The James Joyce Murder
Page 17
“I thereupon asked Bradford, with what I fondly hoped was a careless air, if the machine would wrap a wad of paper up with the hay? ‘That’s the second time I’ve been asked that question in as many weeks,’ Bradford said.”
Grace Knole whistled. “What a hiding place. To hide a needle in a haystack.”
“But, of course, one must have a chance of recovering the needle. I went on talking to Bradford, and discovered that William had approached him for a job as handyman, to begin work in September. He spoke of needing a job while working on his dissertation, of wanting to do physical work, and so forth. He knew of course how hard it is for farmers to find hired men these days.”
“And he intended to ‘find’ the manuscript while working for Bradford. Ye gods, did Bradford hire him?”
“No. Bradford was rather circumspect here, but he seemed to be suggesting that he suspected William of having had an affair with his wife.”
“So that was it,” Kate said. “Molly said—but I never thought . . .”
“Naturally not,” Reed said. “There’s so much we can’t know, and probably never will, though with luck and the grace of God, a psychiatrist or a priest, perhaps between them, may unearth it. I think she seduced him—perhaps out of sheer malevolence, or a mad kind of lust. All that is certain is that she saw him put something into the hay, and learned that it was something he treasured; her knowledge put him in her power. I can’t believe he ever told her what it was, which is, you know, the saddest part of all. Because had she known it was a story, she probably would not have thought it worth bothering about. I’m certain she had never heard of James Joyce. God knows what she thought it was.”
“For some horrible reason,” Emmet said, “I imagine it was in that very hay, where his treasure was, that she made him make love to her. It must have been, if Bradford found them. Perhaps he wouldn’t have killed her for either thing alone, the story, or the assault on his chastity. Or perhaps the thought of her leering at him as he searched, as he had to search, through that hay, was more than he could bear.”
“Whatever way it was,” Reed said, “when Kate recounted to me her conversation with Molly, the girl Bradford loves—it all fell into place. It explained Lina, it explained so much.”
“And on that walk back from Mr. Mulligan’s party,” Kate said, “I thought he was talking about me. I should have known he would never . . .”
“Oh yes, it all fits, once you think about it. Emmet and I agreed. But there wasn’t a shadow of proof, not a glimmer. And what Molly said to you, Kate, was truer than you admitted. Bradford would have been doomed with having murdered his wife in any community, considering the motive he had.”
“So you tried your little act with the fire?”
“It seemed harmless enough. If it hadn’t worked, we would have lost nothing but face—Emmet’s face—and he was ready to risk that.”
“Do you mean to say,” Grace said, “that there is a priceless, unpublished James Joyce manuscript wrapped in one of thousands of bales of hay on the top of Mr. Bradford’s barn?”
“Oh yes, it’s there all right. William had the letter on him when the police took him away. He hid the manuscript but he kept the letter. It just said: ‘Here it is, Lingerwell. Bloom’s first appearance in print.’ ”
“I can’t wait to read it,” Emmet said. “Do you suppose Bloom was seen as part of the general paralysis, as in the other Dubliner stories, or was he already the apostle of love?”
“What I want to know,” Kate said, “is what I am going to do with the four thousand bales of hay I have today purchased from Mr. Bradford. Where does one keep hay in New York City?”
“I only hope,” Emmet said, “he starts today using some other hay for his cows. Can you imagine that story, that precious story, in the stomach, one of the four stomachs, of a cow, slowly being churned into manure or fertilizer? What a horror!”
“An event, nevertheless, which would vastly have amused Joyce,” Kate said. “Read Ulysses.”
Epilogue
The chairman of the James Joyce Society rose to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen. The sixty-second anniversary of Bloomsday has passed,” he said, “to be followed by an event so earthshaking that one could scarcely have conceived of anything so magnificent. Incredible though it may seem, a sixteenth story originally intended for Dubliners has been discovered. A story which may well have been the first to tell of Mr. Leopold Bloom. Here, to recount the fascinating details, is Mr. Emmet Crawford.”
There was applause and many eyes glistened, most of them male. In the back of the room, unobtrusively seated, were a lady, a gentleman, and a small boy looking quite pleased with himself. Emmet Crawford arose.
“Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen. We all share, I am certain, the same excitement. But, alas, neither I nor any of us has a new manuscript by James Joyce. We have only what is perhaps little more than a wild hope for a manuscript by James Joyce. What we have at the moment, ladies and gentlemen, is four thousand—no, let me be accurate, as Joyce would have approved—three thousand, two hundred and thirteen bales of hay!”
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Amanda Cross
Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1926–2003) attended Wellesley College, class of 1947, and later received her graduate degrees in English Literature from Columbia University, where she joined the faculty in 1960, retiring in 1992 as the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities. She authored nine scholarly books in the fields of feminist literary criticism and autobiography. As Amanda Cross, she wrote fourteen academic mystery novels and several short stories, featuring Kate Fansler, an English professor and amateur sleuth.
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