Some Danger Involved : A Novel Read online

  Inside, the building was immense, seating thousands and including a gallery. The latter had a long, gleaming brass rail encircling the room, and in one corner, it bulged out into a small balcony, not unlike a stage. As the first hymn began, I learned something else about my employer. His singing is no better than his penmanship.

  The famous preacher got up to speak. I was impressed by his passion and energy. Spurgeon almost bounded about the stage. He lifted us to the very gates of Heaven, then swooped down and dragged us along the coals of Hell until our coattails were singed and brimstone was in our nostrils.

  Coming out of the tabernacle and down the steps, I had to admit I’d had a good time. I’d even felt spiritually uplifted. Now, like most of the attendees, I was looking forward to a nice Sunday supper, a little reading, and perhaps a Sabbath nap. Alas, such was not to be.

  A four-wheeler stood at our door across the street. In front of it a figure waited impatiently for us to arrive. It was a tall, thin man in a long coat and wide-brimmed hat. His face was pale and hawkish and he had a long black beard. From his temples hung the long side curls of the traditional Jew. I felt a sudden sense of foreboding.

  Barker walked up to him, and they murmured for a moment in what I suppose was Yiddish. The Guv read over a note the man handed him.

  “I fear we shall miss lunch,” he told me after a moment. We climbed into the vehicle and were off.

  4

  I’VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN ARCHITECTURE and the way that buildings resemble their function. Churches point toward Heaven, banks reflect prosperity, and constabularies give us a sense of security. Even gin palaces attempt to show the supposed gaiety and good times to be had inside their doors. But what of morgues? You will never find a plainer building. They are boxes of bricks tucked away out of sight, discreet and anonymous. They are warehouses for bodies, communal coffins. Most are a single long hall, with rooms on both sides, an entrance at one end, and an attempt at a portico at the other, but which more closely resembles a goods dockyard. And why not? It is usually in the morgue that, officially, a person ceases to be a person and becomes merely a piece of property.

  There was a guard at the front entrance with a logbook he required everyone to sign. I thought it was absurd, so much security around dead bodies, but then I remembered the old tales of resurrectionists, of Burke and Hare, and wondered if medical students were still desperate for cadavers. Had Barker not chosen me, for whatever reason, I might have been pulled from the river nearby like some unfortunate from Our Mutual Friend and lying here even now, awaiting some fledgling surgeon’s scalpel.

  There were pallid-looking men in shirtsleeves and guttapercha aprons moving from room to room, stains on the floor, and the reek of decay, carbolic, and formaldehyde. I didn’t want to be here. This was a part of the work I hadn’t considered. I wanted to go back to my little room, my bed, my books, but I couldn’t. Barker was depending on me, and I needed to prove myself.

  As we walked down the hall, a man came out of the far room and began putting on his gloves. He was tall and thin, and his hair was carefully brushed to cover a balding patch. What he lacked on top, he made up for below. His gingery side-whiskers hung thick and heavy and ran into his mustache, giving him the look of an amiable walrus. Ignoring the sepulchral hush, Barker bawled out the name “Terry!” and the man turned our way.

  “Hello, Cyrus. Come for the Jew? Never seen anything like it in all my days. They say you see everything in police work, but this takes it. It’s a sick world, no mistake. How’s business?”

  “Fine, thank you. Busy as ever. This is my new assistant, Thomas Llewelyn. Thomas, this is Inspector Terence Poole of the Criminal Investigation Department. Is the evidence still here?”

  “We’ll be taking it back to ‘A’ Division soon, but I think you’ve got time for a quick gander.”

  “Do you have a name yet?” my employer asked.

  “Yes. Louis Pokrzywa, a Polish Jew. That’s P-O-K-R-Z-Y-WA, but they pronounce it Po-SHEE-va. Leave it to the Eastern Europeans to come up with a name like that.”

  “Who identified the body?”

  “A member of the Board of Deputies, Rabbi Mocatta. The deceased had no relations in this country, though he’d been here for several years. A teacher at the Jews’ Free School by day and a rabbinical scholar in the evenings. A very earnest young man, according to the rabbi.”

  “Will there be a postmortem?”

  “That’s the question the Jews and the coroner are trying to decide. The rabbi wants him in the ground tomorrow, but Vandeleur wants to open him up today. Nearly had us a fistfight in here a while ago.”

  “May we view the body?”

  “Help yourself. He’s in there. I’ll get P. C. Morrow to bring you the board and rope after he’s had his cuppa. He caught a bad case of rubber legs a few minutes ago.”

  Barker walked into the room the inspector had just quitted, and I joined him. Inside were several long tables containing still forms under sheets. In the middle of the room, and connected with one wall, was a larger, stationary table with troughs along all sides for the draining of bodily fluids. The atmosphere in here was more pungent. Large carboys of chemicals were set in two corners to fight the powerful stench of decay.

  There was a body on the large table, its sheet rumpled from recent examinations. Without preamble, Barker seized the sheet and pulled it back. The corpse was that of a man a few years older than myself. His skin was ashen, almost grayish, and I noticed there were several bruises about his face and chest, which showed that he had suffered some ill-usage before his death. The skin around both eyes was dark and swollen, and his nose looked broken. Death appeared to be due to a nasty cut in the left side, just under the breastbone. In life, the poor fellow had worn his hair a little long for British custom, and though he sported a beard and mustache, if he had the traditional curls of Jewish tradition, they were tucked behind his ears. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t remember who just then.

  Barker didn’t touch the body, but instead ran the tip of his walking stick under the shoulder and arm, then raised the wrist with it. The arm was stiff, and I assumed rigor mortis had set in. Then I saw what Barker was trying to show me. I saw it, and the ground careened out from under me. I hit the floor hard, my cheek taking most of the blow. Barker was there instantly, helping me up.

  “He’s been…”

  “Aye, lad. Take it easy.”

  “He’s been crucified!”

  The next I knew, I was in another room, drinking strong tea from a tin cup next to Constable Morrow. His color was just beginning to return, but I was still quite pale. My cheek had begun to swell. I would have a nice welt by which to remember my visit.

  I don’t know what I had been expecting under that sheet, but I knew it was not an El Greco painting of Christ’s passion come to life. Or death, rather. Those ashen limbs and that battered face would haunt me forever. My old Methodist preacher back in Wales was always fond of pouring on the agonies of the crucifixion, especially during Easter week, but his thousand words did not do justice to the picture I saw in the other room.

  I could have sat there all day in that dark, quiet room, drinking muddy tea and trying to get over what I’d just seen, but I told myself I didn’t have the luxury. I had already disgraced myself in front of my employer, and it was probable that he needed me to take notes. I took a final pull from the tin cup, wishing it contained something stronger than tea, and pushed myself up. My limbs were not quite as rubbery as before. I nodded to the constable and left the room. Barker was pacing in the corridor.

  “Ah, lad. Good to see you up and about. How was your tea?”

  “Not as good as the green tea we have at home, sir,” I lied through my teeth. “But it’s done the trick. I apologize for collapsing like that. I didn’t expect—”

  Barker waved his hand in dismissal. “Who would? Don’t count it against yourself. I already knew what to expect, but you didn’t. Let’s go back in.” He ru
bbed his hands together, impatient to get back to work.

  Barker whisked the entire sheet off this time, and I noticed a few more details. The body was still clad in drawers, modern rather than first-century, and the feet had not been pierced. Logistically, I suppose it would have been impossible to transport and set up a man on an entire cross, so the killers had settled upon a representation. The nails piercing the hands would not have supported the body, and abrasions on the forearms showed that they had been tied to the cross with stout rope.

  From where I stood at the foot of the table, I looked at the victim, with his fine Semitic features, the long hair and beard. I suppose I had blacked out from the sudden shock of finding Christ on a postmortem table in Tower Road. Now I saw the man, Louis Pokrzywa. Poor blighter, I thought. Whatever did you do to deserve this?

  “He really did look like Christ,” I remarked. “Or at least, as I pictured him.”

  “Close enough, if it matters, lad,” Barker sniffed. “But Isaiah fifty-three two states, ‘He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.’ ”

  Just then a man came bustling into the room, and Barker continued his examination. He had a hawk nose, steel gray eyes, and white hair combed severely back and falling straight to his shoulders, like a music impresario. He wore a smock displaying every type of bodily fluid and gore a human corpse can produce, with a respectable collar and tie peeping out the top.

  “Hello, Barker,” he said. “Are you almost done here?”

  “Yes, Dr. Vandeleur,” my employer responded. “I am. Did you get your postmortem?”

  “No, blast the luck. I would have loved to test the strain on the musculature of the arms and rib cage. One doesn’t get the opportunity to examine a crucified body every day. A paper in front of the British Medical Association would have made me famous. But there’s no question about the cause of death. It was that knife wound, straight up into the heart.”

  “So he was not alive when he was crucified?”

  “No, but he was for the drubbing they gave him. I’d say he must have received ten blows at least, some to the face, some to the rib cage. Either an entire party went at him, or one fellow who was hopping mad.”

  “Any other marks?” Barker prompted.

  “Scratches, splinters, and creosote smears on his back, where he was hoisted up the telegraph pole.”

  “Telegraph pole?” I wondered aloud.

  “Yes, they found him this morning in Petticoat Lane, hoisted up a pole right in the middle of the Jewish quarter of the City. That took brass,” Vandeleur said.

  “And brains,” Barker added. “They must have moved swiftly in the fog last night and set him up before the first vendors came with their barrows. Now the Sunday market is at its busiest, wearing away any clues they left. Llewelyn, would you please find Constable Morrow, and bring the beam and rope?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There were two benches in the hallway, the first occupied by three biblical patriarchs who could only be the rabbi and his assistants waiting to claim the body, and the other by P. C. Morrow, looking somewhat improved. He had a long coil of rope over his shoulder and a length of wood across his knees. I motioned for him to bring them in. I noticed he followed me reluctantly.

  Barker plucked the stout board out of the constable’s hands the moment he saw it. It was a rough-hewn piece of wood, about five feet long, and gray with age. My employer turned it over. The entire length of the back had been written on in chalk. The legend read “The Anti-Semite League. Psalm 22:14.”

  Barker quoted it from memory. “ ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.’ ”

  “Not a bad description,” Vandeleur said. “His bones would have been out of joint while he was suspended, and the thrust of the knife up under the sternum into the lower left ventricle would have produced a watery discharge with the blood.”

  “A Bible-quoting group of killers. I don’t like it,” Barker rumbled, his chin buried in his coat. “Murder and faith make nasty bedfellows. Hand me the rope there, Constable.”

  My employer took the rope and counted the yards by measuring it between his outstretched hands. Then he examined the cut at both ends, the texture, and even the smell of the rope.

  “Llewelyn, your notebook, if you please. This is common hemp, over an inch in diameter, and a little short of ten yards long. To what was the other end affixed, Constable?”

  “A nearby gas lamp, sir,” Morrow spoke up.

  “What sort of knot?”

  “Bowline, I understand.”

  “And was the rope tying Mr. Pokrzywa’s body to the cross the same sort of rope as this?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s still in the other room. Shall I trot it out?”

  “Aye, please do. This rope smells of animals. It may have come from one of the tanneries in Leadenhall Street, or a knacker’s yard, or possibly a ship that transports livestock. Thank you, Constable. Yes, it is the same rope. Not as much blood on it as you would expect. He didn’t bleed much from the hand wounds, since he was already dead. Thank you, Dr. Vandeleur, for your patience.”

  I was relieved we were finally leaving. The strong odors were making me light-headed again. We almost made it out the door when we were stopped on both sides, me by the supercilious guard, who demanded we sign out, and Barker by the rabbi. I filled out the time of our departure, while Barker conversed in low tones with Mocatta, a salt-and-pepper-bearded scholar of perhaps fifty. There were nods all around, the guard included, and we finally left, stepping out into blessed fresh air again.

  I took in several lungfuls. Granted, we were near the river and a block or two from the fish market, but compared to inside, we might have been standing on the cliffs of Dover. Barker, as usual, appeared unaffected.

  We entered the four-wheeler again and headed north into Aldgate, the Jewish quarter. Every square foot of pavement space contained a sign in English and in Hebrew, a stall of some sort, or an individual—man, woman, or child—engaged in personal commerce. Match sellers, book dealers, clothing merchants, men selling jewelry from a suitcase, women hawking handmade silhouettes in paper. All this on a Sunday, when church-going Christians in London daren’t even ride the “Sabbath Breaker” to Brighton, for fear of breaking the Third Commandment.

  Though it was a ghetto in name, Aldgate was not quite what I expected. One side of the quarter backed up onto the worst streets of Whitechapel, but we were just a few minutes’ walk from Threadneedle Street and the Bank of England. Even as we drove, the streets began to improve, and within a few moments we were stopping in front of a prosperous-looking residence in Saint Swithen Lane.

  A footman in powdered wig and breeches met us at the door. I noticed, just before we entered, that Barker set his walking stick against the wall, outside of the building. A small silver box attached to the doorframe glinted in the pale sunlight. It was my first glimpse of a mezuzah.

  Inside, the hall was richly furnished in a somber and conservative style. Frosted globe lamps gleamed against mahogany paneling, and a rich Persian rug carpeted the floor. The footman led us down an opulent hallway lined with cases displaying relics of old Judaica. Silver menorahs, terra-cotta oil lamps, faded silk prayer shawls, ancient Hebrew coins and alms boxes caught my eye as I walked by. I wished I could have stayed a moment and inspected the small cards that told their histories, but Barker and the footman were pulling away, and I hurried to catch up.

  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 g
entle 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.

  5

  OF 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.”