The Riddle of the River Read online

  ‘Have you read H G Wells’s latest story in the Strand Magazine?’ he asked. ‘The Stolen Body? On the man with an incredible out-of-body experience?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I have read The Plattner Story. Of course, it is fascinating and most entertaining, the description of the parallel world inhabited by Plattner after the explosion. A very interesting idea. But still, Wells only means such tales to be purely amusing fiction to entertain us for a moment, does he not?’

  ‘No,’ he replied flatly. ‘It would be pointless to invent such stories. There would be no use for authors. Every one of us can invent some answer to the question: imagine that you left your body; where would you be, and what would you see? No, the power of Wells’s tales is that they are based on true experiences. The Stolen Body is astonishing. He explains in detail how a man can achieve his aim of departing from his own body, not by some gimcrack explosion, but after weeks of effort and intense concentration.’

  ‘And where does he go?’

  ‘Nowhere. He remains in London, something like Plattner, but he can hover above it, see into people’s rooms and minds; not exactly reading their thoughts, but making some kind of contact with a deep part of their brain, so that in certain cases they can perceive or hear him.’

  Arthur was too polite to comment, but threw me a little look that clearly said ‘nonsense’. I smiled. There are times when I am truly pleased to be a woman. A man must either be above taking such childish rubbish as anything more than fairy tales, or struggle against the silent contempt of his fellows. A woman may serenely allow herself to entertain such fantasies and let her imagination roam, without being required to classify herself strictly as a believer or a disbeliever.

  ‘It is rare to find a scientist who believes in psychic phenomena, is it not?’ I asked non-committally.

  ‘Rare, perhaps, but certainly not non-existent,’ he replied. ‘Why, I myself learnt about all this and became interested as a student up in Liverpool, thanks to my own professor of physics.’

  ‘Not Professor Lodge!’ exclaimed Arthur.

  ‘Yes, Sir Oliver Lodge. One of our great physicists if anybody is.’

  ‘Indeed, he has made some extraordinary mechanical discoveries, according to what I have heard,’ said Arthur. ‘But didn’t he also design some experiments to detect the ether?’

  ‘He did, although they are generally considered to have been unsuccessful,’ said Ernest. ‘The results are difficult to interpret. But then, so are the results of Michelson and Morley’s experiment, which is always hailed as a great success!’

  ‘The Americans, Michelson and Morley, designed a most astute experiment to measure the speed of the ether wind, about ten years ago,’ explained Arthur, turning to me. ‘Instead of which, their experiment seems to have established the non-existence of ether as a material substance.’

  ‘I know the ether is supposed to be whatever fills up the universe, where there is no matter,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t know it was supposed to be a wind.’

  ‘It isn’t; that’s the whole point,’ said Ernest. ‘It’s supposed to be at rest throughout the universe. That’s why something that goes rushing through it at great speed should cause a resistance which would be felt as a wind. Our Earth is constantly moving, both rotating around the sun and spinning around its own axis, so one would expect to find an ether wind, analogous to the air resistance you encounter if you run swiftly forward.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Arthur. ‘Michelson and Morley compared the speed of light along the direction of the Earth’s motion – so where you would expect to get most resistance from the ether – with the speed of light in the perpendicular direction, where there would be less resistance. They found that the speed of light was identical in the two directions.’

  ‘How could they do that?’ I wondered. ‘How can one measure the speed of light?’

  ‘One can, actually, but that’s not what they did. They didn’t actually measure the speed. They compared the two speeds by sending out a single light ray through a piece of glass which was half-transparent, half a slanted mirror. The slanted mirror sent its half of the light ray off at a right angle to the other half. Then, by means of other mirrors some yards off, they sent the two halves of the ray back together again. They arranged the apparatus so that the interference fringes were perfectly matched; that is, one saw dark and light alternating lines on the screen they set up to catch the rays. The apparatus functioned over several months, so that eventually by the earth’s motion, it had turned to a right angle from it original position. The light ray that had been along the earth’s circumference was now perpendicular and the perpendicular one was now in the direction where some resistance from the ether wind might be expected. If the two rays were travelling at slightly different speeds, it would have been reflected in the interference fringes, which would have been shifted. But in fact, they were exactly as before. So they concluded that there was no ether wind which could make any difference to the speed of light.’

  ‘It’s not hard to come up with ether theories that don’t contradict Michelson-Morley,’ said Ernest. ‘Professor Lodge thinks that the Earth’s atmosphere might drag the ether along with it, so that an experiment close to the Earth’s surface wouldn’t detect the wind.’

  ‘Why does one need ether at all?’ I asked. ‘Why can’t the universe just be empty for the most part, with stars and planets and things here and there?’

  Both men began to answer me at once, but Ernest’s voice was the louder.

  ‘Because we have understood that the behaviour of light is a wave-behaviour,’ he explained. ‘Light behaves just like waves you see propagating in the sea, or ripples in water when you drop in a stone. Physicists have been able to determine the speed and the wavelength now; the wavelengths, I should say, because each colour has its own. But what is a wave, Vanessa? Do you know?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘a movement in the water?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But what many people don’t realise, is that the water only moves up and down when a wave passes through it. When you see a wave coming towards you on the beach, you may have the false impression that water from far off is coming towards you. But if you throw a rubber ball some distance away and watch its behaviour, you will see at once that it is lifted by the passage of the wave, and then lowered back to the place where you originally threw it. Actually, except at the very edge of the ocean, the particles of water are only temporarily displaced by the wave.’

  ‘Yes, well, all right,’ I said.

  ‘So the wave is just a force acting on the water, locally moving it up and down as it passes,’ he continued. ‘And that is how waves work in general. Sound, also, travels by waves – through the air. But our air is not emptiness, it is made up essentially of nitrogen, with some oxygen and a dash of other elements. It is a kind of gas, with a certain thickness, which can be moved and shifted, as you can easily feel when you fan yourself. So it supports the motion of waves. Now, our air, or atmosphere, thins out to nothing as it goes up – virtually nothing is left after eighty miles or so. It’s just a kind of halo around the planet Earth. The question is: what lies outside it? Something must, for light reaches us through the space which is far beyond the atmosphere, from stars which are inconceivably distant. So, since light is a wave and a wave is a force acting on some material, we conclude that there must be some substance out there.’

  ‘Yet Michelson and Morley could not detect it, nor Sir Oliver, for that matter. I don’t say it isn’t a puzzle,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Oh, it’s there, all right,’ said Ernest. ‘The greatest minds believe in it, in fact the greatest minds invented it. Newton explains it in the Opticks, simply by the operation of removing air from a glass tube and leaving a vacuum behind. Light shone from the outside across the tube still goes through – ergo something is still in the tube, carrying it. He calls it the Medium – the ‘‘Etherial Medium”, and explains all refraction and diffraction of light by following its density, whic
h will obviously be greater in the wide open spaces than within solid bodies. For that matter, according to Newton, the ‘‘Etherial Medium” explains every phenomenon of vision or perception or motion you can think of.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t remember studying ether in the Opticks. But then again, I haven’t opened it since I was an undergraduate.’

  ‘And even then, you probably skipped that part, you mathematician,’ said Ernest. ‘Give me your copy, and I’ll show you.’

  Arthur abandoned his dinner long enough to fetch the book from his study, and Ernest neglected his to read us out a passage or two, with the result that my plate was empty while theirs were both still well-garnished. I helped myself to more carrots and listened to Ernest:

  May not Planets and Comets, and all gross Bodies, perform their motions more freely, and with less resistance in this Etherial Medium than in any Fluid, which fills all Space adequately without leaving any Pores, and by consequence is much denser than Quick-silver or Gold? And may not its resistance be so small, as to be inconsiderable?

  ‘There, you see? That would explain Michelson-Morley, that right there. And now, listen to this.’

  If anyone would ask how a Medium can be so rare, let him tell me how the Air, in the upper parts of the Atmosphere, can be above an hundred thousand times rarer than Gold. Let him also tell me, how an electrick Body can by friction emit an Exhalation so rare and subtile, and yet so potent, as by its Emission to cause no sensible Diminution of the weight of the electrick Body, and to be expanded through a Sphere, whose Diameter is above two Feet, and yet to be able to agitate and carry up Leaf Copper, or Leaf Gold, at the distance of above a Foot from the electrick Body? And how the Effluvia of a Magnet can be so rare and subtile, as to pass through a Plate of Glass without any Resistance or Diminution of their Force, and yet so potent as to turn a magnetick Needle beyond the Glass?

  Is not Vision perform’d chiefly by the Vibrations of this Medium, excited in the bottom of the Eye by the Rays of Light, and propagated through the solid, pellucid and uniform Capillamenta of the optick Nerves into the place of Sensation? And is not Hearing performed by the Vibrations either of this or of some other Medium, excited in the auditory Nerves by the Tremors of the Air, and propagated through the solid, pellucid and uniform Capillamenta of those Nerves into the place of Sensation? Is not Animal Motion perform’d by the Vibrations of this Medium, excited in the Brain by the power of the Will, and propagated from thence through the solid, pellucid and uniform Capillamenta of the Nerves into the Muscles, for contracting and dilating them?

  He clapped the book closed.

  ‘There you have it,’ he said, ‘from a Cambridge man if there ever was one. We ether supporters are not beaten yet! Professor Lodge believes that ether is the main medium of contact, of transmission, in the universe,’ he went on quickly. ‘He believes it explains every contact of every kind that occurs. Including that between ourselves and the – ah, the afterlife.’ He glanced at us both quickly, with a tinge of aggression in his eyes.

  ‘The universe is still an utterly mysterious place,’ observed Arthur evenly.

  ‘This is all fascinating,’ I said warmly. ‘I really should like to hear more.’

  The pudding had come and gone during this discussion, which had allowed Ernest to recover his usual animation and colour. I smiled at him, and rose to leave the gentlemen a moment alone with their drinks.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ said Arthur, already hunting about for a decanter in the sideboard, as I moved out of the dining room by myself. ‘Let’s see, Ernest, what can I offer you? A little drop of liqueur? Or brandy, perhaps?’

  I betook myself dutifully away from the alcoholic regions, and busied myself arranging the drawing room until they should emerge, but I was interrupted quite soon by a sharp rat-tat upon the front door, accompanied by an anxious ringing of the bell. I opened it at once. Pat, whom I had entirely forgotten for once, stood upon the doorstep, shaking his shoes and wiping off the drops of a misty drizzle from his forehead, where it appeared to have caught him unawares.

  ‘Oh, Pat, come in,’ I said quickly, ushering him forward to the detriment of the floor. ‘Have you got news?’

  ‘Yes, I have. We have her name,’ said Pat. ‘And I have a lot to tell you.’ He took off his hat and dropped it over the umbrella stand, while I helped him to divest himself of his dampened overcoat.

  ‘Who was she?’ I urged him.

  ‘She turns out to have been an actress in some kind of roving theatre company no one ever heard of,’ he began.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked at him.

  ‘Ivy Elliott,’ I said.

  He stared at me for a moment as though I were a magician or a mind-reader, gaping. Then he nodded slowly.

  ‘Still waters run deep,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You knew it all along, even while you sent me off on that ridiculous chase. You knew it – why, you even told me you thought the girl might have been an actress! What a lot of trouble you could have saved us. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ I said. ‘It was just a wild guess. I never had time to find any proof.’

  At that precise moment, the door of the dining room flew open, and Arthur and Ernest emerged. Arthur was his usual sober self, but Ernest had an odd gleam in his eye.

  ‘Oh, hello, Pat,’ said Arthur. ‘Vanessa, guess what? Ernest went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he says the Titania we saw simply isn’t the same actress as the one he meant. She’s a replacement.’

  ‘The very idea,’ added Ernest, ‘of imagining that I can’t tell if a woman is large or small, or wearing a wig.’

  ‘And Ernest says she had to be replaced suddenly, because she seems to have disappeared,’ went on Arthur.

  ‘She’s absolutely gone,’ added Ernest bitterly. ‘They say she’s ill, up at the theatre, but I’ve asked around all my acting acquaintances, and something fishy is going on. No one knows where she is. She was all set to play Titania last Monday, and never turned up. They gave the role to her understudy, who was herself booked to play the First Fairy.’ He glanced at me, and paused suddenly, becoming aware of something. I glanced at Pat, and saw that he had grasped the situation. He looked seriously at Ernest.

  ‘Are you talking about a missing actress?’ he said with unusual gentleness.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Ernest. ‘Missing since last Monday, and no one seems to know where she has gone.’

  ‘What was her name?’ was the next, inevitable question.

  ‘Ivy Elliott,’ he replied, the little glint intensifying in his eye. I felt Pat grow tense next to me, bracing himself. Ernest’s passionate feelings were quite manifest, and they reared up like a massive wall, preventing us from speaking openly and naturally about the dead girl.

  ‘Why, what is going on?’ said Ernest suddenly, growing both defensive and aggressive. ‘Why are you all silent?’ He looked from me to Arthur accusingly. ‘Do you know something that I don’t?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Arthur. ‘Do you, Vanessa? Obviously you do. Perhaps you had better tell it as it is.’

  ‘A young woman was found drowned, here in Cambridge, last week,’ said Pat, once again intervening to spare me a most distressing statement. ‘She has only just been identified.’ He looked at Ernest, sorry and a little helpless.

  The portrait photograph of the dead girl lay in the bureau drawer just behind Ernest. I felt myself move towards it, inexorably, unwillingly.

  Arthur, who, floating in an academic world of ideas, had heard nothing of the murder, stared at me, surprised. Ernest watched me in silence, and stepped aside as I reached behind him, opened the drawer, and drew out the photograph. It was as though we were bound by an invisible thread of intense electric tension. I handed it to him. He fixed his eyes upon it. The silence was long and dreadful.

  ‘How did she die?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘She – she was found in the river,’ I said uncomfortably, anxi
ously, doubtfully. There was much more to say on the subject, but I found myself unable to say it.

  ‘She drowned herself?’

  ‘The police believe it was murder,’ said Pat. ‘She didn’t drown. She was strangled.’

  ‘Who did it?’ snapped Ernest, in a tone for which, had I known the answer to his question, I would have hesitated to give it to him.

  ‘Ernest, we don’t know. No one knows.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re going to find out, Vanessa. You are going to find her killer for me. I am hiring you, if you will take the case.’

  It was so unexpected that I fluttered momentarily.

  ‘I – I don’t know where to start,’ I began.

  ‘But I know. Come down to London with me tomorrow, and I’ll show you.’

  ‘You’re not really going to take this on, Vanessa?’ said Arthur, as I sat in our bedroom half an hour later, brushing my hair. We had sent Pat away, plied Ernest with promises, camomile tea and laudanum, and sent him to bed. The nervous tension of the evening had left us both feeling drained and exhausted. I wanted to sleep. The ivory-backed brush almost slipped from my fingers. I put it down and went over to the bed, pulling back the covers, touching the fresh white sheets, welcoming their soothing, restful contact. Arthur blew out the dressing-table candle, leaving only the two little ones on our bedside tables burning. Their flames cast two soft round glows upwards to the ceiling. It is so much easier to talk in the near darkness.

  ‘I think I am,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘But what is Ernest’s call to hire you?’ he objected. ‘What has he to do with this actress? Just because he admired her!’

  ‘How stupid men are,’ I sighed. ‘Can you not see that Ernest was mad about her? She occupied his mind and soul, that much is clear.’

  There was a hesitation.