Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

by Jessica Stirling

  According to Edith’s mother, in the good old days the appearance of bathing boxes on the Strand had been the first sign that summer was on the way but, with Easter falling late this year, Dublin’s Sunday dippers would wait awhile to romp in the briny. Even if bathing boxes had still been in fashion they wouldn’t have survived the waves that rolled in with the high tide and blossomed, booming, into sheets of white spray when they met the slope of sand and the rocks at the root of the wall.

  On reaching the shop on Sandymount Road, Kinsella realised he’d visited it once before, six or seven years ago, in search of a snip of bandage to wrap round Marigold’s finger when, so she’d claimed, she’d been bitten by a crab and, sniffing bravely, had insisted on immediate medical attention before all the blood in her body drained away through the all but invisible wound.

  Flanked by an ironmongers and a news agents, Winterbottom’s window struck a colourful note. It was dressed not just with the trademark display of three glass carboys filled with rainbow liquid and urn-like jars with black-letter Latin names but also with a row of pastel bathing caps and a phalanx of jade green bottles optimistically labelled Tropical Sun Stroke Reliever.

  Kinsella opened the door. The bell above it tinged.

  The shop smelled of menthol and rosewater with an undercurrent reminiscent of sulphur. Through a curtain behind the counter the pharmacist made his appearance, accompanied by a puff of smoke. To Kinsella’s disappointment the smoke was nothing more arcane than pipe tobacco and Mr Winterbottom carried in his hand neither crucible nor lightning rod but only a cup of tea.

  In his fifties, smooth-shaven and balding, a cream-coloured linen smock tied over his waistcoat, the chemist slid the teacup under the counter and rubbed his pudgy hands.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir, and what can I do for you?’

  Kinsella said, ‘I’m looking for a particular perfume.’

  ‘For a particular lady?’ said Mr Winterbottom archly, with further rubbing of the hands. ‘Of course.’

  ‘She’s partial to – let me see – Halcyon Days, would it be?’

  The pharmacist’s face fell. ‘Oh, that one. I’m sorry, sir, we’re clear out of Halcyon Days.’

  ‘Really! That’s a blow!’ Kinsella said.

  ‘We should have stock in again by Easter.’

  ‘Must be popular,’ Kinsella put in.

  ‘It is, very popular. Many girls will have no other. It falls within their means, you see. Cheaper than French but,’ Mr Winterbottom added quickly, ‘just as good.’

  ‘Ah women!’ Kinsella said. ‘Once they get something to their heads nothing will shake it. It was recommended to my daughter by some of her friends down this way. Perhaps you know them?’

  Beginning to smell a rat and with no sale in the offing, the pharmacist answered guardedly. ‘Perhaps I do.’

  Kinsella leaned an elbow on the counter. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve many men buying perfume?’

  ‘Not many, no.’

  ‘If you did you’d remember them?’

  ‘Here, what’s your game? You’re not after scent at all. You’re a detective, I’ll be bound.’ Mr Winterbottom rose to his full height which, Kinsella estimated, put him just short of a par with Machin. ‘My Drug Book’s up to date, and those pills was never proved to do harm to nobody.’

  ‘Perfume is all I’m interested in, Mr Winterbottom,’ Kinsella said. ‘Specifically which of your customers buys Halcyon Days.’

  The pharmacist wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. ‘I … I sell in confidence. If you are a copper, I need to see your card.’

  ‘Quite right.’ Kinsella put his warrant card on the counter. ‘Can’t be too careful these days. Tell me about the gentlemen who buy American perfume.’

  Mr Winterbottom had pushed the boat out as far as he dared. With barely a glance, he shoved the card back at the Inspector.

  ‘They don’t,’ he said. ‘Truth is, I’ve never sold one bottle of that stu … of Halcyon Days to a man.’

  ‘All right,’ Kinsella said. ‘What about girls?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Are they local?’

  ‘They’re just ordinary young women, or not so young women, come to think on it.’

  ‘A name or two would be useful,’ Kinsella said. ‘They’re not in any trouble, Mr Winterbottom. I’m investigating a theft and have to show I’ve been thorough. Names, I need just a few names to flesh out my report.’

  ‘Meg Cooke, Anna Morris, Davina, her cousin,’ said Mr Winterbottom. ‘There’s the other one, Edy something, but I ha’n’t seen her since last summer. She never bought but one bottle. Came in mostly for baby ointment. She was with the cheeky one, tall girl, all legs and lip who never spent more than a shilling on soap and lip salve. Her name, what was her name? Chrissie … no, Cissy. Father’s a drunkard, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘None of them regular purchasers by the sound of it.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Winterbottom regretfully. ‘Not regular enough.’

  ‘Well, that’s enough to be going on with, I think.’

  ‘You didn’t write it down.’

  ‘I have it up here.’ Kinsella tapped his forehead. ‘Thank you, Mr Winterbottom, you’ve been most—’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ The pharmacist exclaimed. ‘What am I dreaming of? The cripple. She buys regular, has done for a year or more. Halcyon Days is her favourite. Recommended in a lady’s magazine, she told me. Alluring, she says, as if anything could make her alluring. No girl now, poor soul. Twenty-four, if she’s a day.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Kinsella asked only out of politeness.

  ‘Gerty,’ the pharmacist said. ‘Gerty MacDowell.’

  Kinsella thanked him once more and, ten minutes later, was riding back to town on a tram, cursing himself for having squandered the best part of the day on a wild goose chase.

  Blazes didn’t know quite what he hoped to find in No 7 Eccles Street. He also had a suspicion that Kinsella had told the copper to keep a close eye on him. Copper or not, there was something unnerving about entering Molly’s house now Molly was gone. The sense of guilt that enveloped him was almost overwhelming. Everything was exactly the same as it had been last time he’d stepped into the hallway and, try as he might, he couldn’t shake off the suspicion that Molly might be waiting for him behind the closed door of the bedroom, spread out, spread-eagled and demanding his manly attentions.

  If it was bad for him, it must be terrible for Milly. He prayed she wouldn’t go all hysterical. Blood drained from her cheeks and she clung to his arm as if her life depended on it when the policeman, hand raised, said, ‘Not the bedroom, Miss. I have my instructions: not the bedroom.’

  ‘But that’s where Papli keeps his shirts,’ Milly complained.

  ‘With the officer’s permission,’ Blazes said. ‘I’ll fetch ’em.’

  ‘But you don’t know where they are,’ said Milly.

  Blazes met the constable’s eye. The copper hesitated, nodded, stepped forward, snared Milly by the arm and, using no more force than necessary, prevented her darting past him while Blazes, seizing the opportunity, opened the bedroom door and slipped into the room. With Milly’s plaintive cry, a wavering note around the range of middle C, ringing in his ears, he closed the door behind him.

  He waited motionless, backside pressed against the door knob until the sound of the girl’s distress died away, then placed his hat on the lid of the old commode and, steeling himself, turned to face the rumpled bed and bloodstained wallpaper.

  Bolsters and one sheet had been removed but as far as he could make out nothing else in the room had been touched; the chamber pot beneath the wash stand still had Molly’s piss in it. He willed himself to the dressing table and surveyed the jars, bottles and brushes with which Molly had fought off ageing; meaningless now, reduced to a smatter of blood on the wall above the bed, the same bed in which she’d bucked and sweated, hair unloosed, lips stretched as she urged him to pummel her, pummel her and bring her off aga
in. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment then, remembering why he was here, pulled himself together.

  He slid out the drawer of the dressing table where Bloom’s linen was kept; three shirts, three vests and four pairs of drawers. He took out a shirt, a vest and two pairs of drawers not long back from the wash by the smell of them. He laid them over his arm and fished out a starched collar and, from a small box that had once housed Beecham’s pills, two studs and a pair of cuff links.

  Three neckties were rolled up and stuffed into a corner. The black one was stringy and, he noticed, stained on the tip as if it had been dipped in tomato soup. He furled it tidily, balanced it on top of the clothes on his arm then, having seen enough, hurriedly left the room before it smothered him with its memories.

  The constable was leaning against the wall close to the door of the bedroom. He pulled himself upright and, without being invited, relieved Blazes of the armful of clothing.

  ‘What?’ Blazes said. ‘Do you think I’m stealing them?’

  ‘Just being helpful, sir, that’s all.’

  ‘Where’s the girl? Where’s Miss Bloom?’

  ‘Gone to look for her cat.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Next door. I think they have him there.’

  ‘Her,’ Blazes said. ‘The cat’s a female. What are you going to do with the clothes?’

  ‘Find something to put them in. Is there a bag or suitcase we can use, do you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ Blazes said. ‘Try the kitchen.’

  He couldn’t blame the copper for obeying Kinsella’s instruction to record everything removed from the house. He had no doubt that at some stage the items would be listed and he’d be obliged to sign for them, or perhaps it would be left to Milly or even Bloom, but somewhere down the line someone would demand a signature, for that was the way it was when you were dealing with a system hog-tied by rules and regulations.

  He watched the constable go off downstairs. The instant the uniform disappeared, he flung open the door of the living room and went in. He still didn’t know what he was looking for but if Bloom did have something to hide chances were he’d plant it somewhere where Molly would never think to look.

  Molly had been possessed of a suspicious nature and a deal of natural cunning but she was no match for her husband when it came to guile. Blazes didn’t doubt that she’d raked through drawers, poked into cupboards, lifted cushions and carpets and emptied Bloom’s pockets in search of evidence that her hubby was up to something so shameful that it would give her a stick to beat him with when it came to recriminations.

  Blazes knew the living room like the back of his hand. He’d even shifted furniture around at Molly’s request to make room at the piano back last June when they’d begun their regular ‘rehearsals’ for the concert tour. God, he thought, that voice, that lovely voice that blended so well with mine, pitch perfect and sweet without being cloying. He blinked, surprised again by sentiment and the realisation that he’d never again sing ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’ or ‘The Moon Has Raised Her Lamp’ with Molly or hear the angelic clarity of her ‘Ave’ ringing out in church or hall.

  Inside the piano, inside the stool? Far too obvious. He cast his gaze around the room from mantelshelf to armchair to sideboard. No, not the sideboard. He heard the front door open and Milly’s heels tapping on the hall floor. Not the sideboard but perhaps the bookcase. He vaulted the arm of the sofa and began hauling the books forward, tipping them down so that he could peer into the tight-packed pages from the top.

  Bloom’s books, bound black and brown, bruised blue and acid green, thick and dull, closed and impenetrable as far as Molly was concerned. How often had he heard her sneer at Bloom’s books? Dust-catchers, she’d said, full of useless knowledge without a good story in any one of them, sneering because she was intimidated by all the things her husband knew that she didn’t.

  Blazes had no more affinity with books than Molly had had. Dumpy little volumes of M’Call’s Racing Chronicle and the annual records of bloodstock sales lined his office shelves and his bedside cabinet at home was crammed with nothing more substantial than boxing magazines and theatre programmes.

  In the hall, voices: Milly’s shrill; the copper’s soft, male, and placatory. Dante, no. Shakespeare, no. Spinoza, dense as a doorstep, no.

  Four or five volumes at a time, he worked down the shelves, irked by his own conceit in thinking that he could outsmart crafty old Bloom. Astronomy, geology, J.A. Froude’s – whoever the devil he was – Nemesis of Faith and English in Ireland and The English in the West Indies and … there! He tugged out the volume and pushed the others hurriedly back on to the shelf. Four thin sheets of paper, typed upon, were folded between the pages.

  My dearest, naughty darling.

  My own, my one true love.

  Martha.

  Martha? Never mind Froude, who the devil was Martha?

  ‘You all right in there, sir?’ the constable enquired.

  Blazes shook the sheets from between the pages and stuffed them into his inside pocket just as the copper appeared in the doorway, Milly, the cat in her arms, behind him.

  ‘I’m looking for a book to keep Mr Bloom amused over the weekend,’ Blazes said. ‘No law against that, is there?’

  ‘None as I know of, sir,’ the copper said. ‘Have you found one?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Blazes displayed Froude’s volume on the West Indies. ‘This should take his mind off things.’

  ‘He’s read that one,’ Milly said.

  ‘Then,’ said Blazes, ‘he can read it again.’

  ‘Are you finished here?’ the copper asked.

  ‘I am,’ Blazes said. ‘Milly, how’s puss?’

  ‘She missed me, can’t you tell?’ He watched Milly hug the scraggy creature. ‘Olly says he’ll feed her until Papli comes back.’

  ‘Olly?’

  ‘Oliver, from next door.’

  Bending, Milly released the animal who shot off through the half open front door as if, Blazes thought, she couldn’t get out of this haunted place fast enough. ‘Is there anything you need from your room?’ he asked. ‘I mean, clothes or shoes?’

  ‘I’ve nothing black,’ Milly answered. ‘Not a thing to fit me.’

  It was on the tip of Blazes’ tongue to suggest that some of her mother’s clothes might be trimmed and taken in but he realised just how heartless that would seem and, with a smile, said, ‘Well, sweetheart, we’ll just have to go shopping, won’t we?’

  Bloom’s clothes were wrapped in brown paper and tied with string like a parcel ready for the post. Blazes took the book and wedged it securely under the string.

  ‘Do you have everything you came for, sir?’ Jarvis asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Boylan. ‘I think we’re all done here.’

  There being no hacksaws, rasps or sticks of dynamite concealed in the parcel, Mr Driscoll gave Sergeant Gandy permission to take Bloom’s clothes, minus wrapping paper and string, down to his cell, together with the book that inspection had shown to be free of poison pills and coded messages.

  It was still broad daylight, a pleasant, if gusty, spring afternoon. Patches of blue sky showed amid scudding white cloud in the high barred window of the holding cell.

  Bloom was seated on the side of the iron cot. His bits and pieces had been returned to him after his appearance in the magistrate’s court but, having no reason to feign respectability, he had left off his boots, coat and collar and with hands on his knees and face angled up to the light from the window looked, Gandy thought, more like a dirty Hebrew than ever.

  The plate on which his midday dinner had been served had been licked clean and placed, with his tea mug, on the floor by the cell door where Gandy kicked them on entering.

  Bloom looked up.

  ‘Clothes,’ Gandy said. ‘Keep ’um clean for Monday.’

  ‘Monday?’ Bloom said.

  ‘Coroner’s Court, Monday.’

  ‘Oh!’ Bloom said. ‘Right you
are.’

  ‘Where do you want them put?’

  ‘Here on the bed will do.’

  Smirking, Gandy held out the neatly folded bundle and dropped it deliberately to the floor.

  Bloom, without apparent irony, said, ‘Thank you.’

  Gandy stood before him, big belly thrust out, and, gripping Bloom by his shirt, hoisted him, unresisting, to his feet.

  ‘I thought I told you to keep ’um clean,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Bloom said. ‘My fault entirely.’

  ‘Then pick ’um up.’

  ‘By all means,’ said Mr Bloom

  Stooping, he scooped up his clothing from the floor. He knew what would happen next and was prepared for it but the force of Gandy’s knee ramming into his rump caught him by surprise. He pitched forward, the bundle clasped to his chest, then, drawing up his legs, scrambled on to the mattress before Gandy could strike again.

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I won’t be so careless next time.’

  ‘See you don’t then,’ Gandy said, nonplussed by Bloom’s lack of reaction. Picking up the plate and tea mug, he went out of the cell and closed and bolted the door.

  Bloom groaned, kneaded his backside and examined the bundle of clothing that Milly had fetched from home. He lifted the drawers and held them to his nose, smelling the fresh aroma of the wash upon them, a smell that Molly had loved. He could see her still, his drawers pressed to her nose as she inhaled, not his smell, of course, but the clean odour of soap suds. Then, he noticed the book. He let out a cry, snatched it up and thumbed frantically through its pages. He leapt to his feet and, gripping it by the spine, shook it so violently that the binding ripped.

  Dropping the book, he hurled himself against the cell door and pounded on it with both fists.

  ‘Gandy,’ he roared. ‘Machin. Get me a lawyer. Quick.’

  PART TWO

  The Lawyer

  ELEVEN

  Far and wide had Councillor Nannetti travelled in the company of Mr McCarthy, the City Architect, to study Anglo-Saxon methods of dealing with the dead. He had no interest in burial mounds, quaint country churchyards, sprawling urban cemeteries or newfangled crematoriums which were still, thank God, prohibited in Ireland. What Councillor Nannetti hoped to build, to Mr McCarthy’s design, was a mortuary of which Dublin could be proud.