The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  Lafeyre and Weldon were in the Burlington’s Empire Lounge. Weldon beckoned to a waiter as Swallow sat.

  ‘My round, Mr Swallow. What are you having?’

  ‘A Tullamore please.’

  ‘Make it a large Tullamore,’ Weldon said amiably.

  The whiskey was welcome. Swallow relaxed into the club-like atmosphere of the bar. He raised his glass.

  ‘Your health, gentlemen.’

  ‘Do you remember that old Xhosa chief out beyond Stellenbosch, Harry?’ Weldon laughed. ‘He loved his Irish whiskey, when I could get it for him. We got many a boundary settled and many a problem solved over a couple of bottles of John Power.’

  Lafeyre smiled. ‘I always thought it a paradox that Irish whiskey could be helpful in settling land disputes in Africa. It tends to have quite the opposite effect here at home.’

  The exchange prompted a linkage in Swallow’s head.

  ‘Did your department ever have any business with an estate in Galway at a place called Mount Gessel?’ he asked Weldon. ‘A family by the name of Gessel. They sold up under the land acts in the past year or so.’

  Weldon appeared thoughtful for a moment.

  ‘If they’ve moved out as recently as that, the transfer would have come through one of the offices here in Dublin. I’ve heard the name all right. There’s a Gessel at the Prime Minister’s office. But it can’t have been a very big estate, or I’d recall it. Why are you interested?’

  ‘Something came up in relation to missing property,’

  Swallow was instinctively vague again. But that was silly, he told himself. It was he, after all, who had raised the query with Weldon.

  ‘We’re hoping to talk to a family member through our colleagues in London.’

  ‘Gone off to England, have they?’ Weldon asked. ‘A lot of the landed families have done that. Once they get a bit of money in their hands, it usually seems an attractive option.’

  ‘The widow of the last Baronet sold up,’ Swallow said. ‘She’s gone to live on her money at a place called Dymchurch on the Sussex Coast.’

  Weldon nodded.

  ‘She’ll have fewer problems there with the neighbours than she had in Galway.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Swallow gestured to the waiter, but Weldon raised a restraining hand.

  ‘Nothing more for me, thank you. I’m away. I have an engagement to keep.’

  He checked his pocket watch.

  ‘I’m taking a lady to the theatre,’ he smiled. ‘The charming Mrs Walsh. I musn’t keep her waiting.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Swallow knew from his medical student days that he did not make a pleasant drunk. Not that he was so very intoxicated, he reckoned, when he left the hotel on St Andrew’s Street some time before midnight to make his way home.

  His walk was steady, but he had felt the anger building inside as he drank through the evening with Lafeyre.

  Weldon was off to the theatre with Maria. Well, good luck to them. Why should it bother him? She was a free woman. If a well-placed senior civil servant wanted to keep her company, let her get on and make the most of it. Was she not doing better with George Weldon than with an embittered G-man more than a decade her elder?

  Lafeyre was embarrassed. ‘I had absolutely no idea about this. Neither did Lily, I’m sure. He never mentioned it to me. He must have called on Maria or sent a message. If I had known, I’d have said it to you, of course.’

  Swallow called to the waiter for more drinks.

  ‘You needn’t worry. It’s got nothing to do with me. I’ve more important things on my mind.’

  He knew he sounded unconvincing, even to himself.

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool,’ Lafeyre snorted. ‘You’ve got fury written all over your face. In one way, man to man, I can understand. But you’re not in a position to have any grievance. You walked away from her. She doesn’t owe you a thing.’

  ‘I’m not claiming that I’m owed anything, am I?’ Swallow snapped. ‘And I’d prefer if people stopped trying to manage my personal affairs for me. I came along here for a drink because you invited me, remember? So that’s what I’m doing.’

  They had three more drinks in the bar, Swallow throwing back large Tullamores while Lafeyre cautiously nursed his claret.

  They went upstairs to the dining-room. Swallow ordered a bottle of Burgundy before they chose their food, and then another before they had completed the main course. They finished with brandies. He mellowed eventually with the accumulation of alcohol and insisted that he would take care of the bill. It would wipe out a week’s pay, but he did not care.

  ‘Look, forget about George Weldon,’ Lafeyre said. ‘Is there any progress in the murder investigation or in locating Phoebe Pollock?’

  Swallow seemed glad of the change of subject.

  ‘Mick Feore has fingered the doorman at the Northern Hotel as a fella with a violent record. Name of Rowan. Working under an alibi. A bad character. So we’re going to bring him in.’

  Lafeyre nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s a possibility. You’re then looking at perhaps a different story. It’ll be interesting to hear what this Rowan has to say. When I get through a few house calls I’ve got a couple of tests I want to do on the weight that was used to kill Ambrose. I have an idea that might tell us a bit more.’

  But by now Swallow’s mind was starting to be fuddled with the Tullamores, the Burgundy and the brandy. He had a busy day ahead tomorrow and he needed to get his sleep. Lafeyre checked the hour.

  ‘It’s getting late. A walk homeward will do us good.’

  The night was cool and dry, and the air was refreshing after the heat of the dining-room, the heavy food and the alcohol.

  They walked through Wicklow Street and Grafton Street and along the western side of St Stephen’s Green. Two constables in night capes and blackened badges nodded a goodnight as they passed the Royal College of Surgeons. They parted at the bottom of Harcourt Street, where Lafeyre turned for his house. Swallow continued through Cuffe Street, making for Heytesbury Street.

  His head was clearing now. The walk had loosened his limbs and stirred his digestion, heavy from the long drinking session and the rich food at the restaurant table. At the corner of Pleasants Street, just twenty paces from his house, a man started towards him out of the darkness. Swallow’s right hand moved to the butt of his Bulldog in its shoulder holster, now aware that the man might have been watching for him.

  He got the scent of eau-de-Cologne on the night air. It was Charlie Vanucchi.

  The chief of Dublin’s criminal underworld was a notoriously violent man, but he was also one of Swallow’s informants, arguably his most important one. He was no threat. The Bulldog stayed where it was.

  ‘Jesus, Charlie, don’t come up on me so suddenly in the bloody dark. You could get yourself shot.’

  ‘Do ye never come home at a decent hour, Misther Swalla’? I’ve been waitin’ in the feckin’ dark all night. Will ye for the love o’Jaysus let me inta the house before I ketch me death a’ pneumonia.’

  Swallow led him down the steps to the side door and into the back kitchen. He lit the gas mantle and pushed a chair to Vanucchi. The house was silent. Harriet was in bed and probably asleep.

  Swallow told himself that he could not manage any more alcohol. But the relationship demanded that he offer something to his informant. The only choice in the house was rough Tipperary Colleen that he had confiscated in the street one night from a drunken boy. He poured a stiff dose of the cheap whiskey for his visitor.

  Vanucchi grimaced and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  ‘Yer taste is deterioratin’, Misther Swalla’. The liquor isn’t what it used to be when ye were stoppin’ above in Thomas Street with the Widda Walsh.’

  ‘You didn’t come by to lecture me about my choice of whiskey, Charlie. What has you around at this hour of the night?’

  ‘True enough.’ Vanucchi swallowed half of the Tipperary Colleen in a gulp. ‘I have a
… well … I suppose you could say, I have a present for ye.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Youse are lookin’ for an Englishman, after yer shootin’ his pal over in Capel Street.’

  ‘The dogs in the street know that, Charlie.’

  ‘Yeh, well the dogs in the street don’t know where he is. And the geniuses of the Dublin Metropolitan Police don’t fuckin’ know either. But I do, if yer interested.’

  Against his better judgment, Swallow decided to take a shot of the Tipperary Colleen. He laughed as if he had heard something amusing.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know. I’d be mildly interested, but no more than that. There’s not a lot of money around after all the cash we had to put out during the Queen’s jubilee.’

  Vanucchi nodded solemnly. ‘And that money was very well spent, Misther Swalla’. The polis o’ Dublin city done a fine job o’ keepin’ the place safe in them dangerous days. But this’d be worth a tenner.’

  ‘A tenner? Jesus, Charlie, if you brought me Napoleon Bonaparte and the evidence to hang him, I couldn’t get you a tenner. This is some Johnny English on the run from the London Metropolitan. He may be important to someone over there, but not to me. Two quid.’

  Vanucchi sipped his whiskey. ‘I think when you hear the tale this Johnny English has to tell, Misther Swalla’, ye might have a different view.’

  ‘If the story is that big I might rise to three quid, Charlie. That’s being generous. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Here’s a deal, Misther Swalla’. Three quid down, and when ye hear this fella’s story we’ll talk again. If ye’re impressed ye can raise another two quid.’

  Swallow threw back the last of his whiskey. He took an informant payment slip from his wallet, pencilled in the agreed sum and handed it to Vanucchi. Over the coming days, he knew, someone acting on the informant’s behalf, perhaps a child or a woman, would present it at Exchange Court and depart with the cash.

  He reckoned that his night’s sleep, already foreshortened, was forfeit.

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in just a minute, Misther Swalla’.’ He leaned forward across the kitchen table. ‘But first, let me tell ye what I heard from this Johnny English and why I think ye’ll want to talk to him yerself.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  The bells started to ring for 2 o’clock across the sleeping city.

  Shift workers, insomniacs and other habitués of the night sometimes remarked that every one of Dublin’s churches seemed to have a different version of the hour. This meant that the pealing actually lasted for several minutes. One sequence of chimes would end as another would start in the next steeple.

  As the last peals faded, Swallow led the party of G-men with a uniformed constable to the boundary railings of St Patrick’s Cathedral. The moon had dipped to the west of the city rendering the tower and the ancient Norman walls a dark bulk against the night sky.

  Earlier, the constable had roused the sleepy verger from his bed in nearby Cathedral Lane to unlock the high gates fronting onto Cathedral Close. To the verger’s discomfiture, he found that the locks were undone, even though he swore that he had secured them earlier at 10 o’clock as he was obliged to do each night.

  Swallow was working hard to get his head around what Charlie Vanucchi had told him about the gunman from the East End of London who had walked into the wrong public house in The Coombe.

  ‘This fucker is called Shaftoe,’ Vanucchi had told him. ‘First he said his name was Jones. How fuckin’ imaginative could that be?’

  ‘But you managed to persuade him to be more open with you, I suppose.’

  Vanucchi grinned.

  ‘He became very … what’s the word … eloquent all right. He kem here to find some fucking coins that shouldn’t be on the market. He’s been sent over from London just to do that. He tells me he’s workin’ for some rich bastard over there. It sounds like big-time stuff.’

  He put his glass on the table.

  ‘I’ll tell you where to find him, Mr Swallow. He won’t give ye a bit o’ trouble, I promise. But he’s not in the best o’ shape.’

  The G-men slipped silently through the open gates and made for the sheltering darkness of the cathedral wall. Then they moved forward, pressing in against the granite until they came to a stone staircase leading below ground level.

  Swallow signalled two of the detectives to take positions on either side of the heavy wooden door below.

  They merged into the shadows, revolvers drawn. He had taken them from sleep in the dormitory above Exchange Court and briefed them on their task. There could be no noise. Pockets were emptied of keys and coins. Every man’s boots were muffled inside heavy woollen stockings.

  A third G-man with a shotgun gave cover from the top of the steps while Swallow and the constable went down. When he reached the bottom step, gun in hand, Swallow heard the sound from beyond the door.

  It might have been a child’s moan or the noise a small animal might make in distress, an injured dog perhaps. The constable heard it too. Even in the darkness, Swallow could see it register on his face.

  ‘Light the bull’s-eye,’ he said softly.

  The constable struck a match to the police lantern, and yellow light flooded across the stone floor to the wooden door. Swallow tugged the iron handle with one hand, his revolver poised in the other. The door swung out. He saw that the lock had been smashed, its innards of springs and screws littering the floor beneath.

  The lantern light extended only a few feet into the room. It caught workmen’s tools, spades, a pick, buckets. They took a step forward, then another. The sound came again, this time more a whimper. Swallow’s eye caught movement at the periphery of the bull’s-eye beam.

  A shape formed where he had seen the movement. When the constable held up the lantern, Swallow saw the man’s face, eyes wide with fear above streaks of blood and dirt. His mouth was gagged with a fabric strip, knotted tightly at the side of his face. The torso seemed to be covered by a canvas or tarpaulin. When Swallow leaned forward to take it away, he saw that the man’s arms were pinioned behind his back with the wrists roped to an iron embrasure set in the wall. He stank of stale urine and blood.

  Thus, sometime after 2 o’clock in the morning, in a workman’s storeroom, under the south transept of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Edward ‘Teddy’ Shaftoe, of Mile End, London, an ambitious but ultimately inept, small-time criminal, was taken into the custody of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

  The constable used his penknife to cut through the rope that bound him to the wall. Then he cut through another set of ropes that ran around his ankles, biting deep into the skin. Strong hands got him to his feet, and stood him upright. When he saw the helmet and uniform in the lantern light, Teddy started to weep with joy.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  An hour later, in a cell at Exchange Court, Teddy Shaftoe was still shaking.

  They had searched him swiftly on the off chance that he still had the Colt revolver. Then they had taken him from the fetid storeroom to the freshness of the night air and on a police side-car to this place.

  Swallow reckoned that Charlie Vanucchi’s assessment had been on the mark. Teddy Shaftoe had broken. He was gone beyond hysteria to a whimpering, almost hopeless state where he was certain he would die. He had reached the point where he might have welcomed that if it meant no more beatings.

  Every part of his body ached. His groin and testicles were swollen from kicking. His scalp was criss-crossed with cuts and bruises. His tongue rasped across what remained of the broken teeth in his mouth.

  But he would live. The trick, Swallow knew, was to have him talk before he started to recover to the point where he would begin to feel safe. He knew from experience that it could happen quickly. He had seen suspects, at first just grateful to be alive, who re-attained their instinctive defiance half an hour after getting a hot meal and a dry bed.

  A doctor arrived. He cleaned Teddy Shaftoe’s cuts and dressed his wounds. There
was bruising up and down, and rope burns to his wrists and ankles, but the doctor could find no broken bones.

  A plainclothes man gave Teddy a shot of strong liquor in a tin mug. It stung the inside of his mouth where the flesh had been cut by punches and blows, but it felt good coursing down his throat and warming his stomach.

  A constable brought him a bowl of water, a bar of rough soap and a small towel. Thankfully, he also brought a surplus pair of police uniform trousers and an old shirt. Slowly, painfully, Teddy cleaned himself and gratefully changed his stinking clothes.

  When they left him alone in the cell, he lay down on the bunk-bed. It hurt to move, but he could not stay upright. He closed his eyes and tried to think straight. He was in the shit, he knew. He had no idea how the Dublin coppers had found him, or what they planned to do with him. But he was alive. And the beating had stopped. Teddy had dealt with hard men. He had taken his share of fist and boot, cosh and knife. But the bastards who had got him this time were animals. He shuddered and drew the grey cell blanket around him. He wished he had some more of the liquor the copper had given him upstairs.

  Swallow reckoned on allowing him a quarter of an hour, no more, no less. That would be sufficient to have him rest just a little, to allow a little relaxation of his guard, to lull him into a false sense of security.

  So far, Vanucchi’s information had been good. He had said that Shaftoe would be in the gardener’s workshop under the cathedral. It was a safe, secure location, implicating nobody once the Englishman had been brought in there and left under cover of darkness. He would not be a pretty sight, but he would pose no threat.

  He flung the cell door open and then banged it behind him. Teddy Shaftoe lifted his head an inch or two from the mattress to see his visitor. Swallow placed himself on the three-legged stool beside the bunk.