The Death of a Joyce Scholar Read online

  “Look—for tonight, something’s come up.”

  She didn’t allow herself to suspicion what. Like emotional rot, jealousy was insidious, and once begun, it corrupted everything. And then other tactics worked better.

  “Could I meet you later—say, around half-eight for a drink?”

  “Sure. Or why don’t we leave it that I’ll see you at the Castle tomorrow?”

  Bresnahan savored the pause, before he said, “Why?” There was a certain sweet note of consternation in the question.

  “Well, I might be tied up.”

  He waited.

  After counting to five, Bresnahan went on. “Maire called.” She was a new stylish friend to whom Ward had introduced her. “She thought we might slap on the war paint and trot over to Sachs for the afternoon.” A nearby hotel which for years had presented jazz bands in its lounge bar on Sunday afternoons, Sachs was frequented by post-match ruggers and other sportsmen and women.

  “And…?”

  “Well, who knows? We thought we’d ramble on to that tidy little Moroccan restaurant she likes so much.” And the tidy, not-so-little Moroccan restaurateur Maire had told everybody she liked even better, though after Sachs they might have other offers to dinner. Ward, of all people, was acquainted with the possibilities.

  “Suit yourself.” The tone was harsh. He hung up.

  Bresnahan debated waiting for his second call in bed or actually getting up and bathing and dressing for Sachs. She decided on the latter course, since the date with Maire was real, and she didn’t want Ward to think she wasn’t a woman of her word.

  Slipping Ulysses onto the shelf with her other books, she thought of Molly Bloom saying, “a woman wants to be embraced twenty times a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody…” Well, twenty times was perhaps asking too much, and Bresnahan wasn’t sure she agreed with the “no matter by who.” But it was the reassurance that was comforting, even if her “somebody” was a cagey little fella who had to be cajoled into admitting his true feelings.

  Was that the phone? Bresnahan opened the door to the loo, where she was running the bath.

  “Turns out it’s off anyway.”

  “What’s off?”

  “Me bit of business,” Ward said, as though she’d been privy to his every thought which he kept vague, ostensibly because of their off-again, on-again rivalry at the Castle. “Let’s not go to Sachs.” It was familiar turf, and he was known there all too well. “Hungry?”

  Now that she thought about it, she was famished.

  “Why don’t we pop down to the Greystones Hotel. They’ve a brunch on Sundays I hear is excellent.” He forgot that she too had overheard McGarr say as much to O’Shaughnessy. “Phone and ask for a table by the window, and I’ll be by in about an hour.”

  Bresnahan didn’t know what that meant, but she was learning.

  “What about Maire?”

  “What about her?”

  “What do I tell her—about Sachs and all?”

  “Tell her you have a legitimate date, and you’ve no need to go out collecting scalps. Oh, and I’ve got some news.”

  “About what?”

  “The Coyle case.”

  “Have they decided?”

  He hung up.

  Men were too intense, she decided, setting the alarm on the chair by the tub and slipping into her bath. They went at everything hammers and tongs or, in Ward’s case, with fists clenched, when life was best approached on the carom—gently, obliquely, with some understanding of the movement of other spheres. The Coyle case was much in the news, and she could switch on the radio or the television, which were doubtless full of it, if she were of a mind. But where was the hurry? And more, the need? Would her knowing the verdict forty-five minutes sooner in any way change Holderness’s fate or alter the fact that Kevin Coyle was dead?

  Again Molly’s voice came to her,

  I don’t care what anybody says it’d be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldn’t see women going and killing one another and slaughtering…because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop….

  Bresnahan let the hot water pool up around her breasts and, slipping deeper into the tub, closed her eyes and thought of all the things in her life that Ward would never know of: Kerry and the farm and the sea beyond the wall on the other side of the road where they still went for the kelp for fertilizer near the caves where seals mated and the strand where once a whale beached and died and, like a kind of miracle, got carried off on a high tide and was seen no more.

  And the high pastures, every stone in the walls of which she once knew from helping her father lift and tug and rebuild the gray line that seemed to rise right up to heaven. And the mountain with the sheep they “left out to God” and collected every now and again and how on a good day on one spin of heel you could see Tralee, Castlemaine, Killarney, Cahersiveen, and Dingle.

  Well, perhaps Ward could be made to know them. City fella or no, he would be made to know that mountain, she now vowed. She would see to it herself, personally.

  Said Molly:

  he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life…that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn’t answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of….

  Bresnahan met Ward at the door; she could see from his smile and the sparkle in his dark eyes that he had good news for her, good enough that they might be late for their reservation in Greystones. With both hands he held up the Tribune. Banner headlines read,

  TWOFER

  THE BROTHERS H.

  David Convicted of Murder

  “Jammer” Charged as Accomplice

  Below was a picture of Seamus Donaghy scowling into a camera, with the advisory that the verdict would be appealed.

  “Yes!” Bresnahan cried, raising her arms. Ward wrapped his own around her and raised her off her feet.

  “Ya happy?”

  “Yes!”

  There was a pause, and then his smile changed, an eyebrow arched, and his eyes flickered toward the bed.

  then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

  About the Author

  BARTHOLOMEW GILL is the author of fifteen acclaimed Peter McGarr mysteries, among them The Death of an Irish Sinner, The Death of an Irish Lover, and The Death of an Irish Tinker. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Mr. Gill writes as Mark McGarrity for the Newark Star-Ledger. He lives in New Jersey when not in Dublin.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Praise

  THE DEATH OF A JOYCE SCHOLAR

  A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

  “My favorite McGarr.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “A joy to read, and a pleasure to be in the company of as lively a set of characters as ever sparked a yearning for Dublin…The chase is headlong and fun to follow.”

  Philadelphia Inquirer

  “McGarr is as complex and engaging a character as you can hope to meet in contemporary crime fiction…and Gill is a marvelous tour guide, showing us [this] troubled country’s charm and warts with style and wit.”

  Denver Post

  “His mysteries are so very good.”

  Providence Journal-Bulletin

  “Bartholomew Gill has written a police procedural that defies the limits of its genre. He has taken the format and turned it into a richly textured, intricate novel that exam
ines the Irish psyche as well as a murder. The problems explored are as much human as criminal…Gill writes with literary grace.”

  Washington Post

  “Taut and unerring…A superior bit of storytelling.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “A rare balance of Old World mystery charm and modern shenanigans…It is easy to see why Bartholomew Gill’s creation has been compared to Simenon’s immortal Maigret and Nicholas Freeling’s unstoppable Inspector Van der Valk. McGarr is as pugnacious as they come.”

  Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “The Peter McGarr mystery series is heavily imbued with Irish wit and wonder…Gill has managed to combine erudition, humor, and intelligence.”

  Dallas Morning News

  “Gill is a nimble plotter and fine writer.”

  Orlando Sentinel

  “[A] splendid series…Gill shapes wonderful sentences and zestfully evokes the scenery and the spirit of his former homeland. He is also an imaginative portrayer of character.”

  Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Gill’s dialogue is always superb. It’s the Irish talking.”

  Newsday

  “Sure,’ thas been said that an Irishman can spin a yarn in a league with no other. Bartholomew Gill has been proving that adage for 20 years…The reader is lulled immediately by Gill’s storytelling voice—the tone, the rhythm and dialect, the tongue-in-cheek humor and the affectionate national pride…McGarr is interesting and entertaining, to be sure, and skillful and erudite enough to lead the reader along the trail.”

  San Antonio Express-News

  “A joyous Joycean choice…The plot flows nicely to the end…But it is the portrait of Dublin, and the Joyce legend as it persists and infiltrates the city like fog, that give THE DEATH OF A JOYCE SCHOLAR its fine and malty tang.”

  Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Gill captures the reader’s full attention with humor and inventiveness.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Gill’s descriptive powers paint a vibrant landscape peopled by well-drawn characters…From cover to cover author Bartholomew Gill packs a plot with punch and poignancy.”

  Boston Herald

  “Gill never fails to deliver.”

  Kansas City Star

  Also by Bartholomew Gill

  THE DEATH OF AN IRISH SINNER

  THE DEATH OF AN IRISH TINKER

  THE DEATH OF AN IRISH SEA WOLF

  THE DEATH OF AN ARDENT BIBLIOPHILE

  DEATH ON A COLD, WILD RIVER

  THE DEATH OF LOVE

  MCGARR AND THE LEGACY OF A WOMAN SCORNED

  MCGARR AND THE METHOD OF DESCARTES

  MCGARR AND THE P.M. BELGRAVE SQUARE

  MCGARR AND THE DUBLIN HORSE SHOW

  MCGARR AND THE CLIFFS OF MOHER

  MCGARR AND THE SIENESE CONSPIRACY

  MCGARR AND THE POLITICIAN’S WIFE

  (recently published as The Death of an Irish Politician)

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE DEATH OF A JOYCE SCHOLAR. Copyright © 1989 by Mark McGarrity. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Microsoft Reader February 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-162989-1

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