by Evelyn James
“Mr McGhie!” Professor Montgomery snapped, interrupting Clara.
The librarian blushed at being caught out.
“I was just trying to cheer him up,” McGhie said. “That was when he had that bad bout of pneumonia and he lost so much weight he looked like a skeleton wrapped in skin. I hoped to revive his spirits.”
“You are responsible for all this,” Montgomery growled. “I should have known.”
“It was only an act of kindness for a sick man. I never knew he would construct this box, did I?” McGhie protested.
“I begin to doubt that!” Professor Montgomery replied fiercely. “Maybe this was all your idea, huh?”
“No! I never knew about the box until Professor Lynch sent it to me, a few days before he died, with a note attached to it saying I should keep it safe for the next twenty years.”
“We are going to have a long discussion about your continuing role at the Institute, Mr McGhie,” Montgomery said darkly, and the librarian flinched.
“Shall I continue?” Clara asked.
“Go ahead, Miss Fitzgerald,” Montgomery replied.
Clara picked up where she had left off.
“The volume Mr McGhie loaned me was typical of its kind and I must remark that I have always been most sceptical of such things, though I did appreciate the lengths the author went to in an effort to explain the science behind the astrological charts he presented. I also found myself bored and desperate to distract my mind, so I began to play around with the techniques mentioned in the book and I drew up my own birth chart. To my surprise, it proved a remarkably accurate description of my personality.
“With time on my hands, I found myself returning to this game over and over. I made charts for my colleagues and was amused to see how often they proved correct in view of their personal traits and flaws. Only once I was through with this task, did I begin to wonder about charts for predictions. The main element of astrology is that the stars we are born under predict our paths through life and can enable us to take a peek into the future. A load of nonsense, as my dear colleague Professor Montgomery would surely say, and I would have agreed with him up until recently…”
“He knew you well,” McGhie said solemnly to Montgomery.
“We worked together for so long,” Professor Montgomery gave a sentimental sniff as he recalled his long-departed friend. “What else does it say, Miss Fitzgerald?”
“To prove something in science, appropriate tests are required,” Clara continued to read. “These tests must be repeated and have consistent results. As a man of science, I was well placed to test the claims of the astrologers and determine if there was anything to this strange artform other than wishful thinking. I began by using the stars to make predictive horoscopes for my friends and then monitored the results. I found that if I informed a person of the horoscope and what it said, then there was a ninety percent chance of it coming true. However, if I did not inform a person of the horoscope and merely kept track of their lives, then the chance of success reduced to fifty percent.
“I concluded that there was a strong element of human influence in the results. A person was likely to work unconsciously to make a prediction come true if they knew of it, or at least to interpret events differently to prove the prediction accurate. I should add, I only told individuals about my predictions for them if they were interested in astrology, and this therefore further skewed my results, as a sceptic might have been less willing to allow, or perceive, a prediction to come true.
“I also noted that elements of the predictions could be vague and possible to misconstrue. I aimed to make my predictions as detailed and precise as possible, to eliminate this but, ultimately, I felt my results were being tainted by a natural tendency in my participants to encourage the predictions to come true.
“There had to be an ultimate and final test, something conclusive that would prove either the astrological charts had a value as predictors of the future, or that they were a load of hocus pocus. I hoped for the former result, I feared I would discover the latter.”
“He had not lost his mind,” Professor Montgomery said softly. “He was still the rational scientist I had always known.”
“Please, let Miss Fitzgerald continue,” Mr McGhie puttered impatiently.
Clara had finished the first page of the letter and now turned to the second.
“The only hope was a long-term test, something where there could be no influence by the individual in question. I needed a subject who could be objective. As I considered this plan, I concluded I must write charts to predict the course of the future for people who I had never met, and nor could I ever speak to. These people could therefore be relied upon to live their lives without somehow being influenced by the predictions and making decisions that would cause the prediction to come true artificially.
“However, I could not resist also developing a chart for myself. My health has been poor these last months, and I am fearful of what may be coming, yet, I have drawn predictions for myself that offer great hope. One of these charts assured me that I should still be alive in twenty years’ time. Because of this joyful assurance, I decided to instruct that my box be kept sealed until twenty years hence. All of my predictions should have come true by then, and I shall be delighted if it is I who shall be opening this box.
“Unfortunately, the rational scientist in me doubts all this, and I have therefore made arrangements for the box to be handed to Mr McGhie in the event of my untimely death. This will, of course, automatically void the prediction for my own longevity, however, there may still be some value in the remaining predictions.
“So, I leave this box in the hands of friends. My only condition for this is that when this box is opened it be done so in privacy, with only the senior lecturers and the director present. I believe this shall assure for a sensible assessment of the contents. The bursar and Mr McGhie shall also be present, to see for themselves what this box contains.
“Astrology has provided a solace these last days of my…”
“Wait a minute!” Professor Montgomery said forcefully. “Read that last part again.”
Clara did not need to ask him what he meant, she flicked her eyes back up the page.
“My only condition for this is that when this box is opened it be done so in privacy, with only the senior lecturers and the director present.”
Montgomery shot a fierce look at Mr McGhie, who had taken a step back from the counter and was trying to look anywhere but at the Director.
“He specified privacy!” Montgomery hissed.
“There were other instructions,” McGhie mumbled.
“Show me them! Show me this letter that gave these strange instructions!” Montgomery demanded.
“I can’t recall where I put it,” McGhie muttered.
Tommy glanced around him and moved back into the storeroom. After a few moments of rifling through shelves he returned with a piece of paper.
“This could be the note that came with the box, it was on the shelf where the box was sitting.”
Montgomery snatched the letter from him. Tommy cast Clara an offended look, she just shrugged. Professor Montgomery was rapidly losing his composure.
“This is it!” Montgomery snarled. “Dear Mr McGhie, I would like to request you hold onto this box until the year 1922, when it should be opened privately in the company of the senior lecturers, the bursar, yourself and whoever is the director at that time. It contains various astrological charts concerning future events and when you open it, you will be able to determine if there is any value in such predictions. I am only saddened that I shall not be with you to see this event, my own horoscope has proven faulty. If there is any worth in astrology, then this box may go some way towards proving it. However, it may just as easily demonstrate the fallacy of the craft. I wish to thank you again for loaning me the volume on astrology and offering me your words of comfort in my troubled days. Your friendship has been of great consolation to me and I know you sha
ll respect my wishes in this matter.”
Montgomery came to a pause. The tone of the letter, so gently conversive, had suddenly brought Professor Lynch back from the dead, albeit, temporarily. His voice spoke from twenty years past and Montgomery clearly felt emotional at the impact. Here was the friend he had known and cared about, the man of science who he had judged for stumbling into the field of astrology. A mixture of guilt and sorrow was stirred up by the letter.
“You…” Montgomery’s voice was tight with emotion. “You were willing to blot his name and reputation by this ridiculous ceremony you concocted. Why?”
Mr McGhie ducked his head further.
“Professor Lynch was always very modest about his skills as an astrologer, but I believed he had a great power within him. Many of his charts had proven highly accurate. I was certain this box contained prophecies of great value and I feared if it was only opened in private, the contents would be hushed up, even if they were hugely significant. I could not allow that to happen. Astrology must be recognised as a science…”
“Poppycock!” Montgomery snapped. “Its all a load of nonsense!”
“Precisely my point!” McGhie sharply snapped back. “You would never allow the contents to be made public unless you were forced to!”
“So, you concocted this bizarre scheme involving the king and bishops?”
“I never thought that would happen,” McGhie admitted. “But I hoped you would compromise to a smaller public opening. I had to try.”
“And what if the contents proved laughable? Huh? You would have ruined Professor Lynch’s academic name and the name of this Institute! It was precisely what the professor feared and the reason he asked for the box only to be opened in private!”
“I knew his predictions would be accurate!” McGhie countered. “I never feared otherwise!”
“Gentlemen,” Clara intervened as the argument was escalating to no avail, “before you fight further, may I suggest looking at the contents of this box.”
Clara had removed five astrological charts from the box. One was the chart that predicted Professor Lynch would be alive and well to open his box in the year 1922. This she showed to Mr McGhie, who flinched at the implication. The other charts had the details of their predictions written on the back.
One was for Lord Kitchener who the stars predicted would be contesting the role of Prime Minister in 1919. Lord Kitchener had died when the ship he was on sank in 1916. A second chart indicated that the future King George V would come to the throne in 1907, he actually became king in 1910.
McGhie picked up the chart.
“This one is close,” he said.
“It is three years out,” Montgomery shook his head. “It might as well be ten years out. A prediction either must be truly accurate to be considered worthwhile, or else we may as well have drawn years out of a hat.”
The third chart was for Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who had passed away just a few weeks ago in Canada. The chart said that Bell would invent a machine that would enable men to go to the moon by 1915. Even McGhie had to fall silent when he read that one.
Lastly there was a chart for Captain Robert Falcon Scott, that said he would fulfil his ambition of being the first man to reach the South Pole and would return to England a national hero in the year 1906. Scott did, indeed, attempt to reach the South Pole. However, he was not the first there, that honour being claimed by a Norwegian rival. Scott died on the return route from the pole to his ship. He never returned to England alive, though he was celebrated as a national hero.
McGhie read this final chart with a quiet air of disappointment.
“The bits that are correct are clearly based on facts Lynch knew at the time he was making these charts,” Montgomery pointed out, his tone mellowed with the defeat of his opponent. “We all knew that Kitchener was a keen politician, that George V would come to the throne at some point and that Scott was hoping to find the South Pole. His first expedition to the Antarctic was just underway when Lynch died. The rest was guesswork.”
“I…” McGhie stared at the charts forlornly. “I really thought he was a master of astrology.”
“It is not a science,” Montgomery told the dejected man, though his voice no longer had its fierce edge. “It never will be. Professor Lynch knew that, and he proved his point. In the end, he remained a scientist to the very last.”
“I…” Mr McGhie put down the charts and stepped away. “Please, excuse me.”
He disappeared out of the library and could be heard scuttling down the corridor to his room.
“You will not be too hard on him?” Clara said to Montgomery.
Montgomery snorted.
“He did no harm, in the end, and the disappointment of all this is going to eat at him for a long time. I would be a harsh man to punish him further,” a smile crept onto Montgomery’s lips. “I never should have doubted Lynch. He really was a wise man, right to the last.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
With the business at the Institute resolved, Clara could focus all her attention on the murder of the woman called Jenny and the attack on Private Peterson. The next day she set out to find Jenny’s mother and see if the woman could be of any help in determining why her daughter had been killed. Tommy accompanied her once again. He had brought with him his old service revolver, tucked into the pocket of his jacket. The revolver had not worked since the war, having been so clogged with Flanders mud that its internal mechanisms had completely seized up. A clever gunsmith could probably clean it out and repair it, but Tommy had no desire to see it working again. He brought it with them purely for show and to scare off any thugs that tried to threaten his sister.
Rose had given Clara the name of Jenny’s mother – Matilda Greystone – but could offer no address for her, so they began by asking around the local pubs to see if they knew where she was. Most of the landlords knew Matilda, but they could not say where she was right at that moment. Clara was not entirely sure if they were lying to her, perhaps protecting Matilda, but there was not a lot she could do about it if they were.
She kept moving and after visiting twenty-three pubs without success, she shifted her plans to checking out women’s doss houses. These were far less common than the male equivalent, and it did not take long for her to have made her enquiries at all of them, without any luck. Clara was now certain people were deliberately lying to her, there was something about the hasty way they told her they knew no one by the name of Matilda that rankled.
She was leaving the last one, with Tommy a step behind, when she bumped straight into Rose who was coming along the road hastily.
“Oh!” Rose declared, taking a moment to realise who it was she had stumbled into. “Miss Fitzgerald.”
“Call me Clara,” Clara said. “I did not expect to see you here.”
Rose shrugged.
“After you told me about Jenny, I was awake all night thinking how I just abandoned her to her fate as soon as I had the chance to move on. I felt I had let her down.”
“You had no option,” Clara told her sympathetically.
“Well, it felt like I should have done more for her,” Rose hunched up her shoulders and looked miserable. “I want to know what became of her and so I thought I would ask around. I know you said you were looking into it, but I just couldn’t sit around doing nothing.”
“I completely understand,” Clara promised. “And perhaps this is a fortuitous meeting, for I am having considerable bother locating Jenny’s mother. I am under the impression that even if people know where I might find her, they will not tell me.”
A mischievous grin came to Rose’s face.
“That’s because you are clearly not one of us, not in that nice dress, hat and shoes. People ain’t going to tell you where she is, not without good reason.”
“I was beginning to realise that,” Clara groaned. “Maybe you could help?”
“Be glad to, I want to do anything I can to help Jenny. Let me
do the asking, people will remember me and talk to me.”
They retraced Clara’s journey around the various pubs and doss houses in the area. After another hour, with Tommy grumbling about the ache in his knees, Rose emerged from a pub with a look of excitement on her face.
“Old Sam says he thinks Jenny’s mum is sleeping in the kitchen of the Red Lion,” she said. “The landlord there always had a soft spot for her and when she isn’t too drunk, she can whip up some nice grub. He is letting her sleep there if she cooks for him and for customers.”
“Sounds promising,” Clara agreed, recalling with a touch of annoyance that the Red Lion was the second pub she had visited that morning. If Matilda was there, then she had been close to finding her.
They walked to the Red Lion with Rose leading the way. She suggested that Clara and Tommy wait outside while she talked to the landlord first. Clara was getting restless, but she agreed. Rose was gone for over ten minutes, before she returned to them.
“He needed some persuasion, but he says we can all talk to Matilda,” Rose said. “I explained you were private detectives looking into the murder of Jenny. He was shocked to hear she was dead, and its plain Matilda does not know. I promised you are not the police.”
“The only time the police will be involved is when they arrest the murderer,” Clara assured her.
Rose didn’t seem to take this possibility too seriously.
“We ought to go around the back, the landlord wants us to keep this quiet,” she said.
Clara guessed her presence in the neighbourhood had drawn attention and people were wary of what she was about. They followed Rose around to the back of the pub and entered the yard. The rear door was open and there was a pleasing smell of roasting meat coming from inside. Someone was humming, rather untunefully, as they bustled about the kitchen. Rose entered first followed by Clara and then Tommy.