The Cambridge Theorem

by Tony Cape

  Swedenbank was studying the report from the Walthamstow station when Derek Smailes came noisily into the small room the CID detectives shared, carrying a mug of coffee. He looked bleary and bad-tempered, and Swedenbank wondered how he would take the news that he was on the St. Margaret’s suicide alone, whereas Swedenbank, a lowly ADC, had been assigned to Howell and the lorry theft. To his surprise, Smailes already knew about it, and made some decent remarks about the opportunity it offered. It was one thing you had to say about Derek Smailes—he had bloody good contacts when it came to knowing what George Dearnley was up to.

  In truth, Smailes didn’t mind, and actually preferred to wrap up the rest of the Bowles suicide inquiry himself. He had shown no surprise when Gloria, George’s secretary, had stood behind him in the breakfast line in the canteen, silently raising her eyebrows and a file flap showing the memo she had just typed on the reassignment. Swedenbank was a little earnest for his taste, and he didn’t fancy tugging him around today on two hours sleep. Besides, he had to somehow get Bowles’ Kennedy notes back into his files, preferably unnoticed. The thought made him irritated. Hawken had said the sister would be by around one, and he had the other don to try and interview. And then there were the Myrtlefields people, the doctors who had treated Bowles when he was out there. He picked up his telephone and began calling.

  It was a raw Thursday morning when he arrived again at the stone portal of St. Margaret’s, but the heat of the porters’ lodge was stifling. He recognized the duty porter from the day before, but the man failed to acknowledge him as he strode up to the counter. He seemed engrossed in his newspaper, whose headline told of ominous events in the South Atlantic, where Argentina was making threatening noises about the Falkland Islands. No bloody wonder, thought Smailes. How would we like it if Korea occupied the Scilly Isles? The porter slowly looked up, then returned to his reading.

  “Sorry, officer. Someone’s already come for the pass key for Mr. Bowles’ room. I can’t give you my key—it’s not allowed unless I come with it and I’m here by myself until one. I suggest you just go over there, if that’s what you want. Otherwise I can call Dr. Hawken…”

  The porter, a small bald man with thick glasses, was obviously uninterested in calling Dr. Hawken or having his routines, or his reading, disrupted.

  “Who came for the key, if I might ask?” he asked, trying to keep sarcasm out of his voice.

  “Allerton. Friend of Bowles, I think.” At this point, the porter deigned to look up again. “He said he had Dr. Hawken’s permission.”

  “No doubt,” said Smailes. He was carrying Bowles’ notes in a small, zippered portfolio under his arm, which suddenly felt conspicuous. “How long ago?”

  “Oh, ten minutes,” said the porter, and gave an incongruous, expansive smile. Smailes looked at his watch. It was barely twelve thirty; either Allerton was on some mission of his own, or the family had shown up early.

  There was a small crowd in Simon Bowles’ room. Allerton sat with his back to the desk, smoking a cigarette. A woman sat on the rug in the middle of the floor, with the contents of Bowles’ briefcase spread before her. A shabby-looking man with his back to the room was inspecting the books in the bookshelves above the bed. No one was talking.

  Smailes studied the woman. She seemed in her late thirties, but the long, light brown hair that fell across the side of her face made her look younger. It was a strong, intelligent face. She was intent on reading the letters that Smailes had found in the briefcase, and did not at first look up. Smailes could make out nothing of the man inspecting the bookshelves. Allerton was the first to notice him.

  “Uh, hullo,” he said, awkwardly. “Alice, it’s the CID man I was telling you about.”

  The woman looked at him impassively for a moment, then got to her feet and held out her hand.

  “Mr. Smailes? I’m Alice Wentworth, Simon’s sister. Pleased to meet you.”

  Smailes was uneasy about shaking hands with women, unsure how hard to grasp their limp parcel of fingers, but Alice Wentworth’s grip was firm and confident. She looked at him directly but without hostility. He wondered what Allerton had told her of their confrontation the previous day. He could see the family resemblance in the strong nose and small mouth, and the hair coloring was the same. She was wearing a fawn polo neck sweater with a belt at the waist, and brown slacks. She wore a little discreet make-up. Her manner was formal, and her voice was firm, with the featureless Home Counties accent of the upper middle class.

  “Perhaps we should sit down.” She gestured to the armchairs flanking the fireplace. “I’m early. The business at the hospital took no time at all. Giles and I were just trying to straighten things out. The senior tutor said that was all right. It is all right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Smailes, and paused. “I’m very sorry about your brother.”

  The remark seemed to provoke her. “Yes, thank you, but I’m more cross with Simon than anything at the moment. He had promised to speak to people if he was feeling depressed, you know. Someone here at the college, or me, you know. He could have called me. Of course, he refused to see anyone on a regular basis. Said it was unnecessary.”

  She made a scoffing movement of her head and swept her hair out of her face with her hand. “It seems so cruel and selfish, that’s all. My mother is beside herself. My father died just two years ago, I don’t know if you know. And I’m afraid I’m rather old-fashioned about suicide. I think it’s a sin.”

  Smailes had seen the reaction before. Anger and recrimination as a means of stemming grief. That would come later, inevitably.

  Allerton, who had been looking sullen and embarrassed, seemed shocked by her last remark. “God, Alice. Come on,” he protested.

  “No I mean it, Giles. I can’t think that anything justifies taking one’s own life. Anything.”

  Smailes realized that Alice Wentworth could probably provide him with more information than anyone so far about Simon Bowles. But this was hardly the place. He wondered if he could remember how to get to Poole’s office, his interview room. The man examining the bookcases turned to Alice Wentworth and began to speak.

  Smailes had assumed that this was her clergyman husband, but he seemed much too young and dishevelled to be married to this carefully groomed woman.

  “I can give you a hundred quid, the lot,” said the young man, in the voice of a Shakespearean actor. He wore a battered velvet jacket, from the pocket of which protruded the neck of a pint of vodka. The detective realized he represented a second hand bookstore. He probably was an actor, fallen on hard times, consoling himself with vodka at noon.

  “They would be worth more, but most are—er, adulterated, I’m afraid. I mean, they have labels on their spines that will be hard to remove.”

  “Well, quite,” said Mrs. Wentworth, disinterested. “Look, I’ll have to think about it. I may want to keep some myself. Can we call you? I mean, does Giles have your number?”

  The man fished around in his top pocket with a forefinger and pulled out a grubby business card, which he handed to Allerton.

  “Yes, Michael, we’ll be in touch, okay? Might be a day or two,” said Allerton. The men obviously knew each other.

  Smailes had walked across the room to examine again the poster of the old philosopher next to the closet. He was a little surprised that they were moving to liquidate Bowles’ belongings so quickly. Hadn’t Hawken said they could have the rest of the year?

  “How long has this been here?” asked Smailes.

  “The poster? I’ve no idea. Giles?”

  Allerton shrugged. “Dunno. As long as I knew him, I think. At least three years. Sort of forgot it was there. Shall I take it down, Alice?”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose so. We should clear everything, I think. Is there anything else, officer?”

  Smailes asked her if she could spare the time to answer some questions in private, and she agreed. The portfolio with her brother’s files felt heavy underneath his arm as they made
their way to the adjacent court and Poole’s corridor. Smailes found the room without difficulty. Alice Wentworth began talking as soon as she sat down.

  “Look, I know that it’s part of your business to try and find a motive for what Simon did, but I think it’s somewhat pointless to speculate, don’t you? I was probably as close to my brother as anyone, and he didn’t say anything to me about what was troubling him.” Smailes guessed that Allerton had given her words of warning about his interview technique.

  “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

  “On Saturday. And I was annoyed with him. He was supposed to come and stay with us that night, in Rickmansworth, because Sunday was my mother’s birthday and we were planning lunch together. Simon is my only brother, you see, and these things are important for my mother, now that she is getting older. Well, he said he wasn’t going to come, that he had to go down to London on Monday and he needed to do a lot of preparatory work in the library. I thought it was a really stupid excuse.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “Yes. Somerset House. I didn’t ask why. No doubt it was to do with his latest theorem.”

  “His academic work?”

  “Oh no, not his mathematics. It seemed Simon was getting less and less interested in that. No, solving his latest mystery, I mean. Do you know what a theorem is, Mr. er…?”

  “Smailes.”

  “Mr. Smailes.”

  He thought back to the vague geometric concepts he had retained from his schooldays. “Er, some theory that can be proved to be self-evidently true, something like that.”

  “Not quite, that’s an axiom. A theorem is a proposition that you can logically deduce from known postulates, that is not self-evidently true. But it can be proved logically, you see. Well, my brother, as long as I can remember, was fascinated by the notion that every mystery could be solved by logical analysis, that every truth could be known, or at least inferred. Something to do with the mathematical law of decidability, he said. Simon felt you could apply the mathematical method to all kinds of unsolved puzzles, and arrive at probabilities, if not definite truths. He started when he was quite small, with mysteries like the Loch Ness monster, you know, and then developed an interest in more political things, as he got older.”

  “Like the Kennedy assassination.”

  “Oh, so you know.”

  “Well, his friends told me a little about it. And Dr. Davies, his tutor.”

  “You mean Giles?"

  “Yes, and Miss Greenwald."

  “That must be his American friend. I haven’t met her, although Simon had spoken of her. What’s she like?”

  The question surprised him. “She seems very pleasant,” he said lamely.

  “So, anyway, I assumed he was going down to London because he was working on his latest theorem. That was the general term he used for his research projects. It didn’t seem a very good reason to miss mother’s birthday.”

  “And what was his latest theorem?"

  “He was researching the penetration of the security forces by the Russians. Particularly by people who had been communists at Cambridge in the thirties. You know, all this Blunt business. Simon was convinced that all the truth had not come out, that perhaps there were still ‘moles,’ you know, in the Establishment, who were still being protected. He had quite a bee in his bonnet about it.”

  This information made sense, in view of the books and files Smailes had seen, but the detective kept his face impassive.

  “How did he sound? Worried, upset?”

  “Preoccupied, certainly. Simon is, I’m sorry was…” Alice Wentworth stopped and took out a Kleenex from a brown leather handbag, and dabbed lightly at her eyes. She regained herself quickly. “Simon was forgetful, but fairly conscientious. It was unlike him not to come home for a family occasion for such a pathetic reason. I thought he sounded strange, and asked him if he was all right. He said he was, it was just important for him to do this. I’m afraid I wasn’t very sympathetic.”

  “Did he say why he wanted to go to Somerset House? You don’t know if he went, do you? That would have been the day before his death.”

  “No, I don’t think he told me why he was going. To look up birth records, I would imagine. I have no idea if he went or not, I’m afraid.”

  “Would he have told you if something in particular was bothering him?”

  “He might. He obviously didn’t though, did he? Although he was quite candid with me around that dreadful time two years ago, when he ended up in the hospital. I’m sure you know about that.”

  “Yes. So you have no idea why your brother took his own life?”

  “Well, he was depressed again, I’m sure. But specifically why, no, I don’t have any idea.”

  “You said your brother was not seeing anyone, a psychiatrist or anything, on a regular basis? Did he take any kind of drugs or medicine?”

  “For his nerves, you mean? No, no I’m sure he didn’t. He had to take pills for a few months after he came out of the hospital, but I remember him telling me he had stopped. He didn’t like taking them.”

  Smailes thought for a moment before his next question. “Did you know that your brother was homosexual?”

  “Yes, yes, I did, Mr. Smailes. You see I might be a Christian, but I am not completely unprogressive in my thinking, and it didn’t shock me too much when Simon told me. It must have been a year or two ago. Nothing specific, you understand. But he wanted to know whether my mother was expecting him to get engaged and married soon, and he told me that was unlikely to happen. When I asked him why not, he just said: ‘I’m gay.’ Well, if he had accepted it, there was no reason for me not to, was there? I don’t think we spoke at length about it, or have mentioned it since, but I was gratified that he wanted me to know. As I say, I wasn’t surprised. He never had girlfriends during his teens, but then he went to that dreadful public school, which hardly gave him much opportunity, did it? I told Peter, my husband, about it at the time, and he agreed that it was brave of Simon to tell me. But you see we were quite close, in our own way.”

  Smailes found himself admiring this straightforward, intelligent woman, despite his prejudices. She was not unattractive, in a horsey sort of way.

  “What exactly happened, two years ago?” he asked.

  “Well, it was a combination of things, really, as far as I could tell. Simon always tended to get neurotic around exam time, despite the fact that he always did so well. And then there was all the Kennedy business. He kept reading and reading and getting completely obsessed with trying to work out what had happened. He would call me wildly excited about this or that lead that I really couldn’t understand. Then he found that he couldn’t give it up, you know and he became more and more driven and depressed. And then, of course, my father died suddenly, with no warning, and it seemed the last straw for Simon’s sanity. It was quite awful for us when we heard he had jumped out of the window, although he did recover quite quickly in the hospital, thank goodness, and then the college gave him the fellowship, so everything was all right in the end, it seemed. And he did solve it, you know, his Kennedy theorem.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Smailes, stunned.

  “Oh yes, while he was in the hospital, these documents arrived from America. Released by Freedom of Information, or something. And some things from a Cuban study center too. It was all to do with the Cubans, according to Simon. I’m afraid I never paid too much attention. But after he got better he spent a week or two completing his research and actually wrote up his Kennedy Theorem. I think I even read it, although a lot of it I didn’t understand. Mr. Smailes, why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You say your brother actually completed this research?”

  “Oh yes. He was very proud of it.”

  “Well, I have a slight confession to make.” Smailes lifted the portfolio from where it was resting against his chair leg and extracted the manuscript he had read the night before. “I took the liberty of reading some
of the material I found in your brother’s file cabinet yesterday. The Kennedy murder has always interested me professionally, and I thought I might get some insight into your brother by looking at it. I meant to return it all this morning, before you arrived.”

  Alice Wentworth did not seem unduly perturbed by the policeman’s peculiar behavior, although she did hold out her hand in a proprietorial way to take the fat document back from him.

  “Did you understand it all?” she asked.

  “Oh, I knew most of it already,” he lied. “But it was interesting to see a fresh perspective. He obviously had a keen mind, your brother.”

  “Yes, quite,” she said, riffling through the typed sheaf. “You must have missed it, I think.”

  “What?"

  “Well, The Kennedy Theorem, of course. The summary of all this stuff. I would have thought you would have seen it, since you obviously removed these documents quite carefully. It would be odd if it weren’t there. I must check.” There was now an edge in her voice.

  “Yes, of course.” The detective tugged at his ear and glanced over at Poole’s bookshelves with their sad collection of thrillers. “I’d be interested to see it, if it’s there,” he added.

  “Well, of course,” she said, and silence filled the room.

  “What about this latest project—what did you say it was about” asked Smailes eventually.

  “The Cambridge spy ring—you know, those dreadful men who went to Moscow and our famous Mr. Blunt. They were all at Cambridge here in the thirties, although not at St. Margaret’s, I think. Mostly at Trinity. Anyway, I think Simon became interested via his Kennedy project, because he got quite fascinated with the intelligence services and how they operate. He got quite impassioned about it, and said things like secrecy was the only true villainy in a free society. Then of course there was all that scandal surrounding Blunt when he was exposed, and all the speculation in the press that not everything had come out. Simon thought it was worth looking into. He had probably been involved with this for a year or so, off and on. I think he had become more interested in these investigations than in mathematics, frankly, but then he was always so effortlessly brilliant at maths, it didn’t matter. I don’t suppose any of it matters now, does it?”