The Queen's Cipher (28 page)

“You look a bit messy sir, if I may say, but I’ve got a few more questions. That’s if you are up to it.”  Owen pre-empted the answer by reversing a chair and lowering himself onto it.

“Have you seen today’s newspapers?”

“No, I’ve been too busy being ill.”

“Well, you won’t have heard that another professor has been murdered.”

The inspector stared at him coldly before filling in the details. “As you may know, Professor Caspar Dawkins was poisoned nine days ago while out clubbing. The post-mortem reveals traces of potassium cyanide. The poor bugger didn’t stand a chance. You knew Professor Dawkins, didn’t you?”

Freddie could feel the colour draining from his face. He knew only too well where the finger of suspicion was pointing.

“No, I’ve never met the man but, as I’m sure you are aware, he was suing me for defamation.”

“And now you never will – know him, I mean. Look, I can see you’re distressed sir, but when you’ve had time to digest the news you’ll realise there is a silver lining. His libel action ends forthwith. You’re off the hook.”

Freddie wiped his streaming eyes with a piece of kitchen paper. The inspector’s accentuated vowels were grating on him.

“You think I did it, don’t you?”

“I think you had a motive. Professor Dawkins sues you for substantial damages and he’s killed in a Soho club. Just like Professor Cartwright’s untimely end, when you think about it. A bit of a coincidence, you would have to say.”

“Yet that’s all it is – a coincidence.”

DI Owen wriggled around on his kitchen seat. He was never still. Like a child he communicated his thoughts through a hyperactive body. “If you say so, sir, but I’m afraid I must ask you where you were at approximately ten o’clock on the evening of May 3rd.”

“I was sitting in the Standard restaurant having a curry.”

“Did you have any company?”

“Yes, I was with my girlfriend but she’s gone back to America since then. Seriously though, inspector, do I look like a murderer?”

Owen stared at him thoughtfully. He could see how wary the inspector was, leaning forward with his elbows on the chair, pretending to be casual. “No, I can’t say you do, sir, but that’s often the case with murderers. What I can’t ignore is the fact that you were directly involved with two people who have met violent deaths in recent weeks. There must be some connection here.”

“I’m sorry inspector, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Thank you, Dr Brett. Here’s my card. Give me a call if you think of anything else.”

Once he had gone, Freddie shuffled into the lounge to read the newspaper web sites. Before he could do so his computer made a pinging noise and a letter icon signified the arrival of a new email.

Dearest Freddie,

You asked me to marry you. You are the sweetest man I’ve ever met, and I have really enjoyed being with you, but after a lot of soul searching I have decided to turn you down. As you know, I am very ambitious and marrying you and moving to England would destroy everything I’ve worked for at Mather. There is something else too. Although I have deep feelings for you, I have never really come to terms with the intensity of your nature or with your almost obsessive interest in the Shakespeare authorship. What the cipher reveals is fascinating but inconclusive and not worth jeopardizing our careers over. You hold a different opinion which I respect, even admire, but this creates a gap in understanding between us which can only widen with the passage of time. Feel free to make whatever use you like of our discoveries. I relinquish any claim I may have to them. Forgive me for parting in this abrupt fashion. There is no good way to say goodbye. I could never have done it over the phone. So I’ve taken the coward’s way out. Try not to think too badly of me.

Love, Sam

There was a dull, throbbing pain in the front of his head. He wanted to turn back the clock. Only a few days ago she had been lying in his arms, talking about their future together. He had believed it was only a matter of time before she agreed to marry him. Now those hopes had been swept away. The shock hit him, followed by nausea. He sank to the floor and vomited on the shag pile carpet.

13 MAY 2014

The summons came in mid-afternoon. The Master’s secretary rang to inquire whether Dr Brett could spare a moment to see Sir Alan. That was code for ‘drop everything and come immediately’.

He was sitting in Sir Alan’s outer office waiting for Margaret Jenkins to get off the phone. She was a middle-aged lady in rimless glasses and a tailored business suit whose no-nonsense style was offset by her particular fondness for young men.

“I’d be careful if I were you, love,” she said, putting down the receiver. “He’s in a foul mood. The Trojan War isn’t going well.” To prove the point, she opened the connecting door so he could see Sir Alan Cropley pacing up and down his office, talking to himself and waving a piece of paper.

“‘Brave souls and many, to Hades hurled it down …’ Damn it, no!”  The sheet was scrunched up and drop kicked expertly into the wastepaper basket. In wrestling with Homer’s slow stepping spondees and dactylic hexameter the Master of Beaufort couldn’t find the flowing translation he was looking for.

Freddie cleared his throat. “You wanted to see me, Master.”

“Come in Brett,” said Sir Alan, slumping into his desk chair. “You find me in the Slough of Despond. My words should be as sharp as the arrow that pierced Achilles’ heel, not blunt and lifeless. The trick lies in combining grammatical form with verse structure and it’s not coming. Now what did I want to see you about?”

Freddie couldn’t answer that. He felt like a small boy waiting for the cane in the headmaster’s study.

“Take a pew anyway. Ah yes, I remember, library books and the dead professor. That’s what we need to talk about. You do realize it’s an offence to let somebody use your university library card?”

The question completely threw him. “Of course I do. There must be some mistake. I haven’t loaned my card to anyone. Look, I’ve got it here.”

He pulled his credit card holder out of his wallet expecting to see the familiar blue-stripe university card with which members of staff were issued. But it wasn’t there.

“I-I’m awfully sorry, Master, I seem to have mislaid it.”

“Well, somebody has your card and they’ve been borrowing books wholesale. OLIS threw this up.” At Oxford OLIS was God. The university computer system was held to be infallible.

“Your online borrowing record reveals you’ve got twenty books out at present, all of them on secret messaging and the works of Francis Bacon, which I find rather disturbing.”

Freddie trembled with rage. “Well, I haven’t got these books. I can promise you that. You’re welcome to search my flat if you don’t believe me.”

Sir Alan looked at him coldly. “Let me ask you something else. You know Professor Cartwright was working on a Channel Four documentary.”

“I read something to that effect.”

“Well, I’ve had a phone call from the producer and they’re pressing ahead with the show. They have persuaded Professor Cleaver to speak on Cartwright’s behalf and will claim you were the plagiarist, not Cartwright.
You
stole
his
work. More alarmingly, they possess further proof of literary theft on your part. I refused to discuss this over the phone. Do you know what they’re talking about?”

“No, I don’t,” Freddie replied heatedly, “and I resent the implication.”

The Master’s eyebrows shot up. “They are making a serious allegation – that you committed the very crime of which you accused your tutor.”

“Haven’t we been through this before?” Freddie’s anger was rising. “Where’s the new evidence?” 

“Here,” Sir Alan said, opening a drawer in his desk and handing Freddie a printout. “This arrived half an hour ago. It’s a copy of an email sent to you.”

Freddie hadn’t accessed his email. Someone called Fiona Middleton wanted to know why, in a published article, he had ‘borrowed’ from Duncan-Jones’s
Ungentle Shakespeare
and, in a magazine piece, from Claire Asquith’s
Shadowplay
. Ms Middleton admitted plagiarism wasn’t a cut and dry affair but added that on other occasions he had virtually ‘copied out’ someone else’s work.

“I sympathize Brett, I really do.” The Master appeared to be studying the highly polished surface of his wooden desk. “An academic researcher is like a sponge, soaking up information and forgetting where it came from. As for Shakespeare, we know he borrowed wholesale from Ovid.”

Freddie felt sure there was a ‘but’ coming. In climbing Oxford’s political ladder, Sir Alan had learned to be conservative. Certain core values were essential in the academic community and Beaufort had a policy of zero tolerance where plagiarism was concerned.

“But I’m afraid we will have to take this further. Repeated cribbing is a serious matter. It creates a perception of deliberate wrongdoing.”

“Can’t you see what’s going on here,” he yelled. “This is Cleaver’s doing. The bastard wants to destroy me. I bet he’s been onto you, poisoning the well, telling you what a good guy Cartwright was. You didn’t believe this when Cartwright was alive. Why do so now he’s dead.”

The Master moved uneasily in his chair. Milton Cleaver had rung him barely an hour ago, informing him ‘as a friend and colleague’ that Beaufort had made a serious mistake over Dr Brett.

“I am sorry, Brett,” Sir Alan said in a flat voice. “There will have to be a college disciplinary hearing. In the meanwhile, I would s-strongly advise you n-not to talk to the m-media.”

A sentence with three stutters in it had to be taken seriously.

Friday 16 May 2014 •
Cherwell

Brett Charged with Plagiarism

When it comes to high drama, Beaufort’s controversial research fellow Dr Freddie Brett is never far away. Hot on the heels of the Cartwright affair, when he accused his tutor of stealing his dissertation, comes the news that he too is being charged with literary theft. The biter bit? We don’t think so. We believe this is a smokescreen. Oxford’s Eng. Lit. Establishment hasn’t forgiven him for his outspoken attack on the late Professor Dawkins’ turgid Shakespeare biography and is out for blood. Word is Brett’s disciplinary tribunal will turn into a kangaroo court. What’s at stake here is not the young whippersnapper’s purple prose but the more serious issue of academic freedom. Remember, you heard it here first.

17 MAY 2014

Stratford-upon-Avon had an identity crisis. A town trying to retain the quaintness of Old England while wholeheartedly embracing commercialism was bound to suffer from a split personality. This built-in tension was all too apparent in its broad thoroughfares where black and white Tudor style frontages sat disapprovingly above the plate glass windows of coffee shops and car-phone warehouses. Gradually, the high street shops were erasing Stratford’s true character.

On a bright if blustery morning pedestrians had to fight their way along the street against a north-east wind that whipped through women’s dresses and sent pensioners tottering. Some of the surrounding architecture looked equally insecure; top heavy dwellings with overhanging jetties that seemed ready to tumble into the street below.

It was in one of these precariously balanced Grade Two listed buildings that Much Ado Tours had offices. As the owner of this travel firm, it had been Sebastian Christie’s decision to rent an upper floor. He could have acquired much cheaper premises but felt a business marketing Shakespearean package tours deserved a period setting.

More for the customer’s benefit than his own comfort, Sebastian was perched on a hard Tudor settle chair behind an oak desk with rope twist legs. On the other side of the desk a slightly built American woman in an anorak and baseball cap was haranguing him but his thoughts were elsewhere, focussed on the tiny particles of dust that hung in the air before settling on the glass partition that separated him from his secretary.

Back in the world of package tours he was being challenged. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?” demanded the harassed holiday agent.

“Of course I have,” Sebastian retorted, “and I can feel your pain. Your Seattle group did not enjoy their night at the theatre. That is the gist of your complaint, is it not? To which I would answer, Madison, that there is nothing wrong with the auditorium. The thrust stage creates a more intimate relationship with the actors, the upholstered seats are comfortable and the sightlines excellent.”

“No, they’re not. Not in the upper circle where there is no leg room and the security rail gets in the way. You have to bend forward to see even half the stage.”

“Then you should have paid more; asked us to book you seats in the circle.”

Madison shifted her line of attack. The Seattle ladies had found the theatre uncomfortably hot.

Sebastian sighed deeply. “In this country we don’t really do air conditioning. It’s seldom necessary. Although I am bound to say that the ventilation is much better in our new theatre.”

“That’s not …” She got no further. Sebastian silenced her with an imperious wave of the hand. “
Hamlet
is a very long play. That is how Shakespeare wrote it. If you thought it would prove too much for your ladies, who may prefer their culture in a shorter form, you should have chosen
The Comedy of Errors
. In these circumstances we cannot possibly entertain a refund.”

Having grown up in the Bronx, Madison was not easily bested. As Sebastian listened to her increasingly febrile reflections on overpriced theatre programmes and interval drinks he wondered whether he was really cut out for this kind of work. Instead of pandering to go-getting Americans, he should be a don at High Table, cracking nuts and old jokes, with Julia smiling at him as he passed the port. And as if by magic, there she was, Oxford’s most distinguished Shakespeare scholar, in his outer office, waiting to get a word with him.

“I am sorry, Madison, I really am, but something has come up. I hope the rest of your trip is a huge success and that you won’t allow this little hiccup to interfere with our business relationship.”