The Library Paradox (8 page)
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Authors: Catherine Shaw
‘But do you suppose that your cousin and her husband would be willing or able to help us look for the mysterious rabbi?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘It depends,’ intervened Jonathan. ‘We have not seen them much recently, but we were debating in what way we could ask them for help. It would have to be a question of
finding the rebbe in order to warn or exonerate him, and not in order to turn him over to the police – their help would certainly only be on that condition, Vanessa! Anyway, that is what I want, myself. I cannot believe for one moment, not for one single second that the rebbe I saw murdered that awful professor.’
‘And yet …’ I said.
‘I know, I know,’ he answered quickly. ‘Yet the strange time element remains in his defence.’
‘The reconstruction of the crime will help us determine what might really have happened,’ said Emily eagerly. ‘Perhaps we shall come up with a new possibility!’
We separated upon this, and I retired to my room to write my impressions of the day. We have decided to attempt the reconstruction tomorrow night, just as soon as it is late enough for the streets to be empty and the light gone. Furthermore, Jonathan and Amy have agreed to pay a visit to their cousins tomorrow, in order to explain the situation, and to suitably prepare the ground so that they may receive me the day after tomorrow, should they be willing to help us.
My goal for tomorrow, before the evening, is to devote myself to searching out anything I can about James Wilson from the newspapers of 1886, as well as trying to find and read whatever I can locate of Professor Ralston’s own writings. The task will be time-consuming and arduous, I know it from having performed similar ones in the past, but experience has shown me that it can be astonishingly rewarding. The amount of ‘secret’ knowledge which is actually in the public domain is, seemingly, immeasurable.
I arose eagerly this morning, ready to begin with my projects. Emily and her friend were already up when I entered the tiny kitchen, preparing a modest breakfast of toast and tea, improved by a pot of home-made jam from Amy’s parents. We did not dally long, nor even exchange many words; even while devoting a corner of my mind to the pleasure of finding myself in London, I was girding myself up mentally for the day that lay ahead of me. Emily was on her way to a class, and Amy to see an editor, so we all three left the house together, and separated in the street below. I made my way immediately to the British Library.
After three hours of research amongst fusty yellow pages from a decade ago, I began to feel the need for a light meal, and I considered taking a break even though I had as yet found absolutely nothing on the subject of James Wilson. I had, however, come across an article or two by Professor Ralston, which I had read with great attention. Alas, while confirming all the unpleasant impressions I had already received from various sources, they seemed far too general in content to yield any insight on what might have led to his murder.
I wandered out into the pale March sunshine and searched for a place where a lady alone could pass relatively unnoticed while restoring herself. I saw a number of restaurants of all descriptions, all of which were entirely unsuitable, and into which I could not think of penetrating. I was beginning to seriously miss Cambridge, and compare
the metropolis most unfavourably with it, when I spotted a lady as isolated as I myself, entering a place called Zoedone’s. I followed her at once, and discovered an odd style of restaurant, very crowded, very full of noise and people, very adept at abruptly slapping down in front of one the food which had to be ordered over a counter at great speed, almost shouting to be heard over the din. All this was rather stressful for one of quiet habits, but had the advantage that no one in the place appeared to have any time to notice anyone else. Having gone through the ordeal of ordering, I therefore sat down to eat my meal feeling quite triumphant and most pleasingly modern, in spite of its mediocre quality. I would have dearly liked to continue strolling about the streets afterwards, but duty called me, and I bent my steps firmly back to the library.
After exploring a number of newspapers, I concentrated my main efforts on the
Illustrated London News,
whose unusual use of coloured engravings lends somewhat more of a popular and sensational light to the articles than when they are merely printed in narrow columns upon the page. And it was there that I finally struck gold. The article was in a copy dating from the month of June in the year 1886. As I read it, I was gripped by an increasingly powerful feeling of horror.
The trial of brothers Menachem and Baruch Gad for the murder of little James Wilson, an eleven-year-old boy found stabbed to death behind a London
warehouse in early April, came to an end today. The two brothers’ defence was based on the lack of motive, as they were not previously acquainted with the child, who had no family or regular sleeping place, and who, according to testimony, apparently eked out a living, if it may be called that, by minor acts of stealing, either for his own benefit or that of unidentified employers of his talents. Opportunity, however, had been convincingly demonstrated from the very first days of the trial, as the brothers lodged in a building whose windows gave directly over the warehouse where the child was often to be seen, and where his little body was found. Defending counsel having raised the thorny question of lack of motive, their opponents responded with the time-honoured accusation of ritual murder of Christian children at the season of the Jewish Passover festival. The claim is that the blood of a Christian is an essential ingredient in the making of the traditional Passover flat bread. The judge, and seemingly the public also, initially treated this motive with some disdain, but the prosecution then produced a witness whose erudition in such matters was clearly immense, and who gave an apparently convincing exposition of the history, the reality and the relevance of the purported motive. The witness, claiming fear of revenge, asked to remain anonymous to all but the judge, who cleared the court to hear his testimony and gave the jury his own personal assurance of the witness’s high
qualifications. The witness was then escorted out unobtrusively, and the public was allowed to re-enter for the concluding statements, which gave a brief but clear summary of the witness’s declarations. His statements obviously had the effect of causing the jury to accept the motive as a valid explanation of the murderous act. The jury deliberated only an hour and a half. Menachem Gad was condemned to the gallows, and his brother Baruch, presumed to have been his accomplice, to ten years’ imprisonment.
Ritual murder? Christian blood in bread? Horrible! I thought. Could such a thing be true, such a horror really exist? It was difficult to believe – very difficult, indeed
too
difficult. And yet, the article unambiguously showed that twelve honest citizens
could
believe it. That such a thing as this can take place in London, England, at the end of the enlightened nineteenth century! Yet such a thing as what exactly? Ritual murder itself, or merely the belief in it? I remained stunned for some time, trying to collect my thoughts, unable to reconcile myself with the reality. What, I wondered, had Professor Ralston’s interest been in this affair? I felt that I hardly wanted to know the answer; I balked at the idea of penetrating further into this story of suffering. Yet I knew that it could not be avoided. Why was James Wilson’s name found in a strange list containing other names and dates from medieval times? Why was the folder marked ‘B.L.’? What possible connection could there be with a French journalist called Bernard Lazare?
The very fact that the list, written by the professor himself, explicitly contained a reference to a murder struck me as significant. Certainly, Professor Ralston was an historian, and obviously one who gloried in tales, such as this one, which seemed to support his pet hatred. Yet this might also indicate something deeper. For one thing, Professor Ralston took the trouble to dispose of the papers in that file. What could they have been? He did not seem to be a person who habitually destroyed his old papers, which appeared for the most part to be classified in apple-pie order. Why were these removed?
I forced myself to spend another hour searching for confirmatory articles in other newspapers, but discovered essentially nothing more than what I had learnt from the
Illustrated London News.
I then sat back, and began to reflect again on the professor’s list. I decided that the best thing for me to do next was to try to learn as much as I could about the other cases mentioned in it, and thought it should be possible to look them up in books, insofar as they represented historical rather than recent events. I glanced around, wondering where, in all of the enormous library, I should begin, when a voice spoke up within me, as clearly as the ringing of a little bell:
Professor Ralston’s library.
Why, of course – I should be much better off there! It was smaller, and largely devoted to medieval history; it seemed more than likely that I should find everything I wanted, and much faster.
I left the British Library and made my way immediately to Adelphi Street. It was late in the afternoon, but not yet
closing time. The door was unlocked, and Edmund Bryant was at his post, seated at his desk with his spectacles upon his nose, lost in piles of books and papers as was apparently his habit. I could not resist wondering, momentarily, if he were engaged in the stubborn development of wrong ideas, but dismissed the notion at once, as it appeared to me that if anyone’s ideas could be qualified as wrong, they were those of the author of that statement. I stood for a moment contemplating Edmund, while removing my gloves one finger at a time. Eventually, feeling my gaze, he raised his head.
‘Do you need something particular?’ he enquired politely.
‘Yes,’ I said slowly. I thought that Edmund ought, with his knowledge of the library, to be able to direct me very quickly to the books that would best inform me of what I needed to know; I wanted to talk to Edmund in any case, and it seemed a perfect opportunity. Yet I hesitated, and for the following reason: I was embarrassed to take out the list that I had copied from the professor’s paper and show it to him. The terms of the list itself, together with what I had read about James Wilson, made me feel as though my notebook contained something violent, vile and shameful, and I loathed the idea that Edmund might think I was interested in such things of my own accord.
‘I – I need to learn about Saint Simon of Trent,’ I stammered, remembering a name from the list which I hoped would not immediately arouse any associations.
‘Saint Simon of Trent,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Do you know what period he is from? Early Christian? Medieval?’
‘Medieval,’ I said quickly, remembering the date of 1475.
‘Books about saints in the Middle Ages would be here,’ said Edmund, rising and directing me to a certain set of shelves in one corner of the large room.
I set down my things on one of the tables scattered about, and began to browse among the books on the shelves in the area he had indicated to me. I soon found a passage, in a book called
Lives of the Saints,
concerning Saint Simon; I found it all the more easily as the book I was holding fell open naturally at that place. I marked the page with a bit of paper, set the book on my chosen desk, and laying my notebook next to it open at the page containing the copied list, I began to search for references concerning the other names it contained. Whenever I found something, I marked the place and added the book to the growing pile on the desk, to be examined once a sufficient number had been collected. It was only after I had managed to find references to the stories of Padre Tommaso and Anderl von Rinn that I took notice of what I had only half-consciously perceived before: many of the passages which interested me had been studied before; they were frequently underlined in pencil or marked out in the margin and, without even realising it, I had been searching rather for these pencil marks than for the relevant names as I flipped through the pages. When I had constituted a pile of some eight books, I stopped my search and began to study the case of Saint Simon.
It did not take me long to discover that this saint was no more than a tiny boy of two and a half, whose murdered
little body was discovered floating in the river near the city of Trent, in Italy. I skipped hastily through loathsomely detailed descriptions of the tortures he was alleged to have undergone, and read on through accounts of the accusations levelled at the Jews of the community, their trial, the many appeals, protests and retrials, and at last, the final trial before Pope Sixtus IV himself, ending in the burning at the stake of the entire community. I read citations of contemporary accounts of the event, some of which were viciously hostile, others objective and even quite sceptical, still others levelling all manner of ferocious accusations, and plunging without regret into demonisation and fanaticism, all the while tearfully bemoaning and mourning over the tender age of the murdered innocent, the blacker to paint his presumed murderers.
I read all manner of variations of the so-called ‘ritual murder’ accusation I had seen in the
Illustrated London News,
alleging that the Israelites
use the blood of a Christian child in the baking of their Passover unleavened bread.
I tried to imagine how Arthur would react if he heard of such a thing, and immediately visualised his faint smile of disgust at the very vulgarity, the loudness, the sensationalism of it. Indeed, I could not imagine a single sane person giving credence to the idea even for an instant. And yet, of course they do not – not most of them, anyway – not as individuals. The phenomenon is essentially a collective one. Only a crowd, I think, has the power to unleash such vicious madness in otherwise quite ordinary people. And who motivates these crowds? Just a very few people, with
very special interests in mind – the ruin and annihilation of Jewish communities.
