Will Thomas - Some Danger Involved

"When did he first mention her?"

"Less than a month before his death."

"Did he everЧ" A floorboard overhead creaked. I put out the lamp and flew across the room into the hall, as quietly as I could. I kept to the carpet and got into the sitting room just in time. I was stirring the fire with a poker when her mother came into the room.

She wore a robe so thick it might have been made from carpet, and her jet black hair hung down in a ropelike plait to her waist. Her manner had not changed, however, and she looked at me sternly.

"You're not using too much coal, are you?" she demanded.

"I am trying to be frugal, madam. I will use less, if necessary. Is the fire upstairs satisfactory for Rabbi Mocatta?"

"It is like an oven, but he likes it that way."

"And the fires in your daughters' rooms, are they satisfactory?"

"Yes, yes."

"Is there anything else I might be doing for the household beyond the fires and the lamps?"

"We have servants for that, thank you. There shall be several duties in the morning, but none until then."

"As you wish, madam."

"What is your name again?"

"It is Thomas Llewelyn."

"And Mr. Mocatta says you are some sort ofЕ detective?"

"Assistant to Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent. We're working for the Board of Deputies at the request of Sir Moses Montefiore."

"Mmph," she said. It must have irked her not to find anything to criticize. "Mind you, don't fall asleep and let the rooms grow cold."

"Your cook has left a full pot of coffee in the kitchen, along with some victuals." I was rather enjoying the opportunity to use this servant speech. I don't believe I'd ever actually used the word "victuals" before.

"Very well, then. Good night, Mr. Llewelyn."

"Good night to you, madam. I hope you and your family sleep well."

When she left, I waited a moment and went into the hallway to look up the staircase. Then I crept into the library again. The room was empty. Rebecca Mocatta must have flitted upstairs while I was talking to her mother. That was close, almost too close, but I was disappointed at not getting to speak with her again. Very disappointed, indeed.

By the time the servants arrived the next morning, I'd become better acquainted with Thomas Hardy, whose heroine, Bathsheba, was a willful, raven-haired beauty, and a danger to all males, coincidentally enough. I helped start the fire in the big iron stove and made myself as useful as possible in the kitchen. I got on well with the staff.

I barely got a glance at Rebecca amidst the flurry of Sabbath morning activity. The rabbi would be reading that day at one of the smaller synagogues in the suburbs. I understood that he made himself available to speak as an interim rabbi wherever he was called upon. At home, he had a distracted air. Perhaps he was thinking about his reading. He seemed to have one foot on this earth and the other in Paradise. His wife was more pragmatic. Both of her feet were firmly on the ground, and had it not been for her, the rabbi might not have made it out the door Saturday mornings.

I carried water to the rooms, acted as a stand-in valet for the rabbi and his son-in-law, a bland and portly fellow with Prince of Wales whiskers, and even added a word or two to Rabbi Mocatta's notes at his request, since he was forbidden to lift a pencil.

With measured precision, the courses were set on the side-board, and the family broke their fast. I replenished the new dining room fire and removed the ash. Later, I helped the rabbi with his coat, and the family left for service, after which I almost collapsed from exhaustion. I had gotten only four hours sleep out of the last fifty.

The servants cleared the dining room while I went upstairs to clean and rebuild the fires. I trimmed the wicks in the lamps that needed it, while the upstairs maid set every room in order and changed the sheets. It was a lot of work for just one family, and for a moment, I recalled Jacob Maccabee. He performed all of these duties himself, and so smoothly I hadn't noticed he'd done it. Did I think fresh sheets grew like manna, or that Dummolard's meals reheated themselves every night? I reproved myself a little, a very little. It was Mac, after all.

When the breakfast dishes were done, the cook and servants immediately began lunch. The meal would be pheasant consommй, roast beef with mashed potatoes, sprouts, carrots, and trifle, washed down with cabernet and coffee. For some reason, I thought of little Reb Shlomo, Pokrzywa's mystical rabbi. No doubt his repast would be more frugal, but it would also be more exotic: borscht with sour cream, perhaps, or pirozhki, gefilte fish, and homemade rye, washed down with strong tea made in the ever present samovars. The newcomers must think that the Sephardim, so long among the English Gentiles, had lost some of their heritage.

Eventually, the family swept in the door again, flushed from their activities and the brisk air. The cook was 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.