The Sun Chemist

by Lionel Davidson

  There were, independently, good and practical reasons for this. Volume 15 was almost complete; just a bit of polishing to do and a few footnotes, scattered through the book, to be written. Some would have to be done at the P.R.O., anyway, and it would establish a useful pattern of daily activity. I would be tailed there and tailed back (if I was being tailed at all), and while I was away the flat was available for leisurely inspection – if it was thought worth inspecting.

  I thought it might be. For there were differences between Hopcroft’s disappearances and mine. Despite all precautions, he hadn’t enjoyed the same degree of secrecy. I had known where he was going and with what result, and so had Caroline – perhaps even Ettie, and others. One way or another, there had been a leak of information. This time there couldn’t be, because nobody had any to leak.

  Good reasons, all these, to continue not letting the left hand know what the right was doing.

  *

  Thursday morning brought Caroline and Ettie.

  ‘What happened to you yesterday?’ Caroline said.

  ‘Nonsenses.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She waited a moment to see if any amplification was coming her way, and when none did turned away.

  ‘I was at my parents’ last night,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Their phone was out of order.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Over a cup of coffee I assembled volume 15 into my executive case. We went silently to the P.R.O. together.

  *

  It was after three when we got back, and in response to a drumming noise from the bedroom, Caroline let Ettie out of the wardrobe. She was tied up inside with a gag in her mouth. She was quite eloquent when it was taken out. She had opened the door to two men with balaclava helmets over their faces. They had put her in the wardrobe right away, but she had heard another arrive later. It was probably this other who had gone so professionally through my study. Every paper in it had been turned over, and most left on the floor.

  When Ettie had recovered herself, she discovered that four pounds were missing from her purse. This was so improbable on a Thursday that she had a hard job keeping a straight face, but I gave her the four pounds, all the same, to the approval of the police who were there by then.

  It wasn’t much, to learn I’d been right. But it was a disconcerting thing to learn.

  *

  Caroline and I spent a dismal Easter weekend together. I didn’t know what to say to her. I wished she’d go away. She might have been at her parents’. The phone might have been out of order. But I’d been remembering other things. She’d been going with Hopcroft that day to Swiss Cottage; and she hadn’t gone. And she’d returned early from Willie’s when she knew I was returning early. There were good reasons for all these things, and she’d told me them. I still wished she’d go away.

  We’d had a row after returning from my parents. She had been curious, even before this, about the progress with Pickles and carotene, but I’d been able to put her off easily enough. Emboldened by her introduction to the family circle, she had become more curious, and I’d had to put her off more roughly – more roughly than I intended, which was a pity.

  But the whole thing was a pity. As I’d foreseen, she wasn’t much good at trifling, had been much better as a friend than as a lover. She was a bright girl, Caroline, but I wondered what else she was bright at.

  *

  We went to the P.R.O. again on Tuesday; and in the evening I ran over the plan for the following day. Kaplan was still unwell, so I knew I’d be doing it alone. I went over every detail in my mind. Caroline slept restlessly on beside me.

  *

  ‘What Hopcroft forgot,’ I said, skimming through volume 15 after breakfast, ‘was the lease on Featherstone Buildings.’

  ‘Do you need it?’

  ‘I do really. You couldn’t slip over to the lawyers this morning?’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I’ve got the address,’ I said.

  Caroline slipped off to Gray’s Inn, and I slipped off to the P.R.O. A few minutes afterward, I slipped off to the lavatory, accompanied by volume 15. The emergency exit, beyond the toilets, was unlocked. As I’d discovered last week, it led out to Clifford’s Inn. Clifford’s Inn led out to Fetter Lane, and Fetter Lane to Fleet Street.

  A man just alighting from a cab outside the Guardian, and I got in.

  ‘Airport,’ I said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miss Greatorex was glad I was alone, and she had already told me so when I had phoned her from the airport. Her hair wasn’t quite so wild and she’d actually got a touch of lipstick on. Her hands, which had been somewhat papery and rustling on our first meeting, were now much softer and rather tacky: she’d been refurbishing them with hand cream. She hung on to mine for a few moments. ‘You couldn’t know it, but you gave me such a turn when you first came in that door, Mr Druyanov. Shall I tell you why?’

  ‘Please.’

  Still retaining one of my hands, she turned and took an oval frame from a shelf and silently gave me it. Something very like a human greyhound looked out of it. A flat Army cap was jammed on one end, and some distance away, beyond an immensely long nose, thin lips were bared at the other. It was signed ‘Now and Ever – Jack.’

  ‘Mr Bottomley?’ I said reverently.

  ‘The spitting image.’ Her magnified eyes were moist, and it took a moment or two to realize that the likeness referred to was not between Jack and his photo, which was natural enough, but between Jack and me, which was ridiculous. I suddenly recalled Caroline’s description of me as saturnine. Something would have to be done about this, if necessary by surgery. I realized I was shaking my head in unconscious rebuttal, and altered the motion to a slow nod. Miss Greatroex’s head was corkscrewing in a similar manner; she was swallowing hard.

  ‘And now the most precious mementos that I have of him,’ she said. She had taken the photo and replaced it on the shelf. Next to it, I now saw, was an old green box file secured by a band of bloomer elastic. ‘Would you like to see them now?’ she said.

  My nod became a good deal more emphatic.

  ‘His poems.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do sit.’

  We both sat, on a settee, and she slipped off the elastic. A faint musty smell, compounded of camphor and lavender, wafted off Jack’s verse. A heavy spring held down a tremendous amount of it, written in brownish ink. The top one ran:

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

  ‘That’s actually one of Shakespeare’s,’ she said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘He wrote down things that he thought might – you know – apply to me. But he composed in that manner himself. His own lines were very, very Shakespearean, very similar.’

  So they were; the odd word changed here and there. His more personalized verse, though still in Shakespearean vein, had a homelier tramp. One began rhetorically:

  Shall I confess where lies my dearest fancy?

  ’Tis in the face belonging to our Nancy.

  As poem followed poem, I began to wonder, rather uneasily, what she was playing at. She had referred only to ‘the papers’ on the phone – and rather playfully, at that. Was she having me on? Kaplan had had his troubles with her in the matter of the lab books. Everyone had had troubles with her in this connection. Was this a bit of fancy foreplay to soften the final congé? I was wondering also what time the shops and the library closed, and how much the taxi was ticking up. I’d picked up the taxi at the airport, and we’d gone for a preliminary tour. We had visited the nearest library and the shopping center and the post office. All in order there.

  I snickered away respectfully at some gayer examples of Bottomley’s fancy, and glanced surreptitiously at my watch. She caught me at it.

  ‘We have a little time yet,’ she said gently. ‘I knew you’d want to see them, but of course they mustn’t leave my hands. I thought
we could have a peep before Matron came.’

  ‘Matron?’

  ‘You see,’ she said with concern, ‘I don’t want you to think I am being obstructive, Mr Druyanov – There, I’ve got it wrong again. Please say it once more.’

  ‘Druyanov,’ I said in anguish. –

  ‘Lovely. I’ve always thought it a lovely language, Russian. I used to have a record once – oh, years ago – of “The Volga Boatmen.” They only had to say “Put that record on and watch her cry,” and I did. It tugged at my heart. You’ll know it, I expect, Mr Druyanov?’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, and almost felt a snatch of the desperate song rise to my lips. ‘In what sense obstructive?’ I said. ·

  ‘I want Matron to witness that I don’t mean to mislead you. She’ll be here at four.’

  Bottomley’s verse, increasingly lugubrious, hardly sped the time; but sharp on four, Matron appeared, and was introduced. She was a rather jolly small woman. ‘Well, love. What would you like me to do?’

  ‘You know all about it, Dolly, but I have to say it again while you’re both here. Mr Hinchliffe said so.’

  The lawyer had apparently told her that though she was entitled to hang on to the books as a right of gift, she was not entitled to authorize publication. This lay in the power of the copyright holders, and she was not one of them.

  I said, ‘Oh, but I’m sure –’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m not the one being obstructive. It’s them, you see. They wouldn’t want all their theories changed, would they?’

  ‘No, of course not. But –’

  ‘They wouldn’t let you print Mr Bottomley’s amendments. And from my point of view, it’s a trust, a sacred trust.’

  It took a minute or two to see what she was getting at. Her point was that if the work was published at all, equal credit had to be given to Bottomley. It couldn’t be published, and no part of it could be published, unless all Bottomley’s amendments were also published.

  It was because of this unconventional condition that Hinchliffe had suggested that she come to a separate agreement with me. As she turned back from getting the document, I saw that held in her other hand was a small brown paper parcel, sealed with red wax, and my heart almost missed a beat. She’d got them, then. I was getting them! With all the talk of obstruction and advance apologies for misleading, I’d already given them up. I’d seen myself lurking about London for weeks, no longer safe even at the P.R.O.

  ‘Before you sign, Mr Druyanov,’ Miss Greatorex said seriously, ‘I think you had better look at the books and see the full extent of the amendments.’

  I could scarcely wait to get my hands on them. I broke the seal and opened the parcel. Two exercise books in buff covers with the printed black shield of Owens College. The first one started unequivocally:

  10 September 1904

  C. Weizmann & S. Pickles.

  It is hoped to study the analogous reaction of succinic anhydride and of aliphatic Grignard compounds.

  Squarish writing, evidently Pickles’s. As page followed numbered page, each day’s work methodically dated, I spotted bits of Weizmann’s curly Russian, and in the same pen poly-sided figures and equations. There was much crossing out. Another hand, large and loopy, conveyed Bottomley’s amendments, fortunately in pencil. There were plenty of them. He agreed, disagreed, spotted flaws, quoted other authorities, with all the confidence of a second-year student and ten or eleven years’ hindsight.

  Pages and pages of gibberish:

  … the condensation of pthalic anhydride & naphthylmagnesium bromide leading to ortho-(1-naphthyl)-benzoic acid (CII) cyclized to 1, 2-benzanthraquinone (CIII).

  In the middle of a page, suddenly, standing on its own, a bald paragraph:

  Yesterday’s reaction showed conversion of a greatly increased order, believed due to contamination of retort IV by C40 H56, which will be investigated.

  There was an asterisk here and a figure 17. Page 17 bore another asterisk on a paragraph mid-page.

  The contamination of retort IV noted earlier has proved to be of small quantities of C40 H56 (carotene) and further investigations will be conducted.

  There was a penciled note, not Bottomley’s, which said: Book 2, p. 6.

  I turned to Book 2, p. 6. There it was:

  27 September 1904

  It is hoped to investigate the effects of C40 H56 with Grignard reagents.

  Pages and pages of the investigation followed.

  Without knowing it, I’d been holding my breath, and it came out then as a rather soft and lingering sigh. Journey’s end, appropriately enough in a retirement home. I remembered that it had started with a view of the grave, myself seated in Weizmann’s room, racking my brains over the highly opaque directions to the goal: Cromer-le-Poyth, Le-Roy-Parma, Coone Firth, people in Bradford, the old Greenyard’s.

  ‘We have produced,’ he had written, ‘a most elegant reaction … which will provide a ketonic product of extreme concentration. He has the lab books himself.’

  Well, I had them now. And Rehovot had the sweet potato and the bacterium. Full House. Jackpot.

  ‘Yes, in both books,’ Miss Greatorex said, watching me flip rapidly there and back as I sighed between the pair of them. ‘Very extensive amendments, as you can see. I am not a scientist, of course, but I remember him saying, as clearly as yesterday, that they made tremendous differences to the theories.’

  She was rather tense, and the magnified eyes bore a pleading look. The moment of truth was approaching for something she’d had to take on trust for the greater part of her life. Bottomley’s beautiful poetry was one thing; his scientific genius quite another. She had delivered it into my hands.

  It suddenly struck me that the dab of lipstick and the hand cream were not entirely for my benefit. Something of a sacramental nature was taking place, another evidence of phantom Jack being exhibited and bidden farewell. Who else, apart from the surviving sister and the man who kept the numbers of the war graves, knew that he had so much as existed? She was certainly very wrought up. The earlier corkscrewing motion of her face and the devotional session with the poems fell into place.

  ‘I hope I am doing the right thing,’ she said.

  ‘I’m certain you are, Miss Greatorex.’

  ‘Dr Pickles did think highly of him.’

  ‘His favorite pupil.’

  ‘And you do agree with the conditions? Read them before signing. I did explain fairly, Dolly, didn’t I?’

  Dolly told her how fair she’d been while I read through the nonsense; and a couple of minutes later we’d all signed. Just a few minutes afterward I was back in the taxi, and so were the lab books. Everything had to go like clockwork now.

  2

  First stop, Marks & Spencer: hand grip. The hand grip needed to be bulky and well filled, which was a good idea anyway. I hadn’t been able to bring anything with me from home. Pajamas, underwear, slacks, shirt, razor, toothbrush. From the stationer’s I bought a couple of large Manila envelopes. Then we went to the library.

  I was so long inside that the driver came and peered suspiciously to see what the devil I was up to. I was feeding change into the copying machine. There were thirty-four filled pages in one notebook, twenty-two in the other. The copy sheet size could cope with three but not quite four pages at a time. This was far too much of a fiddle, and I was copying a double page on each sheet. The sheets went into one envelope and the lab books into the other, which I gummed and addressed, ‘Meyer W. Weisgal, Esq., The Chancellor, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.’

  ‘Post office,’ I said, emerging.

  ‘Got your stamps?’ He was looking at the bulky handful.

  ‘It needs registering.’

  ‘Registering? You’ll stand there forever. You said you hadn’t booked your flight back.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get one if you hang about there. The business chaps queue up early for a standby to London. You’ll have to take the train.’<
br />
  Oh, no, I wouldn’t. No trains in the plan. The plan called for my sleeping near London airport tonight, with minimum movement away from it.

  ‘Is there a post office at the airport?’ I said.

  ‘Not for registering. Not tonight.’

  The morning, then; at London airport.

  ‘All right. Skip the post office,’ I said.

  But uneasiness gnawed as we moved. A change of plan; a small one, true, and it could go off as easily from London as from Manchester. All the same, the plan had said Manchester. And I had two copies now. I hadn’t planned to spend the night with even one.

  *

  By a quarter to nine I was back in London, and in the international building.

  I passed the baggage office, followed the arrows to the toilets, and locked myself in a lavatory where some transferal operations took place. The copy sheets were going with me to Israel, and would be spending the night in the baggage office with my grip. This left the envelope with the original lab books: they couldn’t go in the grip. They had to be posted off before I reclaimed the grip in the morning. The essence of the thing was speed, as shown in the case of Olga. The things had to be separated. I didn’t intend walking about the airport with both in the morning.

  I cursed silently and put the lab books in the executive case, together with volume 15, added toothbrush, razor, and pajamas, and locked it. I hung grimly on to it as I returned to the baggage office. I deposited the grip, saw it labeled and lodged in anonymity among dozens of identical Marks & Spencer grips, and carefully pocketed the ticket. Stage 1 over.

  Flight reservations next. El-Al fully booked, as I’d foreseen, but other free and willing. I slotted in to an 11 a.m. flight, was told to report by nine-thirty, and that was stage 2 over. All that remained was to put myself away for the night.

  There was a mob at the hotel desk. The overworked clerks were explaining that a lot of Easter traffic was still about. Ten minutes of waiting, the lab books smoldering in my case, revealed that the Easter traffic was infesting every bed around London airport; people were being booked into central London. I heard a couple of them booked into the Russell Hotel in Russell Square, and another couple into the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, and turned away.