Professor Stapley smiled. ‘What do you know about Amundsen, the man who actually made it to the Pole first?’
‘Not much at all. Except that rather tense scene in the film when Scott receives the telegram: “Going South – Amundsen”. I rather agreed with Scott’s comrades that it was a bit ungentlemanly but to be honest I can’t remember why.’
‘Amundsen was originally heading for the North Pole. But just before he mounted his expedition news came through that an American, Robert Peary, had bagged it supposedly on April 6, 1909. But the news only got to the outside world after Scott had set off. So Amundsen turned South. But guess what? We now know that Peary had got nowhere near the Pole and was in fact a fraud. No one in his polar party except himself was trained in navigation and he couldn’t possibly have made it to the pole in the time he said.’
‘Oh well, there you go then. No doubt he went on to a lucrative second career in politics.’
Stapley smiled. ‘The point about the Peary scandal is that it is very easy to claim that you have been at the Pole but difficult to prove. Equally, it’s quite difficult to disprove unless in your account you commit some egregious error as Peary did about timings and distance.’
Jacot said, ‘Are you suggesting that Amundsen made it all up? After all Scott does arrive at the same spot some weeks later. There are photographs of Amundsen’s tent there and Scott picks up a letter for the King of Norway from Amundsen.’
‘No, not at all. By any account and any standard Amundsen was a fine man, a great man. But Verney and Pirbright were definitely onto something. The mysterious figures you recovered from Dr Pirbright’s body after her death. I have an explanation. It’s a bit like a crossword and a bit like deciphering an incomplete ancient text – Linear B stuff.’
Stapley unfolded a map of the Antarctic on his desk showing the routes taken by Amundsen and Scott to the Pole. By its side he put a print out of some figures from the Verney-Pirbright paper. ‘It all looks easy and obvious now but in fact until the advent of GPS navigating at high latitudes close to the poles was enormously difficult. Even now GPS is not always reliable – the satellites are too low on the horizon very often to be of much use. It is an additional aid rather than a reliable means. Sensible explorers still use sextant and compass and chronometer. Even then it’s not easy.
‘There have always been immense problems. Long periods of overcast skies make solar observations difficult to obtain. It’s daylight throughout the summer of course which makes it difficult to see the stars. Abnormal refraction may cause or introduce unknown errors into the sights. To top it all off the weather is often horrendous, even in summer, making it difficult to see the horizon. As if that were not enough the magnetic compass is not reliable in all parts of the Antarctic because of the proximity of the magnetic Pole in addition to all kinds of weird localized magnetic anomalies. And all this stuff relies on accurate time.
‘There was one additional problem for the Antarctic explorers which did not trouble those at the North Pole, bogus or otherwise. That was ascertaining height. The North Pole is at sea level, obviously give-or-take an iceberg or two. But the South Pole sits on top of a flat and windswept plateau at 9,306 feet. It’s one of the reasons that getting there was such a nightmare. The second half of the trek takes place at high altitude, or what would be considered high altitude skiing in Europe. It can be difficult to get a horizon.
‘The first set of figures on the paper are temperature readings. Some in Centigrade and some in Fahrenheit but without the degree signs. Their original source were the records made at the time by individuals on both Amundsen and Scott’s Polar parties. We believe them to be accurate. In other words we have no reason to suspect that anyone on either expedition would have wished to exaggerate or minimize them. We also believe that for the time the thermometers both expeditions used were reasonably accurate. They are probably accurate measurements on the days they were taken. But we cannot know for sure that they are accurate. We have no real way of checking them.’
Jacot sipped his whisky. ‘Why would anyone murder for temperature readings?’
‘Quite, but hang on, I haven’t finished. A lot of research has been done on some aspects of this recently – some of it here at the Scott-Wilson Institute. To cut a long story short, Amundsen and Scott essentially experienced different weather conditions. Amundsen manages to get to the Pole a month before Scott and, guess what, that month was milder than what Scott’s people had to endure and much better than what Scott had to put up with on his return journey. We know from the diaries that Captain Oates dies on probably on Friday March 16, 1912, during a terrible blizzard, and that the temperatures are much lower than they expected. It really was “The Coldest March”. Now the crux of this is that these different temperatures had different effects on the kit and instruments that the two expeditions were carrying. The cold is, of course, what does for Scott and his companions in the end.
‘What the Verney-Pirbright research was showing is that the temperature made the navigation instruments work in different ways – some were more accurate than others. In particular, that Scott’s instruments were in general reading true but Amundsen’s may not have been. It would appear that both sets of instruments had been specially machined and designed against the cold but because Amundsen experienced comparatively warmer weather his readings were less reliable. The kit worked best at the extremes. This is what Verney and Pirbright seem to have been onto.’
‘So what?’ Jacot checked himself. It was the question army officers were trained to ask from the moment they entered Sandhurst but it sounded wrong. ‘Sorry, Professor I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that.’
Stapley was amused. ‘Don’t worry, the military and the scientific minds work in similar grooves, I suspect. Do you know who I mean by Elizabeth Hawley?’
‘She’s ringing a bell somewhere – an American lady who settled in Kathmandu.’
‘Well done. There is a long section in the paper about her work verifying the ascents of Everest. Very interesting, crucial even, that her name appears in the file. She is an American journalist. She began at least as a journalist. But now she is the sole authority who certifies ascents in the High Himalaya. No certification from her and you didn’t get to the summit. Basically, she looks at the photos and interviews the people involved and then decides whether they made it, or not. Usually uncontroversial but there is one nasty case where a South Korean woman climber who swears blind she made it to the top of K2 I think it was, has had her attempt marked as disputed because the photographs didn’t add up quite. Verney and Pirbright reckoned they were onto something on similar lines with Amundsen and Scott.’
‘That’s why I asked you about your knowledge of Amundsen? Do you know how they took the measurements that told them they were at the Pole? It’s all in the chapter of Amundsen’s book – “At the Pole” and it’s much more Heath-Robinsonish than you might think.’
‘So what does it mean?’
‘Well, in essence, if the figures are right, and they are incomplete, it is extremely important. In fact it would be a startling discovery. A hundred years after the Pole was conquered…’
‘In plain English.’
‘It means in plain English that Amundsen missed the Pole. Scott’s famous phrase: “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority”, was wrong. Actually, Amundsen may not have had priority at all. And from the figures it wasn’t a small miss – maybe by up to thirty or so miles. He certainly got closer than Shackleton did in 1909. Most people accept that he was within a hundred miles of his goal when he had to turn back. But the really astonishing thing about Verney and Pirbright’s theory was that if you accept their reasoning Scott did make it.
‘Look at this map.’ Stapley turned to the map on his desk. ‘Amundsen and Scott are on different routes. Look. They are coming at the Pole from slightly different angles. If Amundsen’s instruments are off a little
– don’t worry about the maths for now – it would have been easy for them to miss by thirty miles. And you can see how Scott then inadvertently almost crosses the Pole itself on both the outward and return journeys.’
‘But not enough to murder for.’
‘No! It’s an extraordinary tale. No doubt about it. And if they were right it makes Scott’s expedition all the more tragic. They did, in a sense, win against Amundsen – or they might have won. If Scott had known that he got much closer to the Pole than Amundsen he and his party might have started the fatal return journey in better heart. One of the strongest men in the party, Petty Officer Evans, went to pieces quite quickly. Soon after they turn for home Scott begins to comment in his diary that Evans is run down and prone to frostbite. He dies on Saturday February 17. There is a distressing entry in Scott’s diary about the state he was in but no real clinical data as to why he died. Dr Wilson was unsure too. The scene is slightly glossed over in the 1947 film Scott of the Antarctic where James Robertson Justice played Evans. There has been lots of controversy since about why he died. Unfortunately it has played into the English obsession with class. Of the five men who formed Scott’s polar party four were officers or could be considered officers. Scott was in the Royal Navy. His faithful companion Wilson was a doctor of medicine. Bowers was an officer in the Royal Indian Marine, the embryonic Indian Navy. Captain Oates was famously a captain in a glamorous cavalry regiment, The Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. Only Evans was from the lower deck – the only non-commissioned officer. In some eyes this made him more likely to crack. His simple mind found it hard to occupy itself during the endless trudging over the Antarctic sastrugi.’
Jacot interrupted ‘I know it was a different world and I know the Guards regiments are hardly typical but in my experience the senior non-commissioned officers are the toughest of the lot. If we were like the Israeli Army, without obsessions about where you went to school or insisting that every officer has a degree then they would be in charge. I am not convinced.’
‘Quite, Colonel. I am without military experience but I tend to agree. The most convincing theory about poor old Evans is probably that disappointment at not being first to the Pole broke his heart. There is some evidence that he was planning to run a pub and that he had planned his whole future on being one of the first men to the South Pole. Tragic, indeed. It’s as if you thought you were going to be Armstrong and Aldrin and you ended up being Pete Conrad and Alan Bean.’
‘Who?’
‘Exactly. The third and fourth men on the moon four months later.’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely right. What about the rest of the data?’ asked Jacot.
‘It’s corrupted and in a different format. It seems to be about oil but I doubt it’s connected with the expedition. Could be though. Paraffin oil consumption rates and leakage of supplies at various depots was one of the things that did for poor old Scott and his companions. In fact there is a rather good scene in the film if you remember. Some of the text is in Spanish. Most odd.’
It was a bleak story, and suddenly Jacot felt immensely sad. England had been spared much of the madness of the 20th and other centuries. Yes, we had sent a generation to die in the trenches. Yes, we had been blitzed. Yes, we had lost an empire. But somehow we seemed to still be in control at home. Masters of our fate at least on these overcrowded and foggy islands. For how much longer?
His more immediate concern were two unsolved murders. He was up against something, a force or a group of people or perhaps even a single individual who were capable of acting with extreme ruthlessness and cruelty. It was beginning to dawn on him who they might be. He was frightened not because he was alone – he had the backing of Lady Nevinson at least, and her formidable will and network of connections. The French as well, he supposed. But the really frightening aspect was that he was fighting a force that appeared to be deeply embedded in nearly all aspects of official life.
His optimism soon returned. Not because he thought the task ahead was going to be easy but because it seemed probable, no possible only, that a great national disappointment was about to be reversed. If Scott had been first at the Pole after all? Well there was something to cheer the heart of every English schoolboy.
XXI
Chapel of St James’ College, Cambridge
Jacot was sitting two rows back from the high altar. He could hear the heavy shoes of the college porters as they carried Charlotte Pirbright’s coffin slowly down the aisle. At a wedding the congregation craned their necks to look round for a glimpse of the bride and her dress. At a funeral, particularly a young person’s funeral, the congregation more often stared straight ahead. All members of the college and university attending were wearing their gowns – black for the most part but interspersed with the dark blue of Trinity and Caius.
The chapel of St James’ College, Cambridge was a good place for a funeral – in theory at least. Although Jacot wondered what comfort Charlotte’s family and friends would derive from the astonishing architecture and the glorious music.
Jacot looked up. Three great Christian symbols recurred throughout the chapel. First, of course, the crucifix or variations of it as you would expect. Second, and more unusually at least in the British Isles, the Cross of St James. In heraldic terms “a cross flory fitchy” except with the lower part fashioned as the blade of a sword – to remind worshippers of the role played in the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors by the noble and military order of Santiago.
Some of the more “right-on” dons a few years back had objected to what they saw as symbols of ethnic cleansing. It was certainly one way to look at the re-Christianization of Spain thought Jacot. Like the maddest Victorians whom they so affected to despise, the trendy dons wanted to cover up the evidence of attitudes that they did not approve of. The Victorians with their unhealthy attitudes to sex wanted to paint out the naked breasts and the fleshy female bottoms that so disturbed them, and an attempt had been made in the late 19th century to ‘bowdlerise’ the chapel. But the High Church and worldly dons of St James’ at the time would have none of it and the glorious putti and generously endowed angels had survived unscathed. Modern prudishness was different. Its highly developed and over-refined sense of offence felt that severed Moorish heads carved in stone, even ones no longer colourfully painted as they would have been when the college was founded, might give offence to those who were not Christian. It had been a longer, more vicious and closer battle this time round. The still very High Church dons had seemed less confident in their cause but at the last minute had stood firm, not sadly in the service of history, accuracy or truth but because they regarded the group of younger dons mounting the campaign as not quite gentlemen. It wasn’t their atheism or political correctness but the way they dressed that offended their elder brethren.
The third symbol which occurred throughout the chapel in various sizes and forms was the scallop shell – the personal symbol of St James, son of Zebedee, disciple of Jesus Christ and the first Christian martyr. In wood on the roof of the chapel, in stone on the supporting columns, in wood once again on the pews and imprinted on the front of the prayer books. Always and everywhere in this chapel, gilded. It gave the impression that the chapel was filled with stars.
Charlotte Pirbright’s parents took their seats accompanied by her younger brother. They were not tearful yet, but their faces had the tell-tale tautness of grief barely under control. The overwhelming primal fear of every parent, losing a child, had happened to them. They looked in their late fifties, almost the prime of life in the modern world, but too late to really shake off tragedy and regain some sweetness in life, if indeed any parent in a similar situation ever did. There might be nights when their lost daughter would re-appear in their dreams. The family would be re-united briefly but waking would bring reality.
Jacot needed a drink. Actually another drink. He had knocked back a large slug of vodka in some fresh orange juice just before the funeral. Maybe he was on the edge. His hands hurt badly. B
y one of those seemingly malevolent tricks of fate alcohol lifted his spirits and soothed most of the aches and pains in his body but never his hands. Something in the burning process or the skin-grafting process had made them immune to the deadening effects of alcohol.
Jacot looked round the chapel. It was almost a partial re-run of the dinner the night before General Verney had died. The Americans were there and a sprinkling of other spooks. Most of the fellows of the college. Pretty much the entire staff of SWASI. A large group of friends and friends of the family. And most of the college servants, including Jones 74 who was acting as a pall bearer. Jacot could see him sitting off to the left of the altar looking very upset. He had clearly been fond of the young don.
They stood to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” which should make everyone feel a little better thought Jacot. He certainly enjoyed belting out the comforting words. But the music could not remove his overwhelming sense not of sadness, or grief or even sympathy, but of danger.
At the reception afterwards in the Fellows’ Combination Room where tea and sandwiches were served Jacot was introduced by the Master to Charlotte’s father. Jacot expressed his condolences and explained, in confidence, his role in the investigation. Charlotte’s father even bravely managed a brief smile ‘Yes the Colonel with the burned hands. She mentioned you.’ Jacot had an urgent rendezvous with Monica Zaden who would be arriving in Cambridge shortly, so he made his excuses and left. They had agreed to meet in a pizza restaurant near King’s.
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