The Twisted Heart

by Rebecca Gowers

  ‘Ah, mobiles,’ said Joe, ‘I hate them. But, yes. Remind me when we’re sitting down. We can exchange numbers then.’

  Apart from her pressing need to eat, Kit felt that she could easily have spent the rest of her life pacing along like this with Joe. Even as they walked, the mist grew denser around them. They began to speak inconsequentially about poker, dancing, Virginia creepers, the news; until Kit broke the spell by saying, ‘You know that thing where your brain is quietly fizzing away on its own and it makes a connection you completely hadn’t thought of, and it’s so exciting it makes you want to laugh, or you find that you do laugh, or at least exclaim something or something?’

  ‘You realise how bad a person would feel if you said that to them, and they couldn’t say “yes”?’ Joe replied. ‘But, I’m happy to say—yes. That’s what my balcony’s for, in good weather.’

  ‘Well it often seems to happen to me when I’m in libraries, so I’m forced to keep quiet,’ said Kit, ‘for some irritating reason; because if you do laugh in the Bodleian, they make you feel like a criminal, speaking from experience. I’d like library notices to say, “No talking, eating or mobile phones, but don’t worry, laughing is allowed”. What is number theory, by the way?’ she asked. ‘Bear in mind I know nothing. I’ve decided to ask you for information in small increments.’

  ‘I see.’ Joe glanced briefly upwards. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s the study of solutions of equations where the answers have to be whole numbers. For example, it’s easy to find a solution for x squared plus y squared equals z squared, but once you use integers, it becomes much, much more interesting.’

  In her nervousness, Kit was wholly unable to concentrate on this answer; was instead busy thinking, oh God, I’m such a goof, am I absolutely sure what an integer is? She passed smoothly on to the next thing. ‘I know you’re going to hate me asking this,’ she said, ‘but is there any practical application for what you do?’

  ‘Hard to predict,’ he replied. ‘And it would be disingenuous to pretend that that’s why anyone does my kind of maths. It is true that a solution within number theory can have knock-on effects in other areas of maths. I’m playing with the idea—’ but whatever he had been about to say, it was lost as they got caught up in town, lights, traffic, people, shops, commerce.

  After a couple of attempts, he secured them a table in an Italian place. It was hot in there, or seemed so after the streets. They idled through the menu and made similar orders.

  ‘I want to explain something,’ said Joe, while they waited for their starters. ‘You realise, I think, that Humpty and I have an arrangement to meet at The Forfeit on Friday nights, yes? That’s the reason I keep being sort of semi-double-booked. Because, it was because Humpty was supposed to be meeting me at the dance club the evening I first met you, that he picked a place that happened on a Friday, so it would be when we were supposed to connect up anyway. That was the point. And then he didn’t make it. And now it’s you and me trying to dance on Fridays, when we get over there, and it’s a bit of a muddle.’

  ‘I understand. It’s okay. Semi-double isn’t what you mean, for a mathematician, by the way,’ she said. ‘But yes, I get it.’

  It came to her that she should say something about meeting some other night, but she was paralysed by the attendant thought that perhaps he had a specific night for the quality-goods blonde. Perhaps she was Saturdays, for example. This hadn’t occurred to Kit before, but it occurred to her now. Perhaps Kit was Fridays, and the blonde was Saturdays and Tuesdays. How awful.

  As the waiter brought them their soup, Joe flicked his napkin out of its folds one-handed. ‘So, you’ve been doing a shitload of work?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Kit immediately began to eat. ‘Oh great,’ she said, shoving her unwelcome thoughts aside. ‘Delicious.’

  ‘I imagine it’s pretty simple to make,’ said Joe as he tasted it.

  ‘You think?’ Kit felt so restored by a little nourishment, that she began to devour her broth in a manner to rival Oliver Twist himself.

  ‘Do I take it you had a brainwave in the Bodleian?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not this week, sadly; although, I have had a funny thought. Probably daft, but I—Joe, what do you think? There are so many details in common between Nancy’s case and Eliza Grimwood’s, coincidence, I’m sure, but I can’t get rid of this mad idea that whoever killed Eliza was partly inspired by reading Dickens.’

  ‘That’s a bold leap,’ said Joe, his expression more sceptical even than he sounded.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What coincidences are you talking about, specifically? I’ve finished it, by the way.’

  ‘Oliver Twist? You have? Brilliant. Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘I did, yes. I see what you say about the plot not being well planned out, but it carries you along anyway. There’s things about it that—’ He broke off and looked at Kit appraisingly, then said, ‘Tell you what, let’s go through it. So you don’t bias the argument, I’ll list what strike me as the key details of Nancy’s murder, and you persuade me that Eliza’s killer used them as a primer.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ he said, with a grin. ‘You think you can do it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  Joe pulled a funny face, then began. ‘Well, obviously they’re both prostitutes, killed in their bedrooms by, or possibly by, their pimps, and they are both found dead on the floor in a sea of blood, right? Agreed? Beyond that, Sikes first bashes Nancy in the face with a pistol, then clubs her to death on her knees, and then, if I remember right, gratuitously clubs her some more.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kit, still hungrily downing her soup. ‘Well, Eliza, I grant you, was, by contrast, killed with a long-bladed knife, probably a switch knife. But she was evidently also killed on her knees, and also fell over backwards, and also continued to be attacked after death—I think worse than Nancy, as it happens. By the way, I say also backwards, because Nancy’s corpse lands so that she’s staring up at the ceiling, right? So she must be on her back? And Eliza was on her back, so it’s the identical position.’

  ‘Different weapon, though.’

  ‘I know. I said.’

  ‘And Sikes burns the club to ashes in the fire.’

  ‘Yes, but this is what I’m thinking. Eliza’s killer successfully made his weapon disappear, clearly realising it was necessary and important.’

  ‘Any murderer would figure that out, surely? No sensible killer is going to walk around with a bloody knife in his pocket.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kit, ‘fine, but how about the fact that Sikes throws a rug over Nancy’s body, then plucks it off again? Remember that? Eliza’s body was also semi-covered in bedclothes that had been taken from the bed; and then Hubbard, at the inquest, described how he pulled back the quilt when he discovered the body, hardly knowing what it was, he said, and saw underneath Eliza’s blood-drenched face and drastically cut throat.’

  ‘Really?’ Joe appeared to add this detail to a list in his head.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re cheating. I’m meant to decide which features are important.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Okay, go on then.’

  ‘What do you say about Sikes cutting the blood stains out of his garments and then burning the scraps in the fire?’

  ‘Yes, but again, one of the troubling points about Eliza’s killer was the question of, how did he get away with the fact that in the aftermath of the crime he must have been covered in blood?’ Kit clattered the spoon down into her bowl. In her haste, she had already entirely emptied it. Rich pasta would follow; a good thought, a satisfying thought.

  ‘That, too, though,’ said Joe, ‘in the circumstances, any killer would have to deal with, no?’

  ‘Oh fine,’ said Kit, ‘fine. What about the dog?’

  ‘The dog? Sikes’s dog? Bull’s-eye?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was a nice touch, I thought. You can have that. Okay, so Bull’s-eye walks rou
nd the room and gets blood all over his feet. What of it?’

  ‘Hear me out, okay?’ Kit bent down into her bag and extracted her notebook. ‘Witnesses testified that a dog barked in Eliza’s house the night she died, I think about three in the morning, can’t remember, but it came up at the inquest as hinting at time of death. Listen to this letter to The Times a few days later. This codger wrote in that, sure, okay, the dog may have barked, but all the same, it must have known the killer. Because,’ Kit put her finger under the lines she wanted, ‘quote, “Was the dog bloody? No. How come such a faithful animal was remiss in its duty? Ought we not to have expected to see the animal likewise murdered?”’

  ‘Forgive me, but what conclusion are you drawing from all this?’ said Joe. ‘Even if your old codger thought up his question having read about Bull’s-eye’s scarlet footprints, that doesn’t tell you anything about any influence on Eliza’s murderer.’

  ‘I’m not convincing you this is at all strange?’

  He shook his head, then said, ‘I’ll tell you the main reason why I’m not convinced. Forget all the discrepancies. Really, it’s what the two stories have in common that I think rules out any influence.’ Joe had been eating much more slowly than Kit, and only now finished his soup. ‘The main thing that makes Eliza’s case sound similar to Nancy’s, if you ask me, is that both murders are savage to the point of total derangement. But for that very reason, I can’t believe Eliza’s killer was half-following a pattern out of a book. I don’t know, but to me that just doesn’t ring true.’

  ‘Sorry to have wasted your time,’ said Kit, scowling.

  ‘No need to apologise.’

  ‘All right, I won’t.’ She knew she was being childish but felt too cross to contain herself.

  ‘Look at this another way,’ said Joe, trying to appease her, ‘at least it leaves Dickens in the clear, if he didn’t spark off a gruesome, real-life murder.’

  ‘Yes, but you see, that’s another thing,’ said Kit. ‘He was still interested in Eliza years afterwards, including he asked Charles Field about the case in 1850, over a decade later. I was wondering if that mightn’t have been because he felt guilty about it, kind of deal.’

  The waiter brought them their pasta. ‘Oh, superb, brilliant,’ said Kit. ‘God, I’m going to be stuffed at the end of this.’

  ‘I notice you’re always very polite about food,’ said Joe.

  ‘Polite? You’re being polite calling it polite,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Appreciative, yes.’ A small alarm in her mind was telling her that the evening was about to go wrong; yet, not knowing how or why, she carried right on, eating and talking by turns. ‘I can’t be bothered to do things for myself in the kitchen, so I’m always impressed by anyone who likes to cook. My mother’s all prefab meals these days. I think it’s a big relief to her to have given up. If she cooks an actual cooked dish it leaves this thick smell in our house like fried soap. I find I have bordering on this sentimental thing about it, when I smell that smell after being away.’

  ‘Kit, I didn’t mean to destroy your theory,’ said Joe.

  ‘You’ll think I’m crazy,’ she replied, ‘but even if you have, for now, I can’t promise you I’ve given up on it. Orson says—’ she regretted mentioning him again, but too late, ‘he says, “I like that you get so enthused”.’

  ‘Yes, well, I agree with him,’ said Joe.

  ‘Orson is having trouble with the nature of his being or something,’ said Kit.

  ‘I’m with him on that, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I, too,’ said Joe, ‘am having trouble with the nature of my being or something.’

  ‘Really?’ said Kit. ‘Is it infectious? I ran away when he tried to talk to me about it this morning. I felt bad afterwards, but I was just so bored. I don’t mean I’m bored about you,’ she added awkwardly.

  Joe, who had seemed disenchanted with his food from the start, put his fork down now and held his hand up in surrender.

  ‘But I mean, that was why he asked me to this party thingamabob,’ said Kit, wanting to explain, ‘so he could pour out his woes over a glass. Though why he thinks I can say anything useful, I have no idea. He doesn’t think he truly exists here in Oxford. Joe, I still feel, the Eliza case, I can’t explain, but there’s—I feel there’s something I’m not getting that it would be interesting to understand.’

  ‘Well, I’d be very sorry if you gave up because of anything I said. You know, your eyes shine when you talk about all the details. I don’t know any other way to describe it.’

  This observation caused Kit to start glowering at him again. ‘This isn’t some version of, I don’t know, “you’re beautiful when you’re angry”?’ she said.

  ‘It what?’

  ‘You’re so sweet when you twitter on about your work?’

  ‘Hardly.’ Joe laughed. ‘Kit, what?—you’re so sweet when you twitter on about women being clubbed to death, mutilated and having their heads chopped off?’

  As she wasn’t wholly mollified by this reply, Joe changed tack and asked, ‘Have you tried talking it through with your tutor?’

  ‘No. No, I ran into him on Wednesday, but he splurted out—splurted?—blurged?—anyway, poured out, that he’s getting divorced; so luckily he forgot to ask how my work was going. I mean, I don’t mean to be callous, but I’m getting quite behind. He said his marriage has gone totally phut. He once characterised his wife to me as being—he said, “She’s the sort of woman who stays in touch with all our daughter’s ex-boyfriends”.’

  ‘Ho-hum.’

  ‘I know, it does sound a bit ho-hum. I can’t believe he’s been a super-brilliant husband either. Anyway, none of my business; but he was upset, so I just did the being-sympathetic bit, and that was all we talked about. But what am I—? Yes, sorry. You know, I have definitely done a shitload of work this week. That’s what you asked me, wasn’t it, a large amount of food ago. How are you? Aren’t you hungry? You’ve hardly touched that. I feel so much better now I’ve eaten. Yes, shitloads of work, basically, and not just on Eliza, I don’t mean, far from it. Although I have flipped through a lot of incredibly unhelpful Oliver Twist articles, believe me.’

  ‘Is there anything else you want to say about it all? I’m still open to argument.’

  Kit put her elbows on the table. ‘Okay, one tiny thing, okay, and then that’s it.’

  ‘So long as you don’t tell me you think Dickens himself killed Eliza Grimwood.’

  ‘Give me a break,’ said Kit, ‘I’m not a complete nutter. No, there was this pirate publisher, Edward Lloyd, who plagiarised Oliver Twist, instalment by instalment, and sold his version to the public in seventy-nine penny parts renamed Oliver Twiss—called it a “literary bantling”, but added changes, improvements to the text can you believe, which doubled its length. So I had a look at it this afternoon, out of curiosity. I don’t know what I was after, really. But one of the most peculiar things about it, to me, was that, where Nancy, in Twist, more or less signs her own death warrant on London Bridge, right—remember?—when she betrays Fagin’s gang to try and save Oliver? Well in Twiss this is altered so that her fate is sealed, not on London Bridge, but on Waterloo Bridge. Waterloo Bridge? I mean, don’t you think that’s weird? I double-checked on a map, and Waterloo Bridge, logistically, is in completely the wrong place for the plot. Nancy needs to get from her room in East London to whichever bridge and back again as fast as possible before Sikes wakes up. Waterloo Bridge is much further away. So why did they make that change in the pirate version?’

  ‘And what’s your answer to this question?’

  ‘Apart from Waterloo being London’s number-one suicide bridge at the time, because it was a toll bridge with little recesses, and was therefore the most private, so it had this reputation as kind of a bridge of ill omen—well, that’s the rational theory why. But isn’t it like a weird little prophecy?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to hear this,’ he s
aid, ‘but sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.’

  Kit sighed heavily, finding his rigour oppressive. ‘I have this feeling I can’t put into words that if I try hard enough, I’m going to see something else here.’

  ‘Brute force.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry: a brute-force search,’ said Joe. ‘It’s a maths term; means working out an answer by going through every possible option, rather than by devising a short cut that will eliminate a proportion of the trial runs.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks. Well then, I suppose. Although it’s not the same, because I’m pretty much compelled to look for evidence anywhere it might be. Although, in a brute-force-search way, perhaps. I have to say, I think I’m scraping the barrel now—or at least, the barrel I know about. Not that I haven’t got a thousand other more important things to do. I mean, apart from my thesis intro, and knocking my Conrad chapter on the head, which I’ve virtually not done any of this week, I’ve been slaving over a paper I’ve got to give at the Victorian graduate seminar next Thursday, and my plan was that, even if it’s rubbish, I’d at least try to win them over by amusing them all to pieces—but that’s a scary option in itself, and I’m finding what I’m saying less and less funny the more I work on it.’

  The restaurant was packed, the service slow. Kit assumed that their waiter had decided he could neglect them. They were a couple, after all, and though they weren’t any longer eating, they still had wine. He might soon need their table, but he must have calculated that he didn’t need their approval for being efficient.

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be rubbish,’ said Joe. ‘You’re planning to do a comic turn?’

  ‘I thought it would be good if I could make them laugh.’

  ‘How do you aim to do that, as a matter of interest? Amputations? Cannibalism?’

  ‘You know what? Yes,’ said Kit. ‘You think I’m a maniac? Wrong in the head?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘What’s the paper about?’