kind enough to see that a plate was prepared for me in the kitchen. I had been spoiled by sitting at Barker's table, however. The food tasted like one of Dummolard's experiments. The family did not seem to notice but consumed everything on the table, between the rabbi's blessing on the meal and his benediction.
I came out of the kitchen in time to watch Rebecca Mocatta pass by. She put her head down, but I think there was a smile on her face. The scent of gardenias perfumed the air in her wake. Her black dress swayed like a bell as she passed down the hall, but it was my heart that made the clangor.
The rabbi came down the stairs, dressed in a tattered old sweater, worn thin at the elbows, over his shirt and tie. He came up alongside me and murmured in my ear, 'Would you take a turn in the garden with me, Mr. Llewelyn?'
I agreed, of course. He led me not out the front door, but through the kitchen. The back of the Mocatta property was not large, just a simple square of grass returning to life after the blasts of winter, lined on all sides with shoulder-high walls of red brick. Having clung to life all winter, vegetation began to put forth its first tentative buds. In the center of the lawn, a lone ash tree stood some twenty feet tall, still bare of leaves, but vigorous for all that.
Mocatta stopped me in the little porch outside the back door.
'Mabel does not allow me to indulge in the house, but I am dying for a smoke. Are you as much of a wizard at lighting a pipe as you are at fireplaces, young man?'
I thought of Barker. I'd watched him dozens of times now. 'Even better, I think. Have you tobacco?'
He pulled a pipe from his pocket. I expected a Dunhill, or at the very least a Comoy's, but the rabbi's pipe was almost as disreputable as Reb Shlomo's. I took in his sweater and his pipe together. It was obvious that he saved the luxuries of this world for his family.
I packed the pipe with tobacco from a small tin of Arcadia he carried. I filled it, tamped it down with my thumb, and filled it again. When the rabbi had the pipe clenched in his teeth, I struck a match and made those little circles Barker had demonstrated, while Mocatta puffed plumes of smoke, which drifted out and were blasted away by the early spring air. I didn't envy the rabbi his cold smokes, but he didn't seem to notice. He grunted with satisfaction and wandered out into the garden and slowly walked in circles, probably pondering abstract questions from the Torah. From my vantage point on the porch, he reminded me of one of the older inmates at Oxford Prison, the long-termers, taking the air in the small, guarded confines of the prison yard, with only their old pipes to comfort them.
The rabbi wandered over to the tree, and his hand caressed the trunk. 'Do you see the stump there?' he asked, pointing to a medallion of wood flush with the lawn. I had not noticed it before. 'That was Leah's tree. I planted it the day she was born, and I cut it down a few days before her wedding. We used it, along with the tree her husband's father planted at his birth, to make the chuppa under which they were married. Now there is just one tree here, Rebecca's tree. I wonder if it is lonely.' He tapped out his pipe, emptying the ash onto its roots. Then he absently patted me on the shoulder and led me inside.
Not even the most virulent invective Madam Mocatta might have come up with could have dashed colder water on my dreams than the gentle words of the rabbi. No one had planted a tree when I was born. We owned no plot in which to grow it. My family had no mansion and had never even heard of a chuppa. The water in my father's bath was gray with coal dust when he left it each night, and my mother's faith in Jesus Christ and John Wesley were all that kept her going when times were lean, which was often. I felt just then that I had no more chance of a relationship with Rebecca Mocatta than if she had been a princess among the Venusians. For all the studying and mingling I had done, I felt no closer to this alien race than I had to the crown jewels when I was in the Tower looking through the bars. I am always an outsider.
How had he known? Rebecca and I hadn't exchanged a word in his presence. Was it coincidence, perhaps, or a set speech he made to discourage unworthy suitors? No, he scarce seemed the type. These rabbis seemed rather unworldly to a fellow raised among solid Methodists. I felt they could almost read my mind. And just what had Reb Shlomo meant by that remark about trapdoors?
I came into the hall through the kitchen, and the first thing I saw was Rebecca with a look of concern on her face. Did she already know what her father had said to me? Were they all clairvoyant? I wondered. Then she turned her gaze and I saw that it was not her father who caused such anxiety. A tall figure stood in the hallway, black as death against the white entrance door. It was Barker.
I looked into the sitting room at the clock. It was barely four. He was early; I still had almost two hours left. He paid no attention to me but stepped over to the rabbi and spoke to him in low tones. I strained to listen but only caught the words, 'Take him.' Mocatta nodded his agreement.
'Come, lad,' my employer said. 'Fetch your hat and coat. We must away.'
I collected my things in the kitchen. By the time I came back, the rest of the family had come in, no doubt to look at the spectacle that is Cyrus Barker, agent of enquiry. I couldn't resist one parting shot at Mrs. Mocatta. I spoke up boldly.
'I fear we must leave early, Madam, but it has been a pleasure serving your family. I thank you for inviting me into your beautiful home. Good day.'
What could she say after that? She was speechless. She gave a high-pitched squeak as if her pearl necklace was too tight and nodded as I shook her icy hand. Then I turned and put on my bowler hat. I dared look boldly into Rebecca's eyes for just a second, and tilted my hat at enough of an angle to be rakish, before following my employer out the door.
'What was all that about?' Barker muttered as we got into Racket's cab. He missed nothing.
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'Let's not start that again, Thomas. Don't play the innocent with me. I know better. Tell me everything from the moment you walked in the door.'
I did so. I had hoped to leave my romancing out, but it was too tied up in everything. The best I could do was to abbreviate. If I hadn't risked that glance and had set my hat on properly, I might have gotten away with it. But I'd forgotten that behind those black lenses Barker sees everything.
'I don't approve of your romancing witnesses,' he said, 'unless it is on my order. But then, you were in prison for a few months. I suppose you're only human. Just watch yourself, Thomas.'
'Yes, sir,' I said. I sat back in the cab and looked out ahead of me as Barker did. We were heading northeast, toward the City again.
'You arrived early,' I said, with a sudden pricking of my thumbs.
'Yes,' Barker responded. 'There has been another murder.'
25
Cyrus Barker was upset. I could see it now in the way he sat. He didn't have that calm demeanor I'd come to expect from him. In fact, he was restless, bouncing about in the cab until I could hear the springs underneath protest. I was about to protest, myself.
'I don't like it!' Barker said, smiting his thigh like a petulant child. 'Perhaps I am vain, but I like to think that when the criminals hear that I am on a particular case, they blanch in fear, or at least alter their plans. This carrying on as if I were inconsequential is an affront to my abilities. To quote Shylock, 'I shall have my pound of flesh.'†'
'Have they crucified another Jew?'
Barker seemed not to hear me, but he finally turned toward me. 'What? Oh, I beg pardon, lad. I haven't told you. A body has been found in a quarry wagon on a spur near Aldgate Station. It was buried under rubble. Another message from the Anti-Semite League had been scrawled on the wall by it. It is in a short tunnel of the underground, or it would have been found sooner. I haven't seen it yet. Inspector Poole sent me a message.'
'Not crucified, then?' I asked. 'How was he killed?'
'Stoned. Another Biblical punishment. But it was not a 'he.' The victim was a woman.'
'A woman? They killed a woman? How can anyone kill a woman? This is monstrous!'
'I agree.'
The enormity of the whole thing struck me. I pictured a phalanx of angry Englishmen stoning a poor Jewess
