Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom?

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘Mr Bloom, when did you last see your wife alive?’

  ‘About half past seven on the morning of 9th March.’

  ‘Can you be more precise?’

  ‘She was still in bed, still asleep.’

  ‘I mean,’ Slater said, ‘as to time.’

  ‘I left the house about … I returned about ten minutes to eight. No, that’s right, if not to the minute: half past seven.’

  ‘She was in bed and asleep when you left the house?’

  ‘She was.’

  ‘You left the house for what purpose?’

  ‘To buy meat at Dlugacz shop in Dorset Street.’

  ‘When did you return to number 7 Eccles Street?’

  ‘At ten minutes to eight.’

  ‘And what, Mr Bloom, did you find?’

  ‘I found her … found my wife dead in bed.’

  ‘How can you be sure she was dead?’

  ‘She wasn’t breathing.’

  In the rear of the gallery some fool tittered. Dr Slater hoisted himself up by his arms and, half standing, glared at the culprit. With evidence regarding the instrument of death – a teapot – looming, the warning that he would brook no levity in his court was timely. He lowered himself slowly back into his chair and continued. ‘How could you be sure that your wife wasn’t breathing, Mr Bloom?’

  ‘Because she was lying out of the bed with her face bashed in.’ No hint of laughter now just a general in-suck of breath, a sound as sibilant as sand blowing across a dune.

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I ran out into the street and called for help.’

  ‘And was help forthcoming?’

  ‘A constable came running round the corner. I took him into the house and showed him …’ Eyes still fixed on the recorder’s pen, Bloom paused. ‘I showed him the body.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Bloom. One final question for now. Was the body of the woman discovered in the bedroom of number 7 Eccles Street that of your wife, Mrs Marion Tweedy Bloom?’

  Bloom lifted his head and flicked a single glance up at the gallery before meeting the coroner’s eye. ‘It was, sir. Yes, it was.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bloom. You may …’

  George Conway, jury foreman, was on his feet immediately.

  ‘Coroner Slater, we have questions for this witness.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Mr Conway, and you’ll have ample opportunity to put them, just not at this sitting. The primary purpose of the session is to establish the identity of the deceased and cause of death. Mr Bloom’s statement will be read to you later. Any questions the jury may have will be answered then. To eliminate all possibility of error or deceit in the matter of identification,’ Slater went on, ‘the deceased’s daughter, Miss Millicent Bloom, viewed the body before witnesses this morning. Miss Bloom is in court and may be brought forward without subpoena, but not under oath, if you require it. Miss Bloom has been resident in Mullingar for the best part of a year and hadn’t seen her mother since Christmastide. I would respectfully suggest that the young woman is unlikely to contribute anything material to our inquiry. Do you wish me to bring Miss Bloom before you, Mr Conway?’

  ‘No, sir, we do not.’

  ‘Very well,’ Slater said. ‘Stand down, Mr Bloom.

  Kinsella watched the anguished husband descend from the witness box and, groping a little, seat himself at the table beside his solicitor. Sullivan laid a hand on Bloom’s shoulder but whether the gesture was one of congratulation or commiseration was difficult to determine.

  ‘Mr Rice,’ said Slater, ‘summon the next witness, if you please.’

  ‘Who is it, Jim?’ Machin whispered.

  ‘The pathologist, Benson Rule.’

  ‘Ah! Now we’re beginning to get somewhere.’

  ‘At long last,’ said Jim.

  Benson Rule was a small man in his late twenties, clean-shaven and lean-cheeked. His brow was creased by a brooding frown that seemed fitting for a gentleman who whittled away at corpses for a living. He stood ram-rod straight, chin up, glanced down only occasionally at his notes and arranged each page with hands so tiny that they were almost swallowed up by his cuffs. He repeated the oath in a light, crisp baritone, stated his name and credentials and, without further preamble, plunged in.

  ‘On the morning of March 10th I made a post mortem examination of the body of the deceased in the presence of Mr Thomas McGurk, mortuary attendant, and Stephen Flaherty, student of medicine at St John’s Hospital, who acted as my assistant. The body was that of a mature, well-built and well-nourished woman in her early thirties. Muscles and organs had passed through the rigor stage and were relaxed. The process of decomposition, though slight, had already commenced. I would say that she had been dead for upwards of thirty hours but I can be no more accurate than that.’

  Kinsella looked up at the gallery, at Milly Bloom. She was slumped over, only the crown of her hat showing. Boylan, stooped too, talked to her in whispers. Behind Milly, a row back, two men, one in his fifties the other considerably younger, also appeared to be concerned about the young woman’s welfare, the elder even going so far as to offer a handkerchief.

  Bloom, by contrast, remained impassive, as engrossed in Rule’s grisly report as if he were listening to a lecture on Schopenhauer or the canals of Mars.

  The woman’s limbs and torso, Benson Rule explained, were unmarked, her injuries confined to jaw, mouth, nasal passage and eye socket. Central incisor and lateral incisor were broken, the left canine tooth loosened from the gum. The left nostril was torn. Coagulated blood was present in the nasal passage and glottis but there was no rupturing, bleeding or bruising of the larynx. Fragments of china were extracted from the gum of the upper jaw and the lining of the cheek, indicative, Rule said, of a blow to the mouth with a heavy object.

  Here Slater saw fit to interrupt. ‘In your opinion, Dr Rule, were the injuries to the mouth severe enough to cause death?’

  A curt and unequivocal, ‘No.’

  ‘Now, the heavy object: what, in your opinion, would constitute a heavy object? An iron bar, say?’

  ‘Not a solid object but one prone to shatter on impact.’

  ‘Like a bottle or a vase?’ Slater hesitated, took in a breath, and added, ‘Or, let us say, a china teapot?’

  ‘A large china teapot, yes.’

  No one in the courtroom uttered a sound.

  Slater said, ‘A large china teapot similar in shape and size to the pieces found by the woman’s bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘May I take it, Dr Rule, that the fragments embedded in the victim’s mouth matched the pieces of teapot found at the scene?’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘For the record, would it be fact, not opinion, to state that a large china teapot was the weapon used to deliver the fatal blow?’

  ‘It would.’

  Slater sat back in the green-leather chair with the relieved air of a man who has just missed stepping in dog dirt.

  In the gallery Milly Bloom’s face reappeared, mouth open, thumb resting against her teeth. At the solicitors’ table Bloom moved not a muscle while an officer of the court, on cue, brought out a canvas evidence bag, opened it with great care and displayed first to Benson Rule and then to the men of the jury two broken pieces of floral china, one with a handle, the other a spout.

  ‘Would you say, Dr Rule,’ Slater pressed, ‘that these are pieces of the very weapon with which Mrs Bloom was killed?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘Have you examined them?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Your findings, please?’

  ‘I found distinct traces of blood on each of the pieces.’

  ‘The victim’s blood?’

  ‘I believe it to be so.’

  Mr Rice, the court officer, placed the canvas bag upon the solicitors’ table and laid gently the two pieces of teapot upon it. Mr Bloom, motionless save for a lazy roll of the eyeballs, surveyed the jagged objects with no sign of revulsion, barel
y of interest.

  ‘Now,’ Slater went on, ‘if the blow to the mouth was not the cause of death, Dr Rule, what was?’

  ‘The blow’ – Rule lifted his right arm, closed his fist and fashioned a stabbing thrust from which the jurymen and even some folk in the gallery instinctively recoiled – ‘to the eye.’

  ‘The blow,’ Slater said, ‘to the eye?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘In your opinion, Dr Rule, was this a single blow or one of a series of blows?’

  ‘Based upon my observations, the likelihood is that it was a single blow, that the weapon, the teapot, shattered on first impact – the blow to the mouth – which formed a sharp edge. The penetrative wound to the eye socket – the orbit – was certainly not caused by blunt force.’ The doctor glanced at his notes. ‘I may say with a degree of certainty that no more than two blows were struck in toto.’

  ‘On what is that judgement based?’

  ‘The absence of attendant bruising or laceration in the region of the face and neck. I would say two blows, the first delivered in a swinging arc with the teapot intact: thus.’ He demonstrated with a sudden swish of the arm that, once more, had the jury flinching. ‘Followed at once by a thrust with the broken pot which now had a sharp penetrative protrusion.’

  ‘Do you have other evidence for this assumption, Dr Rule?’

  ‘I do. There were no bruises or lacerations on the victim’s hands, wrists or forearms which strongly suggests that she did not have time to defend herself and that the first blow was unexpected and the second blow, the fatal one, followed instantly.’

  The coroner looked at the jury with a faint, patronising smile. ‘A roundhouse right followed up by a jab?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Dr Rule said, agreeing, though the deepening of the furrow that cleft his brow indicated that he did not approve of sporting analogies. ‘The damage was entirely to the left side of the victim’s face which would suggest that the attack was conducted from a position in front of the victim with the pot held in the right hand.’

  ‘An attack from the rear would not be feasible,’ Slater pointed out, ‘given that the woman was in bed when the assault took place and the bed was fast against the wall.’

  ‘I have not seen the room, so I cannot say,’ said Dr Rule.

  ‘Nor have we,’ Mr Conway announced.

  ‘Oh!’ the coroner exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me … I mean, do the jury wish to see the room?’

  The jury nodded.

  ‘Very well,’ the coroner said, stifling a sigh. ‘I will see to it that the jury are conducted to number 7 Eccles Street under police supervision first thing after recess. Will that be satisfactory?’

  The jury, with some enthusiasm, nodded again.

  ‘Now, Dr Rule,’ the coroner said, ‘will you please continue.’

  For the next ten minutes the courtroom was treated to what amounted to a lesson in the structures of the human skull, orbit, frontal bone, lachrymal ducts, ophthalmic artery and all. Rule’s depiction of the detached eyeball hanging by a thread, followed by a lengthy dissertation on ganglia, muscles and nerves, was in danger of becoming dreary until, once more, he demonstrated just how the eyeball could be plucked out by a motion akin to that of scooping a soft-boiled egg from its shell, a gruesome mime that had several ladies in the gallery reaching for their smelling salts and some of the jurymen swallowing hard.

  It was during this latter charade that Neville Sullivan raised his hand to catch the coroner’s attention.

  The coroner frowned. ‘Mr Sullivan?’

  ‘May I ask a question of the witness?’

  ‘You do know that you are not allowed to cross-examine?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ Neville Sullivan said. ‘However, I have a question that is pertinent and to which, I’m sure, the jury would appreciate an answer.’

  ‘What is your question?’

  Neville Sullivan left the solicitors’ table and took up a position below the witness box. Looking up at Dr Rule, he said, ‘Did the blow that penetrated the eye socket cause injury to the brain?’

  Benson Rule considered his reply. ‘No, sir, it did not?’

  ‘No bruising to the lobes of the pre-frontal area, no discolouration; nothing of that nature?’

  ‘None that I found.’

  ‘Intracranial swelling, perhaps?’

  ‘Mr Sullivan,’ the coroner warned.

  Again Benson Rule hesitated. ‘No, none.’

  ‘I take it that the brain was excised?’

  ‘Now that is enough, Mr Sullivan,’ the coroner snapped.

  Mr Sullivan bowed to the expert witness and sat down again. He exchanged a glance with his client, tidied his hair and missed the superior little smile that played at the corner of Rule’s lips.

  ‘Dr Rule,’ the coroner said, ‘pray continue.’

  ‘On proceeding to an examination of the victim’s reproductive parts’ – a phrase guaranteed to take the jury’s mind off brains – ‘I found no evidence of recent intercourse. However, the condition of the vagina and cervix prompted me to open the pelvic cavity and examine the uterus.’

  Sullivan swung round, first to Bloom and then to glare at the doctor in the box above him.

  ‘At ten weeks an embryo is generally recognised as having evolved into a foetus,’ Benson Rule said.

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Tom Machin murmured.

  ‘A foetus, so formed, was found in the victim’s womb. It was, as far as I can tell, healthy, though, of course, no longer a living thing.’

  The cry from the gallery was audible throughout the courtroom but the coroner, swiftly identifying its source, offered no reprimand and, in the pin-drop silence, Milly Bloom’s unchecked sobs rang out with heartbreaking clarity.

  ‘Are you saying the woman was pregnant?’ the coroner asked.

  ‘Without doubt,’ Benson Rule answered. ‘Close to the end of the first trimester, ten or eleven weeks along.’

  ‘Christmas?’ Tom Machin whispered.

  ‘Early December,’ Kinsella whispered back.

  ‘Do you think Bloom knew?’

  ‘Of course Bloom knew. The question is, did Boylan?’ Kinsella said just as the coroner fished a watch from his pocket and declared, ‘Gentlemen, time for a break, I think. We will adjourn for thirty minutes after which the jury will assemble here to be conducted to Eccles Street.’

  ‘By cab?’ said Mr Conway.

  ‘On foot,’ said Dr Slater.

  THIRTEEN

  Dr Michael Paterson wasn’t particularly tall or muscular and had none of the not-quite-feminine good looks of young Neville Sullivan. He had a blunt chin, thin upper lip and eyes of an indeterminate shade of grey. He was a quiet man, a listener not a talker, and no competition for the voluble rabble who gathered about Miss Bloom in the hall of the coroner’s court.

  This irksome swarm included not only Hugh Boylan but also Malachi Mulligan, Alec Bannon and Kitty Laughlin’s middle brother, Finn. As cocky sober as they were in their cups, they offered Milly their condolences with all the heartfelt sincerity of Republicans saluting the Union flag.

  ‘Who the devil are they?’ Harry Coghlan asked.

  Michael Paterson shrugged. ‘Students, probably.’

  ‘What’re they after?’

  ‘Miss Bloom’s virginity, I imagine,’ Michael Paterson said. ‘For all their idealistic chatter about art and aesthetics, they don’t really have much on their minds but drink and fornication.’

  ‘Was it that way in your day, too?’ Mr Coghlan asked.

  ‘Not so much of the “my day,” please. I don’t have one foot in the grave just yet, in spite of practising in Mullingar.’

  They leaned against the wall close to the ornate faux bronze fitment that contained not holy water but cigar butts and tobacco ash and watched Milly Bloom struggling to cope with her admirers.

  Mourning garb didn’t suit her, though it certainly made her more grown up, Michael Paterson thought. In his professional capacity
he’d watched her blush and fumble for euphemisms to describe the discomfort that nature foisted monthly upon females. He had provided advice as well as a herbal tincture to soothe Milly’s cramps. He’d met her thereafter at summer galas and church soirees and had seen her blossom into a lovely, carefree young woman. It saddened him to see her now, flattened by life’s ugly realities and robbed of much of her innocence.

  ‘Milly didn’t have an inkling about her mother’s pregnancy, you know,’ Harry Coghlan said. ‘If she did, I’m sure she’d have let something slip, if not to me then to Mrs C. What a time the poor lass is having of it. One thing after another. I wonder if she’ll ever come back to Mullingar?’

  Not if Boylan has anything to do with it, but Dr Paterson kept this thought to himself. It hadn’t taken him long to see through Boylan’s unfettered arrogance, the self-serving confidence that came with a bit of money and the admiration of shallow men and women. Boylan was no longer all that young, however, and, possessively rather than protectively, was doing his best to keep the antlered herd at bay.

  ‘I rather regret we made the trip,’ Harry Coghlan said. ‘I thought Milly might need our support but it appears she has her own crowd here in Dublin.’

  ‘I’m not too sure it is her crowd,’ Michael Paterson said.

  ‘At least she’s being well looked after by that Boylan chap,’ Mr Coghlan said. ‘I suppose if her father does go to jail she’ll stay on with Boylan and his sisters.’

  Dr Paterson kept his thoughts on that matter to himself too. He said, ‘If the jury’s being carried off to inspect the scene of the crime we might have time to slip out for a bite to eat.’

  ‘I’m not averse to that,’ Harry Coghlan answered but before the pair could move towards the door, Milly caught sight of them and, pushing through the crowd, scurried across the hall.

  Dr Paterson removed his hat. ‘Miss Bloom.’

  Mr Coghlan, hatless too, said, ‘How are you bearing up, lass?’

  Milly said, ‘As well as can be expected, I suppose. It’s awfully nice of you both to come all this way for me.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think we’re snooping?’ Mr Coghlan said. ‘It was Mrs C’s idea, really. When I said I’d shut up the shop for a day Michael kindly offered to accompany me.’