I thought we might walk to the Sheldonian together,” said Seldom, rolling another cigarette. “I’d like to know…” He hesitated, struggling for the right words. It was now completely dark outside, so I couldn’t see his face. “I’d like to be sure,” he said at last, “that we both saw the same thing in there. I mean, before the police arrived, before all the theories and explanations-the original scene as we found it. I’d like to know your first impression as, of the two of us, you’d had no warning.”
I thought for a moment, trying to remember, to reconstruct the exact scene. I was aware too that I wanted to appear sharp and not disappoint Seldom.
“I think,” I said, “I agree with almost everything the pathologist said, except maybe for one final detail. He thought that when the murderer saw the blood, he dropped the pillow and got out as quickly as possible, without trying to put things back.”
“But you don’t think that’s what happened?”
“He may not have tried to tidy up, but he did do one more thing before leaving: he turned Mrs Eagleton’s face towards the back of the chaise longue. That’s how we found her.”
“You’re right,” said Seldom, nodding slowly. “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know, maybe he couldn’t bear to see Mrs Eagleton’s staring eyes. If, as the pathologist said, this was someone who was killing for the first time, he may have seen her eyes, suddenly realised what he’d done and tried to put them out of his sight somehow.”
“Do you think he knew Mrs Eagleton, or did he pick her more or less at random?”
“I don’t think it was totally random. What you said afterwards drew my attention-that Mrs Eagleton had cancer. Perhaps he knew that she was going to die soon anyway. That would seem to fit with the idea of a challenge that’s mainly intellectual, as if he wanted to do as little damage as possible. If it hadn’t been for her waking up, even the method he chose to kill her could have been seen as fairly merciful. Perhaps what he knew,” it occurred to me suddenly, “was that you knew Mrs Eagleton and that it would force you to get involved.”
“That’s possible,” said Seldom. “And I agree that he wanted to kill in the most subtle way possible. What I was wondering while we were listening to the pathologist was what would have happened if things had gone according to plan and Mrs Eagleton’s nose hadn’t bled.”
“Only you would have known-thanks to the note-that she hadn’t died of natural causes.”
“Exactly,” said Seldom. “In principle the police wouldn’t have been involved. I think that was what he wanted-a private challenge.”
“Yes, but in that case,” I said, doubtful, “I don’t understand when he wrote the note-before or after killing her.”
“Perhaps he wrote it before killing her,” said Seldom, “and even when part of the plan went awry, he decided to carry on and leave it in my pigeonhole anyway.”
“What do you think he’ll do now?”
“Now that the police have been informed? I don’t know. I suppose he’ll try to be more careful next time.”
“You mean, another murder that no one will see as a murder?”
“That’s right,” said Seldom, almost to himself. “Exactly. Murders that no one sees as murders. I think I’m starting to see now: imperceptible murders.”
We were silent for a moment. Seldom was deep in thought. We were almost at the University Parks. Across the road, a large limousine drew up outside a restaurant. A bride emerged, dragging her heavy train and holding on to the pretty headdress of flowers in her hair. A small group of people crowded round her and cameras flashed. Seldom didn’t seem to notice any of it: he walked staring straight ahead, utterly absorbed in his own thoughts. Even so, I decided to interrupt him and ask about the point that was most intriguing me.
“Regarding what you said to the inspector, about the circle and the logical series, don’t you think there must be a connection between the symbol and the choice of victim, or perhaps with the method he chose to kill her?”
“Yes, probably,” said Seldom, slightly absent-mindedly, as if he’d already gone over this much earlier. “But as I told Petersen, the thing is, we can’t even be sure if it is a circle or, to pick an example at random, the Gnostics’ ouroboros-the serpent biting its own tail-or the O from the word ‘omerta’. That’s the problem when you know only the first term of a series: establishing the context in which the symbol is to be read. I mean, whether you should consider it from a purely graphic point of view, for instance, on a syntactic level, simply as a figure, or on a semantic level, due to one of the possible meanings attributed to it. There’s a fairly well-known series that I use as a first example at the start of my book to explain this ambiguity. Now let me see…”
He searched his pockets until he found a pencil and a little notebook, then tore out a page and rested it on the cover of the notebook. Still walking, he carefully drew three figures and handed me the paper. We’d reached Magdalen Street, so I could make them out easily by the light of the street lights. The first figure was definitely a capital M, the second looked like a heart above a line and the third was the number 8:
M
“What do you think the fourth figure is?” Seldom asked. “M, heart, eight…” I said, trying to make sense of them. Seldom waited, a little amused, while I pondered.
“I’m sure you’ll find the answer if you give it some thought quietly at home this evening,” he said. “I simply wanted to show you that, at this stage, it’s as if we’d been given only the first symbol in a series,” he said and covered the heart and the eight with his hand. “If you saw only this figure-the letter M-what would you think?”
“That it’s a series of letters, or the beginning of a word that starts with M.”
“Exactly,” said Seldom. “You would have given the symbol the meaning not just of a letter in general, but of a precise, specific letter, a capital M. But as soon as you see the second symbol of the series, things look different, don’t they? You now know that you can no longer expect a word, for instance. The second symbol is quite unlike the first, quite different. It might remind you of playing cards, for instance. Anyway, to a certain extent, it puts in doubt the initial meaning we gave to the first symbol. We can still think of it as a letter, but it no longer seems so important that it’s specifically an m. And when we bring in the third symbol, again, our first instinct is to reorder it all in accordance with what we know: if we interpret it as the number eight, we’re thinking of a series that begins with a letter, continues with a heart, continues with a number. But note that we’re pondering all the time meanings that we’re assigning, almost automatically, to what are in principle merely drawings, lines on a piece of paper. That’s what’s so cunning about the series: it’s difficult to separate the three figures from their most obvious, immediate interpretation. Now, if for a moment you can see the naked symbols simply as figures, you’ll find the constant that eradicates all previous meanings and gives you the key to how the series continues.”
We passed the brightly lit windows of the Eagle and Child. Inside, people were standing at the bar, laughing soundlessly as they raised their pints of beer, as if they were in a silent film. We crossed the road and turned left, skirting around a monument. The curved wall of the theatre appeared in front of us.
“You mean that in this case, in order to establish the context, we need at least one more term.”
“Yes,” said Seldom. “With only the first symbol we’re still completely in the dark. We can’t even determine which direction to take first: whether we should consider the symbol simply as a mark on a paper, or try to attribute some meaning to it. Unfortunately, all we can do is wait.”
He climbed the steps to the theatre as he spoke and I followed, reluctant to let him go. The foyer was deserted but we were guided by the sound of the music, which was light and joyful like a dance. Trying to be as quiet as possible, we went upstairs and along a carpeted corridor. Seldom opened one of the doors leading off it, which had diamond-shaped padding, and we entered a box with a view of the small orchestra on stage. It was rehearsing what sounded like a Hungarian csardas. We could now hear the music clearly and loudly.
Beth was leaning forward in her chair, her body tense, her bow moving backwards and forwards furiously across the cello. I listened to the dizzying rush of notes, like whips lashing against horses’ flanks, and in the contrast between the lightness and joyfulness of the music and the efforts of the players I remembered what Beth had told me a few days earlier. Her face was transformed as she concentrated on the music. Her fingers moved quickly over the fingerboard but there was something distant in her eyes, as if only part of her were there. Seldom and I went back out into the corridor. He looked grave, reserved, but I realised he was nervous because he started rolling another cigarette mechanically, even though he wouldn’t be able to smoke there. I said goodbye and Seldom shook my hard firmly. He thanked me again for having accompanied him.
“If you’re free on Friday,” he said, “would you like to have lunch with me at Merton? Perhaps we can come up with something else between now and then.”
“I’d love to. Friday would be perfect for me,” I said.
I went down the stairs and back out to the street. It was cold now and drizzling. Standing under a street light, I took out the piece of paper on which Seldom had drawn the three figures, trying to shield it from the fine rain. I almost laughed out loud when, halfway home, I realised how simple the answer was.