The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  “A payoff, as it turned out, that added to the horrendous debt that Paddy with his conference at Parknasilla was hoping to solve. What isn’t known is what else those two socialists were paid. If my memory of the cards is correct, for the wife of one there was a cushy, no-show job in the headquarters of now Minister for Justice Harney’s father’s development business, and a fifty thousand pound, sub rosa ‘contribution’ to the campaign chest of the other.”

  A kind of hush seemed to fall over the crowd, as though the journalists were considering what they had heard. “Proof! Where’s your proof?” somebody shouted.

  “I told you. It’s in Paddy’s notes. We must get them back. They should be revealed to the nation!”

  McGarr thought of Noreen alone with the note cards and photocopies in the suite. Perhaps it was time to get back. It also occurred to him that, while politically explosive, the disclosure that Gladden had just made lacked by half the probable force of some of the other revelations McGarr had read in his—what?—three-hour pass through the cards.

  How long had Gladden been in possession of the note cards before McGarr took them from him? Wouldn’t Gladden, a man with a political ax to grind, have pored over them and even taken notes? Why was his acquaintance with them so seemingly sketchy?

  Because the cards had only recently come into his possession? If so, why hadn’t Power mentioned the fact that he had given Gladden his notes? The cards that were found at the murder scene described nearly every other important activity from Power’s arrival at Shannon right up until an hour or so before his death. Power’s visit to Gladden in his mountain “aerie” was mentioned at some length, but not his having given him the note cards.

  Power did report that he had told Gladden about the proposal he would reveal at the debt conference, which had enraged Gladden. Power had then wondered about Gladden’s mental health. Would he then have entrusted the entire batch to such a man? Not likely.

  Or carried them up over the promontory of Mullaghanattin Mountain? Even less likely still. Together the note cards were heavy, and probably weighed a half stone.

  Then there was the matter of the expurgations: the note cards that were missing from the “Gretta Osbourne” heading in the photocopies sent to Nell Power; the complete absence of a “Gladden” heading in spite of the reference, “(see ‘Mossie’ cards),” that McGarr had found under the subheading “Dirty Tricks.”

  Finally there was the way in which that sack had been delivered to the Waterville Lake Hotel: by a rough-looking country gorsoon who was dressed exactly as Gladden had been on the day that McGarr had first met him. But not Gladden.

  Who now seemed to be speaking about Paddy Power’s proposal for solving the problem of the national debt, but curiously McGarr had heard the words before from Gladden: “…O’Duffy and his elitist clique who have confounded the economic potential of this country and have run the Irish people into the workhouse of foreign interests for their own personal gain.”

  “That’s your old, tired rhetoric, Mossie,” one of the journalists shouted. “We heard that from you years ago.”

  “When did Paddy Power give you his note cards?” a woman’s strong voice, which McGarr recognized, now asked over the shouted queries of the journalists.

  McGarr quickly returned to the window.

  “I’ll not take any questions from the government or a woman who is here under false pretenses. I’ll take questions only from the credentialed press and other uncompromised Irish citizens.”

  “Then answer me,” Rory O’Suilleabhain boomed out in a deep, clear voice. “When did Paddy Power give you the note cards?”

  “And where are your credentials?”

  “Right over there.” O’Suilleabhain pointed to a mountain that could be seen to the southwest of the village. “Every green patch you can lay your eyes on. That’s my stake in this country, and I want an answer.”

  Kieran Coyne, the solicitor accompanying Gladden, now turned his back to the crowd and began speaking animatedly to him.

  “Is it for office you’re running, Rory?” Gladden now asked.

  “What about you?”

  Again Bresnahan had O’Suilleabhain by the sleeve and was standing on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “Since you won’t answer that, can you tell us what exactly Paddy Power had in mind for the national debt?” O’Suilleabhain then asked.

  “Gladly. ‘Creditors are predators,’ Paddy always said.”

  Nowhere in Power’s notes had McGarr read that.

  “His plan would have extricated the country from the grip of foreign interests and the Dublin junta who have enriched themselves and are still profiting by the debt.”

  “How?” O’Suilleabhain demanded.

  Kieran Coyne now left Gladden and began working his way through the crowd toward O’Suilleabhain. He too was a large man, and when two photographers did not move quickly enough, he pushed them roughly aside. Like Gladden’s, his face had a raw look but caused by something other than the elements.

  “By writing the debt down for one,” said Gladden.

  “And for another?”

  “If I had the specifics, I’d give them to you. As I mentioned earlier, the note cards that Paddy gave me were stolen by the government.”

  Bresnahan still had O’Suilleabhain by the sleeve.

  Coyne had arrived in front of O’Suilleabhain, and he now said something to him.

  Said Gladden through the bullhorn, “Do the journalists here have any additional questions?”

  McGarr watched O’Suilleabhain’s hand dart out and seize Coyne by the front of his jacket; on a stiff arm he swung him out of the way. “Wasn’t it Power’s idea to swap debt for equity in Irish assets currently owned by the Irish government? Our peat reserves, Irish television and radio, the transportation system—”

  Now the journalists turned to O’Suilleabhain.

  Coyne tried to pull O’Suilleabhain’s hand away. His face had assumed an alarming shade, the color of old meat.

  “Paddy never meant any such thing. He knew it was unfeasible. He was merely floating a trial balloon to focus the nation’s attention on the debt and the narrow faction of O’Duffy supporters it has benefited.”

  Bresnahan said something else to O’Suilleabhain. “There’s now a good chance that Sean Dermot O’Duffy might endorse the proposal in principle.”

  “Now that they’ve murdered Paddy and have made him a martyr!” Gladden roared. “Now that they’ve taken the matter out of his hands to do as they wish!”

  “Again it comes down to a matter of proof. Your credibility is in some doubt, Mossie.”

  More than a few in the crowd began a laugh, which was echoed in the bar where McGarr was standing.

  “You can ask the woman beside you. She and her chief have sequestered and probably destroyed the proof by now. “I’ll take no more questions until that man and woman leave.”

  With Coyne still at the end of his arm, O’Suilleabhain only waited, smiling up at Gladden.

  After a while Gladden turned and began walking toward his old Land Rover that was parked on the other side of the bridge. A few of the journalists moved after him, but the rest turned to O’Suilleabhain.

  One of the men standing with McGarr at the bar window began chuckling. “Wasn’t it of Mossie Rory made the fool?”

  O’Suilleabhain now said something to Coyne, then let him go.

  “This’ll make him, yah?”

  McGarr canted his head. “Make who?”

  “Rory. He bested Mossie Gladden, and him with a bullhorn on the bridge.”

  Not without some help, McGarr thought. He watched now as Bresnahan, turning to get herself away from the media, was stopped by an old woman wearing a shawl. They spoke for a few moments, Bresnahan nodding repeatedly before leading the woman to the Mercedes and opening the rear door for her.

  “And that woman speaking to Ruth Bresnahan?” McGarr asked.

  “Deirdre Crehan. She’s the wife of an old cottier on the Wate
rville Road. She’s probably asked for a lift home in that grand car.”

  “Do you pay Ruthie that much she can afford such a thing?” another asked.

  “The car?” McGarr thought for a moment, then raised his glass. “Call it a tangible, as opposed to a spiritual, benefit of the national debt.”

  The others laughed, but before McGarr could leave, one man took his arm. “She won’t be with you for long, I’m thinking.”

  McGarr waited.

  “What Rory wants, Rory gets.”

  McGarr hoped it was a local characteristic shared by both sexes.

  Leaving by the back door, he found himself in better spirits than when he had entered, and not just because of what he had consumed. Say whoever had murdered Paddy Power also stole his note cards, he said to himself while walking toward the chemist shop he could see on the other side of the South Green. That person had no use for the cards himself. Why? Because he knew what they contained and that the information couldn’t hurt him.

  What did that presuppose? Two things: that the murerer had been sufficiently close to Power to have spent whatever length of time it might require—days, McGarr knew from his own superficial reading—acquainting himself with what they contained. And that the theft of the cards might be viewed as a motive for somebody else having murdered Power.

  The murderer had then edited the cards in two ways. He had expurgated all negative references to Gretta Osbourne and completely deleted the “Mossie” heading. Dressed as Mossie himself, he had then delivered the cards to Nell Power, knowing she would read them and would probably try to confront Power.

  Why? To make it look as if Gladden had murdered Power and had then tried to pin a motive on his ex-wife. It certainly looked that way.

  McGarr glanced up. M.J.P. FROST, CHEMIST appeared in freshly painted Prussian-blue letters on a bright pink facade. As it had on the pill bottles in Paddy Power’s medicine cabinet. And the plastic sack in which the photocopies of the note cards had been sent to Nell Power.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sin Relived

  BACK AT PARKNASILLA, barman-trainee Hughie Ward volunteered for the task of transporting drinks and snacks to the suite of Mr. Shane Frost.

  “But Frost is probably in conference now, and there’ll be no tip,” explained Sonnie. “Let one of the dining-room staff do it.”

  “Ah, it’ll give me a bit of a break,” Ward insisted. And get me away from you, he thought.

  “In your back, sure, when you see all that it is. For openers there’s a case of champagne.”

  And more with a crib and McGarr’s baby monitor, which he had scarcely gotten set up and plugged in when he heard voices near the door in the hall.

  “Ah, you enjoy it. Go on now, you love it. Don’t be running on to me coy and bashful, you’re a lady’s man, remember? It’s what you live and die for. Apart from money, of course. But then the two sometimes come together, don’t they?” It was a husky older woman’s voice with a playful, wheedling tone. There was a thump against the door. “You can’t tell me you don’t like that, now? Tell me you don’t.”

  “But I’ve got the bloody Japanese coming in an hour’s time. Weren’t you the one who wanted that? You know how particular and observant they are, and the room’s already been made up.”

  “Do we need a bed? Remember the time I had you in the press? Right up against the cupboards with Paddy holding forth in the kitchen? And now that I know your secret—”

  “Nell!”

  “Tell me you don’t need me, now.”

  “But this is important. Didn’t you tell me you wanted Eire Bank dissolved? What were your words? The last vestige of that bastard man’s—”

  “Bastard institution.”

  “—dissolved.”

  “But on my terms!”

  “This is even better,” said Frost. “Think of it—a gang of ‘Slants’ at the helm, having bought it from you, me, and his inheritor, Gretta, the very people whom Paddy squeezed all his life.” There followed a kind of pleasurable groan, as though Nell Power had acted on his suggestion. “But I don’t have my key,” Frost added, when he regained his voice.

  Ward glanced wildly around the room. If he got caught, he could say he made a mistake and brought the crib to the wrong room, but they would lose the advantage of the monitor for the planned meeting with the Japanese.

  The toilet? No, that was out, if he was right about what the woman was planning. Even the shower stall might be used. After.

  Under the bed? Not there either. It was all the way across the room and too much like something out of a bedroom farce. Ward saw the doorknob turn, and he opened the closet and stepped in. He began reaching for the inner knob, when the door to the suite swung open.

  “Oh, you prevaricator, Shane. The only honest thing about you is you mahn, here. He doesn’t lie. Or complain, I’m thinking.” With one hand gripping his necktie and the other plunged deep in his trouser pocket, she swung Frost into the room. With her foot she closed the door, then looked around.

  “Not the bed,” said Frost, resignedly.

  “No, not the bed. The closet? In there among your effects?”

  Christ, thought Ward, not only would he be discovered skulking in the man’s closet, he would be charged as a Peeping Tom. He took another step back.

  “What’s this, something I don’t know of?” She meant the crib.

  “I hope that bloody Jap isn’t bringing his brat,” said Frost. “He must have ordered it.”

  “Him? Not likely. The Japanese are men, Shane. They take what they want. Beside them, Irish men are mere boys to be had.” She shoved him up against the low gate of the crib and pulled her hands away. “Don’t move.” She quickly opened the plackets of her shiny black suit and pulled open the jacket. “Now then, down to business.”

  She was a small, well-preserved woman with short black hair, wide shoulders, and the sort of well-formed, slightly bowed legs that seemed to pose a challenge, especially when wrapped in black lace stockings and raised on high heels. And what she was showing Frost now creased the skin around the corners of his eyes.

  “That couldn’t be a merry widow you’re wearing?” Frost asked.

  “Who with more right?”

  Frost reached for the hem of her skirt, which was also short, but her hand suddenly lashed out and caught him smartly across the face, turning his head. “You’ll wait your turn, is that understood?”

  When Frost said nothing, she struck him again with the other hand from the other side. “Well, is it?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, and she hit him a third time, the sound of each slap resounding around the plaster of the room. “Say, ‘Please, Nell.’”

  Frost said it.

  “Louder!”

  “Please, Nell.” There was definite pleasure in his plea.

  What happened then Ward could not actually see, because of the angle. But fixing Frost with her bright black eyes, she moved in on him. “Can I give you a piece of advice, Shane? Don’t ever lie to me again. We make a good team, you and I, but you must remember who has the upper hand. Knowledge is power—Nell Power—and don’t you ever forget it.”

  Ward leaned forward to chance another peek, but all he could see was her back and Frost’s legs. They were pressed up against the crib that was now rattling and creaking.

  Ward felt like a character out of the Inferno, who was condemned to witness the preferred sin in his life over and over again without benefit of it vivifying immediacy.

  Though not ceasing her exertions, he saw Nell Power pull her head back to regard Frost coolly. “Now, Shane,” she commanded in a small voice that was deepened by evident pleasure. “Now!

  Ward eased himself back into the darkened closet wall and wondered if he had switched on the monitor.

  CHAPTER 16

  A Prescription for Genius

  THE INTERIOR OF Frost’s father’s chemist shop in Sneem was far different from its bright facade. After years of off-center ringing, the bell
over the door had cut a deep groove in the wood. A buzzer sounded in back, but nobody came out to greet McGarr. He closed the door and looked around, trying to place the acrid stench that cut right through the pharmaceutical odor that was common to such places.

  Dim, cramped, and timeworn, the shop was a warren of narrow aisles with a dusty stock of trusses, corn plasters, and tooth powders that McGarr had not seen in decades stuffed on shelves every which way nearly to the ceiling. The lino under foot was worn to the wood, which shone in an uneven path that bent around obstacles—an umbrella stand of canes; a case of luxury soaps so dusty its lighted contents could scarcely be seen; an obviously new revolving display of brightly packaged condoms—and led to the rear. There McGarr could hear a radio playing.

  Cat piss, he decided, following both sound and smell. No, cat piss, tobacco, and the unmistakable odor of old man that McGarr sometimes noted in his own father’s digs in Dublin.

  And there he was—M.J.P. Frost, McGarr assumed—asleep in a tattered Morris chair. The cat was in his lap, an ancient wooden radio on a table to one side, and the morning paper at his feet. In back of him was a tall floor lamp with a tasseled shade. A door that led to an alley in back was open. Not even the cat had opened its eyes.

  McGarr flicked back the brim of his hat, lit up a cigarette, and looked around at the array of bottles, jars, boxes, tins, jugs, cartons, packets, and carboys. No space in the long, narrow room, every wall of which was shelved to the ceiling, was unoccupied. Even the chemist’s work surfaces were cluttered. There were no fewer than five scales, one of which looked broken. Pharmaceutical charts had been hung from a wall, chart upon chart, and now comprised a thick mat. The first was dated 1948; M.J.P. Frost obviously threw little away.

  Beside the maps were his diplomas from Trinity, Dublin, and his licenses—every one, it seemed, that had been issued in his name.