Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“The door to the Lion Tower, Mister Wadsworth. Is it locked at night?”

“Aye, sir. Always. The key hangs in the guardroom at the Byward Tower. Except tonight. When I went to fetch it, the key was gone. I thought someone else had gone ahead of me to investigate the commotion. But I was the first to get here, and I found the key in the door, and the door locked.”

“Who was the guard on duty there tonight?” asked Newton.

“I believe it was Thomas Grain, sir,” answered the keeper.

“Then we shall want to speak to him.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir,” said a loud and imperious voice. “Not without my permission.”

Lord Lucas, the Lieutenant of the Tower, had arrived, a most odious, haughty and quarrelsome fellow, whose jealousy of the Tower liberties made him a mighty unpopular man in the Mint and in the surrounding boroughs.

“As your Lordship pleases,” said Newton and bowed with mock courtesy, for he hated Lucas with as much venom as he hated all stupid people who got in his way — especially those that were supposed to be his betters — although I think his lordship was too crapulent with drink to have noticed Newton’s insolent manner.

“Egad, sir. What the devil do you think you’re doing, anyway? Any fool can see what happened here. A fellow don’t exactly need to be a member of the Royal Society to see that a man has been killed by a lion.” He looked at Sergeant Rohan. “Eh, Sergeant?”

“That’s correct, milord. Any man as has eyes in his head can see that, sir.”

“Accidents will happen when men and wild animals are in close proximity to one another.”

“I do not think it is an accident, Lord Lucas,” said Newton.

“A plague on you, Doctor Newton, if this isn’t any of your damned business.”

“The dead man is from the Mint, my lord,” said Newton. “Therefore I am obliged to make this my business.”

“The deuce you say. I don’t care if he’s the King of France. I’m the law in this Tower. You can do what you please in the Mint, sir. But you’re in my part of the Tower now. And I’ll grind this damned music box whatever way I like.”

Newton bowed again. “Come, Mister Ellis,” he said to me. “Let us leave his Lordship to probe this matter in his own fashion.”

We were making our way back to the door when Newton stopped and bent down to look at a black shape he noticed on the ground.

“What is it, Doctor?” I asked.

“The sad-presaging raven,” answered Newton, collecting a dead but still lustrously plumed black bird off the ground, “that tolls the sick man’s passport in her hollow beak.”

“Is that the Bible, sir?”

“No, my dear fellow, it’s Christopher Marlowe.”

“There are plenty of ravens about the Tower,” I said, as if there were nothing remarkable about a dead raven; and indeed, the Tower’s population of ravens was severely controlled since the time of King Charles II when the Royal Astronomer, John Flamsteed — who was also much disliked by my master, for Newton believed that the theory of the moon was in his grasp but could not be completed because Mister Flamsteed had sent him observed positions of the moon that were wrong, so that he did apprehend some intended practice in the matter — had complained to the King that the ravens were interfering with his observations in the White Tower.

“But this bird’s neck was wrung,” he said, and replaced the dead raven on the ground.

At the Byward Tower he questioned Thomas Grain, the guard, in defiance of the Lieutenant’s orders. Grain had no instructions not to speak to us, and therefore he answered the Doctor’s questions freely enough.

“In the normal course of events, the keeper hung the key in the guardroom at about eight of the clock.”

“How did you know it was eight of the clock?” asked Newton.

“By the toll of the curfew bell, sir,” answered Grain, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder to the rear of the Byward. “In the Bell Tower. Curfew’s been eight of the clock since the time of William the Conqueror.”

Newton frowned for a moment and then said, “Tell me, Mister Grain. Does the key to the Lion Tower form part of the ceremony of the keys, when the main gate is locked?”

“No sir. It stays here until morning, when Mister Wads-worth, the keeper, collects it.”

“Is it possible that anyone could have come in here and removed the key to the Lion Tower without your noticing?”

“No sir. I’m never very far away from these keys, sir.”

“Thank you, Mister Grain. You’ve been most helpful.”

From the Byward, Newton and I returned to the Mint, and straightaway Newton ordered the two sentinels, who were nominally under his command, to search for Daniel Mercer and to bring him to the Mint Office. As soon as they were gone I told my master that the previous evening I had seen Mister Grain standing on the bridge over the moat, about halfway between the Byward and the Middle Tower, which was about thirty feet away from the keys.

“We spoke for almost ten minutes,” I said. “During that time anyone could have taken a key. Therefore if it was possible last night, then it must have been equally be possible tonight.”

“Your logic is irresistible, sir,” he said quietly and, collecting the cat, Melchior, off the floor, set to stroking him thoughtfully as another man might have smoked a pipe.

Then, by candlelight, we examined those items we had found about Mister Kennedy’s person. As well as the stone Newton had removed from the dead man’s mouth were several crowns, a pair of dice, a rosary, a lottery ticket, a pocket watch, some rolling tobacco, and a letter which appeared to have been written by a lunatic but which greatly interested my master. While he examined this, I threw the dice and observed out loud that Mister Kennedy had been a serious gambler.

“What leads you to that conclusion?” asked Newton. “The lottery ticket? The dice? Or both together?”

I smiled, for here I was on familiar ground. “No sir. These dice alone would have told me as much. They are cut perfectly square by a mould and have their spots made with ink, instead of being holes filled with wax, such as would prevent any deceit. No novice would take such precautions.”

“Excellent,” said my master. “Your powers of observation do you credit. We shall make a scientist of you yet.”

He tossed the letter he had been perusing onto the table in front of me. “See what your new powers of observation can make of that, Mister Ellis.”

I looked with puzzlement at the jumble of letters and shook my head. “It is meaningless,” I said. “A fanciful arrangement of letters that has some whimsical purpose, perhaps. I might say that it was some child or illiterate person’s perverse conceit, except that the letters are well formed.”

“Mister Kennedy could read and write well enough. Why would he have such a thing upon his person?”

“I cannot say.”

“And you are still convinced it is some crotchet-monger’s whimsy?”

“Most certainly,” I replied firmly, too tired to perceive that he was making a straw man of me; and, what was more, one he was about to shy with wooden balls.

“It matters not,” he said patiently. “I do believe mathematicians are born, not made. Such things are plain to me. In truth, I see things in numbers that most men could not ever see, even if they could live to be a hundred.”

“But these are letters,” I objected. “Not numbers.”

“And yet one may discern that there must be some numerical order in the frequency of the appearance of these letters. Which makes this more than mere whimsy, Ellis. This is most likely a cipher. And all ciphers, if they are properly formed and systematic, are subject to mathematics; and what mathematics has made obscure, mathematics will also render visible.”