The Oxford Murders Read online

  I asked Seldom for the programme. The next piece was a recent one by a composer I’d never heard of, Salvatore Oronzo’s The Birth of Spring. I handed the programme back to Seldom and he glanced at it quickly.

  “Perhaps we’ll get the fireworks now,” he whispered.

  I followed his gaze up to the palace roofs. Among the statues, you could make out the moving shadows of the men preparing the fireworks. Everything became quiet, the lights over the orchestra went out and a single spotlight focused on an elderly, ghostly figure holding up a triangle. We heard a distant, hieratic tinkling, like the dripping of thawing ice. The orchestra reappeared, bathed in a light tinged with orange, possibly intended to represent the dawn. The triangle sounded in counterpoint to the flutes, gradually fading from the central motif. In turn, other instruments joined in, putting one in mind of flowers slowly opening out. The conductor’s baton suddenly set a frenzied rhythm for the brass, which sounded like wild horses galloping across the plains. Gradually all the sections of the orchestra submitted to the insane pace, until the conductor waved his baton in the percussionist’s direction. The spotlight again focused on him, as if a crescendo was to come from there. But, in the harsh white beam, we could see that something was terribly wrong.

  Still holding the triangle, the old man seemed to be gasping for air. He dropped the instrument, which struck a jarring note as it hit the ground, and staggered down from his platform. The spotlight followed him, as if the lighting technician couldn’t take his eyes off the horrifying scene. The percussionist held out his arm towards the conductor in a mute plea for help, then raised both hands to his throat, as if defending himself from an invisible attacker who was trying to strangle him. He fell to his knees and there was a chorus of muffled screams, most of the people in the front row rising from their seats. Members of the orchestra surrounded the percussionist and called desperately for a doctor. A man made his way along our row and on to the stage. I stood to let him pass and couldn’t help following him.

  Inspector Petersen was already with the musicians and I saw that Detective Sergeant Sacks too had jumped up on to the stage, gun in hand. The percussionist lay face down in a grotesque pose, his hand still gripping his throat, his face a bruised blue, like a marine animal that had stopped breathing. The man who had pushed past me was a doctor.

  He turned the body over, pressed two fingers to the neck to check the pulse and closed the eyes. Crouching beside him, Petersen discreetly showed him his ID card and spoke to him for a moment. He then made his way through the orchestra to the percussionist’s platform and began searching the floor. The triangle was lying by the steps and he picked it up with his handkerchief. I turned and saw Seldom in the crowd behind me.

  Petersen was motioning for Seldom to join him in one of the empty rows of seats. I pushed through the throng until I reached Seldom and followed him, but he seemed not to notice me. He said nothing and his expression was impossible to read. We made our way slowly back to our seats. Petersen had climbed down from the stage and was now approaching us from the opposite end of the row. Seldom stopped suddenly, frozen at the sight of something on his seat. Someone had torn a couple of phrases from the programme and formed a short message. I managed to read them before the inspector moved me aside. The first said: “The third of the series.” The second was the word ‘triangle’.

  Sixteen

  Inspector Petersen motioned peremptorily to Sacks. The detective inspector, who had been standing guard over the body, made his way towards us through the crowd, showing his police badge.

  “Don’t let anyone leave,” ordered Petersen. “I want the names of all the people here.” He took out his mobile phone and handed it to Sacks, together with a small notebook. “Contact the car park attendant and make sure he doesn’t let any cars out. And get a dozen officers here to take statements, another officer to watch the lake, and two more to intercept anyone who gets on to the road via the woods. I want you to do a head count of the audience and compare it with the number of tickets sold and seats occupied. Talk to the ushers and find out how many extra seats they set out. And I want another list that includes the palace staff, members of the orchestra and people organising the fireworks. One more thing,” he said as Sacks was about to leave. “What were your orders this evening, Detective Sergeant?”

  Petersen was staring at him severely and Sacks turned pale, like a student faced with a difficult question.

  “To watch anyone who came near Professor Seldom,” he answered.

  “In that case perhaps you can tell us who left this message on his seat.”

  Sacks looked at the two little pieces of paper and his face fell. He shook his head despondently.

  “I really thought someone was strangling that man, sir,” he said. “That’s what it looked like from where I was sitting: as if someone was trying to throttle him. I saw you take out your gun and I ran on to the stage to help him.”

  “But he didn’t die of strangulation, did he?” asked Seldom quietly.

  Petersen seemed to hesitate a moment before answering.

  “Apparently, it was spontaneous respiratory arrest. Dr Sanders, the doctor who went up on the stage, operated on him two years ago for pulmonary emphysema and gave him five or six months to live. It was a miracle he was still standing, his respiratory capacity was so reduced. The doctor’s initial diagnosis is that the man died of natural causes.”

  “Yes,” murmured Seldom, “natural causes. It’s remarkable how skilled he’s becoming, isn’t it? A natural death, of course, the logical extreme, the most perfect example of an imperceptible murder.”

  Petersen took out his glasses and again leaned over the pieces of paper.

  “You were right about the next symbol,” he said, looking up at Seldom. He still didn’t seem sure whether the professor was an ally or adversary. I could understand why: there was something in Seldom’s way of reasoning that was inaccessible to the inspector, and Petersen wasn’t used to having someone one step ahead of him in an investigation.

  “Yes, but as you can see, knowing it was no help.”

  “There are a few strange differences from the other messages: this one doesn’t have a time. And the strips of paper have ragged edges, as if they were torn out carelessly, and in a hurry, from the programme.”

  “Perhaps,” said Seldom, “that’s exactly what he wants us to think. Wasn’t the entire scene, with the spotlight and the climactic moment in the music, like a consummate magic act? In fact the death of the percussionist wasn’t the important thing; the real trick was leaving these two bits of paper under our very noses.”

  “But the man up there on the stage is dead. That’s not a trick,” said Petersen coldly.

  “Yes,” said Seldom, “that’s what’s so extraordinary: the reversal of the routine, the major effect at the service of the minor effect. We still don’t know what the figure is. We can draw it now, we can follow the outline, but we can’t see it, at least, not yet as he does.”

  “But if what you thought was right, showing him that we know the continuation of the series might be enough to stop him. Anyway, I think we’ve got to try-to send him a message right now.”

  “But we don’t know who he is,” said Seldom. “How can you get a message to him?”

  “I’ve been wondering about it since I received the little note with your explanation. I think I’ve got an idea. I’m hoping to ask the psychologist about it this evening and call you afterwards. If we want to get ahead of him and prevent the next murder, we’ve got no time to lose.”

  We heard an ambulance siren and saw that an Oxford Times van had also drawn up. The passenger door opened and a photographer appeared, followed by the gangling reporter who had interviewed me at Cunliffe Close. Inspector Petersen carefully picked up the two little strips of paper by their edges and put them in his pocket.

  “For the time being this is a natural death,” he said. “I don’t want that reporter to see me talking to you.” Petersen turned towards
the crowd gathered round the stage. “Right,” he said with a sigh, “I’ve got to count all these people.”

  “Do you really think he might still be here?” asked Seldom.

  “I think whether the head count is complete or somebody’s missing, we’ll know something more about him.”

  Petersen moved away a few steps and stopped to talk to the young woman who had been sitting beside him during the performance. The inspector motioned in our direction and the girl nodded. A moment later she headed resolutely towards us, with a friendly smile.

  “My father said they won’t be allowing any taxis or cars out for some time. But I’m heading back to Oxford now. I could drop you off somewhere.”

  We followed her to the car park and got into a car with a discreet police identity badge on the windscreen. As we left the parking area we saw the two officers Petersen had requested.

  “It’s the first time I’ve managed to get my father to a concert,” said the woman. “I thought it would take his mind off his work. Oh well, I suppose he won’t be coming to dinner now. My God, that man holding his throat…I still can’t believe it. Daddy thought someone was trying to choke him. He was about to fire at the stage but because the spotlight was on the man’s face he couldn’t see anything behind him. He asked me if he should fire.”

  “What did you see from where you were sitting?” I asked.

  “Nothing! It all happened so fast. And anyway, I was distracted, looking up at the palace. I knew the fireworks would be going off at the end of the movement so I was watching out for that. They always get me to organise the fireworks at these events. I suppose they think I know all about gunpowder because I’m a policeman’s daughter.”

  “How many people were up on the roof dealing with the fireworks?” asked Seldom.

  “Two. That’s all you need. There might have been one more person up there, at most-one of the palace security guards.”

  “From what I could see,” said Seldom, “the percussionist was slightly apart from the rest of the orchestra. He was the last person right at the back of the stage, up on a platform. He was the only member of the orchestra who could be attacked from behind without the others noticing. Someone from the audience or from the palace could have gone round to the back of the stage when the lights went down.”

  “But my father said the cause of death was respiratory arrest. Could something like that be induced externally?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Seldom, and then added very quietly: “I hope so.”

  What did he mean? I was about to ask him, but the inspector’s daughter had already drawn him into a conversation about horses, which then switched irretrievably and rather unexpectedly to a search for common Scottish ancestors. I turned his intriguing words over in my mind for a while, wondering if I’d missed a possible nuance in English of the expression ‘I hope so’. I assumed that this had simply been his way of saying that the hypothesis about an attack was the only reasonable one, and that for the sake of general good sense it was better to assume that this was what had happened. That if the man’s death had not been caused in some way, that if he really had died of natural causes, one could only think of something inconceivable: invisible men, Zen archers, supernatural influences. Strange how the mind automatically makes little alterations, adjustments: I convinced myself that that was what Seldom had meant and never asked him about it, either when we got out of the car or during any of our subsequent conversations. And yet I now realise that those quietly uttered words would have been the key, the short cut, into his deepest thoughts.

  All I can say in my defence is that I was intent on something else: I didn’t want to let Seldom escape that evening without him revealing the law of formation of the series. To my shame, even knowing the triangle symbol, I was as much in the dark as I had been at the start. Half-listening to the conversation in the front, I tried vainly to give some sense to the circle-fish-triangle sequence and imagine what the fourth symbol might be. I was determined to extract the answer from Seldom as soon as we got out of the car and was watching Petersen’s daughter’s smiles a little anxiously. Although the meaning of certain colloquial expressions escaped me, I realised that the conversation had become more personal and at one point she said again, in a forlorn tone intended to be alluring, that she would be having dinner alone that night. We took the Banbury Road into Oxford and the inspector’s daughter stopped the car at the start of Cunliffe Close.

  “This is all right here, isn’t it?” she asked, with a charming but firm smile.

  I got out of the car but before she drove off, on a sudden impulse I tapped at Seldom’s window.

  “You have to tell me,” I said in Spanish, quietly but urgently, “even if it’s only a clue, tell me something more about the solution to the series.”

  Seldom looked at me in surprise, but my plea had worked and he seemed to take pity on me.

  “What are we, you and I, what are we mathematicians?” he said, and smiled with strange melancholy, as if recovering a memory that he had thought lost. “We are, as a poet from your country said, ‘the ardent disciples of Pythagoras’.”

  Seventeen

  I stood on the pavement watching the car disappear into the darkness. In my pocket, together with my room key, I had a key to the side door of the Institute and the swipe card for getting into the library out of hours. I decided that it was too early to go to bed, so I walked to the Institute in the yellowish glow of the street lights. The streets were empty; the only signs of movement I saw were in Observatory Street, through the window of a tandoori restaurant: two waiters were placing chairs on tables and a woman in a sari was closing the curtains. St Giles too was deserted, but there were lights in a few windows at the Institute and a couple of cars in the car park. Some mathematicians worked only at night, and others had to come back to check on the running of a long program.

  I went upstairs to the library. The lights were on and, as I entered, I heard footsteps-someone was walking quietly among the bookshelves. I went to the History of Mathematics Section, and ran a finger along the titles. One book was jutting out, as if someone had looked at it recently and placed it back carelessly. The books were packed in tightly, so I had to pull it out with both hands. The illustration on the cover showed a pyramid consisting of ten points surrounded by fire. The title-The Pythagorean Brotherhood- was only just out of reach of the flames. From close up, the points were actually small shaven heads, as if they were monks seen from above. So perhaps, rather than being vaguely symbolic of the inflamed passions that geometry could arouse, the flames alluded specifically to the horrific fire which destroyed the sect.

  I carried the book to one of the tables and opened it under the lamp. I didn’t have to turn more than a couple of pages. There it was: It had been there all along, in all its overwhelming simplicity. The most ancient and elementary mathematical concepts, not yet quite divested of mysticism. The representation of numbers in the Pythagorean doctrine as the archetypal principles of divine powers. The circle was One, unity in all its perfection, the monad, the beginning of everything, enclosed and complete within its own line. Two was the symbol of multiplicity, of all opposition and duality, of bringing into being. It was formed by intersecting two circles, and the oval-like an almond-enclosed at its centre, was called ‘Vesica Piscis, the belly of the fish. Three, the triad, was the union of two extremes, the possibility of bringing order and harmony to differences. It was the spirit that embraced the mortal and immortal within a single whole.

  But also, One was the point, Two was the straight line joining two points, Three was the triangle and, at the same time, the plane. One, two, three: that was all, the series was simply the sequence of natural numbers. I turned the page to examine the symbol for Four. It was the tetraktys, the pyramid of ten points that was on the book’s cover, the emblem and sacred figure of the sect. The ten points were the sum of one, plus two, plus three, plus four. It represented matter and the four elements. The Pythagorea
ns believed that all of mathematics was encoded in the symbol. It was both three-dimensional space and the music of the celestial spheres, and it contained in rudimentary form the combinatorial numbers of chance and the numbers of the multiplication of life that Fibonacci rediscovered centuries later.

  I heard footsteps again, much closer. I looked up and to my surprise saw Podorov, my Russian room-mate, emerge from among the shelves. On seeing me at the table, he approached with an intrigued smile. It was strange how different he looked there, quite at home. I imagined he liked having the library to himself at night. He was holding a cigarette and he tapped it gently on the glass table top before lighting it.

  “Yes,” he said, “I come here at night so that I can smoke in peace.”

  He gave me a wry but friendly smile and flipped over the book’s cover to see the title. He was unshaven and his eyes were hard and shining.

  “Ah, The Pythagorean Brotherhood…This has something to do with the symbols you drew on the board in our office, doesn’t it? The circle, the fish…If I remember rightly, they’re the sect’s first symbolic numbers, aren’t they?” He thought for a moment and recited, as if showing off his memory: “The third one is the triangle, the fourth is the tetraktys.”

  I looked at the man, amazed. I realised that Podorov, who’d seen me studying the two symbols on the blackboard, hadn’t even considered that it might be anything other than a strange mathematical problem. Podorov, who obviously knew nothing about the murders, could, all along, have simply got up from his desk and drawn the continuation of the series on the board for me.