“The real danger for a criminal, Green claimed, was not the investigation of events backwards in time-that was no problem as long as the murder was planned carefully enough, making sure all trails were blurred or erased-but the traps that might be laid for him going forwards in time. The truth, he wrote in almost mathematical terms, is strictly unique; any deviation from the truth can always be refuted. At every interrogation, he would know what he had done, and in every alibi he devised there would inevitably be something false which, with sufficient patience, could always be exposed. He wasn’t satisfied with any of the options he analysed-getting someone else to kill her, pretending it was suicide or an accident, and so on. He concluded that he would have to provide the police with another suspect, one who was obvious and immediate and who meant the case was closed. The perfect crime, he wrote, wasn’t one that remained unsolved, but one where the wrong person was blamed.”
“Did he kill her in the end?”
“Oh no, she killed him. She found the diary one night and they had a terrible fight. She defended herself with a kitchen knife, stabbing and mortally wounding him. At least, that’s what she told the court. The jury, horrified by the contents of the diary and photographs of the bruises on her face, decided that she acted in self-defence and found her innocent. It’s because of her in fact that the murder is included in the book: many years after her death some students of graphology proved that the handwriting in the diary, while an almost perfect imitation, was not in fact Dr Green’s handwriting. And they discovered another fascinating fact: the man she married discreetly shortly afterwards was a copyist of illustrations and ancient works of art. I’d like to know which of them penned the diary: it’s a masterly imitation of the scientific style. They were incredibly daring, because the diary, which was read out during the trial, recounted and revealed line by line what they had done. Lying with the truth, with all one’s cards on the table, like a conjuring trick performed with bare hands. By the way, have you heard of an Argentinian magician called Rene Lavand? If you see his act you never forget it.”
I shook my head-the name wasn’t even vaguely familiar.
“No?” said Seldom, surprised. “You must see his show. I know he’s coming to Oxford soon, we could go together. Do you remember our conversation at Merton, about the aesthetics of reasoning in different disciplines? As I told you, the logic of criminal investigations was my first model. The second was magic. I’m glad you don’t know him,” he said, with childlike enthusiasm. “It’ll give me an excuse to see his show again.”
When we arrived at the Eagle and Child I could see Lorna inside. She was sitting with her back to us, her red hair loose and flowing. She was absent-mindedly turning over a beer mat. Seldom, who had automatically brought out his packet of tobacco, followed my gaze.
“Go on in,” he said. “Lorna doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Fifteen
Almost two weeks passed without my hearing anything more about the case. I also lost contact with Seldom, though I found out from a casual remark of Emily’s that he was in Cambridge, helping to organise a seminar on Number Theory. “Andrew Wiles thinks he can prove Fermat’s last conjecture,” Emily said, amused, as if talking about an incorrigible child, “and Arthur is one of the few people who’s taking it seriously.” This was the first time I’d heard Wiles’s name. I didn’t think any professional mathematicians were still working on Fermat’s last theorem. After three hundred years of struggle and especially since Kummer, mathematicians had decided that the theorem was impossible to solve. At any rate, it was beyond all known mathematical tools, and so difficult it would consume the life and career of anyone who took up the challenge. When I said some of this to Emily, she agreed, as if she too found it mystifying. “And yet,” she said, “Andrew was my student, and if there’s anyone in the world who can solve it, I’d put my money on him.”
During those weeks I accepted an invitation to a conference on Model Theory in Leeds but, instead of paying attention to the lectures, I found myself, during sessions, drawing circle and fish symbols in the margins of my notebook, like an invocation to the void. I’d tried to read between the lines of the newspaper articles that appeared in the days following Ernest Clarck’s death but, perhaps because Inspector Petersen had intervened, a possible link between the two murders was only mentioned in passing. The fish symbol was described but the newspapers seemed unaware of its significance and inclined to believe it was a kind of signature. I’d asked Lorna to write in great detail if there were any new developments but, instead of a report, I received the kind of letter I thought people no longer wrote, and which I certainly never would have expected from Lorna. Long and tender, it was a love letter.
At the seminar someone was discussing the Chinese Room Experiment. This is a thought experiment devised by the philosopher John Searle in 1980. A person who has no knowledge of Chinese sits in a room. A native Chinese speaker slips a page of questions, written in Chinese, under the door. The person inside the room answers in Chinese with the help of an instruction book written in English. To the Chinese speaker outside, it seems as if the person in the room understands and speaks Chinese. I reread Lorna’s words, which she seemed to have written in an unchecked fit of passion, reflecting that the burning question in translation was knowing-really knowing-what the other person meant when they slipped a page containing the terrible word under your door. In my reply I copied Qais ben-al-Mulawah’s plea in one of his poems to Layla:
Oh God, make the love between us equal that neither should go beyond the other
Make our loves identical like two sides of an equation.
I returned to Oxford on the day of the concert. Seldom had left a note in my pigeonhole at the Institute containing a little map with directions, the different ways of getting to Blenheim Palace, and a time for us to meet. In the afternoon, as I was changing, there was a knock at my door. It was Beth. For a moment I couldn’t say anything-all I could do was stare. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and matching long gloves. Her hair was tied back, showing off her elegant jawline, long, slender neck and bare shoulders. It was the first time I’d ever seen her wearing make-up and the transformation was spectacular. She smiled nervously as I stared at her.
“Michael and I wondered if you’d like us to give you a lift, if you don’t mind arriving a little early. We’re about to leave.”
I grabbed my thin cotton sweater and followed her out through the garden. I’d seen Michael only once before, from a distance, from my window. He was loading Beth’s cello on to the back seat. When he looked up and said hello, I saw a cheerful, ingenuous face with ruddy cheeks that made him look like a countryman or happy beer drinker. He was tall and heavily built, but there was something soft about his features that reminded me of Beth’s disparaging remark about him. His tailcoat was slightly crumpled and he couldn’t quite button it across his middle. Lank blond hair flopped over his forehead, and I noticed that he flicked it back constantly. I reflected maliciously that he would probably soon be bald.