The Death of a Joyce Scholar Page 23

  “I don’t know, anything. Warble.” The walls between the attached row houses were thick, and McGarr knew from experience that all one could hear without the aid of, say, a stethoscope, was the tone of what was said next door.

  “Why warble?” Noreen asked. “Does she have a bird?”

  McGarr closed the door and threw the bolt. “You’d make a heck of a cop, Frenche,” he whispered as he moved her down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Why? I’ve helped you in the past, you’ve said so yourself.”

  At least she was talking, McGarr thought, and loud enough to be heard. And hearing her, even the dog out in the back garden had stopped barking.

  He switched on the overhead light and moved straight toward the cutting board and the brace of knives in the rosewood sheath above it.

  The filleting knife was a trifle stuck, and McGarr had to tug to free it from the sheath. And no wonder. Unlike the murder weapon, with its high-carbon, blue steel blade, sharpened so often it was thin, the knife in McGarr’s hands was new and made of a titanium alloy (attested to by a stamp on its heel). It still carried the shape that, he imagined, the first knife had borne when new. He pulled the other knives from the sheath. They were all older, with the same high-carbon blades as the murder weapon.

  McGarr did not know what to think beyond the obvious conclusion that the murder weapon had most probably been taken from this kitchen. The knives in Jammer’s shelter across the wall had been new as well, and made of titanium. Could the missing filleting knife from that set have found its way to this?

  Why and how? What was the connection—of Catty to Jammer?

  He replaced the knives in the sheath, and in turning around, found that Noreen was no longer in the kitchen. Nor the hall. Nor the sitting room off it.

  He took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, only to discover his wife standing in a doorway, her hand to her mouth. She turned to him, her eyes wide in shock.

  “What is it?”

  “God bless us—who would have thought. Catty?”

  Apart from the windows, which were sheathed in black vinyl blinds, the room was completely mirrored—floor, walls, ceiling. A kind of trapeze hung from the ceiling in one corner, and a variety of stools, low couches, and cushions filled the room. Painted on the mirrors in the center was a circular logo. It was the same as the tattoo on Mary Sittonn’s shoulder—of a coy-looking cat with green eyes and a long, curling tongue.

  A long closet with a bare-bulb makeup table was filled with negligees and every type of night attire: dozens of silk stockings in several patterns but only three colors (black, peach, and the blue of Catty’s eyes); tall, spiked, sequined high heels; lacy brassieres with the nipple ends open; tutus with crinoline flounces; a whip; chains and handcuffs; a device that looked to be part of the trapeze, and if employed as McGarr imagined, would hoist a person, like a drawn crab, into the air, where—

  “What’s this?” Noreen asked. She had opened a drawer and was looking down into its shadows.

  It contained nothing but a large—an enormous—dildo, black in color, shaped like an erection, and replete with straps and stiff positioning stays. The sequined letters that ran up its shaft read, LE MULE.

  “How could Catty, the little thing that she is…?”

  McGarr closed the drawer. Ask Mary Sittonn, he thought. Or David Holderness or Kevin Coyle, were that possible. Kinch of the noose, or—was it?—the trapeze.

  In the closet in her actual bedroom McGarr discovered among another great array of garments a pink wig, punk in cut, stylish pantaloons, and several jackets with exaggerated padded shoulders. In a jewelry box they found a pair of pink earrings, swastika-shaped and the size of McGarr’s palm.

  “Do you suppose she and that Jammer fellow…?” Noreen asked.

  McGarr didn’t know. He would ask her, for all the good it would do, but it was Jammer they needed, for several reasons, all vital. The surveillance of the shelter on the other side of the cemetery wall was still being maintained, but McGarr had little hope of his man turning up. The natty clothes that he had found there suggested other options, and Jammer—now involved in murder, grievous bodily assault, and the theft of a lethal weapon, all felonies—was too smart and deceptive to chance a return, for what? A few odds and ends.

  Noreen’s step faltered before the open door to the mirrored room. As if to herself, she said, “You hear or read of these things, but you think, well, if they exist it’s in New York or in Paris or in Los Angeles. Never in Dublin and never somebody you know.”

  In the car McGarr checked his wristwatch. “The affair at the Shelbourne must be winding down. What say we canter on to the cocktail party or the dinner.”

  “Take me home,” she said.

  “What?”

  Shock and dismay widened her eyes and furrowed her brow. “Surely you don’t expect me to speak to the woman after what we just saw? Perhaps you, what with your occupation—”

  “Profession,” McGarr corrected.

  “—and all are jaded and come upon that sort of thing every day, but not me. If I see that woman on the street, I’ll cross to the other side. We’re quits, and that’s final.”

  “But remember, you didn’t see anything at all. We weren’t even—”

  “You expect me to forget that?”

  “What?” McGarr struggled not to smile.

  Bright patches of indignation now colored his wife’s cheeks. “That—that thing in the drawer?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know—” He tried to say, I suppose that’s up to you.

  But she spoke over him. “It and that whole place and that woman and anybody, including Kevin Coyle, who ever had anything to do with her is ugly.

  “Now. Belgrave Square, and not a smirk, if you know what’s good for you. Ooh—” She leaned back in the seat and pincered her temples. “I’ve a splitting headache.”

  SEVENTEEN

  WHEN MCGARR got to Dublin Castle the next morning, he found a report on his desk about the murder weapon in the Coyle case. Another report—preliminary—concerned the discovery of a body floating in the Royal Canal sometime in the early hours of the morning. McKeon had dispatched Delaney and Flynn. Also, there were three requests for further information on cases pending before the courts.

  He sipped from the hot mug of coffee that Bresnahan placed on his desk, then topped it up with fermented, aged malt from the bottle he kept in the lower left-hand drawer of his desk. Superintendent O’Shaughnessy was sitting in the chair by that side, reading the papers; he reached down and kept McGarr from closing the drawer. McGarr handed him the bottle, and he added a good three inches to his tea cup.

  “Hard night?”

  “Jammer. I thought I saw him.” He raised the paper again and peered into it.

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Near the Shelbourne, of all places. Tuxedo, black tie. Long black wig curling in the back. But it was him, all right. I’d bet on it.”

  McGarr would too. O’Shaughnessy had a rare memory for faces, and the artist’s mock-up of Jammer had been posted all over the office.

  He wondered if Jammer had actually attended the book-launching ceremony or some of the later festivities. To what point? To taunt the police? Theft? Could he too have been involved with Catty? McGarr thought of all the modish clothes and the pink wig that they had discovered in her closets. The swastika earrings.

  “Rut’ie?” O’Shaughnessy called out of the cubicle, then raised the paper again.

  “Yes, Super?” she answered almost immediately, appearing in the doorway.

  O’Shaughnessy said nothing. She picked up the tea cup. “A chaser, Chief?”

  McGarr raised his head. It was the first time she or any subordinate had inferred that the substance added to his coffee in the morning was something other than what should be found in a Garda facility. And what was he seeing? There was something different about Bresnahan, but he couldn’t tell what—her smile, her tone of voice, her manner? Perhaps.
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  He lowered his head to the report, and she left.

  It said that the knife that had killed Coyle was an Everdur, a quality item that had been manufactured in Coventry up until seven years ago, when a multinational corporation had purchased the company, closed down the plant, and begun producing a different version in Taiwan. The new product differed only in its blade, which was stamped from a titanium alloy not forged from blue steel. None of the latter was available any longer in the Dublin area, or for that matter, anywhere else. The newer model, however, was stocked by two well-known kitchen-and restaurant-supply shops.

  Eleven sets had been sold in the last week, and when the artist rendering of Jammer had been shown employees, one shop girl had said that she was almost certain he had purchased a set. “Very conservative type, though nice,” she said. “Brown tweed suit and storm coat, like a solicitor.” He had paid cash.

  McGarr made a note in the margin to the effect that front facial photos should be obtained or taken of Fergus, Maura and Hiliary Flood, Katie Coyle, Mary Sittonn, Catty Doyle, and David Holderness and shown to the same employees, though he held no hope for that.

  Conclusion? Jammer had bought the second set of knives to replace the missing filleting knife, which had been the murder weapon, in the sheath of the knife rack in Catty Doyle’s kitchen.

  Why? What was his relationship to her? Lover? Friend? Relative? Simple neighbor? McGarr made another note directing McKeon to obtain a bio of Catty Doyle, particularly indicating the whereabouts of any siblings.

  And if Jammer did know her, how had he replaced the knife in the kitchen? With her concurrence? Was she a party to the murder? Had she lied to them?

  Either she or Holderness had. And Flood.

  At the cocktail and dinner parties, which McGarr attended alone, Catty, when asked, assured McGarr that she did not know Jammer. Twice while sunning herself in her back garden she had seen a man who looked like him steal over the wall of the cemetery, which she assumed he’d done to save the long walk around, and then a few other times while she was waiting for the bus. “Oh—I noticed him, certainly, as I would any other interesting young man. Or, man,” she had added coyly. “Pity your wife took ill. I hope it wasn’t the champagne.”

  Holderness, however, had said outright that she had lied about him. If there had been some knock on the back garden gate that night, as Catty had said, they wouldn’t have heard it, dog or no dog. “You see, we were in another room in Catty’s house that’s soundproofed. If you ask properly, perhaps she’ll show it to you.” He smiled. “And after our exertions, I’m afraid I fell fast asleep until about five or so, when I rose and walked back into town and took the first bus out to Bray and to some blessed rest. Catty’s best taken in small parts.” The smile grew fuller. The round, wire-rim glasses flashed in the light of the chandelier overhead. Donaghy was still standing by his side, listening intently now.

  McGarr wondered if Holderness knew he had been in the house. But how? And why would Catty say what she had about his having gotten up to investigate the knock on the back garden gate if it weren’t true—to implicate him in murder? “Could she be lying, then?”

  “Lying’s such a harsh term. Perhaps she dreamed it, or she’s in shock—to have had such an ugly thing happen to an acquaintance so close to one’s abode. And to somebody so”—he had opened his empty hands to mean the gathering—“noted as Kevin Coyle.”

  Then what of what Bang had said of Jammer: that Jammer, considerate as he was, had made a bargain with the drunken Kevin Coyle. The ashplant stick, blazer, and hat for safe passage down the alley to Catty Doyle’s back garden gate? Would Jammer have knocked? McGarr would have, if only to get the man in. The hat: drunk or sober, Coyle would not have relinquished that to anybody, especially for something so slight as getting himself to a back door on a night that had been described by everybody concerned as fair.

  And when McGarr had asked again if Donaghy and Holderness were planning some legal action, Donaghy replied in the affirmative, saying that they had only that afternoon initiated a suit against Trinity College to release Holderness’s thesis—which Coyle, as thesis advisor, had rejected and sequestered—to an ad hoc faculty reviewing committee headed by Fergus Flood. “Kinch was so dogmatic in his antiquarianism, when in fact all that was required of him was an assessment of the academic merits of the paper, which are beyond reproach.”

  “Kinch?” McGarr asked.

  Yet again the thin, unpleasant smile appeared. “I’ve grown fonder of him in death.” McGarr thought of other references: to “murderer’s ground” in Ulysses, where Coyle had been found; to the parallel between Beckett’s and Coyle’s stabbings; to Catty Doyle’s little dog, the one that Holderness had given her; and the meaning of the word kinch. Noose.

  “What about a man named Jammer?” he asked.

  “Named what?”

  “Jammer. You’ve heard it before.”

  “I have? When?”

  “He’s one of Catty’s friends. A tall fellow. Modish in dress.”

  Holderness shook his head.

  “Lives over the wall in the Glasnevin Cemetery.”

  “Certainly you don’t mean he’s a shade?”

  “You’ve seen him plenty of times in the early morning, skulking out of the lane.”

  “Me or this Jammer?”

  Donaghy had interrupted, “Fishing here, McGarr?”

  McGarr had turned to a waiter who was dispensing smoked salmon with capers and onions from a tray. “I like fish. Wouldn’t mind if we had some tonight.”

  But the entrée had proved to be veal swimming in a champagne sauce, and, claiming he had a phone call to make, McGarr slipped out. Given his duties, he found people usually made excuses for him; then, actually, he had reports to write.

  Now, with the staff filing in for the morning briefing, he raised the mug of coffee and took a long swallow. Pushing himself away from his desk, he let the hot malt trickle down his throat. He put his feet up on the edge of the dustbin and looked out the open window.

  There, past the eaves of the Castle, past the spires of Christ Church and St. Audeon’s in the Liberties, was a solitary patch of blue sky, dotted with a puff of cloud. It looked like a solitary, inquisitive hoary eye perusing the city. He thought of Catty Doyle’s eyes, which were just about that color, and then the tattoo on Mary Sittonn’s arm, and finally of the mechanisms and devices and whatnot in that mirrored room.

  And he decided—taking another touch of liquid fire—that, considering the corpse that had been found overnight floating in the canal and the other murders that were sure to be committed as time went on, they had done about as much as they could for the moment to bring Kevin Coyle’s murderer to justice. The investigation had come down to a small amount of physical evidence, a handful of potential suspects, and one person’s word against another’s. And even if, say, Holderness had admitted to answering the knock on the back garden gate, what then?

  The problem was they were understaffed and would soon have to end the surveillance of Jammer’s kip inside the walls of the cemetery in Glasnevin. Sure, Ward had come back to work—he now entered the cubicle and was asked by Bresnahan (Mirabile dictu!) if he wished tea or coffee. But Ward was only good for paperwork, and that with one hand, and failing the reappearance of Jammer, they were stuck.

  Said McKeon, wiggling his cup, “As long as you’re going that way, Rut’ie.”

  “La—I’ll have me hands full,” she replied so pleasantly that McGarr turned his head to her, “and tell me, Sergeant, where’s your rank?” And when he began to complain about Ward, she added, “Or your sling. Or were you crippled beyond the call of duty last night?”

  McGarr blinked.

  Some of the staff, which had filed in and taken their positions, chuckled.

  What was it about her that was so odd? McGarr wondered. When she came back with the two cups (one for herself), he took another close look. Her hair? No. Yes—somehow it was thinner, or she’d brushed it back
from her temples. And it was sort of curly and a bit spiked on top. And then, was she wearing makeup? He thought so, though what with the poor light and him only half awake, he couldn’t tell.

  He was about to take another satisfying belt from the mug when he snapped his head back. Bresnahan was out of uniform. That was the difference, and she looked—what was the word Catty Doyle had used?—interesting for the first time in his memory.

  Said O’Shaughnessy, “Sinclaire and his crew need a break. I thought Rut’ie and Hughie might spell them for the next few days until—”

  They could no longer afford to give the case such attention, he meant.

  McGarr hadn’t taken his eyes from Bresnahan. She was wearing a tight, sleeveless blouse that was open rakishly to, well—his eyes kept descending—and a wide, shiny plastic belt that made her waist seem tiny for a woman of her size. It emphasized the flare of her narrow hips, but more particularly, the expanse of her shoulders and the radical angle of her chest. Her skirt was tight and short and also black, and she was wearing flat shoes to match, which made her long legs look girlish and thin.

  For the first time, McGarr began thinking of Bresnahan as something other than a spare who’d been borrowed from the uniformed service. If she could continue to make herself look more noticeably “Dublin,” as it were, he might have continued use for her, and not just in the office. The way she’d handled Katie Coyle, Mary Sittonn, and Catty Doyle in the antique shop had been quite professional.

  With most eyes on her, she now said brightly, “It all comes down to motive, doesn’t it?” When McGarr said nothing, she continued, “We have four people that we know about who had the opportunity. Fergus Flood, though he was seen to leave the area, might’ve returned. Jammer, who was last seen with Coyle, and on the report of one of his mates, returned shortly after with the ashplant stick, the boater, and Coyle’s blazer. Holderness, who Ms. Doyle reported left her company to investigate some noises they were hearing from the back garden, though he says not. And she herself. Ms. Doyle, that is.