The Reichenbach Problem

  We sat in silence.

  “And your advice?” I prompted.

  His reply was both quiet and firm. “I fear that you should have nothing whatsoever to do with them.”

  “By which you mean cut them in the street? But surely that is hardly polite?”

  “No, I do not propose that you should treat anyone with anything less than the utmost courtesy and dignity. I merely suggest that a degree of distance should be maintained between you and that couple.”

  “I see.”

  “You will do me the honour, I trust, of coming to tea at the house at some point in your stay, doctor?” He was suddenly formal and distant. I looked at him. Was this the real purpose of his visit, to draw me back into the fold? “Not only would I deem it a particular honour, but also it would reconfirm to watching eyes that we are reconciled.”

  “Is it not, Father, another form of reconciliation that you are proposing? I apologize if I sound overly suspicious. I merely conjecture. I am, as you are aware, familiar with the methods of Holy Mother Church and her children.”

  “My son, everybody is always welcome back into the flock. And who knows, some day that may very well be your response. But no, I feel we have dug here some excellent foundations for a lasting friendship, and I only seek to build upon that.”

  “Then it would be an honour for me to accept your kind invitation.”

  We stood, bowed, exchanged a polite handshake and the priest left.

  My first act, once I had closed the door behind my guest, was to cross to my jacket, take out the square of paper, tear it in half and cast it into the wastepaper bin beside the escritoire. My second act was to realize that despite the disposing of the item, I would be unable to forget the time and the venue of the appointment. Nor would I be able to forget the person who had entreated me to keep it. I understood, at that moment, that in this respect, regrettable though it may be, I would be unable to observe Father Vernon’s sound advice in this particular matter.

  TWELVE

  Just to get on and enjoy my visit, however, was more easily said than done. Despite the qualified relief I felt at having had some of my burden lifted from my shoulders by Father Vernon, there were still a number of matters to be resolved. Not least the problem of who was reading my wires and why.

  I would have to create a cipher. One that was reasonably simple to execute, easily managed by myself, with only the basic everyday elements around me to use. But also easily taught to Flemyng in England, whom I had identified as the fellow most likely to give me the answers I believed I was looking for. Despite Flemyng’s initial dismissal of the case, I needed to reopen the dialogue. I considered returning to the library and the English books downstairs. Books always made good keys. Good basic common denominators from which to build a confidential code. Of course, if they can be transported between the two participants in the subterfuge, all well and good. But shipping one book backwards and forwards would be impractical. It would take weeks and I only had hours; days at best. So, everything would have to be conducted through telegram.

  But what key would Flemyng have in or near his office in Whitehall that I would also have an equivalent of in a remote village up a distant brae in Switzerland? I tried to imagine the shelves downstairs and settled very swiftly upon the Bible which I had noted there. A common book, and one that Flemyng would be able to access perfectly easily.

  I removed myself to the library immediately and returned a short while later with the dog-eared, faded, black leather-bound volume with the flaking, gold-leaf lettering. The pages were flimsy, almost transparent, and crackled when you turned them over. Their edges had been coloured by faint, red printer’s staining ink. Sitting at the escritoire, I prepared to create my cipher.

  I needed something that would not arouse suspicion. Some titbit of news that anyone intercepting my wires might think that dull old Conan Doyle would naturally be interested in. Yet it would appear of no particular consequence to any other reader. It was with me the work of a moment to realize that the most likely candidate was that most misunderstood of sporting traditions. The cricket test match scorecard. It was beloved by devotees and spurned or treated with consummate indifference by the uninitiated. For a moment, my spirits rose at the thought of using my treasured sport as a Trojan horse for my messages. But then they fell again when I realized that there were no visiting Test teams to England that summer. The Australians were the next scheduled combatants, but they were not due until the following year. However, I consequently surmised that it would not be unreasonable to be interested in the county scores as well. I began, therefore, to work out a scheme.

  Undoubtedly, trivia is all very well, but my reader or readers would be aware that I was already in touch with Flemyng. He therefore needed to send me information that in the event was banal but, to my reader, would seem to be possessed of the utmost significance for me. Thus Flemyng would have to be charged with coming up with facts that could not be proven. Facts all the same that would seem to the reader to be of value to the both of us. I did not know if this new contact of mine at Whitehall was up to the task. Steen was a canny old bird, though, and I was hopeful that he would not have fastened the young fellow on to me unless he felt the chap was capable of fulfilling this role proficiently. Unless, of course, I had misjudged Steen and he had completely misinterpreted my recent wires as the arrant twittering of a buffoon; in which case, he may have merely slipped the task of handling my excessive missives to some minion. But I could not dwell too long on that possibility. I had to press on and hope for the best.

  With spurious cricket statistics established as my system, I then resolved to ask Flemyng for the close of play scores for the county matches. This would be the easy part. It may well cause the reader to immediately cast the illicitly obtained wire from them with expressions of impatience, or even disgust. What could be more boring for people who were uninterested than a turgid litany of county cricket scores? That is to say, for people who did not realize what rich information such seemingly bland statistics are able to impart. Of course, my plan was that they would impart a whole lot more than even the dedicated observer might realize. But that was another matter entirely.

  Sitting at the writing leaf of the escritoire, I asked myself what, exactly, was this splendid and cunning cipher I had imagined I would devise?

  A regular browser of scorecards in the daily newspapers would know that their main feature is numbers. Single figures, double figures, even treble figures. There would be the names of the players on the batting side and the names of the players on the bowling side; and vice versa, when the teams swapped round. It would be simple enough, I felt, to substitute the figures in the scorecard for page numbers. But to give my esteemed reader such a simple key would lay our cipher open to access in a very short space of time. Besides, what would be on these pages that the numbers referred to? In effect, therefore, we would have to ensure that there was an inconsistency built into this reference. If the code changed consistency at random, then a reader might light upon one or two identifiable elements. But… the very next time they tried to interpret the next set of figures in this way, the code would apparently switch and there would seem to the reader to be no rhyme nor reason to them. Incongruity and anomaly would force them to start again at the beginning. All the time, the hours and even the days might be rolling past while they wrestled with the conundrum; buying me time.

  The notion that whomever it was that had the audacity to open my wires might find themselves put to quite some considerable inconvenience and frustration warmed my heart considerably.

  Perhaps, then, the cipher should work only where it concerned itself with occasional batsmen. Not all of them. Perhaps where they were bowled, or caught or stumped, then the cipher would be activated. Where they were run out or ended the day not out, the cipher would not apply. And the inconsistency would be effected. But since there were only eleven players in the team, this could leave me with six or seven scores, sometimes, with which
Flemyng might construct his sentences. Time, however, was of the essence so I decided to press on with this theory until it proved thoroughly unworkable. All the same I hoped that it was entirely possible to construct answers in just a few words, provided the questions which prompted them were explicit enough.

  If I proposed to use the Bible, I would need sufficient numerals, not only to bring chapter and verse into the equation, but also the number of the word within the verse, I realized. Like a good skipper, I therefore brought my bowlers into play. The bowlers’ figures would identify the chapter of the Bible and the verse. The place where the word came within it, the batsmen’s scores would make clear. Since batting figures were printed first and bowling second, this was a further variation in the flow of the code, which would take any potential interpreter even more time to unlock. But there was a further complication. How would Flemyng and I communicate which book of the Bible we were using at any given time?

  I took out my pipe, cleaned it, filled it and lit it. I went out onto the balcony to ponder. The idea came quite quickly thereafter. Of course, we should use exactly the same book of the Bible on every occasion. There was only one book that could provide us with a broad enough vocabulary in that case: the book of Psalms.

  So there, albeit just sketched out very roughly on a sheet of hotel notepaper, was my cipher. I would be careful to set light to it in my fire later to ensure no record of it remained before Flemyng and I had put it into operation. I spent the next twenty minutes practising my theories, refining the system and making adjustments where necessary until, in my humble opinion, it manifested itself as a creditable effort. One, I opined to myself, eminently workable.

  Now, of course, came the problem of how to communicate this to my co-conspirator. Not just in theoretical terms, in respect of how to tell him the sequences, but also in very practical terms. How might I let him know by wire without running the risk of having the whole affair exposed by a telegraph operator in the pay of my furtive reader?

  It was clear, I reasoned, that I needed to go for a stroll down the brae into the valley and use a distant telegraph office. There, I could only hope, would be a minimal likelihood of my message being relayed to my watcher. To use that office on a regular basis was a thought that occurred to me. I dismissed it on the grounds that it was something of an expedition. An impracticable use of time.

  I donned my jacket, boots and puttees, collected my stick and hat, and left with the substance of my cipher in my head. The notepaper, with my workings-out, resided in the grate as a little pile of feathery ashes; burnt and stirred.

  Anton was in the lobby and, again, I noted his disposition did not reflect his usual ebullience. This moved me, and I was very much minded to stay and discuss this with him. However, I did not know him well enough, I felt, just to engage him in a conversation of an intimate nature. So I passed through, offering him only a well-meant “hello, how are you?”. He responded dutifully and congenially enough. But then he returned straight away to the paperwork in which he was currently engaged at the reception desk.

  I had just reached the door when another thought occurred to me, and I turned and retraced my steps as far as the hotelier.

  “Anton?”

  He looked up from his paperwork. “Doctor?”

  “I wonder if I might ask you for a piece of information.”

  “Naturally – if I am able to help.”

  “Are you aware of any… conversations in the village, instigated by our little visit to the medium?”

  “Do you mean, are people talking about you?” He sounded very much as though all he cared to do was assist me in my enquiry as efficiently as possible.

  “Yes. It has come to my attention that the event was possibly not approved of by some of your friends and neighbours.”

  “No,” he shrugged, and looked genuinely blank. “I have not heard anything.”

  I could not understand it. Anton and his family were surely central to this community. “I was under the impression that the whole village was talking about it?”

  “Not that I know of. Although, doctor, if they were, I might not come to hear of it. People do not talk to me at the moment.”

  “Why not?”

  Anton simply gazed at me bleakly, though I felt that if good manners and good hotel management training had not prevented him, he would have as lief glowered. I was taken aback. Noting this curious revelation accompanied by the change of mood, I decided that there was no better opportunity than now to try to elicit from the young man what it was that was apparently unsettling him.

  “Anton, I cannot but notice that you have not been so bright and breezy of late. Even now, I sense that you have some pressing matter and that, in some way, I am responsible for it. The way you look at me. If there is anything that I have committed or omitted, I would rather that you spoke to me frankly than have me dwell under a mysterious cloud for the duration of my stay.”

  My intention was, with my manly honesty, to lighten the whole mood and, perhaps, obtain a nominal explanation of his concerns. I had contrived rather to drive him to greater distraction.

  “You English! You live in your comfortable, cosmopolitan world, blowing this way and then that as the wind changes. Gathering up this fad and that fashion and dropping it again once you have grown bored with it. You have no idea what it is to have to struggle day in and day out in a village like this.”

  I stared at him, startled by his outburst and even more confused and concerned for his welfare than before. “Whatever is the matter, Anton? I know, for some reason, you have reached a point where you seem to despise me. Yet I cannot help thinking that I have done no wrong. At least, if I have done something, it was committed in all innocence. Will you not talk to me about what it is that grieves you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, I do not doubt that you have your reasons and every justification for them. I would just like you to know that despite this conversation, I remain your friend and a willing, listening ear – should ever you decide that you need one.”

  Anton returned to his paperwork without a word. I turned again to leave but felt cross and dismayed that I should have been so summarily dismissed from his presence. I found it impossible to leave without having just one more assay.

  “Anton?”

  He did not look up from his work.

  “Anton, have you seen Holloway?” I don’t know why I decided to introduce that gentleman into the equation. Perhaps, intuitively, I felt that he might have as much to do with Anton’s disquiet as myself. It seemed to me that the two of them, along with Eva, had become congruent since my supposed companion’s arrival. I wondered if it was Holloway’s bourgeois relationship with his sister that had so piqued him.

  “No.” This mumbled, still without looking up.

  “And Eva?”

  “I have not seen her since this morning. She was supposed to have come here for lunch but she did not.”

  “Thank you,” I responded, and doffed my hat at the crown of his head. It was clear that he had lowered the portcullis and raised the drawbridge. There would be no further progress made on this front for the time being, I reasoned, and departed.

  The walking route down into the valley cut a zigzag beaten track into the brae. I was glad of my boots and my stick as the ground underfoot had not entirely dried after the recent rains, sheltered as it was from the warming sun by the tree canopy. Here and there, streams flogged down in heaving tresses of silver, olive and white. My admonition to myself of continuing with my holiday regardless of events seemed, at times on this walk, a little more attainable. It was a beautiful country and an inspiring environment in which to throw off life’s cares and simply exist for existence’s sake, in sympathy with one’s surroundings.

  How I regretted, therefore, the thought processes that insisted upon returning me, again and again, to the most pressing considerations. One of my main concerns on this downward trek was Father Vernon. An estimable gentleman, no doubt, and in
different circumstances, possibly someone with whom I would have been content to associate. I recognized his temperament as questing and open to argument. It would have been a great pleasure to cross swords with him intellectually but for one small matter.

  I did not trust him.

  Everything that he said was true; everything had value and everything had purpose. I could not gainsay any of that. The difficulty lay in the question why? It was absolutely true that he had come to me in order to prevent the situation getting out of hand. But why he should do so was another matter. I knew why he said that he was doing so. Again, this rang completely sound. To protect me and to reinstate me in the eyes of the community. But why? Did he owe me anything? No. There were pastoral and spiritual duties related to his behaviour, too, of course. But might there be a deeper underlying reason why? Why, also, was I obliged to amble about the place as if nothing had happened, and keep my mouth shut? It benefited me. Yet if he had an ulterior motive, would it not benefit him equally, if not more so?

  I disliked my present, unwelcome suspicious nature. I did not feel that it was at all healthy. I wished earnestly that I might return to the innocence of my younger days. But one cannot unlearn something. I had learned to mistrust, to test, to question and explore. And to suspect. So much so that it had become second nature.

  Perhaps Father Vernon’s solicitude was out of admiration for my work? I did not think so; he had not mentioned any of my writing, and I could see in his demeanour none of the telltale signs that spoke volumes of a stranger’s hidden knowledge that I was who I was. Meanwhile, was there a benefit to him if I did not meet with Francesca or Hugo again? I did not know why, and I could only surmise, but it was nevertheless the case. The reasons he gave, again, made sense and were accurate and fair. So why should I not take them at face value? Because Anton had told me that he had heard no rumours concerning the séance? Admittedly, he had said that he did not hear much at all; but the fact remained. This gossip, which was spreading like wildfire and, it would seem, had the whole village up in arms, may not therefore be as prevalent as I had been led to expect. Why was it that Father Vernon had been the only one so far to apprise me of the situation? Was, perhaps, the whole noble plan to retain my good name just an excuse to keep me quiet and nervous? Out of the way and beyond the reach of others, my relationship with whom might otherwise be an obstacle or a threat to other plans?