Some Danger Involved bal-1

by Will Thomas

  Eventually, the family swept in the door again, flushed from their activities and the brisk air. The cook was kind enough to see that a plate was prepared for me in the kitchen. I had been spoiled by sitting at Barker's table, however. The food tasted like one of Dummolard's experiments. The family did not seem to notice but consumed everything on the table, between the rabbi's blessing on the meal and his benediction.

  I came out of the kitchen in time to watch Rebecca Mocatta pass by. She put her head down, but I think there was a smile on her face. The scent of gardenias perfumed the air in her wake. Her black dress swayed like a bell as she passed down the hall, but it was my heart that made the clangor.

  The rabbi came down the stairs, dressed in a tattered old sweater, worn thin at the elbows, over his shirt and tie. He came up alongside me and murmured in my ear, "Would you take a turn in the garden with me, Mr. Llewelyn?"

  I agreed, of course. He led me not out the front door, but through the kitchen. The back of the Mocatta property was not large, just a simple square of grass returning to life after the blasts of winter, lined on all sides with shoulder-high walls of red brick. Having clung to life all winter, vegetation began to put forth its first tentative buds. In the center of the lawn, a lone ash tree stood some twenty feet tall, still bare of leaves, but vigorous for all that.

  Mocatta stopped me in the little porch outside the back door.

  "Mabel does not allow me to indulge in the house, but I am dying for a smoke. Are you as much of a wizard at lighting a pipe as you are at fireplaces, young man?"

  I thought of Barker. I'd watched him dozens of times now. "Even better, I think. Have you tobacco?"

  He pulled a pipe from his pocket. I expected a Dunhill, or at the very least a Comoy's, but the rabbi's pipe was almost as disreputable as Reb Shlomo's. I took in his sweater and his pipe together. It was obvious that he saved the luxuries of this world for his family.

  I packed the pipe with tobacco from a small tin of Arcadia he carried. I filled it, tamped it down with my thumb, and filled it again. When the rabbi had the pipe clenched in his teeth, I struck a match and made those little circles Barker had demonstrated, while Mocatta puffed plumes of smoke, which drifted out and were blasted away by the early spring air. I didn't envy the rabbi his cold smokes, but he didn't seem to notice. He grunted with satisfaction and wandered out into the garden and slowly walked in circles, probably pondering abstract questions from the Torah. From my vantage point on the porch, he reminded me of one of the older inmates at Oxford Prison, the long-termers, taking the air in the small, guarded confines of the prison yard, with only their old pipes to comfort them.

  The rabbi wandered over to the tree, and his hand caressed the trunk. "Do you see the stump there?" he asked, pointing to a medallion of wood flush with the lawn. I had not noticed it before. "That was Leah's tree. I planted it the day she was born, and I cut it down a few days before her wedding. We used it, along with the tree her husband's father planted at his birth, to make the chuppa under which they were married. Now there is just one tree here, Rebecca's tree. I wonder if it is lonely." He tapped out his pipe, emptying the ash onto its roots. Then he absently patted me on the shoulder and led me inside.

  Not even the most virulent invective Madam Mocatta might have come up with could have dashed colder water on my dreams than the gentle words of the rabbi. No one had planted a tree when I was born. We owned no plot in which to grow it. My family had no mansion and had never even heard of a chuppa. The water in my father's bath was gray with coal dust when he left it each night, and my mother's faith in Jesus Christ and John Wesley were all that kept her going when times were lean, which was often. I felt just then that I had no more chance of a relationship with Rebecca Mocatta than if she had been a princess among the Venusians. For all the studying and mingling I had done, I felt no closer to this alien race than I had to the crown jewels when I was in the Tower looking through the bars. I am always an outsider.

  How had he known? Rebecca and I hadn't exchanged a word in his presence. Was it coincidence, perhaps, or a set speech he made to discourage unworthy suitors? No, he scarce seemed the type. These rabbis seemed rather unworldly to a fellow raised among solid Methodists. I felt they could almost read my mind. And just what had Reb Shlomo meant by that remark about trapdoors?

  I came into the hall through the kitchen, and the first thing I saw was Rebecca with a look of concern on her face. Did she already know what her father had said to me? Were they all clairvoyant? I wondered. Then she turned her gaze and I saw that it was not her father who caused such anxiety. A tall figure stood in the hallway, black as death against the white entrance door. It was Barker.

  I looked into the sitting room at the clock. It was barely four. He was early; I still had almost two hours left. He paid no attention to me but stepped over to the rabbi and spoke to him in low tones. I strained to listen but only caught the words, "Take him." Mocatta nodded his agreement.

  "Come, lad," my employer said. "Fetch your hat and coat. We must away."

  I collected my things in the kitchen. By the time I came back, the rest of the family had come in, no doubt to look at the spectacle that is Cyrus Barker, agent of enquiry. I couldn't resist one parting shot at Mrs. Mocatta. I spoke up boldly.

  "I fear we must leave early, Madam, but it has been a pleasure serving your family. I thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home. Good day."

  What could she say after that? She was speechless. She gave a high-pitched squeak as if her pearl necklace was too tight and nodded as I shook her icy hand. Then I turned and put on my bowler hat. I dared look boldly into Rebecca's eyes for just a second, and tilted my hat at enough of an angle to be rakish, before following my employer out the door.

  "What was all that about?" Barker muttered as we got into Racket's cab. He missed nothing.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Let's not start that again, Thomas. Don't play the innocent with me. I know better. Tell me everything from the moment you walked in the door."

  I did so. I had hoped to leave my romancing out, but it was too tied up in everything. The best I could do was to abbreviate. If I hadn't risked that glance and had set my hat on properly, I might have gotten away with it. But I'd forgotten that behind those black lenses Barker sees everything.

  "I don't approve of your romancing witnesses," he said, "unless it is on my order. But then, you were in prison for a few months. I suppose you're only human. Just watch yourself, Thomas."

  "Yes, sir," I said. I sat back in the cab and looked out ahead of me as Barker did. We were heading northeast, toward the City again.

  "You arrived early," I said, with a sudden pricking of my thumbs.

  "Yes," Barker responded. "There has been another murder."

  25

  Cyrus Barker was upset. I could see it now in the way he sat. He didn't have that calm demeanor I'd come to expect from him. In fact, he was restless, bouncing about in the cab until I could hear the springs underneath protest. I was about to protest, myself.

  "I don't like it!" Barker said, smiting his thigh like a petulant child. "Perhaps I am vain, but I like to think that when the criminals hear that I am on a particular case, they blanch in fear, or at least alter their plans. This carrying on as if I were inconsequential is an affront to my abilities. To quote Shylock, 'I shall have my pound of flesh.'†"

  "Have they crucified another Jew?"

  Barker seemed not to hear me, but he finally turned toward me. "What? Oh, I beg pardon, lad. I haven't told you. A body has been found in a quarry wagon on a spur near Aldgate Station. It was buried under rubble. Another message from the Anti-Semite League had been scrawled on the wall by it. It is in a short tunnel of the underground, or it would have been found sooner. I haven't seen it yet. Inspector Poole sent me a message."

  "Not crucified, then?" I asked. "How was he killed?"

  "Stoned. Another Biblical punishment. But it was not a 'he.' The victim was a woman."<
br />
  "A woman? They killed a woman? How can anyone kill a woman? This is monstrous!"

  "I agree."

  The enormity of the whole thing struck me. I pictured a phalanx of angry Englishmen stoning a poor Jewess to death. It made my blood boil. As far as I was concerned, the fair sex was somehow precious, inviolate. Had I not just shared a few brief moments with a daughter of Zion? Somewhere, even now, the poor dead woman's loved ones were wringing their hands, perhaps, wondering what had become of her.

  We spent the rest of the journey in silence. Barker was irritable and I did not desire to have his discontent directed toward me. I had an unusual question on my mind, one that had only occasionally occurred to me during the course of the investigation: what if we failed?

  What if we failed? We'd taken on a seemingly impossible task, hunting down a pack of murderers, a vigilante group, in a city the size of London, with only a few clues and a good deal of hope. What would happen if the league were successful in hiding their identities? Detective work is not like tailoring; when you engage a tailor, he doesn't have to go out on blind faith, hoping that somewhere in the City there is material of the correct color and yardage sufficient to make a frock coat and trousers. We detectives wander about, making cabmen rich, asking innumerable questions and being tossed out of places, hoping that in the end we don't look like fools with our hats in our hands. What does one say to a client at the end of a month or so? "Sorry, old man, couldn't find the blasted fellow?" A couple of those and it's time to take up your brass plate and see if some barrister in the Middle Temple needs a former detective to clerk and run messages.

  Aldgate was the easternmost station of the Metropolitan Line, serviced by the London, Midland and Scottish line. Once we entered the station and walked down the staircase to the lower level, it was only a matter of following the policemen, who, like so many breadcrumbs, were scattered along the line. Of course, it wasn't as easy as that, because every constable demanded complete particulars. Barker was reasonably pleasant to the first, a little less so to the second, and downright cold to the third. Finally, we came upon a clutch of blue helmets in the tunnel by the tracks, and there in the thick of them was the heavily whiskered face of Inspector Poole, looking somewhat upset himself.

  "Have you removed the body?" Barker growled.

  "Don't start, Cyrus," Poole said, running a hand through his thinning ginger hair. "We're already in the middle of a jurisdictional nightmare. Scotland Yard maintains that this is part of an ongoing investigation, the city police claim that the murder occurred in Aldgate and belongs to them, and the railway police have announced that the death was on railway property and refuse to give it up. We're waiting for our superiors to arrive and sort it out. The lord mayor himself may be involved by the end of the day. Still, I think I may get you close enough for a look-see."

  The body lay beside a row of wagons on a siding near the tunnel wall. It was gloomy here but not dark, for the brief tunnel was lit by gaslight on the station side and by sunlight on the other. Nevertheless, the body was lit by a single lamp which lent a strange and macabre air to the proceedings, rather like limelight from a stage. The woeful form before me was a petite woman of indeterminate age, her face marred by bruising, and her aspect made even more bizarre by her hair's having been shorn close. Poole reached down by her side and lifted what I first took to be a scalp.

  "It's a wig," Barker prompted. "Traditionally, married Jewesses cut their hair and wear wigs as proof against vanity. Have we any identification?"

  "She had no bag, but there was a pawn ticket in her pocket."

  The two detectives discussed the investigation, while I went down on one knee and looked at the victim more closely. Despite the pallor of death and contusions, she had regular features and might once have been attractive. She was not a young woman, perhaps thirty years of age. Her lids were half closed, and the eyes tinged a dark, rusty red. I leaned forward and closed them. They were cool and waxy. I took in her plain, blue dress and stout but serviceable shoes. The last thing I noticed before standing up was the furrow around her ring finger, where a wedding band had once rested.

  "Raise the lamp, lad," Barker ordered.

  I picked it up and lifted it high.

  "How'd she die?" I asked.

  "Back of her head's caved in. Someone gave her a good wallop with a rock or something. There may be more, but we're still awaiting the coroner, and I doubt he'll be stripping the body here."

  The thought that a coroner would dare subject this poor woman's body to such humiliation I found revolting.

  "Over here, lad. Bring the lamp over here," my employer insisted. "I want to see the message!"

  "Sorry, sir!" I'd forgotten about the message. I stepped over to the wall and raised the lamp again. Against the soot-encrusted brick of the wall, the white chalk letters stood out in bold relief: "Lev. 20:10 The Anti-Semite League."

  "Leviticus twenty ten," I read.

  "What say you, Cyrus? Up to the challenge?" Poole asked.

  Barker stood for a moment, sifting through chapters and verses in his mind. I've always admired people who would memorize long passages of scripture; a cold challenge to snap off a particular line seemed particularly hard. Finally, Barker spoke.

  "And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

  We all stood for a moment, taking in the implications of the verse. Then, Poole suddenly let loose a string of curses.

  "Anti-Semite LeagueЧ there's no such thing! It's just one bloke with a grudge. Pokrzywa was sparking the old fellow's lady here, and he set up this whole charade to lead us all on a merry chase after Jew-hating phantoms! We're going to find this woman's name, and then we're going to hang her husband by his thumbs until he confesses. Hundreds of hours wasted patrolling Aldgate, trying to protect the Jews from an attack that will never bloody happen!"

  "I think there's more to it than that, Terry," Barker said. "The East End is like a tinderbox, ready for a match to strike, and this fellow is the match. He's still out there, trying to stir up trouble. He shot at Thomas here. I think he's mad at the Jews, perhaps because of a real or imagined relationship between Pokrzywa and this poor woman. He's intelligent and resourceful enough to rattle the Board of Deputies and elude our collective grasp."

  "Resourceful or not," Poole said, pulling a notebook from his pocket, "he's just one man. I'm alerting my superiors to issue a manhunt. Hoi! Over here!"

  A young constable had come down the line, almost at a run. He pressed a piece of paper into the inspector's hand. Poole glanced at it and thrust it into his pocket with casual indifference.

  "I believe we've seen all we need to see here," he suddenly announced, changing tone. "The railway police appear to have everything in hand, and this is not our jurisdiction. We shall leave them with the body. Shall we go, gentlemen?" Poole left, as if he were the living embodiment of the Criminal Investigation Department of the London Metropolitan Police Force. Barker and I followed behind him more slowly, as if we were merely headed in the same direction. We caught up with him again in the street.

  "Her name?" Barker asked, hungry as a dog on the scent.

  "Miriam Smith."

  "There's your Miriam, Thomas, the one Miss Mocatta spoke of. And the address?"

  "Three twenty-seven A Orient Street."

  "Poplar. Not far from the church. Have you a vehicle waiting, Terry? No? Then let us take a growler. It appears Racket has picked up another fare."

  We took the larger vehicle, Poole promising an extra half crown if we arrived in twenty minutes. As we were leaving, I noticed a few burly police officers in peaked caps arriving at the station cab stand with some speed. Poole had beaten the city and the railway police to the information. He looked pleased with himself.

  "So, Mr. Llewelyn, how did you come by the name Miriam?" he demanded.

  I looked at my employe
r.

  "That information was obtained while questioning people who knew Pokrzywa," Barker said.

  "I suppose asking what you discovered during the course of the investigation is out of the question."

  Barker frowned, or seemed to, behind his spectacles. "You know I don't answer questions without the permission of my clients."

  "We could compare notes," the inspector said, hopefully.

  "The fact that you offer them so readily shows how little you have."

  "I could drag you down to the station and sweat it out of you," Poole warned.

  "You could try," Barker said.

  This went on most of the journey. The two men were obviously friends but rivals when it came to work. Poole backed off several times and came in on a new tack each time, trying to pry information from Barker, but my employer was as impregnable as a clam. He wouldn't even give him information we knew to be useless.

  "What about you, young man?" Poole said, turning to me. "We know about your little stretch in Oxford Prison. We may need to question you about recent events, perhaps have you spend the night in 'A' Division at Her Majesty's expense."

  It was a good threat, but I was not about to be intimidated. "You know where to find me, sir."

  "That I do!" Poole chuckled. "I could throw a sandwich from my window in Scotland Yard, and it would land on your office roof!"

  The inspector alternately wheedled for information and crowed over his small triumphs. Barker balked like a stubborn bull, and I leaned against the cold window and thought of the poor thing that had until recently been called Miriam Smith. To think that days ago, the woman had been pretty enough to have a young scholar in love with her, a man who could have his pick of young women in the City. I pictured her brutal husband murdering her with some blunt instrument, destroying the skull of the woman he had promised to shelter and protect all his days. Who was this fellow? I had seen two bodies now, dead as a result of this man's hand. Obviously, the wretch thought himself justified in murdering for their betrayal.