The Library Paradox (21 page)

‘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 there, 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 thumped 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.

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.

‘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?’