by Philip Kerr
“I am very glad of it, Catherine,” said I and kissed her forehead. “But the only thing clear to me now is how much I do adore you.”
For a long while we sat in front of the fire, holding hands and saying very little. I would kiss her and she would kiss me back. And thinking us to be as intimate in all things as it was possible to be with another human being, I now made a terrible mistake.
A mistake that perhaps cost me my life’s happiness.
After we were seated again, and we did converse again, I think, again most businesslike, she did turn our conversation to the plays of Mister Otway: in particular The Soldier’s Fortune and its sequel, The Atheist, which, she and I being both Whigs ourselves, neither of us had liked particularly well. If I had left things there, it might have gone well enough between us. In time, we might even have married. But then I made some remark to the effect that I knew not how any man could remain a Christian who came into close contact with her uncle’s opinions. At which point Miss Barton seemed to form the impression that some great insult had been done to him, for she withdrew her hand from mine immediately, and the colour she had worn since our bundling quite drained away in an instant.
“Pray, sir,” she said coldly, “what do you mean by that remark?”
“Why, only what must be well known to you, Miss Barton. That Doctor Newton believes all received Christian tradition to be counterfeit and a fraud perpetrated by evil men who, for their own purposes, have wilfully corrupted the heritage of Jesus Christ.”
“Stop,” cried Miss Barton, rising suddenly to her feet, one of which she stamped like an impatient little pony. “Stop. Stop.”
Slowly I stood up and faced her, only now too late realising the truth of the matter, which was that for all her uncle’s heretical opinions—of which I could now perceive that she knew nothing—her clever discourse, her inquiring mind, and her manifest desire for me, Miss Barton herself retained the simple Christian faith of a village curate’s wife.
“How could you say such a wicked thing about my uncle?” she demanded, her eyes moistening suddenly.
I did not compound my offences by asserting that I had merely spoken the truth, for that would have added insult to the box on the ears my words had already given her; and instead I chose to compound them by explaining that it was possible that the unorthodox opinions I had imputed to Doctor Newton were mine and mine alone.
“Can it be that you believe such heinous and wicked things as I have heard you utter tonight?”
What is a lie? Nothing. Nothing but words. Could I have dissembled and preserved the bond that was between us? It is possible. Love, like a cuckolded husband, wishes to be deceived. I could have answered smoothly that I was a true Christian and that I thought my fever had returned, and she might have believed me. I might even have counterfeited a fainting attack and collapsed down upon the floor, as if I had been afflicted with the falling sickness. But instead I avoided her question altogether, which I’ll warrant was all the answer she needed.
“If I have offended you, Miss Barton, I am most heartily sorry and beg your pardon, most humbly.”
“You have offended yourself, Mister Ellis,” she said with a quite regal degree of hauteur. “Not just in my eyes, but in the eyes of Him who created you and in front of whom you will one day stand for judgement and be held to account for your blasphemy.” And then, shaking her head, she sighed loudly and added, “I have loved you, Mister Ellis. There is nothing I could not have done for you, sir. As you have already witnessed this evening. You have occupied my every waking thought these past few months. I would have loved you so much. Perhaps in time we might even have married. How else could I have permitted our earlier intimacies? But I could not love anyone who did not love Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This was sore indeed and hardly to be endured, for it was plain to me that she intended our relationship to be at an end; and my only hope of her being reconciled to me now lay with him who had no more understanding of love than Oliver Cromwell. But still I tried to justify myself, as when one who is condemned although not yet sentenced is asked if he has anything to say.
“Religion is full of rogues,” said I, “who pretend to be pious. All I can say, Miss Barton, is that my atheism is honest and hard-wrought. I would that it were different. I had rather believe all the fables and all the legends than that this universal frame is without a mind. And yet I do not. I cannot. I will not. Until I met your uncle I had no other apprehension but that to deny God is to destroy the mystery of the world. Yet now that I have perceived how it is possible to see the mystery of the world explained by a man such as he, I cannot believe other than that the Church is as empty as a fairy ring, or that the Bible is as baseless as the Koran.”
Miss Barton shook her head vigorously. “But where does the uniformity in all the outward shapes of birds, beasts and men come but from the counsel and contrivance of a divine author? How is it that the eyes of all creatures are made the same? Did blind chance know that there was light and how it might be refracted, and did it design the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it?”
“The accident of uniformity in creation only seems to be thus,” I argued. “As once gravity and the rainbow used to seem which, now explained, are no more accidents than prisms or telescopes. One day all these questions will be answered, but not by reason of a God. Your uncle’s hand has pointed out the way forward.”
“Do not say this,” said Miss Barton. “He does not believe this. For him, atheism is senseless and odious to mankind. He knows that there is a Being who made all things and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. Fear God, Mister Ellis. Fear him as once you loved me.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Man’s nobility is not born of fear, but of reason. If I must be kin to God by fear, then God is himself ignoble. And if your uncle does not understand this, it can only be because he does not wish to understand, for in all else he is the very spirit of understanding.
“But let us have no more high words, Miss Barton. I can see the insult I have offered you seems very grievous and shall say no more to vex you further.”
I bowed stiffly, and adding only that I would love her forever, to which she said nothing, I took my leave, already weary, to walk the several miles back to the Tower. And as I walked I had the smell of Miss Barton’s privy parts on my fingers to confirm that for a moment I had possessed her, only then to be rejected; and I was like one who had been shown the gates of Paradise only to have been denied entry. Which gave me no more appetite for my life than Judas, if such a man ever did exist. Indeed I might have hanged myself as Major Mornay was in the beginning thought to have done, but for the fear that now infected me of being nothing afterward.
It is no wonder that the early Christians could go to their martyrdoms with hymns on their lips when a place in Heaven seemed assured. But what was there for atheists, except oblivion? And without Miss Barton there was not even Paradise on earth.
It was two of the clock by the time I reached Tower Hill, and I could not have felt worse if I had been told I was to meet the hangman and his axe there in the morning. In the Lion Tower, one of the big cats moaned most pitiably, which sounded much like my own hopeless spirit, so that I pictured myself pacing up and down within the cage of my own disbelief. I passed through the gates at the Byward, with hardly a word for the sentry, Mister Grain, feeling as much sorrow for myself as any who had ever gone into that unhappy place. And when at last I reached my house, I went straightaway to bed but could not sleep all night.
So at six o’clock, with very little repose and rest, I arose and took a turn about the battlements to clear my head in a brisk wind that blew up the Thames from Deptford. London’s early-morning bustle contrasted sharply with my own preternatural calm: barges unloaded cargoes of wood and coal upon the Tower’s wharf at the same time that three-masted ships were setting sail for Chatham and beyond; while on the western side, in range of the dozen and a half
cannon that were pointed at the City, maids in wide straw hats were putting down large baskets of fruit, bread and vegetables upon the ruined walls of the Tower’s old bulwark to sell unto the people that were already walking or riding by. Behind me, the flag of Saint George fluttered and snapped loudly in the unrelenting breeze, like a ship’s sail; at seven o’clock the gun on the Brass Mount fired its own salute to another day; and columns of soldiers stiffly marched their clockwork way about the Inner Ward like toys at a fair. And all the while I felt as if the world was passing me by, like a mote in a sunbeam.
My heart full of trouble, I went to the Mint office at around eight o’clock and occupied myself with filing away witness statements in the other cases we still had to deal with; until Doctor Newton came and immediately began to talk about his night’s work with the cipher, for it appeared he had not gone to bed at all. But all the time he spoke, my mind was yet at disquiet that I could not be informed how I stood with Miss Barton and if the morning still found her much offended with me.
“I have a solution,” he said, with reference to the cipher. “Of sorts.”
Chapter Four
Barent Coenders van Helpen, Escalier des sages, 1689
AND THERE CAME IN ME FEAR WITH JOY, FOR I SAW A NEW LIGHT GREATER THAN THE LIGHT OF DAY.
(THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER)
was too upset about what had passed between myself and Miss Barton to be much interested in Newton’s solution to the cipher; and yet I feigned some attention while, with much animation, he spoke of it; so that if there was one thing I understood most clearly, it was that Miss Barton had not spoken to her uncle of our disagreement; and since she had avoided mentioning it, quickly I resolved to do the same, although it had occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that I ever knew in this world.
“My hypothesis upon this cipher has been pressed with many difficulties,” explained Newton. He sat by the table with his papers spread out, and Melchior the cat upon his lap. “As a blind man has no idea of colours, so had I no idea of the manner by whichthis cipher worked. I still do not. I confess the key eludes me even yet. But what I think I understand now is how the cipher is related to the murders that were done. That I did not perceive this earlier now seems to me so great an absurdity that I begin to wonder what this employment within the Mint has done to my mind. For I believe no man who has any competent faculty of thinking about philosophical matters should ever fall into such an error.
“Because you, my dear fellow, always desire simplicity in things, I’ll explain myself with what brevity I can. Three murders have been accompanied by written ciphers. I have worked upon these with such diligence, you would have thought I did this labour like Heracles. And yet in spite of all my efforts, for all my weapons of divine origin, I am left with only mathematical contradictions. And a contradiction in terminis argues nothing more than an impropriety of speech. In other words, the logic in the code is at fault because I suspect that the code has been sometimes used ignorantly, by someone who did not know how the cipher operated.
“It was you, my young friend, who put this in my mind. It was you who mentioned that one might think these murders were done by different people. And so I do believe, but not until last night.
“Now, the murder of George Macey was clear enough in the sense that there was no distinguishing feature save the awful brutality with which it was committed. There were no ciphers, nor any signs of hermetic significance.
“Then things started to become interesting. The murders of Mister Kennedy and Mister Mercer both showed us hermetic signs and written ciphers; and for a long time I also thought that Macey’s murder might even have presented some similar features that time and the actions of putrefaction prevented us from observing.
“But with the murder of Major Mornay, our picture changed once more. This time we found a written cipher, but nothing to indicate there was anything remotely hermetic about it. Now here is a curious thing, Ellis: only the second and third murders show any visible consistency; however, it is only the second and fourth murders in which may be demonstrated some mathematical consistency. Because with the third murder, that of Major Mercer, which gave us the shortest message of all—that which was chalked upon the wall of the Sally Port stairs—the cipher was used without any discernible logic, which leads me to suppose that the author of the third murder could not be the author of the fourth. And the cipher that was chalked upon the wall beside Mister Mercer’s body was wrong. Or, to put the case another way, that it was used ignorantly, as I have said.”
“What about the cipher that Mister Twistleton gave us?” I asked. “Was that used ignorantly too?”
“No, no,” said Newton. “That demonstrates the same logic as those other messages that were letters also. It is only the message chalked upon the stairs that is wrong. Therefore I have discounted it altogether.” He shook his head wearily. “It has cost me much time. But for that, I might have understood this whole case by now.”
Newton pounded the table in the Mint office with his fist, which made Melchior leap off his lap with fright. “If only I had another sample of this cipher,” he said, pounding the table again, which shook me out of my silence. “For I am certain I could solve it now.”
To his credit, Newton had not accused me of copying the cipher on the wall near Mercer’s body incorrectly, for which I was grateful; but nevertheless I was somewhat taken aback at what he seemed to be suggesting.
“But that is almost the same as saying you would wish a fifth murder to be done,” I said with some incredulity. “Are not four murders enough?” I shook my head. “Or do you intend to provoke that one, too?”
Newton stayed silent, avoiding my eyes, mistaking all that was welling there for disapproval of him.
“You are taking this too lightly, Doctor,” I said, admonishing him. “As if it were a mere mathematical exercise such as that problem Mister Bernoulli and Mister Leibniz challenged you with.”
“The brachistochrone?” Newton frowned: this was the name of the mathematical conundrum set by Leibniz and Bernoulli with which they hoped to defeat Newton. “I can assure you, Ellis, that was no mere exercise, as you describe it. When no man in all of Europe could provide a solution, I solved it.”
“But this is murder, Doctor. And yet it seems to me that you are treating it as an intellectual diversion.”
“It would take a considerable intellect to divert me,” insisted Newton, who coloured a little as he spoke.
“Nevertheless, you are diverted,” said I.
“What’s that?”
“What could be more diverting for a mathematician than a code? What could be more intriguing for one who is philosophically adept than those hermetic signs of alchemy that accompanied the murders of Mister Kennedy and Mister Mercer?”
“True,” admitted Newton. “If only I had more data, I tell you I could solve this problem overnight. Just as I did the brachistochrone.”
“Perhaps that is the point, Doctor,” said I. “Perhaps you are not meant to solve the code. Perhaps it means nothing at all. Or perhaps God does not mean you to unravel it.” I was merely using God’s name to discover if it still sounded convincing on my own tongue; but also to provoke him, for I was become increasingly ill-tempered in this conversation, which was a combination of a broken heart and no sleep.
Newton stood up suddenly, as if he had received the effect of a clyster.
“God does not mean me to unravel it,” he breathed excitedly. “Or someone else that does play at being God who is the architect of this design.” And snatching off his wig he walked about the office muttering to himself: “This will make the pot boil, Mister Ellis. This will make the pot boil.”
“What pot is that, sir?”
Newton tapped his forefinger against his temples. “Why,this pot, of course. Oh, what a fool I have been. Too much conceit, that’s what does it. That this should happen to me. Me. I should have been more mindful of Occam’s razor.”
“No more things should be pr
esumed to exist than are absolutely necessary,” I construed.
“Exactly so. It is the principle of William of Occam, our brilliant and rebellious countryman who wrote vigorously against the Pope, as well as much idle metaphysics. He was a great freethinker, Ellis, who helped to separate questions of reason from questions of faith, and thus laid the foundations for our modern scientific method. Upon his razorlike maxim we shall cut this case into exactly two halves. Fetch me some cider. My head has a sudden need for apples.”
I poured some cider for my master, which he drank as if he really did seek to stimulate his brain. Then, seating himself again, and taking up pen and paper, he wrote down what he called the bare bones of the case. After which he put more metaphorical ashes upon his head and declared himself properly penitent for his earlier lack of apprehension. And yet I thought that his avowed lack of earlier understanding could hardly compare with my own that still continued unabated; at least until he spoke again.
“This is the second time today I have found myself at fault,” he reported. “And I am right glad that only you are here to witness it, Ellis, and not that damned German or that awful dwarf, Hooke. They would be delighted to see me so easily tricked.”
“Tricked? How so?”
“Why, it’s just as you said yourself. I have been diverted, have I not? Cast your mind back a few months, Ellis. What case were we investigating when Mister Kennedy was killed?”
“Those golden guineas,” said I. “The ones that were done with the d’orure moulu process. A case that remains unsolved.”
“You see, you were quite right. I was diverted. As someone meant me to be diverted. Someone who knew me well, I think. For those hermetick clues were for my benefit. And I now believe that those other messages—the ones that were enciphered—were for someone else.”
“Then why did we first find the cipher when Mister Kennedy was murdered?” I asked. “Alongside other hermetic clues?”