Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? (2 page)

‘You don’t recognise her, do you?’ Machin said. ‘Weren’t you and your good lady at the Glen Cree Reformatory dinner when Mrs Bloom sang in tandem with Bartell d’Arcy? Madame Marion Tweedy she styled herself then. I’m surprised you’ve forgotten. She had a voice, let alone a figure, that sent shivers down your spine. The story goes that if she hadn’t married Bloom and popped a kiddie she might have made it to Milan.’

‘Well, she isn’t going to make it to Milan now,’ Jim Kinsella said just as the coroner, Dr Roland Slater, bustled into the bedroom and said, as he always did, ‘Well, what have we here?’

TWO

D
ue process dictated that Bloom be conveyed immediately to Store Street station to make a formal statement. To gain a little more time with the suspect, however, Tom Machin sent Sergeant Gandy to round up a mortuary van while Kinsella and he went down into the half basement to allow the grieving widower a further opportunity to unburden himself before he was cautioned.

Bloom was hunched at the kitchen table listlessly stroking a cat that lay full length on the table top purring and licking its whiskers. Kinsella pulled out a chair and sat down. He took off his hat and placed it crown up on the table.

‘What’s his name?’ he began.

‘What?’ Bloom said.

‘The cat, his name?’

‘It’s a female: Pussens.’ Bloom cocked his head and squinted out of puffy, red-rimmed eyes. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

‘We’re just having a little chat, Mr Bloom.’

‘Are you arresting me?’

From his stance by the stairs, Machin said, ‘You haven’t been charged with anything, Mr Bloom. We’re waiting for transport to take you to the station to make a statement.’

‘I was only gone for ten minutes, a quarter hour at most,’ Bloom blurted out.

‘Gone where, Mr Bloom?’ Kinsella said.

‘For meat, for breakfast.’

‘Did you lock the front door?’

‘No, I never do. I didn’t think …’

‘And you left Mrs Bloom, your wife, where?’

‘Molly was in bed.’

‘Asleep or awake?’

‘Asleep.’

‘So,’ Kinsella said, ‘you didn’t have words?’

‘Have words?’

‘Exchange words. Speak to each other.’

‘She was asleep. How could I have words with her?’

‘Nothing then passed between you?’ Kinsella said.

Bloom pursed his lips, full almost sensual lips braced by a spruce moustache sprinkled with a few grey hairs. His head hair, thinning a little from the brow, was glossy black and had probably received attention from the dye brush.

He wore a pale grey suit with a matching waistcoat and a shirt with a none-too-clean collar into which an unusually florid necktie had been inserted. Neither necktie nor collar had been loosened which may have accounted for the sibilant note in his voice, a thin, wheezing hiss that signalled either grief or defiance. We’re not dealing with a slack-jawed bumpkin here, Kinsella thought. Machin’s right: there is something fishy about the Jew, some aspect of his behaviour you can’t put down to the idiosyncrasies of his race.

‘No,’ Bloom said. ‘Nothing passed between us.’

‘What sort of meat was it?’

Bloom’s eyes opened wide. ‘Begging your pardon?’

‘The meat you bought for breakfast.’

‘Calf’s liver.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘I gave it to the cat.’

‘All of it?’

‘She was hungry. She hadn’t been fed.’

‘Didn’t Mrs Bloom feed her?’ Jim said.

As if colluding with her master the cat stopped licking and, stretching, yawned in the detective’s face.

‘Molly was very fond of Pussens.’ Bloom spread the fingers of one hand and screened his eyes. ‘She loved Pussens and Pussens loved her. Everyone loved Molly.’

Tom Machin raised a doubtful eyebrow while Mr Bloom, shoulders shaking, continued to sob.

Kinsella pressed on. ‘When was the cat last fed?’

‘I don’t see what …’ Bloom began then, with a watery sigh, appeared to capitulate. ‘Last night, about half past ten.’

‘Before you and Mrs Bloom retired for the night?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much liver did you buy this morning?’

‘Two cuts. Seven pence worth.’

‘Where did you buy your seven pence worth?’

‘Dlugacz’s. It’s just around the corner in Dorset Street.’

‘I was under the impression Dlugacz sold only the products of the pig,’ Tom Machin said.

‘I’m a Protestant,’ Bloom said. ‘I can eat what I like.’

‘How do you cook the liver?’ Jim Kinsella asked.

‘For the love of God!’ Bloom exploded, displaying as much temper, Kinsella reckoned, as a fellow like Bloom would ever display. ‘What do my eating habits – she’s lying – my wife is lying upstairs with her head bashed in and all you’re concerned about is how I cook my breakfast.’

He rose abruptly, scraping back the chair.

Startled, the cat leapt from the table and with a haughty glance at Inspector Machin, raised her tail, stalked out of the door and vanished upstairs.

Kinsella said, ‘There isn’t much heat in the fire, Mr Bloom.’

Bloom glanced round at the stove, at the kettle, cold and inert upon the hob, at caked ash protruding from the rungs of the grate. ‘Mrs Fleming used to do it. Clean it, light it, then when she had it going nicely we’d have breakfast.’

‘Who is Mrs Fleming?’

‘Oh,’ Bloom said. ‘She’s gone long since. Our daily woman, she was. Molly didn’t take to her.’

‘Why didn’t Mrs Bloom take to her?’

‘Because she was old,’ Bloom said. ‘Molly never did take to any of our servants.’ Collapsing on to the wooden chair, he buried his head in his hands and went back to sobbing once more.

Kinsella retrieved his long legs from beneath the table and got to his feet. He stared down at the crown of Bloom’s head and, for an instant, felt almost sorry for the man. He had a strong suspicion that the fellow was lying but whether he had killed her or whether he had not, his wife lay dead upstairs and he, at this moment, must be struggling to come to terms with it.

‘Take a moment to compose yourself, Mr Bloom,’ Kinsella said, then, picking up his hat, went upstairs to talk to the coroner.

Roland Slater was a respected member of the medical fraternity who had been coroner for Dublin County and City for ten years and, barring unforeseen disasters, would hold the post for life. A garrulous little chap, now in his sixties, he wore an old-fashioned morning coat with beetle-wing tails, striped trousers and a shirt with a collar so stiff and tall that it reminded Kinsella of a slave ring. He was rarely seen, in or out of doors, without a scuffed leather valise attached to his fist and a silk hat perched on his frosty white hair.

He had laid the victim’s body out not on the bed but on the patch of floor between the bed and a dressing table and had covered it with a sheet. He was wiping his hands on a striped towel when Kinsella knocked on the door post.

‘I trust,’ Slater said, looking round. ‘that you haven’t come to queer my pitch, Inspector. I know how you Metropolitan boys love to make mountains out of molehills. If Machin needs a warrant to arrest on suspicion of murder, I’ll sign one here and now. Charge the fellow and trot him down to the station to make his statement. He can argue his case to the magistrate tomorrow. There’s no question the woman was killed by two, possibly three violent blows to the face with what appears to be a heavy china teapot. The penetrative wound to the eye socket was almost certainly fatal but we’ll leave it to an expert to decide on that. He isn’t pleading innocence, is he?’

‘He is,’ Kinsella said. ‘At least, he hasn’t admitted guilt.’

‘Do be careful how you handle him,’ Slater warned. ‘We don’t want some nit-picking barrister insisting that his client’s rights were infringed because we failed to follow the letter of the law. Blood on his clothing or person?’

‘No obvious traces, no.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘He says he left his wife in bed asleep while he went out to buy meat for breakfast. He was gone, he claims, no longer than a quarter hour. He returned to find his wife dead. He ran out on to the doorstep and shouted for assistance. One of Machin’s constables, who happened to be nearby, responded.’

‘I assume you’ll speak to the butcher and the neighbours?’

‘Machin’s men will take statements, I don’t doubt.’

‘Damage to the door lock or evidence of forced entry?’

‘Bloom left the door unlocked,’ Kinsella said.

‘How convenient.’ Slater stuffed the towel into the valise and buckled the straps. ‘It’s as plain as the nose on your face that the fellow’s guilty. Had an argument, lost his temper, struck her with a handy implement then ran shrieking into the street, appalled at what he’d done. He’ll probably get away with manslaughter, particularly if she gave him cause. Women as celebrated as Marion Bloom …’

‘Ah!’ Kinsella said. ‘You recognised her.’

‘I may be knocking on in years, Kinsella, but I do keep in touch with what’s going on in the city. Marion Bloom was one of our best-known concert sopranos. I heard her in the Ulster Hall in Belfast last August and she was superb.’ He glanced down at the shrouded corpse and wrinkled his nose. ‘Well, she’s singing with the angels now, alas, and they, no doubt, will be glad to have her.’

‘You will call for a post mortem, of course?’

‘Haven’t I just said so?’ Slater said. ‘What I’m not going to do is present the poor woman’s corpse to an inquest jury. It’ll be enough of a show as it is. Every damned hack in the country will be clamouring for copy. Well, the vultures will just have to make do with photographs. Beautiful woman, celebrated concert artiste slaughtered by a jealous husband, and a Jew to boot. Dear God, they’ll have a field day.’

‘Jealous husband?’ Jim Kinsella said.

‘Hah!’ Dr Slater snorted. ‘Not only are you a musical philistine, Kinsella, you don’t even keep up with the gossip.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Rumours abound, lad, rumours abound.’

‘You mean Marion Bloom had a lover?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘Did Bloom know about it?’

‘If he didn’t he must be the only person in Dublin who didn’t.’

‘I don’t suppose it would be proper for you to drop me a hint?’

‘Certainly not.’ Dr Slater adjusted his silk hat and hoisted the valise into his arms. ‘You might, however, want to have a quiet word with Hugh Boylan.’

‘Blazes Boylan?’

‘Ah-hah! You’ve heard of
him
, I see.’

‘Who hasn’t?’ Jim Kinsella said.

By the time the meat wagon arrived to convey Marion Bloom’s body to the mortuary in Store Street quite a crowd of spectators had gathered to goggle at the goings-on. Nurses from the training house of the Mater Hospital, a couple of noviciate nuns on the loose from the Dominican Convent and the matron of the Protestant Female Orphan School, from whose office Sergeant Gandy had made his telephone call, rubbed shoulders with window-cleaners, milkmen, postmen, tradesmen and the Blooms’ neighbours who, now that the cat was out of the bag, had cast discretion aside.

The deceased had been celebrated for a variety of reasons but piety wasn’t one of them. Why Father Congleton from St Brendan’s was invited not only to accompany the corpse from the house but to ride with it in the curtained wagon along with Dr Slater was a point worthy of discussion.

As soon as the doors at the rear of the wagon closed and the horse took two steps forward the buzz began.

‘I thought she was a Jew?’

‘No, he’s the Jew.’

‘Isn’t he a freemason?’

‘He’s that too.’

‘I never saw her at mass, did you?’

‘I heard she was forbid the mass.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Father Lafferty, I think.’

‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘She had a fine voice, all the same.’

‘She’ll be singing sweet enough in heaven, I’ll wager, when they put the rope around his neck.’

‘What? Are they saying he murdered her?’

‘They’re not taking him away for nothing, are they now?’

‘Mr Bloom struck me as a quiet sort of gentleman.’

‘Sure and aren’t the quiet ones always the worst?’

‘Is that him?’

‘Ay, that’s Bloom.’

Head lowered, hat slanted over his brow, a knitted scarf hiding half his face, Leopold Bloom emerged from the gloom of the hallway flanked by a constable and a bearded sergeant. He had been cautioned and charged with suspicion of murder under a coroner’s warrant and would be held in custody prior to appearing before a magistrate to answer the indictment.

Unfortunately the police vehicle, a black van with no windows, had been delayed by a coal cart slewed across the mouth of Nelson Street. The brief hiatus allowed the two journalists who resided respectively at numbers 13 and 16 Eccles Street to sprint from their houses and, shouldering through the crowd, fire questions at the bewildered Bloom who, as an employee of the
Freeman’s Journal,
they regarded as a colleague of sorts.

‘Did you catch her in the act, Poldy?’

‘Did she beg for mercy?

‘Did you use an axe or a hammer?’

‘What was Molly wearing? Was she in her nightclothes?’

‘What were her last words, Poldy?’

‘Did she beg for mercy?’

‘Five quid for an exclusive statement, Mr Bloom.’

‘I’ll make that ten,’ bawled a young man from the
Dublin Morning Star
who, to the chagrin of his peers, hurled himself from a hired cab and advanced on Bloom waving a fistful of notes. ‘Ten, cash in hand, for your side of the story, Mr Bloom.’

‘How about twenty for a thick ear?’ Sergeant Gandy growled, giving the cocky young reporter a nudge with his forearm and, nimbly for such a large man, placing himself before the suspect. ‘Stand back, all of you. Stand back.’

It was less the voice of authority than the appearance of six burly constables that caused the crowd, including the gentlemen of the press, to retreat while the constables formed a double line, like a guard of honour, from doorstep to pavement’s edge and Mr Bloom, not bloody but certainly bowed, was hoisted up into the Black Maria and swiftly whisked away.

‘How the devil did they get here so quickly?’ Kinsella said. ‘The Dublin grapevine is famously resourceful but the woman’s only been dead for a couple of hours and they’re already queuing up to see her hubby hanged.’