Some Danger Involved (5 page)

We entered a room lit by two fires, so warm that it felt like a Turkish bath. An elderly man sat in a chair facing us, both hands resting on a cane between his feet. He wore a coat that may have fit him at one time, but which now threatened to engulf his frail frame, and a collar so high it looked like his head was resting on a marble pedestal. As I neared, his face seemed even older, his skin like parchment, but the eyes under the bushy brows glowed like coals. As we came up to him, he favored us with a gentle smile. I didn’t have to ask if it was this man’s note which had summoned us to Aldgate. Barker stopped and bowed low.

“Sir Moses,” he murmured.

O
F COURSE, I HAD READ OF SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE.
Who hadn’t? He was the unofficial ambassador of his people to the world, unofficial only because the Jews had no country of their own. Among his titles were knight, baronet, sheriff of London, deputy lieutenant for Kent, magistrate for Middlesex and the Cinque Ports, and president of the Board of Deputies. Since the 1840s he had been crisscrossing Europe, getting Jews out of scrapes in Russia, Romania, Italy, and countless other countries. Now, it seemed, he was finding trouble closer to home.

“Mr. Barker,” he began, “pray be seated. You, too, young fellow. Thank you for coming on such short notice, and forgive an old man for calling you away from your observation of the Sabbath. Your devotion does you credit. This is, I believe, the second time we have availed ourselves of your services, is it not?”

“It is,” Barker said, sitting relaxed but upright in his chair. “We have just returned from the City Morgue, where we have been examining poor Mr. Pokrzywa.”

The old man stiffened. “You have not…”

“Touched the body? No, sir, or I would not have entered this residence. The stick I used to examine the corpse is out on the curb.”

Sir Moses relaxed. “You know your Jewish customs, Mr. Barker. So, was he literally crucified? I have not viewed the body.”

My employer tented his fingers in front of him. “He was tied and nailed to a board that was hung from a telegraph pole.”

“Barbaric. A Gentile custom, despite our unwarranted title as ‘Christ-killers.’ Stoning is the only form of execution permitted to the Jews.”

“Perhaps,” my employer said, “but Gentiles haven’t used crucifixion as a means of execution for over a thousand years. This form of killing is an anachronism, and as such, anyone with enough motivation could have done it to prove a point, regardless of their race or religion.”

“Do you consider yourself a Christian apologist, Mr. Barker?” Montefiore asked, looking at him through shrewd eyes. “If so, you have much to answer for.”

Barker gave a rare smile. “I am but a humble Baptist, Sir Moses, and have enough to apologize for among my own people. I find that, like the Jews, we tend to divide the world between ourselves and everybody else.”

The old man tipped his head back and laughed. “You argue well. You should have been a Torah scholar.”

“I read Torah as well as the next man, Sir Moses. But come, I believe we’re dancing around the main issue. Are you engaging me to find the killer of Louis Pokrzywa?”

The elderly man knit his brow. “There is more to it than that. Perhaps much more. In Germany the Anti-Semitic Party has been gobbling up parliamentary seats. There have been major pogroms in Kiev, Odessa, and several other Russian towns. Jews in Poland are starving or fleeing because of government sanctions in the Pale. And all of the refugees are coming here by the thousands, by the tens of thousands! We Jews take care of our own, but this is not a mere exodus, it is a deluge. Feeding and housing them all would beggar even a Rothschild. Hundreds are arriving in London by steamer every day. They are good people, though green to the ways of England. They don’t speak English and have nothing but the clothes on their back. They want a place to live and employment, but they are taking work and housing from the English workers and from other immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Italians. They don’t know any better.”

Barker moved forward to the edge of his seat. “You think things will get out of hand? You fear a pogrom here in England?”

“I do, and I forbid it!” Sir Moses cried, punctuating his remark with a thump of his cane. “I will not have a pogrom on my watch. I have not fought against anti-Semitism so long only to see my people evicted from my own country. We have come this far and shall go no further. Our backs are to the sea, gentlemen…and I do not believe the Almighty shall part the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the New World.”

The two men sat silent for a moment, and I pondered how history repeats itself. Here again a Moses was leading his people in the wilderness, making plans and trusting in his God to defend them. The old man thumped the arm of the chair and I saw, just for a second, the power and vitality he once possessed.

Barker shifted in his seat. “A single dead Jew does not make a pogrom. Surely there is more that you have not told me.”

The old fellow nodded, swinging the silk tassel on the small velvet cap he wore. “I must have my finger on the pulse of my people at all times. Anglo-Jewry has always been an uneasy alliance. I’m seeing warning signals everywhere. Last week a rabbi heard a speaker in Hyde Park denouncing the Jews, and when he tried to intervene, he was beaten. There is a successful production of
Merchant of Venice
at the Pavilion Theater with the most deplorable portrayal of Shylock it has ever been my misfortune to see. Several shopkeepers have had their windows shattered by bricks this month, and a number of workers have been assaulted by ruffians. The new arrivals are fanning the flames. They are so alien-looking they frighten the East End Gentiles. Truth be told, they frighten even us! To the average Londoner, however, one Jew is like another. One of the businesses that was damaged has been a family-owned establishment for almost two hundred years. If a pogrom should occur, I do not believe our attackers will stop to ask how long each family has lived in this country.”

“Do you believe there is a connection between the murder of Mr. Pokrzywa and these other events?” Barker asked.

Sir Moses shrugged his bowed shoulders. “Perhaps. Who can say? That’s what I want you to discover.”

Barker paused. No doubt he was debating all the factors in the case. Finally, he nodded once, decisively.

“Very well, then. My agency accepts your case. For now, as a working hypothesis, I shall assume that the murder was part of an attempt to harm the Jewish community as a whole. But I will not force it. Should I discover that Pokrzywa’s death had no connection to those other events, to which endeavor would you have me concentrate my energies?”

“I will trust your judgment on that.”

“Then I shall endeavor to earn your trust. I’ll need a list of pertinent names and addresses, as well as a letter of introduction from you, to verify that I am working for the board until I get my own sources working on this.”

Montefiore reached into his pocket and handed his card and a folded sheet of paper to my employer. Barker thrust them into his own pocket unread, and stood.

“We haven’t discussed your fee,” Sir Moses stated. “I presume you’ll require some money for expenses.”

Barker frowned, and I noticed he moved his shoulder. I sensed that he was uncomfortable discussing money. “I cannot state a fee because I don’t know yet what is entailed in the work. We will discuss it when the case is complete. For now, my customary retainer is five pounds sterling.”

The old patriarch pulled a thick gold clip of notes from his pocket. He removed one from among them and proffered it. Barker did not move.

“Please hand it to my assistant.”

Montefiore smiled at the little eccentricity and gave it to me instead. “You know,” he said, “in my younger days I would have hunted down this killer myself, but since I have reached the century mark, I must rely upon you young fellows.
Mazel tov,
gentlemen. May the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless your efforts.”

The footman led us back to the entrance. I was almost out the door when Barker stopped us and turned his head. There was a comfortable-looking drawing room to our left, with two large easy chairs flanking a crackling fire.

“Good day, my lord,” Barker called out. There was a rustling of newspaper and a
harumph
from the chair. We retrieved our hats and coats and left.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Lord Rothschild, of course. This is one of his pieds-à-terre, down the street from his bank. Sir Moses is his uncle, and since he has reached one hundred years of age, the baron takes close care of him.”

“So he is really a hundred years old?”

“He is. Not exactly Methuselah, but they are a remarkably long-lived race.”

Barker picked up his stick, which was still leaning against the wall. I had to amend my first impression of the area; if one could leave such a fine stick at the curb and find it safely there a quarter hour later, it was safer than most streets in London. The stick had a shiny brass head, and the shaft was of polished maple. It couldn’t be bought for less than three quid. Perhaps the fact that it leaned against a Rothschild property gave it some special protection.

“Petticoat Lane is but a few blocks from here. Let me show you about Aldgate and tell you some of its history. I have no doubt,” Barker said, setting a brisk pace, “that a few Jews accompanied the Romans when they were building Londinium in the first century, but there was no organized community until William the Conqueror brought merchants and artisans here from Europe a millennium later. They set up shop in Aldgate, in the street known as Old Jewry. By law, money lending was forbidden to Christians, so the Jews were able to offer high interest loans and grew rich—rich enough to form the backbone of the royal treasury, when needed. Still, they were not immune to persecution. Conditions quickly began to deteriorate for the Jews, and the government taxed and persecuted them systematically. Finally, in 1290, Edward the First expelled all Jews from the kingdom. They were exiled for three hundred fifty years. Watch your step here, Thomas.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s terrible, what happened to the Jews.”

“Yes, England has much to answer for. During those missing three and a half centuries, Marlowe wrote
The Jew of Malta
and Shakespeare his
Merchant of Venice.
The first is vitriolic, but then Marlowe always was a waspish fellow. Shakespeare’s play is, on the other hand, brilliant. Have you ever seen it staged?”

“No, sir,” I gasped, “but I’ve read the play.”

“Step lively, lad. You’re lagging. Where was I? Oh, yes, three hundred fifty years. Of all people, it was the Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, who restored the Jews to England in 1656, at the request of Rabbi Israel, a man not unlike our own Sir Moses. The first synagogue, Bevis Marks, opened in 1701. It was a Sephardic synagogue, Spanish and Portuguese, but the German and Dutch Ashkenazim followed almost immediately. Since then they’ve been emancipated and have prospered for the most part. The Jewish leaders, led by Sir Moses, formed the Board of Deputies in 1863 to protect all Jews. Which brings us to the present and, not coincidentally, to the Lane. Good heavens, lad, are you all right?”

“Fine, sir,” I said, putting my hands on my knees. “Just a bit winded.”

“First a cold, and now this? We need to get you in better shape, put you on beef tea until we can build you up. Welcome to Petticoat Lane, Thomas.”

We’d turned east at Lombard from Saint Swithen, and come down Fenchurch Street into Aldgate High Street, crossing half of the City’s royal mile. We now stood not a stone’s throw from Whitechapel, facing Middlesex Street, the Lane’s more prosaic name. This was the heart of the Jewish ghetto, where the east end of the City gave way to a strip of land known as Spitalfields. On the map, the street changes names several times, but it is all the Lane on Sunday, including the various alleyways and gated courts that back into it.

The scene before us was like a football skirmish. It was as if half of London had been compressed into one street. People stood elbow to elbow like sardines in a tin, and any space underneath was packed full of children. Makeshift booths were set up, with every inch of space filled with used clothing. Handkerchiefs, ties, and hosiery were tacked to the rickety wooden supports and fluttered in the chill March breeze. The articles for which the street earned its sobriquet hung on low-slung clotheslines overhead. Portable racks of shirts and overcoats lined both sides of the street, and the more permanent merchants had signs in Hebrew and English together. Shoes dangled by their laces from upper-story windows, and hawkers called down to the crowd to use the stair. In front of a shop, which proudly boasted that it had been in this location since 1705, sat a fellow fresh off the boat from Moravia or somewhere, selling his few pitiful possessions from a handkerchief on the street.

“Good heavens!” I cried. “How ever do we get in?”

“It’s quite simple,” my companion said, insinuating his elbow between two men standing back to back. “We push.”

The din was appalling. Every hawker in London was here, yelling “Who’ll buy?” “Better as new!” and “Hi! Hi!” Sailors walked arm in arm with handsome-looking young Jewesses, children with white pinafores and red cheeks scuttled about like mice, and East End matrons in their long shawls sailed through the crowd with the grace and dignity of clipper ships. Here a man offered gold and watches in the same singsong voice in which he had offered prayers to his God the day before, and there an old crone sold vestas and warmed herself from a pail full of coal embers. One could buy any article of clothing here, from a gypsy’s silk scarf to a guardsman’s bearskin busby. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I think every vendor in the street noticed my new clothing.

“Oy, there! Give you a good price on that there suit!”

“Pardon, young fella! I’ll ’schange that suit and give you the difference!”

“Very dapper young gentleman, we have here! I can get you a more comf-table-like pair o’ boots cheap!”

“Just ignore them, lad,” Barker ordered, pulling me through the crowd.

“Why aren’t they bothering you?” I asked. “You’re dressed as well as I.”

“They know better.”

I looked at the faces of the crowd. Most looked like average Londoners, and a few like music-hall versions of Jews, but now and then I saw true Semitic faces: Russian Jews with babushka scarves or fur-trimmed hats, old men who would have looked at home in bazaars in Damascus or Casablanca, and bright-eyed children with black curls and earrings, looking as if they’d just fallen off a gypsy caravan.

“Mind your wallet,” Barker continued. “This is a knucker’s paradise.”

I tapped my back pocket. My wallet had no money save the five-pound note of Barker’s, but it contained a few things important to me, so I held on to it. I hadn’t heard the word “knucker” since prison. Where had Barker picked up the word?