In the Dark River

by Conor Brady

  Ephram smiled.

  ‘That’s good advice, Joseph. And it’s flattering to hear myself compared in any way to a young man like you, in your prime. We both know I’m old enough to be your father. Maybe even your grandfather. But my worry is that when I am gone, Katherine will be alone in the business and alone in life. She should have married, you know. There were several very suitable young men of our faith who could have been a good husband to her and whom I would have been very happy to see come into the business. But she would have none of them. Now, I fear it is too late.’

  He sipped his wine.

  ‘Now, let me tell you something that I think might be of help to you. You brought in some stones and some half sovereigns the last time you called here. You told me in confidence that they might be connected with the finding of that woman’s remains in the underground river at Essex Street and you asked me if there was anything I could tell you about them.’

  He pointed to Swallow’s glass.

  ‘Drink up, Joseph. I do not intend to leave an unfinished bottle behind me when I go upstairs.’

  Swallow obeyed. The wine was getting better as his taste buds adapted themselves to it.

  ‘Two days ago, an old friend of mine who is in the same trade in Manchester was visiting Dublin to buy some rare books that a gentleman had been offering for sale in his house in Merrion Square and he came to visit me here after he had concluded his business. So, we had dinner together and drank some wine and we exchanged all the news about the trade. Who was doing well, who was doing not so well. What the coming fashions were likely to be for art and jewellery. You can imagine, yourself. Any business runs on knowledge and judgement.’

  The old man’s voice seemed to strengthen as he relished the telling of his tale.

  ‘So, then this friend of mine told me about another man in the business, also in Manchester. A man called Harden. Daniel Harden. I know him too. He was in business here in Dublin for some years before he went to Manchester. He told me that Harden had suffered a heavy loss last year when a woman in his employment stole a collection of precious stones and gold coins from his house. I gave nothing away, of course, but I questioned him closely to find out what I could. What he described as having been stolen from Daniel Harden seemed remarkably similar to what you found in your search of the river.’

  ‘We circulated details of that to all the police forces in the Kingdom,’ Swallow said. ‘Manchester Police would have notified us if there was a match.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ Ephram’s eyes lit up as he delivered the concluding element of his narrative. ‘There is another piece to the jigsaw. The police in Manchester would not have been told about the theft because Harden is not an honest man. He is what you call a “fence”. A man who receives stolen property and pays the thief perhaps a fraction of what the goods may be worth. He was not in a position to go to the police because he got them from a thief and who knows where the thief got them? My friend told me this.’

  It was plausible, Swallow told himself. If the woman who robbed Daniel Harden wanted to put distance between herself and her criminal employer, crossing the Irish Sea to Dublin would be a good option. Who could say what mishap might have befallen her? And it was entirely possible that it was her bones that had been taken from the Poddle. They had investigated every other reported disappearance in the city without success. But if the dead woman was not from Dublin in the first place that would explain why nobody in the city was looking for her?

  ‘Can you find her name?’ he asked Ephram. ‘If this is the same woman then it may be that we can trace her movements. She would have needed some place to stay if she came to Dublin and she must have had contact with some person or persons. We might yet be able to find why and how that body ended up in the Poddle and maybe even yet make someone amenable for it.’

  ‘Ah, I doubt it, Joseph,’ Ephram said wearily. It was as if the effort of relaying his story to Swallow had exhausted him.

  ‘My friend recognised my interest in what he had said and he seemed to think that he had told me too much already because he was very anxious to change the conversation,’ he went on after a pause.

  ‘I know there would be little point in my asking him for any more detail. I could guess his identity. But I am so long gone from Manchester that I know only the older men in the trade. There are now many younger dealers in business there whose names I do not even know. And I doubt if Daniel Harden would be very co-operative if you sent your colleagues in Manchester around to his house to talk to him.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Swallow said. ‘There comes a point in any enterprise when it’s probably wiser to step back. Maybe it’s best to let it go.’

  At all events, he told himself silently, he was no longer on G-division’s investigative strength. Since his interview with Mallon earlier in the day, he was a desk-man. A pen-pusher. A glorified clerk. And Mallon had made it very clear that he was to stick to clerking.

  The old dealer’s eyes were starting to close and his head was nodding.

  Swallow reached across the table to ring the small bell beside Ephram’s now-empty wine glass.

  After a few moments, the elderly maid came into the room.

  ‘I think Mr Greenberg needs to retire,’ he told her.

  Ephram rose from his chair, took maid’s extended arm and shuffled with her towards the door. He half-turned as he stepped out to the landing.

  ‘Good night, Joseph. Stay and enjoy your supper. And I hope you will call again soon.’

  He refilled his wine glass, emptying the last of the Lebanese Syrah.

  He was listening to Ephram’s slow footsteps on the stairs as Katherine put her head around the door.

  ‘Supper is on the table in the dining room,’ she said quietly.

  He rose and followed her across the wide landing. The Greenbergs’ dining room was at the back of the house, with three tall windows in the Georgian style, looking west across the city. Now the evening sun filled the room with a warm, pink glow, bathing the Chippendale furniture and damask wallpaper and glinting off the polished silver on the two sideboards. The walls were hung with good paintings of the Irish and British schools. Swallow could identify a Faulkner watercolour and what was either a Maclise or a work copied expertly in his style, probably by one of his students. To the right of the Carrara marble fireplace he recognised a still life, depicting fruit on silver and silk, the painting in oils for which Katherine had been awarded a distinction the previous season by the arts committee of the Royal Dublin Society.

  ‘Please, won’t you sit, Joe?’

  She gestured him to the table where two places were set with crystal wine glasses, fine china and ivory-handled cutlery.

  ‘You like my Father’s Syrah, I know,’ she said. ‘So I have another bottle.’

  She poured the wine into the goblet by his hand.

  ‘Enjoy the wine and the sunset for a few minutes,’ she said warmly. ‘I’ll just need to attend to the food because the cook is gone and the maid will be busy with my father upstairs for a while.’

  He sat back in the chair and sipped at the wine, watching the shadows deepen beyond the big windows. The sinking sun silhouetted the great dome of the Four Courts across the rooftops and caught the shining granite of the Wellington Memorial in the Phoenix Park away to the west. Beyond the Park, the eastern fringe of the central plain of Ireland was already a carpet of darkening blues and greys.

  He tried to imagine what might be happening now at Grant’s on Thomas Street. He could not count how many nights it had been since he been there with Maria, waiting to retire contentedly to the big bedroom on the second floor, or watching protectively as she presided over the business of the two bars, supervising the barmen and greeting the customers with a familiar word and a smile. Monday would be a quiet night usually. They would be lighting the lamps shortly. First, in the select bar and then in the public. The regulars would have started to arrive by now too. A few old pensioners from the Royal Hospi
tal would have their usual corner of the public bar. Shopkeepers from James’s Street, Francis Street and from Thomas Street itself would be gathered in the select bar to swap information at the end of the day’s trading. There would be clerks and brewers from Arthur Guinness’s at Saint James’s Gate. Some of the excise men from Power’s distillery on John’s Lane would probably be there too.

  A sense of sorrow started to well up inside him. It had been gathering all day, even as he had sat in the Chief Commissioner’s outer office, cross-checking statistical totals and hunting stray apostrophes. Sorrow seemed to reach into every part of the world around him. It was connected to so many failures and so much sadness. The loss of the baby. The life that would never be. The world that he and Maria had hoped to build together. His inability now to reach Maria in her grief. His own failure to take control of his life and to take the decisions that were necessary, not just for himself but for Maria also.

  And there was just too much wickedness. A clutch of bones reclaimed from the river, all that remained to testify to the life of an unknown woman, brutally cut short, for reasons unknown. She must have been somebody’s lover, daughter, mother perhaps. A brave young police inspector, shot dead in a Tipperary field, leaving a wife and a young family. A statesman, desperately striving to secure the right for his compatriots to rule their own country, being harried and hounded for his courage.

  He brought himself back to immediate surroundings as Katherine came back into the dining room, carrying a silver tray, laden with two steaming plates of fish, a dish of small, new potatoes and another of green beans, flavoured with something that was familiar from the many times in the past that he had dined with the Greenbergs. She placed his roasted cod, topped with its creamy white sauce, on the table in front of him and took her own place opposite.

  The fish was perfect, firm but moist and very slightly crisped on the surface. The white sauce complemented it perfectly. The new potatoes were fresh and sweet and the green beans, flavoured with he knew not what, were delightful to the palate.

  ‘You must be hungry, Joe,’ Katherine said. ‘There’s a second helping in the oven if you’d like some more.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he smiled. ‘One gets quantity rather than quality at the police canteen. But this provides both. It’s excellent.’

  ‘Surely you don’t eat at the canteen very often? I believe you told me that your wife employs a very talented cook at your house.’

  ‘She does. Carrie is a real jewel. But sometimes, well, it’s not practical for me to eat there. Police hours are irregular. And running a busy public house sometimes gets in the way of Maria’s mealtimes as well.’

  Katherine picked silently at her food for a moment.

  ‘It must be nice, all the same, to have the companionship and the affection when you do manage to co-ordinate your movements and you can be together.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But married life has its ups and downs too. You know we lost a child that Maria was carrying. That hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘No, obviously, I’ve never experienced that kind of loss. But I can imagine.’

  She poured more wine for them both.

  ‘I have learned to live with loss of a different kind,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not as acute as yours, I’m sure. But it’s real to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry to know that. I always think of you as very confident and at ease with your circumstances.’

  She laughed but without humour.

  ‘Ah, that’s what the world sees. A clever, capable Jewish girl, well-set to take over the family business. Understands the fine art and jewellery trade and knows how it works. In fact she’s quite good at business. Paints a bit herself, too. A talented amateur.’

  ‘You’re being a bit hard on yourself. A lot of people would envy you.’

  She raised both hands and gestured around the room.

  ‘Look at this. It’s a gilded cage and I chose to enter it. I’ve got an old man upstairs who’s coming to the end of his days. He wants the business that he and my mother built up together to stay in the family, as he puts it. But I’m an only child and I feel I have to honour that. If I didn’t, I’d sell, pack two trunks and move to London, or New York or Paris. Wouldn’t that be exciting?’

  ‘Will you consider yourself bound to the business even after your father is gone?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, unfortunately. People would consider that foolish. But I’ve given him my word. He had this idea about children and grandchildren coming along to run it in future generations. It was a big disappointment to him that I never married, so I want to leave him with part of his dream. The Greenberg name will stay over the door for my lifetime, at least.’

  ‘You could marry yet, Katherine. You could have children.’

  She shook her head and laughed again.

  ‘I’m past marriage age for a Jewish girl, Joe. When you’re on the wrong side of thirty, any self-respecting young Jewish man will think of you as an old maid.’

  ‘Would you have to marry within your faith?’

  ‘Actually, I couldn’t give a hoot about my faith.’ She snorted disdainfully. ‘But I haven’t met any man that would interest me, within or without it.’

  She paused.

  ‘Except one or two that are already married.’

  Already warm from the wine and the heat of the evening, he felt himself blushing. Katherine’s affections for him had been apparent since she was a schoolgirl and he a young constable whose beat brought him each day through Capel Street and past Greenberg’s Fine Art and Jewellery. He had been a regular visitor to the shop and to the private quarters upstairs. He would have long conversations with her father, while her mother would feed him delicious speck and kosher bread and strong Arabica coffee. But he could honestly say that although he was flattered, he had never done or said a single thing that could be construed as encouraging her.

  ‘That’s unfortunate,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Joe. I’m not unhappy for myself about not marrying. Although I worry about how I’ll manage the business on my own after my father is gone. It would be better to have someone in it with me who could share the responsibility.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ he said.

  ‘You know, if things were different, you and I could be excellent business partners,’ she said suddenly and urgently.

  ‘You’ve got an eye for good art and I think you have a sense of what the trade is about. And I daresay the financial rewards would be better than police pay.’

  They sat in silence for a short while, staring at their empty plates.

  ‘Will I open another bottle of wine?’ she asked eventually. ‘It’s such a short night. It won’t be easy to sleep.’

  ‘No, thanks. Not for me, at any rate.’

  ‘I think I’ll have another glass anyway.’

  She rang the small bell on the table. On cue, the maid came through the door with an uncorked bottle of Syrah. Then, without instruction, she went along the room, lighting the oil lamps one by one, creating soft, yellow pools of light.

  When she had gone, Katherine poured more wine for herself. She gestured towards Swallow’s empty glass but he waved the bottle away.

  He knew the last thing he needed was more wine. It would be no more than a brisk walk in the warm summer night to Thomas Street and the air would counter the effects of what he had already taken. He wanted a clear head tonight. There were many things he needed to say to Maria and, no doubt, there were things that she wanted to say to him. Things that both of them had put off and avoided for too long.

  He pushed his chair back from the table.

  ‘Thank you for a very good supper, Katherine. Thank you also for the very flattering suggestion about the business. However it’s not something I could consider. I’m sure there are quite a few people who could meet your requirements, but I’m not one of them.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I understand, Joe. Now, it’s time for you to
go to your home.’

  He stood.

  ‘Yes, it is. I’m going home to my wife. I’m overdue there.’

  Postscript I

  December 22nd, 1890

  Dublin’s winter had arrived with a singular viciousness after a deceptively mild November. The weather in those mild, dramatic and sorrowful days, however, had not by any means been the principal subject of conversation in the coffee shops, the offices or the public houses.

  The topic on people’s lips, in the newspapers and indeed at public gatherings was the sensational developments at the Law Courts in London where Charles Stewart Parnell had acknowledged that for years there had been an illicit relationship between himself and Katharine O’Shea, the wife of Captain Willie O’Shea, and that he was the father of her three children.

  O’Shea had filed his suit for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent, almost a year previously. So the fact of his allegations had already been in the public domain. But had not the leader of the Irish Party, the champion of Irish nationalism and Home Rule, repeatedly assured his colleagues, his supporters and even his friends in the press that O’Shea’s charges were false? He would be exonerated, he insisted. And did not everyone testify to his honesty, his righteousness, his integrity? If Parnell said the charge was false, who would challenge him?

  They had tried to break the ‘uncrowned King of Ireland’ before, with arrest, imprisonment, fines and most recently with Pigott’s forged letters, purporting to link him to violent crime and incitement. But he had confounded his enemies at every turn and most of his supporters confidently expected that he would do so again this time. Few had been prepared for this extraordinary about-turn. After the hearing, he let it be known that he had decided not to challenge the accusation because he wanted to be free to marry Katharine. The court granted Captain O’Shea’s application, giving the lovers that freedom. But there was a sting in the tail, with their two surviving children being placed in O’Shea’s custody.

  Swallow had never seen John Mallon so gloomy.

  ‘They’ll never forgive him,’ he said, shaking his head as in disbelief. ‘He chose Kitty O’Shea over Ireland’s cause. That’s how it’s being described out there in the streets. An Englishwoman to be placed ahead of Home Rule. He saw off his external enemies, but he’s left himself wide open to the enemies at his own back. Christ, how could a man be so stupid?’