Split Code

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I didn’t bother dragging the crate to No. 2. I jumped for the number, my fingers tearing the pin, and pulled it out at the second attempt. Then to the third, which was on the other side of the room. For as I said, the numbers weren’t in order. That, after all, would have been too easy.

  There must have been about eighty racks altogether but I didn’t have to do them all, which is just as well, as my finger-tips were fringed to the middle joint. Rack No. 36 was the last with a ball- headed pin. All the rest were firmly screwed into place and neither pushed, pulled, nor put their tongues out at me. I looked around, at a loss. Then I looked again.

  I had joined all the dots and as in all the best games, I had been allotted my prize.

  Where there had been a smooth tiled wall, there was now a large irregular hole in the corridor. And within the hole, ridiculously, a red light appeared to be flashing.

  I went forward slowly. The light came from a neon sign wired into the opposite wall of a small doorless chamber about the size of a cage at the zoo. The ceiling, like the walls, was smoothly tiled, and the floor was of solid concrete. Standing in one corner was a large canvas sack, closed with string at the mouth. The sign read, quite simply: Welcome.

  I stepped cautiously into the hole. Nothing happened. I examined the walls and the ceiling. There was no aperture that I could see, apart from the hole I had entered by, which seemed to be pitted like Gruyére cheese along its jagged edges. I touched the canvas bag gingerly, and when nothing darted out and grabbed me by the wrist, I began to open it.

  It was full of large flat metal shapes, whose erratic profiles were fitted with cribbage pegs. They were coloured a uniform biscuit colour, and looked like nothing so much as the segments of some enormous jigsaw puzzle.

  They were the segments of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. And the pegs on the rims of the pieces were precisely the right size to fit into the sockets in the thickness of the entrance hole.

  I was being invited to fill in the hole. But whether to brick myself up on the outside or the inside was the question.

  It was the sign, flashing on and off, that decided me. If I was being made welcome, presumably it was as a guest, not an outsider. And I was not afraid of what Hugo might devise. If I hesitated at all, it was because this time I could see no visible outlet from the chamber; no heating, no air inlet. I might, given someone far more malevolently-minded than Hugo, be stepping into that airtight box Benedict’s kidnappers had threatened. But Hugo was not of that kind.

  All the same, this time I went and fetched Benedict, and lifting him through the hole, placed his cot on the floor just inside it. Without me, he couldn’t survive alone anywhere. Whatever was going to happen, it might as well happen to both of us.

  Then I tipped the contents of the bag on the floor and kneeling, began to sort out the jigsaw.

  There wasn’t a picture on the pieces or anywhere, so it wasn’t especially quick. More a case of painstaking effort, backed by years and years of practice with children. I found the bits that fitted into the side of the hole first, and then searched for and began finding their neighbours all round the edges. The hole began to grow smaller, like the stopped-down aperture of a camera. The light from outside grew less as well, and the flow of fresh air. Inside, all we had was the glare, on and off, of the sign; which flushed Benedict scarlet, and also my hands and arms, where they weren’t already sooty with charcoal.

  The last piece had no pegs on the outside, but like the keystone of an arch, remained locked in the middle by tension.

  So was I. We were immured. It remained to be seen for what purpose.

  Benedict slept. I stepped back, kicking the empty bag to one side and waited, my eyes searching the walls and the ceiling. The red light, the only light in the chamber, went out abruptly.

  Benedict snuffled. I said, ‘It’s all right, my Ben. Joanna switched off the light.’ I couldn’t see, in the dark, whether his eyes had opened. He gave another snuffle and then a whimper and I felt for his cot and kneeling, touched him and talked. After a bit, when he was used to it, I picked him up in his blanket and held him. I don’t know what I was saying. I was thinking, ‘I give this one minute more, and then I unlock the jigsaw.’

  I gave it one minute more, and I stretched out my hand and feeling my way, prised at the centre piece of the jigsaw.

  It wouldn’t come out.

  I tried the others, with difficulty, because Ben wanted his hands freed and once he got them freed, kept swiping me with either his head or his fists. The dark didn’t seem to frighten him.

  It frightened me, now. Somehow, the inserting of the last piece had locked the whole wall into position. So we couldn’t get out that way. Welcome, the sign had said. A sick joke. Welcome to a hole in the wall.

  But the sign had gone off. Accidentally, or on purpose? Chatting to Benedict I turned and with extreme caution, lifted my hand to where the neon lighting had been.

  It was still there, cooling now. I ran my fingers all over it, outlining the cursive lettering. A loose wire somewhere: that was all it needed to deposit us both, fried, on the floor of the cage.

  Cage. The word set off another train of thought. Why had I thought of it as a cage in the Zoo? There were other cages. Such as a lift.

  A lift wouldn’t need to have another door. A lift only needed a button. And the button could only be there, behind the sign, where blinded by light, I wouldn’t have seen it.

  It was. A small round shape, which depressed when I pressed it. There was a whining sound, and the pit of my stomach, already sunk to my knees, bored its way down to my ankles. I held the wall with one hand and Benedict with the other and waited.

  The whining stopped. There was a jolt; a rattle; an unholy crash, and then a blinding rush of light, air, colour, movement and sound.

  The jigsaw puzzle, collapsing headlong outwards, revealed an immense panelled hall full of animal heads, not unlike a set for The Prisoner of Zenda. And standing in the centre of the hall, staring at me, seven well known faces; three female and four blessedly male.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Johnson. ‘All this and the Nigger Minstrels as well.’

  Without Hugo, I don’t think any of them except Johnson would have believed anything I said, either about the underground rooms or about Grandpa Eisenkopp. At the sight of the baby, Rosamund’s handsome face went extremely red and she ran to me. When I put him into her arms she closed her hands round him like claws, crushing all the cream pintucked chiffon and making him give out a short scream of surprise and resentment. As I have said before, you have to put up with the fact that babies are never endearing on cue: quite the opposite.

  Ingmar said, ‘Is he all right?’ in a high voice and walking over, unwrapped him with one taloned hand. You couldn’t actually see the bruises on him for charcoal, but from the way he was roaring, there was no doubt he was in fair working order.

  Then Beverley said ‘Simon!’ and fainted. As Simon made no move towards anybody, Dr Gibbings fielded her. He carried her over to a sofa and then coming back, went to look at the baby.

  I said, ‘I don’t want to bore you, but while we’re all standing here, that crowd are getting away. Hugo, they’re in your workshop. I don’t suppose you can block up the door from the moat?’

  I have never seen Hugo Panadek look so animated. His tanned head glittered, his eyes glowed, his moustache travelled sideways in the most beatific of smiles. ‘Joanna!’ he said. ‘You know you are the first. . . the very first of all my stupid mistresses to find a way out of that bedroom?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m not your stupid mistress yet,’ I said tartly. I knew I looked like a freak. ‘Can you . . .?’

  ‘I have,’ said Hugo dreamily. ‘While we were talking. There is a switch here in the hall. It locks the moat exit at one end, and the door from the workshop at the other. Overriding the switch he has stolen. On the other hand ...’

  The sound of a shot rang out suddenly from outside.

  ‘On the other hand, some of them
may have got out already,’ Johnson said. ‘Where’s your gun room?’

  Hugo opened a drawer and taking out a revolver tossed it to Johnson. ‘Be my guest, I implore you. Hermann, you know where the rifles are. Booker-Readman, you shoot?’

  Outside, another gun went off. Simon didn’t answer. The tie on the flowered crepe-de-chine shirt was a little awry. He spoke to me suddenly. ‘He’s a cripple, old man Eisenkopp. A cripple back in New York. I think you’re having us on. Aren’t you?’

  Gibbings had come in, his arms full of guns and ammunition. ‘Don’t believe me,’ I said. I walked as I loaded. ‘Just wait until you see Comer’s face. He’s run through all the Eisenkopp money. They won’t have a cent.’

  ‘What!’ said Beverley. She sat up on her sofa, then stood up. ‘Are you talking about Gramps?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Hugo briefly. ‘Come on. Beverley, go get the butler. Tell him to phone for the militia.’

  ‘I’m afraid . . .’ said Donovan.

  We all looked at him, and he blushed.

  ‘Mrs Warr Beckenstaff, I’m sorry. But I’m afraid I called the police already. Before I came here. They photographed the ransom note and resealed it. I expect the firing is theirs. They were supposed to follow me here and then trail you.’

  ‘And if my grandson had died?’ said Ingmar Warr Beckenstaff. ‘He would have died anyway without Joanna,’ said Johnson shortly. ‘Hugo, where’s your bloody light switch, or do you turn that off with your nose?’

  A second later we were in the dark, and the doors were open, and those of us who could shoot were scurrying over the drawbridge to join in the slaughter.

  Later, we learned that only four of the so-called Army had escaped before the moat exit was sealed off. Among them was Elijah Eisenkopp. By the time we got out, one of the four had been caught, and sporadic firing from all round the grounds showed us roughly the track of the others.

  Hugo captured one of the rest, with a showy shot in the dark which dropped a man with a wound in the thigh who had just drawn a bead, as it turned out, on Johnson. Then Hugo just missed being shot up himself, before Donovan got hold of the captain in charge, and explained to him how we were helping him.

  The captain’s reaction, quite rightly, was to order us all off at once; but the only one to obey him was Simon. Then Hugo found another set of switches to throw and all the castle floodlighting came on, as well as the lights in the grounds; and suddenly there was Zorzi with two soldiers pinioning his arms and beyond him, a man running soft-footed across the drive to the trees where the ambulance glimmered.

  It could only be Elijah Eisenkopp. I saw Johnson lift his revolver and then lower it. He didn’t have the range. Gibbings shot and missed. All round us, men were trampling and cursing: another rifle barked. In return the running man ahead swung round and fired, recklessly into the dark.

  The last of his shots coincided with the crash of another rifle from the direction of the drawbridge.

  Good as Hugo’s last shot had been, this was better. This went sailing with the right pace, the right trajectory, straight for the running figure and dropped it, shot through the heart. And the marksman, her screech of triumph distorting her bitter, tear-begrimed face, was Beverley Eisenkopp.

  We all walked towards the dead man. Beside me, Hugo said, ‘I didn’t even know she could shoot,’ in an amazed voice. Johnson was on my other side. There was no opportunity for privacy. I said to him lightly, ‘The Folio is in his inner pocket.’

  Johnson’s hair had fallen over his glasses. He said shortly, ‘Tell Hugo. Hugo, your performing doorswitch is in Eisenkopp’s pocket.’

  ‘He can keep it,’ said Hugo. It was Gibbings who knelt and turned Grandpa’s body over, so that his toupee dropped aside from his sparse, greying hair. The captain listened to what he had to say and sent for a stretcher from the ambulance. Then he lost interest in that particular body, and was striding away when Johnson knelt and deftly removed the contents of Eisenkopp’s inside pocket. For a moment he looked at the manila envelope in his hand and then raised his eyebrows at me.

  I nodded. And watched, all the gears in my stomach freewheeling, as the Malted Milk Folio with its translation, was placed in turn inside his own jacket by the man whose job it was to protect it.

  I said, ‘Oh, well. Another ho-hum day drags to a close,’ and Johnson said reprovingly, ‘You should take up a hobby,’ and rising, led the way back to the castle, with the others around us.

  During the long session with the police that followed, there was no need to mention the Folio or my father. The crime, bad though it was, had been a simple one. The kidnapping and holding to ransom of an American child, in order to raise money for the self- styled Croatian Liberation Army.

  A simple crime with political overtones which the militia would work out for themselves, once the foreigners had departed, satisfied to see justice done.

  And the foreigners wished to depart. Donovan had already gone, his contacts with the police completed earlier. Ingmar, her painted skeletal face thrown into relief by the garish silk of her dress, had lost no time in issuing orders: for Rosamund’s clothes and her own to be packed; for the child’s case and mine to be brought from the underground bedroom. The car which brought them would take us to the airport. The first plane to come in would fly us to England.

  Simon said, ‘I can’t come, Mother. You must see. I have business in New York.’

  The ageless, painted eyes looked him up and down, from the golden head to the expensively shod feet. ‘You weren’t asked,’ said Mrs Warr Beckenstaff. ‘Indeed, I didn’t know you had the price of a ticket.’

  He stood in front of the fire in the library, uncaring, this time, of what the rest of us thought. ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘They’re still my wife and son. I might sue you for alienation.’

  ‘He’s not your son,’ Rosamund said. Beside her, Dr Gibbings made a movement of protest, and then halted. From somewhere near at hand I could hear the kind of crying Benedict released on the world when he wanted a bottle. Rosamund said, ‘Hugo. When I get my divorce, will you marry me?’

  His velvet suit was smeared with grass and with mud and he had circles, like the rest of us, under his large liquid eyes, but his smile was as enchanting as ever. He turned it on Rosamund, and then he turned it lovingly on her mother. It was Ingmar, in fact, to whom he gave his answer. ‘My profound regrets, my dear,’ he said. ‘You see before you a hiccough in your stock cycle. You must believe me. I would willingly father you a complete management board and a chairman, but I can’t really stomach your Rosamund.’ The velvet voice slipped a tone and the smile became even more puckish. ‘Why don’t you throw her out and adopt Joanna? She’d give you a grandchild a year and look after them. Look at her. She’s all on edge because you’ve let the brat cry again. Will you never learn, Rosamund darling?’

  I got out of it and went and found Benedict. Hugo’s cook heated his milk for me while I cleaned and dressed him, and then washed myself and got into my salt-stiffened gear from my suitcase. He had nearly finished his bottle when Rosamund came into the kitchen and said, ‘You probably don’t want to stay with us any more.’

  I said. ‘That isn’t really the point. He needs someone of his own to care about him. Even if I came, I shouldn’t stay for ever. No one would.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. After a pause she said, ‘I don’t really like babies.’

  I said, ‘Unfortunately, it’s the only way we know of growing adults. Why don’t you take a course in baby care? If you were going to stay in China you’d probably try and learn the language. And if your mother is going to will him all her money, you’re going to depend on him in your old age, aren’t you?’

  I forgot, until I saw her eyes widen, that that was something I had learned from the video screens. Then she said harshly, ‘How can a thing four months old command such devotion? Will you hate him too, when he is a man?’

  I said, ‘Who looked after you, when you were small?’
/>   ‘Fifty people,’ said Rosamund.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘There is your answer.’

  The police came soon after that to offer a seat in their car back to Dubrovnik. Beverley took it. I thought a breakdown was not far off, but she took a brittle, social farewell of the Booker-Readmans as if their relationship existed, unchanged, as it had been when she boarded the Glycera. As though there were no rift between herself and Comer. As though the family wealth were still untouched at her disposal; as though she had not shot and killed Comer’s father. She asked Simon, before she went, what he was going to do, and he stared at her and turned away without answering. I watched her walk down to the car.

  Ingmar said to me, ‘I hear you desire to leave Benedict.’

  He was in his carrycot again, in Rosamund’s grasp. He was awake, and annoyed about his hands being trapped. Finally he got a fist out and pushed it, blowing, into his mouth. As I looked at him, he saw my face and grinned, dribbling.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mrs Booker-Readman and I have had a talk about it.’

  ‘No doubt you have your reasons,’ Ingmar said. The chinchilla, pulled round her shoulders, gave her face a grey, deadened look.

  She swept her lashes round us all and then walked out to the car. They all got in, Ingmar, Dr Gibbings, Rosamund and the baby.

  I watched the carrycot vanish inside, swinging. Benedict wouldn’t like that. I had made up three more feeds and pushed them in the bag, with a scribbled note. I didn’t know if I was right. Right for Benedict, that was to say. I knew there was nothing right about it for me.

  Then the car door opened and Rosamund got out. It wasn’t to call me, or even miraculously to shove the now shrieking child in my arms. It was to face the drawbridge and say abruptly, ‘Simon?’

  We were standing in the doorway, Hugo, Johnson and I; and Simon had turned aside into the hall.

  I looked back. His head came up. On his face were all the expressions I recognized: of resentment and anger and calculation.

  Calculation won. He said, ‘Well. It seems I’m getting a lift. Thank you so much.’ And shaking hands, walked over the drawbridge.