The Death of Love (4 page)

“You’re taking all this in, sir?” Gladden asked McGarr, who neither nodded nor blinked. There was an antagonism between the two men that was deep and pointed, and he wondered at its cause. He also asked himself what he was hearing here and from which man. An accusation, perhaps? Or a confession? McGarr too had friends with heart conditions, but in what specific way he knew not.

“And Paddy, now—which misadventure befell him?” Gladden asked Frost.

Frost’s eyes, which were nearly the color of his silver hair, surveyed the shattered glass on the floor, the open medical cabinet, the dried blood in the sink, on the tiles of the floor, and the wall near the steam rail, which was bent off center as though having been fallen on. He then glanced into the bedroom at the pills on the floor. Power’s corpse was across the room, concealed by the bed. “I have no idea and, which is more, nor do you.”

“Think you not? We’re not all
amadans
here in the Kerry you turned your back on thirty years ago and would with O’Duffy and his tribe as soon forget. How convenient is it for you to be rid of Paddy Power on the eve of the week in which he would declare himself politically and expose you for what you are?”

Frost’s features had glowered. But he now sighed and, muttering something that McGarr heard as “…your own self entirely,” turned on Gladden a look of encouraging amusement. “Something tells me you won’t be long in telling us what that is.” Frost’s eyes moved to McGarr’s, as if to say, You’re in for an earful now.

“I won’t, Chairman Frost. I won’t, to be sure.” Lowering a shoulder the better to fix Frost with wide-eyed and
deliberate accusation, Gladden summoned himself and said, “You and your bloated sow of an Eire Bank. You and O’Duffy and your pack of slavish jackals are thieves, every last one of you. You stole the wealth of this country and its future right out from under the nose of the poor, hardworking common man, and you’ll do anything, even commit murder, to keep it in your grip.

“Paddy, lying dead out there on the floor, had been part of all that. But
he
was a good man and had second thoughts. He knew how it had happened and why, and he had devised a plan to place this country on a sound and independent financial footing, and then return it to its rightful owners.” With the flat of his hand Gladden smote his own breast.

Trying to suppress a smile, Frost nodded. “In whose place you have always stood. Stolidly. But go on. Work away. It matters not that I encouraged Paddy and am one of the main architects of his plan. How did
we
slavish jackals accomplish Paddy’s death? But watch yourself.”

As though expecting some threat, Gladden braced himself yet more.

“Mention the phrase ‘running dogs,’ and, sure, you’ll reveal yourself altogether.”

Gladden’s body rocked and his nostrils flared, but like a gladiator or pugilist, he rolled his broad shoulders forward, saying, “With digitalis, as you outlined so knowledgeably earlier. And don’t think for a moment Paddy was hoodwinked by you, who, like your chemist father before you, wouldn’t give a man the heat off your water. He’d copped on to your greed years ago, Shane Frost, and knew what you were about with your carry-on of help and aid and suggestions. He knew and he told me, so he did, but, it seems,
I
failed.”

Frost waited.

“A cock-up you were planning. Some way of confounding his scheme, and how better than knowing its provisions in detail beforehand. I argued against you, but not strongly enough. He wouldn’t hear me. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter what Shane and his wrecking crew know, this way or that. The terms of my plan are inevitable and necessary,
and they’ll resist them at their political peril, I’ll see to that.”

“Paddy confided to
you
the terms of his plan?” Frost now asked with humorous skepticism.

“Indeed he did, and who else? Who else in this country has my moral authority? And
consistency
, might I add, from the day I first set foot in the Dail, till the day I denounced O’Duffy and your kind to the populace.”

Smiling fully now, Frost said, “I’ll allow you’ve been that, Mossie.” Frost worked the fingers of one hand, as though feeling something. “Consistent.”

Again Gladden flushed. “About you yourself, do you know what Paddy said?”

“I’m certain you can’t resist telling us.”

“He said, ‘Shane is made for their crowd. We’ve been friends and are still partners, but experience has taught me what he is. Just another craven corner boy. Apart from O’Duffy, there isn’t a man among them. When blood is drawn, you’ll see, they’ll scatter, and Shane will be the first out. He’ll land on his feet, and Eire Bank will survive.’”

Frost’s smile had fallen somewhat, but he only shook his head.

“Good man that he was, he didn’t understand that surviving isn’t good enough for you anymore. Nor is the welfare and future of the country even a consideration. You, O’Duffy, those bastard Harneys, and your confederates have supped at the trough of avarice too long, and now nothing, not even the murder of your oldest friend, is beyond you.”

As though speaking of an absent party or a small child, Frost said to McGarr, “Pity that Mossie stepped down from the Dail. Three years of farming haven’t hurt him a bit. His purple passages are still too good to be true.”

A color that
was
close to purple rose to Gladden’s face. He opened his mouth and closed it, as though having to summon his control. He then turned to McGarr and in a small, tight voice that was trembling with anger said, “To regulate the arrythmia in Paddy’s heart and keep him from having an attack, I had put him on a strict regimen of quinidine tablets that he took religiously three times a day:
when he awoke and then at four in the afternoon and at midnight. Last night at the reception that he gave for his arriving guests, somebody, who was well acquainted with his condition, slipped in here and substituted digitoxin or some digitalis-based substance for the quinidine.

“Paddy had been tramping about the mountains. He had even called in on me, wishing to use the telephone so he could ring up the Parknasilla staff to say he’d be late. But I have none. Instead I offered him a lift back, but he declined, saying his heart had been giving him trouble and he needed more exercise to smooth it out. He always felt better after a long walk. We had tea—noncaffeine for him—and our usual talk, and he invited me round to the reception later in the afternoon. I declined, but then I got to worrying about him, and so I jumped in the car and drove down here.

“I arrived about six. The reception had begun at four, and Paddy had got back at five. Since he was an hour late in taking his pills, I should imagine he came in here straightaway and reached for the quinidine.” Gladden pointed to the largest bottle on the topmost shelf. “Of course, he had his guests to look after, and he would have taken the pill and gone right back out through the bedroom to the sitting room and, you know, mixed.”

And how had Gladden arrived? In his farmer’s storm coat with its old belt and rolled-down Wellies? Or in some more formal, suitable costume?

“By the time I got here—like I said, six—I took one look at him and already I could see something was wrong, though he wasn’t letting on. His skin was gray and flaccid, the whites of his eyes had begun to yellow. There was a bead of perspiration on his forehead, but he looked like he was cold. Chilled.

“I was worried at first that the pressure of the conference and all had gotten to him, and he was off on some sort of
shaughrawn
.” Gladden’s eyes rolled to McGarr. “Paddy, you see, had been a bit of a bounder and aptly named.” He meant that both Paddy and Power were names of Irish whiskeys. “In his time, sure, he’d guzzled enough whiskey to corrupt his kidneys and liver, and—story was—when ineebri-
a
-ted, he’d go up on a midge. And
there he stood, tumbler in hand, chatting up the few women about the place. Gretta, of course, his…assistant or whatever. And then the wives who’d been brought along on the junket by some of his guests.

“But wasn’t the drink in his hand Ballygowan Spring Water and his conversation listless. Paddy was usually wheedlin’ and needlin’ the women, and he could coax a laugh from a crumpet. But all I heard from him was a yes or a no, and him breathing through his mouth. Beset. Going through the motions. With nothing lively, like, about him. Nothing whatsoever.

“‘What happened to you at all, Paddy, my dear man?’ says I to him. ‘Have you knocked back your tablet?’ He turned to me, and it was then I saw his eyes. ‘Janie,’ says I, ‘’tis the digitalis.’ ‘Is it that you’ve taken? By mistake maybe?’ Digitalis poisoning, you know, can kill. But somebody like Paddy, it
would
kill. And
did
.

“Paddy shook his head and, speaking low so only I would hear, said ‘The usual,’ by which he meant his usual maintenance dose of quinidine. ‘You sure?’ He nodded, his poor sick eyes imploring me not to make too much of it there in front of his guests, and he virtually staggered away from me.”

McGarr could imagine the difficult Dr. Mossie Gladden being just the sort of party guest who would keep others, even a host, stirring; the invitation to Gladden had most probably been perfunctory, Power never dreaming that Gladden would actually show up.

“The conference—which, he knew, some others would try to stop or disrupt—meant so much to Paddy Power that he was willing to risk his very life for its success.”

Frost’s nostrils flared. His eyes jumped to the translucent panes of the bathroom window, which was now filled with dun, stormy light.

“But
I
was not put off that easily, sorrh. Not me,” Gladden went on, his head rising and chest inflating with what McGarr could only assume was mock-heroic exaggeration.

Was the man entirely right? And, speaking of eyes—how had he managed to keep his own so pellucid and sparkling? Like brilliant stones polished on a winter beach,
they maintained their gleaming hazel fix without blink or waver.

“I traipsed right in here, opened this medical cabinet, and examined the contents of this very same bottle”—he pointed to the largest on the topmost shelf—“to ascertain, as well as I was able without lab analysis, that it contained quinidine, which it did. And does, I’m certain.

“For it was only this early morning when I arrived and found Paddy murdered that it occurred to me the base tactic those vile wretches”—on the squeak of a rubber heel, Gladden spun around, a finger pointed at Frost—“had wreaked upon our guileless Paddy who had opened his trust, his hospitality, and even, as it turns out, his heart to them the eventide earlier.

“Before—mind you,
before
—Paddy had even gotten back here yesterday afternoon,
somebody
, knowing Paddy’s medicinal needs, his schedule, and even his sensitivity to digitalis, had slipped in here to this toilet ostensibly on nature’s call and with low cunning placed a bottle of pills that looked similar to but were different from this bottle of quinidine here.

“Paddy—unknowing, already late, anxious to get back to his guests—simply gulped one down. Thinking it quinidine, he returned to the reception room, only to feel a half hour later the first effects of digitalis poisoning. A quick, sharp headache and abdominal pain. An hour later, when I first saw him, his symptoms had escalated to nauseousness and a general feeling of total, systemic muscular weakness. His pupils were, as I had also noticed, contracted, and thus his vision had to have been distorted. But mainly he was feeling precordial distress in the form of a rapid and violent heartbeat.

“But thinking to himself that he’d only just taken the quinidine, he must have decided that he was feeling the onset of atrial fibrillation, and if he could just hold out until his guests departed, he had the remedy for that too in the medical cabinet. The dinner hour was fast approaching, and already some of his guests had begun to leave. In the meantime the villain”—Gladden paused—“or villains had returned to the toilet and replaced the ‘doctored’ bottle with the real bottle, that one there.”

Said Frost, “
He
said it, not me. I wonder, Mossie, can you type? Your explanation would make a hell of a mystery.”

But Gladden ignored him. “When finally the last guest had gone, Paddy threw the night latch and, summoning his last ounce of strength, staggered—I can only imagine—through the sitting room, the bedroom there, and into the toilet here, where he fell against the sink. It was wet from his guests. His hands slipped off the porcelain, and his head dashed against the mirror.” Gladden pointed at the shattered glass.

“He managed, though, to snatch down the bottle, but the effort was too great for him, and he fell that way”—the callused maw of Gladden’s large hand moved toward the steam rail, which was bent and spattered with blood—“but didn’t go down. No. Instead he pushed himself toward the bedroom, where finally he fell.” Gladden lurched around and stepped toward the door in which stood Frost, who did not move.

They were about the same height, but Gladden, because of his stoop and his odd way of peering, had to look up at Frost. “Sorry,” he said, by which he meant, Excuse me.

“I wonder if you are,” said Frost. “It would appear to me you’re delighting in all these details and what they might mean, say, to the press. Tell me, Mossie—have you something up your sleeve?”

“Sure, the fella without guilt has an easy pillow.”

“Or a sheep on the mountain,” Frost supplied. It was an old country saying and the basis of what Gladden had said: The fellow without a sheep on the mountain has an easy pillow.

“But don’t I have plenty of
real
sheep on my mountain, which I own without lease or favor, ridge to ridge. No bonds, no stock, no usurer’s mortgage, nor no bailout subsidies from a collusive government. Now, stand out of the doorway. I’ll have no gombeen-man blocking my path.”

Frost’s ears pulled back. He was a big man who looked as though he had kept himself fit. His hands came up, and McGarr stepped forward.

Said Gladden, “Try that caper and I’ll put you on the flat of your soft back.”