Flowers Stained With Moonlight Page 2

  ‘Oh, but I wasn’t really! Only to Mother. I’d have died if I hadn’t been able to talk about things with you, and Uncle Charles, and Miss Duncan!’

  ‘Well, let me train you a little over the summer, and you will be astonished at the results.’

  ‘Poor Miss Forsyth,’ said Emily, glancing at her governess with some surprise, ‘have you had to practise so very much self-control in your life? What for? How does one do it?’

  ‘Il faut d’un vain amour étouffer la pensée …’ murmured Annabel, so softly that I hardly caught the words and Charles not at all. Emily, however, who was all ears, flushed suddenly.

  ‘That’s from Phèdre,’ she stammered, ‘really, I – do you mean—’

  ‘Oh, I mean nothing,’ Annabel said, with a tiny smile. ‘The words came to my mind; Phèdre betrayed a singular lack of self-control, didn’t she, in spite of all the efforts of her poor Oenone. But not everyone can afford the luxury of dishonour and death.’

  ‘Dishonour and death – a luxury?’

  ‘Well, not in themselves, but considered as the price paid for the luxury of declaiming aloud what the world would prefer hidden.’

  There was a long, rather embarrassing silence. Even Charles, who had begun to pay attention to the conversation, seemed wordless.

  ‘It sounds like you’re talking about my father,’ said Emily after a while, breaking the silence.

  ‘My dear child, no! I didn’t mean to. Please, forgive me, and forget everything I said! I meant only to give a literary reference to the evils of self-indulgence.’

  ‘Well, I shall draw a lesson from it, I believe,’ mused Emily. ‘The very next time I feel like laughing at Uncle Charles, this conversation will come back to me and wipe it away at once.’

  Everybody smiled, even Annabel.

  ‘Come now,’ intervened Charles, with the tone of one who is determined to be cheerful in the face of adversity, ‘a little laughter is not harmful, and I’m sure you need not be worried either about making a fool of yourself at the exam, or failing it. Why, you’ve had an easy time of it altogether, preparing for your university studies! I’m sure all the girls in history who’ve ever felt a yen for mathematics should be envious of you. We were talking about just such a one the other day.’

  ‘Who do you mean, “we”?’ enquired his niece with interest.

  ‘Why, I was talking with this fellow Korneck. He’s an odd one; I’m not sure what he is or does. He bobbed up in our department one day and he’s so overflowing with eagerness that I’m positively tired sometimes, after talking with him!’

  ‘Bobbed up? How so? Where from?’

  ‘From Prussia, I believe, but he seems to be some kind of amateur; well, I’m not quite sure. But the man certainly knows a lot of mathematics, at least in his own topic. He’s gone and resurrected an old, well-nigh forgotten problem – Fermat’s last theorem, they used to call it. It’s ridiculously simple to state, yet so diabolically difficult that everyone’s given up working on it for donkey’s years. It used to be all the rage forty or fifty years ago. The history of the problem is chock full of stories, what with secret identities, sealed manuscripts and so forth. Unfortunately, it was all but killed by the birth of modern number theory; considered to be uninteresting, or impossible, although my new friend Korneck seems to devote his life to seeking a solution.’

  ‘Sealed manuscripts!’ I exclaimed. ‘I have seen enough of those to last me a lifetime, I believe. They can do so much harm, the foolish things – whatever do mathematicians keep wanting with them?’

  ‘Always the same thing, Vanessa,’ Charles replied, glancing at me meaningfully. ‘Capturing the glory and keeping it for oneself – you know that as well as anyone, I should think!’

  ‘Oh, you’re talking about that old three-body problem again,’ interrupted Emily. ‘What I want to know about is the secret identities! What use could that be to a mathematician, I wonder?’

  ‘Ah, I’ll tell you,’ replied her uncle. ‘To start with, you have to imagine someone who loved mathematics, and wanted to study them more than anything, but who was prevented from attending university by law.’

  ‘Prevented from attending university by law? Why, that doesn’t make sense – what kind of law could that be?’

  ‘You ought to know, you silly goose! Don’t you realise that if you were just a few years older than you are, you’d be the one who was prevented! Imagine not realising that.’

  ‘Well, but that’s because I’m a girl. Oh! I see what you mean – you must be talking about a girl! All right, I am silly. But do tell about her! Did she have to disguise herself to go to university? How exciting! What did she do? Who was she? When was it?’

  ‘Oh well, I’ll tell you, even though it’s all rather old hat for us mathematicians. We all hear her story sooner or later; in fact the tale was actually written and published by some officious family friend or other. Well, the name of this enterprising creature was Sophie Germain, and she lived in France at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. She must have been just about your age during the French Revolution. Probably didn’t get to spend a lot of time out of doors as a young thing, I’ll bet, what with the sans-culottes bloodthirstily overrunning the streets and all. At any rate, not being an aristocrat, she preserved her head, and after it was all over, Napoleon arrived and took over the world (more or less), and among his many activities he also found time to create a glorious brand new university to train glorious French military men in the glorious sciences. It was the École Polytechnique in Paris, and of course there was no question of anyone but men being allowed to attend. However, the mathematics courses were taught by the most famous mathematicians in Paris, and poor Sophie, who had gotten interested in mathematics while spending all her time indoors, longed to take them, so here’s what she did. She didn’t actually disguise herself, but as I imagine it, she must have started frequenting the cafés around the school, trying to get to know the students who had their coffee there, all dressed up in their fancy military garb with their swords hanging at their sides, and trying to impress the girls. I imagine her trying to get them to tell her about what they learnt in their classes. Eventually, by a stroke of luck, she came to hear about one student, Monsieur Auguste Le Blanc, whose name has gone down in history simply for being such a mediocre student that he ended up dropping out of the school altogether. He went off somewhere, but the lecture notes and problem sets that were printed and distributed to all the students weekly kept on coming for him, and as he didn’t take them, they just sat in his mailbox until some kind soul took to picking them up and delivering them to Mademoiselle Sophie. She then proceeded to solve all the problems under the name of Monsieur Le Blanc, and posted them in every week to be corrected by the eminent professor who taught the course. She made tremendous progress and everything was going beautifully until one fine day, the professor came to ask himself what on earth had happened to the idiotic M. Le Blanc, to make him so brilliant all of a sudden! And he dashes off a letter which he includes with the next problem set, requesting the reformed student to pay him an urgent visit. Poor Sophie! She must have been frightened out of her wits, and so upset about the risk to her lovely arrangement. Nonetheless, off she went to confront the professor, and discovered that although the governing bodies may have been dead set against girls in universities, a real mathematician cares nothing for such rules and prejudices, and looks right past it all to what is important. He was pleased as Punch, and let her go on as before, and she finished her studies and went on to original research. Her alternate identity came in useful there, again, when she used it to submit some of her results to Gauss, the greatest mathematician of the day. He received them with enthusiasm, but then found out the truth, when she arranged to have him specially protected during Napoleon’s invasion of Germany in 1806; he became curious about who was behind the elegant treatment he was receiving at the hands of the French generals and began to make enquiries. “Mademoiselle Sophie Germain special
ly recommended you to my protection, sir.” “Mademoiselle Sophie Germain? Never heard of her – who the devil is she?” “A young lady fiercely interested in mathematics, sir. She has apparently been in correspondence with you upon the subject.” “Has she really? I wasn’t aware of it! I must get to the bottom of this. Can you oblige me with her postal address, please?” Well, you get the picture.’

  ‘So, did he write?’

  ‘He most certainly did, and she answered, telling him the truth.’

  ‘And was he furious to find out that she was a woman?’

  ‘Not at all – he was simply delighted! I’m ashamed to say it, but it seems that the worst country in Europe for prejudices about the higher education of women is the one you have the poor luck to find yourself in this instant! Why, Girton College is still struggling to have its students awarded degrees, even those who pass the Cambridge Tripos as brilliantly as any man. It’s probably a good thing for old Sophie that she wasn’t here in England. Still, let us count our blessings: times are changing, even here. Professor Whitehead teaches at Girton now; he’s a great champion of the feminine cause.’

  ‘Well, you seem to be a fine champion too, Uncle Charles.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not really. I mean, I’m all for it, but I don’t actually do anything about it, you know.’

  ‘Well, you taught me.’

  ‘Ah, but that had absolutely nothing to do with any cause, or theory or principle of any kind! I’ll teach anyone as talented and interested as you are, my dear, whether boy, girl, dog, or cat. It’s a simple matter of pleasure.’

  Emily turned pink.

  ‘Well, that’s even better,’ she said happily. ‘That puts you on a par with the French and the German professors who helped Sophie Germain. I’m proud of you, Uncle. Now if only I can do proper justice to your teaching, and manage to pass the entrance exams! It would be so wonderful to study enough to be able to work on problems that no one else has ever managed to solve – just like being the first to walk on new-fallen snow!’

  ‘Yes, it is extraordinary. I’m glad you understand that. Sophie certainly thought so; she studied and worked day and night, though her parents tried everything to stop her. They tried depriving the poor girl of heat and candles, in the naive hopes, I suppose, that she would employ the wee hours to get a little sleep, but it was no use. She would huddle over calculations in the dead of night, wrapped in blankets, until she wore them down and they gave up and let her work to her heart’s content. And she never stopped right through to the end of her life.’

  ‘She never stopped,’ repeated Emily dreamily, pouring tea into her cup until it overflowed.

  ‘I didn’t say she never stopped pouring tea!’ laughed her uncle, mopping up the puddle with a cloth. ‘Who’s knocking? – Ah, that must be Arthur, come to pick up Vanessa.’

  My heart jumped inside me, for believe it or not, I had positively forgotten about my own news. It flowed back into my mind, and it suddenly struck me that telling Arthur about it might not turn out to be as easy as I had supposed.

  As soon as I had put on my shawl, and Arthur and I had taken our leave, shut the door behind us and walked down the path in the balmy evening air, I turned to him, and fearing that if I did not begin immediately, I might never get up the courage to address the subject, I blurted out –

  ‘Arthur, I must tell you something very surprising that happened to me.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, raising his eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Yes, a – a lady came to visit me, and – oh dear, this does sound quite unreal – she asked me to help her find out who has murdered her son-in-law! And,’ I continued hastily, as some instinct told me that I had better get the worst out at once, ‘she has invited me to go down and stay with her starting Saturday.’

  ‘S-stay with her? Saturday?’ said Arthur, with his slight stammer, which was the more endearing as it has all but disappeared in the last years, and recurs only in moments of distress, of which, indeed, it is often the only sign.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered a little meekly.

  ‘But what for?’

  ‘Well,’ I mumbled uncomfortably, ‘she … well, I don’t know why, but she seems to think I can help her – she wants me to prove that her – that her daughter is innocent of the crime. Arthur, I don’t know why she came to me – I really don’t know. She – she knew about four years ago, and she seemed so very certain I could do something now as I did then, and she tried so hard to convince me to come that I … that I said I would.’

  There was a silence, while Arthur digested this information.

  ‘But Vanessa,’ he said thoughtfully after a while, ‘it doesn’t sound like much of a good thing. Not at all.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I sighed, not so much because of his opinion, which was much what I had expected, but because of the unpleasant necessity of arguing and defending my decision, which in any case – I admit it – was already firmly taken.

  ‘I mean to say, what do we know about this lady?’ he continued. ‘Who is she? What do you know of her? What does she know of you?’

  ‘I only know what she told me,’ I said humbly. ‘She says her son-in-law was shot last Sunday in a woods. His name was George Burton Granger.’

  ‘Ah, George Burton Granger. Well, that rings a bell at any rate; I read about that in the paper. This lady must be the mother of the wife then, of Mrs Granger, I mean. But Vanessa – here you are meaning to rush off to stay with perfectly strange people, and furthermore, you’re trying to get mixed up in a murder – a murder, Vanessa! And what if this Mrs Granger really is the murderer, whatever her mother may believe? Mothers have been mistaken about their children before! And if you start finding out about it, what’ll happen to you? No, you mustn’t go – it’s unthinkable! Whatever can this lady mean by coming to you?’

  ‘She – she was, well, there, four years ago, you know,’ I stammered. It is never easy to evoke the memory of that difficult time, least of all with Arthur.

  ‘What do you mean, “there”? Ah, at the trial.’

  There was a long and awkward silence. I didn’t know how to break it. But Arthur did not seem disturbed at the resurgence of old and painful memories; he appeared to be considering the situation, or mulling, perhaps, over the best arguments to dissuade me.

  ‘Vanessa, think about what you’re getting into!’ he said, suddenly emerging. ‘Have you forgotten what it was like, to know that someone around you was a murderer – a murderer! a killer – and that you might be the next victim? Have you forgotten how frightened you were?’

  Dora, I had forgotten it. I remembered only my desperate fear for him, and the rush of conviction when I finally felt that I understood what had really happened! But his words brought something else back: the moments of blind terror and frantic suspicion, moments when I trusted nobody, moments when I thought I was being stalked and hunted, moments when noises in the night caused my hair to rise upon my head. And the darkest moment of all, when it was suddenly borne in upon me what it meant for one human being to have dealt out death to another. All these things had receded into the background of my mind, blotted out by the happier memories of the subsequent events. They came back to me as he spoke, and I realised with some horror that I had not properly reflected about what I was going to do.

  ‘And then – how can you tell if this lady is really sincere?’ continued Arthur, a wrinkle of worry between his brows. ‘It’s very strange for her to come to you – what does she really want? What if she wants to use you in some way that we cannot conceive of? Why can she not simply let the police do their job?’

  ‘Oh, Arthur,’ I cried, reacting only to the last sentence, ‘how can you ask that? She – she thinks they suspect her daughter, and she knows, like a mother would, that her daughter is innocent, but of course she is terrified that the police will be so eager to show results that they’ll hurry to take the easiest step, and arrest her.’

  Again there was a silence. Who better than Arthur should know that such
a fear is perfectly justified?

  ‘I’m afraid too, Vanessa,’ he said softly. ‘Afraid for you. I don’t want you to go. Think! You’ll be far away from me, alone there with a strange family, a dead man, and someone who killed him, and the more you seek to discover, the more you’ll be risking your life. No, I can’t let you go. You mustn’t. Vanessa, p-please! How can I stay here and wait for you?’

  He reached for my hand. I gave it to him, and answered slowly.

  ‘Oh, Arthur, perhaps I’ve been silly and precipitate. But what you say makes me feel more than ever that I must go. I shall be careful. I’m not going as a “detective”, of course, how could I? I’m no such thing. I’m simply going as a friend. Apart from Mrs Bryce-Fortescue, no one will have any idea of what I’m really doing. But you … what you’re saying is making me realise that a life may be at stake here; a real, human life. I cannot stand by, now that I have been called to act! I don’t know why I’ve been called, but I can’t ignore it. I can’t stand aside and do nothing. I can’t even wait, for Mrs Bryce-Fortescue says that the police may arrest her daughter at any moment.’

  We had reached our own front door, and stood at the entrance, hesitating to enter and separate, each to our own rooms, as Mrs Fitzwilliam would never tolerate any other behaviour from her lodgers, even if they are respectably engaged. Arthur looked down at me, and his brown eyes were troubled.

  ‘To change your mind would be like changing yourself,’ he said softly. ‘I wouldn’t want you any different, and yet …’

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said quickly before he could continue, reached up to kiss him, and slipped quickly into my room. I have not convinced Arthur that I am right to go, of course, but … in fact, he has convinced me that I am right! Before speaking to him, I merely thought that I would go, and now I feel that I must go. Before, I saw it as it as a kind of strange chance or opportunity, but now, it appears to me more like a manifestation of destiny. As for the danger, I cannot, now, perceive it as a serious threat. I do hope I am right!