Free Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? by Jessica Stirling

thereabouts.’

    ‘Nothing,’ Flanagan cried plaintively. ‘Not a hint even?’
    ‘It’s a cruel world, Arthur,’ Kinsella said, ‘a very cruel world, indeed,’ and headed for the door.
    He’d gone no more than a few steps along the street before Delaney caught up with him. He wasn’t in the least surprised to find the Star reporter hot on his heels. Blue eyes, fair curly hair, a broad grin: Delaney’s trick was to disguise a conniving intelligence behind boyish candour. ‘I know you’re pressed for time, Inspector, so I won’t beat about the bush,’ he said. ‘I’ve a fair idea where Boylan might be found and it certainly isn’t Foxrock.’
    ‘I didn’t think it would be somehow,’ Kinsella said.
    ‘I’m not after money.’
    ‘No, you’re after – how do you lot put it? – the inside track.’
    Delaney took his arm and steered him around the corner out of sight of the hotel’s side door. ‘If you’ll answer me a couple questions, Inspector, I’ll give you more than you think you need right now.’
    ‘What questions?’
    ‘Was the woman really murdered with a teapot?’
    ‘Go on,’ Kinsella said.
    ‘Is Bloom the only suspect?’
    ‘What do I get in exchange?’
    ‘I can tell you where Hugh Boylan was last night and where he might be right now.’
    Kinsella hesitated. ‘Yes, it was a teapot,’ he said at length, ‘and Bloom is currently our only suspect. He’ll appear before the stipendiary tomorrow morning. Now it’s your turn.’
    ‘Boylan was down in the Monto until close to midnight.’
    ‘How do you know this?’
    ‘Because I saw him there.’
    ‘Where precisely?’
    ‘In the street outside Nancy O’Rourke’s,’ Delaney said. ‘What’s more he wasn’t alone.’
    ‘Really? Who was with him?’
    ‘Leopold Bloom.’
    ‘Really?’ Kinsella said, sharply this time. ‘What were Bloom and Boylan doing together?’

    ‘Arguing, by the look of it.’
    ‘Were blows exchanged?’
    ‘Not that I saw. I had no reason to linger,’ Delaney said. ‘I bumped into him again by chance this morning.’
    ‘Boylan?’
    ‘Yes, Boylan. He was on the way to his office.’
    ‘What were you doing across the river in D’Olier Street?’
    Delaney grinned. ‘Looking for Boylan. There, I’ll admit it.’
    ‘Time?’
    ‘Coming up for eleven,’ Delaney said. ‘I wanted to ask him if he knew Mrs Bloom had been found dead. He said he didn’t.’
    ‘How did he react to the news?’
    ‘He gave every appearance of being shocked, more so when I told him Bloom had been charged with her murder. He turned white as a sheet and put a hand against the wall to stop himself falling down. Then he said, “I’d better go and fetch Milly,” and, looking flustered, hurried off. Milly’s Bloom’s daughter, isn’t she?’
    Kinsella nodded.
    ‘Flanagan says she has a job in Mullingar. Is that true?’
    Kinsella nodded again.
    ‘Then that’s where you’ll find Boylan,’ Delaney said. ‘I’ll lay odds he’s on his way to Mullingar to fetch the girl.’ He cocked his head and squinted up at the G-man. ‘Now why do you think he would do such a thing?’
    ‘Search me,’ Kinsella said.
    Even late on a weekday afternoon the trains that ran through the junction at Mullingar were crowded. They were loading cattle into wagons in one siding and a squad of militia, weary and travel-stained, were crammed into the carriages of the eighteen minutes past four train to Dublin.
    Blazes had had the foresight to spring for first-class tickets for himself and Milly and they shared a compartment with a prosperous-looking old farmer and a young, whey-faced woman who, by her sober garb, might well be on her way to or from a convent and who, after a swift disapproving glance at Blazes, went back to reading her Testament.
    Blazes put Milly’s suitcase on the rack and settled the girl into a corner seat. She seemed dazed, numbed perhaps by the stuff the quack had ladled into her while peeking down the front of