The Queen's Cipher

by David Taylor

  Along with elation went a sense of relief. He had spent his career praising Shakespeare’s genius while secretly doubting him, seeing in his work the subtle, devious mind and idealistic purpose of a totally different man. Now he knew the truth and it came as a complete surprise. It had never occurred to him that Bacon and Shakespeare might have worked together.

  Most Elizabethan drama was a collaborative effort, reflecting in part on the limitations of those who wrote for the theatre and the constant need for new material. Here, however, were two writers of genius, the philosopher and the poet, who had surreptitiously crossed the class barrier to produce the best ever plays in the English language. Here was a story for the twenty-first century. As for Bacon’s early life and antecedents, the less said the better.

  He picked up his precious acquisition, put it in the wall safe and confirmed the security code. Gloria Fischer wanted quick publication to head off any book that Dr Brett might write. But there was nothing to worry about.

  He possessed the trump card and looked forward to playing it.

  8 SEPTEMBER 2014

  “Listen to this Freddie, ‘Compact two bedroom apartment in a popular location convenient for the station.’ That’s code for tiny flat suitable for a pigmy or small animal in a building next to the railway line regularly visited by burglars. And they want eight hundred quid a week for it.”

  The flat hunting was not going well. With the university term due to start in five weeks time, the cheaper places had already been snapped up in Jericho and the rest were letting for eye-watering sums.

  “You know who’s to blame for this?” Freddie mumbled through a mouthful of toast. “It’s television’s fault. The first ever episode of Inspector Morse was set here in Jericho and house prices have rocketed ever since.”

  “That’s why we need to cast our net wider,” said Cheryl. “Time is running out. We promised Simon we’d be out of Walton Lane by the end of the week. You do want to find a place, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, what was wrong with the Woodstock Road cottage we saw yesterday?”

  “There was no car parking space and the ‘well-stocked garden’ was so overgrown it would take hours a week to weed.”

  In truth, nothing much had been wrong with the cottage. The problem was psychological. Ever since the Miami fiasco he’d been feeling listless, unable to make up his mind about anything. Leaving Walton Lane seemed like a seismic shift.

  “It would make much better sense to buy a flat,” Cheryl grumbled. “We can certainly afford it. That’s if you accept the Master’s offer.”

  Much to his surprise, Beaufort wanted to make him a Reader in Renaissance Literature, a senior post in the college pecking order. But there was a price to pay for promotion. No more rocking of the boat; no more acerbic reviews or challenging articles, just steady low profile academic achievement from now on. The Master also suggested the need for discretion where Cheryl was concerned.

  “It’s been brought to my notice,” he had begun ponderously, “that you have formed a relationship with one of your graduate students. If that be true, you may want to consider relinquishing your tutorial role where she is concerned. Bed and brainwork seldom go together.”

  And you and Lady Dorothy would know all about that, Freddie said silently to himself. For after all his disappointments, he was inclined to accept the readership. Such a wonderful opportunity might not come again and, after all, what had he to lose? Once Cleaver’s book was published, Francis Bacon would become a hot topic and he could write what he liked about him without endangering his career.

  He had discussed this with Cheryl. That was why she couldn’t understand his reluctance to get a foothold on the property ladder. “We could buy a three bedroom house on the Cowley Road for a year’s rental in Summertown,” she said pointedly.

  Freddie wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to live on the Cowley Road.”

  “What’s wrong with it? It’s not a working-class suburb anymore. It’s actually quite bohemian and the houses are a lot better than the student shitholes I’ve lived in.” Cheryl bristled at his perceived snobbishness.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the district,” he replied hastily. “I just don’t want to put down roots there. But renting is fine.”

  In truth, buying any kind of place seemed too great a commitment. He loved Cheryl. Of course he did. She was bright, sexy and fiercely loyal. But he hadn’t stopped caring for Sam and didn’t know what to do about it. Only time would tell.

  The doorbell was ringing and Freddie was none too pleased to discover DI Owen standing on the step. It was a fine early autumn day but he was still wearing a raincoat.

  “Sorry to bother you, Dr Brett, but I’ve got a few more questions.”

  Did the man never give up? Freddie ushered him into the kitchen where Cheryl was waiting to be introduced. Once the formalities were over, the inspector sat down heavily and began his interrogation.

  “Do you know a man called Michael Kelly?”

  Freddie shook his head. “Never heard of him,” he said confidently.

  DI Owen wrote something in his black notebook. “Back in the nineties, when he was in Northern Ireland, he was known as ‘The Engineer.’ Does that ring a bell?”

  “Only that you mentioned him at one of our earlier meetings.”

  “What about Ronan O’Rourke? Are you familiar with that name?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “He’s one of Michael Kelly’s pseudonyms. And here’s another. Sean Brennan. Heard of him?”

  “No, him neither.” The lie was told. “Care for a cuppa, inspector?”

  “Go on then,” Owen replied.

  Pouring water into the kettle, Freddie noticed his hand was shaking.

  “We have reason to believe it was Kelly who killed the two professors, Cartwright and Dawkins, but we have no idea why he did it. His motive is a complete mystery; unless, of course, he was helping you out?”

  “We’ve been through this before, inspector. If he was helping me, it was without my knowledge.”

  Owen looked at his host with mournful brown eyes. “You do realise, don’t you, that it’s an offence to lie to the police punishable either by a fine or by a charge of perverting the course of justice which, in some cases, leads to a custodial sentence.”

  Freddie planted a steaming mug of tea on the kitchen table and stared back at the policeman. “You wouldn’t be trying to frighten me, would you?”

  “Perish the thought.” Owen said lightly, picking up his mug and blowing on it. “But I wanted you to be aware of your legal position now that things have changed.”

  “How have things changed?” He tried to keep the stress he was feeling out of his voice. “Have you caught Kelly?”

  “No, he appears to have left the country and if he knows what’s good for him he won’t come back. Not with three outstanding murder charges against him.”

  He had forgotten about Major Duncan whose Hove bookshop had burned down with him inside it. Freddie should have let matters rest but his curiosity got the better of him. “You mentioned Northern Ireland in the nineties when Kelly was nicknamed The Engineer. Why was that?”

  “Who knows with nicknames? One definition of an engineer is someone who plans, manages and skilfully executes a particular task and Kelly could certainly do that. He made bombs, carried them to their targets and fused them, the complete package deal you might say.”

  “Why didn’t the RUC arrest him?” It was Cheryl’s turn to ask a question.

  “Neither the police nor the Army knew who he was. He was positively wraithlike. It was only after the Cartwright killing that we managed to trace him to a security firm in Birmingham and by then it was too late. Kelly had packed up and gone abroad.”

  The inspector finished his tea and stood up to go. “One thing more I might tell you about Kelly. He’s the prime suspect for the Ballymena bombing in which your father and mother died. You might want to think ab
out that.”

  “I’ll show you out, inspector,” Cheryl said.

  Freddie sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. It was what he had suspected but couldn’t bring himself to believe. The thing he had tried to block it out of his mind.

  Cheryl came back into the room. There were tears in her eyes. She was crying not for herself but him, because she knew the stress he was under. What have I done, he thought, to deserve such devotion?

  “Don’t cry, darling,” he whispered, cuddling her to him. “I’ve been in denial for far too long. It’s time to let go of the past.”

  “That’s the advice Nurse Nightingale would give you,” she said in a choked voice. “It won’t be easy, not with that terrifying terrorist on the run.”

  “He’ll not bother us again. According to his warped morality, the slate is wiped clean. He killed two of my enemies to make up for murdering my parents.”

  “But the bastard nearly killed you, Freddie.”

  “That was my own fault. I started the fight in Venice and he ended up saving my life.”

  “But Kelly took the codex and sold it to bloody Cleaver. I reckon he still owes you.”

  Freddie stood up and put on his coat. “Forget about him. We’ve got flats to see.”

  The phone rang. Cheryl rushed to answer. It was Simon calling from Brighton for the latest news. He left her to it. Out in the hall he picked up an estate agent’s sheet on a property where ‘internal viewing’ was strongly recommended. Did that mean it was awful from the outside?

  “Come on love, we’re late.”

  Cheryl didn’t hear him. She was too busy telling Simon about the ‘bijoux residence in an up and coming area of Oxford’ which turned out to be next door to a landfill site.

  “Come on,” he yelled as he opened the door.

  “You can be bloody rude sometimes,” a muffled voice from the hall reminded him, shortly followed by a girl sticking her head through a fleece jacket.

  “And you always look charming.” He paid for his gallantry by colliding with the postman who was carrying a padded envelope covered in Brazilian stamps.

  “That’s intriguing,” he muttered, taking the envelope into the kitchen and studying its postmark. “I don’t know anyone in Rio de Janeiro.”

  “Not even the girl from Ipanema?” Cheryl swayed around the table to an imaginary bossa nova beat.

  “Not even her.” Freddie ripped the top off the envelope and emptied its contents onto the table. Someone had sent him four large photographic prints, a DVD, and a black plastic film canister.

  He pulled out a kitchen chair and began to examine the first of these prints. He could smell her perfume as she peered over his shoulder at the picture. What they were looking at was a deluxe hotel bedroom. The walls were covered in a patterned green paper and an expensive golden counterpane covered the king size bed. To the right of the bed was an antique writing desk beneath an open window which looked out on a dome topped church. The room was empty.

  “What do you make of that?” Cheryl sounded bewildered.

  “That it’s a scene setting shot.”

  “Fine, but do you know where it is?”

  “Oh yes, it’s a room in the Bauer Hotel facing the Grand Canal in Venice.”

  She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Glad to have you back, Sherlock,” she warbled. “Tell me how you know that.”

  “Do you see the stitched leather hotel room folder on the table? It’s embossed with a big letter B and underneath it are two words, ‘The Bauers.’ Now look at the church. I’d know that cupola anywhere. Santa Maria della Salute is one of Venice’s plague-churches. It’s a famous landmark on the Grand Canal.”

  Freddie looked at the next picture and whistled. “You’re going to love this,” he told her.

  A grey-haired man in open-necked shirt and slacks was handing a cheque to a man whose back was turned to camera. The donor was a shifty-looking Milton Cleaver. In the next picture he was caught accepting a small calfskin book in return.

  The final shot was a close-up of a Bank of America cheque for 500,000 dollars made out to Michael Kelly.

  “He paid enough for it,” said Cheryl, holding the print up to the light. “Where do you think the camera was?”

  “CCTV cameras can be disguised as smoke detectors but these aren’t overhead shots so I’d guess they were taken by a small camera planted in an alarm clock or attached to a mirror.”

  Cheryl picked up the film canister and tried to open it but the lid was secured by sellotape. She pulled away at it and an envelope fell to the floor.

  It contained a typed letter, undated and unaddressed.

  Dear Freddie,

  I want you to have this photographic and film evidence. As you may know, I sold the Bacon treatise to the highest bidder who turned out to be Professor Milton Cleaver. Sorry about that but I needed the money to finance my retirement plans. Even so, I was never comfortable with the idea that an unprincipled rogue like Cleaver should benefit from its purchase. That’s why I arranged to meet him in Venice and had two hidden cameras in my bedroom.

  I told you my name was Brennan. It’s actually Michael Kelly and I used to be an IRA man. Should you decide to use these pictures I think even an accomplished liar like Cleaver will struggle to explain why he paid such a large sum of money to a wanted Irish terrorist for a historical record he claims to have found himself.

  There is a complete video tape recording of my transaction with Cleaver. I also enclose a roll of 35mm negative film on which each exposure is a separate page from Bacon’s notebook. I’ve read it through and confess to being blown away by the man’s mind and his amazing accomplishments. He was a writer of exceptional genius and deserves to be recognised as such.

  You are now in a position to do one of three things. You can use the attached evidence to stop Cleaver from publishing his deceitful book or you can let him publish and then expose his corrupt dealings or, thirdly, you can blackmail him into working with you – Brett and Cleaver, a co-authorship made in hell! The choice is yours.

  Whatever you decide to do, I hope you find happiness.

  See you in another life,

  Michael.

  Freddie couldn’t believe it. Once again he was beholden to the cold-blooded killer who had orphaned him. But what could he do about that? Hadn’t the time come to make a fresh start? He had a tenured job at Oxford and Kelly had given him all the evidence he needed to sort out the Shakespeare mystery. But, beyond that, his parents would want him to be happy.

  He looked up at the waiting girl. “You know what? I think we should buy a flat.”

  FACT OR FICTION?

  All of the cipher systems mentioned in this book are real and there is clear evidence they were used in Shakespeare's day. I cracked the number code in Anthony Standen’s 1593 report and interpreted the allusive cipher in Love's Labour's Lost while the decryption of the cipher square in the First Folio dedication was the result of my youthful collaboration with a retired stage actor called Ewen MacDuff whose real name was Donald Strachan. As a tribute to his memory I have included an actor called Strachan in my novel while giving him a very different personality from his flesh and blood counterpart.

  I have made the historical chapters as factually accurate as possible. The characters often speak their own words and express ideas that were current in their time. I make no apology for writing a factually based fiction for, as Francis Bacon once remarked, truth is so hard to tell it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank that elegant writer and bon vivant Tim Heald for guiding my early steps in the world of fiction. Later, Hollywood scriptwriter Noah Castro did invaluable work in editing the book. That it got to be published at all was largely due to my family. Daughter-in-law Sophie handled the marketing and advertising while my three sons, Paul, Rob and Corin brought their legal, IT and production skills to bear on the finished product. Finally, a word abo
ut my long-suffering wife Laura who has put up with incessant chatter about Shakespeare and Bacon without, as yet, walking out on me.