He felt sure that his mission in Cambridge was now over. The work had been of great importance and he could not have left any sooner. So, about this at least, he felt no guilt. The conjunction of the planets was due the following night, 11 August, and it was clear that no one was about to try the experiment. If Newton was not preparing for it, then nobody else would have the ability, the knowledge or the ambition to do so. Wickins's friends in Oxford had been watching for tell-tale signs, but there appeared to have been nothing suspicious going on there. They had learned of one murder the previous week, but it was clear to them that the girl had died at the hands of her lover who had then killed himself. Or, at least, that was all they had managed to ascertain. But even his friends had to admit that many crimes could be easily covered up and that they could never know for sure. Most crucially, though, Wickins thought as he removed his shoulder bag, jacket and hat and placed them on the hooks in the hall, the ruby sphere was almost certainly safe in its repository. And no alchemical genius had emerged with the ancient codes and Hermetic knowledge to acquire the precious thing.
Wickins was surprised to see that the door leading into Newton's laboratory was open. The bedlinen lay in a crumbled heap. Plates of food had been left ignored on the floor. The window was open and on the wide windowsill stood a bowl of water. It was clean, untouched. Wickins edged his way over to the laboratory. His heart was pounding. A sudden irrational fear had shot through him. Newton was always so careful to maintain his privacy.
His friend had not heard him. Newton was standing with his back to the laboratory door, the glow from the fire lighting up one side of his face. He was cradling something in his palms. It was a thing that Wickins had never before seen in the waking world, a thing of mythology, but something he also knew to be real, sacred beyond words, the nexus of all meaning: the ruby sphere.
Wickins thought he was going to scream, but thankfully no sound came. Yet still the horror would not dissipate. With an almost supernatural effort he managed to raise his hand to his face and grip the skin of his cheeks with his fingernails. It was an almost involuntary act, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was still alive, that what he was witnessing was wholly real.
One of the thrushes landed on the windowsill and tapped at the water bowl. Newton spun round.
During the two seconds that followed, a million clashing thoughts ran through Wickins's mind, but he was really only aware of two. One told him to flee, to race to Oxford and to warn his friends. The other impulse screamed at him to rush into the room to grab the sphere.
In the time it took him to cover the distance to where Newton sat, the scientist had raised himself out of his chair and braced himself for the onslaught.
For a man of almost fifty who had spent his entire life in study, Newton was surprisingly agile. Wickins made a grab for him, but Newton shifted to one side; he lost his balance but managed to break his fall by gripping the table by the fireplace. He spun round and saw Newton grasping at a sheaf of papers that lay on a table close by.
'Isaac, you cannot do this thing,' Wickins screamed. 'Please. . you know not. .'
But Newton seemed oblivious to him. A sudden fury seized Wickins when he realised in an instant that he was wasting his breath. He sprang forward and grabbed Newton by the shoulder. The scientist twisted. Wickins lost his grip and whirled around. He could see the sphere cupped in his room-mate's right hand, and then Newton's fist encasing the sphere came rushing towards his face. He just managed to sidestep the blow, and as he swerved to one side he brought his hand across Newton's face, scratching his cheek. Newton yelped and with blind fury lashed out at Wickins, catching him squarely on the jaw. "Tis mine,' he yelled, his eyes ablaze.
Wickins fell backwards and landed heavily against the shelves, his head smashing against the wood and causing several jars and bottles to wobble and fall. They crashed to the floor except for a bottle of yellowish liquid labelled 'Oil of Vitriol' which landed squarely on Wickins's shoulder, popped its cork and spilled its contents across his arm. He screamed but, almost before the sound had left his mouth, Newton, a look of manic fury etched into his features, took one step forward and kicked him squarely in the face. Wickins slammed back against the floor, unconscious.
When Wickins awoke, it was completely dark. The fire had dwindled to nothing, it was chilly and the smells that reached him were almost overwhelming.
Most disturbing was the unmistakable odour of corroded flesh.
Wickins pulled himself to his feet. The pain in his head almost made him fall to his knees, and his arm throbbed. Stumbling into the next room he saw that there was a little more light. The moon had risen and a silver haze hung over everything. He looked at his arm. The fabric of his shirt had burned away and his flesh was red and blistered. He strode over to the bowl of water on the sill and, soaking a shirt that lay nearby, he dabbed the wet cloth on his arm.
So Newton had the ruby sphere. This was Wickins's worst nightmare come true. He tried to think through the pain. The cool water on his arm helped, but the burn was agonising and his head felt like a dozen workmen with mallets were slamming into his skull as though attacking a resistant mound of rock.
Wickins remembered the timepiece that Newton kept in his room and went to check it. The fourth hour after midnight had passed. He must have been unconscious for a long time. He cursed under his breath. Cupping his hands in the water bowl again he swilled some water around his mouth before spitting it out, red, into the bowl.
Once again he tried to think, but the pain continued to stifle his thoughts. Newton had gone. He could be close to Oxford now, or perhaps he had gone elsewhere to prepare. The conjunction was less than twenty-four hours away. What was Wickins to do? He could send a message to Oxford, but he could not trust a courier with such a grave matter. And besides, what would he say?
A few moments later he was heading out the door, making for the stables, his jacket and hat on, bag over his shoulder.
The stable boy was not best pleased to see Wickins but a shilling brightened him up and he led the way to the stalls. Newton had been there earlier in the evening, the boy told him, but he had said nothing and had seemed even more distracted and unfriendly than usual.
Wickins chose a chestnut mare, one of the best horses in the stable, and gave the payment to the lad in a sealed envelope to be passed on to the bursar. He would, he told him, explain everything to the stable master upon his return a few days hence. He had urgent business to attend to and he simply could not waste a moment. Then, feeling half-dead, Wickins snapped the reins, pulled the mare round and headed for the gates and the main road beyond.
He made Ickwell village, sixty miles west of Cambridge, in two hours, and as the sun rose full above the hedgerows, a fresh horse, a grey gelding, took him through Brill, Horton-cum-Studley and then Islip before he joined the road that would take him to the Eastgate of Oxford. He reached the city walls an hour and a half later. At a trot, he turned along Merton Street before dismounting and allowing a boy to lead the horse away. Then he headed straight for University College.
'Great shit!' Robert Hooke exclaimed as John Wickins finished recounting his story. 'A pox on the man.' And he took a huge snort of snuff up his nostril.
They were sitting in a commodious apartment in University College overlooking The High, a set of rooms that Robert Boyle occupied each August as part of his honorarium. Wickins felt utterly drained and his arm and head throbbed. He had been received by Boyle who, in spite of the fact that he looked frail and tired himself, had insisted that he inspect and treat the other man's wounds immediately. With practised delicacy, he had probed at the blistered skin on Wickins's forearm before bandaging it tightly. To his sore head Boyle had applied a paste of cat urine and mouse droppings that he found particularly efficacious for headaches. As the old man tended him, Wickins described the recent events in Cambridge. Boyle was calm and he absorbed the information with a sigh here, a mild grunt there. Occasionally pausing for a moment
in the task of tending the wounds, he would search Wickins's face, his piercing green eyes searching for something indefinable. Then Hooke had arrived, responding to the urgent message taken to him by a footman. The very opposite of Boyle, he had blustered and fumed, sworn and cursed before throwing himself into a chair by the empty fireplace.
'That abominable creature, that.. that… clyster-pipe,' he growled, reaching for his pouch of snuff.
Wickins, in spite of his agonies, was shocked. 'Sir, please, refrain. .'
'Why should I refrain?' Hooke snapped back. 'There is no better way to describe your esteemed Lucasian Professor. Indeed, 'tis perhaps too mild a description. And I might add that you, sir, are little better than he.'
At that moment Wickins could see precisely why Newton so loathed the man. Hooke's twisted, stunted frame was almost as ugly as his personality.
'Come now, gentlemen,' Boyle interjected. 'I think John would be entirely happy to concede before us here that he has made errors over the matter of his room-mate. But what is now essential is to forge solutions, not recriminations.'
'But it was I who warned you both,' Hooke insisted. Turning from Wickins to Boyle, he added. 'There is no limit to the man's ambition. I told you, sir, in London, after Wren's talk, that Newton had discerned something of value.'
'I do not even recall his presence there,' Boyle replied.
'He stood to the rear of the hall, close to the door. I glimpsed him from the stage. I was not mistaken. He was gone almost as Wren reached his conclusion.'
'And you claimed that you confronted Wren on the matter.'
'I did,' Hooke said almost as a whisper. 'But he would tell me nothing. The man has never liked me.'
Wickins failed to stifle a snort. 'Master,' Wickins said looking across to Boyle. 'I am devastated by my stupidity over this. But if I may be allowed a single expression of self-mitigation, it would be simply to say that even if we had held genuine suspicions about Newton's awareness of the ruby sphere, I would have found it almost impossible to believe that he had the knowledge to snatch the precious thing from under our very noses. Nor could I have brought myself to believe that he might know what to do with it if he had.'
'It was you, dullard, who was assigned the task of watching over the demon!' Hooke exclaimed.
'Gentlemen,' Boyle said, 'I have neither the energy nor the will to repeat myself this sorry morning. You must drop this malice, or else all may be lost. If you do not start to assume the mantle of intelligence and dignity, our friend Isaac Newton will have the better of us. And, make no mistake, he is a most formidable opponent.'
They fell silent for a moment. Wickins was suddenly aware of the sounds of the city coming through an opened window. It was almost nine o'clock and, although Oxford was virtually empty of students, the city remained alive with the noises of traders and street hawkers, of carts ambling along The High. Far off, the clatter of hammers and the crisp rush of saw against wood could be heard as builders worked on repairs to a college roof.
'What are your thoughts, Master?' Hooke refrained from looking in Wickins's direction. 'You know my feelings about Newton. He is piss-proud. Others know this to be true — some from bitter experience. But only a fool would deny his brilliance.'
'Your words are typically plain, Robert, but of course they are true. It pains me to say such a thing, but I fear we must assume the worst. Newton will be working with others. That is a necessity even he cannot avoid, however much he would naturally hate the fact. We must also assume that these men have been in this city a while and that, in spite of our failure to learn of such things, they have bloodied their hands. We all know what the ritual entails.' Boyle looked at each of the other men gravely.
'Gentlemen, through inaction we now face terrible danger. We must, each of us' — he fixed Hooke with a stare that would have made stronger men wither — 'do all that is within our power to thwart the Lucasian Professor tonight. Time is against us, my friends. We must begin our preparations immediately.'
Chapter 15
Detective Chief Inspector Monroe's office was as austere as the man himself. His desk filled a third of the room and it was empty except for a top-notch computer, a pair of phones and a tray of pens. There were no pictures on the walls and a single, almost dead spider plant dangled its leaves down the side of a filing cabinet. Two worn chairs were positioned at the corners of the desk facing Monroe's own low-backed PVC swivel chair. But it was none of these things that made the first impression: it was the smell, an unpleasant medley of fast-food odours. Evidently, Laura mused as she took the chair offered her by the DCI, Monroe was a man who thought proper lunches were a waste of time and resources.
A glass wall ran along one side of the room. It offered a view onto the open-plan area filled with workstations, its walls covered with charts. Monitors were flickering and computers were manned by uniformed policemen and plain-clothes officers who were drinking coffee, scrutinising screens, talking with
great intensity and leaning back in their chairs, feet on their desks. Others were surveying papers, running hands through their hair, scribbling on notepads, tapping on keyboards, talking and listening on the phone. It was 7.45 p.m. but it could have been any time of the day or night. The place was over-lit, noisy and abuzz with activity. Whatever the city, police stations, Laura knew from long experience, never slept.
It was almost with a start that she became aware that Monroe and Philip were staring at her.
'So, Ms Niven,' Monroe fixed her with his intense black eyes, 'you have some information that you think may help my investigation.' His voice betrayed only a hint of the scepticism and impatience she was sure he felt. Laura had met his type before — many times, in fact. Monroe was a stereotype, a Brit equivalent of the hardened career cops she had known during her time as a crime reporter. Guys like the detective chief inspector were impervious to most of the weapons she knew she could use to hold her own in male company, immune to the talent for persuasion and ability to get her own way that she could usually employ so effectively. At the same time, she was well aware that the Monroes of the world made the best cops. They were all men who appeared, on the surface at least, to have no home life, no emotional baggage, nothing to weaken or deflect them from the task in hand.
'Yes, I do,' she replied. 'And I think it's important.' 'Well, that is a relief.'
Glancing again at Philip to check his approval that she should tell the full story, Laura began to explain what she had discovered, about the search on almanac.com
and the expected conjunction. The DCI maintained an almost expressionless mask with merely an occasional frown to indicate that he was listening to her at all. When Laura had finished, he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. The sleeves of his jacket had ridden up and they looked so tight it seemed as though the fabric might split at any moment.
'Astrology.' The single word emerged rounded and pure Home Counties, the 'ol' like an echo in a hollowed-out oak. Monroe gazed up at the ceiling.
'I know what you're thinking. Sure, it does sound, well. . odd, I guess. .'
'You believe our killer is working to an agenda written in the stars, a crank who is murdering to a carefully designed plan.'
'Yes.'
'All because of these coincidences you've found?' Laura bristled.
'I know' Monroe raised a hand to silence her. 'I know, Ms Niven — you don't think they are coincidences.'
'Chief Inspector, I think these facts are more than coincidence,' Philip interjected. 'I don't have any faith in astrology, in case you're wondering. And I know that Laura is very sceptical too.'
'Look, Mr Bainbridge, Ms Niven. I understand what you're driving at. I realise that you don't need to be an astrology nut to decide that a killer is operating by the rules of the so-called art. But don't you think you're pinning rather too much on a set of facts that could be explained in any number of different ways?'
On the drive into Oxford, Philip had warned Laura that Monroe
was not an easy man to convince of anything. In fact, he had added, he wasn't an easy man, period.
'Like what?' Laura challenged.
'The murderer might be laying a false trail. He might be making us think he is working to some cranky agenda just to piss us off. Or, simplest of all, as I said, it could just be a coincidence.'
'I don't buy either of those,' Laura said impatiently. 'I don't buy the idea that someone could plan a pair of murders that fit the data we've unearthed, only then to do something totally different. And I buy even less the idea that this data is nothing more than a set of coincidences.'
Through years of experience, Monroe had learned how to read people and how to get them to read in him what he wanted them to read. He couldn't help admiring this American woman. She had guts, but that did nothing to stop him resisting her theories.
'I understand the physics, Ms Niven. I realise that the astronomical facts, as opposed to the astrological interpretation, are quite irrefutable. But how accurate is the computer programme?'
Laura was thrown for a moment.
Monroe drove home his sudden advantage. 'Your entire theory hinges on accurate timings, linking the murders with the planets entering. . what was it? Aries, yes?'
'I have no reason to believe the website is anything but accurate,' Laura said.
'And what of the times of the murders?'
'Rachel Southgate was murdered between 7 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. on 20 March,' Philip replied. 'Jessica Fullerton the next morning, some time between 2.30 and 4.30.'
'Yes, but you know Forensics can't pinpoint the moment of death with the accuracy you need. Astrology appears to be a far more precise science.' Monroe gave a humourless smile.
'That's a crock, and you know it, Chief Inspector,' Laura retorted. 'There's more than a coincidence in all this. Besides, for God's sake, two young people have died. Do you have any better theories?'
She knew she had made a mistake as soon as the words left her mouth. Philip flashed her an irritated glare.
Equinox Page 8