The Three-Body Problem Page 26

  ‘Let me remind you of one other point raised in Mr Weatherburn’s testimony: that of Mr Akers’ medicine. Mr Akers’ doctor testified that Mr Akers suffered from arhythmia of the heart, and took steady doses of digitalin to control it, at a rate of ten drops, three times a day. During the dinner with Mr Weatherburn, Mr Akers asked for a pitcher of water, poured some into a glass, and took a medicine bottle from his pocket. Mr Weatherburn testified that he poured a drop or two into the glass and then said ‘What am I doing’ or words to that effect, stopped up the bottle, and thrust it back into his pocket. No explanation has been offered for this peculiar behaviour, although it does not seem that Mr Weatherburn would have any motivation whatsoever to have invented it. The bottle of digitalin was not found on Mr Akers’ dead body. I propose to explain these facts shortly.

  ‘It took Mr Beddoes quite some time before finally, in some dusty corner, he lit upon the manuscript he was looking for, and recognised it for what it was. He took it up, perhaps with some idea of looking through it sufficiently to grasp its import, or perhaps carrying it off altogether. At that precise moment, the entrance door to Mr Akers’ rooms opened, and the resident entered, the dinner at the Irish pub not having been unduly prolonged. If he had merely seen Mr Beddoes waiting for him in his rooms, he would perhaps not have been particularly surprised, but seeing him standing in the doorway of the study with the fatal manuscript in his hands, he became enraged and quite probably launched an accusation if not a threat, or possibly even a threatening gesture. Mr Beddoes reacted by seizing the poker and striking out with it at the man who was ready to attack him professionally and perhaps even physically. Mr Akers fell to the ground, and Mr Beddoes dropped the poker, slipped out of the tower and returned quietly home, clutching the manuscript. He may have verified immediately that Mr Akers was dead, or else he must have spent a very dreadful night, wondering about the effects of his desperate blow. But the following day brought him the official news of Mr Akers’ death. He came under no suspicion whatsoever, and as days followed days, he perhaps came to feel that Mr Akers had deserved what came to him, and that no untoward effects would follow from his act.

  ‘Now, Mr Beddoes was a passionate mathematician, if less creative than his colleagues. He was afraid to keep the stolen manuscript, so he copied the entire thing out in his own neat handwriting, got rid of the original, and hid his copy in a special place known only to himself. He studied the manuscript with great care and attention, as witnessed by the many questions and annotations he added in the margins. I submit this copy to you as my fourth piece of evidence. It was found quite by accident after Mr Beddoes’ death, in the secret hiding place where Mr Beddoes kept it, namely under the mattress of one of the cat baskets in the cat house at the bottom of his garden. One might be tempted to ask at first what makes me believe that this paper is not a mathematical manuscript due to Mr Beddoes himself, but closer examination shows that the formulae and results are often annotated with question marks and even explicit questions, and it would certainly be strange if Mr Beddoes did not understand his own theorems!

  ‘Mr Beddoes probably conceived of the possibility of understanding Mr Akers’ idea completely by himself. Whether he then would have made himself the master of these ideas, and submitted an independent manuscript to the competition, will never be known, but it is very likely that such thoughts were in his mind; at any rate, it is clear that he hesitated to mention his find to Mr Crawford, not wishing to awaken any suspicion.

  ‘I was present at a certain dinner party, a few days after Mr Akers’ murder, and heard several people asking Mr Weatherburn to describe his last dinner with Mr Akers. Mr Beddoes was also present, and it was there that he first became aware that Mr Akers had told Mr Weatherburn something about his discovery, and worse still, that he had written down the main formula on a paper which he had then thrust into his pocket. This paper, and Mr Weatherburn’s knowledge of it, became a threat to Mr Beddoes’ desire to claim the result for himself, and he determined to get hold of it. He attempted to have it shown to him at the police station, but was told that it had already been sent away to Mr Akers’ next of kin, his sister living in Belgium. Mr Beddoes then discovered the name and address of the sister, and near Easter, he travelled to visit her, and representing himself as a mathematician who wished to save the lost but brilliant ideas of her murdered brother from oblivion, he tried to obtain from her not only the fatal paper but also Mr Akers’ pocket diary, containing the dates of the ABC meetings. She suspected him, however, and refused to deliver them, offering him to copy them down instead. He refused, and left quite angry, foiled in his intentions. If necessary, this lady, Madame Walters, has accepted to travel to England and identify her visitor, at least from a photograph.

  ‘Mr Beddoes must soon have found that alone, he was not able to come to a satisfactory understanding of Mr Akers’ computations, and finally resolved to obtain Mr Crawford’s help by hook or by crook. An ABC meeting had already been planned for April 17th, and even though Mr Akers was dead, Mr Beddoes went to Mr Crawford’s rooms on that day, at two o’clock. Recall from Mrs Wiggins’ testimony that in mid-April, Mr Crawford had an afternoon visitor, and both took a glass of red wine. There, showing him only his own handwritten version of the manuscript, he attempted to obtain explanations of the difficult points from Mr Crawford, while simultaneously attempting to claim the ideas for himself. It was an awkward procedure, and such an experienced mathematician as Mr Crawford is unlikely to have been taken in by it. He must have understood that Mr Beddoes had obtained access to Mr Akers’ idea by some method or another. By this time, Mr Crawford had worked steadily and ceaselessly on his own idea without a break for two entire months, wearing himself out with trying every possibility that occurred to him, but all in vain. He must have been extremely frustrated, and all of a sudden, in the most unexpected manner, the key to solving all his difficulties appeared in Mr Beddoes’ hands – and Mr Beddoes himself did not really understand it! During their discussion of Mr Beddoes’ questions, Mr Crawford must have obtained at least a certain amount of information as to what lay in the manuscript. Still, I can well imagine that Mr Crawford wanted to look over the whole manuscript carefully himself, and was highly suspicious of Mr Beddoes’ refusal to allow him to do so; this is probably what engendered the quarrel between the two of them described by Mrs Beddoes in her testimony.

  ‘However, as Mr Crawford had thought long and hard about every aspect of the problem, he was able to seize the key idea hidden in the central formula even from the small amount of information that he could glean from Mr Beddoes’ questions, and then his only desire was to lock himself up alone once again in his ivory tower and work it out until he reached a final, complete version of what he considered to be a blossoming out of his own original idea. The moment the door closed behind Mr Beddoes, Mr Crawford went back to work, and after a lapse of a week or so spent in working out details, he believed himself to be in possession of a full and complete solution of the so-called perturbative three-body problem.

  ‘Now, his fevered brain began to envision himself as the winner of the King’s Birthday Competition, internationally famous, honoured and considered on a par with the famous Henri Poincaré. This vision soon became an obsession, and day after day, he convinced himself that only Beddoes, with all his knowledge of the true provenance of the ideas contained in the manuscript, stood between himself and glory. Moreover, the ideas which Beddoes claimed as his own were very unlikely to really be his own, and indeed, the fact that he had them in his possession at all was extremely suspicious; Mr Crawford probably, at least half-consciously, identified Mr Beddoes as the murderer of Mr Akers.

  ‘For a week or so, Mr Crawford was so busy writing and thinking that he kept these ideas at bay, but then came the day on which the manuscript was complete, and only the danger due to Mr Beddoes’ knowledge of the true situation prevented him from sending it off. This brings us to around the day of the garden party, the 23rd of April. Mr Crawfo
rd decided to lay his plans very carefully. To begin with, he knew that a manuscript submitted in English to the competition would attract attention, as no English specialists in the subject were expected to submit. Naturally, he wished his manuscript to attract attention if it were to win the prize, but if that were not the case, then he surely felt that it would be a very dangerous thing that anyone should make even a superficial connection between a manuscript from England and murder in Cambridge. Therefore, he sent his manuscript to be translated into both French and German, so as to make it virtually impossible to guess where it came from. The rules of the competition stipulated that the manuscripts were to be submitted anonymously, with only an epigraph in lieu of signature, and that the true names of the authors were to be supplied in sealed envelopes marked with the epigraphs. Only the envelopes corresponding to the winning entries were to be opened. Therefore, by submitting French and German versions of his manuscript, Mr Crawford thought to protect himself from identification forever, in the case of his manuscript not being considered a winning entry (for example, if M. Poincaré of France had provided an even more astonishing solution). In case his manuscript would be the winner of the competition, Mr Crawford’s desire for the fame and honour which would ensue was so great that he was ready to take any risk.

  ‘He also took advantage of naturally running into Mr Beddoes at the garden party to show him that he held no grudge over their quarrel, and let him know that he wished to dine with him. I saw this myself; Mr Beddoes appeared very surprised when Mr Crawford spoke to him. At the time, I merely thought that he was taken aback by Mr Crawford’s brusque manner, but now I realise that his surprise was due to the fact that the last time the two men had met, a week earlier, they had quarrelled bitterly.

  ‘He then proceeded to an extraordinarily evil action. On April 30th, he invited Mr Beddoes and Mr Weatherburn to dine together with him at the Irish pub, and at the last minute, he excused himself, alleging ill-health. The inclusion of Mr Weatherburn in this invitation was obviously intended to throw suspicion on him, as he had already dined with the victim of the previous murder, and the manoeuvre succeeded only too well.’

  I paused here in my speech, and looked directly at Arthur, as did everyone else in the courtroom. For the very first time since the beginning of this painful trial, I saw his eyes fixed, burningly, upon me. It strengthened me.

  ‘Mr Crawford then installed himself just within the front gate of Mr Beddoes’ garden, in the shadow of some large lilac bushes, and waited in the darkness with a large rock gathered from the garden in his hand. Eventually, he heard Mr Weatherburn and Mr Beddoes return from their dinner, and bid each other goodnight at the gate. Mr Weatherburn turned away, and Mr Beddoes closed the gate and turned towards the house. He received the blow suddenly, silently and powerfully on the back of his head. Mr Crawford was a very large, strong man. The blow fell instantaneously, Mr Beddoes uttered no cry, and no one was aware of anything. Mr Crawford let fall the rock and returned home; Mrs Beddoes discovered her husband’s body only later in the evening, as she was leaning out of the front door in the hopes of spotting his arrival.

  ‘Mr Crawford must have obtained his translations very soon after this. The main judge of the competition, Professor Mittag-Leffler of Sweden, looked at them, and told me that they appear to have been translated by native speakers, but not by mathematicians. I guess, therefore, that he sent them to an ordinary translating agency; if proof is needed, I have no doubt that this agency can be located and identified.

  ‘Hearing of the arrest of Mr Weatherburn, Mr Crawford soon was assured that he was under no suspicion, and on the 4th of May, he took his two manuscripts, sealed them into an envelope, addressed it, and went to post it, probably to someone on the mainland who forwarded it to Stockholm. I visited Stockholm, met with the organiser of the competition, Professor Gösta Mittag-Leffler, and saw the envelope and manuscripts there with my own eyes. However, as the manuscripts were anonymous, and the handwriting, language and envelope did not indicate Mr Crawford explicitly, I was forced to make a special request to open the sealed envelope mailed together with the suspicious manuscript, marked with the epigraph of the author, and containing his name. Professor Mittag-Leffler had not the authority to open the envelope himself, and insisted that such authority could come only from the King of Sweden, patron of the competition. Thus I had to meet and present my petition to the King himself. He opened the envelope, and confirmed that the author of the manuscript was Mr Crawford. He has written this letter to you, my Lord, to inform you of it.’

  An agreeable gasp went round the courtroom, as I extracted the King’s gloriously embossed and sealed letter from my leather bag, and handed it to the judge. There was a breathless silence as he broke the seal and read the brief message aloud.

  ‘I pray you continue, Miss Duncan,’ he said, turning to me. ‘I remain with bated breath waiting to understand how Mr Crawford met his death.’

  ‘That was mysterious to me, too, at first,’ I told him. ‘Recall that on the occasion of the quarrel within the ABC group on the 14th of February, Mr Crawford had drunk a full half-a-bottle of whisky in his excitement. Such an act was most infrequent with him, as a matter of fact, and accompanied only moments of tremendous stress and excitement. The mailing of his manuscript to Sweden was such a moment, especially as he could not share it with a single person. He returned home, alight with secret triumph, took down his whisky bottle, still half-full as he had not touched it since the day of the ABC meeting on February 14th, and drank it down in two large tumblerfuls. As it contained a large dose of digitalin, he fell dead of cardiac arrest within a few minutes.

  ‘But who had placed the digitalin in the whisky? At first, I believed that it was Mr Beddoes, who had extracted the flask from Mr Akers’ pocket after murdering him. But this explanation did not satisfy me completely. For one thing, I could not see why Mr Beddoes should have taken the flask, for surely he could not have conceived of killing Mr Crawford already at that moment – they had not yet quarrelled and were still the best of friends. I thought he might have somehow predicted their future disagreement, but that seemed unlikely and really too diabolical. Furthermore, it gave no explanation of Mr Akers’ peculiar behaviour with his medicine in the Irish pub during the last dinner of his life. It took me some little time to realise that I had been led astray by the prosecution’s insistence that Mr Akers’ bottle of digitalin was stolen from his pocket by his murderer.

  ‘In fact, what happened was much simpler. During the fatal ABC meeting of February 14th, Mr Akers must have understood perfectly that Mr Crawford had no intention of allowing him to proceed with his intentions, submit his paper, and savour his triumph alone. A bitter, impulsive and asocial man, he suddenly decided to eliminate Mr Crawford, probably having almost no thoughts for the consequences. Seeing Mr Crawford, not for the first time, down a full half-bottle of whisky at a single sitting, he must have imagined, not incorrectly, that this was a habitual practice with him, and in a quiet moment, he contrived to empty his bottle of digitalin into the half-bottle of whisky which still remained. He could easily have arranged to visit a doctor in London within the next days to obtain a renewal of his medicine without arousing the suspicions of his regular doctor. If he had done so, he might well have never come under suspicion for the crime, for no one but his doctor knew of his reliance on digitalin, and no one but Mr Beddoes knew of his special and secret association with Mr Crawford. However, he made a serious slip at his dinner with Mr Weatherburn. Automatically following his usual habit, without thinking, he ordered water, poured out a glass and attempted to put his usual ten drops of digitalin into it. However, no more than a drop or two remained in the bottle, as he had emptied it within the afternoon. He must have immediately realised the foolishness of his gesture, as he had now a witness both to the fact that he was in possession of some medication, which might be associated with the death of Mr Crawford, and that the flask was empty. However, there was nothing to do about
it. On an impulse, he threw the telltale bottle of digitalin away, probably in the restaurant when he went to wash his hands. He was quite agitated during the dinner, and indeed, so he should have been, as he must have felt that it was yet time for him to prevent the grisly murder he had undertaken. I hope, I wish to believe, that he would surely have done so that same evening, had his own death not so unexpectedly overtaken him. I hope so, but we will never know.

  ‘My Lord, gentlemen of the jury, that is all that I have to say. I sincerely hope I have been able to explain all of these events to your satisfaction.’

  I stopped speaking, and remained standing shakily in the witness box. A strange noise, like a wave, began at the back of the public gallery and swelled about the courtroom, and I realised after what seemed a long time that it was applause. The judge banged his gavel upon his desk and said ‘Silence in the courtroom!’

  He then turned to the barristers. ‘Would the prosecution like to adjourn until tomorrow to prepare its response to Miss Duncan’s evidence?’ he said politely.

  The prosecutor stood up.

  ‘I will make my closing statement now, my Lord, if you please,’ he replied firmly.

  He turned to the jury and spoke very briefly.

  ‘Members of the jury, you have now heard two very different explanations of how three mathematicians were murdered, and two very different explanations of the same body of evidence, that concerning the disappearance of the bottle of digitalin, the presence of the accused with each of the first two victims just before their deaths, and so on. The witness we have just heard has added new evidence. It is up to you, now, to compare the two possible explanations of the evidence, and to determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the true one. I rest my case.’