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  “Why didn’t you show me?”

  “I can show you now.”

  Billings unrolled the newspaper, opened it to the corresponding page and showed Flynt, but Flynt frowned and pushed the paper away.

  “You don’t get my point, Billings.”

  “What is your point?”

  “My point is that I am the chief inspector, and all decisions regarding this case must be made by me. If you have any ideas or suggestions, you tell me. You should have told me you wanted to take that newspaper back with you, and I should have been the one to ask the manager for permission!”

  “Well, I don’t see why that matters.”

  “It matters because the hierarchy must be respected! I warn you, Billings, these lone wolf tactics of yours must cease at once. I will not put up with any more of your impertinence!” Flynt picked up his pace and marched ahead of the other two. “I want the two of you to visit every single member of the Autonomie Club tomorrow,” he called back to his colleagues. “This is an important case for me. I will not have you embarrassing me again!”

  Ungrateful for What?

  An article by anonymous.

  Published in Liberty: The Periodical of British Anarchists, December 1893.

  After the bombing of the Parisian textile factory last year, which killed twelve people and wounded twenty-three, all the major French newspapers have taken turns to condemn and vilify the Hirsch brothers. They have bandied about words such as evil, unpatriotic and heartless. But one word was used more than others, and that word was ungrateful. The Hirsch brothers have repeatedly been called ungrateful. But ungrateful to what, I wonder? Are they ungrateful to France? Ungrateful to God? The journalists would undoubtedly agree to both of these answers, but what I think they really meant is that the Hirsch brothers are ungrateful to their father, the man who gave them life, the man who brought them up, and the man who owned the textile factory that they bombed.

  Who precisely is Jacques Hirsch and what has he done to incur the wrath of his sons? In this article, I hope to shed some light on these questions, and maybe, by understanding him and the way he treated his sons, you will understand what led the Hirsch brothers to commit the act that has so shocked France.

  Jacques Hirsch was born in a Jewish village in the Alsace. He moved to Paris aged fourteen to work in the textile mills. He worked himself up from being a piecer to becoming a factory overseer, and in the 1870’s he took advantage of the spirit of assimilation that prevailed throughout the Third Republic and started his own textile factory. He now owns three mills and several textile shops all over France. He is a wealthy man with a great mansion in the outskirts of Paris and a beautiful wife. Yet he remains bitter. Why? Well, people who know him would say that he became disillusioned when God granted him seven sons but made them all useless.

  It is commonly known that Jacques Hirsch hated his own sons. He would often deride them in public, and his servants have some shocking tales to tell about the cruel treatment he subjected them to.

  Jacques gave his sons Hebrew names, even though his friends advised him not to do so. They warned him that Hebrew names would restrict their future prospects. They told him that the present tolerance for Jews in France was fragile. But Jacques ignored them. He maintained that his sons did not need French names to succeed. After all, he had already done all the work for them. All they needed to do was to live long enough to succeed him.

  His eldest son was called Ruben. Jacques considered him to be dim-witted and moronic. He constantly belittled and humiliated him in public and made cruel jokes about his lack of intelligence.

  Then came Simeon – a sickly weakling. It is commonly believed that he was lamed by polio at the age of six, but the servants deny this. They claim that Simeon’s lameness was the result of a spine injury, which he acquired after a serious beating he received at the hands of his father.

  After Simeon came Levi, of whom Jacques said that he had shifty eyes and a dishonest face. Levi was so despised by his father that he was not allowed to enter the house and was forced to sleep in the kennels with the dogs.

  The fourth son was Judah – a coward and a cry-baby. Judah was a sensitive child with a particular phobia for insects. Jacques took morbid pleasure in frightening him. The servants tell of a time when Jacques locked Judah up in a dark cellar along with a nest of angry hornets. The boy screamed for two hours until the multiple stings eventually caused him to faint.

  Jacques tired of his wife after Judah’s birth. He said she had borne him nothing but useless cretins and moved in with his mistress, who gave him one more son, but he was illegitimate and therefore useless to Jacques.

  After a heart attack forced him to confront his own mortality, Jacques felt the urge to try once more to produce a competent heir and went back to his wife. He had four more children with her:

  Issachar, who wet his bed every night until the age of fourteen.

  Zebulun, who was quiet, passive and morbid.

  And Joseph, whom Jacques considered to be lazy and vain.

  His last son was Benjamin, but he died two days after being born.

  Jacques was older now and no longer wont to cruelty. He continued to complain about his younger sons and openly admitted to despising them, but mostly he ignored them.

  Disillusioned with his own offspring, he adopted his sister’s son, Pierre, and groomed him to be his heir. This did not go down well with his own sons. They had put up with their father’s torment and disapproval for too long to be disinherited in this manner by their own cousin.

  When the Hirsch brothers grew up and left the house, they turned against their father. Knowing what it was like to live under a ruthless dictatorship, they took pity on the poor workers their father employed at the factory and supported them in their campaign for higher wages and worker rights. They joined a group of radical anarchists and together set out to destroy their father’s mill.

  War is a necessary evil. Nothing has ever been achieved without a struggle, and in all wars, there are casualties. Twelve people lost their lives in the bombing of the textile factory. Twelve hard-working and honest people. I am not denying that this is a great tragedy, but there are two sides to every story.

  Let me explain to you a little bit about how the attack was orchestrated. The French press have tried to make out that this was a desperate and bungled operation, but all the evidence points to the opposite. First the dynamite was bought and smuggled into the country from Germany. This process must have taken several months to complete. Then the bomb was fabricated by an expert and planted in the factory, presumably with the help of a factory worker.

  Finally, the bomb was detonated at three o’clock in the morning – an hour at which everyone would expect the factory to be empty. The fact that there were still so many people working in the mill at that hour is just another example of Jacques Hirsch’s ruthless and tyrannical hold over his workers.

  In my opinion, the Hirsch brothers never meant to kill or injure anyone. They merely wanted to destroy the factory, the usurper of their father’s affections; that great symbol of tyranny and oppression; the place that enslaves its workers and strips them of a dignified life. I support the action that the Hirsch brothers have taken. There is no point in hoping for a better future and not doing anything to ease its arrival. Just like a forest fire clears the forest of its rotten trees and leaves behind a newly enriched soil for the next generation of trees to prosper in, so too must we destroy the current status quo in order for a new utopia to rise from its ashes. This is my opinion, and I stick to it.

  2. In Darkest London

  “What the devil does it say here?”

  Clarkson looked over Billings’ shoulder at the notebook that he was holding up. “Wentworth,” he said.

  “That doesn’t say Wentworth. It says Mentmorth!”

  Clarkson shrugged. “I was in a rush. You know I always get me m’s and w’s mixed up when I’m in a rush.”

  “And is it Wentworth Lane? Went
worth Street? Wentworth Road?”

  “I can’t tell. It got smudged.”

  Billings frowned. He lowered the notebook and looked at his surroundings. They were standing in Spitalfields – the heart of darkest London. The once spacious and handsome Huguenot houses that lined the streets now looked like dilapidated shacks. Dirty, ragged children played in the street. Pallid-faced women trudged by, staring with hostility at the two detectives who had dared to enter their terrain. This was a terra incognita for respectable citizens. A crime-ridden, rat-infested slum, populated mainly by Irish and Eastern Europeans.

  “So what the devil do we do now?” Billings asked.

  “I saw a sign saying ’Wentworth Street’ a few blocks back.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I don’t know. I was just following your lead.”

  Another deep sigh. “Right. Let’s go back then.”

  They re-traced their route to Wentworth Street and stopped at house number 12. As Billings stepped towards the door to ring the bell, he heard all sorts of commotion coming from within the house. Babies crying, women shouting at each other in a foreign language, chickens clucking and frantically flapping their wings. This last noise ended abruptly with what sounded like the whack of a butcher’s knife hitting a slab.

  The door opened, and the detectives were met by a short fat man with rolled-up sleeves and a leather apron. His hands were covered in blood. Chicken feathers stuck to his hair.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” the man said in a thick Eastern European accent. “I was preparing chicken for soup. You are looking for room?”

  “Uh… no.” Billings was taken aback by the man’s unsavoury appearance. “I am Detective Sergeant John Billings from Scotland Yard. And this is my partner, Detective Constable Clarkson. Are you Mr Kurowski?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are a member of the Autonomie Club?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were there that night when the body was found.”

  “Ah. You are here to investigate death of Issachar Hirsch.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I know nothing about it.”

  “But you know the victim’s name?”

  “Yes. He was my tenant. He and his brothers.”

  “His brothers?”

  “Zebulun and Joseph. All three slept in shed.”

  “Are they here now?”

  “No. They got kicked out.”

  “Kicked out? Why?”

  “Problems with another tenant. We have rules here. This is respectable house.”

  Billings peered through the open door into the dark hallway. This didn’t look like a respectable house. There was an animal standing by the staircase. He couldn’t make out what it was at first, but as his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw that it was a donkey, tied to the banister. There were other animals there too. Chickens perched on the handrail. One of them lay dead and headless on the floorboards, the bloodstained instrument of its slaughter on the floor beside it. Rats scurried over the blood, feathers and chicken dung on the floorboards.

  Billings frowned at the decrepit state of the house. “Do you know where Zebulun and Joseph are now?”

  “No.”

  A girl suddenly appeared from the kitchen. She was about fifteen or sixteen, dressed in rags. She stopped in the hallway and stared at the two detectives with large, curious eyes.

  “Tsi hot ir gekumen vegn Isuf?” she asked with a soft, trembling voice.

  It took Billings a few seconds to figure out what language she was speaking. It sounded like German, but it wasn’t quite. It was Yiddish.

  The landlord turned around and scowled at her. “Vas tustu da!” he said. “Geyn tsu deyn tsimer!” He shooed her away with his hand, and she ran up the stairs.

  “Who was that?” Billings asked.

  “One of tenants. Her brother doesn’t want her to talk to strangers.”

  “May we come in?” Billings asked.

  “Why you want to come in?”

  “I’d like to have a look around.”

  “Do you have warrant?”

  “No, but I can get one.”

  “Then get one.”

  Billings frowned. The public nowadays was too well informed about police procedure. He blamed it on that dreadful trend in which retired police detectives published their memoirs.

  The landlord smiled. “It’s not me, you understand. I don’t mind. It’s tenants. They don’t like to see police snooping around.”

  Billings looked into the house and up the stairs. Curious tenants had gathered on the first-floor landing and were listening in on the detective’s conversation with the landlord. They hid their faces or averted their eyes when Billings looked up. This house was clearly a den of thieves, smugglers and burglars, and Billings understood Kurowski’s reluctance to subject his tenants to police interference. This was supposed to be a safe haven for them. Kurowski would lose his livelihood if his tenants should decide to decamp.

  “That girl just now,” Billings said to the landlord. “The one with the pale face and blonde hair. What did she say?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “She said something about Isuf. Did you come here about Isuf.”

  “You speak Yiddish?”

  “I speak German, and that’s close enough. Who did she mean by Isuf? Did she mean Joseph Hirsch?”

  “Her name is Rebekah Hochst. She’s just a young girl who lives here.”

  “Bring her down so I can talk to her.”

  “Her brother doesn’t allow her to talk to strangers.”

  “Well, bring her brother down as well, then.”

  Kurowski hesitated but did as he was told. He went upstairs and came back a short while later with the girl and her brother.

  “Hello,” Billings said, smiling at the girl, who was tagging along behind her brother. She didn’t smile back. She just stared at him with large, worried eyes.

  “I am Detective Sergeant John Billings from Scotland Yard. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “You are police?” It was the brother who spoke. He was a tall young man with a stern-looking face.

  “I am.”

  “What you want?”

  “I want to ask your sister some questions?”

  “What about?”

  “Joseph Hirsch.”

  “We have nothing to do with him.”

  “But you know who he is?”

  “He’s scoundrel! Low-life! If I see him, I kill him!”

  Billings was taken aback by the angry expression on the young man’s face. “Why do you want to kill him?”

  The brother clammed up. He looked at his sister. Billings followed his gaze. He noticed that the girl kept holding her arms over her belly, as if to hide something. There was a small bump there.

  “He is bad man,” the boy said. “He and his brothers. They’re no good.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Martin. Martin Hochst.”

  “Your sister asked me about Joseph Hirsch earlier on. She said ’Did you come here about Isuf’.”

  The brother scowled at his sister then slapped her hard across the face.

  Billings stepped over the threshold with his hand outstretched. “I say, steady on!”

  “I told her not to talk to strangers.” The boy looked at his sister. She was holding her hand to her face. He caressed her head by way of an apology. “She is young and naive,” he said. “People take advantage of her. Like Joseph Hirsch did. She wouldn’t be in the trouble she is now if she had only listened to me.”

  “So you have no idea where he could be?”

  “No.”

  The boy had an honest-looking face. He seemed sincere and forthright, and Billings had no reason to believe there was anything more to the girl’s relationship with Joseph Hirsch than what her brother had related. “Thank you, Mr Hochst,” he said. �
��You have been very helpful.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her back up the stairs.

  “I have some letters for you,” the landlord said to Billings.

  “Letters?”

  The landlord held up a bunch of letters he was holding in his hand. “For Joseph Hirsch. They came here after he got kicked out. Perhaps you give to him when you find him.”

  Billings took the letters and looked through them. There was one telegram from France, and two envelopes with a wax seal.

  “I think you’re not allowed to open them without a warrant,” the landlord said.

  “I’ll get a warrant, don’t you worry.”

  “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, thank you. You have been very helpful.”

  The landlord nodded at the detectives and closed the door.

  Billings stuck the letters in his coat pocket and sighed.

  “What do we do now?” Clarkson asked.

  “How many more names are there on that list?”

  Clarkson looked at the notebook and counted the names. “Twenty-two.”

  “Are they all in the East End?”

  “Spitalfields, Clerkenwell, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green…”

  Billings took his watch out of his pocket and checked the time. “I suppose we’d better move on to the next one. It’s getting late, and we don’t want to be roaming these streets after dark.” He marched on but stopped a few paces later and looked back at his colleague. “Perhaps, um…” He hesitated. “Perhaps we can go for a drink together when we’re done.”

  “Oh…well…” Clarkson scratched his head and looked at his pocket watch. “I’d love to, Billings, but it’s getting a bit late, and I’d like to be home before the lil’uns go to bed.”

  “Never mind.” Billings quickly turned his back on Clarkson before the disappointment on his face became too apparent. He knew he shouldn’t have asked. He continued marching down the street