The Eloquence of the Dead

by Conor Brady

  ‘He … sort of … staggered. He was bleeding. But he came at me again. He was shouting and cursing … foul language. I hit him a second time … and I think maybe a third. He collapsed back into his chair and he … he was there. He wasn’t dead though. He was bleeding a lot but he was breathing.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘I … I’m not sure what happened next. I was afraid that he would attack me again, that he would get up from the chair. There was a piece of rope on a shelf nearby. I took it and wrapped it around his arms and tied it behind the chair so that he couldn’t move. You see, he had the coins. I needed to get them back.’

  ‘Did you not think to get help, Mrs Clinton?’ Johnny Vizzard asked.

  ‘I was in a panic … I didn’t know what to do. I was going to call for help. Then the door opened, and the woman came in. She saw what had happened.’

  ‘The woman, you mean Pollock’s sister, Phoebe?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘I didn’t know she was his sister. I thought she just worked in the shop. She saw what had happened, and I thought she would attack me too … or run for the police. But she didn’t. She just looked at him and then back at me and she asked what happened. So I told her. She said to me, “Go home and don’t tell anyone.” I don’t really remember leaving or anything else. The next thing I knew, I was at home. I had blood on my coat and on my dress, so I burned them in the fire.’

  ‘You took the coins with you?’ Swallow said.

  ‘I realised when I got home that, yes, I had taken them.’

  ‘You had sufficient presence of mind to do that.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I had or didn’t have. But yes, I took them home.’

  ‘Did you not feel it necessary to inquire, perhaps the following day, what had happened to the man?’ Vizzard asked.

  ‘Well, there wasn’t anything in the newspapers. And I went down to Cornmarket two days later to see what had happened. All I could see was that the pawnbrokers was open and doing business. I assumed that the man was all right, even though I knew he was injured. I thought he was afraid of saying or doing anything about what had happened because it had been his … attack … on me that caused him to be injured.’

  ‘You went back to the scene?’ Vizzard prompted her again.

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t go into the place. I couldn’t. I knew there was a jeweller’s on Capel Street. Greenberg’s. And then I went to the shop on Capel Street and I sold the coins to the woman there.’

  ‘When did you know that Ambrose Pollock was dead?’

  ‘I only understood what was happening when I read that his body had been discovered a week later. Then my husband found that the coins were missing. He was so angry that I had to tell him what had happened.’

  ‘Did he not suggest that you should go to the police at that stage?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘He became hysterical. He said that if the police got involved they’d find out about everything and that he would be a dead man. He said I would be in danger too, and the children.’

  ‘What do mean when you say the police would find out about everything?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘Arthur … told me what had been going on. He said he and the others had been making false claims for land to be purchased for the government. But he had been greedy. He had been making his own profits on the side by taking valuables from the houses and the estates that were being redistributed. He was taking silver, coins, good paintings, furniture, and he was selling it to Ambrose Pollock. Mr Pollock had an exporting business to London, it seems.’

  ‘False claims for land?’ Swallow asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘I can understand that your husband wouldn’t want the police involved,’ Johnny Vizzard said. ‘But if you felt yourself and family to be in such danger, would it not have been better to tell them?’

  ‘I thought about it. I said it to Arthur. He said the police couldn’t protect us. That what he was involved in went higher than the police. He persuaded me that our only hope was to disappear. So we went to my mother’s, down in Meath.’

  ‘Who are the people who were involved with your husband in this … enterprise?’ Swallow asked.

  ‘I … really don’t know … I think he said there were quite a few people involved in the paperwork. I suppose that’s how things are done officially. Arthur said he wasn’t the only one doing it.’

  ‘Do you know any names?’

  ‘No. He never told me,’ she said wearily.

  Mossop’s notes by now ran to many pages. Swallow saw that Grace Clinton was exhausted. She had probably told them what she could.

  He stood.

  ‘Mrs Clinton, I’m going to charge you in connection with the death of Ambrose Pollock. I’ll arrange for you to be transferred to Kilmainham Jail. The conditions for women there are safe and reasonably comfortable. Is there anything that you would like us to do for you?’

  ‘You could have someone notify my mother of what’s happened.’

  ‘Of course. Would you like me to arrange for your children to visit you?’

  ‘No, not at the present. They’re safe with my mother for the moment.’

  Swallow nodded to Vizzard to send for the car to transfer her to Kilmainham. At the same moment, Mick Feore put his head around the door.

  ‘We’ve finished up at the bank, Skipper. And we have the information you need, whenever you’re ready.’

  Swallow’s watch was showing past midnight. Ordinarily, with something as significant as a murder confession, he would go straight away to brief John Mallon at his house. But it was more urgent to know what had been learned at the bank.

  He would prepare a report for Mallon and leave it for his clerk in the morning.

  It was going to be a long night.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Swallow sensed something different in Harriet’s demeanour immediately they sat to breakfast in Heytesbury Street. She seemed hesitant and cautious, a contrast to the enthusiasm with which she usually met the new day.

  ‘I have no school this morning,’ she told him. ‘There’s an inspection of school stock, so classes are cancelled.’

  ‘Any plans for the day?’

  ‘Yes, in fact I have. Plans that may involve you.’

  He was instantly suspicious.

  ‘You’re not in some sort of trouble again, I hope. Out to turn society upside down?’

  She placed a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’m very worried about you. You seem so tired and so worried about these cases.’

  He knew he looked drawn. He had seen it in the mirror as he shaved himself earlier. It was hardly surprising. It had been close to 4 a.m. when he reached his bed.

  ‘Fair enough. I won’t deny it. Bear in mind that I’ve had to go over and back to London with a prisoner. I’ve seen two men dead, a woman widowed and a family orphaned.’

  He thought about telling her of Jenkinson’s job offer, but he thought better of it. The last thing he needed was a lecture about being lured into the heart of the Imperial machine.

  ‘I think I can help,’ she said. ‘Or at least some of my friends can help.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You remember at Maria’s that Willie Yeats spoke about the gift of vision and you asked him if he could trace a missing woman?’

  So now, Swallow noted, the young Mr Yeats had become ‘Willie.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, he asked me the other evening at a meeting of the society if you had located her yet. I said I didn’t think so. But he said if we were to ask some of the members to try to vision her, they might have some information that could help you.’

  ‘Vision her?’

  ‘Yes, try to locate her using psychic powers.’

  He tried not to sound impatient.

  ‘Interesting. So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m meeting two of them this morning, and we’
re going down to Lamb Alley to where the woman lived. We’re going to try to vision where she is, whether she’s still in this world or gone to the spirit world.’

  He chuckled cynically in spite of himself.

  ‘It’s a total waste of time, Harriet, though I appreciate your concern.’

  ‘You’re completely ignorant,’ she said hotly, ‘but I’ve seen things happen that have surprised me. Now, it would be especially helpful if you could arrange it so that we can get access to the house. It would make it much easier to pick up some sense of the woman.’

  ‘It’s out of the question. It’s private property … and it’s a crime scene.’

  ‘You could come with us. Make sure we don’t interfere with anything. Or you could send someone else if you can’t go yourself.’

  Only brotherly tolerance prevented him from standing from the breakfast table and ending the conversation.

  ‘I can’t go. And all my men are busy.’

  ‘Give us just one hour. Surely you can spare somebody. What harm can it do? You’re not making any progress on this case.’

  Extraordinarily, he heard himself agree.

  ‘Right. Just one hour. I’ll arrange for Pat Mossop to meet you there. What time?’

  She smiled clapped her hands.

  ‘That’s wonderful. We planned to meet there at 11 o’clock. Oh, I know you think this is all poppycock. But you just might be glad of it.’

  He finished his breakfast, carefully avoiding the dried figs, and set out for Exchange Court.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  The G-men had worked late into the night, piecing together the information they had gleaned from the files at Keogh, Sheridan and James and from the National Bank.

  Swallow was in by 8 0’clock. To his surprise, Pat Mossop was hovering around the crime sergeants’ office.

  ‘The very man,’ he told Mossop. ‘I need you to go up to Pollock’s at Lamb Alley at eleven and meet some people there. Show them around the shop and the living quarters. Don’t let them touch a thing, and don’t give them more than an hour.’

  Mossop blinked, uncomprehending.

  ‘I could take a long time to explain it,’ Swallow said, ‘will you just do it? They call themselves mystics. They think they might be able to help us to locate Phoebe.’

  ‘Righto … Boss,’ Mossop said slowly. ‘If that’s what you want. But it isn’t like you … if you know what I mean.’

  ‘It’s to do with my sister … Harriet.’

  Mossop nodded.

  ‘Ah, fair enough, I understand.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘I think I might have something on Phoebe’s disappearance, Boss. But sure, it’ll wait until after the conference.’

  The diminutive Belfast detective had a rare capacity to pick up connections between things that might at first seemed unrelated. He could see patterns in the masses of information that a major investigation would throw up. And he never disregarded a detail, however trivial it might appear.

  Sometimes, Swallow wondered if Mossop was affected by some unusual ordering of the mind. He knew from his own foreshortened medical studies that doctors specialising in what was called ‘psychiatry’ were only starting to classify such conditions. The man’s capacities for concentration and focus could be unnerving. Conversely, his limited ability to understand or anticipate people’s emotional responses was a serious handicap.

  ‘We’ve an hour before the conference. Out with it.’

  ‘We have this fella Jimmy Rowan, the hotel porter, above in Mountjoy on remand,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘He’s got a record of violence against women, and his alibi didn’t stand up.’

  ‘Sure,’ Swallow said. ‘They found a few wallets he’d lifted.’

  ‘Yes. So he’s on remand for that. He gave us an alibi that fell apart when we checked it, but we haven’t been able to connect him to Phoebe’s disappearance at all. He’s been interviewed time and again, and he’s sticking to his story. He says he never even saw her.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, you’d have wonder if we should believe him at this stage. And I think we might have something else on the case.’

  He drew his notebook from his pocket.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘it’s not that we’ve got anything new on Phoebe herself. But we might have a fix on her gentleman friend, this fellow called Len or Lennie.’

  Swallow felt a stir of optimism. Mossop did not go out on a limb unless he was fairly sure that his information was solid.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  Mossop flicked through his notebook.

  ‘You remember that when we went to the Northern Hotel on Thursday, the first fellow you met was the General Manager?’

  ‘Yes. Barry.’

  ‘Do you remember his name?’

  ‘John.’

  ‘No, his full name.’

  ‘That’s what he said his name was.’

  ‘Yes, but the plaque on the desk in the lobby gave his name as JOHN L. BARRY. I wrote it down.’

  Swallow guessed.

  ‘You’re telling me the L stands for Len or Lennie? Are you saying he’s Phoebe’s gentleman friend?’

  Mossop grinned.

  ‘You’re quick enough off the mark, Boss. You’ve got the ear for accents and you said he was from Cork. So I got the RIC to check the parish registers in Cork city against the date of birth he gave us when we got him to sign his statement.’

  He took two sheets of paper from his pocket and spread them on the table.

  ‘This fella was born John Leonard Barry in 1842 in Cork. There were eight other John Barrys born that year in Cork, and probably every year. The bloody place down there is crawling with Jack Barrys. So he’d naturally use his middle name.’

  Swallow smiled with the pleasure of comprehension. ‘And we only ever heard the staff call him Mister Barry. He’d be the right age for Phoebe’s drinking companion, and he’d fit the descriptions we have.’

  Mossop’s eyes were alight with enthusiasm.

  ‘And he’d have had access all around the hotel without anybody taking notice of him. He could have been up around the corridor by Phoebe’s room on any number of occasions and nobody would have remarked on it.’

  ‘What do we know about him, our Mister John Leonard Barry?’ Swallow asked. ‘I’ll be surprised if you haven’t been through the records already.’

  ‘I’ve got a good bit,’ Mossop riffled through his notebook. ‘Aged forty-five, born in Cork, as you know, no convictions. I pumped some of the staff down there. He’s not known to have ever married, but there’s been talk of some romantic encounters with women working at the hotel.’

  He flicked another page on his notebook.

  ‘He patronises one or two of the local public houses, which is a bit odd for a respectable man of commerce. The taverns are all as rough as a terrier’s arse down there.’

  He turned another page.

  ‘He has two rooms at the top of the hotel, a bedroom and a sitting-room or parlour. He takes his meals in the dining-room downstairs.’

  Swallow grimaced. ‘Not exactly the profile of a brutal murderer. But he’s the only Len or Lennie in the scene so far.’

  ‘There’s one other small thing, Boss,’ Mossop added. ‘According to the local public houses, when he does drink it’s Jameson Twelve-Year-Old, same as Phoebe’s man, as you heard it from ‘Five Times’ Currivan.’

  Swallow smiled appreciatively. Mossop missed nothing.

  ‘I think we should take this Barry fellow in and do a search on his rooms at the hotel. We’ll go down at a decent hour and do it discreetly. The man is entitled to a bit of privacy until we know for sure that he’s the fellow we want.’

  WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 12TH, 1887

  SIXTY-SIX

  Swallow was at Mallon’s office at nine. Boyle and Feore were there before him, waiting in the outer office.

  ‘He’ll have had a report from me last night,’ he told the clerk. ‘I think he’l
l very likely want to see us.’

  ‘Right y’are. Yer to go in the minute you were all here, that’s what he said.’

  Mallon was at his desk, the crime sheets spread out in front of him. Swallow saw the file he had put together late the previous night. The three G-men drew chairs to the front of the desk.

  ‘Jenkinson just messaged me,’ Mallon said. ‘He’s got Lady Gessel on the evening sailing out of Holyhead, accompanied by one of your friends from Scotland Yard. We’ll meet them at Kingstown and take over the escort.’

  ‘That’s fast work, Sir.’

  ‘She’s a very angry woman. That’s good from our point of view. She wants to do everything she can to pin down whoever’s behind the attack at her home.’

  ‘She sounds a formidable individual.’

  ‘You’ll get your chance to make a judgment for yourself on that,’ Mallon said. ‘We’re putting her up at the Shelbourne. Under-Secretary’s instructions. I’m aiming to interview her tomorrow morning, and I want you there.’

  ‘Now,’ he reached for the file. ‘You had a productive night. Grace Clinton confessed to the Pollock murder. Well done.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir. We might have a fresh lead on the sister’s disappearance too.’

  He told Mallon of Pat Mossop’s tentative identification of John Barry as Phoebe Pollock’s gentleman friend.

  ‘I detailed Mossop to do a check at DCR on Barry. He’s at it now.’

  Mallon nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘That sounds promising. We might have got the wrong man in that fellow Rowan, the porter. But he’s been up to no good anyway, lifting wallets.’

  He turned to Boyle.

  ‘Inspector, will you lead the arrest party for this fellow Barry?’

  Swallow knew it was Mallon’s way of trying to restore Boyle’s bruised pride. By right, the arrest party should be led by Pat Mossop. Boyle swelled a little.

  ‘Of coorse, Sir.’

  Swallow guessed that Boyle could already see his name in the newspapers, maybe even being mentioned to the Commissioner as the arresting officer.

  Mallon tapped Swallow’s report.

  ‘Bring me back to Grace Clinton and her statement last night. She confirms your suspicions about what her husband was at. Pillaging valuables off the Gessel estate and working some sort of fraud on the land transfers.’