by David Smith
*
At home at last on Sunday evening, Hunter put on one of his favourite CDs – of course, given all that was on his mind, it was natural for him to play Pearl Taylor’s latest release. He had been re-running in his mind all the evidence they had gathered so far, but he knew there was something missing, something that didn’t quite fit. Maybe Troyte would provide the clue they needed in the morning. He wondered whether he should go round himself that evening but it was likely to be his one night off for a while and he didn’t want to undermine Penny’s decision. He had been looking at the coded messages again, trying to see if he could make anything fit. Pearl Taylor had been enigmatic but the one link to her in the word ‘Toposcope’ had been too tenuous to take any further action that afternoon. Somehow he felt she had the upper hand with him on this. She was certainly a very smart lady. He poured himself a glass of brandy and put his feet up on the ottoman. His bachelor pad was spartan but tidy, his books, his music, a few choice pieces of furniture, chosen for their design integrity rather than comfort. ‘Form follows function’ was his mantra, although he would also agree with the sentiment of William Morris when he said, Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
Hunter had begun to doze off when he suddenly woke with a start. He looked at the photograph on the CD of Pearl in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.
‘Of course, Pearl Harbor,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Why didn’t I think of that before? Seven digits, it works exactly.’ He looked up at the nineteenth century engraving of the British Camp on the Malvern Hills on the wall and had another brainwave. He rang Penny immediately.
*
‘Read me that header to the message we got at lunchtime again,’ he asked.
‘WSW. Don’t take clues from Toposcope hounds, blessings and Glory to God!’ I replied.
‘God, I’m stupid, I thought WSW was an initial of some sort. Have you got that iPad of yours? From the beacon, which towns would you hit if you went west southwest would you say, Penny?’ he asked. It took me a minute to look up the map function.
‘Alcester, Worcester, Malvern…’ I replied.
‘Yes of course you do, Malvern, how stupid I am. “Nimrod confused”’, oh how stupid of me, yes that’s clever, so very clever. I think we may need a little bit more work on this, Penny. Think back to when we met Miss Taylor in the hotel, did you happen to write down exactly that cryptic clue about Nimrod she gave us?’
On the other end of the line, I opened my notepad again and read: ‘Don’t be confused, my mighty Nimrod, it’s in G-minor after all.’
Hunter groaned. ‘Which of course also refers to me given my name is Hunter – Nimrod the mighty hunter – confused. OK so “confused” in a cryptic clue would normally signify an anagram. What’s Nimrod an anagram of?’ he asked. I started to scribble on my pad.
‘Mindor, Romind, D-minor?’ I answered.
‘She said “G-minor after all”. Think. What does she mean?’ he replied. I could imagine him beating his brow with his hand. ‘What else did she say?’
‘But as a rule you should always keep the major key in sight.’
He gave out a gasp of discovery. ‘Yes, if I remember right, Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ variation is in the key of G-minor not D-minor, so that works. But she also made a little joke about your name didn’t she – bright Penny? And if I take that first, the letter ‘d’ is the old money symbol for a penny and D-major would therefore be the major key. What’s the significance of D-major to Elgar?’
‘The key of one of his famous pieces?’ I guessed.
‘Maybe, but I have another idea, what would you see on an old penny?’
‘The Queen’s head?’
‘And on the tails side?’
‘I don’t know, a portcullis isn’t it?’
‘No, I mean on an old penny.’
‘Britannia?’
‘Yes, Britannia, that’s right.’
‘Britannia or ‘Rule Britannia’?’ I added in triumph.
‘Yes but that’s by Thomas Arne not Elgar. Oh but of course, well done Penny. Beethoven’s ‘Variations on Rule Britannia’ are in D-major. Many people believe that’s the secret theme that runs through Elgar’s Variations. So we’ve got ‘Nimrod’ in G-minor and ‘Rule Britannia’ in D-major. What happens if you write out the scale of G-minor from ‘Nimrod’ and the scale of D-major from ‘Rule Britannia’ side by side?’
‘That would be G A Bb C D Eb F and D E F# G A B C#,’ I said. Scales were one thing I’d had lots of practice at over the years. I wrote out the two scales alongside each other.
‘Bravo, so if you transpose all the G-minor notes that appear in your transcription with the corresponding D-major notes in the scale in the emails, what happens?’ We were beginning to see how Pearl’s mind worked. I worked away at the paper for a minute or two and then shouted out in triumph.
‘‘LIAR THIEF COWARD ADULTERER’.’
‘Bullseye!’ he replied in triumph. ‘Now we’re in business, but what on earth is she up to? We’d better go and talk to her again.’
‘But she’s already left.’
‘What?’
‘She was leaving for London this evening, don’t you remember?’
‘Damn, OK first thing in the morning we need to get on to her.’
Chapter Seventeen
The Return of the Dancing Men – (Con fuoco)
Randolph Turpin became world middleweight champion after he beat Sugar Ray Robinson on a fifteen round decision. He shot his 4-year-old daughter Carmen twice then ended his life at Gwen’s Transport Café, near Leamington, on May 17, 1966.
Based on Wikipedia, Randolph Turpin
When the housekeeper found Arthur Troyte sprawled dead on the daybed early on Monday morning, the blood that had dribbled from the bullet wound in his head had already dried into a sticky brown patch like a halo around his brow. An old-fashioned Browning pistol lay on the floor just out of reach of his fingers.
*
When we arrived at the scene twenty minutes later, we noticed at once the gold ring with similar markings to the one that Nariman had been wearing. The forensics team arrived shortly afterwards and their preliminary examination revealed no other signs of a wound than the gunshot to the head.
Hunter turned to the shocked housekeeper and asked, ‘When precisely did you last see Mr Troyte alive?’
‘I left him with his lunch on Saturday – he was very tired after the journey,’ she replied. ‘I had fully stocked the larder for him for the weekend but he said that he would probably be dining out that evening and away on Sunday at the convention. He was due to be speaking yesterday and he said he would see me bright and early this morning.’ Her voice was nervous and still trembling from the shock of her unpleasant find. I knew she was clearly hiding something.
‘And what happened last night?’ I asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You were supposed to go round and check up on him last night; you got a call from Hugh Powell?’ I said to the housekeeper, who looked at me guiltily, knowing that I had caught her out.
‘I had something I had to take care of at home, he had my number, and he only needed to call,’ she replied defensively.
‘Looks like that might have been difficult in the circumstances,’ I chided with my most ironic voice. Of course what she didn’t know was that I was feeling even worse than her about this given that I had not insisted on seeing Troyte the previous afternoon.
‘OK Penny, that’s enough. We all make mistakes, don’t we? What do you make of the bullet wound, Alice?’ asked Hunter.
‘Point blank range, I’d be very surprised if this isn’t the weapon, but forensics will test it as soon as they can,’ she said.
‘Seems like a classic suicide, even though there’s no note,’ Sergeant Jones chipped in.
‘Indeed, sergeant, but we also know from Mr Baxter that a Browning like this was stolen by Rohit Dhawan on Saturday eve
ning, so we certainly can’t discount foul play. Let me see the victim’s hand a second,’ said Hunter.
With Jones’s help, Alice turned him on his back.
‘No sign of any damage to the web,’ Hunter said, inspecting the skin between Troyte’s forefinger and thumb. ‘That’s not conclusive but this pistol has a tendency to ‘bite’ the web of the shooter’s hand, between the thumb and forefinger. You’d expect to see a mark if it was a suicide.’
‘But if it’s not a suicide then it must be murder and Rohit’s in the frame?’ I asked, trying to get back into the action.
‘Or an accident, we do have to keep an open mind, Penny. But equally, if you were planning to kill yourself, would you really choose a gun with such a poor reputation for reliability? I suppose it could be a coincidence but this single-action Browning Hi-Power is a very unusual handgun in the UK. On the other hand, it’s unlikely to be a hit; a criminal gang would tend to prefer semi-automatics for a hit.’
‘I’ve just found this screwed up in his pocket,’ said Alice. She gave him a glove and then passed him a ball of white paper marked with the now familiar dancing men.
‘Wow,’ said Hunter. ‘I didn’t expect that. Let’s see what this one says; why don’t you have a go, Penny?’ At last I was useful again.
He spread out the piece of paper and I brought out the earlier copy that we had made of the longer message with the quotation inscribed on the Toposcope. I got out my pencil and began to transcribe the letters corresponding to the dancing figures into my notebook.
‘It’s meaningless again, Sir. But then again this code is different to the other one, look: they are all holding flags, not just the men at the end of each word.’
‘Of course, that’s very well spotted. Maybe for this one we just need to use some simple semaphore then.’
I got out my iPad again and substituted the letters for semaphore characters read off the screen. My work quickly revealed a new but altogether more chilling message.
‘TROYTE PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD.’
‘I think suicide is beginning to look much less likely, don’t you?’ asked Hunter.
‘And it certainly doesn’t look like an accident now,’ I replied.
‘Yes, it looks as though we have another murder on our hands. But the nature of the message and the code is perplexing – we need to get Rohit in and track down Pearl.’
‘Inspector, one more thing,’ Alice said as we turned to go. ‘We haven’t finished our report yet, but the victim from Saturday – Mr Nariman – the indication is that he was dying already of mercury poisoning.’
‘Really, could it have been something in his diet, fish, sushi, maybe?’ asked the inspector.
‘Unlikely. The concentrations were far too high for that unless he ate nothing else. Evidence so far suggests he was being poisoned.’
*
In the control room at the Woodbine Studio, Eddie was in the middle of mixing a track for a local indie band on the Audient Asp8024. Absentmindedly, he reached down into his sports bag for his lunch and instead pulled out a brown paper package. It was the envelope that Pearl had given him the night before to give to DI Hunter. He had forgotten to drop it off at the police station as Pearl had requested. He opened it slightly and pulled out a sheet of paper.
Room 23, The Holly Hotel – remember a day of Infamy.
He called Hunter immediately on his mobile to tell him about the letter.
*
Filming had resumed and the square had recovered its theatrical ‘normality’ after the disturbing events of the weekend. Jack was talking to Penn who was dressed in a towelling gown. They had been debating how Penn should leap so as to fake the fall from the balcony of the second floor window. They would need to cut to the stunt man for the real shot, but Penn needed to give them the start of the scene.
Across the square, Izzie was watching somewhat anxiously but proudly from the windows of the top floor of Sherridge House. The other nurses were looking on as well, all eagerly waiting for the action to begin as Penn removed his robe.
*
When we reached the Holly Hotel, we found that our female American friend, who had occupied Room 23 that weekend, had indeed checked out the previous evening, but she hadn’t left any forwarding address as she had promised to. We hurried up the stairs with the concierge in tow. He was complaining loudly about the intrusion and the lack of a warrant. I snapped at him to be quiet.
‘Get this door open quickly!’ ordered Hunter when we reached the room. He seemed genuinely angry, a tone in his voice that I had not heard before. We knew we had both made mistakes here in not following up with Mr Troyte the previous evening. The concierge unlocked the door as quickly as he could, steeled by the directive tone of Hunter’s commands.
We entered the room and Hunter ran straight over to the closet safe that he had seen Pearl put the package away in on his previous visit to the room.
I studied the keypad. ‘It’s locked with a combination,’ I said, and then turned to the concierge who shrugged his shoulders.
‘We’d have to get the locksmith in – we don’t have codes to open the safes ourselves, it’s company policy.’
Hunter studied the safe for a few seconds more and then said out of nowhere, ‘Try 12, 7, 19, 41,’ I tried this combination and was surprised to hear the electronic beep as the safe door opened.
The small question of how he knew the combination was left hanging as I opened the door and removed a collection of papers from the safe and a larger package. There was a signed copy of Pearl Taylor’s promotional photograph with the message, My dearest Gus, xxx, there was also an airline ticket stub to Sydney, New South Wales and a flyer for a concert the next month in London at the Elgar Room, An evening with Pearl Taylor, please join me, P xxx, which I handed to Hunter with a wry smile.
I opened the larger package. There were a number of flash drives and computer disks as well as papers and photographs inside. At first, I had to turn my eyes away in disgust as I inspected the images that I pulled out one by one from the package but then quickly realised that I recognised both Troyte and the other man in the printed photographs. Isn’t this Bas? I thought, Eddie’s friend? How could that be?
I was soon back working my magic machine. ‘Flight BA15 left on time at 21.15pm last night, do you want me to check with the airline that she got on, Sir?’
‘Yes, but I suspect Miss Taylor is well on her way to Sydney by now. Can you just summarise the timeline for me, Penny?’ Before I did so Hunter dismissed the concierge and warned him not to say anything about what he had just seen to anybody. I checked my notes.
‘Well we saw her here at around 2pm,’ I began. ‘She’d been somewhere that morning and returned just after lunch. The curator at Compton Verney says Troyte arrived around 10am to give his lecture but did not leave there until around 4pm, as he was feeling unwell. Hugh was there visiting Claudia Baxter and dropped him off back in Leamington about 4.30pm. So that’s still enough time for Pearl to meet him when he got back, kill him here and then get to Heathrow to catch a 9.15pm plane.’
‘That’s true, but Eddie told me earlier that she was also with him and Carrie singing at the nursing home from 4 till 5pm and that she was due to catch a taxi to London at 6pm.’ I frowned, I was a little annoyed that Eddie had chosen to tell this to Hunter and not me.
‘But it’s still just about enough time.’
‘All the same, I’m pretty sure that Miss Taylor is not our murderer. Given all the clues she’s left for us and your account of what the curator said went on at the conference yesterday, I rather suspect that she has already had her revenge for whatever Troyte did to her.’
‘What about the photos? Maybe she was planning to blackmail him.’
‘A good idea but even that’s not a very likely scenario for murder, unless something went wrong. I can’t imagine she needs the money either.’
‘Well, whatever happened, she has certainly been wasting our time during a very serious in
vestigation.’
‘True, but I don’t think we can drag her back to the UK just for that.’
‘Ok, Sir, what do you want me to do next?’ I said in frustration. I knew my boss was a fan of Miss Taylor’s but this had begun to feel like he was getting dangerously close to protecting her for personal reasons. Hunter must have noticed this tone in my voice as his next statement was clearly designed to get me back on side.
‘I’m sorry; forgive my funny little ways. The thing that’s confusing me is that I can’t see any connection between the Troyte and Nariman murders, have you got any thoughts on that from your research to date?’
‘Well obviously they knew each other from the past.’
‘Yes there could be something significant there, but again, it hardly gives us a motive for murder. What else, Penny, what’s the connection, what are we missing? Might it be about something that happened, not about the man himself?’
‘Well, as you said yesterday, the phone lines were cut and the sniper shot that killed Nariman made that killing look like a hit or professional assassination, but Troyte’s death is completely different. It looks more like a domestic than a professional job.’
‘I agree, they could be completely separate incidents but we also need to consider who would have wanted them both killed. Nariman I could understand, given his business interests, we just need to work out who wanted to kill him enough, but this guy is just a mildly successful Midwest architect on a personal trip to Europe as far as we know. I just don’t get any possible motivation yet for the Troyte murder.’
‘Maybe someone thought he knew something about Nariman’s death, something that they needed to shut him up about.’
‘Possible, but it seems unlikely given that he had hadn’t even arrived in Leamington when Nariman was killed.’
