TEN
BACK IN STEVENSON AGAIN
"Did anything strike you as odd?" said Lord Peter to Bunter, when they had returned to their quarters.
"Apart from the absence of shot glasses, my lord? I did wonder if Dr Black had had his lecture notes typed up by a secretary, since only the mathematical symbols were handwritten."
"Aha, so you noticed the lack of a typewriter," said Wimsey. "You know, under other circs this would be a frightfully jolly little investigation. All the evidence is in the absence - no suicide note, no fingerprints, no shot glasses, no typewriter, no private correspondence. What's your interpretation of the missing typewriter?"
"On general principles it seems plausible that it was removed because of fears that a document Dr Black produced on that typewriter could be traced back to it."
"It seems superficially plausible, I grant you, but it's really rather odd. Why wouldn't Black have signed anything he wrote on the typewriter? No, it must have been something written by the murderer, though why he felt the need to sit down and compose a damning document on his victim's typewriter is beyond my imagining. Fawsley's right, I fear. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all his sons away, including the old grey matter. Well, put it on the list of puzzles. Let's turn to the evidence of the fireplace. How long till you can get those ashes analysed?"
"It will take a while, my lord, since I must first purchase the necessary chemicals, but purely from their appearance I should say that they are composed largely of paper rather than wood."
"Splendid. That just leaves the question of whether Black did the burning, or whether it was the murderer. If it was the latter, he must be an ice-cool sort of bloke. Can you imagine sitting here, peacefully smoking a fag and sorting through the files, while all that uproar with ambulances and corpses and whatnot goes on around you? He'd have to have nerves of steel."
"It seems to me, my lord, if I may venture an opinion, that given Dr Black's proclivities, he had excellent reason not to wish his private correspondence to be read after his death by third parties."
"I know it's your job to stick up for suicide, Bunter, but do you have to do it with such tenacity?" protested Wimsey. "I concede that the burning may just have been a sensible precaution on Black's part, but what about that vodka, eh? Glasses for all different kinds of drinks, including whiskey, but no shot glasses. That suggests the vodka-imbibing murderer brought it with him."
"It did occur to me, my lord, that it might have been purchased for Mr Kuryakin rather than brought here by him."
"What?" It was not often that Lord Peter Wimsey was astonished, not at his advanced years, but it was true that if anyone could pull that feat off, it was Bunter. "Explain!" he demanded.
"Dr Black is known to have invited Mr Kuryakin for drinks, repeatedly, and with a persistency that required considerable inventiveness in producing excuses." Bunter looked at his master with an expression that invited him to draw an obvious conclusion. When Wimsey refused to oblige him, Bunter shifted uneasily in his seat. "You agreed, my lord, that Dr Black had good reason to wish to burn his personal correspondence," he said unhappily.
"Yes?" said Wimsey, still looking blank. Bunter very nearly groaned aloud.
"Mr Kuryakin is a very, er, athletic young man," he said, in an agony of embarrassment. "To a certain kind of mind, he might appear, ah, er... that is to say, an invitation to drinks might be a prelude to..."
"I say, Bunter," said Wimsey, thunderstruck, "You're not suggesting Kuryakin and Black..."
"No, my lord, quite the contrary," said Bunter, with unspeakable relief that he need hint no further. "There is no indication whatsoever that Mr Kuryakin returned the sentiment. Dr Black, on the other hand..."
"It's possible," said Wimsey, musingly. "But then there's his well-known dislike of all things Soviet."
"I would venture to suggest, my lord, that the passions of the heart are as irrational as the passions of the palate. Think of Mr Kuryakin as a bottle of pinot noir."
"You may have a point," said Wimsey thoughtfully. "In fact, I'm sure you do. But it still requires a huge speculative leap. Evidence, Bunter, where is the evidence?"
The question had been intended as pure rhetoric, a fact of which Bunter was well aware. Nonetheless, he produced in response an envelope from his packet. This he handed over to his employer with something that, in any other man, would have looked very like a flourish.
"I found this in Dr Black's fireplace, my lord."
Peter fell upon the contents like Lord Byron upon a chambermaid.
"A fag end! In fact, on close inspection, I should say the butt of a Turkish cigarette. Good God, so it wasn't the Poison Pen lurking underneath Kuryakin's window, it was Black. No, hang on a mo, Bunter, this won't wash. You're not going to tell me that a chap like Black, who was pathologically tidy-minded, habitually chucked his cigarette butts into the fireplace? There were no ashtrays in his set, you know."
"He may have preferred to avoid smoking in his rooms, my lord. He did, after all, carry matches around with him. It is possible that on the evening he died, the mental distress of burning his papers led him to break that habit. The footprints in the shrubbery, you will recall, were size eight and a half, and the shoes in Dr Black's cupboard are the equivalent continental size. This would explain both the vodka and the cigarette butts without requiring that we multiply the entities, my lord."
Peter frowned. "But if the connection between Black and Kuryakin is purely personal, and has nothing to do with the KGB, then why was Kuryakin trying to fillet Turing's files?"
"It is possible," said Bunter, who had given a great deal of thought to this very issue, "that there is no connection between Turing and Black. Perhaps Mr Kuryakin's research is not going well and he was seeking fresh inspiration."
"Plagiarism, eh? I don't deny that would account for the midnight raid, although that would require a coincidence, and my faith in coincidences is non-existent. Besides, I can't see what computing engines, or botany, have to do with quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, let us see if we can reconstruct the events surrounding Black's death on the assumption that Kuryakin was attempting to plagiarise Turing, and therefore that the KGB are not involved.
"Black, let us assume, develops a seething passion for our Soviet friend. Hate, after all, is very close to love. He argues politics with him, finds himself both attracted and repelled, makes overtures and is rebuffed. He lurks outside Kuryakin's window, smoking and suffering and straining for a glimpse of the object of his affection. In a cloud of despair he burns his papers and shoots himself. There is no murderer, and no espionage, and Christ's is cleared of any scandal. But where does that leave the anonymous letter? If Black was the Lurker, then how on earth did the Poison Pen get the idea that Kuryakin was involved in Black's death? No, don't tell me the letter was just a nasty attempt at mud-throwing, that means we're saying both the letter and the files aren't pieces of the puzzle, and that's more coincidence than I can stomach, however many improbable things I try to believe before breakfast. Besides, why was the pistol wiped clean of prints? And why was Black's typewriter swiped? It just doesn't hang together.
"Very well then, let's try a different tack. Black makes a pass at Kuryakin and is rejected. Black, however won't take no for an answer. He keeps pursuing Kuryakin and threatens to expose him as a KGB sleeper if he doesn't submit to his desires. In despair, Kuryakin borrows Milton's pistol from the SCR and shoots Black, wipes off his own prints, adds Black's, and then destroys his papers. That's rather wonderfully melodramatic, but it won't wash. Kuryakin was at Formal Hall when the shot was fired, and anyway, he couldn't have got into Black's set without a key. Unless Black gave him one. Gosh, there's a thought. Suppose Kuryakin was blackmailing Black, rather than the other way round? Suppose he didn't reject his advances, but accepted them with a view to blackmailing him into helping the Soviets get their hands on Turing's research? No, Bunter, I insist you let me incorporate the KGB into this, even if it does mean multiplying the entities. Under the threat of exposure, Black tells Kuryakin all he can about Turing's work, then, overcome with shame, he shoots himself. Kuryakin, having the key to Black's set, lets himself in and removes any evidence, including the suicide note and the typewriter on which it was written. Bingo! Now all he has to do is find the relevant papers in Turing's files, hence the midnight raids."
"And the anonymous letter, my lord?"
"Dammit, that's the one piece of the puzzle I can't fit in. Someone must have known what was going on, but in that case why frame the accusation in such general terms? Why not go straight to the police? I don't like it, Bunter. Something's missing. And there's something else bothering me too, something Fawsley said about Turing, but I'm so abominably out of practice I'm damned if I know what it is. All I know is that it's niggling at me, and I do so hate being niggled. It makes me all jumpy, as if the frightful fiend was treading close behind me, except no matter how often I turn my head, there's no-one there. We need to look at those files, even if all we find is empty air. There's something I know about them that doesn't jibe with what Fawsley said, and perhaps having a peek will jog my memory.
"Very good, my lord. Shall I enquire of Sir John Duffield's secretary if he will be available to accompany us this evening?"
Peter glanced at him sharply. "What's that?" he said.
"Sir John Duffield," repeated Bunter. "Professor Fawsley suggested that we draw on his expertise in interpreting the significance of Dr Turing's work, my lord."
"He did, didn't he?" said Peter slowly. "Now why is that part of the niggle? It's got something to do with cricket, I'm sure. What's the association? Googlies? Pimm's?" For a moment he stared into space, pursuing the elusive memory. Then his face changed. "Duffers!" he said. "Fawsley said Duffield ought to look at the files because he'd worked on Fibonacci numbers. But when I asked Duffers about Black's research he said number theory wasn't his field. Why would he lie to me about that?"
The question was clearly rhetorical and, like all good pieces of rhetoric, it was highly effective. Bunter felt a bolt of mental electricity galvanise his thought processes into action. Before he could speak, however, Wimsey was off again, the ideas coming almost faster than he could articulate them.
"Fawsley must be telling the truth. He said Duffield presented his research to the Royal Society, which means it's a matter of public record. We can check that at any time. And if this is the work that got him elected a Fellow of the Society then that gives us a motive straight off – it isn't Kuryakin who's plagiarising Turing, it's Duffield. Presumably that means he couldn't get elected off his own bat; I wonder if the quality of his work has taken a nosedive in recent years? It would be easy to check that too. But, I hear you ask, if Kuryakin wasn't trying to plagiarise them, what was he doing trying to pinch Turing's files?"
"It is possible that Mr Kuryakin had been told of Sir John's activities, and wished to ascertain whether the allegation of plagiarism was correct," suggested Bunter, this being exactly the action he would have taken under similar circumstances.
"Blast you, Bunter, that was supposed to be my big revelation," grumbled Peter. "I wish you'd just sit there and look thunderstruck with admiration, instead of having it all worked out before me. No, no need to apologise, Dr Watson, I shall let you play Holmes for once. Step forth into the limelight and tell me how you think Kuryakin got wind of Duffield's unspeakable activities."
"I believe Dr Black informed him, my lord. The young gentleman who captains the Cricket Club did say Dr Black had been very keen to speak to Mr Kuryakin in the week before his death."
"I don't know why they say two heads are better than one; I'm beginning to get the impression that ours share but a single brain between them. Black must have realised that Duffield had ripped off Turing when he read Duffield's Royal Society paper, and then he went and spilled the beans to Kuryakin."
"And why did he choose Mr Kuryakin to confide in, my lord?"
"Don't you know? I thought you were the one who spotted Black's, um, attachment. Fawsley did say Black was a bit of a coward. My guess is he was too frightened to confront Duffield directly, so he asked young Kuryakin to do it for him. I daresay he'd built him up a bit in his mind - all those long hours lurking outside his window, smoking and dreaming, you know. A young Apollo, golden-haired. A knight in shining armour. An athlete. A ruthless Red, frightened of nothing. About as different from poor Black as anyone could get, in fact. Just the chap to take on the forces of darkness and extract vengeance. It does make sense in a way. And then Duffers finds out and bang! Black is found dead and Kuryakin is carted off back to the Motherland, where he spends the next few years incarcerated in a Siberian work camp for blowing his assignment. At least, I imagine that was what was supposed to happen, when Duffield's old chum from the Foreign Office made a few behind-the-scenes enquiries and discovered there was a query on Kuryakin's file. A nice quiet repatriation to avoid a College scandal, and no questions asked. No wonder the boy didn't like the look of my face. Have I ever mentioned, Bunter, how much I dislike being used?"
Bunter, observing a familiar shadow passing across Lord Peter's face, hastened to ask a question.
"Are you implying that Sir John Duffield murdered Dr Black, my lord?"
"No," said Wimsey slowly. "I don't think he can have done, at least not directly. He was at Founder's Dinner when Black died, remember? But I'm not sure he didn't have a hand in it just the same. He knew Black was terrified of being exposed as a homosexual. He had access to the SCR, where the pistols were kept. And he had a key to the cellar where the fireworks were being stored for the May Ball, so he could lay his hands on gunpowder without any inconvenient visits to the chemist's. He may have offered the pistol to Black as a way out. You know, Bunter, I think it's time we had a chat with Mr Kuryakin. And I'd rather not do it on College premises – walls have ears, and all that. What do you suppose the odds are that our enterprising Ruskie will have another crack at Turing's files tonight?"