The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  I walked along rapidly, feeling a hint of springtime piercing delicately through London’s persistent dinginess, located Lyons, found it to be a pleasant enough place indeed, just what London’s ladies are sorely in need of. I emerged refreshed and renewed, ready to set off courageously on the long walk down Haymarket and Cockspur to New Scotland Yard. The inspector was in his office.

  ‘So,’ he greeted me as soon as I made my appearance within his doors, ‘how is your investigation progressing? Has the arrest of the Sachs youth clarified things for you?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ I said disapprovingly. ‘I will admit that I was perfectly blind not to predict his arrest from the newspaper article at once. But I still suspect that it may be a mistake.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said the inspector not unkindly, although with a rather annoying smile, ‘we have our methods and you have yours, to be sure. With all due respect, I myself am more likely to believe in logical reasoning than in feminine intuition, though my wife would probably beat me about the ears if she heard me say so. Well, it isn’t my fault; I’ve nothing to do with the case myself. So you have other ideas in mind, do you?’

  ‘They are not ripe yet,’ I said. ‘It is useless to discuss them on a theoretical level without any proof. I need to investigate further.’

  ‘It isn’t useless to discuss a theory,’ he said hopefully. ‘We do it all the time, how else do you think we work?’

  ‘Well, the police make their own theories, but past experience has already shown me that they are not too keen on listening to mine,’ I replied. ‘Remember your colleague Inspector Peters in the emerald case.’

  ‘Yes, I remember it well,’ he smiled. ‘That was the first time we met, you and I, wasn’t it? I remember Peters expressing doubts …’ His voice trailed off, perhaps because he sensed that his remarks were on the point of becoming tactless.

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said, unable to resist the expression of a latent resentment which I usually manage to forget. ‘Policemen always seem to have doubts about me. If I were a tall, unsmiling, square-jawed man with a cigar and a trench coat, the police would be happier listening to me, I suppose. The problem comes from the skirt, perhaps, or the general lack of authority. I don’t know. But that isn’t the issue right now – you for one have never treated me that way, and I am grateful. It is I who doesn’t want to talk about my theories quite yet. I need more information. Please, do tell me if you have managed to arrange for me to be able to visit Baruch Gad in Dartmoor.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I have,’ he said. ‘We police are not so useless as all that, you see?’

  ‘I never said you were useless!’ I protested vehemently.

  ‘Well, let us not spar,’ he laughed. ‘I have your visiting pass right here, with tomorrow’s date on it. You will have to make your own way down to Dartmoor.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough!’ I exclaimed, my good humour all renewed. ‘Please forgive my asperity. This may be immensely useful! Oh, I do hope I find out something from the poor man.’

  ‘So do I, indeed, and if you do, I hope you will be kind enough to let me know,’ he said, handing me the paper, and I bid him goodbye and took my leave feeling that I had obtained everything I needed in spite of the awkward moment caused by my too-pointed tongue. I set out immediately to walk to King’s College, hastening my steps.

  The college building is enormous, but thanks to the careful instructions provided by Professor Taylor, I found the history department without difficulty. It was still reasonably early, but the large lecture hall was already buzzing with curious listeners. I took a seat in the most thickly populated part of the room, and began listening to the medley of different conversations, snatches of which struck my ears from all sides. I soon distinguished three major themes: first, the question of why exactly Mr Bernard Lazare had been invited to give this lecture today, and whether there was some relation with the mysterious murder of Professor Ralston; secondly, was Mr Bernard Lazare correct or mistaken in his well-known position with regard to the innocence of the Jewish captain; and thirdly, were the captain guilty, what was his motivation? Some thought that he was guilty because he was Jewish, and as such, naturally devoid of patriotic feeling. For others, he was not guilty, but accused in good faith because he was Jewish, and as such, assumed to be devoid of patriotic feeling. And there were those for whom he was not guilty, and his accusation had been made in bad faith, by those who wished to make a scapegoat of a member of the Jewish religion. It seemed quite inconceivable to anybody present that whether guilty or innocent, his acts or the accusations against him might somehow be entirely independent of his religion. This struck me as a strange and rather sad state of affairs. Upon the stroke of three o’clock, Professor Taylor entered the lecture hall, accompanied by a short-legged, stoutish man wearing a pointed beard associated with a well-furnished moustache, a small pair of spectacles, a balding forehead, and a general air of intense thought and willpower. Professor Taylor introduced him sagely, with little commentary, as a French journalist of repute who had come to tell us about the current state of the Dreyfus affair, which is at present an issue of such urgent divisiveness in French politics. We applauded politely, he sat down, and the stout gentleman took his place behind the lectern, and began to speak in rather heavily accented but perfectly fluent English.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I am not here merely to inform you of a grave injustice being perpetrated at this very moment upon French soil. I will inform you, certainly; I will give you every known detail about the situation. But I will do more than merely inform you: I will ask you for your active and vocal support of the sacred cause I am defending here; your support as Englishmen and Englishwomen, citizens of a country whose great history proves that it is less deeply troubled than my own by the fatal and destructive disease of anti-Semitism.’

  He proceeded to give a shocking description of the general movement in France against the Israelite population, illustrated by French newspapers which he held up to our view and whose front pages were decorated with lurid titles and drawings dripping with hatred.

  ‘As the English befriended the beleaguered French aristocracy during the Revolution, I expect them to befriend the beleaguered Jewish population of France today,’ he said incisively. ‘France is stripping its Jews of their rights, and all but forcing them to leave, just as England is opening her hospitable arms to tens of thousands of those who are fleeing the despair and destruction of the East.’

  He spoke as if the phenomenon of anti-Semitism were unheard of in England, something that is obviously false given all that I have learnt lately about Professor Ralston. However, I thought that his attitude of assuming beyond even a moment’s doubt that the English were on a higher moral plane than their traditional enemies across the Channel – a doubtful fact in itself, I suppose – was probably a wise enough manoeuvre to arouse a feeling of support. Besides, it is undoubtedly true that England has accepted many thousands of Jewish refugees in the last ten or twenty years; enough, as I had seen with my own eyes, to form almost a complete city within a city in the East End of London.

  Now Mr Lazare left the subject of anti-Semitism in general, to turn to the Dreyfus affair in particular. He introduced the case as a figurehead for the expression of all the pent-up hatred for the Jews seething within all the different layers of French society, and openly declared Dreyfus himself to be nothing more than an innocent scapegoat.

  ‘All Paris, all France is divided over the guilt of this man,’ he exclaimed, ‘guilt whose proof was deduced falsely, based on racism, inference and dishonesty. Let me now describe the facts.’

  I pricked up my ears, wondering if it was conceivable that some titbit relevant to my investigation might be forthcoming, and scooping out my notebook, prepared to take notes of the salient aspects of the case. Let me set them down here in detail.

  September, 1894: In the waste-paper baskets of the German embassy, a French spy discovers an unsigned letter, the bordereau, co
ntaining a list of military classified documents. Mr Lazare read it out:

  Sans nouvelles m’indiquant que vous désirez me voir, je vous adresse cependant, monsieur, quelques renseignements intéressants:

  1. Une note sur le frein hydraulique du 120, et la manière dont s’est conduite cette pièce;

  2. Une note sur les troupes de couverture (quelques modifications seront apportées par le nouveau plan);

  3. Une note sur une modification aux formations de l’artillerie;

  4. Une note relative à Madagascar;

  5. Le projet de Manuel de tir de l’artillerie de campagne (14 mars 1894) …

  Je vais partir en manoeuvres.

  This letter apparently accompanied several documents delivered to the German Embassy, which were not discovered. Captain Alfred Dreyfus is selected by the French Army as the most likely culprit, because he has been in contact with the Army divisions dealing with artillery, the hydraulic brake and the negotiations on Madagascar – but above all because he is Jewish.

  October 1894: Commandant du Paty de Clam tricks Dreyfus into writing down some of the same words as those which appear in the bordereau, decides on the basis of a certain superficial similarity that Dreyfus is guilty – goodness, do not spies even take the trouble to disguise their handwriting? – and has him arrested and sent to prison.

  October 31, 1894: The French anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole somehow obtains this secret information and publishes it on the front page, which Mr Lazare held up to our astonished eyes:

  HAUTE TRAHISON!

  Arrestation d’un Officier Juif!

  Le Capitaine Dreyfus!

  thus simultaneously revealing open anti-Semitism and state secrets.

  November–December 1894: A brief and secret investigation into the case ends with the recommendation for a court martial.

  December 19th–22nd 1894: Dreyfus is tried in a secret court martial behind closed doors. Handwriting experts all contradict each other. Those who do not agree with the desired analysis are sent away, some are removed from their official positions. It leaks to the public that an unidentified letter on an unidentified topic, shown only to the judge (and certainly not to Dreyfus’s defending lawyer), is a key incriminating document; the public learns only that it contains the words ‘that scoundrel D’. Dreyfus is pronounced guilty of high treason and condemned to military degradation and perpetual deportation.

  January 5th, 1895: His appeal rejected, Dreyfus is degraded in a public ceremony where his buttons are removed – goodness, the imagination pales – and his other military insignia, and his sword is broken. He remains calm and firm throughout the entire ceremony, regularly proclaiming his innocence in a ringing voice. Yet the crowd of onlookers outside the fence surrounding the courtyard ceaselessly screams racist insults. I recalled the captain’s own terrible description of the experience … last Saturday remains branded in my spirit in letters of fire …

  April 1895: Dreyfus is placed in solitary confinement on Devil’s Island, a sweltering rock off the coast of French Guyana, where he remains under close and hostile surveillance every minute of the day, in constant danger of death from exhaustion and tropical diseases. Unspeakably horrible.

  March 1st, 1896: A new document is apparently discovered by the same French spy, in the same place as the bordereau. But unlike the bordereau, this document is addressed to an explicitly named person. And that person is not Captain Dreyfus.

  ‘I cannot give you the name at this point,’ said Mr Lazare, ‘for under the rules of democracy, the addressee must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and to have him prematurely condemned by public opinion would be equivalent to the crime against Dreyfus himself. I will, however, give you the nature and text of the message discovered. It is a telegram, a so-called petit bleu, which was written and addressed but for some reason thrown away and apparently never sent. The contents are as follows: Monsieur, I await before anything a more detailed explanation than the one you gave me the other day on the question in suspense. Consequently I pray you give it to me in writing so as to be able to judge if I can continue my relations with the house of R or not.

  The contents of the telegram seemed meaningless. Mr Lazare was sensitive to this impression.

  ‘To experienced eyes, this is very obviously an espionage document,’ he announced firmly, and in spite of the fact that this theory supported his personal views almost too perfectly, I felt inclined to agree with him. The peculiar message did seem to be purposely couched in a language of disguise and double play which did not obviously correspond to any normal way of writing.

  ‘What it means is simple: the bordereau formed part of a correspondence between an officer of the French Army and a German member of the Embassy, which has continued to this day, uninterrupted by the arrest and condemnation of Dreyfus! What conclusion could be clearer?’

  Indeed.

  ‘I learnt of the existence of this document almost immediately,’ he continued, ‘for fortunately, France and its Army contain many honest people, who are aware of the injustice committed against Alfred Dreyfus, and are working together to overturn it. But do you think it will be easy for me to use this new discovery to advantage? No – it will be not only difficult, but dangerous. First of all, I have never seen the document, but only a hasty copy made by my informant. If it becomes a serious threat to the upper echelons of the Army, nothing could be easier than to destroy the original. Secondly, if it becomes too well known to be destroyed, the person who takes it upon himself to make it officially public runs a serious risk of being accused of having forged it. All dealings with this new document contain a tremendous risk of backlash. For indeed, to any objective observer, it proves and confirms the innocence of Dreyfus, and indicates the guilt of another. But for those whose main goal is to confirm his condemnation and foment enmity against the Jews, it is nothing but a danger.

  ‘Before taking any other action, I must try to prevent the negative reaction I predict, by calmly apprising as many individuals as possible of the existence and reality of the petit bleu, in order to avoid them learning about it by some kind of public announcement such as a newspaper headline, which would only increase the intensity of the polemic. That is my purpose here today: to give you an objective version of events before you will learn of them through articles written by journalists, each of whom has a racist theory to prove.’

  He bowed, to signify that he had finished, and the audience proceeded to applaud politely. I remembered Mr Lazare’s letter to Professor Ralston. The beginning of the professor’s answer gave a fair idea of what the rest would have been like; I remembered his qualifying the news as ‘vague nonsense’ and saying the telegram was sure to be ‘a forgery’. Out of pure indignation, I surprised my neighbours by suddenly redoubling my applause. Professor Taylor stood up, calmed the noise with a gesture, and invited the audience to ask questions.

  The exchanges continued over the next half an hour or so, and Mr Lazare filled in a good many details, telling us where and in what conditions Alfred Dreyfus is being held at this instant, the unceasing activities of his brother and his wife in his defence (what his wife must be living through at this very moment – it does not bear thinking about!) and a good deal of generality about the shameful wave of anti-Semitism in France and the shocking role of the newspapers in its development. Finally, the questions were over and the audience filed out. As the room emptied, Professor Taylor beckoned me forward and introduced me to the illustrious journalist, with no frills, as the private detective investigating the death of Professor Ralston.

  ‘That is very interesting,’ he said to me, raising his eyebrows. ‘But is there some way in which I can be of help to you in the matter?’

  ‘I do have a few questions I would very much like to ask you,’ I began hopefully. ‘He was one of the people to whom you wrote about the petit bleu, was he not? We found your letter in his study after his death. It seems as though he was in the process of answering it when he was killed.
’

  ‘How terrible,’ he said. ‘There was a letter to me? What did it say?’

  ‘He hadn’t written much,’ I said. ‘But he said something to the effect that if the petit bleu existed at all, it was probably a forgery.’

  ‘I know this is a difficult thing to say of the dead,’ said the journalist slowly, ‘but I must tell you that my correspondence with Professor Ralston had led me to believe that he was becoming slightly mad. Not only did he suffer from a degree of anti-Semitism whose rabidity denoted some form of paranoia, but his correspondence had lately taken on a tone of insult and provocation which went beyond the limits of decency.’ Glancing at his watch, he added, ‘I must hurry away now, for I have a meeting with several journalists in half an hour. But we can meet again tomorrow morning, if you wish, before I return to France. I will show you some documents to explain what I mean. I propose that the three of us meet together at ten o’clock in the foyer of the Savoy, where I am staying.’

  We nodded our heads, and the overworked gentleman bid us goodbye and dashed off into the street with an energy unexpected from one of his rather portly girth. Professor Taylor accompanied me to the exit at a calmer tempo, but his eyes were full of urgency.

  ‘Finally, we can talk,’ he said. ‘I heard this morning that young Sachs has been arrested for Ralston’s murder. Do you know anything about this? Are you connected with it in some way?’

  ‘No. The police arrested him on the grounds that the only logical solution to the mystery is that his testimony must be false. However, he insists that he is speaking the truth,’ I told him calmly. But my heart was beating wildly. Professor Taylor could be the murderer – for powerful reasons of his own – yet he did not seem the kind of person who would allow someone else to be condemned in his stead. Was he going to confess?