Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘Mullingar,’ Bloom answered. ‘Coghlan’s photographic shop in Castle Street.’ Then, with a curt little nod, as if that was another item neatly ticked off his list, he folded a second slice of buttered bread and pushed it, whole and unbroken, into his mouth.

  The doors on the top half of the kitchen dresser swung open at a touch. Plates, saucers and cups were arranged on the lowest shelf, together with egg cups, a salt cellar and a small jar containing black pepper. The middle shelf supported proprietary brands of tea and cocoa, a canister of lump sugar, a wicker basket cradling two wrinkled apples, a box of Beecham’s pills and, towards the back of the shelf, a china milk jug and a sugar bowl, both decorated with tiny painted flowers.

  Kinsella lifted out the jug and bowl, placed them on the apron of the dresser and, resting his hips against the table’s edge, studied them thoughtfully. If, as seemed likely, the shattered teapot had been part of a set, who had taken it from the cupboard and why had he carried it upstairs? If the perpetrator of the crime had been consumed by a monstrous fit of rage, why would he trot all the way downstairs and select an empty teapot – a teapot, of all things – to serve as a murder weapon?

  Stirring himself, Kinsella opened a dresser drawer and rattled through an assortment of forks, spoons and knives. A second drawer contained a carving knife with a serrated blade, two small knives of the sort used for coring fruit, a brass letter-opener and, scattered around the cutting implements, an assortment of buttons and bits of ribbon and a pair of vicious-looking pinking shears: weapons, in other words, galore.

  He closed the drawers, placed the jug and bowl in the centre of the table and, pulling out a chair, hoisted himself up to fumble on the dresser’s top shelf where he found nothing more incriminating than a bottle of brandy, unsealed, and a half-empty bottle of white port of the sort recommended for invalids and expectant mothers.

  He climbed down from the chair, checked the cupboard in the base of the dresser – a pail, soap, wash-clothes, scrubbing brushes and a tousled old mop head – then, pausing only to light a cigarette, took himself upstairs to the living room.

  The living room was cluttered with furniture; chairs, sofa, sideboard, bookshelves, two tables, a pier glass and a piano. He opened the piano lid and tapped two or three white keys. Unlike his wife, Edith, and all three of his daughters, he had no ear for music and couldn’t tell if the piano was in or out of tune. On the scroll were three or four music sheets: ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ was the only one he recognised. He closed the piano, crossed to the bookshelves and, pushing back the sofa, examined Bloom’s library.

  The books were mostly of the sort you might buy from the hawkers’ carts down by the Merchant’s Arch. They covered a queer old range of subjects, though: geology, astronomy, history, science, several works by J.A. Froude, ‘Photography in a Nutshell’, Shakespeare complete and illustrated, Dante ditto, Cosgrove’s ‘Dictionary of Dublin’ – almost new that one – and a well-thumbed copy of Thom’s massive Directory for 1901 with ‘Property of the Freeman’s Journal: Not to be Removed’ stamped on the title page. Slotted horizontally on the top shelf were several novels of a sentimental sort and one title, ‘The House of Shame’, that looked as if it might be more to Marion Bloom’s taste than her husband’s.

  Inspecting his books, Kinsella experienced a fleeing affinity with Leopold Bloom, for his head too was filled with ill-assorted scraps of information about how the world had come into being, how nature functioned and what role man had in shaping his own destiny.

  He left the living room and crossed the hall to the bedroom.

  The bed, minus a top sheet, and the fragments of the ornamental teapot had not been much disturbed.

  The fireplace was flanked by a wardrobe and a wash stand with an empty cut-glass vase propped on its shelf. A chamber pot with a healthy quantity of urine in it was tucked half under the wash stand. The rackety old commode against the inside wall was no longer fit for purpose, it seemed. He moved to the dressing-table, the woman’s domain: powder bowl, sable brush, tweezers, a jar of vanishing cream, a perfume spray with a puckered red rubber bulb, a pack of playing cards resting on a shoddily printed booklet entitled, not without irony in the circumstances, ‘Your Fate’.

  On a chair by the bed were stockings and stays and on top of a trunk at the foot of the bedstead other items of female clothing, including a petticoat. Kinsella pinned the clothing with a forearm and opened the trunk, which contained only blankets and sheets.

  He turned his attention to the bed.

  It was a very unusual bed, large and ugly, with metal rings along the rail that rattled when, knee on the mattress, he leaned to examine the stains on the wallpaper; stains made not by blood pumping from a wound but more likely from the weapon, the teapot, being brought down in a slashing arc.

  Above the bed hung a framed, luridly coloured print of half-naked nymphs frolicking by the shores of a lake. Now, Kinsella wondered, did Bloom insist on hanging the titivating picture over Mrs Bloom’s objections or did Mrs Bloom willingly capitulate in the belief that the picture was ‘artistic’? One or other or both of the Blooms had, it seemed, a vulgar streak.

  Something was missing, though. Bloom’s nightshirt: there was no sign of Bloom’s nightshirt. Stooping, he peered under the bed, then, on all fours, reached under the sagging springs and fished out a bolster which, at first sight, seemed unmarked save for a few dust balls adhering to the material.

  He sat back on his heels and turned the bolster over to reveal a few faint patches the size, say, of a florin, and one larger patch not just damp but wet. With the bolster across his knees, he dipped a finger into the blood patch and brought out something hard and shiny which proved to be not a fragment of china but a broken tooth. He put the bolster on to the bed, removed a clean white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, opened it out and carefully transferred the chipped tooth to the centre of the linen square. He folded the handkerchief in on itself, corner by corner, tucked it back into his breast pocket, gave it a pat to make sure it was snug, then, letting out his breath, got to his feet.

  He had something, though he didn’t quite know what just yet.

  He would instruct one of Machin’s men to collect the bits of the teapot in an evidence bag and take it to the station, but the little piece of Molly’s tooth he would keep to himself for now.

  Constable Quinn had the steadiest hand not just in Store Street but, by repute, in the whole of the Rotunda Division. He had been trained, by a knuckle-rapping aunt, to write a fair imitation of copperplate at high speed because the old bitch thought she was going to make a lawyer of him; an ambition that young Quinn, as well as his five brothers, three sisters, and his Da, a veteran of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Kilkenny, knew was laughable, though they were all too scared of old Auntie Nula to say so out loud.

  Harsh though his aunt’s instruction had seemed at the time, Constable Quinn was glad of it now. As the Superintendent’s chief clerk he had a front row seat at all the dramas that were played out in the wood-panelled office with its plaques and photographs and the Division’s collection of sporting trophies in a glass-fronted case behind the prisoner.

  The prisoner, in turn, faced directly into the light from the tall south-facing window, a sergeant or duty inspector behind him and, on this particular day, Superintendent John George Driscoll seated across the table, smiling encouragement.

  Neither Superintendent Driscoll nor Inspector Machin said much, just a word now and then when it seemed as if Mr Bloom’s soliloquy, as halting as Hamlet’s, might dry up completely.

  If the prisoner’s story had been rehearsed it had not been well rehearsed or – the thought crossed Constable Quinn’s mind – so well rehearsed that it made a nonsense of denial and became instead a lesson in the art of obfuscation.

  It said much for Mr Driscoll’s patience, or his guile, that he allowed the chap to drone on about the domestic habits of the Blooms, living and dead, and the sorrows that had been visited upon them
since he’d met Molly playing charades – or was it musical chairs? – in the year of the short corn and how Mrs Bloom’s father had served in the garrison on Gibraltar, a Major, no less, in the Dublin Fusiliers and had collected postage stamps as a hobby.

  ‘Yes,’ said Superintendent Driscoll at length. ‘Quite!’

  Mr Bloom, eyes downcast, paused, then, to Constable Quinn’s surprise, said, ‘Do you know, I once had a terrible dream …’

  ‘I don’t think dreams are relevant,’ Inspector Machin said, ‘unless you’re pleading insanity.’

  ‘No,’ Bloom said. ‘Really, I did. I dreamt I was on trial and all my friends and enemies turned up to bear witness against me. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, I suppose.’

  ‘Been where?’ said Inspector Machin.

  ‘I went with a friend, a young friend. He got himself into a spot of bother with the drink. It’s not a place I’m in the habit of …’

  ‘You mean the Monto?’ the Superintendent put in.

  Bloom nodded. ‘I have, on occasions, in the way of business, passed through the Monto.’

  ‘This young friend …’

  ‘He’s gone now, gone abroad.’

  ‘As a matter of interest what was his name?’

  ‘Dedalus.’

  ‘Simon Dedalus’s boy?’ the Superintendent asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Bloom answered. ‘Do you know him?’

  Constable Quinn’s pen hovered over the foolscap. He had only a vague notion how to spell Dedalus but it had already dawned on him that three pages covered with Bloom’s self-indulgent musings were about to be scrapped.

  ‘When did this … this incident take place?’ Mr Driscoll asked. ‘I don’t mean the dream, I mean your visit to the Monto.’

  ‘Last summer,’ Bloom answered and then, as if he had given too much away, instead of nothing at all, added, ‘I don’t suppose it matters now.’ His shoulders heaved. ‘Perhaps I should begin again.’

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ Superintendent Driscoll agreed.

  Daguerreotypes of lean, severe-looking men with pointed beards did not seem an appropriate decoration for the walls of a young woman’s bedroom. Kinsella assumed they were ancestral portraits foisted upon her by her father to remind her that she had exotic and possibly wealthy forebears hidden in the family tree. Until he’d opened the door of the room on the right of the hall, it hadn’t occurred to him that the Blooms might have a family and Bloom, for some reason, had said nothing about children.

  The narrow bed was battened down by a tightly tucked spread that released a cloud of dust motes when Kinsella patted it. The water jug on the wash stand was bone dry. There was no soap in the bowl or hairs in the brush on the ledge. The wardrobe had a few clothes in it but they, as far as he could make out, were just dainty little dresses that no one had had the heart to sell. Two pairs of shoes, very small and dainty too, rested against the fender of the tiled fireplace as if to tempt the child, like a changeling, to return. It required no great cerebral effort to deduce that Miss Bloom was no longer a permanent resident in the household.

  He returned to the hall and went upstairs. What was Bloom doing living in such a large house? Why hadn’t he rented out the upstairs rooms? There wasn’t a stick of furniture in any of them, nothing save a flea-bitten mattress rolled up in a corner, a hideous oval mirror, cracked and fly-blown, and in the room to the front of the house, a weather-stained brown mackintosh hanging forlornly from a hook behind the door.

  Outside, beyond the grimy window panes, the good folk of Dublin were going about their weekday business. He could make out the clatter of hoofs on cobbles, the yawping of seagulls, the croon of pigeons on the roof, a dog, a small dog by the sound of it, barking, and the shrill whistle of a locomotive from the Liffey branch line a half a mile away.

  The click-clack of the door plate in the hall startled him.

  ‘Jarvis?’ he called out.

  ‘Ay, sir, it’s me.’

  There being nothing upstairs to keep him, he was on the point of turning away when something skittered over the dusty floorboards like a tiny white mouse.

  Hunkering, he picked up a ball of cotton wool, clean, fresh and white as a snowdrop, and, for no good reason that he could think of, sniffed it.

  ‘Are you there, sir?’

  ‘Yes, in a minute,’ Kinsella said.

  Scented, perfumed, not a medical smell; he sniffed again.

  Lavender toilet water maybe? It smelled stronger than lavender but not oily or heavy. There were no smears on the cotton wool to suggest that it might be a simple lip salve. He was no expert in female fragrances but fortunately he knew someone who was. He opened a pocket in his waistcoat, dropped the ball of cotton wool into it and, as he’d done with the broken tooth, patted it into place before he went downstairs.

  Jarvis was waiting in the hall.

  ‘Did you find Mrs Fleming?’ Kinsella asked.

  ‘I did, sir. She resides on the second landing in the middle of the three isolated tenements in Union Court.’

  ‘I know it,’ Kinsella said. ‘Between the back of the prison and the long wall of the engineering works. Did you speak with her?’

  ‘No, sir. I did not engage the lady in conversation. I found out from a neighbour that’s where she lives.’

  ‘You must be tired, Constable Jarvis.’

  ‘Well, I could do with a bite of breakfast, sir.’

  ‘Can you hold out just a little longer, do you think?’

  ‘Whatever’s right for you, Inspector.’

  ‘I’d like you to walk at an even pace from the front door to Dlugacz, the pork butcher’s shop. Make careful note by your watch how long it takes and record the exact time in your book. Don’t gallop but don’t dawdle either. Understood?’

  ‘Ay, sir. Understood.’

  ‘After that, you may report to Store Street to sign off. Before you do, though, will you ask Inspector Machin to fetch up evidence bags and labels for the remains of the teapot, also both bolsters from the bed and the jug and sugar basin I’ve left on the kitchen table. Have you got all that?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘Tell Inspector Machin I’ll drop by the station around one o’clock,’ Kinsella said. ‘Enjoy your breakfast, Constable Jarvis. I reckon you’ve earned it.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’ The young man grinned. ‘I reckon I have at that.’

  FOUR

  Mr Henry Coghlan, known to all and sundry as Harry, was, by his own estimate, the best retoucher of photographic negatives not just in Mullingar or Westmeath but in the length and breadth of Ireland.

  Buried in the darkroom at the rear of his Castle Street studio he could work miracles on the least likely subjects by skilled manipulation of matt varnish, finely powdered black lead, alcohol, ammonia and a penknife. If Mr Coghlan’s wife, Biddy, ever harboured suspicions that photographic negatives weren’t the only thing Mr Coghlan touched up in the dark behind the curtain she kept them to herself. He had certainly never laid a finger on any part of his young assistant’s anatomy and Milly Bloom, the young assistant, considered her employer to be a perfect gentleman in all respects.

  As a penniless young man on the doorstep of his career Mr Coghlan had manufactured a series of postcards depicting martyrs of the Republican Brotherhood, cards that had sold under the counter like hot cakes but would have meant a spell in prison if he’d been traced as the source. The stuff that boosted profits these days was a deal less treasonable and, though Mrs C still huffed and puffed, Harry Coghlan’s sideline in prints of pretty little girls in fairy costume was well within the boundaries of the law.

  Reverend Stephens, minister of the Presbyterian church next door to the shop, had had one of Harry’s artistic prints bought for him by his scamp of a daughter. Going along with the joke, he’d hung it in the vestry until a posse of prune-faced elders had insisted he take it down and destroy it, an act of vandalism with which Reverend Stephens had refused to comply. Instead he’d put the picture up for
auction at the annual church fete and had watched it knocked down, after a frantic bidding war, at three pounds, eighteen shillings, which was more than three pounds over the price his daughter had paid for it, not including the frame.

  ‘All in a good cause, Mr Coghlan,’ the Reverend chortled. ‘All in a good cause. I take it you’re equally charitable to the poor mites who pose for you?’

  ‘Certainly, I am,’ Harry Coghlan said. ‘They’re mainly servant girls who slip down from Athlone on their day off. It suits them to have a florin in their pockets and a free photograph of self done up as May or July or … do you remember Peaseblossom?’

  ‘A dream she was, indeed,’ the Reverend said wistfully, ‘with her little wings sticking out.’

  ‘Milly sewed the wings out of muslin. Clever with a needle for a Dubliner. I’ll use the wings again when I find the right Cobweb.’

  ‘Fair and slender and shining like the dew?’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Stephens. Exactly.’

  ‘Milly, I take it, is a trifle too – ah – robust for a Cobweb?’

  ‘A little too down to earth. I can’t see her as a fairy somehow.’

  ‘As many things, Mr Coghlan, but as a fairy: no.’

  Chaperoning the girls who offered themselves up to Mr Coghlan’s lens was one of Milly Bloom’s less arduous tasks. She never failed to be impressed by how well her employer treated his youthful subjects, how patient he was with their shyness, which, as a rule, disappeared as soon as they were in costume. For the half hour or so it took to dress them, position them against the painted backcloth, adjust the lamps and take the photograph they were no longer unloved drudges but became the irresistible charmers they’d always imagined themselves to be.

  Milly was sure, even if Mrs Coghlan was not, that Mr Harry Coghlan did not lust after young flesh or, for that matter, any flesh that hadn’t been hung on a butcher’s hook. He saw the girls as they saw themselves and was as delighted as they were by their transformation.

  He was less delighted by the fat wives and glowering sons and daughters of the family groups that made up his bread and butter, or by the couples who posed, bride seated, groom standing, in the studio and who, Mr Coghlan said, usually looked as if they were about to face a firing squad and not a life of bliss together. No, Mr Coghlan said, only half in jest, when it came to inspiring subjects he’d far rather have Archie Montiford’s prize-winning bull, Zeus, or Lady Garrard’s fox-hunter, Morning Meadow, which latter he’d tried not very successfully to photograph in motion using a giraffe tripod and a rapid rectilinear lens on full exposure.