by Will Thomas
“He does have that effect on people.”
The strudel arrived, and the poor scholar tucked in. It felt good to buy him lunch. I supposed he ate well only on feast days. I sipped my coffee and lit up the cigar.
“Cyrus Barker. I’ve seen his advertisements in The Times. He must be doing well for himself.”
“Quite well. He has a big office hard by Scotland Yard, and a home in Newington with an oriental garden. And a Jewish butler.”
“A Jewish butler!” Moskowitz thumped the table and laughed. “I love it! Leave it to Sir Moses to hire the best!”
I handed him the cigar. He held it in his hands like a holy relic. I watched as he drew it slowly under his nose, then brought it to his lips and lit it with a vesta. The Jewish scholar closed his eyes and drew in the smoke.
“Paradise,” he said.
“Let’s get back to Louis Pokrzywa, if you don’t mind. He certainly had a lot of charities.”
“He did that. He often tried to talk us into helping with this or that one. Not to give money, of course, but time. He was very free with our time. Much of the responsibility fell on my shoulders or Israel’s—that is, the Mr. Zangwill I was telling you about. But we explained to him that we didn’t have his gifts. We needed time to study or to prepare lessons. Oh, the face he made! He looked like Jesus after he’d just been kissed by…John? Jude? I forget the fellow’s name. I’m not up on Christianity.”
“Judas,” I told him.
“The very man. Anyway, he’d get the long face and mope, and tell us he’d volunteered our help, and how the children would be so disappointed, and well, of course, we’d break down and give him all our study time. Then I’d be vexed by the next Friday when I did poorly on an exam and he received a first.”
“Had he done that lately?”
Moskowitz thought. “No, come to think of it, he hadn’t. Perhaps he saw that we were beginning to avoid him.”
“Was there any change in his behavior over the past month or so?”
“Your employer asked a question similar to that. This is a marvelous cigar, by the way. I don’t know. I thought he seemed a bit more…reluctant to talk about where he was going. It was always, ‘I’m going out, Ira. I shall be late getting back.’ Perhaps he had realized that I didn’t give a damn what charity he was going to that night.”
“Anything else?”
“I wouldn’t want to make something of nothing. He seemed a little…distracted. When I first met him, his journal was very important to him. I thought he believed that future generations would be reading his collected journals and gaining great insight. Lately, he seemed to lose interest. I doubt he wrote in it more than once a week.”
“Fascinating,” I said. We’d been gone close to an hour now. “Was there ever anything to suggest that he might be going somewhere or seeing someone clandestinely?”
“Clandestinely? Louis? Doubtful. Why would he do anything clandestine? A scandal might harm his big plans for the future.”
“Why, indeed? We should get back. My associate is expecting me.” I pulled the large wallet from my jacket pocket and paid the bill. Moskowitz’s eyes opened when he saw the size and thickness of the wallet.
“Business must be good,” he commented. We walked back, still smoking our cigars.
“Oh, yes, the Barker Agency is the top agency in London,” I said. Actually, I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded good.
“I didn’t realize that being a detective was so lucrative.”
“We in the business prefer to be called ‘private enquiry agents.’ ”
“My apologies, Mr. Private Enquiry Agent.”
“Apologies accepted.”
As we came down the street, Racket’s cab came toward us, with Barker inside. I shook hands with Ira Moskowitz and hopped aboard, leaving him awestruck at our extravagance. I looked over at Barker, who had a contented look on his face, like a cat that had gotten into the clotted cream. Obviously, his search of the rooms had yielded something.
“Ho’s?” I asked.
“Certainly.”
Barker sucked the last of his noodles up under that huge brush of a mustache and set the bowl down on the rugged table in front of him. I sat and watched him between half-closed lids. Now he would take a last sip of tea and wipe his mouth before reaching for the pouch he’d been dying to open all morning.
I waited until he’d gotten his traveling pipe stoked. “I presume you discovered something.”
Barker shook his head. “You first.”
I was to be the opening act, and he the grand finale. I gave him word for word an account of our meal conversation, or as close to one as I could. I’d never had to recount an entire conversation before. I was hoping I hadn’t made any mistakes, or left any big questions unasked. Barker sat in stony silence as I gave him my narrative, the only animation being the smoke coming from the bowl of his pipe and the corner of his mouth. As I finished, I was on pins and needles, as they say, hoping for a good word. He puffed on for a moment or two. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
“Well done, Mr. Llewelyn,” he pronounced, finally. I let out my breath all at once. “Sending the waiter for cigars to prolong the interview was a nice touch.”
“Thank you, sir. Had you any reason to suspect that he’d have so many opinions?”
“I did,” Barker responded. “First of all, people are always reticent about discussing a fellow’s faults after his funeral. It’s speaking ill of the dead. But, if you get one fellow alone, you might get your blade in him and pry him open like a razor clam. I chose Mr. Moskowitz because he was Pokrzywa’s roommate and would have spoken to him most often, but also because he was messy. Have you ever noticed that a messy person is often the most talkative? I fancy if the situation had been reversed, and you were speaking to Mr. Pokrzywa about the late Mr. Moskowitz, it would have been a lesson in frustration.”
I took a sip of the flavorless tea in front of me and glanced about. The room seemed its usual mix of clandestine conspirators. Not only had I become a “regular,” but I was now involved in one of those secret conversations that Ho’s was famous for, or rather, infamous. Who knows, perhaps some fellow in the room was here for the first time, noticing the small, diffident chap talking to the stone gargoyle in the smoky spectacles.
“So how did you get on with Mr. Pokrzywa’s bookcase?” I asked. “Did you make them an offer for the books?”
“I did. They are carefully considering the offer. Louis Pokrzywa was a particularly intelligent and well-ordered man, until recent months. Something set him on his ear. As you said, his personal journal dwindled off after several years of daily entries. The entries were very instructive. Louis really did want to be a prime minister like Disraeli. He hoped to rise to a position in Parliament and convince the government to sponsor a return of the Jews to Palestine. He wanted no restriction against the Jews ever again. In fact, he agreed with Disraeli, who wrote in his political novel, Sybil, that the Jews were not genetically inferior, as the eugenicists insist, but actually superior.”
“How so?” I asked.
“It’s been years since I’ve read Disraeli’s work, but let me see if I can put it plainly. Let’s take a nation of people, the Irish, for example. Now, conquer their homeland, and disperse them across every inhabited continent. Scatter them among hundreds of different indigenous peoples. Let them be despised and persecuted, and even periodically slaughtered. Do so for almost two thousand years. Do you suppose, at the end of that time, you would find the average Irishman just as you find him today, with his rusty hair, his brogue, his love of life and good ale, his veneration of the saints, et cetera? Or would he have long ago been subsumed into the general population, leaving the memory of a strange race known as the Hibernians only a footnote in the history books?”
“I see what you mean,” I conceded.
“There was a very interesting page I came upon. Just an entry in his journal, among the others. Louis was pondering whether the c
oming Messiah would know he was the Messiah. He wondered how high he could go, to what heights he could aspire.”
“Are you telling me Pokrzywa wondered if he was the coming Messiah?” I gasped.
“Not outright, but it was implied.”
“And the looking like Jesus Christ?”
“Was all a part of it. I suppose he could not help looking like he did. He didn’t grow a beard to look like Christ, only to follow Jewish custom. But looking so much like him affected him in some ways, I believe. It contributed to his grandiose plans.”
“Can one be obsessed with Christ and not be a Christian?” I said aloud.
“Well, of course, you saw the New Testament in his room. I even found a book of our own Reverend Spurgeon’s sermons. But there were also a half dozen books written by Jewish scholars giving their reasons why Jesus could not have been the Messiah. He was studying them. So, I would have said that, no, he was not a Christian, except for one thing.”
Barker reached into his cavernous pockets and pulled out a fold of paper. I took it from his hand. It was a church bulletin from the First Messianic Church of Poplar, dated the ninth of March, not two weeks ago.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“It was in the Bible.”
“First Messianic Church of Poplar,” I said. “It’s no denomination I’ve ever heard of.”
“It is a church for Jews that have converted to Christianity.”
I sat up in my chair. “Really?”
“Yes, though it was not something he would have spoken about with his friends or rabbis, or put down in journals that didn’t have a lock or key.”
“Of course! No wonder he stopped the entries! Was he thinking of converting?”
“There may have been more than religion involved. Look at the margins in the back.”
I turned the circular over. The service’s hymns were printed there. Notes had been scribbled in the margins, in pencil, notes in two different hands.
Can you get away tonight?
I’m not sure.
I’ll be at the usual place until nine thirty.
I make no promises. I’m being watched. I’ll try to be there.
“An assignation!” I said, and whistled. Barker had not wasted his time.
“Yes, and a feminine hand. Unless I’m entirely mistaken, Pokrzywa had met the princess of whom Moskowitz had spoken.”
“I wonder how long it had been going on.”
“Three months, I’d say. The journal entries stopped, you see. I think not only did he wish to avoid setting down his feelings about a Christian-convert girl on paper, he also had nothing else to write about. It is not yet proven, but I believe we shall find that Louis Pokrzywa had given up most of his charity work and could generally be found in the girl’s neighborhood, mooning under her window. The longer love tarries, the harder it strikes. After twenty-nine years, Louis was deeply smitten.”
“Was it the girl Ben Judah mentioned seeing?” I asked. “Was the telegraph pole their ‘usual place,’ do you think?”
Barker shrugged his thick shoulders. “Who can say, at this point? But it certainly gives us a place to start.”
“Where?”
“Why, Poplar, of course.”
13
IN CHAPTER SEVEN OF MATTHEW, JESUS says, “Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” That technique did not work at the First Messianic Church of Poplar. No amount of knocking or knob rattling brought anyone forward to open the door. It was not a traditional church. More likely it had been a large shop, converted over for church usage. There was a faded silk banner over the shop’s original sign, which bore the name of the church and the message, “If the Lord comes today, will you be ready?” The windows were large, but no amount of pressing my nose to them brought anyone out of the gloom. All I could see were rows of chairs and a makeshift podium. It was not exactly Saint Paul’s.
“Do you see anything that says when services are held?” Barker asked, looking in as well.
“Yes, sir. There’s a small card stuck to the window here. Sunday mornings at nine thirty, Sunday and Wednesday evenings at six thirty.”
“Tomorrow night, then. Very well.” He leaned against a lamp post and pulled some notes out of his coat. I think he carried a working office in his breast pocket.
“What have you got there?” I asked.
“These are the lists of anti-Semite speakers and organizations in London, provided by Brother Andy and the chief porter of the Tower. It’s probable that one or more of them are members of the Anti-Semite League that murdered Pokrzywa.”
I looked over his shoulder at the list.
“Good heavens,” I said. “Most of them are pastors of churches.”
“That is so. One is not five blocks from here. Shall we go and have a look?”
After ten minutes’ walk east, we came upon a modest but venerable church. It was not old by London’s standards, mid-seventeenth-century at the earliest. Looking around me at this decayed area east of the City, it was hard to imagine it new a century and a half ago, when this was the edge of town and the church looked out onto acres of empty pasture. Now the façade was crumbling, the stonework blackened with soot, and the board-covered windows were in need of a glazier. Across the entire front were hoardings explaining how the old building was receiving a reprieve:
Come hear the VERY REVEREND ALGERNON PAINSLEY preach from his immortal series, “THE WANDERING JEW” or “THE LOST TEN TRIBES OF DIASPORA” every Sunday in April at six P.M. You DARE not miss it!
From the open doors of the church came the steady pounding of hammer and nail. Work was being done on a new platform for the altar, and I noticed as we stepped inside that the old and musty pews had been augmented with temporary chairs. Attendance must be picking up. I followed Barker down the aisle, as he inquired about the whereabouts of the Reverend Painsley. We found him pounding on the platform, as preachers are wont to do, but not generally with a claw hammer in their hand. He stopped at our approach, rolled down the sleeves of his shirt, and came forward to meet us.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
“Sir, we are reporters for the Daily Dispatch, and we are investigating the recent unrest among the Jews.”
“I’ll gladly help in any way I can, sirs,” Painsley said. He had a square jaw, blue eyes, and straight, crisp hair the color of straw. A cursory glance told me the fellow was going places and that this crumbling church would not hold him for long. There was high color in his cheeks from his physical exertions, and the strong hand he extended toward me was hard and calloused.
“A terrible tragedy, gentlemen, this crucifixion, but not totally unexpected. The Jews are making things hot for themselves here, flooding in like a Mongol horde from Eastern Europe. I fear the citizenry has grown tired of the steady influx of foreigners, and taken matters into their own hands. It is a mistake, I believe, for our government to leave the drawbridge down for all the refuse of Europe. A worse group of dirty, illiterate communists, anarchists, nihilists, and atheists have never crossed our borders before.”
“You have a way with words, if I may say, sir. Are you getting this down, Mr. Llewelyn? Do you believe the Jews have brought this action upon themselves in any way?”
I had never seen Barker play a role before. This pushy, inquisitive reporter was so unlike his normal self, I had to keep from smiling behind my notebook.
“I do,” Painsley asserted. “This is a common pattern for the Jews. They move in, as refugees, and there is a general feeling of sympathy for them for a while among the public. Gradually, they prosper and begin to charge higher and higher interest rates, as their natural avarice begins to assert itself. The sympathy fades, eventually to be replaced by disgust. The disgust boils over into anger and violence, and the Jews are driven out. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe. Look at our own history. It shall happen here, again, gentlemen. Mark my works.”
“Do you think there will be a pogrom, then, sir?”
&nbs
p; “Of course. I mean, I hope not, but I fear it is inevitable.”
“So you believe this murder to be the work of citizens justifiably angry at the Jews for usury, or for coming in and stealing jobs?”
“Not necessarily. It is possible the Jews did it themselves.”
“Themselves?” Barker almost spat out, letting his mask slip for a moment.
“Yes. Is this the kind of murder an Englishman would commit? Certainly not! A Celt or a Teuton might kill in the heat of anger or a fatal stroke of passion, but remember, it was the Jews who crucified our Lord and Savior.”
“Are you keeping up, Mr. Llewelyn? Don’t miss a word, now. And why would the Jews crucify one of their own, Reverend Painsley?”
“To gain sympathy, I suppose,” the reverend said, breezily. “Or some internal struggle. There are many kinds of Jews, all with their own petty squabbles and hatreds. They carry their feuds for centuries, you know.”
“How dastardly.” Barker shook his head. “So, if England were to shut its doors to the thousands of Jews arriving from Eastern Europe, where would they go?”
“If the civilized countries were to close their borders, they would have no choice but to return to the oriental countries from whence they came, and through hardship, privation, and war, gradually reduce the seething mass to a more manageable size.”
“That would certainly decrease the population,” Barker said. “But what of the Jews that have been here for hundreds of years?”
“It was a mistake of Cromwell’s to let them return in the first place. London is the center of Christendom. No doubt the nobility was seduced by the prosperous Jewish merchant families and their millions of pounds. Now they are marrying into English families, even into the aristocracy. I can only hope that succeeding generations shall water down this strain until the dominant Teutonic blood overwhelms it.”
“But what of Jesus, sir?” I blurted out. “Wasn’t he a Jew?”