The Riddle of the River Read online

  They paid, rose and left, leaving me filled with an odd confusion, increased by the impossibility of thinking clearly and calmly while sitting at a white-clothed table, covered with dishes containing the bony remains of aquatic creatures, together with a man who might or might not be the father of a murderer, a lady who had very clearly applied rouge to her cheeks and redness to her lips, and her swain who clapped his hand too familiarly upon her arm and drank at least four glasses of wine during the meal. The gentlemen at the neighbouring table took the messages seriously – and they continually mentioned Marconi. And the name appeared familiar to me. But where had I seen or heard it before?

  A creamy syllabub concluded the meal. Mr Archer summoned the waiter with a lordly gesture and paid the bill, while I tried to pretend that this was perfectly normal and not a shameful and inadmissible proceeding which I would never dare to admit to any human soul. I felt more uncomfortable than I ever had, for money spent in one’s favour creates a debt towards the spender which is more dreadfully difficult to erase or forget than that created by words, smiles or even (Heaven forbid!) kisses. It was a relief when we arose and made our way back to the dock, but a disappointment to find that although the fog had turned to no more than a light mist inland, the worst of it appeared to have drifted out to sea, so that the horizon was still as invisible as before.

  ‘What shall we do?’ complained Mr Munroe, ‘We’re not going to stay here, are we? Why, we might as well be lying in bed!’

  ‘Let’s go back to the Yacht Club and look at the messages,’ I suggested quickly. ‘If you want to know how the race is going, you can find it out from there.’

  He did not know about them. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked me, surprised.

  ‘They have information on the course of the race, that they are putting up on the front window for all to see,’ I said. ‘We were there just before lunch.’

  ‘What is this cock-and-bull story?’ asked Mr Munroe, turning towards Mr Archer.

  ‘I don’t know the details,’ he replied. ‘She’s correct that there are messages proclaiming the progress of the race, though I don’t know how accurate they can be.’

  ‘Well, let’s go and see!’ exclaimed Mr Munroe. ‘It’s almost three o’clock; the race is practically over anyway.’ He turned on his heel, and off we went, the four of us, back in the direction of the Yacht Club.

  The list of messages on the door had become considerably longer, and another list had been started next to it, this one giving the progress of the Sovereign’s Cup race, which had started some two hours later than the Queen’s.

  2:13:13 BONA rounded Rosberg, standing on

  2:20:22 AILSA

  2:28:50 RAINBOW gone about starboard tack

  2:44:30 ISOLDE rounded. The vessels are very much scattered. BONA alone about on the port tack with a very long lead.

  ‘What do you make of all this?’ exclaimed Mr Munroe, with real amazement, when we had worked our way to the window and read over everything from the beginning.

  I was beginning to answer him by some reference to the scientific impossibility of such a thing, but he had quite other ideas in his mind. Turning towards Mr Archer and gesticulating with annoyance, he cried,

  ‘Why, it says here that Bona’s ahead by seven minutes or more! I was certain Astrild couldn’t fail this year – she’s been so completely overhauled I thought she was primed to win!’

  ‘Astrild looks to be last,’ laughed Mr Archer. ‘Better luck next time, old fellow.’

  The young employee of the Yacht Club, wearing his smart cap and buttons, appeared behind the window holding a rather large sheet and placed it carefully below the preceding one.

  3:16 BONA keeps spinning out her lead turning to windward in the smooth water and barring flukes she may fairly calculate on winning the Queen’s Cup. Coming up to the Kish on the second round although there was more wind the sea was lighter and more suitable therefore for the smaller boats. BONA has rounded Kish, holding a 20-minute lead.

  ‘Twenty minutes! It’s all over,’ said Mr Munroe.

  ‘Let’s go back and see if we can see the boats coming around for the finish,’ said Miss Eaglehurst. ‘I’m sure the fog is gone by now, aren’t you?’

  A great many other people had the same idea. Parasols went up in the street as a more and more shafts of sunlight pierced through the mass of grey clouds.

  ‘If they only rounded Kish ten minutes ago, they won’t be coming in for another half an hour,’ said Mr Munroe.

  ‘No, but if the fog keeps thinning we’ll be able to see them when they’re still quite far out. In fact, I wonder if we can’t make them out already,’ replied Mr Archer, as we came in sight of the sea. ‘Look, Munroe. Can’t you see those moving shadows way over there?’

  ‘Yes, by Heaven, I think you’re right!’ he exclaimed, and the cry was taken up by a hundred voices and as many pointing fingers. Ten minutes later the first of the returning boats was clearly visible. Comments burst forth all around me.

  ‘It’s the Bona,’ said someone. ‘But which is the second boat? I don’t recognise it.’

  ‘It isn’t a yacht,’ someone else answered. ‘Look, you can see it now. It’s just a tug.’

  ‘Oh, that must be the Flying Huntress, following the race! Yes, there it comes. Just look at the mast!’

  ‘Seventy-five feet it must be. That’s where the wires are. It has to be so high, they say, to transmit over ten or twenty miles. For a mile or two you don’t need nearly so much.’

  ‘Wires? Does he use wires? But they call it wireless transmission, don’t they?’ exclaimed another voice.

  ‘Do you mean to say it’s true?’ said a lady who stood so near me that the fragrance of the fresh violets she wore in her corsage wafted across my face, mixed with the strong, salty, fishy odour of the sea water and all the other nameless odours of the throng. ‘Do you mean to say it wasn’t all a big joke, those messages on the Yacht Club window?’

  ‘Of course not,’ replied a man near her. ‘It’s perfectly real! The messages are sent in Morse code, by electrical impulses which go up the wire there and out into the air, where they are captured by another wire set up in a tree next to the Yacht Club. The wire is connected to a Morse printer that reads the electrical impulses that come down it, and the messages are then copied out in longhand and handed to the Yacht Club and to the Irish Daily Express. The newspaper ordered up the whole operation. Oh, Marconi’s fame is going to multiply by a hundred after this publicity!’

  All grew dark before my eyes. The sensation of loss of consciousness, of fainting, was so powerful that I believed I had fainted, and was almost surprised when my vision returned, no more at first than a little hole in the centre of which the Flying Huntress rose and fell on the waves. Two young men were now discernible on the boat; one was working at a machine set up on a table, and the other peered at the Bona, and then at the boats which were following behind, and made notes. A great cry went up from the crowd as the boat passed the finish. But it was not the Bona which was being thus acclaimed.

  ‘MARCONI! We want MARCONI!’ went up from every throat, and the applause swelled into a great thunder as the tugboat approached the dock and the smaller of the two young men stood on deck, waving at the people. A gaggle of journalists wriggled their way to the forefront of the crowd and began shouting questions at him before he was within earshot.

  And in my mind, everything suddenly came together in a dreadful picture, terrifying in its simple completeness.

  The wire in the tree!

  A wireless transmitter: whatever that was, it was the machine which stood on the table on the deck of the boat now floating before me. And Mr Archer had one of them in his house. Of this I was now as certain as if I had seen it at work.

  The Marconi Company; I remembered now that I had seen that name on the list of the companies in which he invested! Mr Archer, fascinated by all new technological inventions, had invested in the Marconi Company before the genera
l public had even heard about it, and learnt all the details of the existence of this strange, incredible, unheard-of machine. Mr Archer was supposed to possess an immense talent for choosing intelligent investments. In this one, he had apparently surpassed himself.

  The crowd pressed thickly forward, hats were thrown in the air, parasols were waved, and the man called Marconi was hailed as a triumphant victor and welcomed to land on the shoulders of a crowd so excited by his prowess that the skipper of the Bona stepped off his ship onto the dock practically unnoticed. With great aplomb, however, he shouldered his way to where Marconi was being celebrated and interviewed, moved up to him, and shook his hand, offering a great smile to the photographers as he did so.

  I stared transfixed at the man who had succeeded in realising what Sir Oliver had made sound nothing more than a myth on the level of fairies and spiritualism séances. He had sent messages over the sea, through the air, from one wire to another; messages which had been encoded and decrypted, and then read and understood by hundreds or thousands of people. He had accomplished something which seemed but a dream. And there he stood, astonishingly young, barely more than twenty, his fair hair slicked back, his fine-featured face serious one moment, laughing boyishly the next.

  There was no doubt about it: Marconi’s invention was more important than the boat race, more mysterious than telepathy, more powerful than the telephone, more astonishing even than electricity. For telephones and electricity run along wires, and our human brain is capable of comprehending transmission along a concrete object linking us to our destination. But wireless transmission – waves travelling, whether it be through the ether, through the air, or through absolute nothingness – this was something which, it seemed to me, would change the future of the world more than any of those.

  The magnitude of the discovery thus revealed to me was so exhilarating, that it took many long minutes before I came to the realisation that I was finally in possession of the undoubted truth about Ivy’s death. I stared at Mr Archer as he gazed out over the sea, watching the slower boats arriving. He had pretended all day that he knew nothing about the wireless transmission. He had lied – but it would be easy to get proof!

  Without attracting his attention, I slipped off through the close-packed crowd and made my way along the streets to Kingstown’s little station, where I boarded the first train to Dublin. I had only one idea in my mind: I must return to Cambridge instantly, at once, now. There was no time to be lost.

  July 1898

  Telegram for Guglielmo Marconi:

  Urgent Her Majesty Queen Victoria having been informed of recent success of wireless transmission requests immediate wireless service communication between Osborne House and royal yacht where HRH the Prince of Wales is recuperating after knee surgery.

  MARCONI TRIUMPHS: TRANSMITS MESSAGE OVER TWENTY-FIVE MILES

  Telegram for Guglielmo Marconi:

  Have heard of astonishing accomplishment re reporting Kingstown Regatta New York Herald would like to request similar reporting service for upcoming America’s Cup next autumn

  Telegram for G. Marconi, President, Marconi Company:

  Construction of receiving station for cross-channel communication proceeding as planned in Wimereux near Boulogne stop first experiments in cross-channel transmission should be possible within six months

  SHIP TO SHORE COMMUNICATION MADE POSSIBLE BY INCREDIBLE MARCONI WIRELESS APPARATUS

  US Navy commander considering installing Marconi apparatus on all ships if cost can be kept reasonable

  MARCONI’S FANTASTIC DISCOVERY ENDS THE ISOLATION OF THE SEA!

  Thursday, July 21st, 1898

  Stumbling in my haste and silently upbraiding my carpet-bag, which had struck me as eminently light and manageable upon the outward journey, but had now turned into a heavy and cumbersome burden. The short trip to Dublin passed quickly, but I missed the connection to Dun Loaghaire, and thereby the last steamer of the evening. The employees behind their counters looked upon me with sympathy as I tried to explain that I must return to England instantly. There was a steamer at seven in the morning, they told me. That was sufficiently early, was it not? I fretted and fumed, but there was nothing for it, so I took the last train for Dun Loaghaire, and dined late in a small hotel near the dock, where the lady was kind enough to give me a room for the night and promise to send a maid to call me at six. Of course I woke up one thousand times during the night to look at my watch, but was sleeping soundly when the rap came on the door at first light. I had to hurry madly to call for hot water, prepare myself and purchase my ticket, and finally flung myself onto the gangplank at the last possible moment; it was removed for departure almost from under my very feet as I rushed up it. I dropped exhausted onto the deck and wondered why time seemed to alternate continually between rushing headlong and stopping altogether. The morning rose bright and beautiful as we moved out over the water. It seemed forever until we reached Holyhead, and I hastened to the ticket window, then stood in a long queue, and finally asked the man the quickest way for me to get back to Cambridge. He took out a book of timetables and made some calculations.

  ‘You wouldn’t necessarily think it, ma’am,’ he said finally, ‘but you’d do best to take the Day Mail to London and go from there. It leaves at twelve-thirty, and will get you into Euston Station before six o’clock. You’ll have to take the Circle Line to Liverpool Street – you won’t find a cab available at that hour – and catch the train up to Cambridge.’

  I couldn’t possibly arrive before the evening! I grimaced with annoyance, then smoothed out my face and purchased my ticket with as pleasant a face as I could muster. It was the knowledge I now held which gave me such distress, such tension and such a need for hurry: the knowledge, and my enforced silence. Even though I knew that a few hours of delay could make but little difference, I felt that I could not bear the knowledge all by myself; I was driven by the need to share it without delay, in order to remove some of the dreadful burden from my shoulders.

  Just thinking about Julian Archer caused me to burn inside. He had been disporting himself cheerfully for weeks since the murder, smiling and gay, apparently, even on the very night of the murder, and every further minute that he spent in liberty now struck me as a debt he owed to Death itself.

  A debt which could no longer be left unpaid.

  I believe I have never felt a horror or enmity for any human being as powerful as that which I felt for Julian Archer, while I sat motionless, my teeth clenched, hour after hour on the rhythmically shaking train. Every smile, every laugh, every dashing gesture or pleasant word I had seen or heard from him became tainted, in hindsight, with the horror of cold-blooded murder. I hated him and I was angry with myself for having thought him quite likeable. I remembered the first time I had seen him, when I stepped into Heffers full of my question about the old gentleman with the silver-topped cane. I remembered noticing his kindness and courtesy as he helped the customers, and thought that Ivy was already dead, and his heart already full of the secret horror. For the first time in my life, I desired to see a man arrested, tried, and condemned.

  Not one man, but two. A father and son as diabolical as the mind can contemplate.

  My mind turned over and over these thoughts with the persistence of a nightmare, till I ended by dozing off. I was awakened by the sound of bustle and argument about me. The passengers in my compartment were in the process of being told by a conductor with a most deprecating expression on his face that no specific duration could be given to the delay, which was due to a technological problem.

  ‘We’ll be going when they’ve mended it,’ he was saying for the fourth time as I came fully to myself. ‘No, ma’am, I cannot tell you when that will be.’

  A glance out of the window told me that we had stopped at Rugby. So near Cambridge – a mere sixty or seventy miles, I thought – and yet so far! Oh, why was there no direct train from Rugby to Cambridge?

  Like the other passengers, I descended onto the platf
orm and took to walking up and down, trying to get some idea of the progress of the work that a group of men were engaged in about the locomotive. Nearly an hour passed as I fumed and fretted, and then something happened. The stationmaster was hastening along the platform, holding something out – to me? No, to a woman standing near me, in the grip of an impatience as frenetic as my own.

  ‘An answer to my telegram?’ she said, snatching it from his hand and reading quickly over the contents. ‘Oh, thank God!’ And she hastened towards the barrier, while I followed her, curious to see what she had arranged.

  She waited for some moments at the barrier, and then a couple arrived, and came towards her, nearly running.

  ‘Oh, I think the train has stopped forever!’ she moaned.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the man, ‘everything is arranged. We’ve got as good a pair as you could wish for to start off with, and my man is arranging the relays as we talk. We’ll have you there sooner than you could have arrived by train to Cambridge and then the carriage afterwards.’

  She flung her arms around his neck with a sob. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, ‘I am so frightened, so frightened of arriving too late! Oh, you are so good to me. How can I thank you enough? But it’s such a long way to go there and come back. How will you do it?’

  ‘We’ll leave you in Huntingdon and spend the night in Cambridge, with friends,’ said this blessed gentleman, as she gave up her ticket and passed through the barrier to join his wife and him. ‘It’s nothing, my dear. Don’t put yourself out. Richard is ill, and of course we’ll do anything we can to get you to him quickly! Come along outside now. We ought to leave this very minute.’

  ‘Wait!’ I cried in a panic, giving up my ticket and swinging past the barrier to run up behind them as they moved quickly away. ‘Wait, please! Are you really going to Cambridge? Can you take me with you, please? I’m in the same situation as you are – I must get there tonight!’