The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  McGarr drifted through a car park filled mostly with automobiles that bore the logos of Shannon Airport rental agencies. Many of the Irish cars were large and pricey—Mercs, Jags, and BMWs—which caused McGarr to think of the conference that Power had been attending and of which Farrell had claimed no knowledge. Had he seen something about it in the papers? No again, which was curious.

  Since Power’s return to Ireland three or so years earlier, the most sensational of the Dublin newspapers had been featuring stories about the “eccentric humanitarian billionaire,” was the phrase he remembered—with headlines like, POWER WATCH, when Power was photographed raising binoculars to his eyes at a race meeting. POWER SURGE showed the man striding up the rocky face of a mountain. McGarr would have thought POWER MEETING a natural, especially in a setting, like Parknasilla, that was more usual to billionaires. But then he was not—thank Saint Mark, patron saint of scribblers and other idlers—a journalist.

  Stepping out of the Cooper, McGarr had to snatch at the brim of his fedora. The tempest was enough to stagger him, and the small car rocked in its blast. Overhead as out of a cannon, a flock of teal—driven on the wind—shot in a complex weave of body and wing that looked suicidal. In a flash of white, bottle green, and dove gray, the formation bolted quickly toward a wall of dense trees where the birds separated suddenly and disappeared.

  Pivoting, McGarr gathered his mac around his waist and propelled himself at the main building of the resort, which was both more and less than he had expected. Doubtless because of his in-laws’ stories, he had thought the three-story Victorian structure castlelike and immense; instead he found it a graceful gray stone building with large, airy windows and gabled roofs.

  A porter in white tie and tails met McGarr at the door and conveyed him to the office of the manager, one Jim Feeney. “Ah, yes. We were expecting you. You’ve had several calls.” Tall, well tailored, and youthful in appearance, Feeney handed McGarr two phone memos, both instructing him to ring up the callers immediately. One was from Farrell, the other from Farrell’s boss, Minister for Justice Harney, “ASAP.” When McGarr slipped both in a pocket, Feeney conducted him to the third floor where Garda Superintendent Butler was waiting.

  Paddy Power’s face was the color of an old bruise. The jaw was dropped open, and the eyes were bulging. Lying on his back on the carpet with his arms thrown over his head, he looked as if he had died while issuing a final commentary upon life.

  His smile was ghastly, like a kind of macabre guffaw, and the split in the skin on his forehead had added blacker streaks of bloody war paint that only elaborated the impression of wild, riotous, savage laughter. A single white card was clasped in a hand like a winning tote ticket at a race meeting. It was as though Power were saying, I know something you don’t. This is the prize. There is none other.

  McGarr wrenched his eyes away. It was a smile he would not soon forget. Also on the floor on the side of the bed closest to the toilet was a brown bottle from which small yellow pills had spilled.

  McGarr turned his head and looked back into the sitting room at the large, paneled door that had been removed from its hinges with such care that the night latch was still snugged in its clasp. The door itself was leaning against the molding of the jamb.

  McGarr glanced at Feeney, wishing him to explain. At six-three or -four, the young manager towered over McGarr. Bending slightly at the waist, he advised in a low voice, “Nothing has been disturbed. It’s a heavy door, quality construction. The night latch had been thrown, and we found it quicker and easier to slip the pins and pull the door away.

  “Mr. Power had asked for a wake-up call at six this morning. He’s usually…he was usually an early riser whenever he stayed with us, which was at least twice a year when he came to visit the graves of his mother and father. And, of course, today his conference was to begin.”

  “Conference?” McGarr asked.

  “Yes, and has begun, might I add, according to instructions from Minister for Finance Quinn in Dublin. We’ve made the excuse that Mr. Power is indisposed. So far, I believe, his death is not general knowledge.”

  McGarr blinked. So, to Commissioner Farrell and Minister for Justice Harney he now added Minister for Finance Quinn, who had been in touch with Parknasilla. Quinn was even now giving the orders about Power’s conference.

  Feeney went on, “As I was saying, I arrived at the door just around seven. I too knocked insistently. Receiving no answer, I ordered the carpenter to remove the door. It was plain the poor man was already dead, but I phoned the doctor all the same. And, of course, a priest.” He paused for a moment before continuing.

  “Dr. Gladden speculated that Mr. Power had died some time before, most probably in the early evening, and after examining the body and…the premises”—Feeney’s eyes moved toward the medical cabinet that could be seen through the doorway to the toilet—“he insisted I phone the Civic Guards.”

  “And a damn fool thing to do,” said a voice behind them.

  The men in the room turned to find a fourth man, who was as tall as Feeney but older, standing immediately in back of them, his hands clasped behind his back. He had a long, handsome face and gray hair that was thin on top but swept to a rich cascade of silver curls. He was wearing a black vicuña overcoat and a light-gray business suit set off by a pearl-gray silk tie.

  His shoes were gray as well—capped bluchers with blond laminated heels—all polished to a mirror sheen. A lubricious ruff of silk scarf, which matched the tie, traced the line of his lapels. The man needed only a black bowler and rolled umbrella to complete the archetype, thought McGarr, and a different venue. In all he seemed better suited to the confines of financial Dublin than to the chambers of a quiet hotel on the coast of Kerry.

  “I’m Shane Frost.”

  McGarr had expected so. He was the man Commissioner Farrell had instructed McGarr to look up. First thing. Frost had been Power’s partner in Eire Bank, and whereas that institution had thrived under Power’s hand, under Frost’s it was now petitioning the government for assistance in meeting its obligations. Or so the papers had been saying for the last several months.

  “You McGarr?”

  “Sorry,” Feeney began too say. “I assumed you knew each other. Chief Superintendent McGarr, this is—”

  But Frost spoke over the hotel manager. “Weren’t you supposed to report to me?”

  McGarr surveyed the bunched furrows on Frost’s forehead, the raised eyebrow, his clear blue and accusatory eyes, the muscle that was twitching on the side of his cheek. He wondered if a commanding presence, so to speak, was usual to Frost, or had some other concern—perhaps sorrow at the death of an old friend and colleague—precipitated his imperious mien. As Farrell had said, Frost was also from this part of Kerry, and had been with Power “all the way.”

  “Before you listen to this gombeen-man and his self-serving prattle,” boomed another voice from the doorway “would you hear me, who was Paddy’s doctor and, as it turns out, only real friend?”

  McGarr turned to the man who now entered the bedroom and was struck by the contrast. Like Frost, Dr. Maurice “Call Me Mossie” Gladden was a tall man, but he was wide and stooped with bandy legs that gave him a busy, shuffling gait like a boxer angling for a kill: as now in moving toward the toilet, where McGarr could see a shattered mirror on the front of a medical cabinet above the sink.

  Gladden gestured with a large hand for McGarr to follow, then turned to him an oddly configured face and clear hazel eyes that seemed to see best in sidelong glance. His skin was wind-scoured and red. It only added to the impression of combativeness that Gladden had developed over his nearly three decades in public office. Nor had his clothes been selected with an eye to please.

  Gladden was wearing a farmer’s heavy black coat with leather patches on the shoulders and an old belt cinched about the waist. His trousers were made of some coarse green material and had been stuffed into a pair of rolled-down Wellies. In his public career Gladden had played
the wide-eyed-but-crafty Kerry gorsoon, even to the extent of larding his speech with country expressions given out in a thick Kerry brogue.

  But his hand, which McGarr now took, had felt like flint, and he guessed that Gladden had spent the intervening years practicing the occupation for which he was dressed. Not doctoring, though the mantle was not fully off. McGarr tried to recollect what he knew of the man.

  Although returned as T.D. (tachta Dail, a member of the Irish parliament) in election after election from a constituency in the South Kerry mountains, Gladden had resigned, when Sean Dermot O’Duffy was named taosieach (leader of the majority party) for a fourth time. In a press conference he condemned O’Duffy for confounding the economic potential of the country and running the Irish people into the “workhouses of foreign interests for his own personal gain.” When asked if he had proof, Gladden had said not yet, but he would get it.

  From what McGarr knew about the laws of libel, O’Duffy might have brought Gladden to court. Instead he only smiled and said, “Mossie Gladden is his own self entirely. He has served this country vociferously and in one particular instance with profound charity. He remains living proof that, although sometimes misguided, we Irish are a democratic and indeed a tolerant people.” Of course O’Duffy was asked when the instance had been. “His final utterance, which we can only hope was sincere. His resignation.”

  It was a squelch that was repeated in all the media, in pubs, trains, buses, cars, and kitchens the country over, and proved effective. Three years had now elapsed, and McGarr could not remember another mention of or from the contentious Gladden, who at one time had been the darling of the more sensational radio-talk and late-night television shows.

  “Look you now at this bottle here.” Gladden pointed to the brown pill bottle on the floor. “And these other ones, here in the cabinet. Tell me, d’ye know their purpose?”

  McGarr glanced down at the bottle on the floor, the label of which said:

  M.J.P. Frost, Chemist

  Sneem, Co. Kerry

  From: Dr. Maurice T. Gladden

  For: Mr. Padraic B. Power

  Rx: Digitoxin: 1.0 mg. Max. dose 2 tablets

  The pills were sprayed, like yellow dots, over the blood-red carpet.

  Carefully McGarr stepped into the toilet, trying to avoid the shattered glass. Slivers crunched under his feet. The medicine cabinet, which was open, had a larger bottle on its top shelf that was also from M.J.P. Frost, Chemist. The label said it was quinidine in 0.2 gm units to be taken T.I.D., which—McGarr remembered from a bout of flu he once had—meant three times a day.

  Said Gladden, “I don’t actively solicit patients anymore, I only deal with them I had and them what come to me in need. Like Paddy, when he was here. Over in London he saw a pricey Mayfair cardiologist who never spoke him a word different from mine. I was his family doctor and good friend.” His hazel eyes snapped to the door where Frost was standing. “The best, as it turns out.”

  Gladden waited, but Frost said nothing, and he continued, “Paddy had Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. It’s not a disease but something Paddy inherited. A kind of short circuit in the heart. The nerve signal is too quick and arrives early in one ventricle but on time in the other. The patient shows no real symptoms, unless he notices a”—Gladden waved his large, callused hand before his chest—“fluttery feeling. It can lead to atrial fibrillation, which is not a life-threatening condition unless the other ventricle becomes involved, and here did. I’d stake my farm on it.”

  McGarr canted his head to signal that he wished a further explanation of the medical terms.

  Said Frost from behind them, “A fibrillation is a sudden acceleration of the heart. If it beats fast enough, it can seize.”

  McGarr kept his eyes on Gladden, who said, “Why t’ank you, Chairman Frost. Or is it Dr. Frost? For a jumped-up banker, costume and all, you’re wonderful acquainted with cardiac arrythmias.”

  “I was with Paddy’s. He was my friend too.”

  “Which remains only to be disproven,” Gladden said, with a knowing glance at McGarr. When sitting in the Dail, Gladden had vanquished many a skilled parliamentarian with his quick and acerbic country wit. “And tell us then, Dr. Frost who knows so much, what are the causes of a ventricular fibrillation?”

  McGarr turned to Frost.

  “Well, since you ask—they can be several. Some coronary occlusion, or an overdosage of medication.”

  “Like digitalis?”

  Frost nodded and pointed toward the medicine cabinet. “Or quinidine. There’s also procainamide, potassium chloride, barium chloride, or a combination of those substances.”

  “You’re taking all this in, sir?” Gladden asked McGarr, who neither nodded nor blinked. There was an antagonism between the two men that was deep and pointed, and he wondered at its cause. He also asked himself what he was hearing here and from which man. An accusation, perhaps? Or a confession? McGarr too had friends with heart conditions, but in what specific way he knew not.

  “And Paddy, now—which misadventure befell him?” Gladden asked Frost.

  Frost’s eyes, which were nearly the color of his silver hair, surveyed the shattered glass on the floor, the open medical cabinet, the dried blood in the sink, on the tiles of the floor, and the wall near the steam rail, which was bent off center as though having been fallen on. He then glanced into the bedroom at the pills on the floor. Power’s corpse was across the room, concealed by the bed. “I have no idea and, which is more, nor do you.”

  “Think you not? We’re not all amadans here in the Kerry you turned your back on thirty years ago and would with O’Duffy and his tribe as soon forget. How convenient is it for you to be rid of Paddy Power on the eve of the week in which he would declare himself politically and expose you for what you are?”

  Frost’s features had glowered. But he now sighed and, muttering something that McGarr heard as “…your own self entirely,” turned on Gladden a look of encouraging amusement. “Something tells me you won’t be long in telling us what that is.” Frost’s eyes moved to McGarr’s, as if to say, You’re in for an earful now.

  “I won’t, Chairman Frost. I won’t, to be sure.” Lowering a shoulder the better to fix Frost with wide-eyed and deliberate accusation, Gladden summoned himself and said, “You and your bloated sow of an Eire Bank. You and O’Duffy and your pack of slavish jackals are thieves, every last one of you. You stole the wealth of this country and its future right out from under the nose of the poor, hardworking common man, and you’ll do anything, even commit murder, to keep it in your grip.

  “Paddy, lying dead out there on the floor, had been part of all that. But he was a good man and had second thoughts. He knew how it had happened and why, and he had devised a plan to place this country on a sound and independent financial footing, and then return it to its rightful owners.” With the flat of his hand Gladden smote his own breast.

  Trying to suppress a smile, Frost nodded. “In whose place you have always stood. Stolidly. But go on. Work away. It matters not that I encouraged Paddy and am one of the main architects of his plan. How did we slavish jackals accomplish Paddy’s death? But watch yourself.”

  As though expecting some threat, Gladden braced himself yet more.

  “Mention the phrase ‘running dogs,’ and, sure, you’ll reveal yourself altogether.”

  Gladden’s body rocked and his nostrils flared, but like a gladiator or pugilist, he rolled his broad shoulders forward, saying, “With digitalis, as you outlined so knowledgeably earlier. And don’t think for a moment Paddy was hoodwinked by you, who, like your chemist father before you, wouldn’t give a man the heat off your water. He’d copped on to your greed years ago, Shane Frost, and knew what you were about with your carry-on of help and aid and suggestions. He knew and he told me, so he did, but, it seems, I failed.”

  Frost waited.

  “A cock-up you were planning. Some way of confounding his scheme, and how better than knowing its provisions in detai
l beforehand. I argued against you, but not strongly enough. He wouldn’t hear me. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter what Shane and his wrecking crew know, this way or that. The terms of my plan are inevitable and necessary, and they’ll resist them at their political peril, I’ll see to that.”

  “Paddy confided to you the terms of his plan?” Frost now asked with humorous skepticism.

  “Indeed he did, and who else? Who else in this country has my moral authority? And consistency, might I add, from the day I first set foot in the Dail, till the day I denounced O’Duffy and your kind to the populace.”

  Smiling fully now, Frost said, “I’ll allow you’ve been that, Mossie.” Frost worked the fingers of one hand, as though feeling something. “Consistent.”

  Again Gladden flushed. “About you yourself, do you know what Paddy said?”

  “I’m certain you can’t resist telling us.”

  “He said, ‘Shane is made for their crowd. We’ve been friends and are still partners, but experience has taught me what he is. Just another craven corner boy. Apart from O’Duffy, there isn’t a man among them. When blood is drawn, you’ll see, they’ll scatter, and Shane will be the first out. He’ll land on his feet, and Eire Bank will survive.’”

  Frost’s smile had fallen somewhat, but he only shook his head.

  “Good man that he was, he didn’t understand that surviving isn’t good enough for you anymore. Nor is the welfare and future of the country even a consideration. You, O’Duffy, those bastard Harneys, and your confederates have supped at the trough of avarice too long, and now nothing, not even the murder of your oldest friend, is beyond you.”