Enigma Variations

by Bradley W Wright

  “Sorry, Jutting,” I said, reaching under my robe and shoving the paper into my own pocket. “I have to go.”

  Chapter 22

  The Aftermath

  July 6-9: Powick, London, Mid-Atlantic

  Leaving Jutting where he lay, I wound my way unsteadily through the pandemonium of robed figures and security guards. A shoulder bumped me hard. Someone fell sprawling in front of me and I jumped reflexively, landed hard, and staggered but kept my feet. The image of an emergency exit door flashed in my mind. It was at the back of the apse. I had seen it during my previous visit. I made my way toward it, dead reckoning through the shadows. The black tapestries covering the windows hung to the floor, blocking and hiding the exit. I parted them, fumbling along the wall, and felt the cool metal of the crash bar on my palm. I hesitated for a moment, taking one last look at the chaotic scene in the chapel before turning away. With the last of my strength, I pushed through the door and bolted across the grounds, adrenalin giving me the energy I needed. A moment later, I reached the wall that divided the grounds from the fields beyond. Somehow, fingers curling over the top, I swung up, threw my leg over, and tumbled down on the far side. I lost consciousness for a moment then, sinking down limply. When I came to and my head cleared I was lying on my side, back to the wall, damp earth beneath me—another cold bed. I could hear voices calling out orders from the asylum. A siren wailed in the distance. Standing, I tore the robe off and discarded it. I didn’t want to think about what I had seen, what I might have seen.

  I stumbled along, one hand on the cool stone, following the wall back around to the front of the asylum and stopped there, crouching in the dirt and hyperventilating. I took several shuddering breaths then leaned out and peeked around the edge. There was a scrum of robed people and expensive, chauffeured cars outside, all jockeying to depart. I saw a Rolls Royce back into the fender of a Land Rover, lurch forward, swerve to avoid a man running past, the hood of his robe flying behind, then speed off up the road. Given the chaos, I wasn’t worried about being seen. All the participants seemed hell bent on getting away from the scene as quickly as possible. Casually, I strode across the edge of the parking area and into the backyard of the nearest house. My head pounded and I felt nauseous. I threw up on a bush in the next yard, retching over and over until my stomach was empty, the acrid smell making me nauseous all over again. A vibration in my pocket alerted me to an incoming phone call. It was Ashna, making an actual voice call. She had to be worried. I swiped the call away and continued across the dark lawn.

  It wasn’t much farther but it felt like miles. At last, I made it to the yard of the model home and crossed the patio with lurching steps, coming up against the French doors. Ashna was seated at the table, furiously typing something into a command line. I knocked and she looked up, surprised, then stood and pulled the door open.

  "What the hell is going on over there?"

  "Long story. I can tell you in the car. We need to get out of here. Police will be here soon."

  "Okay, let’s move," Ashna said, gathering her things and shoving them into her messenger bag. “Did you get what you went in for?”

  "Yes. We’ll need to cut across the fields. The road will be packed. They might be stopping people and searching cars."

  Ashna gave me a concerned look. I tried to control my voice but it must have sounded shaky. "Are you okay? What happened?"

  "Not okay but I can make it to the car. Might need to see a doctor."

  Ashna nodded and shouldered her bag. "Where’s your backpack?"

  "Had to leave it." I remembered the paper in my pocket and pulled it out. "Take a photo of this and text it to Wolhardt before we go. It’s important."

  "Okay," Ashna replied, pulling her phone out. She flattened the page on the table, took a photo, and fiddled with her phone for a moment. "Sent. Let’s go."

  We followed the route I had used before, cutting through yards until we crossed over into fields. I don’t remember much of that hike—just scattered images of dirt clods breaking under my feet in the moonlight, bright stars above, passing through a grove of trees. I was dead on my feet when we made it to the car at last. Ashna opened the door and helped me collapse into the passenger seat. At the wheel she looked at me nervously and noticed for the first time the clotted blood behind my ear.

  "Holy shit Justin," she exclaimed, touching the contusion. "We’re going straight to the closest emergency room."

  "Not here," I croaked. "Back in London. Too risky here."

  The speed limit on highways in the UK is ninety six kilometers per hour. At some point during the drive I regained awareness long enough to glance over and see the speedometer pegged at one forty five. I tried to tell Ashna to slow down but my head lolled and I was sucked under, sinking back into the numb, torpid ocean of fevered sleep.

  A few scattered memories—being rolled on a stretcher into an emergency room, a woman prodding my head while I feebly tried to bat her hand away, being told repeatedly by someone with a very high class British accent to stay awake and stay still while a CT scanner hummed away, showering my brain with radiation.

  ****

  I woke the next morning in a hospital room. A gray light fell across the foot of the bed, the putty colored blanket, and Ashna, seated in a chair with bent plywood armrests, cushions upholstered in a cherry motif with a white ground. Two cherries with crossed stems, space, two more cherries, space, on and on. It made me anxious. I exerted myself and sat up. Ashna looked up from her laptop.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Seriously? Don’t tell me you have amnesia or something. I need the story.”

  “No, I mean, what happened last night? After we left the asylum. I think I remember what happened at the asylum.” I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. Images flashed through my head, settling into a timeline. “Yeah, I remember. Most of it at least.”

  “Oh good. Nothing much. Drove fast. Pissed off some uptight people on the freeway. Brought you here. Hammersmith hospital urgent treatment centre. They checked you out, gave you a CT scan. You have a minor skull fracture and a pretty bad concussion. They said you can leave whenever you’re ready but you have to take it easy for a few days.”

  “Have you slept at all?”

  “Yeah. I went back to the rental last night. Got back here an hour ago. I brought you some fresh clothes.” She looked at her phone. “It’s just after nine.”

  “Okay. Good.” I looked out the window at the low blanket of clouds covering the sky. “Is it raining? I guess you want the story now.”

  “Yes. And no. Let’s get the hell out of this place first. Hospitals give me the creeps. Can you walk?”

  Ashna went off and got the paperwork underway while I got dressed. My body was stiff and sore and I still felt a bit dazed, but I was able to get my clothes on, sign some forms, and walk myself out. A hackney was just dropping off a passenger at the curb so we hurried over, got in, and asked the driver for a breakfast recommendation. He took us to a place called Café Continente in Kensington. We sat near a window, watching the rain drizzle down outside, and ate omelets while I went over what had happened at the asylum. My recollection was foggy at first but the details came back to me as I told the story. Ashna listened, interrupting now and then for clarification. When I was done she sat back in her chair and shook her head in disbelief.

  “Un-fucking-believable. He was screwing his own niece on the altar and then he was going to sacrifice her? To his goat god? That is seriously messed up.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about Jutting’s face, overlaid with another face, spectral horns rising above. I hadn’t told her that part. I wasn’t sure I would ever tell anyone that part. I wasn’t sure I had even seen it. It had to have been a hallucination. The concussion playing tricks with my brain. “Yeah, very weird and, as you said, seriously messed up.”

  “And then Dworkin just appeared? With a sword?”

  “Came out of nowhere. He seems to have a talent for
it. I was too slow.”

  “Somebody clocked you with a flashlight. You could barely stand up.”

  “It was a surreal scene.” I closed my eyes, remembering the flashlight beams bouncing around the chapel, Dworkin face down under a pile of guards, clutching Cellini’s grimoire to his chest, Victoria Butler collapsing to her knees at Jutting’s side and bringing a fist down hard on his chest, tears streaking her face. A strong feeling of fate had hung in the air—Victoria in her chiton like Electra mourning over the fallen Agamemnon. Maybe, in the end, Jutting’s whole life had been pointing to that moment. Pointing not toward the glory he sought but toward ignominious defeat. He had been a man who saw himself as the master of his own destiny, able to bend even gods to his will. Just the type to be brought down by fate in the end, hubris his fatal flaw.

  “Well, you got it done.”

  “We got it done,” I said, looking out the window again. “I need a nap.”

  I fell asleep on the black leather couch in the living room of our rental, Belka sprawled on my chest and purring as if he had missed me. Maybe he did. Did cats miss people? I had no idea. Several hours later. I woke confused, climbing out of a dream—something about a windmill with a secret room.

  “Coffee?” Ashna asked, seeing me stirring.

  “Absolutely,” I croaked. Belka was still lying on my chest. I must have slept soundly, unmoving. He woke and meowed a complaint, shifting his bulk as I struggled to sit up.

  “Some interesting items in the news,” Ashna said, delivering a steaming cup to me and sitting down on the couch with her phone. “Would you like me to read them to you?”

  “Yeah, probably. My eyes don’t really seem back to normal yet. Little halos around everything. Sometimes there are two of you.”

  “Okay. Here we go. From the Telegraph. Ahem,” Ashna continued in a newscaster voice. “Billionaire Real Estate Developer Morgan Jutting Dead Under Bizarre Circumstances. Detectives are investigating the stabbing death of billionaire Morgan Jutting. Mr. Jutting was murdered late last night while staying at one of his properties near Powick, Worcestershire. Police were called to the site by private security after an intruder broke in, disturbing a gathering of Mr. Jutting’s friends and associates, and apparently assaulted him with a sword. Mr. Jutting died from his injuries at the scene. The identity of the intruder has not been released, nor has the motive for his actions. Mr. Jutting, a former member of the United Grand Lodge of England, was known for his deep interest in the occult. Our reporter has learned from an anonymous source that the gathering was ritualistic in nature and took place in the restored chapel of the building which formerly housed Powick Hospital, a psychiatric facility. The identities of the other participants attending the gathering are not known at this time. Mr. Jutting had, in recent years, become increasingly reclusive and estranged from his family. Mr. Jutting’s niece, Victoria Butler, who was employed as his personal secretary and was present at the property when the crime occurred, has released the following statement. ‘My uncle had a great intellect. He was a man of utmost integrity and kindness who built great things. His extended family, friends, and close business associates will miss him greatly.” Ashna broke off and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “That’s the young lady he was about to murder when Dworkin ran him through? There’s more but it’s just boring details about his life. I have another one to read you though.”

  “Okay,” I said, settling back while Belka took over my lap. “Please continue.”

  “Man Held In Murder of Billionaire. A United States citizen is being held after confessing to the murder of wealthy property developer Morgan Jutting. Lester Morehouse Dworkin of Philadelphia is being held in anticipation of formal extradition to the United Kingdom. Dworkin confessed to killing Mr. Jutting late last night but, according to authorities, has not yet provided a motive for the crime. Psychological experts have been called in to determine…blah blah boring.” Ashna broke off and fiddled with her phone for a moment.

  “Do they have capital punishment in the UK?”

  “Of course not! They just send people to some storm blasted rock in the North Sea and make them live the rest of their lives in little stone huts eating nothing but Marmite. Here’s another one,” Ashna waved her free hand excitedly. “This one is fun. Niece of Murdered Billionaire Rumored to Inherit Estate. Rumors have begun to leak pointing to Victoria Butler, niece and personal secretary to the late Morgan Jutting, as the sole beneficiary of his vast estate. Mr. Jutting, who was estranged from his family, has apparently left everything to his niece who served him loyally as his secretary and confidant. If true, this would make Butler, a twenty-four year old graduate of Imperial College London, the thirteenth richest woman in the world after Italian Heiress Massimiliana Landini Aleotti.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, you should have gotten on her good side when you had the chance.”

  “I guess so. Good for Victoria. I hope she can turn it around. Or maybe she’ll just sell the company and retire somewhere warm. Do you have that piece of paper? The one I got from Jutting’s pocket?”

  “Yeah, why?” Ashna got up and went to retrieve it.

  “I realized I’ve never actually seen the solution. Have you heard from Wolhardt?

  “Yeah, he said he came up with the same solution but he doesn’t know what it means. He thinks it’s a clue about what piece of music the counterpoint comes from.” She handed me the paper.

  “Jutting thought it was a reference to the correct chapter and page of the grimoire, telling him which spell to use.” I looked at the paper. I couldn’t understand the formula but I could see what it led to. There were carefully drawn tables that showed some sort of gradual decomposition from musical notation to strings of text that, eventually, via an algorithmic transformation, yielded a simple string of five numbers and one letter: 1C1312. I stared at it for a moment.

  “That guy was obsessed. He must have thought the C was for Cellini,” Ashna said. She kept talking, starting in on another diatribe about Jutting.

  I blocked out her voice, closing my eyes. A memory was coming back to me. I was standing in the gallery in Los Angeles, surrounded by a swirl of activity, gazing into the dark, distorted, copper colored depths of the Eliasson piece, the whole gallery behind me reflected and trapped. Another memory bubbled up, replacing the first. Sitting in church when I was maybe twelve years old. The pastor was speaking. Something about darkness, a mirror. I opened my eyes and looked at Ashna. She was looking back at me.

  “What is it man? You look spooked.”

  “This is simple. Why hasn’t anyone figured it out?”

  “What? Tell me.”

  I pointed to the paper. “Stupidly simple. Put a colon there. This is a biblical reference. What book of the bible starts with C?”

  “I don’t know. I’m Muslim. Jesus! How insensitive. You probably think I’m a terrorist.”

  “Just get me a list. Actually, never mind. It’s Corinthians. It has a one in front of it. I think Corinthians is the only one with more than one book. So, one Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse twelve. Look that up.”

  Ashna ran a search on her phone. “King James? American Standard?”

  “King James of course.”

  “Okay.” She cleared her throat and read without any funny voices, speaking the words clearly and with emotion. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

  We both sat for a moment, thinking our own thoughts.

  “Dark saying.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Through a glass, darkly.”

  “What does it mean?”

  I cast my mind back to the sermon, so many years ago, remembering the pastor’s voice, the shaft of sunlight from a high window lighting up the golden hair of the girl sitting in front of me. “It’s about partial knowledge, partial vision,” I said. “As our mortal selves, we can only glimpse shadows, or dark reflections of reality. But when
we die and see God face to face then we will see things as they really are. Something like that. I’m no theologian.” I stopped speaking for a moment. Something was nagging at me—another memory. It came in a rush, Johann Benderick’s office, discussing the dark saying. He had said he didn’t believe it was an evil spell, that what he felt conducting the music was more like a heavenly vision, a parting of curtains after millennia of darkness to reveal the sun. “I think this is it,” I said, focusing on Ashna’s face. “What time is it? Can we call Wolhardt?”

  “It’s about six in the evening in California. Let’s try. Ashna placed a video call from her laptop. The little ringer sounded once, twice, then suddenly Wolhardt’s face appeared. He was outside, a lemon tree in the background.

  “Hello? Justin and Ashna?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure. I was just having some tea. I’m in my back yard.”

  “I think I know what the enigma solution means. It’s a biblical reference. One Corinthians. Chapter Twelve. Verse Thirteen.”

  Wolhardt was silent for a moment, looking away from the phone, thinking. “You might be right,” he said, standing. “Just a minute.” We saw a blur of shifting colors as he walked inside. He set his phone on the piano and we saw him walk to a bookshelf and search for a moment, finally pulling out a thick book. He opened it, flipped through for a few moments, found the passage and read silently. When he finished, he looked up, gazing at our faces on his little phone screen. A tear escaped from the corner of his eye. He was obviously overcome with emotion.

  “Do you want us to call you back later?” Ashna asked.