The Dog It Was That Died

by H. R. F. Keating

Roger turned on his heel and hurried off. One of the attendants looked up with decided irritation as he swept past him on his way out. The Bosun followed, pit-patting across the stone-flagged floors.

  When Roger got out into the cold of the winter’s day the first thing he saw was the docker. He was standing in the wide quadrangle watching the heavy pillars of the museum from the shelter of the symmetrically heavy pillars of the National Library and beating his arms together to keep himself warm.

  At the sight of Roger he stopped abruptly and advanced. With menace.

  ‘Down, sir, down,’ the Bosun called.

  The effeminacy of the high, piping voice.

  The docker halted at its sound. The breath from his nostrils making a little cloud in the chill air. A baffled bulldog.

  ‘That’s right,’ the Bosun went on. ‘We’re leaving him alone now. But don’t forget what he looks like. Mark him, boy, mark him.’

  Chapter Seven

  When the Coroner announced a verdict of suicide on Eric Smith, Roger shrugged his shoulders. There had been no evidence of murder and none of accident. There had been precious little evidence of suicide. Only rat poison never gets into a bottle of stout by magic.

  Afterwards Inspector Murphy came up. His pale face lurking like a ghost in the shadows of a thick overcoat.

  Roger was now accompanied by Cuchulain. The inspector looked at the giant wolfhound with mistrust.

  ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘how are we this morning?’

  Roger smiled.

  ‘I successfully accounted for the man I saw,’ he said. ‘He was real right enough, though. It turns out he lives near me. He’s a bit simple it seems, and he took it into his head to follow me. I just happen never to have noticed him before.’

  The inspector moved round so as to put Roger between himself and Cuchulain, who had begun to sniff at his trouser leg.

  ‘Well, that’s one little mystery cleared up anyway,’ he said. ‘I wish they were all so easy.’

  ‘Like the mystery of Eric Smith’s death?’

  The sharp eyes in the pale face flicked up at Roger.

  ‘No,’ the inspector said, ‘there’s loose ends enough there, God knows, but nothing to worry about.’

  The sharp eyes again asked for an answer.

  Roger took an extra turn of Cuchulain’s leash round his wrist.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said. ‘There could have only been one verdict.’

  ‘You’re right so. Well now, I must be getting back to a few of those other little puzzles awaiting me. It’s a hard life, surely.’

  He backed away still looking mistrustfully at the hulking form of the wolfhound.

  The atmosphere in the big bedroom was intolerably stuffy. The grate in the fireplace was in the form of an iron basket and when the wind was in the north nothing could be done to keep the fire down. It burnt any fuel that was put on it – coal or turf – at an alarming rate.

  It was far too cold to open either of the big sash windows across which the heavy green chenille curtains were two-thirds drawn. Although the short winter day was coming to an end and the light was failing no lamps had been switched on and the room was so dark it was difficult to make out what was in the corners.

  Only the towering mahogany furniture loomed through the dimness and two areas of white proclaimed themselves. One was a towel draping the collection of medicines and sickroom utensils on a card table set against the wall opposite the windows. The other was the huge mound of white pillows at the head of the double bed covered with the dark purple eiderdown.

  Breaking the smooth white mass of the pillows was the slim yellowish oval of the invalid’s face. It was so drained of colour and the room was so dim that Roger could scarcely distinguish the familiar features.

  He leant forward on the stiff bedroom chair that had been set for him near to the big bed.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve come to bother you, sir,’ he said quietly.

  He looked closely at the yellowish oval of the sick man’s face. A slight flicker of the eyelids was visible. An acknowledgement.

  ‘You heard about Eric Smith,’ Roger went on. ‘The – the –’

  He hesitated for the word, and then plunged.

  ‘The nurse, the nun, told me they had let you know. What I wanted to see –’

  He stopped.

  The emaciated yellow hand lying on the purple eiderdown had suddenly been raised in an imperious gesture.

  But for some time the invalid said nothing. Then the voice came. The familiar rich Irish tones, but as if strained through innumerable fine meshes.

  ‘Eric Smith was a good man. He gave up much to come to the School. He made a hard decision.’

  Roger waited. But the sick man said no more.

  ‘Professor O Nuallain,’ Roger began again, ‘you remember me speaking about Bosenwite, the director of the Institute at Leeds?’

  Silence signifying assent.

  ‘When he came over in the summer Eric gave away our existence. Now Bosenwite is over here again. I was talking to him this morning. He admitted that he was responsible for Eric’s death.’

  The yellowish face on the great mound of white pillows began to raise itself with horrible slowness. From the chair in the darkest corner of the room the figure of the nun swept forward. In a moment she was beside the sick man. A cool hand gently pressing the forehead back on to the pillows.

  She turned to Roger.

  ‘Sure now, you’re after disturbing the professor. I’ll have to have you out from this if you do it again.’

  The almost stage Irish coming from beneath the classic shape of the black coif with the white stiff linen border. Totally unexpected.

  Roger looked at her suspiciously. The mysterious, unknowable life.

  ‘I – I’m very sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll try not to do it again. But this is really very important. I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been.’

  ‘Dr O’Malley said you could come, the dear man,’ the nun replied.

  She glided back to her corner in the gloom.

  Roger leant forward towards the emaciated form of Professor O Nuallain again.

  The failing mechanical body dragging down with it the trenchant, simple spirit.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself about Eric, sir,’ he said. ‘If there is anything that can be done, you can be sure I shall do it.’

  The flicker of the eyelids. The minimal sign of acknowledgement.

  ‘It’s something else, another aspect, that I have asked to see you about,’ Roger resumed.

  He paused.

  ‘I gathered from what Bosenwite was saying to me this morning that he had found out a great deal about Eric and myself from someone he had got into the School.’

  Again the hand on the suffocating purple eiderdown was raised to halt the flow of Roger’s speech.

  And the pale shadow of the professor’s polychromatic West of Ireland accent.

  ‘Wrong. It is wrong. Very wrong.’

  ‘You mean you don’t believe –’

  ‘No.’

  The sound quite loud in the big stuffy room.

  ‘No, if you say so I believe you. I know you. But it is wrong that anybody should have learnt about you. What you two were and where you came from was a secret between the three of us. I told you so when you came.’

  The slow words added one to one.

  ‘That’s what the School is for,’ he continued. ‘It’s a refuge for the uncommitted. I’ve given my life for that.’

  He fell back into silence.

  ‘Then who could have told Bosenwite about us?’ Roger said. ‘Who else could have found out?’

  For a long time the professor said nothing. Roger peered forward in the gloom. The yellowy eyelids had dropped down over the tired eyes. Roger listened carefully to the sick man’s irregular breathing.

  He glanced into the dark corner where the nun was sitting. A slight movement as her fingers busily passed the beads of her rosary through her folded hands.


  ‘I’m sorry to be so long,’ the tired, tired voice came at last. ‘But I find it hard to gather my thoughts nowadays. I’m afraid at times I simply lie here rambling incoherently. However, with time and patience I can still put things together when the need arises. I still have certain reserves.’

  Roger leant farther forward. The rich voice was very weak.

  ‘There are two possibilities as I see it,’ O Nuallain went on. ‘My secretaries have access to my files. Generally they do not see the confidential one. But since I have been stuck in bed up here they have on occasion had to bring me papers from it.’

  ‘That would be Miss Hogan and that newish girl Miss Whatshername, Miss Bloom?’ said Roger.

  ‘Yes, that is correct. They have each been up to me here with documents from that file. Of course, Miss Hogan has been with us ever since we began. I have never had the least reason to suspect her integrity. Miss Bloom has only been with us a couple of years, since Fergus Pike left to go to the Ministry of External Affairs. But she comes from an old Dublin family. I suppose I’ve known her since she was a slip of a girl. It’s not possible.’

  Silence again in the big gloomy bedroom with its pervasive smell of disinfectant.

  After a while Roger said:

  ‘I had thought of the possibilities of your secretaries having access to some file or other. But you mentioned a second approach.’

  O Nuallain’s voice seemed a little stronger in the fast-gathering darkness.

  ‘Yes. You said that it was sometime in the summer that this man Bosenwite learnt that Eric was here.’

  ‘Yes, Bosenwite came over to receive the Sir Patrick Dun Medal. Eric shouted insults at him in the Theatre at Trinity.’

  ‘That was the first inkling Bosenwite had about you?’

  ‘Yes. You’re thinking that anyone who has joined the School since then is suspect?’

  ‘There are really only two. Colonel Myles and Austin Boycott. I expect you know Myles. He has been studying Oliver Cromwell since he retired from the British Army about ten years ago. He published some excellent stuff and when he came over here recently we gave him a grant.’

  The quiet voice died away. The sound of the wind in the shrubbery of the big suburban house in Rathmines.

  ‘A charming man,’ the rich voice added, ‘a soldier of the old school and a scholar. The only person to join us in the past half year – except old Boycott.’

  ‘I don’t know him,’ Roger said.

  ‘I’m surprised. He’s well known in Dublin. But then you’ve been a bit of a hermit, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have.’

  ‘No matter. Well now, let me see what I can tell you about Boycott.’

  The nun rose quietly from her chair, went over to the table of medicine bottles and switched a lamp on. The bulb under the thick green metal shade was of very low power but its faint light obliterated the last traces of daylight in the big room. The nun pulled the heavy green chenille curtains firmly together.

  The turf in the basket grate gave out a glow almost as powerful as the dim light on the table.

  ‘Boycott is a Communist, of course,’ O Nuallain said.

  Roger jumped.

  ‘And he’s allowed to work at the School?’

  ‘Oh yes. Why not? I insist on the Government giving me a free hand in my choice of staff. Although Boycott’s not exactly what you might call a card-carrying party member. He wouldn’t take orders from the party if he happened to object to them.’

  ‘But all the same,’ Roger said, ‘in this country, in this day and age.’

  ‘He threatened to blow up the Dail a couple of years back,’ said O Nuallain.

  Roger detected in the faint light a twitch of the sunken cheeks that might have been a smile.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Go and meet Austin Boycott, then you will,’ O Nuallain replied. ‘You’ll understand why he’s working at the School – he’s writing a book on the Boycott System, he’s descended from the notorious Charles Boycott himself, ironically enough – and you’ll understand why he could not possibly be your man.’

  On the bosomy purple eiderdown the outstretched fleshless hand drooped.

  ‘There’s one other person,’ Roger said. ‘A man called Wyndham, George Wyndham. I gather he’s got some sort of permission to work in the School library.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’d quite forgotten about him. I met him just before I retired to bed for the last time –’

  Roger made a gesture of protest.

  ‘Oh come, I know quite well it’s the last time. It doesn’t worry me. A few years ago when the book on the Absolute Differential Calculus was all to write I might have been fretful. But it’s done now. Nunc dimittis, you know.’

  The peace of the big bedroom. The threshing of the wind in the shrubbery down below. The hot atmosphere with its ineradicable sickroom tang.

  ‘I hope to hell George Wyndham is your man,’ O Nuallain said. ‘He’s the most terrible bore I ever met.’

  Roger, peering hard at the sick man, thought he heard the nun in the corner rustle with disapproval.

  ‘No, I don’t hope that,’ O Nuallain said. ‘I hope nobody is your man. But I suppose there must be someone.’

  The eyelids closed.

  Roger got up to leave.

  ‘Good-bye, sir,’ he said.

  The nun rose from her narrow chair and went to open the door for him.

  He began to go.

  Then suddenly he stopped. He eyed the black cowled figure with the unlikely stage-Irish accent and turned back to the great bed. He leant close to the sick man.

  ‘Professor O Nuallain,’ he whispered, ‘there’s one thing more. It’s important.’

  Beneath him the eyelids opened.

  ‘Professor, you said you sometimes were incoherent and delirious. The nurse, the nun. Who is she?’

  Chapter Eight

  Suddenly the yellow oval of Professor O Nuallain’s face lying wanly on the great mound of smooth white pillows began to shake.

  For a moment it looked as if he was entering on an agony of coughing. Then it became apparent that he was laughing. Laughing tumultuously.

  The enigmatic black figure of the nun closed the door with a sharp click and whisked over to the bed.

  ‘Now, Professor,’ she said, ‘you musn’t be doing that. Sure, you know what dear Dr O’Malley said.’

  She turned the black coif in Roger’s direction and he caught a swift reproving glance from somewhere inside it.

  ‘Ah, don’t be a bloody fool, now,’ Professor O Nuallain said. ‘A laugh like that does me more good than all O’Malley’s palliatives.’

  The nun went back to the door and opened it again with severity.

  Roger stood up to go.

  ‘One moment,’ O Nuallain said.

  Roger bent over him again. The fleshless face, the colourless lips.

  But a spark in the deep-sunk eyes.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ the old man said, ‘Sister Bridget left her home in County Kerry when she was fifteen to go into a convent nearby and she’s been there ever since. She came up to Dublin specially to nurse me, and it’s her first visit to the paganish place.’

  Roger approached the School buildings circumspectly. At the entrance to the square he stood for a long time behind a tree making a methodical survey of every possible point from which the Bosun or one of his hirelings could be watching the door of the School.

  It was always possible that the Bosun had rented a room overlooking the School. There were occasionally vacant offices in the tall houses round the square. It was possible too that he had been busy during the afternoon recruiting someone less conspicuous than the docker. But there was nothing Roger could do about either of these possibilities. Some risks had to be taken. He looked at his watch.

  Five o’clock. In half an hour or less the School would be closing.

  He left the shadow of the tree and, turning up his collar and hunc
hing his shoulders, he walked away from the square, round two corners and back to the nearest point to the modest flight of steps that led up to the School front door.

  A last look round.

  Then he set off, walking quickly but not too quickly. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead until he got level with the steps and then he turned sharply at right angles and swiftly ran up them. The door as usual was not locked and he pushed it quickly open and stepped into the hallway, bare and unwelcoming beneath its fine plasterwork ceiling.

  He stood still for a moment regaining his breath. Then he walked over to the big polished wood door with the neat painted board on it saying ‘Inquiries’ with underneath the official times of opening and closing in Irish and English.

  He pushed the door open.

  In the spaciously proportioned room, with its four tall windows, its plaster panelled walls and its high fireplace between the two elegant pillars, the office furniture provided by some Ministry or other looked curiously squat. It gave the effect of a room designed for ordinary human beings having been taken over by dwarfs or apes. Round the walls were a number of green painted steel filing cabinets, their tops about a foot below the level of the mantelshelf. On either side of the door were two impermanent looking desks set facing each other. Each bore a triangular wooden bar painted with the name of its possessor once in Roman script, once in Gaelic. On the left Miss Kathleen Hogan. On the right, Miss Etain Bloom.

  Miss Hogan’s desk was unoccupied. But when Roger entered Miss Bloom looked up at him from hers with a bright smile of inquiry.

  Roger looked at her. The secretary machine, the dispenser of stationery and official returns, transformed into somebody. Somebody to be entered into a relationship with, to be talked to. About the Infiltraitor. Possibly, for all Professor O Nuallain’s disbelief, the Infiltraitor herself.

  The chances after all were no more than five to one. There were five people likely to have told the Bosun what he wanted to know: two secretaries with access to the files and three newcomers who might have been sent to the School with instructions to pry. A total of five, and this girl with the polite smile one of the five.

  She must be about thirty. Her blonde hair was swept into a bold chignon but various wisps had escaped and trailed over the velvety white skin of her neck. She wore glasses, an elongated blue butterfly pair. It was difficult to see the colour of her eyes through them, but they did not conceal the wide bridge of her nose. Her cheeks were rounded, full and pale. She used a bright red lipstick and her mouth was moderately large.