When he’d asked her what she’d ever seen in Bloom she’d thrown a tantrum, had kicked him out of bed and told him he was only half the man her husband was. But when he’d turned up at her door four days later with a shilling’s worth of roses and a tray of chocolates, she’d given him a slap and told him he’d better come in before someone took a photograph for the Chronicle and, five minutes later, had been riding him as furiously as Hardy bringing Sceptre home down the straight at Doncaster.
Molly was dark, of course, all over dark, while Milly was fair, all gilded curls and eyes as mauve as his silk handkerchief; an inheritance from ancestors back down the line, probably. She already had a chest on her, without the sag that had marred poor Molly’s udders latterly.
He looked over Milly’s head at fields stabbed by spears of crimson light. They were travelling east, the sun dipping behind them, which was why he couldn’t see the shadow of the train or the smoke from the locomotive billowing over bridges and hedges. Sad light: sad time. He glanced at Milly who was looking from the window too. He couldn’t imagine, not for the life of him, what was on her mind right now. She was no longer a silly Milly, filled with pep and childish gaiety. She might never be his silly Milly again, he thought despondently.
The old farmer had fallen asleep, chin on chest, and the would-be nun, if that’s what she was, was deliberately ignoring him. He drew Milly closer, tidied the folds of her coat to keep her warm and put an arm about her shoulder.
‘He will get out, Blazes, won’t he?’ she murmured.
It was the first time she’d ever called him Blazes to his face, a sign not only that she was growing up but that she wasn’t afraid of him, which, for his purposes, was all to the good.
‘Of course he will, sweetheart.’
‘You’ll get him out, won’t you?’
‘I will, Milly. If I have to move heaven and earth to do it, I will.’
Mercifully, she seemed to believe him and, resting her head on his shoulder, sighed and, soon after, fell asleep.
SEVEN
Superintendent Smout approved his report, the duty inspector signed him off and, buttoning his overcoat and tugging on his hat, Kinsella stepped out into Lower Castle Yard.
The sandstone and granite parapets of the Castle’s towers were tipped pink by the setting sun but the streets below were already in shadow. He was tempted to leg it along Dame Street to have one last go at tracking down Hugh Boylan but if Delaney’s information was correct and Boylan had gone to Mullingar to fetch Milly Bloom the chances were that he wouldn’t be back yet. He might slip out for an hour after supper, for Boylan lived in Sefton Street not much more than a mile from Kinsella’s home in Escott Place.
On being posted to G Division, Kinsella had been obliged to reside within the ward and his wife’s uncle had put them up in one of his shabby properties near Christ Church Cathedral, rather too close for comfort to the dark and dirty heart of old Dublin. Blood being marginally thicker than water, though, the uncle had charged them a reasonable rent that had remained unchanged even when Jim’s circumstances improved.
From outside, the narrow, three-storey building with its cluster of ornate chimneypots and steep-sloping roof looked quaintly down-at-heel, like an illustration from a child’s fairy book. At one time, it had been the residence of some ecclesiastical dignitary but its glory days were long past. Apart from replacing rotting window frames and painting the rusty railings in front of the postage stamp sized garden, Jim had done nothing to improve the house’s outward appearance for, crowded into the decaying tenements that flanked the narrow alleys nearby, lived the poorest of the poor, not all of them entirely honest, and the Inspector was too downy a bird to advertise his gentility to potential thieves.
Edith had done a marvellous job of furnishing the rooms and, with never more than one servant to help her, ran as tight a ship as a man could wish for. Being married to a policeman was not an easy lot but his wife rarely chided him for his erratic hours or the solemn moods that came upon him when an investigation was going badly. And if that wasn’t enough virtue for one woman, she even put up with his father, Robert, who had lodged with them since his retirement nine years ago.
Jim’s spirits rose when he opened the squeaky iron gate, saw the light in the hallway through the thick triangular glass at the top of the door, heard one of the girls practising her scales on the piano and glimpsed in the window of the dining room Edith helping the maid, Noreen, lay the table for supper.
He used his key to let himself in and, as always, was greeted with savoury smells from the kitchen mingled with floor polish and a faint flowery air he could only put down to his daughters’ fondness for scented soap and toilet water. He removed his overcoat and hat and was on the point of going into the living room when Daisy, the youngest, came clattering downstairs, calling out, ‘Grandpa, he’s home. Daddy’s home,’ and his father thumped his stick on the first-floor landing and shouted, ‘About time, too.’
Edith emerged from the dining room, followed by Noreen.
Oldest daughter, Violet, popped her head round the door of the living room and blew him a kiss while middle daughter, Marigold, abandoned her scales and broke into a grand march that he thought might be from ‘Entry of the Gladiators’, though he couldn’t be sure. Edith kissed his cheek. ‘You’re just in time, dear. Soup will be on the table in five minutes.’
‘Good, that’s good,’ he said, then, ‘I may have to pop out after supper, I’m afraid, but I shouldn’t be much more than an hour.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ his father bawled from half way down the stairs. ‘Next thing you know it’s dawn and the bed’s still empty. Is it this murdered woman in Eccles Street? Blossom, is it?’
‘Bloom,’ Jim Kinsella said. ‘I assume you read it in the evening papers. I’m not quoted, am I?’
‘Who’d want to quote you?’ his father said. ‘Where’s the key?’
‘In my pocket, where it always is,’ Kinsella said and watched Edith, throwing up one small exasperated hand, follow the maid along the passage to the kitchen.
His father, impatient as always, gave him a prod with his walking stick to hurry him on and trailed him into the living room.
‘Edith tells me Mrs Bloom was a singer,’ his father said.
‘Yes, she was. Quite well known.’
‘Well, I’ve never heard of her.’
‘Oh, Grandpa,’ said Marigold, glancing up from her music, ‘you’ve never heard of anyone.’
‘I have. I’ve heard Lettie Le Mond sing on the stage at Lowry’s, which is more than you’ve ever done.’
‘What did she sing?’ said Violet.
‘Something about the moon.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t something about Ireland?’
‘Perhaps it was. Ay, perhaps it was.’
Distracted by the sight of his son fitting a key into the lock of the cabinet in which his, Robert Kinsella’s, badges, ribbons and medals were displayed, he conceded the point without argument. Licking his lower lip, he watched Jim remove a quarter bottle of Jameson’s whiskey from among the decorative plates together with two glasses, each of which had a shamrock engraved on the bottom.
Jim uncorked the bottle and carefully measured out a thumb’s length of the golden liquid into the glasses.
‘Don’t break the bank,’ his father said sarcastically. ‘Here, what the devil are you doing?’
‘Joining you.’
He gave a glass to his father, corked the bottle and locked it away in the cabinet, then, picking up his own glass, held it out between finger and thumb.
‘The road to ruin, Pa,’ he said.
‘The road to ruin, it is,’ his father said.
The glasses clinked rims lightly. Marigold, giggling, improvised a snatch of the ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ and Violet, in mock horror, called out, ‘Mother, he’s at it again.’
He waited until they were all seated at the long table in the dining room and Edith was dishing out broth f
rom the big tureen before he brought the little ball of cotton wool from his vest pocket.
He didn’t want to tempt the girls into asking questions about the grisly murder in Eccles Street, though Edith said they were much more savvy about the nasty side of his profession than he gave them credit for. He squeezed the cotton ball gently between finger and thumb and waited for someone to notice what he was up to, which, naturally, didn’t take long.
‘Have you been bleeding?’ Violet asked.
‘What? No.’
‘I thought you’d missed your chin with the razor again,’ his oldest said, nodding at the pinch of cotton wool. ‘What is it then?’
‘I know,’ said Marigold. ‘It’s a clue, isn’t it, Dad?’
He tried to laugh it off. ‘What makes you think it’s a clue?’
‘Because of the way you’re holding it,’ said Marigold. ‘Shall I fetch your magnifying glass?’
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Jim Kinsella said. ‘However, before you go mad with the pepper pot, Vi, I wonder if I might borrow your nose for a moment?’
‘My nose?’ Violet self-consciously prodded her snoot. ‘What’s wrong with my nose?’
‘Not a thing,’ Jim said. ‘It’s a very fine nose, a very sensitive nose, in fact, which is why I’d like to borrow it.’
‘Huh!’ said Violet, not sure whether she’d been complimented or insulted. ‘Oh, very well. Borrow away.’
He rose from the chair and, leaning across the plates, offered the little white ball to his daughter without releasing it.
She drew back. ‘It doesn’t have blood on it, does it?’
‘No, no blood. Can you identify the fragrance?’
Edith stood at the head of the table, ladle in hand, watching intently. Noreen, by the door, watched too. Even Grandpa, who was usually too occupied with his food to notice anything much, scowled across the table as Violet brought her nose to the cotton ball and inhaled. She sniffed again, then sat back and shook her head.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what it is?’ she said.
‘Should I?’ Jim Kinsella said.
‘It’s my perfume. I wear it every time we go out.’
‘You’ve been found out, Daddy,’ said Daisy, chin on hand. ‘You gave Vi a bottle last Christmas.’
‘Does it have a name?’ the inspector asked.
‘Halcyon Days,’ said Violet. ‘Oh, do stop blushing. Don’t think I don’t know Mama bought it for you.’
‘Where?’ The inspector glanced at his wife. ‘Smely’s?’
‘Winterbottom’s,’ Edith said. ‘On Sandymount Road.’
‘Why there?’
‘It’s the scent Violet wanted. Winterbottom’s was the only shop in Dublin that had it in stock.’
‘Why is it so difficult to find?’
‘It’s imported from America,’ Violet informed him.
‘Is it now?’ Daddy Kinsella said, ‘Is it, really?’ and, tucking the cotton ball safely into his vest pocket, passed his plate down the table to claim his share of the broth.
It was still daylight when they arrived in Broadstone railway station. They made their way down the platform, across the shallow forecourt and out through the lofty colonnades. Blazes carried her suitcase in one hand and gripped her arm with the other as if to protect her from the buffeting wind. Even after Blazes had bundled her into a cab and they were clipping down Constitution Hill she nursed an irrational fear that Papli would come looking for her and that she should be back at the station waiting for him.
Broadstone station was the last place she’d seen Papli. He’d walked her up from Eccles Street at the end of the Christmas holiday under a leaden winter sky that, like a cauldron lid, had trapped the din and stink of the railway yards. He’d kissed her on the brow as if he was saying goodbye for ever. He’d pressed two half crowns into her gloved hand in spite of her protests and had waited until she’d found a seat in a third-class carriage and the locomotive was making steam before he’d turned away; another hat and overcoat vanishing into the crowd.
‘Where have they taken her?’ Milly asked.
‘Who?’ said Blazes. ‘Oh, you mean … well, to the mortuary.’
‘May I see her?’
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘No, sweetheart. She’ll be kept there safe and sound until we can arrange the funeral.’
‘My father will do that.’
‘If he can’t,’ and Blazes, ‘then we’ll do it between us.’
‘Where is Papli now?’
Blazes rubbed his blunt chin. ‘They’ll be holding him in Store Street or possibly the Castle until a magistrate hears his case.’
‘When will that happen?’
‘Tomorrow probably.’
‘And then he’ll be released.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Blazes dubiously.
Milly slumped against the cab’s musty upholstery. It had finally dawned on her that she would never be able to go back to the home she’d left ten months ago, for it was her mother’s strident presence that had given the house life, just as it had enlivened all the other houses they’d stayed in after her baby brother had died.
Familiar streets yielded to those less familiar. The cab crossed the O’Connell Street Bridge. She glimpsed the Liffey, like a ribbon of steel, and the smoke of the barges crawling upon it.
The cab veered left and, a few minutes later, drew up outside a building with huge wooden letters pinned high up on the facade. Before she could take her bearings, Blazes had her out on the pavement and tripping up three shallow steps and through an open door into a hallway as dark and echoing as a mausoleum.
‘Hughie,’ said a female voice from out of the gloom, ‘where on earth have you been?’ A second female voice piped in, ‘Who’s this you’ve brought home? Another of your fallen women?’
The gas light in the long hallway was so dim that it took Milly a moment to make out the figures who stood, like basalt pillars, one on each side of a wide staircase that soared up into inky blackness.
‘No, Maude,’ Blazes said. ‘This is Milly Bloom, Marion Bloom’s daughter. In case you haven’t heard the news …’
‘We have,’ said Maude. ‘Very sad.’
‘Very sad,’ echoed the other sister, Daphne, and stepping out of the shadows, placed a hand on Milly’s sleeve. ‘Come, child, let me show you to your room.’
The wooden letters half way up the face of the building had been stripped of gilt by wind and weather. Three letters swung from their pegs and two more were missing, which gave the sign – Ancient Order of Rechabites – an inappropriately tipsy appearance that suggested that the Rechabites had moved their tents to a more salubrious location. The printed card posted in the pavement-level window, Rooms Let to Distressed Gentlewomen, seemed more the ticket, though why any gentlewoman, distressed or otherwise, would wish to sleep under the same roof as Hugh Blazes Boylan was more than Kinsella could fathom.
Any notion that stragglers from a Friendly Society might still be lurking behind the weathered door was dispelled when, in response to Kinsella’s tug on the bell-pull, the door swung open to reveal an overbearing woman dressed in a cross-buttoned Norfolk jacket and green pleated skirt so out of date that not even his father would have considered it fashionable.
The Norfolk jacket growled, ‘We’re closed.’
‘I’m not looking for a room,’ Kinsella said.
‘You’re looking for charity, aren’t you?’
‘No, actually …’ Kinsella groped in his pocket for his warrant card and, a split second before the door closed, found it and thrust it up into the woman’s face.
‘Police,’ he said, growling too. ‘Detective Inspector Kinsella.’
The woman reared back, swung round and called out in a voice that reverberated through the catacombs like the whinny of a coalman’s nag, ‘Hughie, what have you been up to now?’
‘Caretakers,’ Hugh Boylan explained as he escorted the inspector along the hallway towards a slive
r of light beneath the staircase. ‘My sisters are still associated with the Ancient Order, which isn’t so ancient as all that. When the whole shebang upped and moved to splendid new halls off Sackville Street we – my sisters – volunteered to keep this place in decent trim until the lease expires.’
‘The card in the window?’
‘Lodgers?’ Boylan shrugged. ‘A perquisite, you might say.’
‘How many women are lodging here at present?’
‘Nary a one, as it happens.’
Boylan had betrayed no surprise at Kinsella’s arrival on his doorstep and had personally escorted the inspector into the house. He was clad in flannel trousers, a floral waistcoat and a linen shirt, the sleeves of which were held up by garters. A table napkin was tucked into the vee of his waistcoat but, in spite of his casual attire, he still managed to appear dapper.
He paused in the corridor outside the lighted room. ‘We’re just finishing dinner. I assume you know I have Milly Bloom here? If you failed to fish out that titbit of information then you can’t be much of a detective. Which of my loyal friends shopped me?’
‘Delaney of the Star.’
‘Hmm,’ Blazes said. ‘Just because I sent my secretary home for the day and closed the office it wasn’t my intention to be – what? – furtive. My first thought was for the child.’
‘How is she?’
‘Stricken and confused,’ Blazes said. ‘On the other hand she did manage to tuck away a decent bite of supper. One of the advantages of being sweet sixteen, I suppose, is a hearty appetite.’
‘How much does she know?’ Kinsella said.
‘No more than I do,’ Blazes said, ‘which, frankly, isn’t much more than I read in the paper.’
‘Does the girl know her father stands accused of murder?’
‘Oh! Has Bloom been formally charged? That’s new.’
‘He’s being held on suspicion.’
‘No other suspects?’
Kinsella refrained from answering. He said, ‘Bloom will appear before a magistrate tomorrow morning. Given the serious nature of the felony the hearing will be closed to the public and I doubt if he’ll be granted bail, but if the girl wishes to see her father afterwards I’ll arrange it.’
Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? Page 7