The Library Paradox E-Book

Catherine Shaw

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Vanessa Duncan
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 515

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Cambridge, 1896. Motherhood and private detecting don't easily go hand in hand, but even with two small children Vanessa Weatherburn still manages to indulge her passion for solving mysteries. When three sombre scholars knock on the door of her family home, Vanessa is presented with perhaps her most puzzling case yet. Professor Gerard Ralston, Head of the History Department at King's College, London, has been shot dead in his study. As the only suspect left the building a matter of seconds before the shot was heard, and with witnesses testifying that no one left the building after the shot rang out, all are perplexed as to how the killer could have escaped. Vanessa must use all her logic and intuition in order to solve the paradox of a seemingly impossible murder.

Leseprobe

THE LIBRARY PARADOX

CATHERINE SHAW

For my sister, who provided the greater part of my education on the subject

Contents

Title PageDedicationPAGES FROM VANESSA WEATHERBURN’S DIARYEPILOGUEMATHEMATICAL HISTORY IN THE LIBRARY PARADOXAbout the AuthorBy Catherine ShawCopyright

PAGES FROM VANESSA WEATHERBURN’S DIARY

March 1896

Cambridge, Wednesday, March 11th, 1896

We were sitting in the front room, Arthur and I. I had not told him about the telegram. I rather thought that nothing might come of it, and in that case there wouldn’t have been any point. But when I perceived, through the window, a little group of gentlemen coming up the path, I felt it might have been better to have mentioned it before.

Arthur was reading the newspaper, and I was peacefully engaged in mending a tiny torn sleeve, while Cedric tried to climb upon my knees and Cecily dug through my work basket and flung out all the spools. We had come in but shortly before from our outing; the late afternoon sun was still gleaming through the crisp cold air, and the children’s cheeks were still flushed from their exertions of toddling, usually in opposite directions, and what with tumbling down rather frequently and trying to climb up on anything pointy or lumpy, we came home with a fair crop of scrapes, tears and dirty spots.

The cheerfully crackling fire was most welcome, and I had just put on the kettle and taken up my mending, when a shadow darkened the window and the three gentlemen came up and stood hesitating outside. Arthur glanced up at my gesture of surprise, and saw them also. I hastily rescued the telegram from my work basket, where Cecily had only just discovered it, and handed it to him wordlessly.

DEAR VANESSA SOME FRIENDS OF MINE WILL POSSIBLY VISIT YOU SHORTLY ASKING FOR HELP PLEASE DO HELP THEM IF AT ALL POSSIBLE VERY URGENT PLEASE THANK YOU THANK YOU STOP EMILY

‘I see,’ said Arthur with a very faint smile, looking from the telegram to the window to me.

I rose from my place, put down my sewing (or rather, put it up, in a place high enough for little hands not to pull it down and prick themselves on the needle), and arrived at the front door just as the bell rang, Cecily and Cedric frothing about my skirts in an effervescent mixture of shyness and curiosity. Three grave, somewhat embarrassed scholarly faces looked into mine and there was a short silence.

‘How do you do?’ I said politely.

‘Very well,’ said one of the gentlemen, a little shortly, I thought. ‘We would like to speak with Mrs Weatherburn, if you please.’

‘Oh! She is me, I mean I am she,’ I said, realising he must have taken me for a housekeeper. ‘Please do come in, of course.’ And I stood away from the door, shooing the twins a little distance off so that they should not be trodden upon. Cecily took one look at the gentleman who entered first and burst into tears, while her brother, apparently deciding that the visit had already lasted sufficiently long, directed the word ‘Bye-bye’ to the newcomer in a firm, ringing tone, while waving his little hand in an unmistakable gesture of dismissal. The gentleman glanced at my upset work box, the scattered mess upon the floor and the weeping tot with frank dismay. I was just about to take some drastic measures, when the door from the kitchen opened, and Sarah entered, back early from her half-day out.

All three gentlemen brightened up considerably. How something so diminutive, so fresh, and so pretty can also be so efficient and so energetic, always delightful, always cheerful in spite of the endless round of cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children, is quite beyond me. And what is more, she does it all on vegetables alone! Sarah neither eats nor prepares meat, but at least she allows the mistress of the house to fiddle about in the kitchen (so many cooks do not) so that I can easily put on a roast or some chops to accompany her lovely spinach soufflés or rice-stuffed tomatoes. That such a thing should have found its way into my household is a blessing; surely it must have been a stroke of Divine Aid.

In less than no time, Cecily was gathered up and consoled, her tears dried, and the spools and cottons swept out of sight, while Cedric was momentarily controlled with a small cake. I pulled forward chairs for the visitors and tried to pretend that noise, chaos and disorder were phenomena perfectly unknown to me.

‘I’ll take them up to the nursery,’ said Sarah, sweeping Cecily under one arm and trundling her away in great contentment, followed by Cedric snugly wedged in his father’s left arm. I sighed with relief and turned my full attention to my visitors. Three pairs of eyes were fixed upon me with doubtful expressions. I breathed again.

‘There,’ I said firmly, in the hopes of dispelling possible poor impressions. ‘Now I do hope you will tell me how I can be of help to you.’

There was some shuffling and looking at each other, and the most senior of the three gentlemen began to speak.

‘Let us introduce ourselves,’ he said gravely. ‘I am Professor Hudson and this is Professor Taylor, of King’s College in London. This young man is Mr Sachs, a student of mathematics. We have had a – a difficulty, a problem, at our university; you may have heard something of it. It is the kind of problem which …’ and his face took on a more doubtful expression than ever, ‘which apparently you have had some success in solving before, or so we have heard.’

‘From Emily Burke-Jones,’ timidly interjected the youthful Mr Sachs. ‘She’s a good friend of mine.’

It began to dawn on me that the problem about to be set before me might be more important than I had bargained for. Certainly, Emily is aware of the half-dozen or so little investigations I have undertaken since my marriage left me without any professional occupation, in most of which I succeeded in unearthing the truth by what always appeared to me to be a fortunate mixture of good luck and coincidence. Considering the lengthy miens in front of me, I felt sure that she must have exaggerated my accomplishments to the point at which they had expected to encounter someone quite different from myself. But I felt curious. No, it was more than curiosity. Clearly something very serious had happened, and I felt an urgent desire to know more about it.

‘Please tell me about the problem,’ I said quietly.

There was some hemming and hawing and looking at each other. Then Professor Hudson cleared his throat.

‘The problem concerns the death of a colleague of ours, a professor at King’s,’ he said. ‘Ahem, it appears to be undoubtedly a case of murder.’

‘Murder!’ said Arthur, returning to the room exactly in time to catch this particular word. In spite of his best efforts to hide it, I cannot help being aware that Arthur suffers from a feeling of visceral horror and repulsion in respect of my work as a detective. Yet he has long since given up trying to dissuade me from it, and indeed I can count on his doing his utmost to help me if he can.

I did not speak, but the word murder awakened an echo of violence and terror inside me, which certainly mirrored his. This immediate reaction was, however, instantly overcome by an impulse to interfere quite as powerful as any I might have felt had I observed someone being murdered in front of my very eyes.

‘Ah, Weatherburn,’ said Professor Hudson with an air of relief at this sight of a familiar face, shaking Arthur’s hand cordially. ‘How do you do? Good work that last article of yours. Yes, yes indeed. You’ve heard about our problem down at King’s, I suppose? No? Well, it isn’t in the mathematics department. It’s a strange thing.’ The pleasant light went out of his eyes and a wrinkle appeared on his forehead as he recalled himself to his task of information.

‘The circumstances of the murder are most mysterious; one might even call them paradoxical. And the police appear to be making no headway. The whole situation has created innumerable difficulties at the college; the atmosphere is heavy, students are withdrawing, trustees are making remarks. The case is in imminent danger of being drawn to the notice of the Queen, in which case I fear that the college may come in for serious sanctions.’ He coughed again, uncomfortably, and threw a glance into a corner where, my eyes following his, I perceived Cecily’s favourite rag doll lying with her legs tossed unconcernedly over her head.

‘Professor Taylor, here,’ he continued, ‘is the head of the history department and as such was one of the closest colleagues of Professor Gerard Ralston, the murdered man. The history department is of course the one most affected. My student Mr Sachs, however, was one of the three who discovered the body. Because he has been questioned by police and is directly concerned in the case, we decided to approach Professor Taylor about the possibility of consulting a private detective, someone who would be entirely discreet and devote his energy uniquely to the case in hand in the hopes of arriving at a satisfactory and rapid solution.’ He coughed once again. ‘As it happens, we were not acquainted with any such person, but Mr Sachs, as he said, had heard about your achievements in this line, Mrs Weatherburn, from a friend of his.’

‘People often have recourse to the famous detective of Baker Street in cases as important as this one, do they not?’ I murmured, perceiving his discomfort with, as I supposed, my dissimilarity to his preconceived idea of a successful detective.

‘Holmes?’ Professor Taylor spoke up, an expression of disgust on his face. ‘The publicity, the publicity! I have no doubts of his capacities, and surely he is discretion itself during a case, but when all is over – why, his associate publishes detailed descriptions of all the most interesting cases in the Strand Magazine! Which, by the by, explains his immense renown at least as much as his successes do. No, no, we cannot consider such a thing. Much better to remain closer to home. My being acquainted with your husband keeps it all in the family, as it were.’

‘I see,’ I said thoughtfully. Certainly, I am neither experienced nor famous nor brilliant, and yet, there was a period, after I married and stopped teaching, where if some interesting problems had not come my way, I should have fallen into gloom out of sheer boredom – indeed, there is quite simply a part of my brain which is not fulfilled by the plain enjoyment of domestic pleasures and yearns to touch the rougher spots of life’s texture. And I have, after all, been able to untangle several rather complex situations. Still, most of those were not murders, but rather, less drastic if equally mysterious disappearances and robberies. I cannot feel certain of success when undertaking a case; yet there is no room for error in a situation like this, where lives may hang in the balance.

‘Before deciding anything at all,’ I said, firmly putting these considerations away for later, ‘I would be grateful to have as many details of the case as you can give me.’

‘Certainly,’ answered Professor Hudson. ‘I will give you the circumstances as precisely as I know them, and you will see at once that it all appears to be quite inexplicable. To begin with, you must know that Professor Ralston, a professor of history, worked so extensively with texts that he had collected a considerable library of his own, consisting of thousands of historical volumes. Upon an agreement with the college dating back several years, he donated the whole of his library to the college on certain conditions; the new library was to be situated on the ground floor of a building belonging to the college, which had been used hitherto for the lodging of lecturers. This building lies a few hundred yards down the Victoria Embankment from the main building of King’s College, in a strip of grounds giving onto Adelphi Street, with a back gate to these grounds on John Street. Professor Ralston was lodged on the upper floor of the house, with a study on the ground floor giving directly onto the library. In this way, he was able to continue to treat the library as his own, while the whole of the body of students and professors was also able to take advantage of it during the day; Professor Ralston continued to add to the library as fast as he acquired new tomes, and the college added to it from its own funds as well.

‘The interior of the house was altered according to these arrangements. The front door now leads directly into the library, which occupies the whole ground floor of the building as a single vast space, except for the one room, which was preserved as Professor Ralston’s study. Shelves of books line the walls of the room from floor to ceiling all the way around, and there are a few desks and lamps in the centre for readers. The stairs to the upper part of the house where Professor Ralston resided lead up from inside his study. The house itself is situated in the middle of a grassy quadrangle, which is some thirty yards wide, with buildings on either side of it. The length of the quadrangle stretching between the two parallel streets is longer, probably about eighty yards. It is entirely surrounded by a tall wrought-iron grille and one can enter only by the two gates. A path leads from the front gate directly up to the house, a distance of about thirty yards. This path then skirts the house to either side, and continues straight on to the back gate. The back gate is locked at five o’clock each evening, by a caretaker of the college on his rounds, whereas the front gate remains open in general unless Professor Ralston is away.’

Taking up a paper, the professor made a quick sketch of the grounds, the buildings and the adjacent streets, which I reproduce here.

‘Now,’ he continued, ‘although the official library hours were from nine to five o’clock, Professor Ralston was not strict about this rule, and had no particular objection to people remaining in the library for a little while after five o’clock; generally, he did not bother to lock the front door of the house until he went upstairs to get ready for the evening meal at seven. Knowing this, two students from his department, Matthew Mason and Edward Chapman, needing to consult some texts, headed to the library after their last class of the day: we are talking about the 6th of March, the Friday of the murder. It was already nearing five o’clock; indeed, the students arrived at the back gate at five o’clock precisely, exactly at the same time as the caretaker, who walked with them for the last part of the distance and allowed them to enter before locking the gate behind them.

‘The two young men walked down the back path and had just turned left along the house to go around to the front, so that they were passing under the window of Professor Ralston’s study, when they heard a tremendous noise of shouting and crashing of furniture coming from within. They stopped for what they describe as a few moments, listening and hesitating, and then they heard the sound of a shot followed by total silence. Immediately and together, the two students dashed around to the front of the house and rushed into the front door, which was closed but unlocked.

‘As they came around the corner of the front of the house, they caught sight of this young man here, Mr Sachs, who was walking up the front path towards the door and had heard nothing of the commotion within. Mr Sachs, perhaps it would be better if you would recount to Mrs Weatherburn what happened next.’

Professor Hudson folded his wrinkled hands and sat back with a small sigh of relief. Mr Sachs looked shy, but quickly began to speak.

‘I was coming up the path to the house to use the library,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell the time exactly, but they tell me it was just on five o’clock and that seems about right. I was too far to hear any sounds of a struggle, and as for the shot, I don’t think I heard it, but there was plenty of noise behind me, what with people and carriages passing in the street. At any rate, I walked up the path towards the house, and when I was about halfway there, about fifteen yards off I should say, I saw Mason and Chapman come tearing around the side of the house. They saw me as well, and shouted something like “There’s a fight going on in there!” and then they ran inside together. I rushed up after them and followed them in. One of them was already inside the professor’s study, and the other was in the doorway of it. The one inside, I think it was Mason, was bent over the professor’s body, feeling his pulse. He said, “I think he’s dead.” The other fellow reacted very quickly. He glanced around the library, then ran back to the main door and looked outside. No one was in sight. He ran around the house to the left and, understanding that he was looking for the murderer, I ran out with him and went round it to the right, but we saw each other coming around the back; there was nobody in the quadrangle at all. I swear it was absolutely empty; it’s only grass, there isn’t a corner where anyone could hide. Then they asked me if I had seen anybody going out as I came in. Now, this is the funny thing.’ He hesitated, glanced up at me quickly, and continued. ‘I had seen someone going out as I came in, and it was a very odd sort of person to see in a place like that. I don’t know if you know the kind of person I mean, but it was an elderly gentleman of the Orthodox Jewish persuasion, dressed in traditional garb, with a long black overcoat that hung open, a black jacket beneath it from under which hung the fringes of his prayer shawl, and a large wheel-shaped fur hat on his head.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Well, at first the police were all for tracking this person down,’ continued Mr Sachs. ‘In fact, they soon found that he was seen by other people as he approached the library grounds along Adelphi Street at about four-thirty, and then as he left it just on five o’clock. He was seen taking an omnibus in the direction of the East End. The police have been searching for him, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack; if you’re not from there, no one will talk to you, and most of them hardly speak English anyway. At any rate, after trying to reconstruct the crime, it turned out that it didn’t seem possible for him to have been the murderer.’

‘Why not?’ I said, surprised.

‘Because I crossed him just as I was entering the gate from the street. The timing is wrong. As soon as they heard the shot, Mason and Chapman ran around to the front of the house. The house is a square about twenty yards long on each side, and they had only to run halfway around, so they can’t have taken more than nine or ten seconds to reach the front door. When I saw them coming around, I must have been about halfway to the house, which means a distance of fifteen yards or so from the street. I had walked those fifteen yards at a normal pace, say in eight or ten seconds, and I’d seen the man leaving as I came in. What that means is that I saw him going out the gate to the street at virtually the same moment that the others heard the shot. He’d have had to get there in no time at all, after the shot – not even a champion sprinter could do it! Besides, when I saw him, he was just walking normally out of the gate, not running. I didn’t notice him being out of breath or anything like that, either. The police have gone over it again and again with me, but it just never seems to add up.’

‘Couldn’t the other two gentlemen have run around the house more slowly than they thought?’ I asked.

‘The police had them do it again as they thought they had done it, and timed them. Nine or ten seconds.’

‘Well, then there must have been someone else in the library,’ I said.

‘We did think that someone might still have been in the library when we all dashed in, but he could not have done otherwise than be plainly visible. There is no place to hide in that large room. Still, even supposing that he managed it, and then slipped out during the moment we were all looking into Professor Ralston’s study, it would take him ten seconds or more to run out of the room and down the path to the main gate. But I’m sure much less than ten seconds went by before Chapman ran out the front door to look around. You see, Mason and Chapman were a few seconds ahead of me going into the front door, so they got into the study before I did, and Mason was saying that Professor Ralston was dead just as I put my head in at the door. And I certainly saw no one. But Chapman ran outside as soon as he heard Mason’s words, and I followed him immediately. There was no one there, absolutely not a soul. On top of this, the police have managed to locate a handful of people who were outside in Adelphi Street around that time, and although more than one observed the old Jew and saw me entering as well, nobody observed anyone else coming out of the gate.’ He stopped, bewildered, and looked at me expectantly.

‘Perhaps the murderer rushed up the stairs leading to Professor Ralston’s private quarters,’ I suggested.

‘The police thought of that,’ intervened Professor Taylor, opening his mouth only for the second time. He was a tall, rather dry man of reserved appearance, who seemed reluctant to take part in the conversation even as he spoke. However, as he knew the deceased professor much better than the other two, he was clearly aware of many relevant facts. ‘The door to the stairs was locked and the key was in the professor’s pocket.’

‘Why would he lock the door to his rooms while he was sitting in his study?’ I said. ‘Doesn’t that seem a little strange? Surely he went in and out?’

‘He did, but he had the habit of locking that door always. For he also left his study frequently to go to look up books in the library, or even to have an informal chat outside with a colleague, and he disliked the idea that someone could slip in and go upstairs during those times. So he had it fitted with a lock that locked itself automatically whenever he came out and shut the door, and if he wanted to go back upstairs, he would just unlock it.’

‘Is it possible that there was another key to the door? People usually have a spare.’

‘He had exactly one spare; his housekeeper knew that. She told us he kept it in his bedside-table drawer, and it was there.’

‘Was the housekeeper in the rooms upstairs?’

‘No, she leaves every day at three. There was no one at all in the flat.’

I remained silent for a moment, reflecting on the peculiar arrangement of the facts.

‘Was any weapon found?’ I asked.

‘Yes, indeed, the gun was on the floor. Professor Ralston was lying on the floor behind his desk, which had been pushed over. The chair opposite had also fallen, and the desk was partly propped up on the chair. Books and papers had slipped off the falling desk, and one or two things, a chair for instance, had been thrown violently across the room.’

‘And where was the gun?’

‘It was lying on the floor near the door of the study. We presume the murderer dropped it as he fled.’

‘The police believe that he was shot from the doorway?’

‘Ah no, he was shot at point-blank range. The police believe the murderer fled instantly, dropping or tossing the gun.’

‘And have they tried to trace the gun?’

‘The gun belonged to Professor Ralston, and was habitually kept in his desk drawer.’

‘Oh! It was his gun? Why did he have a gun in his study?’

There was an embarrassed silence, during which everybody looked at somebody else. Both mathematicians ended up looking at Professor Taylor with silent firmness, so he resigned himself to speaking once again.

‘Professor Ralston was a very special kind of person,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘He had … let us say that through his researches, he had made a certain number of enemies, and was aware of it. I always found him a very suspicious and perhaps even rather paranoiac individual, although given what happened his fears appear to have been justified. In any case, he cared very much about his library being freely accessible to researchers, but at the same time, this put him in a rather risky position with respect to anyone who might wish to harm him. That is why he purchased a pistol and in fact learnt to use it and kept it by him at all times.’

‘So he may have had the pistol out, and it must have been snatched from him during the struggle,’ I visualised.

‘That is what we assume must have happened. But it seems impossible to understand what occurred next.’

‘Were there fingerprints on the gun?’

‘There were smudged traces of Ralston’s own fingerprints, which is normal enough, but according to police, they were much smeared over as though the gun had been somehow loosely wiped.’

‘Did anything interesting come up at the inquest?’

‘Nothing we have not already told you, I believe. Naturally, they brought in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.’

We sat silently for some moments, each engaged in trying to form some picture of the violent events he was describing. It was strange indeed, that the obvious and straightforward explanation seemed excluded merely by a bother over a few seconds. No other solution appeared possible, so there simply must be some way to arrange the timing in order to understand how the old man could have shot the professor and so quickly arrived at the gate. Unless it were not he, but a different person, who had managed to hide himself somewhere in the room (under the overturned desk, perhaps?) and darted out later. Perhaps the most urgent aspect was to try to discover the motive for the crime, and form some idea of who could have borne a personal grudge against the man.

‘The case sounds most interesting,’ I began. ‘I really think one must concentrate on the question of motive. Is it possible for you to give me a thumbnail sketch of Professor Ralston’s circle of family and friends?’

‘It is only too easy,’ said Professor Taylor with dry displeasure. ‘He was a single and very lonely man, with an acrid and vinegary nature. He lived entirely alone, with a housekeeper who came in by the day, but who had already left the building and is known to have been at home at the time of the murder. His father is a well-known historian, but in an area quite remote from that of his son; he studies the royal history of France and Poland at the time of Catherine de Medici. Their joint history, you know; her son Henri was chosen King of Poland before becoming Henri III of France. The professor travels to the Continent quite often; indeed, he was away on a journey at the time of his son’s murder, and it is taking the police some little time to locate him. The telegram has been following him about Europe, but it is expected to reach him and bring him back to England within a few days. Ralston’s mother died, from what I have heard, when he was a small boy. She was a foreigner; his father had met and married her on his travels. He had no other family. His social life was essentially restricted to his professional contacts at the college; he rarely ate at home, preferring the company and opportunity for open discussion at high table twice a day. I have lunched and dined with him frequently, by which I mean that I have actually sat next to him and spent the hour listening to what he had to say; he was not one to listen much to other points of view. He also had students whose research he guided. But I cannot say that I knew him to have any particular friends. It is true that he travelled on occasion, visiting other universities, and he also had a lot of contact with journalists, not all of it friendly, for apart from scholarly articles, he was a great contributor to political newspapers and magazines. He had an enormous correspondence and published reams of Letters to the Editor in both British and French newspapers.’

‘From what you say, it sounds like there are people who may have had a professional motive of resentment against Professor Ralston. Perhaps it would help to know more details about his writings. Of course, I suppose the police are already working on all these angles.’

Professor Taylor sighed rather loudly.

‘These are not easy questions,’ he observed. ‘You see, some of Professor Ralston’s research … was of a very special nature. Not everything he did, naturally,’ he added hastily. ‘He was a specialist of Christian history, particularly medieval history: medieval saints, you know, and the Spanish Inquisition. His collection of books was to a large extent concentrated around that period of time. But he …’

His voice trailed off, and he once again looked embarrassed.

‘He had bitter relations with the Semitic community,’ put in Professor Hudson firmly. ‘You see, he published a continuous stream of articles on the role of Jews in medieval and modern society. His views on the subject were quite radical. They were more than views, as it happens; he had built up an entire theory attributing, shall we say, many of the ills of modern British society to the agency of its Jews and their occult but fundamental, as he believed, role in its development. In defending such views he was certainly not alone, although it isolated him within the university.’

‘He published virulent articles refuting Herzl, and several on the Dreyfus affair as well,’ put in Professor Taylor. I felt a little dismayed, hoping the professor did not assume that I recognised these names as a matter of course. If this constituted a motive, then I feared I would have difficulty penetrating its depths. However, the professor was still speaking.

‘You know of Theodore Herzl, of course,’ he said, in a tone which clearly implied that he was well aware that I did not. ‘An Austrian journalist, but based in Paris. Ralston knew him personally and was fundamentally opposed to his vision. This Herzl came out very recently with a most inflammatory pamphlet on the subject of the Jewish State, whose thesis asserts, essentially, that the sufferings and persecutions of the Jewish people, together with the perceived ills they cause to the fabric of society in the many European countries which harbour them, could all be resolved in a single blow if the people were to be given an independent state of their own, located in their historic land of Palestine. The subject is not my speciality, of course – my research concerns guilds and apprenticeships – but the thing was in the newspapers. Anyway, I had only too many opportunities of becoming familiar with Ralston’s attitude to these things.’ He made a face rather as if he had tasted a lemon, but continued valiantly. ‘You see, Ralston was convinced, as a great many people seem to be, that the Jewish community in England, as in each European country, wields power and influence far out of proportion to its relative size. It is no secret that the proportion of Jews among intellectuals and financiers is greater than that of the general population; I have frequently heard this fact attributed to the ancient tradition of study of that people, and possibly also to the fact that in certain countries, they have been forbidden access to the land and to many of the manual employments. I have no claim to being a specialist, and personally do not have any realistic idea as to whether the disproportionate presence of members of that race in the professions relating to money is a consequence of some natural propensity or simply of the many social restrictions imposed upon them. In any case, it is not to be denied that they have made a success of it, in what concerns their profit at least, if not in what concerns their popularity as a group. At any rate, Ralston was filled with resentment against what he perceived as their undue influence, and very fired up with concrete plans to diminish it. It is a natural thought that might occur to anyone, that if the Jewish people were given a state of their own, a large number of them would certainly depart thither, and that in fact by various pressures and persecutions, that number might be augmented, so that many of those – and there are many – who share Ralston’s point of view welcome the ideas in Herzl’s paper with alacrity. But Ralston did not; he was very acrid about what he considered such foolishness. Since the recent appearance of Herzl’s pamphlet, Ralston discoursed upon the subject at practically every opportunity. His view was that the role of the Jewish community within a given country, England for instance, would be comparable on a world scale with the role of a Jewish state among the states of the world, and that therefore, if a state of its own were to be attributed to the Jewish people, it would soon come to wield among the nations of the world the same undue and disproportionate influence and power as he perceived is wielded by the local community. This appeared to him as a far graver ill, for it would threaten global peace and not merely the well-being and cohesion of each population separately. His view was positively doomsday and even apocalyptic; he was convinced that, not content with seeking peace, well-being and profit for themselves, the Jews have a natural desire to foment discord and failure in others. Ceaselessly he cited example after example from history, from ancient to modern times. And such examples are easy enough to come by, especially if one is willing to be tendentious in one’s interpretations. Consider merely the books of the Old Testament. Time and again, after their escape from bondage in Egypt, the arrival of the Jewish people sowed trouble and discord in other lands.’

‘Really,’ put in Arthur, whose mind had wandered away during this discourse, but who was brought back to earth suddenly by the words ‘Old Testament’, a topic which fascinates him. ‘I should have said that the Bible portrays the Hebrews as a much persecuted people. I mean, enslaved by the Egyptians, exiled to Babylon, invaded by the Greeks, conquered by the Romans; it never seemed to stop.’

‘But think of the older stories; Dinah and the Hivites, for example, or the Amalekites, or the Canaanites,’ sighed the professor, ‘and all the other nations the Hebrews were commanded to destroy … in Deuteronomy 7, is it not? Certainly, these conquests are depicted as a necessary struggle for the survival of the chosen people, but it is all easily open to many interpretations. Ralston interpreted – but he was never crude. He would never, for instance, have made scholarly use of the popular notion amongst ignorant Christians that “the Jews killed Jesus”. Instead, he taught a course on early Christianity in which he gave an analysis of the role of Saint Paul as a dissident Jew within his own community; something which would quietly sustain his thesis by focusing on what he considered the quintessentially Jewish procedure for gaining influence, while fully respecting the nuances of history and the beauties and glories of Christianity. His teachings were always outwardly irreproachable, and in fact the students unanimously claim that they learnt an enormous amount from him. However, he allowed himself to be much more inflammatory and demagogic in his newspaper and magazine articles, something which would not have been acceptable within the college walls.’

‘And were not the newspaper articles harmful for his scholarly reputation?’ I asked.

‘For his reputation as an individual, perhaps, but not as a scholar,’ he replied. ‘His articles were invariably serious and carefully thought-out works. His political views may have been dangerous, radical and to some extent even rabble-rousing, but he expressed them very solidly. His strong suit, he always claimed, was logic. He was particularly apt to phrase his theses in terms of deductions and syllogisms, so as to make them appear infallible. As a matter of fact, he was sincerely fascinated by logic as a science, and followed lectures on the subject.’

‘That is how I became acquainted with him,’ explained Professor Hudson. ‘He followed the introductory courses on logic several years ago, and continued to come back occasionally for the more advanced levels. He was quite good actually; he took the trouble to work out the problems to the last detail and he penetrated the language and style of reasoning as well as the best of the students. I’ve talked over one of his pet topics many a time over dinner: the role of morality in the sciences, and in logic in particular. He very much enjoyed constructing complicated paradoxes, which somehow proved his moral or historical point. I could not accept his views, but I was invariably forced to respect his insight and the solidity with which he constructed his arguments. He was a highly intelligent man, and his articles were incomparably better than the average journalistic fare. It is really a great pity that …’

He stopped, frowning. Mr Sachs rolled his eyes. Professor Taylor sighed.

‘Do you think we could actually dig a specific motive out of all this?’ I asked.

‘We all agree that Professor Ralston’s activities in this domain were aggressive and reprehensible, and they certainly earned him many enemies,’ observed Professor Taylor. ‘But it is hard to imagine that someone can have been provoked by them to the point of murder. And why now?’

‘There was something,’ said Professor Hudson. ‘I don’t know what its bearing on the case may be, but it is certain that Professor Ralston was very concerned about it in the last days preceding his unfortunate demise. I cannot tell you exactly what it is, because he did not really tell me, and I am not even certain of how much he himself knew. But on the very day before his death, he was fulminating at the table about some new development in the Dreyfus affair. Professor Taylor has also published articles on the affair, following the news of his scandalous secret trial, something over a year ago, was it not? But his views on the subject are diametrically opposite to those Ralston entertained.’

‘That is very interesting,’ I said, looking at Professor Taylor. But he did not appear to have much to contribute.

‘He said nothing to me of this “latest development”,’ he grumbled, looking at me as though to gauge the extent of my ignorance of the topic to which he referred, which, alas, was complete. Newspapers find their way only sporadically into my hands, though Arthur reads them rather regularly, and my knowledge of current world news is no better than that of most young mothers with babies in the nursery.

‘Alfred Dreyfus,’ explained Professor Hudson, having obviously understood the state of affairs, ‘was a captain in the French Army, who was accused in November 1894 of spying for the Germans, after the discovery of a letter containing classified information found in a waste-paper basket in the German embassy. The letter in question was not signed, and the judgement was based on an absurd and controversial comparison of handwritings. He was court-martialled, and condemned to be publicly dishonoured and deported to perpetual solitary confinement in the Devil’s Island prison off the coast of French Guyana, where he remains to this day. He has never ceased for a moment to declare his innocence, and his family – together with a handful of lawyers, journalists and other associates – is working as energetically as possible to discover the true culprit and obtain a reopening of the case. They have made but little progress, unfortunately, until now. However, from what Ralston said to me the day before his death, something new appears to have turned up. Ralston had involved himself deeply in the public commentaries on the case from the start, and as far as it was in his power as a kind of intellectual journalist, he did what he could to sway public opinion against Captain Dreyfus. As a matter of fact, it would appear that Dreyfus was selected to be the culprit, on totally unsatisfactory evidence, simply because he was Jewish. His enemies and detractors in the French press have been generic anti-Semites for the most part, led by that rabid creature Drumont and his inflamed Parisian newspaper, La Libre Parole. Well, Ralston thought that attempting to sweep anti-Dreyfusism under the general blanket of anti-Semitism was a bad thing, sufficient to convince idiots but not anyone with an independent, thinking mind. The trouble was that the very nature of the Drumont articles clearly indicated that anti-Semitism alone was the fundamental basis of conviction. So Ralston devoted himself to publishing a series of articles specifically demonstrating Dreyfus’s guilt according to a “logical” examination of the evidence. He spent time in Paris and met and disputed publicly or in print with a number of the people connected with the events. He came to know most of these people personally, and I assume it was for this reason that he always seemed to be in possession of the very latest rumours on the case. What he learnt shortly before his death must have been something of this sort. From what he told me, I gathered that some secret document or other has turned up which some interpret as showing that the spying business is still going on even though Dreyfus has been mouldering on Devil’s Island for the last year. I dined sitting next to him on the 3rd, and he was simply steaming, rolling up his sleeves to begin the battle. Well, all I can say is that even if all this actually turns out to have some bearing on the case, in terms of motive, it still fails to shed any light whatsoever on the means.’

‘Could you make any guess as to the person who gave Professor Ralston the information?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know who gave it to him,’ he answered. ‘I wish I did, but he did not mention the name. However, I did get the impression quite strongly that he had not received it from a friend, but rather from someone who had communicated with him for the express purpose of proving him wrong, someone who was probably a strong believer in Dreyfus’s innocence. It could be that journalist, what was his name? A French Jew who stood up for Dreyfus throughout, and who exchanged a number of letters and polemical articles with Ralston after the condemnation. Ralston seemed to be permanently angry with him. I can’t remember his name. But he is very passionate about the case, and works continuously with the family on suing for a retrial. If anything new has turned up in Dreyfus’s favour, it seems likely that he would know about it, and not inconceivable that he might tell Ralston, just to thumb his nose.’

‘Ralston’s influence against the Jewish community was growing,’ said Professor Hudson. ‘That explains why it seems as though he might have had any number of enemies. It must, I suppose, be considered possible that some fanatic may have wished to put an end to him and his work, without being personally acquainted with him. The police obviously considered at first that the Orthodox Jew seen by Mr Sachs was a prime suspect of this nature. It would really be an almost unthinkable coincidence that someone else could be murdering Ralston exactly at the same moment as the curious but not entirely unbelievable visit by this unexpected personage. But to put it bluntly, the police are flummoxed by the time element. No one can understand how the man could have done it and got himself to the gate in so little time, or how someone else could have managed it without being seen.’

There was a brief silence, during which I felt, perhaps exaggeratedly, that all three gentlemen were waiting for me to explain how the thing might have happened. But nothing came to my mind, except that further investigation would be needed. I hesitated. Arthur was on the point of leaving on a trip to France – I was supposed to be spending two weeks alone with the babies …

‘This needs further investigation!’ I said.

‘We are at our wits’ end, Mrs Weatherburn,’ said Professor Hudson, leaning forward anxiously. ‘The college is suffering.’

I longed to accept the case immediately, dash to London, and set about learning about Professor Ralston, his private life, his nasty articles, his enemies, and their apparently rather good reasons for hating him.

‘Unfortunately, I am leaving tomorrow morning to spend two weeks in Paris,’ said Arthur, not looking particularly displeased. ‘I don’t see how you can get away, Vanessa.’

I felt a minuscule pang of rebellion. Over the past few years, Arthur has ended up becoming used to my investigations, and has even, on occasion, actively lent me a helping hand. But he rightly considers murder something different and far more dangerous than the run-of-the-mill case, for one who has killed may well kill again, by choice the person who is on his track …

How could I manage it? I listened to the sounds of happy thumping and laughing echoing dimly from upstairs. I am needed here, I know it. And even if I were to go, would I really be able to help? Might not a case of murder, based, perhaps, not on personal feelings but on causes of an international and political nature, be beyond my modest capacities?

I am so taken with the babies that I sometimes fear that my horizons, never immense, have now shrunk definitively to within the four walls of their nursery, and I find myself envying Arthur, who although of course the most devoted of fathers, still allows himself the occasional jaunt to London or even to the Continent, upon important mathematical occasions, not to mention the many hours spent at his work in Trinity College.

I write honestly the thoughts and doubts that went through my mind, but I do not pretend to deny that underneath them, I enjoyed a perfectly solid conviction that I should be setting out to London shortly, by hook or by crook. As I said before, I could no more refrain from investigating this murder than if it were being done in front of me. I looked at Arthur and he looked gravely back at me.

‘It will be difficult,’ I said politely to the visitors. ‘I must think about it. I will send you a telegram tomorrow morning.’

They took their leave, courteously abstaining from insisting. Professor Taylor actually seemed a little relieved. I then proceeded to devote myself to domestic affairs with no further mention of the case. Arthur glanced at me suspiciously but did not say anything. Together with Sarah, we bathed and fed the twins and entertained them until it was time for them to settle like little droplets into their cribs to sleep. Then we sat down to our own evening meal. It was only then that I caught a significant glance from Arthur.

‘Vanessa, dear, I really don’t see how …’ he began.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ I said, hastily changing the subject.

I wonder if Dora and John would not enjoy spending a few days playing at being loving and doting aunt and uncle for a little while. After all, it might give them some practice for the future – might it not? I could send the twins down to them on the train tomorrow morning, with Sarah. With Sarah there, it should be manageable, and then, Sarah could teach Dora how to vary her husband’s diet with some of her unusual ways of preparing food, such as putting cheese and mushroom sauce over cauliflower, instead of a juicy roast of mutton. And perhaps, seeing that Dora’s face is so exactly like mine, the twins would not suffer too much from an absence of several days at least; certainly longer than any they have ever known. Could I do it?

I shall do it! Tomorrow morning I shall send Dora a telegram, and another to Emily, to see if I may stay with her in London. And as soon as I have received answers, I shall send another to Professor Taylor. He is not expecting me to come, I think, but he shall be surprised!

I will write down everything in this diary exactly as it occurs, and it shall be for you, Arthur, to read upon your return and discover the full record of my failures or successes. For even when you are away, there is nothing I do not wish to share with you, and nothing that we can share can ever be deeper than that which we share already. If I do not want you to know that my decision is already firmly taken at this very moment, it is because you look so tranquil and happy sitting across from me, scribbling formulae in the golden glow of the lamp. I do not want you to leave England fearing for me; I do not want your stay in France to be undermined by worry. Go peacefully, and we shall see what we shall see.

London, Thursday, March 12th, 1896

I was awakened this morning by Arthur’s gentle kiss on my forehead; he had risen in the early darkness, and dressed in total silence. We did not exchange a single word; his clasp and his lips told me everything; I knew his thoughts and he knew mine. There is so much that it is really better not to put into words.

Yet even with his tacit seal of acceptance of whatever I should decide, I spent a long moment of doubt and anxiety, as I sat in the train to London, all telegrams having been expedited and answered during the morning. I have often noted that forced inactivity engenders this state within me, and have never yet truly managed to discover an effective antidote. I found I could not fix my mind on the poor professor’s murder, for I really do not have anything to go on. Instead, my mind was filled with the image of my last sight of Cecily and Cedric, as they stood framed in the doorway of the train, clinging to Sarah’s skirts with their little fists, and watching me, their eyes wide with doubt and suspicion and the corners of their little mouths beginning to descend sorrowfully.

When they awoke this morning, and I went to fetch them out of their little beds and gathered their tender bodies in my arms, still all warm and soft from a night of sleep, with flushed cheeks and heavy eyes, I could not help asking myself if I was not making a mistake; if the right place for me at that moment was not, quite simply, exactly where I was. And I had a sudden and most displeasing vision of myself, thrusting the children into the care of others and gallivanting off to London. I love them so much, yet there is something in me which longs to emerge, if only occasionally, from the tender cocoon of motherhood, and confront the brutal realities of life. I suppose it must be quite normal, yet I find myself racked with doubts.

The arrival of Sarah bearing warm milk and buns relieved me of some of the weight of these thoughts. The babies opened their mouths like little birds in a nest, and while I sat upon the carpet holding them, Sarah, who had already been out to send off my telegrams, had begun preparing for the trip, under the assumption of replies in the positive, and filling a capacious bag with tiny morsels of clothing, and sundry indispensable cloths and scraps. Having finished her breakfast, Cecily, whose eighteen-month-old little mind is already very sharp, stood up, collected a favourite sheep in one hand and her pillow in the other, and prepared to follow Sarah on the trip she was obviously about to take, lining up behind her and imitating her movements with accuracy. Cedric, equally fascinated by the packing procedure, attempted to contribute by taking things out of the bag as fast as Sarah put them in, and throwing them upon the floor, until she lifted the bag onto the table, and forestalled the noise about to emerge from his widely protesting mouth by popping a biscuit into it. And when finally the bag was filled and closed and the children washed and dressed, Dora’s eager response to my telegram had arrived, and it was already time to leave for the station. With no time to feel regrets …

How excited the babies were by this unusual excursion, by the noise and bustle of the station, the train’s long whistle as it approached, and the footboard connecting the platform to the carriage, into which they were energetically hoisted by a passing porter in a uniform with bright buttons. The effect of it all was that they were in a state of effervescent delight until the very moment when calm returned, the whistle blew once again and the porter arrived to close the door, which separated them from their mother. Only then did the beginnings of dismay appear upon their little features, but there was no time to react, for the door clunked shut upon them, and I was left alone, feeling guilty and sorrowful, and infinitely grateful for knowing that after myself, nobody in the world could care for them better than Sarah.

I could not accustom myself to the separation, the first of more than a few hours since their birth. I boarded my own train, to London, and sat in it nostalgically recalling all the months during which I carried them within me, full of hope and astonishment and dawning suspicion, reliving the hours of pain and ecstasy which brought them forth, and remembering Arthur’s face when the nurse finally opened the door to allow him entry to the bedroom, and confronted him proudly, carrying two little snugly wrapped bundles, one in each arm.

These things are the pearls hidden at the heart of the outwardly dull-seeming oyster.

And yet, there have been moments – many of them – when I have felt imprisoned by the walls of domesticity, and yearned for something more. Since I gave up teaching to be a respectable matron, it has happened to me, on occasion, to be submerged with ennui. More than once, since then, I have been saved from this state by people who, referred to me by other people in a quietly expanding chain, have brought me strange little problems to solve: a man who read his wife’s diary and found himself cold with fear at what he saw there; a lady who slipped out of her own life, leaving no trace behind; a woman who lost her emerald, and never recovered it – for when I realised who had taken it and followed her onto the boat on which she meant to depart forever, she saw me approaching, understood instantly and, slipping it out of her pocket, flung it impetuously into the flashing waves.

But murder is something that I have not encountered since the strange case of Mr Granger’s death before my marriage. My mind roved into the past, remembering the facts of that case, and then, four years earlier, those other murders through which I first met Arthur. Eight years! It is hard to believe. My mind wandered on to Emily and the telegram I had just received from her. She was just a child of thirteen back then. I remember her so well, already grave and intelligent far beyond her years, a penetrating intellect and an innate, unswerving sense of justice. I have not seen her much since my marriage, and not at all since last summer, when she shocked her mother by announcing her intention to continue her studies at the University of London.

Cambridge, of course, does not allow women to obtain doctorates, even if they do achieve Wrangler status at the Tripos. One of the best young women students of mathematics in Cambridge ever, Grace Chisholm, who had completed her undergraduate course of study at Girton three years earlier than Emily, was obliged to leave for Germany in order to obtain a doctorate. I had thought that Emily would follow in her footsteps, but she has other ideas. Having discovered that women may earn a doctorate at the University of London by enrolling at Queen’s College, she has decided to follow this path. Indeed, she has realised that although this college itself is actually destined for the training of highly educated governesses, enterprising young women may manage to follow courses or receive tutoring from professors at King’s or at Cambridge, and thus proceed to the highest levels of study. Certainly few girls have accomplished this feat as yet, but Charlotte Scott of Girton did it more than ten years ago, and is now teaching in America!

Emily’s mother was more shocked by the idea of her daughter’s renting a flat in London than of her travelling all the distance to Germany and living unsupervised in a foreign land. Like any other matron, Mrs Burke-Jones feels that London is a Gehenna, and that her daughter may be led to perdition there. However, Emily held firm, and her mother ended by consenting to give her a modest allowance, on the condition that she share her flat with an older lady by way of a chaperone. The allowance perhaps strains her means a little, but clearly she finds it preferable to tolerating the humiliation of having Emily go out to work. Emily’s results at Girton were quite brilliant, and even her mother feels that it would be a great waste to force her to stop her studies now and vegetate here in Cambridge, a place which, while being a shining light of erudition, is such a lamentable backwater as to progress and social issues, and particularly the rights and abilities of our sex. So Emily has set up house in London, and to all appearances she is very happy there. I am most eager to see her again; her welcoming reply to my telegram was sparing in words (youth is always short of money) but not in feelings. Tavistock Street – the words gave me a pleasant little shiver of anticipation. London again! Its streets, its bustle, its vigorous life, its frenetic activity, its easy freedom; a taste of it is like a taste of vibrant red wine.

These were my thoughts as the train pulled into Liverpool Street. An electric tension swept through me as I stood up; my bag was reached down by a helpful gentleman traveller who ushered me politely onto the platform ahead of himself. The moment I emerged, the very air of London struck me as different, and my excitement increased as I scanned the small group of people waiting to welcome the passengers, to see if I could spot Professor Taylor, who had confirmed that he would fetch me. Before I saw him, he was coming towards me and taking my valise out of my hand.

‘I cannot thank you enough for accepting my invitation,’ he said gravely, as though he had prepared the words. I could not help feeling a twinge of worry as to whether he truly believed in the success of my enterprise. I myself was, as always, tremendously uncertain about the outcome, meaning only to try my best.

‘Have you already arranged for a place to stay, or will you need a hotel?’ he continued solicitously.

‘I will be staying with a friend,’ I responded quietly. ‘But it is enough for me to go to her flat this evening. My case is not heavy; I can carry it with me, and I am ready to start working immediately.’