Flowers Stained With Moonlight (9 page)

My dearest sister,

Here I am back in Cambridge, writing to you at my very own desk, in my very own dear rooms! How familiar, how consoling and reassuring they seem. And just two weeks ago, I felt quite tired of them, and wished very much that something should happen to take me away from them for a time!

Yesterday morning, I closeted myself with Mrs Bryce-Fortescue, and told her what I had learnt about the person I call to myself ‘the mysterious young man’. She was greatly impressed by the importance of the discovery, and I told her that in order to pursue my researches, I needed to travel. I needed to try to pick up the traces of his journey, and perhaps to follow or trace him as far as London, or wherever else he had decided to go and lose himself. She grew most excited and
worried, above all when I asked her opinion on the subject of the police: should we not inform them of our discovery at once? Could they not trace the gentleman much more efficiently than I should be able to? No, Mrs Bryce-Fortescue did not think so. She was much against speaking to the police at all; she hemmed and hawed, and twisted, and said that they would not listen to us, that their minds were fixed against Sylvia, that they would dismiss our words as so much useless gossip. The reasons she gave did not strike me as being extremely convincing, but she is my employer, after all, and in any case, I felt that nothing should be lost by waiting, and much might be gained. After all, the police could certainly be informed at any time, and besides, what prevented them from finding it out for themselves, instead of proving that Sylvia was somewhere where she wasn’t? Why, whoever said they saw her ought to have been seeing a red-caped young man instead!

I told Mrs Bryce-Fortescue that I thought I should visit Cambridge before anything, for the young man had almost certainly stopped there in the train from Haverhill, and I thought I might be able to find out if anyone remembered him alighting. For that matter, I thought that one might be able to trace his voyage to Haverhill as well as that going away, and either way, Cambridge would be the nearest major station.

We decided that Peter should take me to Cambridge today, and he took me to despatch a telegram to Arthur to let him know that I was coming.
‘Arthur darling returning Cambridge need your help Vanessa’
was as much verbosity as my small change would cover (the second word was
perhaps not strictly necessary but did much to alleviate the overcharged state of my feelings).

I set about preparing a few things for my journey, for I could not tell how long I might be away nor what I should find out, and tried to put my thoughts as well as my clothes in order until teatime, when I sallied downstairs. We had barely settled around the teapot, when the sound of cantering was heard rapidly approaching the house.

‘Whatever is Peter doing with the horses?’ said Mrs Bryce-Fortescue, going to the window.

‘It isn’t Peter,’ said Sylvia, getting up also.

A splendid carriage worthy of a fairy tale, pulled by two high-stepping and perfectly white steeds, was approaching at a fast clip.

‘Is it some friend of yours, Vanessa?’ Sylvia asked.

‘No one I know possesses such a superb equipage!’ I answered, and we remained all four glued to the window, quite breathless with amazement.

The carriage pulled to a halt in front of the house, and a gentleman alighted from each side of it.

‘Why, that
is
a friend of mine,’ I cried, astonished. ‘It’s a mathematician of my acquaintance, Mr Morrison! But I don’t know the man who was driving.’

The gentlemen saw us plainly, gathered together in the window as we were, and they smiled gaily, but went ceremoniously to ring the bell. Charles’ friend, the proprietor of the carriage, was a distinguished although somewhat portly person of fifty or so, with an ample and carefully tended greying moustache. I waited with ill-contained impatience
until Mr Huxtable had opened the door, taken the gentlemen’s coats and ushered them formally into our presence.

‘Did you get our telegram?’ were Charles’ first words. ‘We did send one to say we were coming – you haven’t had it yet? I’m so very sorry! We got here before it; it’ll come any moment, I dare say. Please do forgive us. We didn’t mean to interrupt your tea! Vanessa – Miss Duncan – telegraphed that she was meaning to come up to Cambridge, and my friend Korneck and I thought it would be simpler for everyone if we just came down and fetched her ourselves, as Korneck has the most terrific horses and they were really in need of exercise. Please let me introduce myself,’ he added with the debonair manner which had its usual effect of irresistible charm on everyone around him. (Charles is really a dear.) ‘I’m Charles Morrison, mathematician, Trinity College in fact, and this is my friend Mr Gerhard Korneck, an amateur mathematician from Prussia, presently also of Cambridge.’

‘From the region of Posen, old Poznània, I come. I am enchanted, enchanted to make your acquaintance, dear lady,’ said Mr Korneck punctiliously, in fluent English with a marked Germanic accent, addressing himself uniquely to the lady of the house. As she kindly extended her hand to welcome him, he took it and kissed it in a most continental manner! ‘I ask a thousand pardons for our so sudden, so ridiculous arrival not announced by telegram.’

‘Oh, please do not worry about it,’ said Mrs Bryce-Fortescue courteously. ‘We were just sitting down to tea, and should be most pleased and honoured if you two gentlemen would like to join us.’

Indeed we were pleased (and perhaps even honoured – who can tell?); the presence of a couple of gentlemen in a society of ladies enlivens the mood remarkably, and witty remarks soon began to fly among the members of the younger generation, while Mr Korneck continued to address himself admiringly to Mrs Bryce-Fortescue, praising her house, her roses, her tea, her cakes and her delightful hospitality. Indeed, he seemed greatly taken by the adventure, and continued to repeat lovingly,

‘It is all so very British, so very British,’ as though he could not get over this plain and simple fact.

We had a lovely tea (Charles’ telegram was delivered in the middle of it,
‘Coming to fetch Vanessa this afternoon please excuse suddenness Morrison’
). Afterwards, I collected my things, bid farewell to Mrs Bryce-Fortescue, promising to return as soon as I should have some positive information, or to write her if necessary, and took my departure with Charles and Mr Korneck.

Once comfortably installed upon the plush cushions of the most luxurious vehicle I have ever had the good fortune to enter, I scolded Charles vigorously.

‘I might have been in the middle of important detection! It might have been necessary for me to stay the night! I might have really wanted Peter to take me into Cambridge – it might have been urgent for me to talk to him!’

‘Oh no,’ he exclaimed with meek dismay. ‘I never thought of all that – I do hope we haven’t spoilt your plans! Anyway, you must blame Arthur, not me; it was mostly his idea. In fact, it’s all your fault, Vanessa, when it comes to that. It was that
“darling” in your telegram that did it. Arthur got all het up when he read that, and here was Korneck with his horses just pawing the ground with eagerness to get going somewhere, and I suddenly had this stroke of genius about how to satisfy everybody at once! I tried awfully to get Arthur to come, but he had to teach his very last class of the year this afternoon. I tried, I did, Vanessa. I told him the students would be delighted to get early vacation, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.’ He shook his head with mock sorrow. ‘Poor old Arthur. There’s a man who’ll never take a walk on the wild side.’

‘I’d just as well he didn’t,’ I answered smartly. ‘I prefer him steady and reliable. He was in enough danger once to last anyone a lifetime, if you ask me!’

‘That was different,’ said Charles; ‘it was danger, right enough, but it wasn’t courted, any more than the pedestrian on the pavement is courting the danger of the brick which all unknowingly bonks him upon the head. It wasn’t a consequence of taking risks and living to the hilt!’

‘But why should a person court danger? It comes only too often when it isn’t wanted, don’t you think?’

‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ sighed Charles a little wistfully. ‘It’s different for you; here you are in the thick of it.’

‘Rubbish, I’m not in any danger!’ I snapped, feeling slightly annoyed at Charles’ indiscretion, for I didn’t want Mr Korneck to know anything about my detecting activities. But it turned out to be much too late for such worries, for that gentleman said cheerfully,

‘Yes, yes, I have heard that you undertake a dangerous task, a most dangerous task.’

‘Charles!’ I cried in dismay. ‘You haven’t told!’

‘Not a thing, not a thing! I only said that you were hunting down a murderer, that’s all. I just told him in the carriage, coming over. No details, I promise.’

‘You are impossible!’ I was beginning.

‘He told me no details at all,’ said Mr Korneck hastily, then added with a wink, ‘None were needed. I read the daily papers. But reassure yourself, my dear young lady. I will be the soul of silence, I will be the tomb. I am deeply shocked to hear of a young lady engaged in such activities. I do not wish to hinder or increase the danger in any way. I will be of discreet help if possible, nothing more. You may count on me. Your …
Verlobter
, your fiancé is very good, a very fine man. But if you need further help, please do not hesitate to depend upon me.’

‘I haven’t introduced you to Korneck properly yet,’ said Charles, quickly redirecting the conversation into channels less immediately connected with his own foolish indiscretion. ‘You remember I mentioned him last week; he’s the one who’s working on Fermat’s last theorem, the lost and forgotten problem.’

‘Ah, so beautiful!’ Mr Korneck showed a great disposition to be distracted from my doings, and hold forth upon what was obviously his pet topic. ‘Do you know the problem, Miss Duncan? Are you a lover of mathematics?’

‘I am sadly ignorant,’ I smiled, ‘but always greatly interested in listening to the conversation of my many mathematical friends. I have heard so much over the past years that the language has a welcome, familiar sound to
me, and I feel quite happily at home surrounded by talk of quaternions, matrices, or vectors, even if I cannot participate.’

‘But Fermat’s last theorem is something different. It is, I believe, much easier to explain than those objects you have just mentioned. You are a teacher of children, Miss Duncan, so perhaps you have already encountered this simple question: can you think of three ordinary numbers, not zero, of course, such that the square of the first plus the square of the second is equal to the square of the third?’

‘Well, certainly; that’s Pythagoras’ theorem on right triangles,’ I answered; ‘three squared plus four squared equals five squared, for example.’

‘Very good, very good! Nine and sixteen make twenty-five,’ he nodded approvingly. ‘And there are many, many more; an infinite number, in fact. If you seek you will easily find a great many more. Thirty-six plus sixty-four equals one hundred – did you ever notice that? A delightful equation – such beautiful numbers. But now – now for the great mystery of Fermat. Can you think of three numbers such that the cube of the first plus the cube of the second is equal to the cube of the third?’

‘Let me see,’ I hesitated. ‘One cubed plus two cubed is nine – no, that’s a square. Two cubed plus …’

‘Do not try, do not try any longer, for it is impossible! No such numbers exist, none at all, and this was proved long ago, some say by Fermat himself, although his argument appears to contain an error, which was rectified over a century ago by the great Leonhard Euler. Fermat also left a proof for the fourth powers, a beautiful and astute
argument. But he asserted that much more was true. Indeed, his famous so-called “theorem” states that one cannot find three numbers such that the nth power of the first plus the
n
th powers of the second is equal to the
n
th power of the third, for any ordinary number
n
greater than 2. You see, this is what you cannot have,’ and he scribbled:

x
ⁿ
+
y
ⁿ
=
z
ⁿ

onto a bit of paper and showed it to me.

‘Really? You can never have that for any ordinary numbers
x, y
and
z
?’ I said, surprised, for the equation has nothing so very startling and improbable in its appearance.

‘That is the mystery! For Fermat himself wrote that he
had
proved that you cannot, but his proof was never found. He noted the formula on a page of his copy of Diophantus, saying that he had found a most marvellous proof, but that the margin was too narrow to contain it –
cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
’

‘So you think he wrote it down elsewhere? And it has really never been found or rediscovered?’

‘Never, although some progress was made towards rediscovery at least. The greatest step of all was taken by a member of your sex, the great, great Sophie Germain, my inspirer and my muse in all things. Ah, the sublime beauty, the unspeakable wisdom of her method! She worked with prime numbers, certain very special prime numbers, the Germain primes. You know that a prime number,
p
,
is a number which is not divisible by any other, save the number one, and itself, of course. Five, seven, eleven, these are primes. But the Germain primes are very special, for not only is
p
itself prime, but
2p
+
1
. Five is a prime number and so is twice five plus one – eleven, so five is a Germain prime! Seven is prime, but twice seven plus one is fifteen, not prime. So seven is not a Germain prime. The notion is so beautiful, so mysterious, so admirable. Inspired by this, I try and attempt to go even farther than she did!’

‘And what did she do, exactly? What did she use these Germain primes for?’

‘Very nearly, she proved that Fermat’s equation is impossible when
n
is one of them – you cannot have
x
^p
+
y
^p
=
z
^p
for a Germain prime
p
. Well, I exaggerate. She proved this in the case that
x, y
and
z
are not divisible by
p
. But no one has come close to proving anything so important in the subject, excluding the great Kummer of course, but that is something else, for his techniques are entirely modern and different, whereas hers could have been those of Fermat himself. Such purity, such simplicity! And she sent her beautiful theorem to the greatest mathematician of the day, Carl Friedrich Gauss, but she wrote under the identity of a man, for she feared that her sex might cause her discovery to be despised and rejected because of the prejudices of her time.’