The Second Woman, page 16
‘He wasn’t going to Whitehall when I had lunch with him.’
‘You didn’t know that, in fact, when we last talked. Still your guess, or you have new facts? Give it up: Sir Hector is about as mysterious as the smell of fish. If you’re in doubt about something, ask him.’
‘What about “Freddie” and the one I clouted?’
‘I told you, we’re working on it.’
‘What d’you think it means that “Freddie’s” disappeared? Last week, he was going to be Guillam’s partner; now, Guillam says he’s gone.’
‘Nothing. Taking a day off to do his paperwork—who knows? If he hasn’t appeared in three or four days, it might mean that they—whoever they are—believe they’re done with your dead woman and E Division and the investigation, and Guillam can write a report and it’s over.’
‘And the body?’
Munro tightened his lips and accordioned his nose as if at a bad smell. ‘The LCC coroner doesn’t have it. Officially, therefore, there is no body. Coroner’s jury can’t sit on a body until it’s there before them, and a coroner can’t convene a jury until he knows that the body is in his jurisdiction. So, with nobody knowing where this body is, no coroner is claiming it and no jury’s been called.’
‘No body, no crime?’
‘No body, no inquest. You can have a crime without a body if the circumstances are suspicious enough, and these circumstances are full-bore suspicious, but we’re supposed to shut up and not lean on the coroner—if we knew which coroner. If the lack of a body kept the police from investigating, we’d have only half the murder cases we get. And wouldn’t that be nice!’
They left shortly afterwards. Munro wanted to meet again in a few days. He named the Old Red Lion, nearby. Laughing, he said, ‘If anybody asks, I’m showing an American the sort of pictur-ess-cue pubs they think are reely, reely English. If there’s a change of plan, I’ll send you a wire or something.’
Denton pulled himself up in a parody of hauteur. ‘My good man, as of tomorrow, I shall be on the telephone.’
Munro raised his extravagant eyebrows. ‘Well, I can give you a shout then.’ He shook his head. ‘The way the world’s going, we’ll get so we never need to look another human being in the face.’
CHAPTER
11
‘First post’s come.’ Atkins dropped a pile of envelopes on Denton’s chairside table. It was morning; the weather threatened by the thunder had come, pouring rain and a wind that was turning umbrellas inside out.
‘Short spring,’ Denton said.
‘Wind coming through the letter box’d about blow your brains out your earholes.’ Atkins poured Denton more tea, then poured himself half a cup and took a piece of toast from the rack. ‘You still ambulant, as they say, after yesterday?’
‘Sound as a dollar.’ His legs and shoulder itched ferociously; he had some suppurating from his ear but didn’t say so.
‘Dutchy says he’ll finish today. He’ll have to be paid.’ Atkins looked severe. ‘How’s our new book coming?’
‘Still in the pencil. Don’t worry, Sergeant, it’ll all work out. Don’t chivvy me.’ Denton was opening the mail—more sympathetic notes telling him how shocked the sender was, ‘outrage’ a favourite word; but three were the opposite, calling him various things, ‘dirty Jew’ the mildest—and he paused over another note from Henry Held the financier. ‘I suppose that if a millionaire’s sending his carriage for me, I can’t refuse.’
‘Coming it a bit strong, sending the carriage. Who?’
Denton held up the note. ‘A man named Held. “Very important.” I wish people wouldn’t be mysterious. I met the man once and now he wants me to appear at his house. No offer of supper. Millionaires are like that, I suppose.’
Atkins, slightly near-sighted, was holding the envelope at arm’s length and trying to read it. ‘Held the big insurance man?’
‘Pots of money, but I don’t know how he made it. Seemed nice enough, although I’ve never noticed that niceness and pots of money go together.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘I don’t want to go!’
‘Don’t. He can come here if it’s so important. You’re injured.’
‘He says that, in fact, but pretty clearly doesn’t want to.’
‘Better him than you.’
‘No, because if I go to him, I can leave when I want to.’ They talked about clothes in which to visit a millionaire. Denton, who had hoped to lure Janet to the Café Royal again, saw that notion vanishing. ‘Hell,’ he growled. As he went upstairs, he said, ‘And don’t forget the telephone’s coming today. Be here so they can get in.’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for two and a kick in ready money.’
Yet, once out on the wet streets in Held’s carriage that night, Denton was almost glad he was going. The wind had fallen to a brisk breeze; the air was colder; the stars, rarely seen above London, were bright when scudding clouds did not obscure them. He had passed the day at his desk, staring at the words he had scribbled on the piece of paper, then spending hours on a new story about somebody he had seen at a formal dinner once, trying to seduce the woman next to him.
He had eaten supper at Janet’s, food sent in from the Lamb and served by Atkins and Annie. Janet had been mostly monosyllabic; her work on the Isle of Dogs was going poorly, and he knew she was thinking of it and not whatever he was saying. Finally, he had stopped talking and let the silence envelop them. It was rather comfortable. When she came to after fifteen minutes, she gave him a surprised and guilty smile. Yet he thought that instead of increasing his sense that something was wrong between them, this very ordinary evening had lessened it. Dullness as resolution. Or at least as balm.
The derringer was still not to be found. Denton shrugged and went out.
His mood of patient tolerance stayed with him through uninteresting streets, ugly streets, drab streets, his interest increasing as they climbed above the rest of London. Held lived beyond Maitland Park, a region Denton hardly knew. The sky cleared as they came to the height; the moon appeared. Held’s house was huge, as expected, and hideous, as he supposed he should have known it would be. He was set down in a porte cochère that seemed to swallow them, pulling them into the house’s darkness and hiding the brilliant sky.
Yet inside was a Germanic comfort, over-heated, over-carved, over-furnished, nonetheless welcoming after the cold. Held, in dinner clothes, received him in a room presumably a study, large enough to have played some active ball game in. Up high were ornate mouldings varnished dark brown; dark-brown pilasters pretended to hold them up; the walls were covered with books where they were not covered with tapestries. Denton wondered if the books had been bought by the pound; he knew nothing about tapestries but questioned that they were old. What would it matter if they were? Or weren’t? Of what was he suspecting Held to be guilty—decorating his house as he wanted? He realized that he resented being there instead of at home.
Held came forward, smiling. They shook hands. ‘You’ll forgive me, I hope, for not having asked you for dinner; in fact, I suspected you’d rather not. There were only the three of us. We’re very dull for someone like yourself.’ He added that his wife had already gone to bed. It was just nine.
Held offered cigarettes, cigars, brandy. He seemed not nervous, but wary. He was nowhere near as tall as Denton, clean-shaven, rather fair, his skin sleek and looking polished, rather handsome. He did not at all ‘look Jewish’, but to Denton more like one of the Nordics Hench-Rose talked about. To Denton’s ear, too, he had no accent, meaning that he had an accent but it was neither aristocrat’s drawl nor ‘Cockney’.
‘I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here.’ Held was standing in front of an enormous fireplace with a carved stone mantel, his right hand in his jacket pocket, looking as if he was about to tell the board of directors what they were to do next. Denton was sure he was a practised speaker (maybe too practised), and that he would have his points memorized and in order: the flow would be smooth and assured. However, Held said without preface, ‘What do you know about Zionism?’
Surprised, Denton had to think; he said, ‘A homeland for East European Jews.’
‘For all Jews. Do you know the World Zionist Congress?’
‘Didn’t they meet in London a couple of years ago?’
‘Very good, yes. You’ve surprised me. I meant to make a little speech.’ Held smiled one of those smiles that lift only the corners of the mouth, but some of his air of the too-pat and the too-prepared vanished. ‘The man you saved was a Jew.’
‘Cohan? I know that.’
‘In fact, the name means—You know about the Kohanim? One surprise after another. Well! I shall have to start again.’ Held gave him the smile again and walked a step towards him. ‘Have you known many Jews, Mr Denton? No? You can take us or leave us?’
‘I guess I can take or leave most people.’
‘You don’t know many Jews, but you have no feelings about us?’
‘I suppose I take people one at a time.’
Held went to a bookcase and extracted a book. It was a real book, and, unless he had planted it ahead of time among the decorative backs, they were all real books and were there as books, not as décor. As if to make the matter clear, Held said, ‘I collect books. First editions, that sort of thing. I confess to a pro-Jewish interest.’ He handed the small book to Denton. ‘Know it?’
Denton looked at the spine. The King of Schnorrers. Israel Zangwill. He shook his head.
‘Do you know Zangwill?’
‘I think we’ve met.’
‘But he’s not a friend? And you don’t read his books.’
‘There are a lot of books I don’t read.’
‘But I’m sure you read books by German writers, French writers—Zola, Huysmans?—and have probably seen a Norwegian play—Ibsen?—so you read foreign writers. Why not Zangwill? Because he’s a Jew, Mr Denton?’
Denton winced as that truth came home. Feeling himself redden, he said, ‘I suppose. I thought—he wrote in Yiddish—or something…’
‘You must read him.’ Held pointed at The King of Schnorrers. ‘Keep that. I have another.’ He walked a few feet up the room, turned back, not looking at Denton. The chairman-of-the-board manner was entirely gone; he seemed now introspective, rather uncertain, perhaps embarrassed. He might have been talking to himself or to the room. ‘I wanted to make a point about being a Jew. About never belonging. Zangwill was born here; that book is about London. But he isn’t an English writer to you, is he? He’s a Jewish writer. More foreign than Zola or Ibsen or…’ Held shrugged. He took a few uncertain steps, stopped, turned as if to say something more, then turned back and took a cigarette from a box, belatedly offered it to Denton. ‘My native language is German. I was born in Berlin. My father came to London when I was one year old, but we spoke German at home. I knew nothing of Yiddish or Hebrew. Yiddish was low and vulgar, Hebrew was the language of an old-fashioned and un-German religion.’ He took a bit of tobacco from his lower lip and rubbed his fingers together to rid himself of it. ‘My father was a convert to Christianity.’ He blew smoke out in a thin stream. He smiled. ‘There is a story about a woman and a boy on an omnibus in Berlin. The boy is studying Hebrew, and the mother keeps talking to him in Yiddish. A man on the bus says to her in German, “Woman, why do you speak this wretched Yiddish to the boy when he reads wonderful Hebrew?” The woman says, “Because I don’t want he should forget he is a Jew.”’ Held looked at his cigarette, then stubbed it out. ‘We have many jokes. You know what a schnorrer is?’
‘A beggar.’
‘Yes, but worse than that—a leech. There are lots of jokes about schnorrers—usually these days, the schnorrer and Rothschild. It used to be the schnorrer and the Rich Man; now it’s Rothschild. Or Held. It’s the duty of the rich Jew to help the poor.’ He got himself another cigarette. ‘A schnorrer goes to Held but can’t get past the gate. He stands outside the gate and makes a huge noise, so Held tells his servants to let the man in. Held gives the schnorrer a shilling and says, “If you hadn’t made all that racket, I might have given you half a crown.” The schnorrer says, “Held, do I tell you how to sell insurance? Don’t you tell me how to be a schnorrer. ”’
Denton smiled. He didn’t understand where Held was going: maybe he wasn’t going anywhere, and Denton could leave soon.
‘Jews have many jokes. If anybody else told them, they’d be anti-Semitic. Maybe we tell them so other people won’t. Or maybe we want to laugh at ourselves. Or something worse.’ He sat down in a chair near Denton and, after inhaling the cigarette, said, ‘Jews must have a land of their own, Mr Denton. Wherever they—we—go, we are outsiders. Perhaps we make ourselves outsiders, although I tell you, no man could have worked harder than my father to be a German. He was, as they said then, “emancipated”—freed from being a Jew, it meant. He spoke only German; he had served in a German army, he revered German culture, he loved Berlin. But…’ He cocked his head. ‘You understand that “but”? But he was a Jew.’ He ground out the new cigarette. ‘The world is one of nations now. Not religions and communities and principalities, but nations. The Jews must become a nation—for which they must have land.’ He stood up and walked quickly towards a door beyond the fireplace. ‘I want you to meet someone.’
Denton had been about ready to start making moves towards leaving. The visit had become bewildering, and he wondered if he had been got there only to listen to the musings of a very rich man. He didn’t doubt that Held was sincere, but if he had been another writer talking about a book, Denton might have said, What’s the plot? Just tell me the story and get on with it! But he couldn’t say that to a man like Held, not because he was rich, but because he wouldn’t have known what Denton was talking about. Taking advantage of Held’s absence, Denton stood; he could more easily move to a departure from a standing than a sitting start.
The door opened again and a tall man came through, at first silhouetted against light, then filling in his outline as he moved into the room. He was long-bearded, younger than Denton, rather sharp of eye. Held, coming along behind, said, ‘This is Dr Theodor Herzl, President of the World Zionist Congress.’
Denton had in fact heard of Herzl—but that was all. The same superficial, newspaper-born knowledge that had given him his three-word sense of Zionism gave him the scantest awareness of Herzl. They shook hands. Herzl barely smiled, stepped back and put on a patriarchal frown.
They sat down. Held said something to Herzl in what Denton supposed was German. Then Held said to Denton in English, ‘Dr Herzl is here for what we hope will be a great step forward for Zionism. This is in strictest confidence, Denton: he is to negotiate with the British government for a Jewish homeland. Within the Empire.’
Denton remembered his conversation with Hench-Rose. ‘I thought the Turks had closed Palestine.’
Herzl said something in German. Held said, ‘Not in Palestine. Palestine is the ultimate goal, but it can’t realistically be hoped for yet.’ He glanced at Herzl, muttered something, and Herzl nodded. Held looked back at Denton. ‘You must keep this confidential until there is a public announcement. Perhaps two weeks.’ Again, Denton was reminded of Hench-Rose: mum was the word. Held was going on. ‘The British government are receptive to the idea of making part of their African protectorate of Uganda available as a temporary Jewish homeland—“temporary” meaning for several decades, perhaps.’
Denton had only a hazy idea of where or what Uganda was, although there had been a lot about an Uganda Railway in the papers. He remembered only that Uganda was in Africa, somewhere in the interior, hence the importance of the railway to reach it. He said what came first to his mind, not the most politic words he might have spoken: ‘Doesn’t somebody already live in Uganda?’
‘Not enough to matter. Nomads—savages.’ Held spoke in an undertone to Herzl, who answered vigorously, his hands moving as if he were doing some sort of athletic exercise. ‘Dr Herzl says the government have assured him that there is no problem of evictions or of moving people out. If there are people there, an influx of Europeans could only do them good. We would bring modern agriculture, medicine, knowledge. We would live in peace with everyone.’ As an afterthought, he said, ‘They would make a ready labour supply, too, and we would give them jobs.’
Herzl began speaking again before Held had finished. The two men talked together; Denton watched Herzl, thought he saw the passion and the excitement of a man dominated by a single idea. Herzl’s eyes were bright and wide; his vigorous hand gestures were like assaults on the air around him. His voice rose, fell to a dramatic whisper, rose again: he was lecturing Held. He began lecturing Denton, as well, still in German.
Held summed up some, perhaps all, of what Herzl had said, although he got through it much more quickly: Eastern European Jews must have a place to emigrate to. The pogroms were terrible. Walls were rising against Jewish immigration everywhere. Uganda would offer rich land, the railway to move goods and products, the protection of Britain. Wealthy people in Europe and the United States would underwrite the costs. Held waved a hand when he had finished; perhaps he had heard it all too often. He said, ‘You are wondering why you have been told all this.’
‘Well, I guess maybe I am.’
Held gave him the corners-only smile. He muttered yet again with Herzl and then said, ‘Three weeks ago, a woman and a man left Russia separately and, we believe, came to London. The man is, or was, named Gowarczyk. The woman was then calling herself Tania Simonova. Our sources tell us that their goal is to kill Dr Herzl and the British negotiators in the Uganda matter.’
The word sources stuck in Denton’s consciousness, but he said, ‘Why?’
Held sat back and folded his hands over his crossed legs. ‘In Russia, there is an organization called the Bund. It is Jewish but anti-Zionist. Strongly anti-Zionist. We think that they have made an alliance with Jewish anarchists to stop Dr Herzl’s project, perhaps to stop the Zionist Congress altogether.’ He leaned towards Denton and said in a low voice, as if he didn’t want Herzl to hear him, ‘Herzl is the heart of the Congress—the heart of Zionism. If he goes—’ He shook his head.
