Some Danger Involved bal-1

by Will Thomas

  I loitered with intent in the theater as it slowly emptied, but I saw no one else involved in the case. I half expected to see Nightwine or Rushford; this was their type of crowd. Within ten minutes, the time it took Barker to return, the ushers and I had the lobby to ourselves.

  "Are you ready, lad?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Did you see anyone connected with the case?"

  I told him about the girl I'd seen at the funeral. "Have you any idea who she might be?" I asked.

  We stepped outside. Barker raised his cane and we hailed a cab. "A Jewess that pretty and still unmarried is rare enough to be remarked upon. I believe she is Rebecca Mocatta, the rabbi's daughter. I've asked her father for a private interview with her, since she was a close friend of Pokrzywa's. So far, the rabbi has not responded. I wish I had been here myself."

  "Sorry, sir. I would have gladly stopped her had I known you wanted to speak to her."

  "I have no doubt you would, you rascal," he chuckled. "So, the Mocattas went to the theater tonight, did they? I'm sure they enjoyed it about as little as did we. And you saw no one else here tonight you recognized, Jew or Gentile?"

  "No, sir. How was your interview?"

  My employer snorted. "That egotistical little windbag. To hear him tell it, his fame has been long overdue. He's going to ride this hobbyhorse as far as it will go. He's talking of playing Fagin next in a version of Oliver Twist."

  "Is there anything to connect him to the case?"

  "I doubt it was his plan to kill Pokrzywa as some sort of publicity stunt for his play. I cannot see Rosewood as some diabolical leader of the Anti-Semite League, not unless he's a much better actor than I give him credit. Frankly, he doesn't seem intelligent enough to orchestrate such an operation."

  "Another dead end," I complained.

  Barker turned his head my way. "Would you rather I fasten blame on someone without proof or sufficient evidence?"

  "No, sir!" I said, realizing he'd taken my remark as a criticism. "I didn't mean it like that."

  "Patience, lad. Remember? Every suspect you eliminate brings you closer to a solution. It's still early days yet, and we're coming along. You've discovered something very important."

  "What's that, sir?"

  "The stunner with the pretty eyes is Rabbi Mocatta's daughter," Barker said, giving me another of his little nudges in the ribs. It galled me to think that he had complained about my sense of humor.

  20

  I was at the Hammond the next morning, typing up all that had occurred so far in our investigation. Barker claimed that a dry listing of facts would be helpful in clearing his mind, but I secretly felt he was giving me busywork. I couldn't think of anyone else to interview, and, I suspected, neither could he. Was this normal, or was my employer floundering out of his depth as Nightwine had suggested? I had no way to judge; the fellow was an enigma to me, and my knowledge of detective work rudimentary at best.

  Jenkins came through the room with some papers, moving as slowly and surely as a clockwork automaton. He was always this way in the mornings, half asleep, moving about like a somnambulant and propping himself against door frames for support. As the day progressed, he would become more and more animated, until he was near frantic by five o'clock, trying to get all the duties he had neglected finished.

  As for Barker, he, too, was ruminating. He began in the office, pacing from the desk to the window, the window to the bookshelves, and back to the desk. Eventually, he ended up in the little outdoor court, wandering about in the cold. It didn't matter to me how mad he looked, if his thoughts were actually getting him somewhere.

  Since joining Barker's employ, I had enjoyed a highly irregular schedule. Some days we ignored the office entirely, our only communication being a telephone call or a message from Jenkins. We had meals at all hours of the day and sometimes went without. Our visit to the theater the night before had been part of our investigation, and since we did not get home to Barker's ritual bath until nearly midnight, I had put in a sixteen-hour day. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I was fortunate indeed to have an employer who liked a little flexibility in his schedule.

  I had picked up The Times and was preparing to study it for the day's events. Barker felt a complete reading of the daily was essential in our work. It was nearing noon, and my employer, having completed his circuit, was back by his desk. Jenkins was lazily buzzing around the room, like a trapped bluebottle, lighting here and there. I had finished my report and placed it on Barker's desk, and he was just starting to go over it. I was a bit bored, to tell the truth, and hoped we might go back to the City after lunch, as this inactivity galled me. Those were my thoughts as I picked up the newspaper and noted the date, which was the twentieth of March.

  I leapt to my feet, knocking my castered chair across the room. My heart was pumping like a thoroughbred's at Ascot, and though I reached out to the desk to steady myself, I couldn't feel the wood under my fingers.

  "Good heavens, man," Barker remonstrated. "What is the matter?" He had that same look on his face his Pekingese got when its dignity was affronted.

  "IЧ IЧ IЧ" I began, then tried again. "I have to leave, sir. I require the rest of the day off."

  "You what?"

  "I have to go, sir. Now! I'm sorry. Oh, hang it!" I ran out of the room. Jenkins was ambulating again, and I got past him just in time. If Barker tried to follow, the clerk had sealed up the doorway for a moment or two. I clattered down the front steps, too upset to even remember my hat and stick. I hurried down Whitehall toward Charing Cross, close to a dead run. I didn't care a pin about what the people who watched me pass by must think. I had more important things on my mind.

  I reached Waterloo, and realizing I couldn't keep this pace up, I stopped to catch my breath, while I watched the cold gray water of the Thames pass under the bridge. My mind kept repeating the phrase: twenty March, twenty March, twenty March.

  It was one year to the day since my wife's death. Her death, her illness had led to my arrest and trial, and my eight months' sentence. How had I not remembered the date until now? What kind of husband was I that I couldn't even remember the first anniversary of my wife's death? While it was true that my time had not been my own since I had been hired, I still felt a crushing weight of guilt on my chest.

  I paid the tuppence toll and crossed the bridge, walking aimlessly. Jenny was her name. Memory conjured up her face before me. Her hair was soft and brown, and her large eyes hazel. I had loved the shape of her ears and the way the curls in front of them spiraled. I had loved everything about her. We had been married less than three months. The old loss came back, the loss that had made me howl in my cell, that had taken a young boy of twenty summers and turned him into an old man.

  Gradually, having wandered for hours, I felt the enormity of what I had done begin to sink into my troubled brain. I had walked out on my position, after all Barker had done for me, after the expensive clothes, the room, the meals. I was a complete ingrate. I had left him much out of pocket, and now I was back against the wall again, no savings, no position, no prospects. Perhaps I would be swimming in the Thames yet. I recognized the hand of Fate by now, and her cruel little jokes.

  Eventually, finding myself with nowhere else to go, I returned home. I passed a curious Mac and made my way upstairs. With a stoical sigh, I reached under the bed and pulled out my old battered suitcase, the one Barker had rescued from the dustbin. It had become my oldest friend. Inside it was the meager suit I had worn to my first interview with Barker. Had it only been a week? Somehow, it seemed longer. I changed into my old clothes again. After wearing some of the finest apparel available in London, I saw that the suit looked shabby indeed, mere refuse for the stalls in Petticoat Lane. A pity. I would have liked to own a nice suit in which to be buried.

  There was a knock at the door. I was so deep in thought I didn't notice, until it came again. It startled me. Nobody in this household knocked. Barker bellowed, Maccabee barged right in, and D
ummolard never came upstairs. I got up and opened the door. It was Mac.

  "Mr. Llewelyn, Mr. Barker requests that you join him in the basement."

  "The basement, did you say?"

  "Yes, sir." He bowed and left.

  So, that was it, then. I was to be dismissed in the basement, unless he intended to shoot me instead. I would have preferred the office, where it all began, but the basement was as good a place to be sacked as any.

  I went down the stairs and opened the door. In the middle of the room, Barker was seated at a small deal table of indeterminate age. The table was without benefit of a tablecloth but was covered with plates of bread, cheese, and a cold joint.

  "Yes, sir?" I said. "You wanted to see me?"

  Barker got up and went through a door leading into the lumber room. "Have a seat. I must say, you had me going," he said, while I heard him rummaging about. "I didn't quite know what to make of it. Then I remembered. Your wife passed away a year ago today, didn't she?"

  "Yes, sir. How did you know?"

  "I went to Oxford that second day, while you were cramming those first books. Interesting reading. Your files, I mean." He came out again and put two pint glasses on the table. "Why didn'tЧ My word, what are those rags you're wearing?"

  I looked down at my suit. He was right. Compared to what I had been wearing the last week, they were rags. "My suit, sir. The one you hired me in."

  Barker seemed a bit short-tempered, as I would expect him to be under the circumstances. "I thought I told Mac to burn those. What are you wearing them for?"

  "They seemed as good as any to be sacked in, sir."

  "Sacked? Who said anything about being sacked? Have I told you that you are sacked?"

  "No, sir." I watched him go back into the lumber room again.

  "Your records at Oxford were rather vague. The charges were theft and assault, but the full particulars were mislaid. For a city the size of Oxford, I found the constabulary quite bucolic. The sentence seemed very stiff for such a small crime. According to the report, the total worth of the stolen property was exactly one sovereign. Here it is!" He came out with a small barrel, very dusty and cobwebby. "Give me a hand here, lad."

  I held the barrel, while he pulled the peg and opened the spigot. A brown liquid filled the glass, producing a tan collar on top. It was porter. He transferred the tan froth to his mustache.

  "Eminently drinkable," he pronounced, and poured me a glass.

  "What are we doing, sir?"

  "That should be obvious. We are getting drunk and hearing the story of your life. Where was I? Yes. You are not the sort to suddenly refuse to do work that is required of you. Something of immense personal import to you made you leave the office suddenly. Obviously, something that happened before your employ, unless, of course, my numerous foibles finally grew to become too great. So, come, lad. Spill it. Confession is good for the soul."

  "But, sir," I protested. "I saw you sip at the stout at the pub the other day. It is evident that you dislike it."

  "There you go inferring again, without evidence, Llewelyn. What you have taken for dislike is in fact an overfondness. I could pour this stuff down my throat by the gallon, and did, in fact, during my wilder days. But now I must be abstemious, save upon an extraordinary occasion such as this. Tonight we shall drink ourselves into a stupor, and tomorrow morning conduct ourselves once more as sober men, and this occasion need never be discussed again. So tell it, man, and no blubbering. I can take anything but blubbering. Good porter, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir. Excellent."

  "Mac makes it himself. Never trust a butler that can't make first-rate spirits."

  "I shall remember that." I was trying to put together all the disjointed thoughts in my head and to be coherent. This was a subject I had never spoken of with anyone before. I wanted to get it right.

  "Well, sir, I first met my wifeЧ"

  "No, no," Barker broke in. "You're making a hash of it already. Go back to the beginning, Thomas. Tell me about your family and your village."

  I took another sip of the porter, then a large gulp. I'd never had the luxury of being drunk in my entire life, but this seemed as good a time as any.

  21

  I was born in Cwmbran,in Gwent,sir, the sixth of nine children, and the fourth son. My father was a miner, and my mother took in wash to make ends meet, not that they ever did. We also had a grandfather living with us, my mum's dad, who was retired from the mines after a lifetime underground. He used to take us on long walks around the hills, as a means of coughing up fifty years' worth of coal dust from his lungs. His years in the hole were secondary in his mind, and in that of the town. He was primarily a bard. The townfolk were proud of old Ioan Llewelyn, for he'd won several eisteddfods, storytelling competitions, traveling as far as Cardiff. Granddad used to tell us children stories on our long walks, to entertain us and to keep his skills sharp, and so I grew up on the old tales of Pwyll and Math, and the brave queen, Rhiannon. The stories meant little to my brothers and sisters but were all the world to me. When I was younger, I was sure they were all true, as if they'd just happened. I trembled in terror at the thought of the dark underworld of Annwn more than any glimpse of Hell's fire and brimstone imparted to us children by our Methodist minister. But I was nothing special, just number six of the Llewelyn brood, destined for the coal mines, a family distinct only because my grandfather chose to spell the family name a little differently from the established and royal spelling.

  "The first inkling that I was a little different from my family and friends occurred in my fifth year of schooling, when I began to set some of my grandfather's tales down in class for my teacher. Mr. Wynn was something of a hedge bard himself, and he was impressed more by my memory than my syntax. He pushed me to learn English as well as Welsh and drilled me in all the rules of grammar and punctuation. He also undertook to teach me elocution, an hour after school twice a week. In lieu of any payment, I furnished an introduction to my grandfather, and the two gentlemen who were my mentors became fast friends. Mr. Wynn himself set down all my grandfather's tales verbatim, and they were published in Cardiff shortly before Granddad passed away that year. By that time, everyone was convinced that my grandfather's 'gift' had been passed down to me.

  "Under my tutor's encouragement, I entered a countywide eisteddfod when I was but twelve. I didn't win, of course, for who would have presented an award to little Number Six, the collier's boy? However, my tale did come to the attention of Lord Glendenning, who was most impressed to have a savant in his district. With Mr. Wynn's encouragement, His Lordship agreed to sponsor my education at a public school in Cardiff. I'll never forget the day I was seen off at our little station by my parents, in the best clothes cobbled together from the family's wardrobe." I paused for a moment. "Could I have a bit of that cheese, there?"

  Barker cut a thick slice of Stilton for me and put it on a plate, along with some Huntly biscuits. I poured another glass from the cask. Storytelling is thirsty work.

  "In my new school, I kept to myself as much as possible and strove to excel at my schoolwork. I had few friends, for I was a poor lad among all those rich merchants' sons. I did make one friend, though, an English lad named Bryan Pill. It was Pill who introduced me to English literature, which is to say, the modern literary journals: Blackwood's, Cassall's, Pearson's, and others. I became as much addicted to them as he. In my naivety, I began to send them odd pieces of prose, poetry, reviews, and the like. In their complete ignorance of the fact that I was but a youth, they accepted one or two.

  "I was called into the headmaster's office one morning, during my final year at school, to find myself in the presence of Lord Glendenning himself. He had been watching my progress, his 'investment,' and had even gotten wind of my work in the periodicals, from Mr. Wynn, no doubt. The headmaster was able to offer encouraging words on my academic standing, and the outcome was that His Lordship wished me to sit for the examinations to enter Oxford. If I passed with high marks, he wou
ld see fit to finance a frugal year's tuition at Magdalen College. I passed with very high marks indeed."

  "Good, lad."

  "Thank you, sir, but nothing had prepared me for the enormity that is Oxford. When I was not reading Classics or attending tutorials, I worked at various odd jobs, as well as serving as a batman for an upperclassman, cleaning his rooms and waiting on him, which is a requirement during the first year. The upperclassman, the Honorable Palmister Clay, was a sleek and odious fellow, a peer's son who spent his money on fine clothes and all the rigors of dissipated living. He found occasion to criticize my dress, my speech, my manners, and everything else about me.

  "Up to that time, I had lived a Spartan life and, of course, a celibate one. The only females I had known were my own sisters and classmates, and I had been cloistered among boys since I had begun attending public school. Love was something I read in the story cycles of King Arthur and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. So I was utterly unprepared when Cupid's arrow finally pointed my way.

  "I was on my way to one of my numerous jobs one evening, having come from a bit of tutoring I was doing for a student without much brain but with a wealthy father. I was walking along Holywell Street when I noticed a shape on the ground ahead of me. It was early evening, but it being late October, the day had already grown dark. The gaslights glowed in the midautumn fog, and by their light I saw the shape ahead of me move. I slowed down, realizing the bundle of cloth was human. Even Oxford streets could be dangerous at night. Then my ears detected the sound of abject weeping. Some poor wretch was sobbing piteously, a beggar's child or an old crone decrying her fate. The sound of my shoes on the paving stones must have alerted her, for her face suddenly appeared from under her shawl. I thought then and there that it was the most beautiful face I'd ever seen. Her hairЧ"