Free The Library Paradox by Catherine Shaw

in the evening.’
    ‘But the library is locked in the evening,’ said Amy.
    ‘I have the keys,’ I said. ‘Shall we do it tomorrow night?’
    ‘Yes – tomorrow night,’ said Amy. ‘Let us all meet here and go together.’ She looked around to check that everyone was in agreement, then took a deep breath. ‘Now, about the other thing. Jonathan – you tell her.’
    He shifted about on his seat, unwound his long legs and knotted them differently, looking uncomfortable. After a moment’s silence, he looked at his sister. She looked back at him.
    ‘It is awkward,’ he said. ‘I hate doing it. I suppose I had better explain to you straight out, Vanessa, how bad I feel at the idea of pursuing the old man that I saw coming out of the library that day. I … I have to say that I don’t believe he is the murderer, yet I don’t understand how it could be anybody else. But not him – it just doesn’t seem possible. That kind of person does not, cannot …’ He stopped and again looked at his sister for help.
    ‘We feel that trying to hunt him down
as
the murderer would be wrong,’ said she. ‘We think we
must
hunt for him, but without prejudice. As a witness, as someone who certainly will be able to explain something about the mystery. About what he may have seen while he was there, I mean.’
    ‘I understand what you are saying,’ I said. ‘For reasons I am ignorant of, above and beyond the peculiar timing element, you are deeply convinced of his innocence. Perhaps you should begin by telling me why.’
    ‘He was a Hassid, Vanessa. Hassidim do not commit murder.’
    ‘Perhaps you had better explain to me more precisely exactly what a Hassid is,’ I said.
    Jonathan and Amy looked at each other.
    ‘Hassidim are a group of Jews who practise their religion according to particular rites and rituals not shared by all Jews,’ began Jonathan sagely. ‘It isn’t easy to explain superficially. If I tell you that they are of Ashkenazi origin, meaning from the eastern and not the southern countries; that they respect articles of a dress code not of Biblical or Talmudic origin, but established down to the slightest details by last-century rabbis; that they form little groups, each around what they call a “rebbe” – this is not exactly the same as what you would probably know as a rabbi, but a tsaddik, a truly wise and righteous man, whom they treat as their link to God, and from whose lips pure wisdom falls; that while praying they lose themselves in rocking back and forth and wild singing and dancing, all this does not really begin to describe the soul of the movement. The word Hesed means “grace”; these Jews feel that they have been touched by the grace of God. They are not approved by certain other groups of Jews, who consider their practices backwards, obscurantist, medieval. I am not speaking only of Enlightenment Jews who have assimilated into Europeansocieties for generations, but even of other Jews living in the very same remote Polish and Russian villages as these Hassidim, but who, however, are wary of the shade of fanaticism that accompanies their devotion.’
    ‘How could you be sure that you recognise a Hassid when you see one simply walking down the street?’ I asked.
    ‘They have that very particular code of dress,’ said Amy. ‘The black coat, the sidelocks, and either the black hat or the big
shtreimel
, the fur-bordered hat that this man was wearing.’
    ‘But perhaps the man you saw was wearing those clothes as a disguise,’ I proposed.
    ‘No!’ said Jonathan. ‘I wish I could believe that. Then we could assume that he
was
the murderer, and we would have only to hunt for him and solve the time puzzle. But it is impossible. The man was a real Hassid. There is no doubt about it.’
    ‘But how can you tell?’
    ‘I’ve grown up among them. It would be easy enough to put on the clothing, but I don’t think even the most extraordinary actor could learn to walk with that special