Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

by Jessica Stirling

  During the exchange Mr Devereux had sifted through the files upon his table and, without a word, handed up to the coroner a copy of the signed statement Bloom had given to Superintendent Driscoll. For an instant Roland Slater’s control deserted him. He snatched the file with ill-disguised anger and, flicking over the pages with a rampant forefinger, scanned it while Neville Sullivan rocked gently from heel to toe and lightly stroked his hair.

  Mr Boylan, who had not been dismissed, lolled meanwhile against the ledge of the witness box, pale-faced and sweating.

  At length the coroner looked up. He hesitated, licked his upper lip and then addressed the jury. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘it appears Mr Bloom’s counsel is correct. The point was not put directly to Mr Bloom during police questioning. It is therefore not entered into evidence as sworn testimony.’ A breath, a beat: ‘I’m grateful to Mr Sullivan for pointing out the error and acknowledge fully his client’s right to stand, without prejudice, on his original testimony. I will instruct you further in the course of my summing up. We will move on to another witness and you, Mr Boylan, may …’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘What is it now, Mr Sullivan?’

  ‘With your permission and on behalf of the jury, may I put a couple of questions to Mr Boylan before he leaves the box?’

  ‘Can’t it wait, Mr Sullivan? Mr Boylan will be returned to the box in due course and you may put your questions then.’

  ‘I would prefer to put the questions now, if it please you.’

  The jury members were already whispering among themselves and Mr Conway, making no attempt to silence them, was wryly shaking his head. Roland Slater knew when he was beaten. ‘Very well, Mr Sullivan,’ he conceded. ‘Two questions only and as briefly as you can, if you please.’

  At the defence table, Poppy Tolland sat up and removed his spectacles while Bloom, craning his neck, looked up at Blazes Boylan for the first time.

  ‘Mr Boylan,’ Neville began, ‘you said in evidence that you were unaware that Marion Bloom was carrying a child. Is that true?’

  Blazes had lost the rhythm and with it his bantering arrogance. He mopped his cheeks with the sodden handkerchief and answered uncertainly, ‘It … it is.’

  ‘Are you acquainted with a certain Mrs Bella Cohen who keeps a house in Upper Tyrone Street, adjacent to that of Mrs Nancy O’Rourke?’

  ‘I … I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘With your permission, Coroner Slater, may I jog the witness’s memory?’ Neville asked.

  Though he would not admit it even to himself, the coroner was intrigued by Sullivan’s line of questioning and, having little or no alternative now that he had ceded the floor, nodded.

  Neville said, ‘Mrs Bella Cohen, like Nancy O’Rourke, is the owner of a house in Upper Tyrone Street where girls may be hired for sexual purposes. I have it on best authority, Mr Boylan, that you are a regular visitor to both establishments. Is that true or false?’

  ‘True,’ said Blazes grudgingly.

  ‘Then you do know Mrs Cohen?’

  ‘Matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘Have you in the course of let’s say the past month engaged Mrs Cohen in conversation in respect of obtaining the services of a woman practised in terminating pregnancies?’

  The din from the gallery drowned out any answer that Blazes Boylan might give. Court officers called for order and Roland Slater, with a face like thunder, stood up and remained standing until the racket died down.

  ‘Oh!’ said Blazes. ‘Me, who loves kiddies and babies. I’d never do such a terrible thing.’

  ‘In which case my information must be wrong,’ Neville said.

  ‘What information?’ Blazes said then, voice rising, shouted. ‘Who told you? Was it that fat bitch Cohen?’ He thumped a fist on the ledge of the box. ‘Damn the bitch to hell! Is she here? Have you got her here? I’ll kill her, so I will. I’ll kill her with my own bare …’ The threat trailed off and he stood there, shivering a little, aghast at his outburst.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Boylan,’ said Neville. ‘I have no more questions to put to this witness.’

  ‘In which case, you may leave the box, Mr Boylan,’ Slater said and waited, still on his feet, while Blazes negotiated the four shallow steps and groped for a seat on the witness benches.

  ‘Mr Sullivan,’ the coroner said, ‘do you have a witness you wish me to call, a witness who is not already on my list? Mrs Bella Cohen, for instance?’

  ‘No,’ said Neville. ‘I have no additional witnesses.’

  Slater allowed himself the ghost of a smile and seated himself once more while Blazes Boylan, shrunken and shivering, put his head in his hands and groaned.

  TWENTY NINE

  ‘Mr Rice,’ the coroner said, ‘those steps can be rather hazardous. Would you be good enough to give the witness your arm and assist her into the box.’

  Gerty picked up her skirts as she’d seen it done on stage and, giving the press boys an eyeful of her ankles, allowed Mr Rice to hand her up into the witness box. From the floor of the court the box seemed cramped but as soon as she stepped into it its dimensions expanded alarmingly and she felt as if she were standing alone on top of Dalkey Hill. Leaning a little – more of a stagger, really – she peeped down at Poldy who had shifted his chair to bring her into view. He smiled and nodded and, no longer alone, Gerty lifted her head and faced the coroner.

  ‘What is it it that you have in your hand, Miss MacDowell?’ Slater asked in a kindly fashion.

  ‘My beads,’ Gerty answered.

  ‘Ah, your Rosary,’ Slater said. ‘A comfort to you, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Gerty cleared her throat and, with another glance at Poldy, added, ‘A great comfort, sir.’

  ‘If you tell the truth, which I am quite sure you will,’ Slater said, ‘you have nothing to fear, young lady. Mr Rice, the oath, if you please,’ and Gerty MacDowell from Sandymount was duly sworn in and, for the record, identified.

  Miss MacDowell was twenty-two years old but Roland Slater insisted on treating her as if she were a child. He propped his right elbow on his left knee, brought himself as close as possible to the witness and spoke so quietly that it was all the great unwashed could do to catch the gist of the exchange.

  ‘Do you know why you are here today, Miss MacDowell?’

  ‘Inspector Kinsella had me sent for.’

  ‘That’s true, but do you know why?’

  ‘Because of Poldy … Mr Bloom.’

  ‘Poldy? Is that what you call him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gerty blushed like a beacon. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ Slater assured her. ‘We all have our special names. Do we not, Mr Tolland?’

  ‘Uh?’ said a startled Poppy Tolland. ‘What? Yes, I suppose we do,’ and hastily clipped the pince-nez to the bridge of his nose again. Used to the ways of his master, Mr Devereux prudently omitted the aside from the record.

  ‘Mr Bloom – Poldy – is a friend, is he not?’ the coroner said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he a close friend, Miss MacDowell?’

  Not as naïve as she appeared to be, Gerty said, ‘He’s not my lover, if that’s what you mean.’

  Somewhat taken back, the coroner uncoupled elbow from knee and sat up. ‘Well, yes, I suppose that is what I mean. You’re saying, are you not, that the relationship is platonic?’ Gerty looked blank. ‘Unconsummated, not – ah – physical.’

  ‘Mr Bloom is a gentleman,’ Gerty declared. ‘He hasn’t sought to take advantage of me.’

  ‘I see,’ the coroner said. ‘How long have you been acquainted with Mr Bloom?’

  Gerty tactfully removed their first encounter from her calculation. ‘Seven months,’ she said, ‘and two weeks.’

  ‘Did you meet … what, by chance?’

  ‘We were properly introduced,’ Gerty said, ‘by a mutual friend, a widow lady, Mrs Dignam. She said it was all right for Mr Bloom and me to be acquainted.’

  ‘In
spite of the fact that Mr Bloom was married?’

  ‘That didn’t matter.’

  ‘Did it not occur to you, Miss MacDowell, that it might have mattered to Mr Bloom’s wife?’

  ‘I never met her.’

  ‘That,’ said Slater, ‘is not the point.’

  ‘What is the point then?’ Gerty spoke out. ‘I love him.’

  Steering away from the sticky topic of sense versus sentiment, Slater said, ‘You live at home with your family, do you not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do your parents approve of your friendship with a man so much older than you are, a married man at that?’

  ‘My mother was all right with it. My father put his foot down, but he puts his foot down about everything. I wasn’t going to let Poldy … Mr Bloom escape just because of my father, You don’t find many like Mr Bloom in a bunch.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said the coroner. ‘May I ask what you hoped to gain from your friendship with Mr Bloom? I mean, what end had you in view?’

  ‘End?’

  ‘He could not marry you.’

  ‘He can now,’ said Gerty.

  In spite of Boylan’s half-cocked admission that he had a motive for murder, Roland Slater continued to believe that the love-struck young woman would, if given enough leeway, hand him Bloom’s head on a plate. While the court buzzed with excitement, he pondered his next set of questions.

  ‘Did Mr Bloom promise you marriage?’ he said at length.

  ‘He said he loved me and would never leave me.’

  Ignoring the theatrical groans from cynical pressmen, Slater rephrased the question. ‘Did Mr Bloom, at any stage, indicate that you and he would become man and wife?’

  Gerty nervously fingered her Rosary. To Slater’s satisfaction cracks were beginning to show, faint cracks like those on the top of a breakfast egg at the first tap of the spoon. She looked now not at Bloom but up into the gallery where a tall, sallow-skinned girl with bushy hair was making frantic signals of what might be encouragement or, more likely, disapproval.

  ‘Miss MacDowell, I must insist on an answer.’

  In a whisper Gerty replied, ‘He said he loved me and would take care of me for all our days together.’

  ‘Marriage, Miss MacDowell, marriage? When did Mr Bloom promise to marry you?’

  ‘I think it was about Christmas time. No, it was January,’ Gerty, confused, corrected herself. ‘On the tram home from town. He took me for supper at a place on O’Connell Street. It was lovely, all lovely, with candles on the tables.’

  ‘He proposed marriage in January, did he?’

  ‘No, that’s when he asked me to run away with him.’

  ‘Did he promise marriage?’ Roland Slater insisted.

  ‘He told me I was his angel and my limp didn’t matter,’ Gerty blurted out, twirling the Rosary beads like a little black whip. ‘He said he loved me and took me in his arms and kissed me and no one had ever done that properly before.’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Slater under his breath, and then, ‘Control yourself, please, Miss MacDowell.’

  ‘I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life crying in front of a mirror. When Poldy said he would take me away with him that was enough for me.’

  ‘But did he mention marriage?’

  ‘Who cares about marriage?’ Gerty snapped.

  And there it was, the transformation, passion driven and quite remarkable: Gerty MacDowell drew herself up, tossed the beads on to the ledge, stuck out her chest and said, ‘As soon as we get to England we’ll call ourselves man and wife, and if that’s a sin before God, I don’t care.’

  Cheers from the gallery confirmed Dr Slater’s opinion of the under class. It crossed his mind that reticence and modesty were seeping away from the world as he knew it and that in ten or twenty years his children’s children, the little minim included, would be on their feet and cheering too.

  Surrendering to the young woman’s inexplicable appeal, he gave up trying to prove that Bloom did in his wife to marry a crippled girl-child, like a Hans Andersen fairytale rewritten by that filthy Norwegian.

  ‘Now,’ he said sternly, ‘you’ve heard from previous witnesses that Mr Bloom was not home with his wife late on Wednesday evening, that he was in Upper Tyrone Street arguing with Mr Boylan. Where at this time were you, Miss MacDowell?’

  ‘Packing my suitcase.’

  ‘Are you saying it was your plan – Mr Bloom’s plan – to leave Dublin that very night?’

  ‘In the morning by the early boat.’

  ‘Where did your rendezvous with Bloom take place?’

  ‘He met me outside our house in Tritonville Road.’

  ‘Your parents were asleep, I assume.’

  ‘I said goodbye to my mother.’

  ‘Didn’t she try to stop you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Drunk,’ said Gerty scathingly, ‘and snoring.’

  ‘Did Mr Bloom have a bag or a suitcase?’

  ‘A small suitcase.’

  ‘What happened to that suitcase?’ Slater asked.

  ‘It’s hid under my bed,’ Gerty answered.

  ‘We may take it that Mr Bloom’s plan to leave Dublin did not work out as intended. You must tell the court exactly what you did after you met Mr Bloom at … what hour of the night?’

  ‘Half past one.’

  ‘Six hours, on estimate, before the sailing. Where did you go and what did you do in that period of time?’

  ‘Poldy said it wasn’t safe to go to a hotel. He was frightened somebody would catch up with us. He said he might be able to find a room somewhere in a house where nobody would think to look, but that fell through. He said we would wait by the dockers’ coffee stall on the Quay until we could board the boat.

  ‘That isn’t what happened, is it?’

  ‘No. At the last minute he said he had to go back to Eccles Street,’ Gerty said. ‘He wanted me to wait for him on the Quay but I was frightened so he took me with him.’

  ‘Did Mr Bloom tell you why he felt impelled to return to Eccles Street?’ Slater said.

  ‘To make sure Mrs Bloom was safe.’

  ‘Safe?’ said Roland Slater, frowning. ‘Safe from what?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘What time did you reach Eccles Street?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It was a long walk. We had to stop now and then because my foot … because I was tired. I think it would be about three o’clock or a bit after.’

  ‘Why didn’t you – Mr Bloom, I mean – hire a cab?’

  ‘Poldy didn’t want to leave a trail in case we were followed.’

  ‘Followed? By whom?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  If Boylan’s wits had been dulled by alcohol, Miss MacDowell’s had been sharpened by devotion. She gave no appearance now of cracking.

  ‘When you arrived at Number 7 Eccles Street did Mr Bloom unlock the door with his key?’ Slater asked.

  ‘No, the door wasn’t locked.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Poldy was surprised too, frightened, I think.’ Gerty went on unprompted, ‘There was a light on in the hallway. We went upstairs to an empty room. He put down the luggage and told me not to come downstairs until he called for me. I sat on the floor. I was tired and I needed to rest.’

  ‘How long were you alone there?’ Slater asked.

  ‘About three or four minutes.’

  ‘Did you hear anything while you waited, any unusual noises?’

  ‘I heard a cry. More of a shout.’

  ‘What sort of a shout?’

  ‘Just a shout, no words.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I got up from the floor. I was frightened.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘A minute or two after, Poldy came upstairs. He was shaking like a leaf. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, “Something terrible has happened.”’

  ‘Did he say what i
t was?’

  ‘No. He sat on the floor and put his head in his hands. When I sat down beside him he put his arms about me. He was crying. Eventually he got up again and told me we wouldn’t be going to Liverpool that morning.’

  ‘Did you see upon Mr Bloom any sign of blood?’

  ‘No, no sign of blood,’ Gerty said. ‘He told me to stay where I was then he went downstairs again.’

  ‘How long was Mr Bloom gone this time?’

  ‘Ten minutes, maybe.’

  ‘Did you hear any further sounds from downstairs?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘When Mr Bloom returned …’

  ‘Wait,’ said Gerty. ‘I haven’t told you everything.’

  ‘What,’ said Slater, ‘haven’t you told us, Miss MacDowell?’

  ‘I went to the middle of the stairs and looked down into the hall to see if I could find Poldy and I saw someone come out of the room at the far back of the house.’

  ‘Mr Bloom, you mean?’

  ‘No, Poldy was in the bedroom with the door closed.’

  ‘This man in the hallway – I assume it was a man – did he see you, Miss MacDowell?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What did he do, this man?’

  ‘He stopped outside the bedroom door for a second then went very quiet down the hall to the front door. He bent down and put a hand over the metal thing at the bottom of the door and reached up and opened the door. Then he went outside and closed the door.’

  ‘There was a light in the hall, you say?’

  ‘The gas was low but it was light enough to see by,’ Gerty said. ‘I didn’t want Poldy to think I was prying. I was scared the other man might come back so I went upstairs to the empty room again. When Poldy came for me he was crying but when I told him I’d seen a man in the hall he stopped crying. He went to the window and looked out then he took our suitcases down to the hall.’

  ‘Was the bedroom door open at this stage?’

  ‘Closed,’ Gerty said. ‘It was closed.’