It’s always difficult for someone like Bram to separate fact from fiction. Eddie murdered? Too much for him to take in. No point pushing it, so Hayden eventually settled for saying he wanted to spend a bit more time on the home patch. Soak up the atmosphere. Bram worked this through in his mind as they turned back into Kincora Road.
‘You’ve decided to set it in Clontarf,’ he said. ‘Good move. Possible title: Clean Streets. You know. As in –’
‘I know, Bram,’ said Hayden. ‘I know.’
Bram had just slowed down for a speed bump when – wow! Professor Emeritus Larry Stern cycled past, his shock of white hair flapping furiously in the bike-induced breeze. I mean, serendipity or what? Professor Emeritus Larry Stern, Dept. of Comedic Studies, CDU. Author of several seminal works on this most complex of subjects. His masterpiece, A Learned Disquisition on the Theory and Practice of Comedy, is never far from my bedside table, or, indeed, my thoughts. His short introduction to the subject, Mirth: A User’s Guide, which posits five levels of comedy, is highly recommended for the uninitiated.
Now, I don’t want to get lost on a tangent, but I wish I could have followed the professor. As I’ve become familiar with his impressive body of work over the years, I’ve found myself referring to him as one would to a philosopher; as a guide, if you will, through the seemingly endless complexities of this Sturm und Drang we call life. Perhaps he was running a summer course at City of Dublin University. If so, I desperately wanted to join.
I filed the professor away for future reference as Bram pulled the car to a halt outside Eddie’s.
Hayden hopped out. The three aunts waved from behind the cotoneaster.
‘Howaya, stranger. Coo-ee.’
‘Seems like only twenty minutes since you were last here.’
‘That’ll be the oul dementia kicking in.’
‘No, it won’t,’ said Hayden, crossing the road. ‘I was here twenty minutes ago.’
‘Did you forget someting? Did you?’
‘Only that could be early onset.’
‘We’d see a doctor quick if we were you, Hayding.’
‘Before you forget.’
Hayden decided to get to the point. ‘The gash on Eddie’s forehead,’ he said. ‘Thoughts?’
His words had a surprising effect. His aunts seemed to shrivel into the bush like a three-headed tortoise. Hayden waited. They reappeared.
‘That’s an ingrown birtmark, Hayding. They grow out when you’re dead.’
‘Or syphilis.’
‘That’s what I said,’ said Bram, getting out of the car.
‘Oh, did you now? Well we were joking, weren’t we girls?
‘A bit of respect for the dead if it’s all the same to you.’
‘But we’d go for ingrown birtmark, Hayding. They only manifest themselves post mortem, don’t they, ladies?’
‘That’s Latin, Hayding. But you’ll undoubtably know that from your classical education wit the Christian Brothers in Fairview.’
‘The point is,’ said Hayden pointedly, ‘I’ve decided to stick around for a while.’ He was about to say ‘Something about this whole business stinks’, but you never knew what convoluted byroads of the English language the three aunts would go down with that one. ‘I need a bit of a break,’ he said instead.
‘From what, Hayding?’
‘More to the point, for what?’
‘To what exalted purpose, if any, do you deign to grace us wit your estimable presence?’
‘In a word.’
Hayden regretted his response as soon as it popped out. ‘I’m writing a novel, actually.’
‘Oh now. Excusez-nous.’
‘Will we be in it, Hayding? Will we?’
‘Not as such,’ he replied. ‘It’s not that kind of novel.’
Then, before they could set off babbling again, he thanked Bram, waved to his dearly beloved aunts, strode briskly back across the road and crunched up the drive to Eddie’s. Bram returned to his car and drove gratefully off. The three aunts resumed pruning and said nothing, each lost in her own deep thoughts, and all three lost in each other’s.
‘Turn the car back. I think Eddie’s been murdered.’ Hayden might just as easily have said ‘Turn the car back. I need a bit of a break’, because that’s exactly what he needed – and where better than his late uncle’s house in leafy Clontarf?
Hayden, though, didn’t see it as a break. No, Hayden was a man with a mission. He dumped his bag on the sofa, marched back out the front door and went around the side of the house. An old, black bicycle lay against the wall. Behind it, a rusty ladder. He moved the bike and laid it to rest against the privet. He then hoicked the ladder over his shoulder and made his way, with difficulty, to the front door. Put the ladder down first, then open the door. Makes sense when you think about it, but it’s not what Hayden did. I was reminded of a scene from an old 1912 black-and-white two-reeler, Apoplexy, in which the heavily moustachioed silent screen icon Finlay Jameson fails to get a ladder past the front door and ends up demolishing the doorframe, the building, and, thanks to the house of cards effect, the whole street, ‘with hilarious consequences’.1 Wonderful comedian, Jameson. Even his moustache had funny bones. Not to mention his heavily-insured skipping rope eyebrows. My own particular favourite Furious Finlay short has him pushing a gorilla over a rickety bridge, only to meet a self-propelled piano coming the other way.
But this is by the by. Hayden eventually manoeuvred the ladder inside the house and lowered it into the cellar. Extended to its double length, it thumped satisfyingly onto the floor below. He switched the light on, stepped gingerly onto the top rung, and started the steep descent at the point where the original ladder had snapped. He stopped. There was no doubt about it. A saw had been applied to the left-hand upright. It had been sawn most of the way through. He ran his fingers along the edge to where it had snapped. His mind racing now, he continued his descent. The floor underfoot was tightly packed earth and, as he became accustomed to the light, he almost tripped on an overturned wooden drink crate. He set it face up.
He was about to move on when the light reflected off something in one of the empty bottle compartments. He reached down and prised it out. A pair of broken spectacles! Eddie’s. He delicately disentangled the twisted wire of the frame. Bloodstained. As, he now saw, was the edge of the crate. Could this explain the large gash on Eddie’s forehead? Had he been descending the ladder, possibly to replenish his supply of Sweet Ambrosia, then fallen, probably drunk, to the wooden crate beneath? But the ladder was sawn through. Why had no-one seen fit to investigate Eddie’s death? To suspect foul play? He glanced quickly around the cellar. Silence and shadows. Cobwebs and canvases. He climbed back up and out into the daylight.
This was serious.
It wasn’t crime fiction.
It was fact.
1 Prof. Larry Stern, Disquisition, Chapter XIV – Other People’s Misery.