Neither of us had anything to say. I put my arms around her and gave her an embarrassed hug, and she leaned her head for a moment on my shoulder. In the taxi back to college we talked the talk of strangers, about the American election results, new compact disk recordings, and the town’s worsening traffic problems.
We did not go to my rooms, but set out at once to walk on the near-deserted paths of the College Backs. The gloom of the previous afternoon had intensified. It was perfect weather for weltschmerz, cloudy and dark, with a thin drizzle falling. We stared at the crestfallen ducks on the Cam and the near-leafless oaks, while I waited for her to begin. I sensed that she was winding herself up to say something unpleasant. I tried to prepare myself for anything.
It came with a sigh, and a murmured, “He didn’t kill himself, you know. That’s what the report said, but it’s wrong. He was murdered.”
I was not prepared for anything. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
“It sounds insane,” she went on. “But I’m sure of it. You see, when Arthur was home in June, he did something that he’d never done before. He talked to me about his work. I didn’t understand half of it”—she smiled, a tremulous, tentative smile; I noticed that her eyes were slightly bloodshot from weeping—“you’d probably say not even a tenth of it. But I could tell that he was terrifically excited, and at the same time terribly worried and depressed.”
“But what was he doing? Wasn’t he working for that German company?” I was ashamed to admit it, but in my preoccupation with my own research I had not given a moment’s thought in four years to Arthur’s doings, or to ANF Gesellschaft.
“He was still there. He was in his office the morning of the day that he died. And what he was doing was terribly important.”
“You talked to them?”
“They talked to us. The chief man involved with Arthur’s work is called Otto Braun, and he flew over two days ago specially to talk to me and Roland. He said he wanted to be sure we would hear about Arthur’s death directly, rather than just being officially notified. Braun admitted that Arthur had done very important work for them.”
“But if that’s true, it makes no sense at all for anyone to think of killing him. They’d do all they could to keep him alive.”
“Not if he’d found something they were desperate to keep secret. They’re a commercial operation. Suppose that he found something hugely valuable? And suppose that he told them that it was too important for one company to own, and he was going to let everyone in on it.”
It sounded to me like a form of paranoia that I would never have expected in Marion Shaw. Arthur would certainly have been obliged to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the company he worked for, and there were many legal ways to assure his silence. In any case, to a hi-tech firm Arthur and people like him were the golden goose. Companies didn’t murder their most valuable employees.
We were walking slowly across the Bridge of Sighs, our footsteps echoing from the stony arch. Neither of us spoke until we had strolled all the way through the first three courts of St. Johns College, and turned right onto Trinity Street.
“I know you think I’m making all this up,” said Marion at last, “just because I’m so upset. You’re just humoring me. You’re so logical and clear-headed, Giles, you never let yourself go overboard about anything.”
There is a special hell for those who feel but cannot tell. I started to protest, half-heartedly.
“That’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to be polite to me. We’ve known each other too long. You don’t think I understand anything about science, and maybe I don’t. But you’ll admit that I know a fair bit about people. And I can tell you one thing, Otto Braun was keeping something from us. Something important.”
“How do you know?”
“I could read it in his eyes.”
That was an inarguable statement; but it was not persuasive. The drizzle was slowly turning into a persistent rain, and I steered us away from Kings Parade and towards a coffee shop. As we passed through the doorway she took my arm.
“Giles, do you remember Arthur’s notebooks?”
It was a rhetorical question. Anyone who knew Arthur knew his notebooks. Maintaining them was his closest approach to a religious ritual. He had started the first one when he was twelve years old. A combination of personal diary, scientific workbook, and clipping album, they recorded everything in his life that he believed to be significant.
“He still kept them when he went to Germany,” Marion continued. “He even mentioned them, the last time he was home, because he wanted me to send him the same sort of book that he always used, and he had trouble getting them there. I sent him a shipment in August. I asked Otto Braun to send them back to me, with Arthur’s personal things. He told me there were no notebooks. There were only the work journals that every employee of ANF was obliged to keep.”
I stared at her across the little table, with its red-and-white checkered cloth. At last, Marion was offering evidence for her case. I moved the salt and pepper shakers around on the table. Arthur may have changed in the past four years, but he couldn’t have changed that much. Habits were habits.
She leaned forward, and put her hands over mine. “I know. I said to Braun just what you’re thinking. Arthur always kept notebooks. They had to exist, and after his death they belonged to me. I wanted them back. He wriggled and sweated, and said there was nothing. But if I want to know what Arthur left, he said, I can get someone I trust who’ll understand Arthur’s work, and have them go over to Bonn. Otto Braun will let them see everything there is.”
She gazed at me with troubled gray eyes.
I picked up my coffee cup and took an unwanted sip. Some requests for help were simply too much. The next two weeks were going to be chaotic. I had a horrendous schedule, with three promised papers to complete, two London meetings to attend, half a dozen important seminars, and four out-of-town visitors. I had to explain to her somehow that there was no way for me to postpone any part of it.
But first I had to explain matters to someone else. I had been in love with Marion Shaw, I told myself, there was no use denying it. Hopelessly, and desperately, and mutely. She had been at one time my inamorata, my goddess, the central current of my being; but that was ten years ago. First love’s impassioned blindness had long since passed away in colder light.
I opened my mouth to say that I could not help.
Except that this was still my Maid Marion, and she needed me.
The next morning I was on my way to Bonn.
Otto Braun was a tall, heavily built man in his mid-thirties, with a fleshy face, a high forehead, and swept back dark hair. He had the imposing and slightly doltish look of a Wagnerian heldentenor—an appearance that I soon learned was totally deceptive. Otto Braun had the brains of a dozen Siegfried’s, and his command of idiomatic English was so good that his slight German accent seemed like an affectation.
“We made use of certain ancient principles in designing our research facility,” he said, as we zipped along the Autobahn in his Peugeot. “Don’t be misled by its appearance.”
He had insisted on meeting me at Wahn Airport, and driving me (at eighty-five miles an hour) to the company’s plant. I studied him, while to my relief he kept his eyes on the road ahead and the other traffic. I could not detect in him any of the shiftiness that Marion Shaw had described. What I did sense was a forced cheerfulness. Otto Braun was uneasy.
“The monasteries of northern Europe were designed to encourage deep meditation,” he went on. “Small noise-proof cells, hours of solitary confinement, speech only at certain times and places. Well, deep meditation is what we’re after. Of course, we’ve added a few modern comforts—heat, light, coffee, computers, and a decent cafeteria.” He smiled. “So don’t worry about your accommodation. Our guest quarters at the lab receive high ratings from visitors. You can see the place no
w, coming into view over on the left.”
I had been instructed not to judge by appearances. Otherwise, I would have taken the research facility of ANF Gesellschaft to be the largest concrete prison blockhouse I had ever seen. Windowless, and surrounded by smooth lawns that ended in a tall fence, it stood fifty feet high and several hundred long. All it needed were guard dogs and machine-gun towers.
Otto Braun drove us through the heavy, automatically opening gates and parked by a side entrance.
“No security?” I said.
He grinned, his first sign of genuine amusement. “Try getting out without the right credentials, Herr Doktor Professor Turnbull…”
We traversed a deserted entrance hall to a quiet, carpeted corridor, went up in a noiseless elevator, and walked along to an office about three meters square. It contained a computer, a terminal, a desk, two chairs, a blackboard, a filing cabinet, and a book-case.
“Notice anything unusual about this room?” he said.
I had, in the first second. “No telephone.”
“Very perceptive. The devil’s device. Do you know, in eleven years of operation, no one has ever complained about its absence? Every office, including my own, is the same size and shape and has the same equipment in it. We have conference rooms for the larger meetings. This was Dr. Shaw’s office and it is, in all essentials, exactly as he left it.”
I stared around me with increased interest. He gestured to one of the chairs, and didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Mrs. Shaw told me you were his best friend,” he said. It was midway between a question and a statement.
“I knew him since we were both teenagers,” I replied. And then, since that was not quite enough, “I was probably as close a friend as he had. But Arthur did not encourage close acquaintance.”
He nodded. “That makes perfect sense to me. Dr. Shaw was perhaps the most talented and valuable employee we have ever had. His work on quantized Hall effect devices was unique, and made many millions of marks for the company. We rewarded him well and esteemed his work highly. Yet he was not someone who was easy to know.” His eyes were dark and alert, half-hidden in that pudgy face. They focused on me with a higher intensity level. “And Mrs. Shaw. Do you know her well?”
“As well as I know anyone.”
“And you have a high regard for each other?”
“She has been like a mother to me.”
“Then did she confide in you her worry—that her son Arthur did not die by his own hand, and his death was in some way connected with our company?”
“Yes, she did.” My opinion of Otto Braun was changing. He had something to hide, as Marion had said, but he was less and less the likely villain. “Did she tell you that?”
“No. I was forced to infer it, from her questions about what he was doing for us. Hmph.” Braun rubbed at his jowls. “Herr Turnbull, I find myself in a most difficult situation. I want to be as honest with you as I can, just as I wanted to be honest with Mr. and Mrs. Shaw. But there were things I could not tell them. I am forced to ask again: is your concern for Mrs. Shaw sufficient that you are willing to withhold certain facts from her? Please understand, I am not suggesting any form of criminal behavior. I am concerned only to minimize sorrow.”
“I can’t answer that question unless I know what the facts are. But I think the world of Marion Shaw. I’ll do anything I can to make the loss of her son easier for her.”
“Very well.” He sighed. “I will begin with something that you could find out for yourself, from official sources. Mrs. Shaw thinks there was some sort of foul play in Arthur Shaw’s death. I assure you that he took his own life, and the proof of that is provided by the curious manner of his death. Do you know how he died?”
“Only that it was in his apartment.”
“It was. But he chose to leave this world in a way that I have never before encountered. Dr. Shaw removed from the lab a large plastic storage bag, big enough to hold a mattress. It is equipped with a zipper along the outside, and when that zipper is closed, such a bag is quite airtight.” He paused. Otto Braun was no machine. This explanation was giving him trouble. “Dr. Shaw took it to his apartment. At about six o’clock at night he turned the bag inside out and placed it on top of his bed. Then he changed to his pajamas, climbed into the bag, and zipped it from the inside. Sometime during that evening he died, of asphyxiation.” He looked at me unhappily. “I am no expert in locked room mysteries, Professor Turnbull, but the police made a thorough investigation. They are quite sure that no one could have closed that bag from the outside. Dr. Shaw took his own life, in a unique and perverse way.”
“I see why you didn’t want Mr. and Mrs. Shaw to know this. Let me assure you that they won’t learn it from me.” I felt nauseated. Now that I knew how Arthur had died, I would have rather remained ignorant.
He raised dark eyebrows. “But they do know, Professor Turnbull. Naturally, they insisted on seeing the coroner’s report on the manner of his death, and I was in no position to keep such information from them. Mrs. Shaw’s suspicion of me arose from a quite different incident. It came when she asked me to return Dr. Shaw’s journals to her.”
“And you refused?”
“Not exactly. I denied their existence. Maybe that was a mistake, but I do not pretend to be infallible. If you judge after examination that the books should be released to Dr. Shaw’s parents, I will permit it to happen.” Otto Braun stood up and went across to the gray metal file cabinet. He patted the side of it. “These contain Arthur Shaw’s complete journals. On the day of his death, he took them all and placed them in one of the red trash containers in the corridor, from which they would go to the shredder and incinerator. I should explain that at ANF we have many commercial secrets, and we are careful not to allow our competitors to benefit from our garbage. Dr. Shaw surely believed that his notebooks would be destroyed that night.”
He pulled open a file drawer, and I saw the familiar spiral twelve-by-sixteen ledgers that Arthur had favored since childhood.
“As you see, they were not burned or shredded,” Braun went on. “In the past we’ve had occasional accidents, in which valuable papers were placed by oversight into the red containers. So our cleaning staff—all trusted employees—are instructed to check with me if they see anything that looks like a mistake. An alert employee retrieved all these notebooks and brought them to my office, asking approval to destroy them.”
It seemed to me that Marion Shaw had been right on at least one thing. For if after examining Arthur’s ledgers, Otto Braun had not let them be destroyed, they must contain material of value to ANF.
I said this to him, and he shook his head. “The notebooks had to be kept, in case they were needed as evidence for the investigation of death by suicide. They were, in fact, one of the reasons why I am convinced that Dr. Shaw took his own life. Otherwise I would have burned them. Every piece of work that Dr. Shaw did relevant to ANF activities was separately recorded in our ANF work logs. His own notebooks…” He paused. “Beyond that, I should not go. You will draw your own conclusions.”
He moved away from the cabinet, and steered me with him towards the door. “It is six o’clock, Professor, and I must attend our weekly staff meeting. With your permission, I will show you to your room and then leave you. We can meet tomorrow morning. Let me warn you. You were his friend; be prepared for a shock.”
He would make no other comment as we walked to the well-furnished suite that had been prepared for me, other than to say again, as he was leaving, “It is better if you draw your own conclusions. Be ready for a disturbing evening.”
The next morning I was still studying Arthur’s notebooks.
It is astonishing how, even after five years, my mind reaches for that thought. When I relive my three days in Bonn I feel recollection rushing on, faster and faster, until I reach the point where Otto Braun left me alone in my room. And then
memory leaps out towards the next morning, trying to clear the dark chasm of that night.
I cannot permit that luxury now.
It took about three minutes to settle my things in the guest suite at the ANF laboratory. Then I went to the cafeteria, gulped down a sandwich and two cups of tea, and hurried back to Arthur’s office. The gray file cabinet held twenty-seven ledgers; many more than I expected, since Arthur normally filled only two or three a year.
In front of the ledgers was a heavy packet wrapped in white plastic. I opened that first, and almost laughed aloud at the incongruity of the contents, side-by-side with Arthur’s work records. He had enjoyed experimental science, but the idea of car or bicycle repair was totally repugnant to him. This packet held an array of screwdrivers, heavy steel wire, and needlenosed and broad-nosed pliers, all shiny and brand-new.
I replaced the gleaming tool kit and turned to the ledgers. If they were equally out of character…
It was tempting to begin with the records from the last few days of his life. I resisted that urge. One of the lessons that he had taught me in adolescence was an organized approach to problems, and now I could not afford to miss anything even marginally significant to his death. The ledgers were neatly numbered in red ink on the top right-hand corner of the stiff cover, twenty-two through forty-eight. It was about six-thirty in the evening when I picked up Volume Twenty-two and opened it to the first page.
That gave me my first surprise. I had expected to see only the notebooks for the four years that Arthur had been employed by ANF Gesellschaft. Instead, the date at the head of the first entry was early April, seven and a half years ago. This was a notebook from Arthur’s final undergraduate year at Cambridge. Why had he brought with him such old ledgers, rather than leaving them at his parents’ house?
The opening entry was unremarkable, and even familiar. At that time, as I well remembered, Arthur’s obsession had been quantized theories of gravity. He was still coming to grips with the problem, and his note said nothing profound. I skimmed it and read on. Successive entries were strictly chronological. Mixed in with mathematics, physics, and science references was everything else that had caught his fancy—scraps of quoted poetry (he was in a world-weary Housman phase), newspaper clippings, comments on the weather, lecture notes, cricket scores, and philosophical questions.
Dancing With Myself Page 12
