The Death of an Irish Lass

by Bartholomew Gill

  McGarr kept his hands in the air as he turned and walked toward her. He judged her to be a woman of her word who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot any of them, Simonds included.

  “Where were ye born?”

  “The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.”

  “When.”

  “July twenty-second, 1927.”

  “Father’s name?”

  “Hugh Frances.”

  “Mother’s.”

  “Cecilia Agnes Ford.”

  “Says here your eyes are blue. Look gray to me.”

  “It’s fear,” McGarr said. “I’m not used to you New Yorkers.”

  She snorted. “I’m not a New Yorker. What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to find out who murdered May Quirk.”

  “Here?”

  “I want to read her files.”

  The old woman thought about it. She had a red, bulbous nose and a square jaw. Her forehead was low. She wore glasses. Her own eyes were gray, too, and quick. “What do you need them for?” She meant Sugrue and Simonds.

  “One to hold the files, the other to turn the pages.”

  “You’re from Dublin, all right.” She turned to the other men. “You two. Get out.”

  “But I’m—” Simonds began saying.

  “I couldn’t care if you were the man in the moon. Beat it.”

  “Aw, Nora—” Sugrue pleaded.

  “Don’t ‘Aw, Nora’ me, you worthless little shite. Now that May’s gone you’re not welcome here, and if I had had my way you’d never have shown your tinker’s fishy head in this house and she’d be alive today.

  “Now scram, before I give you what you deserve.”

  When the door closed, she threw the night latch and turned to McGarr. “Tea?”

  “Love some.”

  “You’ll find what you’re after in the bedroom, over there.” She pointed to a door. It led to a room two walls of which were glass.

  McGarr was presented with a magnificent vista of lower Manhattan at twilight from this the thirty-seventh floor of a new high-rise. He walked right by the desk and filing cabinets, opened a sliding glass door, and stepped out onto the balcony. The hot, sulfurous stench of a city that had been baking under the summer sun rose to him.

  In the distance McGarr could see the curve of the island packed tight with buildings, bristling with piers and jetties. The twin towers of the World Trade Center, two outsized boxes taller even than the Empire State Building, were straight ahead. In comparison, the older big buildings (perhaps only twenty years less recent) seemed like relics of a more refined age. Whatever little gilding or grace each possessed welcomed the eye: the gentle ripples on the Chrysler Building’s dome, the treed tiers of older hotels on the East Side, even the neon sprawl of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and Forty-second Street. At least the scale of those areas was somewhat human.

  Nevertheless, the view that May Quirk had had from this balcony was spectacular. Above the Palisades, across the Hudson River in New Jersey to McGarr’s right, a flame red sun was sinking into a bank of purple clouds. The lights of the city were just going on and the brilliant specks rivaled the majesty of the heavens. McGarr felt suspended in an interstellar void with stars above and below him.

  Even now, on Sunday night, the city was noisy. The sounds of jackhammers and rivet guns, the droning of tugs in the harbor, and more than one jet overhead assaulted the ledge.

  McGarr stepped back inside and closed the door. The noise died quickly and all he could hear was the hush of the air-conditioning system.

  In addition to the bed, which was a huge, canopied affair at least a hop off the floor, the room contained an oak roll-top desk with banks of metal file cabinets on either side. One group contained May Quirk’s research, the other, old articles, correspondence, and personal affairs. Everything seemed to be in order, the files neat and arranged according to chronology. The desk also was uncluttered. The drawers held office equipment, paper, pens, pencils, a box of typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, supplies for a copy machine that sat in the corner.

  “She did all her work in that bed, with the curtains drawn. The poor, darling girl!” said the old woman, placing a tea tray on the desk. “She ate here. Breakfast and, when she needed it, tea.”

  McGarr had opened the folder marked I.R.A. It was thick—loaded with newspaper clippings, notes from a work diary, and other trivia. McGarr set this near his teacup.

  “I see you went right to the source,” Nora Cleary went on. “Them being the low-lifes who are responsible for her demise.”

  “How can you be so sure?” McGarr asked, although he continued to leaf through the folder.

  The tea was black, some Oriental variety with a delicate jasmine scent. Hot scones, the aroma of which McGarr had been smelling since he had entered the apartment but only then placed, were also on the tray, alongside a boat of unsalted butter.

  “Wasn’t she working on them when it happened? Didn’t it happen back there in some bog? I tried to warn her off that tinker Sugrue and his ilk, but no, she was strong headed. I’ve tried to call her folks, with no luck. And what’s to happen to all her stuff and this apartment and the car in the garage and all her bank accounts and things? She owns this place, you know, McGarr. It’s a con-dome-inium.” She paused. “And another thing, what’s to happen to me?”

  “Have you no savings, no relations? Couldn’t you find another job like this one?” McGarr asked, if only to make conversation. He was still leafing through the files, munching on one of the scones. The taste was light, buttery, with just the hint of soda beyond. “The way you handle a gun, I could probably put you to work back home.”

  “I suppose a job like yours makes a person hard. Death doesn’t touch you.”

  “To tell you the truth, it usually doesn’t, but her death did. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Can you tell me about it?” she asked, her voice suddenly old. “I hope you can understand me wanting to know. I’m not a ghoul nor nothing like that. It’s just that she was from my village. I’ve been with her lo these ten long years and she was like me own daughter.”

  McGarr looked up from the file. It was only then that her name struck him. “Are you related to James Cleary?”

  She looked up from a bit of knitting she’d been doing while McGarr talked. Through her octagonal glasses McGarr could see she had been crying, but silently. She blinked several times. “Indeed, he’s my youngest brother. The baby of the family.” Her voice was thick. “Why do you ask?”

  “He had an attack the day after May was murdered.”

  She cocked her head. “An attack? What do you mean? Jamie was always as strong as a bull, never had so much as an extra hour in bed.” She thought for a moment. Then her eyes seemed to clear and she stood. “Certainly you don’t think he—” She then caught her breath. “Oh, my God!” She took a step toward the file cabinets, but stopped. She turned her head to McGarr again. “What do you mean by an attack?”

  “He had a fit of despondency. The doctor said it was a nervous breakdown. Spasms of nausea. And he tried to damage himself, too.”

  She caught her breath, bit her lower lip. Standing in the middle of the modern room like that she seemed massive and out of place, a huge, matronly West Irish woman dressed as she would have been in any Clare kitchen. “Then maybe you should see this. As much as I love him, his being my baby brother and all, May was worth a thousand Jamies, and murder is murder. God help me!”

  Her step was more a waddle. She opened a drawer of the cabinet marked C, and took out a thin folder. In it were three letters, all written in the labored script that McGarr recognized as the sort taught in the Irish national schools. His own hand was little different, though fluid.

  The first, which was now over eight years old, was a simple statement of intent: James Cleary was asking May Quirk to marry him. He straightaway set out the advantages of such a match—the propinquity of their farms and families, his desire to have children, and most particularly his admirat
ion and affection for her. It closed on a note that was almost fawning:

  I know a big-city person such as yourself would probably feel a little strange at first back here with me and the cows on the farm, but when you think how fast time flies and why the good Lord put us here and how he intended us to live, I’m praying you’ll see life here is best with your own kind doing what He intended. May, I dream of the day you will return and accept this lonely farmer’s plea, for I know in my heart of hearts it is what Jesus Himself wants for the both of us and our children. You will make me the happiest of men saying yes and I will work my fingers to the bone to serve you. I beg Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to bless this petition. So far I have led a good life and will ask Them for nothing else will They but send you to me. With all the love of my heart I am your idolator.

  James Frederick Joseph Cleary

  Sitting as he was in the desk chair of a former staff reporter for one of the world’s most powerful newspapers, McGarr was filled with profound pity for Jamie Cleary. Here was a simple peasant’s plea for perhaps the only woman in his life who might have made him an acceptable match, and she had been so worldly and contemporary that she could only have thought of his proposal as ludicrous or pitiable too. There had never really been a chance that she might have consented to marry him when she was still back home, but the prospect for the aging bachelor once she had established herself here in New York was hopeless. Although separated from each other by a short, affordable plane ride alone, they were whole worlds and centuries apart in their expectations.

  The next letter had been mailed a year before, in the spring. The tone was strident. It even contained a veiled threat.

  I don’t know what I might do if you don’t return to me. Twice now I have driven to Shannon Airport to watch the aeroplanes fly off to America. If you don’t answer this letter I plan to take out the papers I need to visit you there. I know it is not you, May, who wrote me that letter six years ago but some other person who the big city has changed. Tell me there’s hope, May. Just one little ray or maybe will be enough. I’m desperate lonely and I love you more dearly with every passing day.

  Said his sister, looking over McGarr’s shoulder, “She wrote him a long, kind letter telling him she had indeed changed and had no intention of marrying, ever. Here,” she said, placing a photocopy of a typed letter in front of McGarr. “Jamie is—” she paused, “—a country man. He—” She was on the verge of tears again.

  “You don’t have to explain. I’ve met Jamie,” said McGarr. He turned to the final letter, dated two months before. It read:

  Your father told me this morning that you are coming home soon but you are not coming home to me. When he left I got down on my knees and asked Blessed Mary Mother of God to intercede for me to give me guidance to help me understand why you have been so heartless over the years, so deaf to my pleas. I must hear your denials from your own lips, May. I pray that She will protect you on your air flight over the far ocean.

  Your loving and still hopeful petitioner,

  James Frederick Joseph Cleary.

  “And to think,” his sister said, “that he then would have killed her. Ah, God—life is strange.”

  McGarr stood. “I see no reason to assume your brother murdered her.”

  “You don’t know him like me, McGarr. He was the youngest and as spoiled as any old cow’s calf.”

  McGarr remembered then having heard just about the same remark about Rory O’Connor.

  She continued, “My mother doted on him. He had everything he ever wanted, which gave the poor man a temper. I once saw him break down a door to get a new pair of shoes that were locked in the bedroom when my father was away.

  “And the pitchfork you mentioned.” She was rubbing her upper chest. “That would be his way, it would. He wouldn’t have the knowledge of a gun.”

  McGarr opened a drawer of the filing cabinet and replaced the thick I.R.A. folder. Most of the information in it was general, cuttings from her own and other newspapers, notes taken from her reading and research in the United States.

  McGarr then moved to the files on the other side of the desk. Here he found the classification People. He discovered a file marked “O’Connor, Rory,” and another, “Fleming, Dr. John.” He removed these. He was unable to find listings for Max Schwerr or Paddy Sugrue.

  In O’Connor’s file were the two Daily News articles Sugrue had mentioned earlier. With them were photographs that hadn’t been used in the paper and the notes and rough drafts she had made in working up the stories, which were in no way flattering.

  O’Connor, she intimated, had been prodigal of his talents. He had squandered his time on literary dreck, catering to the current tastes of New York critics. He had created a sort of pop novel filled with fantastical scenes and cardboard people when, in fact, he had shown in his earlier books that he was capable of creating real people and placing them in situations relevant to the lives of present-day Americans.

  The second article was a virulent attack upon O’Connor. It had been issued only six months before, either on or about the date of the release of O’Connor’s game, Potlatch. She called it “The Game an Artist Would Never Play.” The photograph showed O’Connor reclining in the deep plush of a fur-covered couch, his hand to his brow as if he were slightly ill, the game board and pieces on a coffee table in front of him.

  The piece ended with a cutting remark, “The big game O’Connor has always had in him is the charade he’s currently playing with both the moguls of the trade book industry and critics and, most lamentably, the gullible reading public—that of ‘being an artist.’

  “Have you played Potlatch?” the article asked. “The game is well named. O’Connor calls it a fun game. His giggle comes when you throw your money away on it.”

  The file also contained reviews of O’Connor’s books, letters he had written her over the years, photos, and other memorabilia like a rose pressed in a thin volume of Lorca’s poems, a snake skin he’d sent her from Arizona, a menu from their first big celebration in New York, the one they had following the acceptance of his first novel.

  “Rory,” said Nora Cleary fondly. Again she was looking over McGarr’s shoulder. “The apple of me eye. A fine big man and so successful.” She began tsking. “But, alas—it wasn’t to be.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “I suppose it’s all right to tell about it, now that she’s dead. The truth of it is he broke her heart. Big and successful and handsome, there wasn’t a woman in the world who wasn’t after thinking him a great catch. And when he got to drinking, he’d grow wild. It was during one of his toots that May returned suddenly to town here and found him down in his studio in bed with some mutual friend’s wife. It was only a fling, don’t you know. But May was just a country type at heart, like my poor brother Jamie, and never forgave him.

  “Then she went a bit off the deep end with men. For a few months she hardly spent a night home here in this bed. And—” She stopped speaking.

  McGarr said, “She had to have an abortion.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just guessing.”

  “An abortion,” the old woman said with awe. “Just think of that. May Quirk having to abort some bastard’s spawn. The shame of it! She never recovered from that, I don’t think. I mean, in her mind. And she blamed Rory O’Connor as the source of her miseries. If she had had any real city savvy, she would have turned a blind eye to the transgression. He’s the sort of fellow who needs a whore now and then.”

  “What about his game, Potlatch?”

  “Sure it’s not as bad as she paints it. A gambling game it is. Sporting people think it’s a gas. They say he dreamed it up on one of his escapades. In spite of what she said, some people think he’s a genius—for business and writing and games.”

  “And women, it would seem,” said McGarr.

  “Maybe the truth is he was too much for her, or for any woman. Maybe she was spared the travail and heartache of being a wife t
o a man who can’t help being a bounder.

  “Who knows, maybe she’s better off dead. Some of us, like May, do big things and die young, while others like me and my brother Jamie do nothing and live long.”

  “How do you know Jamie does nothing?” She had told McGarr she hadn’t been home in forty years.

  Her eyes didn’t waver. “I could tell as much from the way he wrote and what you said.”

  McGarr doubted that and reached for the teacup.

  “Could you use something a bit stronger?”

  McGarr nodded. “Please. That’d be lovely.” He closed O’Connor’s file and turned to Fleming’s.

  Nora Cleary shuffled out of the room.

  The article on Fleming had been sold for national syndication in the color magazine sections of American Sunday newspapers. The first paragraph read:

  While the trend among young doctors is to specialize and pursue private practice in big cities, Dr. John Xavier Fleming, whom his colleagues call “brilliant, gifted…a doctor in a million,” has decided to abandon his budding career in New York for the rocks of County Clare, Ireland.

  The article went on to explain the details of Fleming’s career—First Honors, chemistry, U.C.D., Columbia Medical School, Roosevelt Hospital, his area of specialization, which was internal medicine and surgery—and then described an interview with him in which he was portrayed as a taciturn, dour young man. The implication was that some character flaw or innate morbidity was driving him away from an international reputation to a sort of purgatory in a dying country society. She kept asking him why. He kept mentioning how he felt a duty to his people.

  Nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath is a doctor enjoined from accepting any case but one which will advance his skills and enhance his reputation. That’s what I find myself doing over here. In fact, right from the start of my practice, my advisors have counseled me to husband my energies, to concentrate on the new, difficult operations, to research new methods. The idea is that I might develop techniques which will aid hundreds of other doctors and thousands of patients. Indirectly.