The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘But entering his home is not enough,’ I said. ‘I am going to need to speak with this man in private.’

  ‘That seems practically impossible, Vanessa. I don’t mean this offensively, but he would not speak alone to a person like you; in fact, you would be expected to stay in the women’s section of the room. I don’t know how you can manage it, but at least I think I can get you inside.’

  ‘All I want right now is to see him – to see if it is the right man,’ said Jonathan. ‘I don’t need to talk to him – I wouldn’t even know what to say. Vanessa can do that afterwards, if he is the one.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said David, then glanced at me. ‘You think this is strange, don’t you? I understand that in a way it is absurd that it should be difficult just to get near enough to someone to speak to him about something important. The thing is, it isn’t a question of individuals. Life here is so different from life outside. The meaning of people’s lives is different. I mean, people’s lives have meaning. Rivka, for instance – she isn’t just a married woman raising a family like thousands of others, doing her best to get the children fed and to bed on time. Not here. Here, everything you do is for the glory of the Lord. Everything you do counts and your time, your efforts and your words are not your own. You just have to trust me that it isn’t a simple matter. I can’t think of anything better than the Purim festival.’

  ‘To talk to him, maybe. But I just want to lay eyes on him from a distance,’ said Jonathan. ‘I can’t wait till Thursday. I need to see him now.’

  ‘We heard he walks home from shul at the same time every evening,’ said Ephraim helpfully. ‘Of course, he leaves together with the whole group of students, but perhaps if we go and stand near the shul, Jonathan can get a glimpse of him.’

  ‘What time does he go?’ I asked.

  ‘Seven o’clock exactly.’

  ‘Let’s go now,’ said Jonathan immediately, glancing at his watch, and David nodded and led the way outside. Amy remained to help Rivka with the small children, and David tried to forbid his brothers from joining us. Yakov complied with a shrug, but Ephraim attached himself to us irrepressibly, with the excuse of being the only one who knew exactly where the rabbi’s shul was situated.

  ‘If it is really the right man, we must make some kind of a plan for me to be able to do more than merely enter his house,’ I said to David as we walked.

  ‘Even if you did manage to approach him, and to talk to him directly about the murder, which seems almost as unlikely as flying to the moon, you almost certainly would not obtain a straight answer,’ he answered quietly. ‘Rebbes speak in parables and ask questions instead of answering them.’

  ‘Ugh,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have to cross each bridge as we come to it. First things first, then: let Jonathan identify him! Is the place far?’

  ‘No, it’s just off Brick Lane,’ said Ephraim. ‘It’s a good thing it’s not too dark yet.’

  Although not dark, the light was dimming. Poor people hustled along the dirty streets in the chill, and comforting lights showed at a multitude of windows along the way. I tried to imagine many little homes all as snug as Rivka’s, but the task was impossible, so powerful was the impression of poverty and misery given by the cold, huddled people in their ragged coats and the half-naked, bare-legged children who ran about the streets. We crossed Whitechapel and turned down Old Montague Street and then up Brick Lane, Ephraim gambolling happily ahead of us, and reached the tumbledown little house that served as synagogue and shul for the rabbi’s community at a few minutes before seven.

  ‘That’s the place,’ said Ephraim in a whisper, pointing. We stopped, and peering at its dimly lighted windows with interest, we tried to find a place to post ourselves near enough to see, but not so near as to attract attention. It seemed strange to be standing there doing nothing. Several people passing stared at us with some hostility, and indeed, Jonathan and I in our city clothes fitted badly into the general atmosphere, even though Rivka had bound my hair up under one of her own kerchiefs before allowing me out of the house.

  ‘Where has Ephraim got to?’ I wondered, looking around for him.

  ‘Shhh!’ David admonished me. The door of the prayer house was opening.

  In front of my fascinated eyes, there emerged a gaggle of young men wearing clothes and aspects so outlandish as to give David, by contrast, almost the air of a typical British man-about-town.

  Dressed in black from head to toe, with long coats and big hats, they wore their hair in long curls falling on either side of their cheeks. Without exception, their faces were pale and wan. All of those faces were turned towards one exact point in the middle of their group; they surrounded their rabbi and had eyes only for him. Alas, he was rather short in stature, and it was impossible to see anything more of him than the large, wheel-shaped fur hat he wore on his head.

  I glanced at Jonathan, who made a gesture of frustration. I was just wondering if we should not try to create some diversion to shake apart the tightly bound group, when we saw that Ephraim, who had moved right up to the door, had understood the situation and was in the process of taking this task upon himself. Throwing the merest twinkling glance in my direction, he burst suddenly forward, and running up to the tightly knit, slowly advancing knot, he called out a few names in a loud voice – ‘Hey, Shimon, Reuven!’ and began to babble something in his own language, in loud and excited tones. David shook his head in amazement.

  ‘Shh, shh,’ said several of the earnest young men, pushing Ephraim away and murmuring, in low voices, little phrases which sounded for all the world like ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you think you are doing?’ He struggled and continued to shout. Several of the young men undertook to hustle him aside, and in doing so, they actually increased the distance between themselves and their revered leader – and he became, momentarily, visible! He was quite an old man, nearer eighty than seventy, with a spreading grizzled beard on his chest and a wholesome face whose sternness was relieved by a faraway, almost ecstatic expression. Although short, he walked with a steady step, and seemed firmly built, although this was somewhat hard to judge as he was well wrapped up against the weather with greatcoat, scarf wound many times about his neck, boots, and gloves. Gloves. I thought about the gun, about its strangely smudged-over fingerprints.

  I felt someone grab my arm. ‘It’s the same man! It is!’ Jonathan was whispering urgently into my ear. ‘There’s no question about it. I recognise him absolutely. Oh, my God.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ responded David immediately. ‘Our task is accomplished for the present. We don’t want them to notice us. Let Ephraim find his own way back. He can deal with it,’ he added ruthlessly, as his brother received a resounding smack for some insolence and rubbed his cheek ruefully. ‘Don’t worry about him! There never was such a survivor. He’ll know his job is done when he sees us gone.’

  His attitude surprised me for a moment, when I remembered how annoyed he had been at my inveigling the child into helping, however harmlessly, with the investigation. But I suppose that then he was imagining his brother being led into all kinds of unknown dangers, whereas the mere falling into the hands of a group of ultra-religious Hassidim obviously constituted no danger at all in David’s eyes.

  I disliked leaving the child behind, but followed David nonetheless as he walked quietly away and turned the corner into Brick Lane. There, to my surprise, I saw a man standing still and waiting, just as we had being doing a few moments earlier. I looked straight at him, and his gaze momentarily met mine. There was something disagreeable about it. I did not know the man, but I knew the look.

  ‘That man is from the police,’ I murmured to David, as low as I could, hurrying to catch up with his rapid steps.

  ‘The police?’ he said, glancing back without slowing down. ‘What makes you say that? He looks perfectly ordinary to me – more so than you do, at any rate.’

  ‘I don’t know how I know. I just feel it. I’ve met so many policemen! And he’s th
ere, waiting, watching. Do you think the police can possibly have succeeded in identifying the rabbi? Oh, I forgot to tell you – but just this morning I heard from the police that there was going to be an arrest today. Can they have found him themselves? How can they have done it? And how could they possibly justify an arrest? We know he cannot be the murderer!’

  Jonathan turned to me, looking worried.

  ‘Can we warn him?’ he suggested.

  ‘I wish we could, but it would not change anything. He would not heed a warning,’ said David. ‘A rebbe does not flee. If he is arrested, he will defend himself with the truth.’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ I said. ‘If the rabbi is on the point of being wrongfully arrested, he is in serious danger! Jewish people are convicted of crimes just because they are Jews! Don’t you know that?’ I was surprised by the urgency in my own voice. All that I have learnt about the Dreyfus affair, on top of my increasing doubts about the Gad case, has shaken me to the core.

  ‘Vanessa is right! He mustn’t be arrested!’ said Jonathan suddenly, in a voice so choked with passion that I stared at him in amazement.

  ‘What happened? Was it the right man?’ said Amy, hastening towards us as soon as we stepped into the little flat, which was warm and steamy with cooking.

  ‘It was, Amy!’ said Jonathan. ‘If only we could talk to him soon! But Vanessa thinks she saw a policeman watching him as we came away. She’s afraid the police might have identified him too, and be getting ready to arrest him.’

  ‘No-o-o,’ cried Rivka. ‘I can’t believe that – it just isn’t possible. Why, how could they have ever identified the rebbe? They can have no spies or informers here.’

  ‘The police have a lot of methods,’ I was beginning, but Jonathan interrupted me.

  ‘If the rebbe is arrested, we will save him,’ he said firmly. ‘After all, we can prove that he is innocent, can’t we? Our reconstruction shows that he can’t possibly have done it.’

  It was true, and I wondered again, as I had many times already, what ‘logical loophole’ the Illustrated London News journalist had been thinking of, that I had not yet been able to see.

  ‘And if the rebbe is not arrested,’ Jonathan was continuing, ‘Vanessa will have to approach him during the Purim festival, the day after tomorrow. Now that I’ve seen him, I understand why David says that it’s our best chance of getting near him. It seems practically impossible to approach the man for a private conversation.’

  Ephraim entered the flat at that moment, laughing.

  ‘I ran all the way home,’ he said. ‘Oooh, they were mad at me! Did you get a proper look at him?’

  ‘Yes. It is the man we were looking for,’ said David soberly. Ephraim joined us at the table and served himself some food.

  ‘When are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ he said.

  ‘As soon as we can; as soon as we know enough ourselves,’ I began.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said David firmly.

  ‘Well, if you won’t tell me about this case, do tell me about another one, at least!’ he insisted pleadingly. ‘Tell us about a mystery that you solved. I want to learn,’ he added slyly, ‘you know I want to become a detective myself!’

  ‘Ah,’ I began, wondering if this was the right place and time to recount the stories of other crimes. But everyone else seemed to think the idea was an excellent one.

  ‘Well, let me think,’ I said, quickly reviewing some past cases in my mind for something that I could reasonably recount in front of children. ‘I once had an interesting case about a woman who disappeared. I am afraid that the police suspected she had been murdered. As all the people who could possibly have been concerned seemed to have an alibi, the police came up with the theory that the murder was a collusion between at least five people, each of whom, I admit it, was in possession of a very valid motive. The woman was extremely rich, and her two grown children would have inherited her money. She had had a … ahem, there had been a story with a … well, her husband was actually quite angry with her. Furthermore, her own two brothers had a serious grudge against her because she had inherited a large fortune from an old aunt who had disinherited her nephews on account of their dissolute ways.’

  ‘And what had really happened to her?’ asked Ephraim.

  ‘Well, in fact, she had had enough of being harassed, disliked and resented by her family, which was also in the bad habit of constantly pestering her with demands for money. So she had purchased a house for herself in the south of France under another name, and quietly departed thither. You know, Ephraim, the majority of the cases we private detectives are called in to investigate end up being more mysteries than crimes. The number of true crimes is much smaller than the number of mysterious occurrences, which may take on the appearance of crime.’

  ‘That poor lady,’ observed Ephraim, ‘she lost her family. Even if it wasn’t a very nice family.’

  ‘Perhaps life is nothing but a long series of losses,’ said Rivka, ‘and we only notice it in this story because we do not have the habit of seeing it in our daily lives. It is unavoidable, even for us, who seem happy now. I know it.’

  Amy and Jonathan both reacted to this gloomy statement by voicing vaguely consoling murmurs while hastily gathering up their things. It was indeed a good time to depart, as it was becoming quite late.

  ‘And the rebbe? Should we not go and see whether he has been arrested?’ said Jonathan, without much hope.

  ‘It is no use now,’ I said, ‘we will just find ourselves in front of a darkened house with no way of telling what has happened. Listen, I will try to find out what has happened first thing tomorrow, and if necessary, we will go to the police together.’

  After walking a short distance, we hailed a cab, and trotted quietly through the dull-coloured evening, speaking little. The cab slowed down as we moved up Tavistock Street, and drew up in front of our door. I alighted and saw, to my surprise, another cab in the process of drawing up behind us, just as Jonathan emerged from ours. At the very moment that he set his foot upon the pavement, two things happened.

  First, a man jumped out of the cab which had stopped behind ours, and dismissing it with a word, smartly greeted two other men who had been standing in the shadows near our doorway. I recognised him at once – it was the very man I had seen on the corner near the rabbi’s little synagogue.

  Second, one of the two waiting men stepped forward towards us.

  ‘Mr Jonathan Sachs?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said that young man with a justifiable air of alarm.

  ‘Police,’ said the man. ‘You are under arrest for the murder of Professor Gerard Ralston. I will ask you to come along with us quietly’ – and in the blink of an eye, Jonathan found himself in handcuffs and being pushed rudely in the direction of a waiting police vehicle further up the road, while I stood by feeling stunned, shocked and impotent.

  ‘Don’t just stand there! Do something!’ cried Amy, jumping to the ground beside me and shaking me violently by the arm. ‘You know the police – speak to them!’

  ‘So we got him,’ murmured the gentleman I had seen earlier to one of those who had been waiting for us, while the other gave Jonathan the usual speech contingent upon an arrest. ‘I followed him back,’ he went on, ‘I’ve been tailing him about London all day. I’ve got every one of his movements written down.’ And he smiled with the satisfaction of a professional after a job well done, exactly as though Jonathan had been a hardened criminal who had gone into hiding and been tremendously difficult to find.

  Amy and I hastened up to them as Jonathan was being hustled into the carriage.

  ‘Where – where are you taking him?’ I stammered awkwardly to the policeman making the arrest.

  ‘Bow Street,’ snapped the officer, climbing in.

  ‘Jonathan!’ cried Amy desperately.

  ‘Amy – I didn’t kill him!’ he answered hoarsely, leaning across the policeman towards her for a moment, before the carriage door thumpe
d shut upon them. She did not answer.

  How blind I have been! I remained on the pavement, thunderstruck, unable to move, rooted to the ground, staring blankly, physical existence forgotten, while a great light was suddenly lit in my mind, throwing aside the shadows. This, nothing other than this, was the famous ‘loophole’ in the logic of the case. Jonathan was lying – the whole of his story was a tissue of fabrications – there was no rabbi! At the moment when the other young men came running around the house, he was halfway down the path leaving the building, and simply turned around upon hearing them coming, pretending to be walking towards it. Here, indeed, was a simple, complete, indisputable solution to the incomprehensible paradox.

  I turned to Amy as the carriage rumbled away, and was frozen by what I saw in her face.

  I expected to see shock; I expected surprise, distress, horror, anger even. But her expression showed something completely different. How can I describe the look in her black eyes as deep as wells? Unfathomable sadness, immense weariness, wordless fear and dull despair, the crushing weight of the world – she had the kind of eyes with which one contemplates living death. And it dawned upon me slowly, my hair rising on my scalp, that she knew all about it – she knew it, she knew it all along.

  As though knowing what her face must reveal to me, Amy turned away into the darkness, her hand in front of her mouth.

  ‘I must go to my parents,’ she said in a muffled voice, and the sound of her quick steps was lost to me within a minute.

  London, Tuesday, March 17th, 1896

  It took me a long time to come back to myself, to bring myself to walk to the door, open it, climb the stairs, and unlock the door of Emily’s little flat. I entered stiffly, awkwardly, feeling unlike myself, not knowing what to feel, so shaken was I by what I had witnessed.

  Emily was sitting at her desk, her burnished hair shining in the light of a little lamp, having a late cup of tea all by herself, and labouring over a heap of papers filled with scribbled calculations. The fire had died down to a mass of embers, glowing mysteriously from within as though communing with themselves, and the rest of the room was in shadows. She looked up with pleasure at my entrance, and rose to throw a little more coal on the shivering flames.