by Adam Roberts
Teabag seemed to sag where he stood. The emotional blow of his friend’s death was making itself visible upon him.
‘Jacques . . .’ he gasped.
‘I’m afraid he is indeed dead,’ said Hook, bleakly.
‘Yes,’ said Teabag, simply, lowering his karate-hands. ‘I’d heard. I’ve only just got in. I’ve been out. But I saw on the Eevny Stannit news-stand that somebody has murdered Jacques inside his own Gallery . . .’
‘It’s too too true,’ said, or perhaps stammered, Sophie. ‘A terrible tragedy.’
‘So you’ve been out, have you?’ asked Father Hook, in a suspicious voice. ‘Where did you go, might I ask? Anywhere near the National Gallery, eh? Eh?’
‘I might,’ bristled Teabag, ‘ask you the same question, you - priest.’ Robert was struck that this last word emerged almost as a term of abuse, even though it described Hook very precisely.
‘How dare you impute,’ said Hook, stepping forward, ‘that I had something to do with dear Jacques death! He was my closest friend.’
‘He was my closest friend, too!’ retorted Teabag.
‘Come, come, gentlemen,’ put in Robert, trying to defuse the situation. ‘He can’t have been both of your closest friends, now can he?’
Everybody in the hallway looked at Robert.
‘Why couldn’t he?’ said Sophie, shortly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Think about it,’ insisted Robert. ‘ “Closest” is an absolute term. Many things may be “close” or “closer” but only one might be “closest”. So when both Sir Herbert here and Father Hook claim that they were “closest” to the recently deceased, they can’t both be right. Do you see?’
‘Yes, I think I see the logical solecism here,’ said Teabag, in a much less hysterical voice. ‘The point is that Jacques might have been my closest friend from my point of view - and also have been this priest’s closest friend from his point of view - without there being any contradiction in those two facts from Jacques’ point of view.’
Robert thought about this for a while. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ he said.
‘Right. Good to have cleared that up. Where were we?’
‘We were,’ said Hook, ‘accusing one another, by implication, of Jacques’ murder.’
‘So we were, so we were,’ said Teabag, pleasantly. Then he yelled: ‘How dare you! I loved Jacques like a brother – we both know that if anybody is likely to have killed him it will be the Catholic Church . . .’
A light went on in Robert Donglan’s mind. The Catholic Church.
‘Ah!’ Robert said. ‘Of course!’ He tapped his own forehead gently. ‘That’s what the anagram was – Chatholic Curch, Catholic Church! That’s what he wrote on the wall: that the Catholic Church had him murdered!’
Teabag looked at Donglan. ‘He wrote that on the wall?’
‘Yes,’ said Donglan.
‘That wasn’t reported in the Eevny Stannit.’
‘I don’t believe it has been reported publicly. The police took me to the murder scene, so I saw with my own eyes. In fact,’ he chuckled, ‘they even accused me of the crime! Fancy that!’
‘But - but - they accused you – why?’
‘Well, Sauna-Lurker had had this giant codfish stuffed down his throat and apparently they found my fingerprints on the fish. Obviously,’ Robert said, realising as he spoke how incriminating this must sound to Teabag, and trying to throw a laugh into his sentence to illustrate how risibly absurd it all was, ‘obviously, somebody was trying to frame me for the murder. Obviously.’
Teabag’s eyes had assumed a rather wild shimmer. ‘You!’ he gasped. ‘You’re in it together! You’re all in it together! You all murdered Jacques together, and now you’ve come to murder me! Help! Help!’
‘His grief at Jacques’ death has unhinged him,’ Father Hook said to Robert and Sophie sotto voce, which is to say, in Italian, ‘in a small voice’. Not that he spoke to them in Italian, which Robert and possibly Sophie would not have understood. It’s just that that is the phrase one uses to indicate that a speaker is speaking in a small voice. I don’t know why there isn’t an equivalent English phrase. Perhaps a suitable English translation might be ‘in a voice like Sooty’s’. ‘Let’s cuff him, and try to calm him down.’
‘Nobody wants to murder you,’ said Sophie, holding her hands in front of her and advancing on the Baronet.
‘Herbert, we have known one another for years,’ said Hook in a soothing voice. ‘You must trust us! We are trying to discover who Jacques’ murderer is. That’s why we’ve come here – you may be able to help us.’
Teabag looked wildly from face to face and then, bizarrely, his whole manner changed. A calmness took hold of his features, and he spoke in a level voice. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I apologise for my over-reaction. It was a terrible shock to hear of poor Jacques’ demise. Why don’t we go through to my study and have a drink, talk about what to do next? A little drink, Hook? Would you like?’
Hook beamed. ‘That’s more like it, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘I must say I was a little worried that you—’
There were two sounds simultaneously. One was a sort of thwok noise, such as might be made by hitting a watermelon with a sock full of coins. The other was a voice saying, with excessive loudness, ‘Would you like a snifter, priest? Eh? Eh?’ The latter sound, Robert realised, was coming from Teabag’s mouth; he had leaped forward and coshed Hook over the head with a wooden carved owl that he had grabbed from a shelf. For the briefest moment Donglan was stunned by the disparity between Teabag’s words – politely offering his guest a drink – and the irrational violence of his actions. Then he understood.
‘He’s having one of his fits,’ he called to Sophie. ‘His body is beyond the control of his conscious mind! We must restrain him!’
But Mademoiselle Nudivue was way ahead of him. She rushed to the fallen figure of the priest, picked up the cuffs, and turned on Teabag.
Once again the Baronet demonstrated a strange disparity between his spoken words and his actions. His mouth was saying ‘I have no desire to injure a lady!’ but his body was swiping at her with the carved owl, in clear contradiction of his words.
‘Sophie!’ called Robert, in an agony of anticipation. ‘Be careful!’
But Sophie was more than a match for the elderly British aristocrat. In a single graceful movement she ducked under his outstretched arm, knocked the owl from his hand, grabbed his elbows and pressed them together behind his back. Indeed, although she was smaller and slenderer than Teabag, she displayed a surprising strength of muscle. In a trice the handcuffs were on Teabag’s wrists, looped through the pole at the bottom of the stair banisters and, struggle as he might, he was restrained.
12
Sophie went straight to the supine body of the priest, where Robert joined her. ‘He’s out cold,’ she said, moving him into the recovery position. ‘Still breathing, but unconscious.’
‘Oh I do hope I haven’t hurt him,’ said Teabag, although he was hopping and wriggling and trying to get free of the handcuffs even as he spoke these words of remorse.
‘We’d better phone for an ambulance,’ said Robert.
‘This is a terrible development,’ Sophie deprecated. ‘Phoning for an ambulance will be tantamount to alerting the police that we are here. We will have to leave – and yet we are no closer to discovering the terrible secret for which Jacques was murdered.’
‘Perhaps Sir Herbert will still help us,’ said Robert.
Sophie looked up at him, chained to the banister with his arms behind him, wriggling and shaking in rage and terror, and said ‘do you really think so?’
‘Remember what Father Hook told us. This is one of those fits of madness of which he spoke. Although his body has violently lost control, his mind is clear and sane. Hook’s account of somatic tourette’s syndrome describes these symptoms to a “t”. And indeed to a “b”, an “a” and a “g”.’
‘You’ve chained me to the banisters!�
� Teabag cried, struggling. ‘You came into my house with handcuffs and chained me to the banisters!’
‘You see?’ said Robert. ‘That’s a straightforward statement of fact; the mark of a rational and therefore sane mind.’
‘Well I suppose so,’ said Sophie, dubiously.
‘Call an ambulance!’ Teabag cried.
Robert looked over at the phone in the hallway. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘The little blinking light is flashing; what does that mean?’
Sir Teabag had stopped struggling, and seemed to have slumped into a state of resignation. ‘That’s the answerphone,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Press the little green button.’
Robert, glad to hear the baronet sounding less fitty, did as he was instructed. There was a beep, and a mechanical voice declared: ‘You have one new message. Message, today, at seven twenty-eight pm . . .’
Then the hall was filled with the sound of coughing:Co-u-gh! cof! co-u-gh! cof! co-u-gh! co-u-gh! co-u-gh! co-u-gh! cof-cof!
‘Jacques!’ cried Teabag, starting to struggle against his restraints once again. ‘That’s the sound of Jacques’ coughing . . . I’d recognise that anywhere! My poor Jacques - murdered! Let me go you two - release me - undo me!’
‘Come now, Sir Herbert,’ said Sophie. ‘Your mind may be rational, but your body is beyond your conscious control. You know we cannot release you.’
Robert was pondering the phone message. ‘He rang up to cough at you?’ he said, puzzled. ‘Just that? Why would he do that?’
‘He was an inveterate smoker,’ said Sophie. ‘He was famous for it.’
‘An invertebrate smoker?’ gasped Robert, surprised.
‘Inveterate,’ corrected Sophie. ‘But don’t you see what this means? This message was left at seven twenty-eight pm! That’s immediately before he was murdered!’
‘Murderers!’ yelled Teabag, confirming Sophie’s statement with such volume that it was almost as if he hoped to be audible to people in the street outside. ‘Break-in! Violence! Murder!’ he was still struggling violently. Robert marvelled that so thorough-going a physical seizure could nevertheless leave Teabag’s mind sane enough to summarise the events at the National Gallery so pithily.
‘But why would Jacques ring Sir Herbert only to cough at him?’ Sophie asked.
‘Perhaps he couldn’t speak. Perhaps the cod was already down his throat.’
‘He could hardly cough with a cod down his throat. No, this must have been before the murder.’
‘You mean . . . ?’
‘I’m assuming he had already encountered the assassin, and perhaps had struggled with him. Maybe the assassin had already cut those slashes on either side of his neck. But it must have been before the codfish was actually stuffed into his throat. So he could have spoken, but chose not to.’
‘Well, perhaps he didn’t want to speak because the murderer was in the room with him.’
‘So he coughed to convey a message without the murderer understanding?’ said Sophie. ‘Brilliant! But what was he saying?’
‘How many times did he cough?’ asked Robert. ‘Perhaps it is some kind of code. Perhaps a coughing version of morse code. What do you think, Sir Herbert? ’
‘Four cough!’ yelled Sir Teabag, excitedly. ‘Let me go! Use odds! Four cough!’ He wriggled and danced.
‘Four? No there were certainly more than four,’ said Robert. ‘I counted at least ten.’
‘Let me go!’
‘That’s still barely enough elements for a message in morse code,’ said Sophie. ‘Many morse code letters require three components, like dot-dot-dot. Some even require more than three.’
‘Yes,’ said Robert. ‘So a mere ten elements might be conveying as few as three letters.’
‘Three letters,’ mused Sophie.
‘Not so much morse code as less code,’ said Robert, and grinned. Sophie seemed oddly unmoved by the joke. ‘It’s a joke,’ he explained, thinking perhaps that his humour had not translated from English into her French mind. ‘Do you see? Do you get it?’ He turned to the Baronet. ‘You get it, don’t you, Sir Teabag?’
‘Four cough!’ shouted Sir Teabag again, struggling against his handcuffs.
‘No it was certainly ten,’ said Robert. ‘But the question is: what message is being communicated by the coughs?’
‘Go boil your heads!’
‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘That would have required many more than ten dots and dashes.’
‘Drop dead!’ yelled the Baronet.
‘He did indeed drop dead,’ agreed Robert, soberly. ‘And we owe it to his memory to decipher his last message to us.’
‘If the softer, throat-clearing coughs stand in for dots,’ Sophie suggested, ‘and the louder phlegm-shunting chesty coughs for dashes . . .’
‘Of course!’ barked Robert. ‘By George, I think you’ve got it. Now, hang on a mo, I happen to have a card in my wallet that gives the morse code equivalents for the letters of the alphabet.’ He rummaged around in his pocket. ‘Here you go.’
A · -
B - ···
C - ·- ·
D - ··
E ·
F · · - ·
G - - ·
H · · · ·
I · ·
J · - - -
K - · -
L · - · ·
M - -
N - ·
O - - -
P ·--·
Q - - · -
R · - ·
R · - ·
S · · ·
T -
U ·· -
V · · · -
W · - -
X - · · -
Y - · - -
Z - - · ·
‘Play the recording again,’ suggested Sophie.
Robert pressed the button on the answerphone, and Sauna-Lurker’s voice was once again audible: Co-u-gh! cof! co-u-gh! cof! . . . Co-u-gh! co-u-gh! co-u-gh! . . . Co-u-gh! cof-cof!
‘Right,’ said Robert, consulting the chart. ‘Well, long-short-long-short is “C” . . .’
‘Yes,’ agreed Sophie, looking over his shoulder. ‘And long-long-long is “O”.’
‘Well everybody knows “O” in morse,’ said Robert, smugly. ‘That’s the middle letter of SOS, isn’t it. Everyone knows that.’
‘And long short-short is “D”.’
‘There you have it. COD.’ Robert looked pleased with himself. Then he frowned. ‘His own murder weapon? He didn’t need to tell us that he was about to be murdered with a cod . . . and certainly not in such an oblique, roundabout manner. That doesn’t make any sense. Why would a dying man bother to cough C-O-D? Why couldn’t he just say it?’
‘But how do we know if we’re hearing the pauses between letters in the right places? What if the first letter is long-short-long-short-long? That’s “K”. Then long-long-long, “O”, and short-short, which is “I”.’
‘KOI?’ queried Robert. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a kind of carp.’
‘So,’ said Robert, meditatively. ‘It could be either COD or CARP. Both types of fish.’
‘Oh very different sorts of fish,’ said Sophie, with a dismissive shake of her head. ‘Cod belongs to the family Paracanthopterygii, which includes toadfish, trout and perch as well as cod. Carp belongs to a wholly different family, the Ostariophysi, which includes nearly six thousand different varieties of carp, minnows, loaches and catfish.’
Robert stared at her for a moment in frank admiration, and indeed physical desire. ‘That’s amazing! How do you know so much about fish?’
‘Just one of those things that I’ve picked up,’ she said, blushing. ‘During my busy and adventurous life.’
She blushed extremely attractively. Robert found himself wishing he could do something to summon that blush to her cheek – something embarrassing, or insulting perhaps. But, he reminded himself, now is not the time for romantic speculation. Perhaps later . . .
‘It doesn’t get us any closer to solving th
e mystery’, he said.
‘Presumably Monsieur Sauna-Lurker wanted to say cod to us in such a way that the murderer, even though he was overhearing him, would not understand,’ said Sophie.
Robert patted Sophie’s shoulder. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, in what he hoped was a letting-her-down-gently voice, ‘and in general I’d say your command of and fluency in spoken English is excellent. But the English word is “Mister”, not “Monsieur”.’
Sophie glowered at him. ‘I know that.’
‘Well,’ said Robert, beaming at her, ‘I’m only saying. If nobody corrects your English then you’re never going to improve. The point is that it would be more correct to say “Mister Sauna-Lurker”. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘You really think I don’t know the English word “Mister”?’ fumed Sophie. ‘What kind of fool do you take me for?’
‘A very attractive and alluring fool,’ purred Robert. He reconsidered what he had just said, and decided that perhaps it did not create the impression he was hoping to create. It had sounded, in his head, before he spoke the words, witty and disarming. But somehow it had come out of his mouth as rather patronising and even insulting. ‘So, yes, well, by which I mean to say,’ he added, in what he hoped was a smooth recovery, ‘that I don’t consider you a fool at all. You’re not a fool. You are the opposite of a fool, whatever that is. A wise man. That’s the sort of way I look at you. So, to reiterate, nothing foolish about you. Although the attractive and alluring part still holds. And . . . um . . . when I said wise man back there I wasn’t trying to suggest that you look like a man. And especially not like a man with a long beard and a camel, ha-ha-ha!’ But his laughter sounded unusually forced. ‘I seem,’ he continued, in a graver tone of voice, ‘to have tied myself rather into knots! What I’ve been trying to say is that . . . well, look there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Sophie. Fate seems to have thrown us together; but I can’t believe I am mistaken in sensing a certain – what’s the French word? Help me out here . . . a certain rappaport.’