The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘Why, are you alone?’ she asked, noticing it suddenly. ‘Where is Amy?’ Then, catching sight of my face, she came towards me quickly. ‘Vanessa, what has happened?’

  ‘Jonathan has been arrested for the murder,’ I said heavily.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Vanessa, it can’t be! Jonathan – but why Jonathan? Why?’

  ‘Think,’ I told her. ‘His having done it explains everything.’

  ‘You mean …’ I saw her expression change slowly as she tried to imagine what might have happened.

  ‘He could have been leaving, not coming, when the others saw him. And invented all the rest,’ I told her. ‘At least, that explanation would fit the facts. And that is what the police think, and this journalist as well,’ and I pulled the morning’s newspaper out of my bag and showed it to her. She read over the article quickly.

  ‘You read this this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes – and my inspector friend actually told me there would be an arrest today. But I did not understand what it meant until this happened, just now. I have been very stupid.’

  ‘No, you haven’t! Vanessa – the police are wrong, of course! They are making a horrible mistake! You don’t believe that Jonathan did it, do you? Do you? Vanessa – how can you? Is it because there is no other explanation?’

  ‘Well, that and something else,’ I said slowly. ‘I saw Amy’s face when they took him away. She knows.’

  ‘I don’t believe it, no, I don’t,’ said Emily stoutly. ‘Not just because I know Jonathan and like him and cannot believe for a second that he would ever murder anyone. It isn’t just that, Vanessa. It’s everything together; it makes no sense. Just think! Why would he have been so eager to have you come and solve the crime? When I told him about you, he was so keen on your coming! He pressed me into writing to you, and persuaded the professors to go and see you. Why would he have done that – out of some kind of insane hubris? No, that just isn’t possible. And then, what about the rabbi that he saw? That wasn’t a lie, you know it wasn’t – that man was seen in the street by other people.’

  ‘It could have been a coincidence,’ I murmured reluctantly. ‘Or it could have been witnesses reacting to suggestion. Or maybe Jonathan even saw the man he described, but a few minutes earlier, when he was really going into the library.’

  ‘But Vanessa, Jonathan was looking for that rabbi, and making you, and Amy, and David and Rivka look for him! Why would he have wanted so much to find him? If you had managed to locate him, and then he had stated that he left the grounds at a few minutes before five and saw Jonathan going in, it would be horribly dangerous for Jonathan – it would as much as accuse him of the murder! Surely he wouldn’t have been trying to find the rabbi, if he really was the murderer.’ She looked at me suspiciously. ‘But perhaps you think that he has been leading you up the garden path all this time, by pretending there was a rabbi when really there was none, or by pretending to search for the rabbi while making sure that in fact nobody would ever find him.’

  ‘No-o,’ I said thoughtfully, realising that she knew nothing of our activities of the evening. ‘It isn’t that. We did find him.’

  ‘You did? What do you mean? When? How did you do it? How can you be sure it’s the right man?’

  ‘Jonathan recognised him,’ I said confusedly. For Emily was right; this behaviour would be quite inexplicable if Jonathan were really guilty.

  ‘How did you ever manage it?’ she asked. ‘One rabbi among thousands?’

  ‘David’s little brothers did it. At least, they found out about a rabbi who had seemingly disappeared for a whole afternoon, the Friday before last. So we went to see if we could have a look at him. And he came out of his house, and Jonathan recognised him.’

  ‘There!’ she said triumphantly. ‘You see? That would make no sense if he had invented the whole story. He wouldn’t have identified him. It would have been a crazy thing to do! He would simply have said it wasn’t the right one. This proves that he’s innocent. I hope you believe me now.’

  ‘You sound like a mathematician,’ I smiled. ‘Real life is not always that simple.’

  ‘But why not? Proofs are proofs, whether in mathematics or in life!’ She touched the pages scattered on the table in front of her. ‘And do you know,’ she continued, ‘it’s not just the proofs that can be similar, but the whole situation of having a problem and wanting to solve it. I imagine that what you feel when you are on a case is not much different from what I feel when I work on a problem in maths – it becomes an obsession, and I turn it over and over in my head, looking at it from every angle, searching out every tool I can possibly use. I never thought of being a detective myself, and I’ve always admired you for all the ways you have of reasoning that I would probably never think of. But now it’s different – Jonathan has been arrested, and he is my friend! I want to work with you, think with you, think like you, use the fact that I can think like a mathematician to help you solve this case! And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m pointing out something that would make no sense if Jonathan were really guilty. He just wouldn’t have identified that rabbi.’

  ‘What you say does make sense, Emily,’ I said. ‘It’s not that I disagree. I want to agree. But people do very strange, illogical things sometimes, according to their character, and particularly when they are in danger. It might just be that Jonathan didn’t realise the danger, and tried to convince us of the truth of his story by trying to prove the elements of it which really were true.’

  ‘At the risk of having his story disproved and immediately causing his own arrest? No, Vanessa. Jonathan is not that stupid. He can think.’

  ‘But this explanation solves the paradox,’ I said anxiously, as the force of her argument sank in. ‘There isn’t any other possible solution.’

  ‘There must be,’ she said. ‘We just don’t see it yet. We didn’t think of this possibility either, until now.’

  ‘I don’t know about “we”,’ I said. ‘You and I did not, certainly. But what about Amy, and Jonathan himself?’

  ‘You really think they might have been expecting this?’

  ‘I am certain of it, and so would you be if you had seen how they reacted to the arrest.’

  ‘Did Jonathan say anything?’

  ‘He said “I didn’t kill him”,’ I admitted, remembering his face, his voice as he spoke those words, trying to analyse what they signified. He had not spoken them to the world at large; he had addressed them specifically to Amy, as though they contained some kind of personal message. Why? Because he saw that she believed he had done it? But why would she believe that, she, his own sister, when Emily remained staunchly defensive?

  ‘I think Amy knows something she isn’t telling me,’ I said.

  ‘And what about the rabbi? He must know something important! Are you going to talk to him, Vanessa?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean to see him on Thursday.’

  ‘Thursday! But that’s ages away! Why not tomorrow morning?’

  Why not, indeed? David’s explanation seemed so complicated, and yet, when I remembered the gaggle of students and the manner in which they had unceremoniously chased away little Ephraim, I believed him.

  ‘I will do everything I can,’ I said. ‘I have three days before Jonathan will be had up before the magistrate. If I find out the truth by then, he will not be committed to trial. Emily, I won’t stop looking, I promise you.’

  I went to bed, but could not sleep for seeing Emily’s large, accusing eyes. I tried to recapture the immediate sense of conviction and enlightenment that I had felt when Jonathan was taken away, but it was too late; Emily had succeeded in diluting it with a heavy dose of doubt. Jonathan, firing a gun at Professor Ralston? Impossible to visualise. I remembered my list of suspects: Edmund Bryant, Professor Taylor, Britta Gad. Yes, but those hypotheses had not allowed me to solve the paradox. It had never occurred to me to think that the witnesses might be lying. Least of all Jonathan; I had not doubted his word f
or a moment. And what if he were not lying? Could it be the other two witnesses, Mason and Chapman?

  I lay back in the dark, and tried to work out the possibility. To begin with, they were together, so they must at the very least have been accomplices. Fine, they were accomplices. Yes, but the caretaker had declared that he had accompanied the two students to the back gate and locked it behind them at five o’clock precisely. They would have had to run inside, kill the professor, and return outside, going towards the back for some reason, then come running back to the front even more incomprehensibly to ‘discover’ the corpse. If Jonathan had not been there, this behaviour would have been foolish and dangerous. Had they been meaning to flee out of the back gate? But it was locked. Had they bribed the caretaker to leave it open? Much too risky, once he heard about the murder. Was the caretaker also an accomplice, nourishing a secret hatred of Professor Ralston? Nothing was beyond belief on that score, perhaps, yet this was much too complicated, and anyway it totally failed to explain why they should have changed their minds and come running back. Could they have heard Jonathan coming? Not from that distance, and even if they had, it would have been wiser to continue out the back gate and away. Could they have heard the rabbi leaving? But what nonsense – if my construction were true, and under the hypothesis that Jonathan was speaking the truth, the rabbi was in the library during the murder.

  Absurd!

  Mason, Chapman and the caretaker were obviously telling the truth.

  So then, Jonathan was lying? Friendly, smiling, dark-eyed Jonathan. I began to think over Emily’s arguments in his favour. Why would he have pressed her into calling me in to solve the case? He would have done better to quietly ignore the situation. Why would he have identified the rabbi? It would have been so much safer to say it was the wrong man, and leave us searching. His behaviour made no sense if he were guilty – yet how could he be innocent? Round and round circled my tired brain, like a ferret in a cage.

  I slept a little towards morning, but woke early, feeling troubled and anxious. Emily was still in bed, and the flat was strangely silent. Rising, I dressed in the chill and went to make tea and consider my plan for the day. I had meant to visit Inspector Reynolds to see if he had been able to obtain the authorisation for me to visit Baruch Gad, as he had promised. I had also meant to listen to Bernard Lazare’s lecture at three o’clock, and to try to talk to him privately afterwards, in order to probe the link between the Dreyfus affair, which was the ostensible subject of his dealings with Professor Ralston, and the list of ritual murders contained in the file marked ‘B.L.’ Under the assumption that Jonathan was innocent, these tasks were indispensable, and I meant to accomplish them. But was he innocent? I decided to begin my day by going to visit him. Guilty or not, he was not going to avoid some pointed questions.

  I left the house as soon as I had finished my cup of tea and a slightly stale raisin bun, and proceeded immediately down Tavistock Street and up Wellington Street, then on to the Bow Street Police Station, stumbling along through a heavy fog which caused me to step accidentally into the road more than once, so that my boots were soon squelching with muddy water. I tried in vain to recover the feeling of delight at having the chance to visit London that had filled me as I took the train from Cambridge, failed utterly, arrived at the station frowning, and demanded to see Jonathan with a sharpness that the policeman took for authority. As a result, less than ten minutes later, I found myself face-to-face with the newly detained suspect.

  I have been in prisons many times in recent years, to see prisoners accused of various crimes, or people who might hold some key to the investigation in which I was engaged, and the surroundings no longer hold much awe for me. Yet I was strangely moved as I saw Jonathan led into the room. He looked sorrowful and gloomy, his face drooped, his eyes drooped, his tail would have drooped if he had had a tail. I felt a sudden pang as I remembered my very first visit to a prison, so long ago, and another young man behind a wire mesh … Jonathan’s dark eyes seemed to merge with another pair, from my memory, as I gazed into them, and I was fired with the same urgent desire to defend him that had seized me eight years ago when I first saw Arthur behind bars. Oh, I am easily moved by young people in distress!

  ‘Why have they arrested me? What do they have against me?’ he asked me, before I had a chance to speak. The words were not at all what I expected. I looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘As far as I know,’ I told him, ‘you have been arrested purely on the grounds that your having lied appears to provide the only possible explanation of the library paradox.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said, looking startled, and yet strangely relieved, as understanding swept over him. ‘I see. I didn’t think of that. I thought – I thought it must be something else altogether. Yes, I see it now. How awful – it’s true! My lying would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Good heavens! Only I’m not lying, Vanessa.’

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I swear it! Vanessa – don’t you believe me? Everything I told you is the truth. They can’t arrest me just because if I were lying, it would solve the puzzle, can they? They have to prove I’m lying, and they can’t prove it, because I’m not!’

  ‘They most certainly can arrest you on those grounds, and for that matter, they can try you and even convict you,’ I said severely. ‘Being the only person with opportunity is the single major factor in a murder conviction. A second important factor is motive. That is what they will look for next.’

  He remained silent, looking at me apprehensively. Motive. What was in Amy’s mind?

  ‘Listen to me, Jonathan,’ I said. ‘If there is anything else against you – any evidence, any past event whatsoever that could be construed as motive, or any reason for suspicion of wrongdoing on your part, you must tell me.’

  I saw him flinch.

  ‘Don’t lie,’ I said quickly. ‘I know there is something.’

  The silence grew deafening. I mistrusted him, and yet oddly, his reaction reassured me more than a wordy, fulsome and immediate denial would have.

  ‘Do you know,’ I said after a moment, ‘I have never asked you exactly what you were doing in the grounds of Professor Ralston’s library that day. Why did you go there at all, you, a mathematics student? Were you going to see him?’

  ‘No, I – I never saw him,’ he stammered. ‘I – I was going to look something up in the library.’

  ‘What was it?’ I said sharply, feeling a finger of worry creeping up my spine.

  ‘It was, it was something to do with Judaism.’

  ‘Jonathan, you don’t know how to lie. Don’t try to do it! Don’t you realise that the police will tear you apart when they interrogate you? Don’t you realise that if you hide something now, when it comes out it will make your case much more serious?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Vanessa,’ he said desperately. ‘I can’t, I just can’t. It doesn’t matter, does it? I swear to you that every single thing I told you about what happened as I was going up to the library is true, exactly the way I said it. I swear that I didn’t murder the professor and have no idea who did. All of that is the straightforward truth. Somebody else murdered him, and the important thing is to find out who it was and how he did it! You can find out, Vanessa, you’re a detective. What I was going to the library for is personal, and I didn’t get it done anyway. So how can it matter? Vanessa, somebody else murdered him! That rebbe that I saw, Reb Avrom, he must know something – he came from the room where it happened! He can’t be the murderer himself, we proved that. He could confirm my story. I’m sure he saw me just as I saw him. He must remember it. I could tell the police about him, maybe it would help me. But I don’t want to. I – I hate the idea of a man like him being … being where I am now, or worse. Vanessa, you must go to see him. Find out what he knows! It’s the only thing that can help me.’

  I frowned at him, disappointed and disapproving. Yet there was something in what he said. If I chose to believe that his statements as to the e
vents on the day of the murder were true – and I did find myself believing him, a little in spite of myself – then I needed to investigate all the possibilities, to follow up all the threads. And there were still several. Britta Gad. Bernard Lazare. The rabbi.

  And then – whatever Jonathan was hiding, Amy knew it as well. I remembered the look in her eyes as the policemen took him away, and mentally added her as a fourth line of enquiry to my list.

  Jonathan bid me goodbye with a chastened air. I responded a little coldly. I do hope he will not make a fool of himself in his interrogation by not being able to answer simple questions such as what he was doing at the library at all, or by trying ineffectually to withhold some information that is probably bound to come out anyway. If I ever fail as an amateur detective, perhaps I could turn to the task of preparing prisoners for their interrogations.

  Emerging into Bow Street, I was struck, as I had been many times before, by the contrast between the hidden shadows of prison life, and the sunny freedom of the busy citizens without. There have been times when I have seen a man captured and led off by policemen with his hands in handcuffs, and it has seemed to me that I saw that man cross the invisible boundary between two parallel worlds. I looked around me, savouring, as I always did, the ability to walk whither I would, before going to see Inspector Reynolds at Scotland Yard. I felt a great need to stretch my legs to the full extent of their possibilities, a reaction, no doubt, to the claustrophobia of the police station. The distance from Covent Garden to the Victoria Embankment did not seem far enough, and the time was too near the midday meal to visit the inspector immediately, so after a moment’s reflection, I decided to go round by way of Piccadilly Circus, where Emily had told me that a quite suitable and agreeable tea shop called Lyons had very recently opened its doors. The idea of finally discovering a decent solution to the daily problem of luncheon was tempting enough for me to take the long route with pleasure.