The Death of a Joyce Scholar

by Bartholomew Gill

  It was a line McGarr thought he’d heard or read somewhere, but he was fairly sure that for all her homeliness, Katie Coyle would continue to live in a world where quotes, events, and places from books had a force of fact that not even a dead—no, a murdered body—could command. He thought of her ready use of the present tense when speaking of Ulysses, while Coyle merited the past alone.

  He had been found three days before in a laneway at the back of the Glasnevin Cemetery, where so many of Ireland’s patriots and notables were buried, and which also figured in Ulysses. The day before the morning on which he was found, a colleague from Trinity had employed him to act as a kind of narrator/actor in the yearly tour that the professor organized for literati and other interested parties. Held on the day that the book was set—June 16, or “Bloomsday,” so named after one of the book’s principal characters—they had been wont to conduct their guests around Ulyssean Dublin, frequenting mainly pubs, by the wife’s say-so, though she did not know the itinerary exactly.

  She had seemed surprised that her husband had arrived at the cemetery in Glasnevin, which might figure as his final resting place, though rather less so that he had been murdered. Muggers, she had put it down to, and her husband’s hubris at thinking that by birth, background, and predilection he so possessed the city that he was immune to its darker side. She did, however, mention the colleague—Fergus Flood—and another former associate, a man named Holderness, who for reasons that she left vague might have been moved to murder her husband. Flood had been jealous of Coyle. Holderness had been disciplined by him. Or so she said.

  Anybody else? Herself, of course, who had broken laws that, McGarr believed, were known to all citizens in regard to destroying evidence, especially in capital crimes. And Cat’rine Doyle and Mary Sittonn, the latter of whom now corroborated all Katie had said except for one word. Katie’s “mates” were, according to Mary Sittonn, “sisters.”

  Younger than Katie, she was a quick woman, small and broad, with a round, fleshy, pink face, a button nose, and hazel eyes so yellow they almost matched her close-cropped blond hair. In spite of the heat she was wearing a long black dress and battered, black ankle-cut boots. With both hands she pulled her dress between her legs before seating herself on the wicker hassock in front of McGarr.

  They had in fact used a tarp to cover him. “Had to lie the poor blighter on his side, and him still like sitting, so stiff he was with death. Back here we could only sit him in a chair or prop him against the headboard, which we thought more seemly. Heavy he was for all his bones, bent up like that, I can tell you.”

  “But you thought it not unseemly to move him.”

  For the second time her hand moved to the bristles of her blond hair, which she ruffled. With her round features she looked less like a woman or man than a large, pudgy child of indeterminate sex who had found its way into its mammy’s clothes. “In what regard, unseemly?”

  It was the wrong word. Unlawful was the correct one, but through long experience McGarr had discovered it was best to avoid the dynamics of confrontation in an interview until the last possible moment, when a sharp question might be used to effect. “In regard to his cause of death.”

  “Which was?”

  “Apparently murder. A single stab wound to the heart.”

  She blinked. “Are you sure of that?”

  “Reasonably. And you’re not?” Had Coyle committed hari-kari for some reason…literary in nature? Was there a reference to suicide in Ulysses? he wondered.

  She looked up at the birds in the cage, who had again begun their elaborate duet. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, one way or another,” she said speculatively. “Dead being dead. Or, rather as you would have it, murdered being murdered.”

  “Then you found no weapon there as you were examining the site?”

  The allusion seemed lost on her, or she chose to ignore it. “I suppose we didn’t, and then his wallet and hat were missing. And the ashplant stick and striped blazer that he had begun the morning with. Or so Katie said.”

  Not to him. “Hat?”

  “A boater. Like the Stephen Dedalus character wore in Ulysses. In fact it’s one of Joyce’s own and had his initials monogrammed in the leather of the band. Bought it at auction, Kevin did. Paupered the family for weeks, but what did he care? It was all in the grain, if you know what I mean?”

  McGarr did not, and he waited.

  “The Joyce grain, man,” Mary Sittonn explained, suddenly testy. “You’ll have to think Joyce and Beckett and books if you’re going to get anywhere with this thing. That’s if he was murdered for a ‘reason’ and not—”

  McGarr again waited.

  Finally she blurted, “—just murdered.”

  The wife’s first thought.

  “You queer?” McGarr asked.

  Said Mary Sittonn: “The expression is ‘gay.’”

  “You gay?”

  “None of your fookin’ business, Jack.”

  McGarr liked the sound of that. Jack McGarr. It seemed so much more authoritative than Peter. Like something out of a crime novel.

  FOUR

  BY THE TIME McGarr regained his Mini-Cooper, the small, boxlike car was as hot as an oven, and he got caught in a snarl of homeward-bound commuter traffic along the Phibsborough Road. In the glare of the six o’clock sun—still high on the horizon—the exhausts from the line of great green double-decker buses, lorries, cars, and delivery vans that stretched from Cross Guns Bridge to the corner of Finglas Road rose like a cloud of black sordid steam. The Cooper, which was an antique of sorts, was not equipped with air-conditioning, and the foul fumes that filled its small interior made McGarr want to pull over and walk.

  The Brian Boroimhe, an old half-timbered Dublin pub that had been owned by the Hedigan family for nearly a century now, was just across the bridge on the bank of the Royal Canal, and McGarr considered pulling in and washing the sour taste from his mouth with another pint of lager. Instead he reached for a cigarette on the idea that his own pollution, which at least tasted familiar, was preferable to that of an internal combustion engine. But the tie-up broke suddenly, and he drifted by the “Boru” with a longing that was little short of love, one he knew he’d have to satisfy before long.

  De Courcy Square sits between the east entrance of the sprawling Glasnevin Cemetery and the busy Finglas Road. It is a small parallelogram of modest, brick Victorian row houses surrounding a fenced-in common ruled out in individual vegetable gardens. Now, at tea time, with the children indoors, it seemed remarkably peaceful to McGarr. The sun, angling across narrow gabled roofs, filled the nearly people-less space with a rosy light.

  Number 2 lay at the west end of the square, and the aroma from an open bay window netted by lace curtains spoke to him of baking tomatoes and butter and garlic and—was it?—fresh tarragon. Yes. Turning his head to the patch of common that he guessed would belong to number 2, he caught sight of the delicate gray-green leaves of tarragon plants in a bed with other aromatic herbs. But there was another delicious, more complex odor too: fish, and of two types, with anchovies more dominant, though he could not be sure of the second. Trout? No—city folk did not eat freshwater fish by choice. Nor roach. After the exercise of digging in the garden and the distraction of Katie Coyle’s news, McGarr had forgotten his stomach; he was now both thirsty and famished. He was about to ring the bell when the door opened and a young thin woman with dark hair opened the door.

  “Superintendent McGarr?” She had fair skin and light blue eyes that blinked once, as though snapping his picture.

  “None other.”

  “I’ve been expecting you and thought you’d get here sooner. I knocked off work a bit early, you see, since I have some friends coming to tea. Won’t you come in?”

  Cat’rine “Catty” Doyle, McGarr assumed, following her into the house. Her hair, as black as any McGarr had ever seen and cut in a perfect stylish line, spanked on the shoulders of a white sleeveless jumper that revealed an oval of deeply t
anned skin on a ruler-straight back. Below, and just the color of her eyes, were blue shorts that swathed what McGarr judged to be comfortable hips. Or, rather, hips that definitely could be comforting.

  Her legs, which were also tanned, were thin and shapely, and she wore canvas runners on her feet. They were white, like the jumper and her short, tight, little-girl socks. These last wrapped only her ankles.

  In the kitchen she raised herself up after bending to peer in the oven. McGarr noticed that the jumper was slightly transparent, revealing not only the peaks of her nipples but also the hint of dark circles beyond. They were large, about the size of a 10p. coin. Her face was long, the bridge of her nose very thin, and in all she communicated a kind of fragility that McGarr found intriguing.

  Mainly it had to do with the way she carried herself, which was nothing if not erect. Her posture was perfect, her movements graceful, and McGarr concluded that Catty Doyle’s beauty, which was in a petite way considerable, was overwhelmingly feminine. He also decided that Catty Doyle, who either worked out of doors or who had not worked in some time during daylight hours, had so devised herself and her house that the persons who were expected for tea would have little choice to appreciate that beauty, if they had eyes.

  In spite of the elaborate food preparations, no surface in the kitchen seemed soiled, nothing seemed out of place. Herbs, spices, and condiments were neatly shelved. A long cutting board, which had just been scrubbed down, glistened with water. The deep red handles of the knives in a rosewood sheath gleamed as though freshly treated with tong oil.

  A table had been set for three in front of the open door to the back garden; the doorway was draped with various beads. The plate was a pattern that McGarr recognized as Belleek, and the crystal Waterford. He then placed the oven aroma that filled the kitchen.

  “Plaice Nicoise,” he said. “On the bone?”

  She seemed startled that he had guessed right.

  He stepped past her toward the table and parted the beads, twirling a knobby surface between his fingers. It was a Spanish touch, or Portuguese. Iberian at any rate, and McGarr wondered if they had always hung there or had she put them up especially for the occasion and the heat. The plaice Nicoise was Mediterranean, of course, the wine in the chrome bucket by the side of the table a vinho verde from the Minho. What was he seeing here, a little celebration?

  “I wonder—could this wait until tomorrow?” she asked pleasantly, her voice feminine and soft, like the rest of her, but surprisingly deep.

  McGarr slid the bottle back into the ice water. “I’d lower the heat, were I you. Smells done to me.”

  “Really,” she pressed, half turning to the hall that led to the front door. “Tomorrow I could give you all the time you want.” She slid her fingers in the slit pockets of the blue shorts and hunched her shoulders so that her breasts hung loose in the jumper. “Anything.”

  Was that another sort of offer?

  “Tomorrow you’ll be speaking to one of my staff.” Stepping toward the sitting room, McGarr turned off the gas and peeked into the oven. The pots were earthenware and Spanish in design, and he was willing to bet that the second contained a risotto with tarragon, white wine, and saffron. He made a small, involuntary noise in the back of his throat. He felt like he could eat a cow—or a Catty, for that matter—and he had to remind himself of his purpose. And the fact that he was happily married to a beautiful woman nearly half his age.

  The sitting room, like the kitchen, had been prepared for company. A coffee table had been set before a love seat. On it were a bowl of mixed nuts, a wedge of Brie and another of Stilton. A bottle of Offaly port, 1964, stood at hand. A trolley held bottles of various spirits and a shiny bucket, beaded with moisture. With lace doilies covering the arms and the backs of the overstuffed chairs and love seat, it seemed a room in which a person might most pleasantly be pampered by the likes of the super-feminine Ms. Doyle.

  He turned back on the young woman, who was watching him from the doorway, her cheeks now flushed in—was it?—anger. “When is your company expected?”

  “Half-past seven.”

  It was seven-ten.

  “You understood that a murder was committed.”

  Her eyes moved off. She nodded.

  “And that there would have to be an investigation.”

  Her eyes fell to the carpet.

  “And yet you didn’t notify the Guards.”

  She raised her head to the open window, through which they could hear heels on the walk of the square. A man passed by. “Kevin was Katie’s husband, wasn’t he? And she’s my sister. Look”—the eyes flickered up at him—“he was dead. I mean, long dead. And”—another pause—“it’s not as though we…fancy the police, begging your pardon, Mr. McGarr. Who they—not you—are, if you know what I mean.” Her voice was low and confiding.

  “We?” he asked in a tone no less intimate. “You and Katie Coyle are sisters?”

  She shook her head once and looked away, as if to say that he just didn’t know what she meant.

  McGarr had never considered himself unpolicemanlike. If anything, he struggled to be as complete a policeman as he possibly could, according to his own definition of the role, which required that he be a decent human being first and an official second.

  Said Catty Doyle, “We’re sisters because of our sex. You know, women.” She glanced at McGarr, and when he still said nothing, she added, “We discussed it. Mary said you wouldn’t—couldn’t—understand, and we should just phone the Guards. The others. The ones here in Glasnevin. But Katie insisted we take him back to the house and she would get you. ‘Kev would’ve wanted it like that,’ she said. She also said he used to read everything he could about you in the papers. ‘Pure Dublin,’ he’d say about you.”

  As was what he was hearing from her now. Soap, and as soft and sweet as could be had.

  “‘He’ll find who did this,’ she went on.”

  Again her eyes turned to the sound of footsteps in the street.

  “Which brings me to where and how you found him. Exactly, Catty. May I call you that?”

  She flashed him a quick smile, and with some relief left the sitting room. She walked quickly into the hall, through the kitchen and beaded curtains, and out into the full sun of the back garden. McGarr’s eyes dropped down on the flat plane that extended from the band of her shorts to the base of her spine and was, he imagined, just the size of his palm. Her step was crisp but graceful, and his urge, following her like that, was to reach out, stop her, and in some way tack her down. He forced himself to look away.

  “I have a wee dog. Kinch.” She flicked a hand at a doghouse that had been fashioned with some forethought into a corner of the garden wall and looked custom-made. It had been raised off the ground; a little ramp led up to its entrance. The style was Swiss, like a chalet, with gingerbread eaves, shutters on mock windows, and window boxes with multicolored plastic flowers. “Kinch is fixed. It makes it easier that way. And then I can let him out for an hour or two every morning without fear that he’ll run off. Between the time I get up and go to work,” she went on, opening the back gate and stepping out into the alley.

  “And what work is that?”

  “I’m in publishing, actually.”

  “You don’t say. In what capacity?”

  “Editor.” She mentioned a British publishing house, a name McGarr had seen on the spine of Kevin Coyle’s book. And she added, “Irish acquisitions and publicity. They fairly well leave things here up to me to make the most of.”

  Books again, McGarr thought, and he reconsidered Catty Doyle. She seemed rather young and insouciant and all too fey and winning to be an editor in a publishing house. But then McGarr knew little of publishing, and perhaps acquisitions was something to which a person like she might be well suited.

  “As I was saying, I had let Kinch out, and I was late and in a hurry. When I opened the gate here and called, he didn’t come as usual. And when I listened, I heard him barking down the al
ley.”

  Again McGarr followed her, trying to think of something, anything besides the plateau bounded by the crests of her backside. He had even forgotten cold lager beer, plaice Nicoise, and vinho verde. He wouldn’t know what to do with somebody like Catty Doyle if he had the chance—ultimately, that was.

  “It was rapid, worried, sustained barking, the way Kinch barks when somebody’s at the door.”

  McGarr couldn’t remember any such barking, but then he hadn’t rung the bell.

  “And I followed it around the cemetery wall to here. The barking.”

  As the lane at the rear of De Courcy Square approached Finglas Road, it branched off into another alley, which served Bengal Terrace and was bounded on the other side by the wall of the cemetery.

  “Still I couldn’t see Kinch, and I walked nearly to that gate”—she pointed to the lane—“before I caught sight of him standing by what I thought at first was some itinerant or tramp. But when he wouldn’t come away, and I saw that the man’s eyes were open and then recognized who it was, I said, ‘Get up now, get out of that, Kevin, and come in the house and have a cup of tea.’” she turned to McGarr, “never thinking—” Her eyes had filled with tears, and her shoulders cupped, then shook.

  McGarr’s first instinct was to put an arm around her shoulders, but he thought better of it.

  “Where?” he asked in a gentle tone.

  “There.”

  “But exactly. Take me to it.”

  He waited while she gathered herself, noting how much less appealing Catty Doyle seemed to him emotionally stricken and vulnerable than when she exuded the taunt of sexual command. And he decided to exploit the weakness, if only to understand the Catty Doyle who had not prepared herself for guests or the police.

  She stepped forward tentatively until they reached an area where the tall grass and weeds beside the granite blocks at the high cemetery wall had been matted down and stained generously with what McGarr imagined was Kevin Coyle’s blood. He noted hoofprints and the track of a narrow rubber tire in the soft ground.