“Are you a member?”
“They don’t allow women. But I’m a regular donor, so I was invited to meet them.”
“Are you an anarchist?”
“Yes, I am. You’re surprised, aren’t you? That there is such a thing as an aristocratic anarchist. But it’s not fair that I should have all the opportunities in life, simply because I had the good fortune of being born into a wealthy family, whereas someone who is far more talented and gifted than I has no hope whatsoever because he was born poor. So I do what I can to redress the balance.” She reached towards the coffee table and opened the lid of a silver cigarette box. “Do you smoke, Detective Sergeant?”
Billings shook his head.
“I hope you’re not one of those men who is offended by the sight of a woman smoking.” She picked a cigarette out of the box, put it in her mouth and lit it. “It helps me to relax.”
The conversation was interrupted by the maid, who entered the drawing room with a tea tray.
“Oh Bessie, darling, you’re an angel,” Olexa said as the maid placed the tray on the coffee table.
Billings looked surprised when the maid sat down in the armchair and joined them for tea.
“Bessie always joins me for tea,” Olexa explained. She poured the tea into the three cups, then picked up a cup and saucer and handed it to the maid.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Bessie mumbled.
“Bessie is not a servant,” Olexa said. “She is a human being, just like myself, and is treated with the same respect I bestow on anyone.”
Billings glanced at the maid. She looked uncomfortable, perched on the edge of the big armchair, wearing her maid’s uniform. He wondered whether the maid really appreciated the countess’ eccentricity. He was convinced that she would far rather be sitting in the kitchen, gossiping with the cook.
“I’m not here on a social visit, Miss Olexa,” he said, gesturing at the maid. “I would like to ask you some personal questions.”
“Bessie may hear everything you have to say. I have no secrets.”
“Very well.” Billing shrugged and continued with his interview. “You are aware, I suppose, that the Hirsch brothers are wanted by the French Police.”
“Of course I am.”
“They are wanted for the murder of twelve factory workers.”
Olexa frowned. “Those deaths were an accident.”
“You think the fire at the textile factory was an accident?”
“No. The factory was bombed by the Hirsch brothers, but there wasn’t supposed to be anyone in there. It was one o’clock in the morning. The factory was supposed to be closed. But Jacques Hirsch had his people working there day and night. Those workers were treated like slaves and were paid a mere pittance.”
“But they’re not being paid anything now, are they? They no longer have a factory to work in.”
“The old order needs to be destroyed before we can build up a new one. We must all suffer to create a better world.”
Billings looked around him at the opulent surroundings. “Are you suffering?”
Olexa paused before replying. “Don’t judge me, Detective Sergeant. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“Are you still in touch with the Hirsch brothers?”
“We quickly lost touch with the four older brothers. They wanted nothing more to do with anarchism and disappeared. I’m only in touch with Joseph now, and through him, with Issachar and Zebulun.”
“You know that Issachar and Zebulun are dead.”
“I read about it in the newspaper.”
“Do you know how they died?”
“Issachar was stabbed in the street by some crook. And Zebulun was found in an abandoned building with his throat slit. I suppose you’re going to tell me that it was Joseph who killed them.”
“Would you believe me if I did?”
“Of course not. What reason does Joseph have to kill his own brothers?”
“What precisely is your relationship with Joseph Hirsch?”
“What do you mean?”
“How close are you to him?”
Olexa went silent for a few seconds. She turned towards her maid. “All right, Bessie, you can go now.”
Bessie was quick to jump up from the armchair and rush out of the room, relieved to have been set free.
Olexa waited for the maid to leave the room and shut the door before finally answering the detective. “I suppose what you’re really asking is whether Joseph and I are lovers. Well, the answer is yes. Why should I deny it? We are both unmarried, and we share the same philosophy. I already told you that I care nothing about class.”
“Are you his only lover?”
Olexa was taken aback by the question and paused before replying. “What kind of question is that?”
“I ask because there was a girl at his address in Spitalfields who is expecting his child.”
“A girl? What kind of girl?”
“A sixteen-year-old German beauty by the name of Rebekah Hochst.”
Olexa’s face tensed up. She stared at the detective without responding. She picked her cigarette up from the ashtray and took a drag.
“I know what you’re doing, Detective Sergeant. I know this tactic. You’re trying to turn me against him so that I will betray him. But it won’t work. Joseph Hirsch is a good man. I stand by everything he does.”
“Do you know what he is plotting at the moment?”
“No, I don’t. But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s a good thing. This horrible inequality in which we live must cease.”
“He is plotting to plant a bomb in a Metropolitan Railway train.”
Olexa laughed.
“Do you think it’s funny? Can you imagine the carnage this will cause?”
“I think you’re overestimating Joseph’s abilities, Detective Sergeant Billings. He only does small-scale attacks. And he won’t do anything that will result in people losing their lives. I already told you that the deaths at the textile factory were an accident. I think it’s time you left.” She put her cigarette down on the ashtray and stood up. “I have been civil with you. I have invited you into my house, I have answered your questions, but you repay me by insulting the man I love. And by insulting him you have insulted me. So please leave now. I want you out of my house.”
Billings stood up. “I am sorry if I offended you, Miss Olexa. That was not my intention. But it seems to me that you are deluded about Joseph Hirsch. I have met him myself. He is a dangerous man. I would advise you to stay well away from him.”
“Will you go now, please?”
“I will.” Nodding his goodbye, Billings made his way out of the drawing room and down the stairs.
8. Three Dead Anarchists
There was a small brown envelope on Billings’ desk when he came to work the following morning. It was addressed to Detective John Billings.
“What is this?” Billings asked, picking up the envelope and waving it in the air.
Clarkson was sitting at his desk, reading the morning paper. “Jack put it there just now,” he said.
Billings opened the envelope and pulled out a small note, written in black ink on cheap, hard paper.
If you want to meet Joseph Hirsch, go to Tower Hamlets Cemetery.
He shall be waiting for you at the grave of Wilber Cockerel.
Hurry, or he will be gone.
“Who did you say put this on my desk?” Billings asked again.
“Jack. He’s distributing the morning post.”
Billings rushed out of the office and looked up and down the corridor for the messenger boy. He saw Jack coming out of another office with the post bag strapped over his shoulder.
“When did you receive this letter?” Billings waved the letter in the air.
“It was in the post box this morning when I came in.”
“It has no stamp.”
Jack shrugged. “The sender must’ve put the letter in the box himself.”
“How often do you check the post?”
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“Twice a day. First thing in the morning and again at five o’clock before I go home.”
Billings went back into the office and sat down at his desk. Who could’ve written him that letter, he wondered. It had to be someone who knew him, because it was addressed to him personally. There were only four people who knew that he was looking for Joseph Hirsch. Kurowski, Martin Hochst, his sister Rebekah and Countess Olexa. He doubted that the letter had been written by Kurowski. The landlord had no reason to betray Joseph Hirsch, and furthermore, if he had written that letter, he would have left out the definite article before the word grave, as he was wont to do when he spoke. It couldn’t have been written by Rebekah, as she spoke no English, but it might have been written by her brother. However, Billings doubted that Martin’s grasp of English was sufficient to draft a letter without a single mistake. So that only left Countess Olexa. Perhaps she’d had a change of heart after Billings had left her. Perhaps she had thought about what he had told her and concluded that Hirsch really was the cad he had made him out to be.
He took the letters the countess had written to Joseph out of his desk drawer and compared the handwriting. Obviously, the writing was not the same. The letter was supposed to be anonymous, and the countess would have gone through the trouble of disguising her writing, but certain similarities in style could still be ascertained: the way the letters inclined to the right, the seamless manner in which the letters were joined, the way the t’s were crossed in the middle.
He got up from his desk. “Come on, Clarkson, we’re off,” he said, taking his coat and hat from the hatstand.
Clarkson looked up from his newspaper. “Where are we going?”
“To the cemetery.”
When Billings and Clarkson arrived at Tower Hamlets Cemetery, they found it deserted. It was a large cemetery, littered with dozens of unmarked gravestones. Only forty years after it was created, it was already in a terrible state of neglect. Many of the larger gravestones were covered in moss and lay tumbled down and cracked on the ground, while the smaller gravestones were completely concealed beneath long grass and brambles.
Like Highgate Cemetery, this graveyard was laid down on the outskirts of the city in the 1840s to ease the overcrowding of the small urban churchyards, which were causing disease and ground water contamination. But unlike Highgate Cemetery, this was predominately a pauper’s graveyard. Over two hundred and fifty thousand bodies had been interred here since it opened. Entirely unrelated bodies were buried in the same grave, some of them dug 40 feet deep and containing up to 30 bodies.
“There’s no one here,” Clarkson said, looking around him. “The letter was a hoax. I knew it would be.”
Billings wasn’t convinced. “Let’s at least try and find that gravestone. It might tell us something.”
“What on earth can a gravestone tell us?”
“I don’t know, Clarkson, but we’re here now. We might as well look.”
It was no mean feat finding a stone with the name of Wilber Cockerel written on it in this jungle. Billings and Clarkson spent nearly half an hour rummaging in the undergrowth, pushing the weeds aside with a stick or carving the moss off the stone with a pocket knife to read the inscriptions.
After about twenty minutes, as Billings wandered towards the woods at the edge of the graveyard, he spotted a tramp sleeping in the long grass, his head resting on a tombstone. Billings approached him slowly. The tramp was wearing dirty and ragged clothes. His beard was long and tangled. There was a dark stain on his jacket, shirt and trousers. Was it mud? Urine? An empty bottle lay tumbled by the tramp’s side. He must’ve spilled the liquor all over his clothes in a drunken stupor, Billings concluded. But as he got closer, he saw that the stain was not caused by liquor, nor mud or urine. It was a blood stain. And the tramp was not sleeping. He was dead.
Billings turned towards the gravestone. He read the following inscription:
Here lies Wilber Cockerel
Beloved father and grandfather
b.1784 - d.1846
Billings turned back towards the tramp. He had a pale face and a thick copper-coloured beard. This was no tramp. This was Joseph Hirsch.
“Well, another Hirsch brother dead. That makes three in a row. So much for capturing the brothers alive!” Chief Inspector England took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Detective Sergeant Billings has a theory about who is killing the brothers,” Flynt said, turning towards his colleague. “Why don’t you tell Chief Inspector England what you told me.”
“I believe the brothers are killing each other.”
England raised his eyebrows.
“When I met Ruben Hirsch, he said that his father had taken revenge on his sons by changing his will. The money will go to only one son. The one who outlives the others. According to Ruben, his father wants his sons to kill each other off one by one until only one remains.”
England frowned. “That sounds like anarchist propaganda. A fairytale concocted by the Hirsch brothers to vilify their father.”
“I telegraphed the French Police. They checked the will.”
“And does the will say the money will go to the brother who kills the other six?”
“Not in so many words. It says that the money will be held in a trust and released to one of the brothers at the trustee’s discretion. It would have been illegal to make a will that insinuates that the brothers must kill each other before inheriting, but I believe that there is an unwritten agreement between Jacques Hirsch and the trustee that the money should go to the last surviving brother.”
England scoffed at this. “So you believe that Issachar, Zebulun and Joseph were all killed by one of their brothers?”
“Yes. Initially I believed that Joseph killed Issachar and Zebulun for the reason I mentioned before. But now that Joseph is also dead, I believe the killer might well have been Ruben. He was there at the plot meeting when Zebulun´s throat got cut.”
“And you believe he also killed Joseph?”
Billings paused before replying. “It’s a possibility. But I also have two other suspects in mind. One of them is Martin Hochst, a young man who lives in the same boarding house Joseph Hirsch stayed at. He was disgruntled because Joseph had impregnated his little sister. The other one is Countess Olexa.”
“Countess who?”
“She’s a Bohemian aristocrat living in London. She sponsored the Hirsch brothers when they first came here, and she fell in love with Joseph Hirsch. She too may have become disgruntled at finding out about her lover’s previous liaison with Martin’s sister.”
“That rather contradicts your previous theory, doesn’t it? That the killings were all done by the Hirsch brothers themselves in order to inherit their father’s money?”
“My theory still stands for the first two killings, but the murder of Joseph Hirsch might have been an exception. The manner in which the killings occurred differs too much. The first two brothers were killed with a knife; Joseph was killed with a gun.”
England shook his head and smiled. “I took you for an intelligent, eager and cunning young man at first, Mr Billings. But perhaps I was mistaken.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh, come on, it all sounds rather melodramatic, don’t you think? A bitter will? A murdering countess? A lowly German immigrant avenging the cad who dishonoured his sister? Sounds like something you’d read in a novel.”
“Billings is fond of reading,” Flynt chipped in. There was a mischievous smile on his face. “He always reads on his lunch break. I’ve seen him do it. He’s reading Wagner the Werewolf now.”
“Wagner the Werewolf?” England shook his head and laughed. “The story you just told me sounds exactly like a plot in one of Reynolds’ novels.”
“I’d change to reading newspapers if I were you,” Flynt added. “Novels are for women, whose minds are flighty and not based on reality.” He laughed.
England put his glasses back on and cleared his thr
oat in order to focus his colleagues’ minds back on the main issue. “I suspect that these murders are the result of some sort of internal war within the London anarchist community. I propose we continue investigating the various members of the Autonomie Club. There must be something important that they haven’t told us yet. Interview them again and dig further this time. It is imperative we capture the remaining Hirsch brothers once and for all, before they too end up dead!”
Upon returning to his office, Billings flung himself at his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. “What an utterly despicable man! What is wrong with reading a novel for relaxation? Flynt may not read novels, but I know he goes to the theatre regularly. And to the opera. Is that not an activity for women whose minds are flighty and not based on reality?”
“Don’t let him get to you, Billings,” Clarkson said, following him into the office. He went to the hatstand, took an apple out of his coat pocket and sat down with it behind his desk. “You and Flynt ain’t ever seen eye to eye, but you’ve got to make the best of the situation. I suggest we just do what we’re told.” He took a big bite out of his apple.
“Do as we’re told? Flynt wants us to interview all of the Autonomie Club members again. You haven’t even finished writing the reports of the first visit. It’s a waste of time, Clarkson. The Autonomie Club members know nothing.”
“Well, what do you propose we do then?”
Billings didn’t answer. He just stared ahead of him, wondering about the next move.
The door to the office opened, and Jack stuck his head in. “There’s a lady ’ere to see you, Mr Billings.”
“A lady? Did she mention her name?”
“No, she didn’t. But she ain’t half posh. She’s waiting for you at the reception.”
“Tell her I’ll be down soon.”
“Will do.” Jack withdrew his head from the doorway and closed the door.
“Who could that be?” Clarkson asked.
“No idea.” Billings got up and made his way out of the room.
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