Raising Arcadia

by Simon Chesterman

  “Matchstick cameras,” says Magnus. “Expensive, but not hard to purchase in the open market. You’re sure that the attached unit did not have a recording capacity? A shame, but it means that someone may be in possession of a video of the attack on our parents. Such devices can transmit up to a hundred yards, so the recording device could be inside the house or nearby.

  “More interesting is the question of who planted it. From what you have said and the reports that the police have filed thus far, the break-in on Tuesday and today’s events look very different. It is highly likely that these were two separate actors — and that the man who murdered Father and so gravely injured Mother does not know that there is a recording.”

  Mr. Ormiston has been restraining himself but is unable to do so any longer. “I don’t understand how you two can remain so calm. You lost your father. Your mother is in a coma. Aren’t you even in the least bit affected by this?”

  They both look at him. “Of course we are ‘affected’,” says Magnus at last. “But breaking down in tears won’t help her and we don’t have time to cycle through the stages of grief. Or, if it will make you feel better, I can do so quickly: This can’t be — it’s not fair! Why don’t you take me instead, God? I’m so sad. But I have to get on with my life.”

  “Magnus,” Arcadia says gently. “He’s just trying to help.”

  “Of course he is.” Magnus turns to Mr. Ormiston: “I do apologise. But if you would like to help then perhaps you can tell us more about the woman known as Sophia Alderman?”

  Mr. Ormiston weighs something and then decides to speak. “Very well. I met her about a year ago at a teachers’ conference. She’s a part-time science instructor. She had come out of a messy divorce. One thing led to another and — ” he breaks eye contact and looks at the ground.

  “Do part-time instructors typically get invited to these ‘teachers’ conferences’?” Magnus asks.

  “Sometimes. Well, not usually. No.”

  “At what point did she ask you to do something for her?”

  Mr. Ormiston’s eyes widen. “We — we started an affair. At first it was — it was a fling, we would meet up occasionally. I’m not proud of what I did. And I’m only telling you in case there is a chance it will help you find out what happened to your parents. But one night she — she took some photographs of me. In a compromising situation. Then earlier this week she threatened me. She said she wanted a part-time position at the Priory School. If I didn’t arrange it, she said she would send the photographs to my wife. I told her there were no positions available for a science teacher. Then when Mr. Pratt had an accident — oh, dear God…”

  “With Mr. Pratt indisposed and Miss Alderman conveniently available, you thought it couldn’t hurt to recommend her for the position.” Magnus finishes the account for Mr. Ormiston, whose head is now in his hands. “As for Mr. Pratt’s accident — a hit-and-run with a motor vehicle, or something of the sort? — I understand your inference that it might have been no accident. But have you or anyone else actually seen him in hospital? Is it possible that he has other reasons for absenting himself from the school for several weeks, and allowing Miss Alderman to take his place?”

  A minute passes in silence.

  “Miss Alderman does have a background in science,” Arcadia observes. “Possibly including some graduate study — though she said that she made a choice that was incompatible with completing it. She also has some proficiency in acting, perhaps including professional work after her university days.”

  “Interesting,” Magnus muses. “She certainly deploys her acting skills to some effect. For it turns out that there is no Sophia Alderman. Or rather, there are several — but none that correspond to the person presently teaching science at the Priory School. After you mentioned her in the context of our biological parents I did some basic background checks. Whatever this woman’s name is, she has done impressive work in creating a false identity under the name ‘Sophia Alderman’. The only way I discovered the artifice was that her records, though complete, do not appear in the backups of databases that are more than a year old. That broadly corresponds to the timeline of what Mr. Ormiston here has described. The scenario of entrapment in this manner is what is known among spies, I believe, as a ‘honeypot’.”

  Mr. Ormiston stands up. “I have to phone my wife. Tell her where I am.”

  Yes, or she will assume you are with that woman again. But Arcadia simply nods as her teacher steps out into the corridor to make his call.

  “There’s a further dimension to all of this,” she says to her brother. “Do you recall how Mother would set codes for us to solve on Saturday mornings?”

  “Of course.” For the first time that day, Magnus’s face creases into a smile. “It began as a game that we would play. She set a puzzle for me to win a treat or find some money. After you turned five, she would ask me to include you in solving the codes. That slowed things down, of course, but I believe she wanted to foster some kind of sibling bond between us. I gather she now uses this to send you on the occasional shopping errand.”

  “Did you ever wonder where she got the puzzles from?”

  The smile fades. “She would joke that it was her little secret.” Magnus says. “It was evident that she was not making them up herself. I assumed that she had purchased a book of puzzles or periodically browsed the Internet for ideas about codes.” The beginnings of a frown appear on his forehead. “But you now suspect that these puzzles were delivered to her? To what end?”

  “I’m not sure. But I found this box in her dresser.” She produces the Chinese box from her backpack and enters the combination zero-one-six. She opens the box to reveal the stack of envelopes. “Each envelope is sealed, with a post-it note indicating a future Saturday. This box contains envelopes for the rest of term.”

  She takes out the envelope on top, marked for Saturday, the day after tomorrow. “I steamed this one open to check what was inside. It’s unlike any of the earlier codes.” The glue has resealed so she rips the envelope open to reveal the message within:

  “Interesting,” says her brother. “A substitution cipher, clearly. Impractical to solve without more text, unless — oh, I see it was for you, wasn’t it Arcadia? So ‘Nicely done, Arcadia. You are nearly ready.’ Very interesting. But I can’t really see Mother coming up with that herself.”

  “I agree,” she says. “And why are the envelopes sealed? Mother needed to know the answer. How else would she have known where to hide the reward?”

  “The solution must have been explained to her somehow. Perhaps there is a separate stack of answers. Perhaps she received a message each week, timed to coincide with the note.”

  “But from whom?”

  “That, dear sister,” Magnus says, “is the all-important question. Father’s death and the attempt on Mother’s life are clearly connected with the unravelling of efforts to monitor and shape your development. These codes now look to be part of that monitoring. The fact that in this message, dated two days hence, you are congratulated for solving something on your own gives me a deep sense of unease. Was it mere chance that you happened upon this envelope ahead of time?”

  “Yes,” she replies. “It was reasonably well hidden. But this would make no sense as a code if Mother put it out for me. And surely she would see the strangeness of it also?”

  “Unless whoever provided the code assumed that she would not be in a position to leave the code out this Saturday morning.” Magnus sits back in the waiting room chair.

  “But then, why are there nine more envelopes?” She tears open the envelope for the following Saturday and takes out the note inside. It is blank. Holds it to the light but there is no invisible ink. She opens envelopes for the successive Saturdays. All contain blank sheets that she drops on the floor.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” says Magnus.

  “What does it mean?” she asks, mostly to herself.

  “Why, dear sister, for perhaps the third time in my life
I have no idea.”

  She and Magnus are sitting in silence when Dr. Jackson returns to the waiting room. “You can see your mother now. She’s still in a coma, but she’s stable.”

  They walk behind her into the corridor, where Mr. Ormiston is just finishing his phone call. He follows them, but waits at the door when they enter Mother’s room.

  The blood has been cleaned from her face and a hospital gown has replaced her clothes. Bandages cover most of her neck and arms; tubes connect her to the various machines that now help her heart to beat and her lungs to breathe. An electrocardiogram tracks the uncertain rhythm of her life.

  “There are mixed views on whether comatose patients can actually hear and understand people around them,” Dr. Jackson says. “We haven’t yet attempted a full assessment as she’s still under anaesthetic. But there’s good evidence that speaking positively to a loved one can have a beneficial effect. I’ll leave you with her for a few minutes.”

  She gives them a professional smile and walks off to check on other patients. Son and daughter approach either side of the bed in which Mother lies — sleeping, and yet more than sleeping. Arcadia reaches out to touch her hand, gently lifting it to hold it in her own. She looks across the bed at her brother, to find that Magnus has done the same.

  11

  ENDINGS

  They sleep for a few hours on the chairs in the waiting room. As day begins to break, Dr. Jackson advises them to go home and get some proper rest. Mother’s condition remains stable and is unlikely to change in the next few hours.

  Mr. Ormiston says that they are welcome to stay at his house, but Magnus needs to return to Cambridge and takes a taxi to the train station. He will be back at the hospital by early afternoon. For her part, she asks for one more favour from her teacher.

  As they are driving back towards home, she receives a call from her Aunt Jean and Uncle Arthur. Magnus informed them last night of Father’s death; they are now making arrangements to come up from their farm in Surrey and will be organising a funeral service on Monday, three days from now.

  After she hangs up, Mr. Ormiston turns from the road to look at her: “You really have to tell the police what you know.”

  “I understand that,” she says. “But I need to check a couple of things first.”

  “If you don’t inform them, it could be regarded as obstruction of justice.”

  The police seem to be quite capable of obstructing justice on their own. But she keeps this to herself.

  Mr. Ormiston’s attention remains focused on the road, but he adds: “And I still can’t believe that Sophia, I mean Miss Alderman — or, whatever her name really is — could be involved in murder.”

  Nor can she. Was the tear in her eye after the violin performance simply more theatre? “It’s circumstantial evidence, but does seem to suggest a connection between her and the attack,” she says.

  They continue without speaking until they approach her street.

  “What are you looking for?” Mr. Ormiston asks as she climbs out of the car.

  “I’ll know when I find it.”

  It is still early and the neighbourhood is only just waking up. Her house is now cordoned off by yellow tape. For the second time in a week, she lifts the tape that reads “Police line: Do not cross”, and steps past it.

  She unlocks the front door and goes inside. The police completed their investigation and sealed the house, but it is clear that something has changed. The entranceway once more shows the mark of a chair that has been placed under the light fitting, even though someone has tried to fluff the carpet back up with their fingers. Above her, the matchstick camera and its cord are gone.

  As she moves down the hallway to the living room, an echo of the dread she felt last night runs through her body; an alien sensation, then and now.

  It is a myth that police draw chalk outlines of bodies. Apart from the fact that it would contaminate the crime scene, photographs from different angles more than suffice once the site has been examined. In any case, although Father’s body has been removed she can still visualise precisely where it lay, fingers outstretched to Mother’s as they lingered on opposite sides of the Styx.

  Though nothing else has been disturbed, the camera here is missing also. As is the one in the dining room. She climbs the stairs to her room, knowing before she opens the doors that that camera too has been removed.

  She looks for evidence of other cameras or changes in the house, but whoever returned for them has been careful. There is no evidence of forced entry. Even the residual adhesive from the tape has been removed from the various surfaces — a faint smell of ethanol suggests that this was done with rubbing alcohol. Recently.

  She goes back to her parents’ bedroom. The night before, she restored the underwear drawer to its prior state, wiping away the scarlet drops that came off her hand. It appears untouched, but it is the painting and what lies behind it that she has come to examine. On the wall, the pastoral scene looks the same, but a closer inspection of the frame shows that it is too clean. Mother’s routine was — Mother’s routine is to dust on weekends. This wood has recently been wiped down.

  In case there are any fingerprints to be found, she takes a pen from the dresser to nudge the painting aside and enter the code — her birthdate — to open her parents’ safe. The chirping sequence of beeps is followed by the click of the internal lock opening. Again using the pen, she swings the door open and looks inside. The family’s passports are still there, along with several hundred pounds in cash and a few pieces of Mother’s more precious jewellery. But something is missing.

  The diaries. There were three diaries tied up with ribbon. When she opened the safe on Saturday she was looking for the stationery Mother used for the weekly puzzles, but now she pictures the diaries: brown leather notebooks tied in a bundle with purple ribbon. She did not look at them closely, but they appeared old and well-used. The leather was worn at the corners, the edges of the paper yellowed with time.

  She does not recall Mother keeping a diary. When she saw them she assumed that they were a sentimental keepsake of an earlier period in her life, perhaps from her courtship with Father. Father himself is highly unlikely to have written a diary, and certainly not to have bound it in purple ribbon to keep next to Mother’s jewellery.

  It was improbable that Mother would have moved the diaries in the past week herself. Yet it was also improbable that a thief would break in and guess the code, ignoring the cash and jewellery, just to take her notebooks. She closes the safe once more, locking it and replacing the painting.

  Returning downstairs she closes up the house and is almost at Mr. Ormiston’s car when she sees Mrs. Pike walking towards her, the bulldog Winston straining ahead on his lead.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Pike.”

  “You’re back again, are you?” she says, concern written across her face. “How’s your ma doing? We saw them racing her off in that ambulance last night, but I never got a chance to ask you.”

  “She’s stable, but in a coma. We’re not sure what will happen.”

  “Oh, dear me, that’s terrible.” She shakes her head. “And your poor pa. Such a nice man. I’m so sorry, Arcadia.” She is lost in memories of her own for a moment before she looks up. “I did speak to that nice police officer last night, told him all that I saw.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pike. What did you tell him?”

  “Oh, about the man who walked up to your place last night. Big tall fella, wearing a hat. Now you don’t see many men wearing hats these days. That should be a clue right there.”

  A simple disguise, more likely, to shield his face from view. But she nods for the woman to continue. “Did you see what colour hair he had, anything else about him?”

  “Well, with that hat you couldn’t see too much but it didn’t look like he had a lot of hair — there was nothing poking out from under it. Why maybe he wore the hat because he was bald! Men can be so self-conscious about those things. And he carried an umbrella,
even though there wasn’t even a hint of rain.” She bends down to give Winston’s ears a scratch. “He was inside for an hour or so, and then walked out, calm as you like. Walked off back down the street. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a proper look at his face. You know, come to think of it, that hat was pulled down kind of low.”

  “Did you see if he smoked a cigarette?”

  “Cigarette? No, I don’t think so. Filthy habit. My Winston can’t bear smoke and I keep him away from people who do.” The asthmatic bulldog gets another rub. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. If I’d have known what devilry he was up to I would have called the police myself.” She is beginning to cry. “It’s such an awful business, dear Arcadia.”

  She finds herself in the odd position of having to comfort the older woman. “I’ll be OK, Mrs. Pike. But tell me, did you see anything else last night or this morning, after the police left?”

  Mrs. Pike wipes her eyes. “No, no. Just you is all. Anyway, Winston and I have finished our trip to the park so I’d best be getting him his breakfast. If there’s anything I can do for you, Arcadia, just let me know?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Pike,” she says. “And thank you again.”

  The cigarette — the lack of a cigarette — is odd. But perhaps, like the hat and the umbrella, it is a diversion rather than a clue. Distracting attention away from that which might actually identify the killer.

  “Are you sure you want to go back to school?” Mr. Ormiston asks before starting the car.

  “Yes,” she says. “Just to get some books and things. I can take a bus and be back at the hospital by lunch.”

  It is a short drive and Mr. Ormiston drops her at the main entrance. He tells the security guards that Arcadia will be leaving the school grounds early to visit her Mother in hospital. “As for me,” he says, “I need to go home and shower. I don’t have classes until after Friday morning prayers. You could do with a wash yourself.” He writes down his mobile number on a slip of paper and passes it to her. “Call me if I can help in any way.”