladies withdrawing after dinner to allow the gentlemen to smoke and talk among themselves. Lily thought it a mark of gentility. It was common in the professional classes in which she moved as Harry Lafeyre’s fiancée.

  ‘It’s my house,’ Maria told her firmly when they rehearsed her programme for the guests, ‘I’m not going to be shooed off to where I can’t engage in the conversation of the evening.’

  She found herself sitting beside Swallow in the parlour after the meal. She thought he looked strained.

  ‘I suppose you’re working very hard,’ she said.

  She surprised herself with the sympathetic tone that she had resolved to keep in check for the evening.

  ‘It’s fairly brisk, as you might imagine,’ he smiled. ‘Mallon has landed the latest murder on my lap.’

  ‘You mean the case down at Lamb Alley? Ambrose Pollock?’

  ‘Yes, and the disappearance of Phoebe Pollock as well.’

  ‘I saw about it in the newspapers. I presume that’s what you were referring to when you had that exchange with Mr Yeats at dinner?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘Did she kill him? Or am I allowed to ask?’

  ‘You can ask. But I don’t know the answer. I don’t even know if she’s alive herself.’

  He forced a lighter tone and added a polite lie.

  ‘But I’ve good fellows with me on the job. And I wouldn’t have missed this evening.’

  She tried not to think of the countless ruined meals and cancelled arrangements over the time that they had shared their living arrangements.

  ‘I’m glad you were able to come,’ she said simply.

  She wanted to tell him that she missed his presence, irregular and unpredictable though it always was. She wanted to say that she missed their conversations and their outings – when they could get them – to the Park, or to the Zoological Gardens or along the strand at Sandymount. And she wanted to say that she missed his practical help in the business of running M & M Grant’s.

  ‘How do you find your house in Heytesbury Street?’ she asked instead.

  ‘It’s fine. There’s plenty of room for Harriet and myself. We’ve taken on a day maid. Harriet is gone to teaching early, so she keeps the place for us and she has breakfast ready every morning. ‘

  ‘That’s very satisfactory. I’m delighted to hear it.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Of course, if you would ever like to come here for supper or for dinner, you’ll always be welcome. I mean, if you find yourself caught on duty … or whatever.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She blushed with embarrassment, then with anger.

  Thanks. What a flat, empty word. He could hardly be more graceless, she thought. She forced herself to change the subject.

  ‘Lily tells me how much you’re enjoying her painting class.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m also discovering how much I don’t know,’ he grimaced. ‘There are some very talented pupils there.’

  ‘She tells me you met an old friend in the class,’ she said. ‘That must be nice.’

  He picked up the undertone of hostility.

  ‘I don’t know what your sister may have told you. But I’ve known Katherine Greenberg since she was a child,’ he said tersely. ‘She runs the family business now in Capel Street with her father.’

  ‘Yes, I know the shop. A bit unusual for a Jewish girl to go into business and not to marry, isn’t it? ‘

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to.’

  She could see that he was becoming tetchy. No matter where she tried to bring the conversation, it seemed to go wrong. She got to her feet.

  ‘I think we’ll have a little music to round off the evening,’ she said in what she hoped was a tone of levity.

  ‘Harry, to the piano, if you please.’

  Lafeyre played while Lily sang The Minstrel Boy. Friar Lawrence recited from Goldsmith’s Deserted Village. Weldon sang poorly from The Gypsy Prince. Maria briefly took the piano seat from Lafeyre and played a Mozart sonata. Harriet recited some lines of poetry in Irish. William Yeats recited one of his own poems.

  Maria said she liked the metre of the poem, which, Swallow deduced, was about dogs and hunting. Beyond that, he acknowledged silently to himself, he could make neither head nor tail of it.

  Swallow pleaded a lack of talent when his turn came to perform, but Maria persuaded him to try a few verses from Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

  But there was no more talk of politics, or crime, or land as the night drew to an end. Lafeyre’s driver and assistant, Scollan, arrived with the brougham. They took Lily to Alexandra College, dropping Yeats at St Stephen’s Green, then they brought Swallow and Harriet to Heytesbury Street before returning to Lafeyre’s house.

  George Weldon and Friar Lawrence decided to walk together towards their respective abodes. The Franciscan monastery was at nearby Merchants’ Quay. Weldon offered to accompany him, since his own lodgings were just across the river on Ormond Quay.

  Swallow reckoned that Weldon was trying to compensate for his earlier brusqueness to the elderly friar.

  Maria was unsure what she had hoped for from the night.

  Did she want Swallow to ask her if he could come back? Hardly. She could not contemplate resuming their relationship as before in all its ambiguities and uncertainties. Was she expecting to hear him say that he would leave the police, marry her and share in the business? She knew he would see that as an undignified surrender. Was she simply hoping that being together for the evening would reignite the spark between them that had never fully gone out?

  Whatever she had wanted, it had not worked out. The idea of meeting in company with the others had seemed a clever device when suggested by Lily, but it had been all wrong. She had embarrassed herself by mentioning the Jewish girl that Lily had told her about. And she had shown herself as over-eager by telling Swallow that he would be welcome to supper whenever he felt like it.

  The night had been a disaster. Maria was always moderate in her consumption of alcohol, but now she felt completely enervated. Before she doused the oil lamps, she poured herself a very large glass of port and drank it down neat.

  MONDAY OCTOBER 3RD, 1887

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Next morning, trainee Detective Johnny Vizzard discovered, more or less, where the Clinton family had gone after they departed their house early on Sunday.

  Smarting from the embarrassment of losing his quarry through his own fault, he was resolved to affirm his detective skills to the degree that might be possible by trying to establish their destination.

  He reasoned that Arthur Clinton was likely to have hired the cab from the nearby stand at the village of Phibsboro, or at Hanlon’s Corner where the cattle dealers and the drovers congregated. But the cattle markets were closed on Sundays, and there would have been few fares for the cabmen.

  His deduction proved to be correct. Clinton’s neighbour had described the vehicle as a closed carriage, dark in colour, drawn by a grey horse with the driver a short fellow, bearded and stout. Vizzard found him with his horse and cab, all matching the neighbour’s description, queuing for early morning business alongside St Peter’s Church at Phibsborough.

  He was surly until Vizzard showed his warrant card. Then he became co-operative, and demonstrated a surprisingly good memory for detail.

  ‘Yer man kem up to hire me around eight in the mornin’, all urgent and in a hurry. So we go down to the house and collected the wife and the young wans. I think there was three o’ them. But I thought to meself ’twas a hardship to have them out in the chill o’ the mornin’ like that.’

  ‘Where did you take them?’

  ‘I brung them down to the railway terminus at the Broadstone. I heerd one o’ the little girls askin’ the father would it be warm on the train. So they were goin’ travellin.’ And sure they were loaded down with bags and boxes. I must ’iv loaded a dozen ’iv �
�em into the luggage racks there.’

  ‘Any idea what train they took, or where they went?’

  ‘Nah. I asked yer man, just to be conversational, like. But he gev ne’er an answer to me. I’d have said the man was nervous, very upset. And the wife was cryin’ an’ she leavin’ the house.’

  Morning trains ran each day from Broadstone, Sundays included, to the west and northwest, stopping at scores of stations in between, and with connections to regional lines.

  The Clinton family could be in Galway, Sligo, Cavan, Donegal, Mayo or anywhere along the lines. But a family of five, burdened with bags and boxes, might not go unnoticed at the railway terminus, especially in the relative quiet of a Sunday morning.

  Within the hour, after he had jogged the recollection of the foreman porter for the price of a couple of pints of stout, Vizzard had what he considered to be relatively good news. The Clintons were not gone to the far-flung reaches of Connaught or Ulster. He was satisfied that they had bought tickets for Trim, in County Meath, just thirty miles from Dublin.

  He had at least narrowed the field to the extent that he could claim some progress when he would report to Joe Swallow later in the day.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In the morning, Swallow revisited the Ulster Office at the Bedford Tower.

  His ill-temper of Saturday afternoon had not abated after he had found the civil servants gone for their half-day. If anything, it had been exacerbated by the tensions of the previous evening at Maria’s.

  Carrie’s stubble goose and her compote of autumn fruits, both delicious in the eating, had lain heavily in his stomach during the night. And he was angry, although he was not sure who to be angry with, about what he knew had been a set-up to get Maria and himself back on track together.

  There was little to report at the morning crime conference. Not that he had been expecting much. Nonetheless, it dragged on as the book men checked and re-checked statements and cross-references. It was repetitive and painstaking work.