by Will Thomas
Once in the door, the Guv was giving orders to Maccabee, while I went upstairs to change. My evening clothes were my most impressive outfit, and I admit I felt it something of an extravagance, since I would get little or no use out of it. As usual, Barker had prepared for every contingency. I changed my day suit for evening wear and smoothed my unruly hair. I had never been so formally dressed in my life. My shirt front was snowy white, my white silk tie peeped from under the tips of my collar, and my evening jacket was of the latest cut. There was even a pair of kid gloves.
Mac provided himself and me with a cold meal by the door: slices of game pie, a bean salad with vinaigrette, and a carafe of water on a silver platter. I leaned against the wall and ate standing up. Presently, our employer came down as well.
Cyrus Barker in evening dress was a sight to behold. The expanse of white linen across his chest seemed immense. His day spectacles had given way to an evening pair, the round disks inside the tortoiseshell frames as green as jade. Altogether, he looked grand and foreboding, a figure of mystery.
Gloveless, he picked up a slice of game pie in his fingers and consumed half of it in one bite. Mac handed him a goblet of water and began whisking imaginary crumbs from his suit with a small brush. For once, this all seemed rather decadent. Evening wear, cold suppers, and a butler brushing away stray crumbs was a far cry from starving in a garret. London is truly a city of extremes.
“Mr. Llewelyn, I must ask you not to lean on the wall, please. It is indolent. Mac, whisk him.”
Mac took the broom to me rather thoroughly. There hadn’t been a crumb on me to begin with. Any satisfaction the butler derived was removed by Barker’s next question, however.
“Might Llewelyn borrow your silk hat for the evening? I have not had the opportunity to purchase one for him yet, and I did not anticipate he would require one so soon. I fear one of mine would o’erwhelm him.”
For a moment, Jacob Maccabee looked as if he’d just been slapped. He glanced at me as if I were a species of vermin that had somehow been carried into the house. Then his professional demeanor took over, he acquiesced, and in a moment or two was adjusting a beautiful silk top hat on my head at just the perfect angle. Somehow I wanted to apologize, though I knew it was not I but Barker who had commanded him. Mac tied a voluminous opera cape around Barker’s neck, handed us our sticks, and we were off.
19
ARRIVING AT ONE OF LONDON’S PREMIERE theaters in a top hat and evening kit was a novel experience, but my day had been full of them. In the last twenty-four hours, I had been shot at, had a knife thrown at me, and been nudged by a wild beast. I’d faced down an old tutor and watched a man defeated who may have tried to assassinate me. Still, none of these events had prepared me for a night at the theater, or the sight of my employer in an opera cape.
I suppose I had once aspired to come here and walk among these beautiful, elegant people as one of their own, but that had been long ago, before all my dreams had been dashed like porcelain on paving stones. Now that I was finally here, I felt all the more like a Welsh collier’s brat, as if I were still twelve, nose running, and starting to outgrow my brother’s cast-offs. I was in the right place at the wrong time. Such was the refrain of my life.
“Cheer up, Thomas, old man,” I told myself, looking down at the crowd from one of the immense stairways. I would try to enjoy the evening out for its own sake. Heaven only knew if I would ever be in such a situation again.
The Pavilion was as long in the tooth as an old dowager, but a fresh coat of paint covered a multitude of sins. The plush was wearing thin on the seatbacks, and plaster showed here and there beneath the gilt of the cherubs and ribbons, but all in all she was still handsome. The marble flooring and stairs had reached that luster of beauty which nothing save time and millions of pairs of shoes could create. Barker and I were admirably situated mid-distance between the orchestra pit and the stalls, close enough to hear all of the dialogue, yet far enough away to have the illusion unspoiled by heavy-handed makeup and garish sets. I must state as well that I am a classicist, and much prefer Shakespeare over the latest patter-operas of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan.
The performance was a tragedy in every sense. The actor playing Antonio was stoic and noble, and Bassanio was justly aggrieved at his kinsman’s predicament; Portia was just as I imagined her, and in the portrayal of the Jewess Jessica there was nothing of which Sir Moses could disapprove; but in the casting of Shylock the sponsors of the play had made a dreadful mistake. The Merchant of Venice is a play which must be done subtly if one is to get the full benefit of the tragedy therein, and the character of Shylock should be portrayed realistically, so that we feel his alienation as a Jew. Instead, the actor, Frederick Rosewood, portrayed him as a cold, calculating villain, whose only desire is to destroy every Gentile he gets in his clutches. Such a performance might have caused little concern to the Board of Deputies had the audience been merely members of the upper class, but the shilling stalls were filled with East Enders who booed and hissed whenever Shylock appeared. They seemed very likely to vent their emotions from the play in the streets afterward.
“No wonder Sir Moses is concerned,” Barker murmured, as we gathered our things. “I had the good fortune to attend Irving’s interpretation at the Lyceum in ’eighty-one. Now that was a performance.”
“Rosewood was heavy-handed,” I admitted. “He’s turned Shakespeare into a cheap melodrama.”
Barker and I had fallen in with the crowd making their way out to the staircases, when he turned to me. “There’s something I’d like you to do, Thomas. I’ve got a mind to have a word with Rosewood, and it might be useful if you would mill about and see if you recognize anyone from the investigation.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Good, lad. Off with you, then.”
I reached the top of the stairwell and leaned against the rail nonchalantly, all the while scanning every face for a connection to the Jews. I did indeed see some faces I recognized, but only from their illustrations in the popular press. The Pavilion may not have been the grandest theater in London, but it still had the ability to bring in the fashionable crowd. One could count the dresses, the suits, and the jewels in the tens of thousands of pounds. I was looking down on this pageant as it passed below me, when I found myself staring into a familiar pair of cool brown eyes.
It was the beautiful young Jewess from Pokrzywa’s funeral, moving slowly and gracefully down the stair. She wore a gown in a deep forest green, with a matching mantle over her bare shoulders. She had noticed me again and was giving me the same scrutiny that she had in the cemetery. For some reason, I remembered the scene in Eliot’s Deronda, when Gwendolen first meets Daniel’s gaze. I expected her to look away demurely, but she did not, not immediately, anyway. My heart began fluttering in a way it hadn’t in a year; I had thought it cold and dead since my wife’s passing. I determined to find out who she was.
She turned her head and spoke to a woman at her side. I wondered if she was speaking of me, but the other woman did not look up. Surely, it must have been some commonplace remark. Her companion was a stern, harsh-looking woman some twenty years her senior, whom I concluded was her mother. I was quite content, therefore, not to be the subject of their conversation. The girl gave me a final glance with those velvety eyes of hers and frowned when I dared offer her a reserved smile. I summoned my pluck and made my way down the staircase after her, but when I reached the lobby, she was gone.
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 st
epped 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.
“I—I—I—” 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 Dummolard 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’t—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.”
