The Library Paradox

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘Asked him to?’ he repeated, and his eyes filled slowly with a look of horrified consciousness; I could see the idea forming in his mind as clearly as it was in my own, that Jonathan might have gone to kill the professor in order to offer his uncle a future, however heavy the price.

  Jonathan, so cheerful and so full of life – spending the rest of it here, in this hell!

  He blanched. The expression on his face alone was enough to convince me that the man in front of me knew no more about Jonathan’s purpose in visiting Professor Ralston than I myself did. Yet I tried to ask him again.

  ‘Yes – was he asked to go see the dog?’ I insisted.

  ‘No, never, never,’ he said with such horror that his hair seemed literally to be rising upon his scalp, and his voice rose to a dangerous pitch of excitement. ‘I would have given my right hand, I would have given my life to avoid this.’

  It was borne in upon me that his words were not a mere expression; he meant them literally. I felt no doubt that he would, as he said, have given his life, have chosen death, rather than see his nephew condemned for murder, whether innocent or guilty. I sighed.

  ‘You never thought this might happen?’ I said. He shook his head, and suddenly, as I stared at him, his eyes rolled upwards under their lids, revealing only the whites in a horrific image of blindness, and he fell to the floor like an inert mass.

  ‘Fainted,’ said the guard in the corridor with scant interest. ‘They often do, during visits. It’s too hot. End of visit, that means, I guess.’ And releasing me, he guided me firmly back to the governor’s office, with much clanking of keys and metallic doors.

  ‘Well?’ said the governor, ignoring me and looking at him.

  ‘They only talked about a dog, like the other fellow, except now the dog is dead,’ said the guard laconically.

  ‘What is this about a dog?’ said the governor to me, eyeing me coldly.

  ‘This dog was very important to Mr Gad before he went to prison. It was the one attachment he preserved to the outside world, except for his nephew,’ I said firmly. ‘However, the dog has died. I felt it my duty to tell him before his release, so that the news would not come as too great a shock to him once he is free.’

  ‘This telegram says you are here to investigate a murder,’ he said angrily.

  ‘The murder of a dog,’ I replied unmovedly.

  ‘What kind of investigation is this? What could he know about the death of a dog?’

  ‘Not much, indeed,’ I replied.

  ‘I consider this a hoax,’ he said icily. ‘Thanks to this, Gad’s visiting rights are cancelled from now until the end of his term of imprisonment.’

  I reminded myself that he had visiting rights only every three months anyway, and would be released in much less than that. There was clearly nothing to be gained by sweetness, so I allowed my natural impulses to take over.

  ‘Inhumanity is probably not the best way to govern a prison,’ I said frigidly. ‘Fortunately it is not my concern if it is the principle upon which you wish to establish your authority.’

  We glared at each other in silence.

  ‘Show this woman out,’ he said finally, turning away from me and indicating the door to the guard. And I was pleased enough to rise and leave, to emerge into the outside world, to capture the waiting cab, to listen to the smart clip-clop of the hooves trotting away from the dreadful prison, and then to the soothing rumble and whistle of the train as it carried me through the Devon countryside towards Tavistock Junction. Once safely settled on the express for Paddington, I began to reflect upon what I might conclude from my visit, but fell asleep instead out of pure emotional exhaustion, and did not wake until the train pulled into the station.

  As it stopped with a shudder, I started awake from a dream so vivid that I had to shake myself to return to the present. I had been standing in the shadows of a darkened room, holding Cecily and Cedric by the hands. It was eerie, but their presence warmed and protected me (although in reality, in that situation, I should have been terrified threefold). The room was lit only by a shaded lamp which threw a dim glow onto the motionless, standing figure of a man. He looked at us wordlessly, we looked at him, and I tried to make out his features in the gloom. That sharp nose, those sunken cheeks – why, it was Professor Ralston, returned to haunt his own study! Yes, that is where I was standing. I recognised it now, saw the desk and chairs, returned to their upright positions. I saw, also, the bleeding wound in his chest.

  Who killed you? I asked him, but he did not answer. Of course not, I thought reasonably. How silly of me to ask questions to a dead man. I squeezed the children’s warm little hands, tiny anchors linking me to the world of the living. He could not tell me how he had died. Yet his eyes were fixed upon me.

  It was actually more of a powerful image than a dream.

  As I gathered my wraps and descended the steep step onto the quay, part of my brain was still under the spell of the strange vision. It was evening, but not very late. There was no reason not to …

  I found myself on my way to the professor’s library.

  With no fixed purpose, I let myself into the building and, unlocking the door of the study, I stood where I had been in my dream and looked towards the place where I had seen the professor standing. There was no lamp, but the dim evening light was grey, not black, and I tried to conjure up his presence within it. I remained concentrating, calling him forth with all of my powers. I stood silently, evoking his presence, receptive, asking for communication. The minutes passed slowly. And I heard a faint noise.

  And then another one. The sound of steps overhead, in the flat above me. Slowly, these steps began to descend the stairs leading to the door behind the desk, the door to the professor’s rooms.

  Can I describe my feelings? I believed, yes, I truly believed that I had conjured the dead. I stood frozen, too petrified to take note of the many physical manifestations of fear which flooded me; a kind of horrified fascination glued me to my spot. I would not have fled for the world. I expected no grinning death’s head or rotting flesh, but let me admit it openly and frankly – difficult as I myself find to believe it now, as I write it – I did, truly and completely, expect the professor, in the dim, shadowy incarnation I had seen in my dream. The steps reached the bottom, the door opened quietly. My eyes were fixed upon it.

  It was Edmund who stepped into the study.

  He leapt back, violently startled at seeing someone standing there, knocked himself sharply against the doorjamb, and stood breathing heavily, one hand rubbing his head. His other hand, which clutched a piece of folded paper, was pressed to his pounding heart. He looked completely undone by the shock, and the sight of his state brought me to myself.

  ‘So you do have a key to Professor Ralston’s private rooms,’ I said. ‘I thought there must be a double somewhere. No one takes the risk of having a single key to an important lock.’

  ‘Professor Taylor had it together with the others,’ he said faintly.

  ‘And he gave it to you? To look for something? What?’

  Edmund did not look capable of any vigorous reaction after the shock my presence had given him, which seemed to far outweigh the shock he had caused me, in spite of the fact that he had unexpectedly encountered a mere solid human, whereas I was expecting to come face-to-face with a ghost. Taking advantage of his weakened state, I crossed over to him and removed the paper firmly from his hand. He did not resist. It was a short letter, written in the cramped handwriting of someone ill and weary.

  Dear Professor Ralston,

  I am aware that your father’s wishes in a certain matter concerning me are of great annoyance to you and that you have strong objections to his plans. I fear, indeed, that these feelings have led you to regard my son with an enmity that he does not deserve. I wish to inform you herewith that although your father is a kind, admirable and noble man, I have no intention of acceding to his wishes, now or in the future. I sincerely hope that this will not cause him pain or di
sappointment, for I should not wish to be the cause of unhappiness in any person. But what he asks is impossible for me. I feel that a woman can marry but once in her lifetime, be that marriage before God or before society. I beg of you, therefore, to put aside all worry on that score and, if possible, to influence your father to forget me, and to find it within yourself to treat my son as you would any other student, with no regard to these private events that have disturbed our lives, but in which he plays no part.

  Sincerely yours,

  Emilia Bryant

  ‘What does this mean? Professor Ralston’s father wanted to marry your mother?’ I said, lifting my head in surprise and looking at the pale, still-motionless young man who stood facing me, leaning against the doorjamb.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with the ghost of a shrug.

  Time seemed to have stopped in the darkening room, and the atmosphere breathed no violence. I knew I should be afraid of Edmund, yet I found it impossible.

  ‘Did you kill Professor Ralston because of this?’ I asked.

  He looked surprised, and roused up a little.

  ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘What an idea!’

  ‘Did you kill him because of your thesis?’ I continued.

  ‘I didn’t kill Professor Ralston at all, and nor did my father,’ he said. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Your father?’ I said, taken aback, even astounded by these unexpected words. ‘What do you mean, your father? I thought – Professor Taylor had said that your mother was a widow. If you have a father, why – then how could Professor Ralston’s father have wanted to marry your mother?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he snapped. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of illegitimate children?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘And Professor Taylor knew about it?’

  He had obviously thought that I knew more than I did. Now he seemed to regret having spoken. He did not answer, and I stared at him, thinking.

  Why was he here, searching for this letter? Why did he have the key? Who had given it to him? Who had I seen searching, searching among papers and documents, in this very room?

  ‘Professor Taylor!’ I said suddenly. ‘Professor Taylor has had a second family all this time, growing up alongside the real one!’

  ‘No, it isn’t like that,’ he replied quickly. ‘My father is an honourable man.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said doubtfully, trying to adjust myself to this new vision of the white-haired history professor as a rake. My expression seemed to stimulate Edmund to defend him.

  ‘This all happened when my father was very young,’ he explained. ‘He did not intend to be a professor; as a young man, he entered the Army. When he was only in his early twenties, he fell in love with my mother, who was the daughter of the captain of his regiment out in India. Something happened – I can’t explain it,’ he went on, blushing. ‘But the captain was furious with him. Right around that time, the regiment sent a small group of soldiers out to reconnoitre, and they had fallen into an Indian ambush. The captain accused my father of having colluded with the enemy, and having given them information. There was a court martial. Had he been found guilty, he would have been executed. But the charges were patently false, there was obviously no proof of any kind. In the end he was accused of negligence and disobedience, and given a dishonourable discharge. He returned to England an embittered man, and started a new life, attending university. My mother and I returned to England only several years later. She looked everywhere for him, but when she finally found him, he was married to someone else. He had had no idea that I existed. It was too late. Yet he did what he could for my mother and me, discreetly. It was thanks to him that I became interested in studying history. He has been a father to me in spite of everything. I – I cannot criticise him for what happened when he was barely twenty. He has been in a difficult situation for the last twenty-five years, and he has handled it with as much dignity as he could.’

  ‘So that explains why the Dreyfus affair rouses him to such fury!’ I exclaimed, suddenly enlightened.

  ‘Oh yes. The injustice and the shame of his dishonourable discharge left him with a bitterness that has never been effaced,’ Edmund replied.

  I was touched by his spontaneous defence of Professor Taylor’s behaviour, and disinclined to make any moral judgement. Indeed, it was difficult to see how the professor could have acted differently, once the mistake had already been made. He almost certainly thought that he would never be allowed to see the young girl again, knew nothing of the coming child, and could be justified in leaving the error behind him and beginning a new life on a solid basis of scholarship and marriage. But how dreadful for him when the young lady suddenly appeared, having borne all the terrible consequences of the mistake alone, still in love with him, the mother of his eldest son – and he could do nothing for her, or almost nothing, for what is a little help and friendship to a woman who loves?

  ‘Did Professor Ralston know about this?’ I wondered suddenly.

  ‘He did, because my mother told his father why she could not and would not marry him, and he told his son. I don’t think Professor Ralston cared much. But he liked knowing, and let my father know that he knew.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ I said quickly.

  ‘Oh no. He neither used nor even mentioned the situation except for a hint here and there. As I said, I don’t think it meant much to him. Ralston’s mind was on other things. However, it made my father uncomfortable. He was afraid that Professor Ralston might have written something down somewhere – in a diary, or something – and wanted to search his papers to find anything of the kind. He was really afraid that if some document were found by the police, or by whomever should sort Professor Ralston’s papers later on, the story could not but come out, and his wife and all his colleagues would learn of it. The first few days after the murder, he couldn’t search, he could only wait, because even though he had the keys, the police were there every day, and they left a constable at night to keep the place safe. But it seemed that they found nothing; at least they questioned no one about it. Then he became hopeful that there was nothing, only I knew that my mother had written a letter to the professor – that letter there. But the police clearly never found it, for I am mentioned in it explicitly, and they would certainly have questioned my mother and me about it. When the police finished their work, my father began to search for it. He could not risk it during the day, there were too many people in the library, but he managed it once or twice at night. He looked through the flat and the study before you arrived, especially through the letters. The day you came, he searched through all of the articles and publications. But he found nothing, not even my mother’s letter. Professor Ralston might have destroyed it, of course, but we were sure that he had not. He was proud of never destroying any document. My father was convinced that the letter was hidden somewhere, and became more and more nervous about its being found. He gave me the key to the flat and asked me to search for it. I did, many times, after hours, but I never found it until today. I used to wonder if it wasn’t hidden in the pages of some book, even though it seemed impossible that he would leave such a letter in a place where anyone might find it – but I used to take every opportunity to open the books in the library and look inside them, except that there are far too many of them, and usually I just ended up reading them for pleasure. That’s what happened the evening you were here, studying medieval saints. I couldn’t help getting interested in what you were looking up.’

  ‘And where was the letter in the end?’

  ‘It was hidden behind a framed photograph of his father. It’s an odd thing to do, to have put it there, isn’t it? It’s almost like he thought perhaps his father was lonely.’

  Edmund had become strangely loquacious; I felt that it was a relief to him to tell me all this. He came towards me, and reached to take the letter back.

  ‘This belongs to my mother,’ he said. I read it through again quickly, fixing its contents in my mind, before handing it ov
er to him.

  ‘Edmund,’ I said, ‘could that key have ever left your father’s possession? Do you realise that anyone who held it could have shot the professor and then quickly run upstairs?’

  He looked surprised.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, after a moment. ‘My father had this key all the time, and found it where he had put it. But in any case, everybody knows that the police opened the door with the key that was in Ralston’s pocket and searched upstairs. There was nobody.’

  ‘Windows?’ I said tentatively.

  ‘These enormous windows don’t open,’ he said. ‘They’re the same upstairs. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you must look for your murderer elsewhere. Come – there is nothing more for us to do here. Let me get you a cab.’

  I followed him outside, seething inwardly. Whether or not the strange story of his mother constituted a motive (and it was not clear that it did, barring the hypothesis of blackmail), Edmund was right. It was impossible for the key to have been used for the murderer to hide upstairs. I had known that already. The case abounded with motives – if anything, there were too many of them by now. Yet the paradox remained complete.

  London, Thursday, March 19th, 1896

  I sat over my breakfast tea, smoothing out and marvelling over the telegram which had only just been delivered for me, and which excited me so much that Edmund and his story were pushed to the back of my mind. The message was from Bernard Lazare, according to his promise, and fitted like a puzzle piece into the scheme that had sprung up in my mind while I was talking to him.

  ON RECEIPT OF RALSTON LETTER ZADOC KAHN COMMUNICATED WITH REBBE MOSES AVRAHAM NOW IN LONDON ASKING AVRAHAM TO MAKE SOME ATTEMPT PRESSURE RALSTON STOP WORKING UP BRITISH PUBLIC OPINION AGAINST DREYFUS

  David pronounced his rabbi’s name as Moyshe Avrom, but I hoped that the difference was but a matter of pronunciation, and hastened to David and Rivka’s house to show it to them, and to prepare for my visit to the rabbi. David, who had remained home from work to celebrate the festival, confirmed this. ‘Avrom, Avrohom,’ he said, ‘it’s our Ashkenazi pronunciation that changes some a’s to o’s. The correct transliteration is Avraham; the English would say Abraham. As for Moyshe, it’s the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Moshe, the Hebrew form of Moses.’