The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  I had plenty of time before my planned visit to Inspector Reynolds, who had answered my note with a confirmation brought in late yesterday evening. I employed this intervening time in trying to advance my search. I first visited Somerset House to look up other Rubinsteins and try to discover anything about Britta’s family. But I failed, for the opposite reason from last time; there were too many Rubinsteins for it to be feasible to trace them all. I then went to Mr Upp’s office and had the freckled urchin carry him a note containing a request for information on the subject of the present location of Britta Gad and her daughter. He contented himself with sending me back a brief answer to the effect that unfortunately he had no information on the question, but that had he himself been in the position of the widow of a man executed for murder, he would undoubtedly have changed names, a notion which discouraged me. After having wasted my entire morning in this manner, I wended my way on foot through a chill mist to the Victoria Embankment, and entered the premises of New Scotland Yard with damp shoes, soiled hems, and black thoughts.

  My only consolation was in the thought that it might be possible to obtain help from the inspector not only in locating the two missing ladies, but perhaps even in obtaining permission to visit Baruch Gad in prison. Indeed, this kind of thing, which is practically inconceivable for ordinary mortals, is a mere matter of routine for the police.

  I walked into the building and enquired for the inspector with a lady seated behind a counter, wearing a forbidding expression on her face. ‘I believe he is out on a case,’ she said with asperity, but disappeared nevertheless into the inner reaches of the building.

  The inspector himself returned with her to greet me, and he was neither out nor forbidding; he seemed quite pleased to see me.

  ‘Mrs Weatherburn, what a pleasure,’ he said. ‘You visit London very rarely, don’t you? Why, I can’t remember ever seeing you here before. Do let me show you around. We’re quite proud of our location; we’ve only been here five or six years, you know. “New Scotland Yard”, we insist on calling the place, although there’s no more Scotland Yard here than Buckingham Palace. I rather miss the old Scottish Kings’ courtyard and its legends, but we’re much better off here, of course. We’d become very cramped in Whitehall. Now we can work properly. Do come along to my office. I ought to be able to scare up a cup of tea. Now, tell me what you are doing here. Is this holiday or business?’

  ‘Business,’ I said firmly. The relationship between the police and private detectives is always, at best, ambiguous, so I thought I would do as well to take the bull by the horns straight away.

  ‘Is that right?’ he said cheerfully. ‘Getting under our feet again in some way, are you? Do I know the case?’

  ‘You probably know of it, at least,’ I said. ‘I am investigating the murder of Professor Gerard Ralston of King’s College.’

  ‘The Ralston murder! Why, I’ve heard about nothing else since I got here this morning. There’s to be a breakthrough today, it seems. Are you behind that, then? I might have known.’

  ‘But I’m not,’ I said, amazed and alarmed. ‘This is news to me. Dear me, what can have happened all of a sudden? Do you know?’

  ‘Well, to start with, there was a fairly nasty newspaper article on the front page of the Illustrated London News, more or less accusing our services of incompetence. I’ve got it upstairs; I’ll show it to you. I’m not on the case myself and I’m not quite sure what’s going on with it, but according to what I’ve been hearing in the corridors, our people are ready to react.’

  ‘React? How?’

  ‘By making an arrest.’

  ‘An arrest! Who will be arrested? Do they know who to arrest?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the details. All I can tell you is that the newspaper article talked about logic, and logic is apparently the order of the day. How is your own investigation going?’

  ‘Not too well,’ I admitted, as we continued down hallways and up stairs, arriving finally in the inspector’s comfortable quarters. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you how you think I might go about finding a person who might be anywhere.’

  ‘Locating lost persons; a difficult task. What exactly do you know about this person?’

  ‘It is two people really: a woman and her daughter. I know their names, or at least, I know the names they went by ten years ago: Britta and Rebecca Gad. I haven’t been able to find any official record, or anything at all, in fact, after the marriage of Britta Rubinstein to her husband Menachem Gad in 1874 and the birth of their daughter in 1875.’

  ‘Menachem Gad? Now, that name rings a bell. What is it? An old criminal case, wasn’t it? The murder of a child. He hanged, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did. But – but I have honestly begun to wonder whether he was really guilty. There was apparently no real motive, except for some sickening rubbish about ritual murder.’

  ‘Motive, motive,’ he said. ‘There goes the amateur. It’s means that count, means and opportunity.’

  ‘There goes the policeman,’ I said, only half-smiling.

  ‘And why exactly are you looking for this man’s widow?’

  ‘I have a feeling there might be some connection with the Ralston case,’ I said a little reluctantly. ‘But I could be wrong.’

  He whistled slowly. ‘I won’t ask how you dug that out; I expect you wouldn’t say it if you didn’t have good reasons. I haven’t heard a whisper of anything about that old case here.’

  ‘I might be mistaken,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s just a faint lead.’

  ‘So the wife and child have disappeared from view?’

  ‘Well, they do not seem to be in London; not under the same names, at any rate.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean much; they could easily have changed their names. They could have done anything, couldn’t they? Even gone to live in a foreign country. What did you say the woman’s maiden name was?’

  ‘Rubinstein. But I haven’t been able to locate her even under that name.’

  ‘Rubinstein; she may have been foreign herself. Perhaps she went back to Poland or Russia or wherever they all come from. There isn’t going to be too much I can do to help you. I can send someone to check that there is no criminal record under those names,’ and he scribbled a short note which he delivered to a young man who answered a bell.

  ‘What would the police do in a case like this?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we’d be methodical. We’d start with all the bureaus of public information in the country; we’d tackle the nearest family members we could find, and failing specific information, we’d cover everyone in the area bearing the same family name, both maiden and married. Rubinstein is common among the Jews. There was someone else in the family involved in the Gad case, wasn’t there? Wasn’t it a trial of brothers?’

  ‘Yes. The other brother is in Dartmoor.’

  ‘Well, then, that’s the person to start with.’

  ‘I would like to! But how could I obtain the authorisation to visit him? Only family members can visit a prisoner, in general.’

  ‘Well, the police can certainly visit a prisoner if we judge it necessary,’ he began. ‘Ah, you’re back,’ he added, as the young man he had sent out with the note returned and thrust his head around the edge of the door.

  ‘Yes sir, but nothing to report. No criminal record associated with either of the names you wrote down.’

  ‘Thank you, Johnson. Well, that was to be expected. Still, as we were saying, there is still the brother in Dartmoor. Let me handle this for you, Mrs Weatherburn. I should be able to arrange visiting rights. Coming from Scotland Yard, that should not be a problem, even though you do not have official status. But we’ll brush that under the rug – you’ve been helpful in the past, so I’m happy to be able to do you a good turn now. I’ll communicate with the governor of the prison and fix a time for your visit. I suppose it’s rather urgent?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Come back and see me tomorrow after midday,’ he said. ‘I’ll
send a telegram or two and see what I can do before then.’

  I contained my enthusiasm with difficulty. Finally, a ray of light in the darkness?

  ‘Don’t be too optimistic,’ he cautioned me. ‘The prisoner might refuse to talk to you, or he might know nothing about their whereabouts.’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, if you believe in this thing, you had better work as fast as you can, because as I told you, an arrest is imminent.’

  ‘Oh, yes! Who can it be? I almost forgot – you were going to show me the article that caused such a stir.’

  He reached over to a chair near his desk, upon which he had laid his coat, hat and stick in a precarious pile. They all fell off as he unceremoniously dug the newspaper out from underneath them.

  ‘Bother,’ he said, handing it to me.

  The article leapt to the eye. A blaring headline entitled it:

  LIBRARY PARADOX STILL UNSOLVED

  Interviewing a logician? Why, this must be the article written by the very journalist that Bertrand Russell mentioned yesterday. What had he suddenly understood? Was it Russell who had indicated the solution to him? What could it be? I read the description of the crime and its discovery once again, and tried to apply a fresh eye and logical reasoning. But my mind remained perfectly blank.

  ‘Do you understand what the famous loophole is?’ I asked the inspector, feeling a little envious of the anonymous journalist whose boasts – or whose prowess – I was not able to match.

  ‘No, but I haven’t thought about it. The fellows on the case saw what he meant right away, I believe,’ he replied. ‘At least, I assume they did, since they’ve been talking about an arrest. But they’re not telling details at this point.’

  ‘I do wish I knew,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll find out very soon,’ he assured me, handing me the paper and guiding me kindly to the exit. ‘But one never knows – this doesn’t mean you should stop your own work, not yet. Go on and follow up your lead.’

  I reached home, worried and harassed, to find Amy waiting for me in a state of great excitement.

  ‘Look – we must go back to Settles Street tonight!’ she exclaimed the moment I came in. ‘Can you? We received this note from David. Do you think he’s found something out?’

  The note read: Come down tonight if you can – urgent.

  ‘Of course we shall go. When do we leave?’ I said reassuringly, taken aback by her excitement almost verging on panic, as she unconsciously crushed the little note into a ball.

  ‘Right now, if you will. I’ve sent to Jonathan to tell him to go directly there.’

  ‘And what about Emily?’

  ‘Oh, Emily!’ A look of intense annoyance crossed her face briefly, then she shrugged and smiled. ‘She won’t be in this evening – she won’t come with us. She’s busy. She’s at the Hudsons’ again. It’s for the best.’

  ‘For the best? What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh – nothing. I wasn’t talking about tonight – I was talking about Emily and Roland Hudson. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether she comes with us or not, or what she does. You see, she isn’t really one of us. Emily is a dear friend and I love sharing the flat with her, but when it comes to questions of life or death or one’s whole future, then …’

  She did not finish her sentence, and I did not take her up on it. I thought I understood that when she spoke of ‘life or death or one’s whole future’, she was not referring to our investigation, but to something else, something I had also noticed. However, as it seemed to be no business of mine, I did not comment, but merely took up my shawl, which I had only just put off, and prepared to depart.

  The aspect of the sordid, tumbledown tenement in Settles Street seemed more depressing than ever, and the contrast with the radiant warmth and liveliness within was all the more striking. Already before Rivka opened the door for us, a great racket of shouting and playing and tumbling about was to be heard. I do believe I have never seen a woman happier in her interior than Rivka Mendel, as she rose like an angel from amidst a medley of scattered toys, spoons, rolling balls, half-eaten children’s meals and mending, to say nothing of what appeared to be an unbroken sea of boys, complete with crashing waves. Her own two were directly in the process of riding on the back of a youth whom I immediately recognised as cheerful little Ephraim. He was galloping about on all fours, knocking into the furniture, while a second, somewhat older youth galumphed after them, holding the littlest one in place to prevent him from tumbling off, and generally aiding the whole pyramid in its endeavour to remain upright.

  ‘You know Ephraim already, and this is Yakov, David’s other brother,’ said Rivka, tranquilly indicating the thumping, bumping four-headed beast. ‘David is not home yet; he is still in shul. But it is Ephraim who says he really has something to tell you.’

  ‘Did you succeed in the project I gave you?’ I said eagerly, addressing the red-headed youngster. He looked up from his activities and smiled.

  ‘Yes! We did it! And we worked hard, I can tell you,’ he answered. ‘I told Yakov about it – I hope that’s all right – and we sleuthed together. We kept on asking everybody where they had heard the rebbe story, and we talked to everybody – I mean everybody! We talked to boys from five different shuls! And we found out something.’

  It was at this precise moment that Jonathan and David arrived together, having met each other in the street outside. Unlike his younger brothers, David looked serious. He glared at me.

  ‘The boys say they have found out something important that they want to tell you,’ he said severely.

  ‘Yes,’ I said meekly.

  ‘You put them up to this, didn’t you, Vanessa? You know that I didn’t want them mixed up in it,’ he began.

  ‘Oh, David, don’t start!’ shouted both his brothers in chorus. ‘We had fun! We loved it! And it’s silly to think it was dangerous. It was just a test!’

  He said some scolding words to them in Yiddish, but they were undaunted and answered back loudly, without losing their cheerfulness. Finally, David shrugged and turned to me.

  ‘Well, they haven’t told me what it’s all about, so I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do I have the right to find out, or is this for your ears only?’

  ‘No, I think we should all hear it. Ephraim, tell us what you have discovered,’ I said.

  ‘Everybody was telling the rebbe story last week, because – there really was a rebbe who disappeared!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘For a whole afternoon! Nobody knows where he went! And then he came back and everything went on just the same as before. There’s a song about it, too, that they’re singing now.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ I said quickly.

  ‘It was iom shishi – the eve of the Shabbat,’ he said. ‘That means it was the Friday before last.’

  ‘It is the one!’ exclaimed Jonathan.

  ‘Have you simply heard about him,’ I said, ‘or have you actually found out his name?’

  ‘We’ve found out his name, of course,’ said Ephraim indignantly. ‘What do you take us for? It’s Reb Moyshe Avrom.’

  ‘Moyshe Avrom!’ said David. ‘I can’t believe it – Moyshe Avrom is one of our best-known and most revered rebbes. He is known far and wide for the extent of his knowledge and the depth of his interpretations.’

  ‘All I need to do is lay eyes on him,’ said Jonathan, unimpressed by the praise. ‘I would know him again at once. I must see him.’

  There was a short silence at this remark, during which the two boys fixed us with large, astonished eyes.

  ‘Why do you need to see him?’ asked Yakov.

  Nobody answered. Ephraim turned to Yakov with an air of utter delight, and said, ‘Why, it wasn’t a test after all! It was real detection, for the murder mystery! Wasn’t it?’ he added, turning to me for confirmation.

  ‘Well, it was,’ I admitted, feeling a little guilty. ‘But keep the secret, whatever you do.’

/>   ‘Be quiet, boys,’ said David severely. ‘I’m sorry you ever got into this at all, but since you did, just keep quiet about it. No more meddling.’

  ‘But we want to help!’ wailed Ephraim.

  ‘When can we see the man?’ asked Jonathan impatiently.

  ‘Well, I’ve told you this would not be so easy,’ said David thoughtfully. ‘I’ve explained to you already what the life of a rebbe is like here, I mean a real Hassidic rebbe like Moyshe Avrom. His time is not his own. There isn’t one moment when he isn’t surrounded by his pupils or his disciples or his family. His disciples live in his house, and follow his every movement, word and gesture, trying to learn something from them. He never has a casual conversation, because everything he says is taken to have tremendous meaning. In fact, for this rebbe to have left for an afternoon must have been quite difficult.’

  ‘We heard that he just told his students to stay in the shul and simply walked out the door, and none of them even thought of following him, because they always do as they are told,’ said Yakov. ‘They probably thought he went out to breathe the air, but in fact he did not return for several hours.’

  ‘Why can’t we just go and knock on his door?’ said Jonathan.

  ‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t get near him. His disciples would receive you, and never let you get near their holy man.’

  ‘Can we not get a message to him?’ I suggested.

  ‘But how would you deliver it? Even if you delivered it by hand, you’d still have to give it to one of the students. They probably take care of his mail for him as well,’ said Rivka.

  ‘I have an idea!’ said David suddenly. ‘What about the Purim festival, Rivka? It starts Thursday. You probably don’t know what the Purim festival is, Vanessa; I’ll explain it to you later. But it’s the one day in the year in which all houses are open. People wear disguises, and mummers and musicians go in and out of the houses playing and dancing. Why, probably anyone will be able to enter the rebbe’s home that day!’