Free Whatever Happenened to Molly Bloom? by Jessica Stirling Page B

dark and dirty heart of old Dublin. Blood being marginally thicker than water, though, the uncle had charged them a reasonable rent that had remained unchanged even when Jim’s circumstances improved.

    From outside, the narrow, three-storey building with its cluster of ornate chimneypots and steep-sloping roof looked quaintly down-at-heel, like an illustration from a child’s fairy book. At one time, it had been the residence of some ecclesiastical dignitary but its glory days were long past. Apart from replacing rotting window frames and painting the rusty railings in front of the postage stamp sized garden, Jim had done nothing to improve the house’s outward appearance for, crowded into the decaying tenements that flanked the narrow alleys nearby, lived the poorest of the poor, not all of them entirely honest, and the Inspector was too downy a bird to advertise his gentility to potential thieves.
    Edith had done a marvellous job of furnishing the rooms and, with never more than one servant to help her, ran as tight a ship as a man could wish for. Being married to a policeman was not an easy lot but his wife rarely chided him for his erratic hours or the solemn moods that came upon him when an investigation was going badly. And if that wasn’t enough virtue for one woman, she even put up with his father, Robert, who had lodged with them since his retirement nine years ago.
    Jim’s spirits rose when he opened the squeaky iron gate, saw the light in the hallway through the thick triangular glass at the top of the door, heard one of the girls practising her scales on the piano and glimpsed in the window of the dining room Edith helping the maid, Noreen, lay the table for supper.
    He used his key to let himself in and, as always, was greeted with savoury smells from the kitchen mingled with floor polish and a faint flowery air he could only put down to his daughters’ fondness for scented soap and toilet water. He removed his overcoat and hat and was on the point of going into the living room when Daisy, the youngest, came clattering downstairs, calling out, ‘Grandpa, he’s home. Daddy’s home,’ and his father thumped his stick on the first-floor landing and shouted, ‘About time, too.’
    Edith emerged from the dining room, followed by Noreen.
    Oldest daughter, Violet, popped her head round the door of the living room and blew him a kiss while middle daughter, Marigold, abandoned her scales and broke into a grand march that he thought might be from ‘Entry of the Gladiators’, though he couldn’t be sure. Edith kissed his cheek. ‘You’re just in time, dear. Soup will be on the table in five minutes.’

    ‘Good, that’s good,’ he said, then, ‘I may have to pop out after supper, I’m afraid, but I shouldn’t be much more than an hour.’
    ‘That’s what they all say,’ his father bawled from half way down the stairs. ‘Next thing you know it’s dawn and the bed’s still empty. Is it this murdered woman in Eccles Street? Blossom, is it?’
    ‘Bloom,’ Jim Kinsella said. ‘I assume you read it in the evening papers. I’m not quoted, am I?’
    ‘Who’d want to quote you ?’ his father said. ‘Where’s the key?’
    ‘In my pocket, where it always is,’ Kinsella said and watched Edith, throwing up one small exasperated hand, follow the maid along the passage to the kitchen.
    His father, impatient as always, gave him a prod with his walking stick to hurry him on and trailed him into the living room.
    ‘Edith tells me Mrs Bloom was a singer,’ his father said.
    ‘Yes, she was. Quite well known.’
    ‘Well, I’ve never heard of her.’
    ‘Oh, Grandpa,’ said Marigold, glancing up from her music, ‘you’ve never heard of anyone .’
    ‘I have. I’ve heard Lettie Le Mond sing on the stage at Lowry’s, which is more than you’ve ever done.’
    ‘What did she sing?’ said Violet.
    ‘Something about the moon.’
    ‘Are you sure it wasn’t something about Ireland?’
    ‘Perhaps