The Cantor Dimension (4 page)

Perhaps the Prince of Transylvania's coachman and footman knew of the dangers of High Old Robbing Hill and thought to use it as a cover. However, they failed to hide their murderous secret and were arrested in London shortly thereafter, tried, convicted and then hanged at the very place where they'd done the dirty deed.

High Old Robbing Hill, officially known as Gad's Hill, later became the place where Charles Dickens lived and many of the characters in his books were patterned after the people of Kent. Dickens often wrote of the people and places thereabouts, thinly disguising their names. As for the prince, his body was buried with honor at the Rochester Cathedral in Kent, England.

Kent County was no stranger to death. In 1665, a great plague passed through Kent bringing the angel of death to decimate entire families. 7000 deaths a week were recorded at the height of the plague. If one family member was infected, the entire family would be locked inside their home for forty days with a red cross painted on the door to warn others away. It was believed that dogs and cats were the carriers and were thus ordered to be killed to stop the dreaded disease. As the real carriers were the rats and their fleas, killing the cats and dogs who preyed upon the rats backfired. In the Strood burial records, the only entry for the year of the plague was "a long list of deaths" with no details as to who died or when. At 7000 deaths a week they simply couldn't keep up with recording them all.

On the heels of the plague came the Great Fire of London which ripped through the city destroying nearly 14000 buildings including some of the holdings of Edmond Halley the soap-boiler. Even after that, London and nearby Strood did not find peace as the Anglo-Dutch wars which had been active off and on since 1652 finally heated up at Medway in 1667.

During a battle known as
Raid on the Medway,
twenty-three English ships were either burned, captured or sunk. The Dutch fleet had appeared straight out of the misty fog taking the Englishmen completely by surprise. The Dutch invasion of the Medway was called "a dreadful spectacle as ever Englishmen saw." Sir William Batten of the Royal Navy was heard to say, "By God, I think the Devil shits Dutchmen!" The war did end that year and the citizens of London and Strood were finally able to start rebuilding.

In the early 1700s, the Reverend Caleb Parfect became the Vicar of Strood and took over the parish registries, his entries adding an odd sense of humor for the reader. On one occasion the Reverend wrote that he took the nun's milk as witnessed by several parishioners. Two years later, the Reverend took Mr. Pilcher's hops growing in a garden on Spittle Hill.

In ancient times Spittle Hill, also known as Spittal Hill, was the location of the
Hospital of St. Nicholas by the White Ditch
for lepers, which existed as early as 1253 when the lepers of St. Nicholas had a grant of protection. White sores and white skin were one of the diagnostic tools of leprosy in the Middle Ages which may have been the origin of the naming of
White Ditch
.

While most dictionaries will tell you that
spital
is short for
hospital
, the old spellings sometimes used
spittal, spittle
and even
spytell
. Frequent spitting was a symptom of leprosy caused by excessive salivation. In addition, it was common practice to spit upon a leper. Therefore, a leper colony would be a place where a lot of spitting would be going on, both incoming and outgoing, and might thus lend itself to the naming of Spittal Hill.

Strood was not the only town to possess a Spittal Hill. Many leper hospitals across Europe named their locations
Spittal
. There were approximately 19000 leper hospitals in Europe during the Middle Ages. Lepers were forced to wear special clothing and ring bells to warn others that they were approaching. They were forbidden to enter public buildings, touch anything that did not belong to them, wash their hands in a stream, or to touch another person. Lepers were separated from their families, and spouses were given the option to either divorce the leper or live with the leper in a leper colony.

Lepers weren't the only ones to be shunned by society. Women of ill-repute and women who bore children out of wedlock were known as
fallen women
. Charles Dickens took a special interest in fallen women when one of the richest women in all of England requested that he partner with her to open a home to rehabilitate the fallen women, with the goal of teaching them manners and skills so that they could be integrated back into society in a more acceptable way. This was the mission that Dickens undertook. The house for fallen women was located in Shepherds Bush, London, and named Urania Cottage by a previous owner.

Dickens was involved in the daily operations of Urania Cottage and he was responsible for recruiting the residents. He wrote
An Appeal to Fallen Women
to be distributed to women in prison and he signed it
Your Friend
. Many of the fallen women were recruited from Coldbath Fields Prison and if the rehabilitations were successful, the women would emigrate to Australia, South Africa or Canada to start a new life.

Dickens wrote publicly about Urania and its residents. Of the girl known as Sesina Bollard he wrote that she was "the most deceitful little minx in this town - I never saw such a draggled piece of fringe upon the skirts of all that is bad... she would corrupt a nunnery in a fortnight." Many of the characters in Dickens' stories came from Urania Cottage and his life in London. Dickens later died in his house on High Old Robbing Hill in Higham, a village which borders the Hoo Peninsula.

In Greek mythology, Urania was the muse of astronomy with Urania meaning
heaven
or
heavenly
. The Greek muse could foretell the future by reading the stars and her name has been given to astronomical observatories in Berlin, Budapest, Vienna and Zurich. One could imagine that the astronomer Edmond Halley, of whom Halley's Comet is named for, and who owned properties in Kent two hundred years before the life of Charles Dickens, would name one of his properties Urania Cottage after the muse of astronomy.

Urania was also the name of one of the most famous gypsies in Kent County who was born five years after the opening of Urania Cottage for fallen women. Levi and Urania Lee, also known as Gypsy Lee or Gypsy Rose Lee, were the king and queen of the Romany gypsies in Kent. Urania had a nationwide reputation as a palmist and fortune teller like her namesake the Greek muse. The Lee camp was in Tugmutton Common which was west of London.

Tugmutton was named for a game of tying a leg of mutton onto a long pole and holding it up high while the villagers jumped up and tried to tug it down. Tugmutton Common was also known as Bastard Green and was surrounded by places with names such as Bagshot, Cheapside, and Frogmore.

Gypsies were common in Kent and on the Hoo Peninsula, some living near the sea at Hoo were the Romans buried their dead. The gypsies had their own customs for burying their dead which included burying objects of value with the deceased.

Legend had it that three thousand pounds worth of treasure was buried with a gypsy named Chilcott. If the treasure was made of silver and gold which was common at that time, it would be worth a fortune today. The Lee family of gypsies and the Chilcott family did intermarry and the location of the Chilcott treasure is not known. The English gypsies buried their dead in remote places and no place was more remote in Kent than Hoo All Hallows.

Table of Contents

Brody sat in his living room reading about the legends of Kent and the Cantor papers until dawn. Along with the book he'd read through hundreds of papers, scrutinizing each one lest he miss some important clue. Brody was baffled. So far the Cantor papers were nothing more than a haphazard collection of genealogical notes, mathematical formulas, meteorite research, child-like drawings of cubes and compasses, and summaries from a variety of odd books such as the one he'd brought home. Nothing he'd read brought him any closer to solving the mystery of Max's disappearance.

There'd been quite a bit about a mathematician named Georg Cantor who was right up there with Edmond Halley as far as Max's notes went. It appeared that Max's grandfather had been obsessed with Georg Cantor who was presumably an ancestor in the Cantor family tree, of which Max and his brothers were the last generation unless they produced heirs. While the works of Georg Cantor might have some meaning to Max, as far as Brody was concerned it was a monotonous reminder of why he'd hated math in high school.

Brody shoved the papers aside, frustrated. He'd been up all night reading and he'd feel much better after a good long sleep. He stood up, stretched and padded toward the bedroom, kicking off his shoes. Brody was too exhausted to take off his clothes so he lay on top of the bed fully dressed, where he immediately fell asleep. Brody slept until the doorbell woke him up at 3:00 p.m. It was two police officers and they were looking for Max.

"Are you acquainted with Maxwell Cantor?"

"Yes," Brody answered with a grimace. He rubbed his hands together to restore the circulation. He had fallen asleep with his head on his crossed arms.

"Do you know where we can find him?"

"No."

Brody had learned never to volunteer information. Max had taught him that.
Only answer the question asked and as briefly as possible
, Max always said.
Never offer what they haven't asked for
. The policeman pressed Brody.

"What relation are you to Mr. Cantor?"

"I'm his friend."

"His friend, ah." The second police officer jotted something down in a small notebook. The sharp eyes of the first officer bore accusingly into Brody. "And you expect us to believe that you have no idea where he went or when he's coming back, is that right?"

Anger flooded through Brody. He didn't like it when people tried to intimidate him. "I don't expect you to believe anything! Like I'm my brother's keeper or something... like I'm supposed to know what he does every minute of every day?"

"Well, here's something for you to believe... your friend Mr. Cantor is in a lot of trouble." The police officer looked expectantly at Brody. He wasn't disappointed.

Brody's forehead wrinkled as lines of worry replaced lines of anger. "Trouble? What kind of trouble? What do you mean? Oh God..." Brody turned and strode into the living room running his fingers nervously through his sandy brown hair, the police momentarily forgotten. The two police officers followed him inside making a note of his crumpled shirt and sleep-heavy eyes. It was an odd time of day to be sleeping.

Brody stepped over the Cantor papers and kicked at a stack of them - the stack he'd been reading last night. Brody wasn't very good at covering his emotions, not like Max. He turned to the police officer, his pale blue eyes almost pleading. "Look, I don't know where he is. Honest to God! I wish I did!"

The two officers glanced at each other.
Now we've got him
their expressions seemed to say. To Brody one of them offered, "Why don't we all sit down?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, sure. Go ahead." Brody's face was heavy with worry. Something really serious was going on here. "What kind of trouble?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, we're not allowed to discuss the details but if you help us maybe we can find your friend. You appear to be quite worried about him. By the way, I'm Officer Hartley and this is Officer O'Neill." He extended his hand in a gesture of friendship. Brody's clammy hand grasped the officer's cool, dry one. Another entry was recorded in Officer O'Neill's notebook.

Officer Hartley seemed sincere about wanting to help. Brody's trust would be sorely misplaced if he believed them. What they really wanted was to solve one of the most publicized crimes ever to hit the heartland and get themselves promoted. Their goal was to put Max behind bars for a long, long time. He was their prime suspect.

It had been a stroke of pure luck that they'd been sent on a disturbance call. It was Max's landlady who'd made the call, telling the police that she'd heard an angry, violent-sounding fight and had feared the worst. The truth was that Max had forgotten to pay his rent and the landlady simply wanted to find out if Max had moved out. She had used the police as a ruse to gain entry, as Max had changed the lock and her key no longer worked.

When they searched Max's apartment for signs of a struggle they'd found the blueprints on the table. Max had forgotten to stamp them with the cube so Brody had left them behind. The blueprints were what turned a disturbance call into a criminal case but Brody didn't know this as he shook the two officer's hands, establishing a friendly rapport with Max's worst enemies.

Brody was confused. He didn't know whether to trust the police or not. All he knew was that Max was missing and he was scared and he didn't know what to do about it. Brody finally decided to tell them only what he and Max had agreed upon until he could finish reading the Cantor papers.

"I really don't know much," he began. "All I know is that Max takes these trips to research the articles he writes and I feed his fish and stuff while he's gone. He never tells me where he's going. That's all I know!" There, he'd told the truth. He just hadn't told all of it. Who knows? Maybe it
was
the truth. Maybe the trips
were
related to the articles.

The police weren't so easily fooled. "If that's all there is to it then why are you so worried?"

"Because he's never been gone this long before! What if he went to one of those countries where they snatch tourists and chop off their heads? Something horrible could have happened to him and how would I ever know?"

"So he travels to other countries regularly? Do you know what countries? Does he make his living writing these articles?"

This was a sore spot with Brody. He had no idea how Max earned a living. Max didn't go to a daily job nor had he ever mentioned investments or trust funds or an inheritance, yet he always seemed to have plenty of money. There was a lot that Brody didn't know and he hesitated a long time before answering.