Swallow’s painting class was on Thursday afternoons at the Municipal Art School. Before his promotion he had juggled his leave every week, taking on extra shifts to wheedle the half-day off duty from his then boss at Exchange Court, Inspector ‘Duck’ Boyle. He had thought initially that it would be easier to plot his week’s work at his new rank, but in fact, as he realised quickly, it put him under more pressure to stay with the job. Nonetheless, he rarely missed the class. The Municipal Art School was on Thomas Street, just a few minutes’ walk from Exchange Court.
He took a pork chop with potatoes and parsnip for his midday meal at the police canteen in the Lower Yard. Another blast of chilly November rain, driven before a sharp northern wind, hit him full in the face as he stepped through the Palace Street gate. He turned his coat collar up, jammed his bowler down on his head and set off towards Thomas Street.
He had always been a sketcher, drawing birds, animals, trees and buildings around the scenes of his childhood in rural Kildare. The family finances did not allow for the purchase of sketch pads, but his pencil and charcoal drawings filled the pages of innumerable school copybooks. He had never painted, and it was Maria’s sister, Lily, who taught a weekly painting class at the Art School who had suggested that he should enrol with her.
‘You’d enjoy it, Joe,’ she enthused one evening as she and Harry Lafeyre were having dinner with Joe and Maria at Harry’s club, the United Services, on St Stephen’s Green. ‘If you’ve worked only in pencil or charcoal, you should try out your hand with watercolours. I’ll help you.’
‘All I did as a boy every day was to draw what I saw,’ Swallow had explained. ‘I wanted to record things, reduce them if you like, to images on paper. I’ve always done that. Even still, I want to frame the reality that I see within . . . some sort of medium of my own.’
‘Hmmph,’ Lafeyre had grumbled, forking sole bonne femme into his mouth. ‘Sounds as if you should have been a photographic technician. Cameras are very good at that sort of thing; far better than people scratching away with pencils. Painters can lie. Flatter to deceive. But the camera doesn’t lie.’
Lily rolled her eyes.
‘Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m going to marry a complete philistine.’
Despite being more than a year into the course, he felt that he had learned only of his limitations. Lily was a good teacher, patient and tolerant, but even getting him to understand primary colours was a challenge. He had thought initially that using watercolours looked easy, but he learned quickly that if one got something wrong it almost always required a completely fresh start. Moreover, there were some talented people in the class whose work was so superior to his efforts that he sometimes felt embarrassed.
‘Good afternoon, Joe.’
Catherine Greenberg greeted him as she set up her easel next to his in the art room. She was one of those talents. Catherine could infuse a still-life—a silver bowl with fruit or a lamp draped in satin—with colour and vitality that seemed to give it an existence beyond its mundane reality.
It was in the blood, Swallow reckoned. Catherine’s father, Ephram, operated one of Dublin’s finest dealerships in objets d’art and antiques from his premises in Capel Street. Unusually among the Jewish community, Catherine had not married, and at thirty or so she was was probably considered beyond marriageable age among her own people. She was now in the business as a partner with her father. As well as an aesthete and an artist, Swallow knew her to be a competent businesswoman.
He had known the Greenbergs, as he knew all of the Jewish community around Capel Street, from his days as a constable on the beat from the D-Division’s Bridewell Station. Miriam Greenberg, Catherine’s mother, would give him poppy-seed bread and strong coffee when he would slip into the Greenbergs’ kitchen off his beat. She had died in a local influenza outbreak ten years ago. Catherine had inherited her mother’s dark good looks, deep eyes, and a slight tendency to plumpness.
The Greenbergs had recently come back dramatically into Swallow’s professional life when two London criminals set out to rob the Capel Street shop. When he came on the scene with a uniformed constable, investigating the appearance of stolen gold coins in a number of city shops, Swallow had disabled one of them with a shot from his Webley Bulldog while the other fled.
The investigation into the attempted robbery at Greenberg’s of Capel Street had uncovered evidence relating to an earlier murder, that of Ambrose Pollock, a pawnbroker and furniture dealer, done to death in his shop at Lamb Alley, off Cornmarket. In turn, that had revealed the existence of a large-scale embezzlement of exchequer funds in the administration of the Land Acts that enabled Irish tenant farmers to buy out their holdings from their landlords. It was the success of that investigation, John Mallon had told Swallow, which ensured his promotion to the rank of detective inspector.
Catherine made no secret of her affections for Joe Swallow. It had been there even as a young girl, when the handsome, uniformed constable would sit, drinking coffee in her mother’s kitchen, his Roman-style helmet on the table. Later, when Swallow had become a G-Division detective, he would come to visit her father. They would drink Lebanese wine from the Bekaa Valley in Ephram’s upstairs study, looking down into Capel Street. If there was stolen property on the move around the city’s art shops or galleries, Ephram Greenberg knew about it, and usually who was behind it. And as young Catherine became more involved in the business she would sit in on the conversations that ranged beyond the provenance of stolen silverware into politics, philosophy, religion and more.
She was probably seventeen when Swallow realised he was an object of her romantic interest. He was flattered, but nothing could come of it. He was thirteen years her senior. Their faiths divided them, although she made it precociously clear that she was not interested in practising the Jewish faith or any other. And there was an economic divide. The Greenbergs were a wealthy family with an established business. Whatever about the G-Division inspector that he now was, he would have been a poor catch for her as the young uniformed constable he had been then.
He delighted in the painting class, for all the self-doubt about his talent. When he stepped through the doors of the college he entered a different world. Crime, intrigue, dark corridors and dark minds were left behind for a blissful two hours in the company of creative, energetic people. And so it was this afternoon. He felt a lightness in his step and his spirits lifted as he settled to his customary place.
‘Hello, Catherine,’ he grinned. ‘I suppose you’re going to dazzle us all with your homework as usual.’
She smiled.
‘I wish you wouldn’t make fun of me, Joe. I’m just a muddler and I know it.
‘Go on,’ he laughed. ‘If there’s a real artist, as distinct from the ambitious amateurs, in the class, that’s you.’
‘You haven’t been down to Capel Street to see us for a while,’ she said, affecting a reproving frown. ‘My father isn’t as young as he used to be. He’s really confined to the shop and the house. He needs friends to come to see him. You know there’s always a welcome there for you. From both of us, if you understand my meaning.’
‘I’ll be in to him tomorrow,’ Swallow answered. He fully understood her meaning but he was not going to respond to it. ‘I need to make a purchase.’
He had been mentally grappling with what to do about a ring for Maria. She had continued to wear her wedding ring on her left fourth finger, a silent but unmistakable memorial to her late husband. He would not ask her to displace it. At the same time, he knew it would be necessary to mark their nuptials with a gesture. He had raised the question with Harry Lafeyre over a drink at the Burlington Hotel on St Andrew’s Street.
‘Simple,’ Lafeyre answered. ‘Go for what they’re calling an “engagement ring”. I got one for Lily. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Often they’re made up around a diamond, but they’re available with other precious stones as well. They’re expensive, but they’re very fashionable among the moneyed classes in London.’
Swallow had indeed noticed the solitaire diamond ring glittering on Lily’s hand on social occasions.
‘It would be a pretty costly item,’ Lafeyre told him, ‘but it would be a nice investment too. The De Beers company has brought a big supply of diamonds into the market straight out of the Kimberley mines in South Africa, so the prices are reasonable, and the stones will go up in value over time. You’ll see them advertised in the newspapers.’
Later he bought a copy of the London Daily Telegraph and found half a dozen display advertisements for ‘engagement rings’ among the classifieds. He did some financial calculations. The Telegraph’s advertisers were mainly London-based, but he guessed that Irish prices should be comparable and certainly not higher. And he remembered that Greenberg’s displayed trays of rings under its glass showcase counters. He would see what was on offer. Ephram was sure to see him right both on quality and price.
‘A purchase?’ Catherine looked surprised. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to start investing in fine art.’
Before he could answer, Lily Grant took her place at the top of the classroom and clapped her hands, bringing the class of perhaps a dozen students to silence.
‘Good afternoon, everybody. It’s encouraging to see the loyal few who’ve braved it through the terrible weather.’
She smiled.
‘Now before we get to work, we have some good news. First, I think you’ll be delighted to know that Miss Greenberg’s still life, Silver Plate on Marble, has been accepted by the Royal Dublin Society for inclusion in their December exhibition.’
A spontaneous round of applause spread across the room. There were calls of ‘well done’ and ‘congratulations’. Catherine smiled and nodded in acknowledgment.
‘And,’ Lily added, beaming, ‘we have some romantic news. I’ve heard from a little bird, no pun intended, that Mr Swallow is to make the big step into matrimony this week. In fact, he is to marry my sister, Maria. So it’s congratulations all round!’
There was more applause. Somebody clapped Swallow on the back and wished him well. Lily’s face shone with delight. But Catherine Greenberg had gone as pale as chalk. Swallow heard her gasp as she absorbed Lily’s words. Then with knuckled hands clasped in front of her face, she ran to the door and into the corridor outside. Lily looked after her with an expression of mock horror.
‘Oh dear. Poor Miss Greenberg. The shock of having her painting accepted for the RDS exhibition next month must have been too much.’