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-а-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 richЧ 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
