Newton’s Fire

II

In the back of the BMW, Rachel watched anxiously for pursuit. She couldn’t see anything, yet her heart kept pounding all the same. That man on the roof; the noise of him trying to tear his way through the fabric. And the look on his blond companion’s face when he’d seen the papers in her hand; she’d never before seen murder so plainly written on a human face.

She turned to face front, assuming that Luke and Pelham would be equally shaken. To her surprise, however, they both appeared almost calm. In the passenger seat, Luke was flicking between radio channels in search of bulletins from Crane Court, while Pelham was driving in characteristically negligent fashion, slouched in his seat with his legs splayed wide and his wrist on the wheel. Something in their manner proved contagious, and her own nerves began to settle.

They reached dual carriageway, headed west. The road’s surface had recently been re-laid, and it was so tacky from the sun that it sounded almost like driving through shallow water. Luke finally gave up his hunt for news and turned the radio down low. Relative silence gave Rachel the opportunity to brood and reminded her of how little she knew about these two. If they were to be fugitives together, she needed to learn more. On the other hand, she didn’t want to antagonise them with crude questions, so she leaned forwards between the front seats and turned to Pelham. ‘I bet you get asked this all the time,’ she said. ‘But where did you get your first name?’

‘The folks were Wodehouse fans,’ he told her. ‘How sick is that?’

‘He was a wonderful writer.’

‘So was Dickens. So was Tolstoy. No shortage of wonderful writers with cracking first names. I’d have made a great Leo, if you ask me. Big, king-like and extremely dangerous. But no, I get fucking Pelham.’

‘It could have been worse,’ she pointed out. ‘They could have been Bronte fans.’

He laughed and threw her an admiring glance. ‘So do you have a bloke, then, Rachel?’

Luke put his head in his hands. ‘Jesus, mate,’ he sighed.

‘A bloke?’ asked Rachel.

‘A man. A boyfriend. You must have come across the concept. Someone to rush home from work for, so you can do his ironing.’

‘Ah. A bloke. Then no. Not just at the moment.’

‘Outstanding,’ grinned Pelham. ‘Tell you what. When this business is all over and done with, how about you, me, Mozart and some moonlight? The chance of a lifetime, though I say so myself. I mean, how many Nobel laureates have you ever been out with?’

She looked at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve won the Nobel Prize?’ she asked.

‘Of course he bloody hasn’t,’ said Luke.

‘Maybe not technically,’ admitted Pelham, ‘but I assure you it’s just a matter of time. And this way you get to say you knew me when.’ He turned to face her again, letting the BMW drift alarmingly from their lane, so that Luke had to grab the wheel and course-correct them. ‘Come on. How about it?’

‘I’m really flattered,’ said Rachel. ‘But, honestly, I don’t think I could go out with a man called Pelham.’

‘Fucking parents,’ scowled Pelham. ‘I tell you something: that man Larkin knew what he was about.’

‘Hey!’ said Luke, holding up a hand for silence while turning the radio back up loud to catch a chaotic Crane Court press conference in progress, a crowd of reporters shouting out questions.

‘What’s in there?’ yelled one of them. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Then what’s with the HazMat suits?’

‘Purely precautionary, I assure you.’

‘Precautionary for what? Anthrax? A dirty bomb?’

‘Is this to do with the memorial service?’ yelled a woman.

‘The what?’

‘The Royal Family are going to parade past here on their way to the memorial service at St Paul’s on Tuesday night. Has this investigation got anything to do with that?’

‘No comment. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

The press conference ended in a bedlam of unanswered questions. A reporter summed up and handed back to the studio. Luke turned the volume back down. ‘A dirty bomb. Jesus. They’re not holding back, are they?’

‘You reckon they’ve found it?’ asked Rachel.

‘I reckon we won’t hear a peep if they have.’

‘No.’ She sat back and spread the Newton papers out on the rear seat beside her, read again the enigmatic note on the sixth page. ‘And you guys can’t think what it was that Ashmole might have left Newton?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know a thing about Ashmole, apart from that Dee connection,’ said Pelham. ‘At least, there is one thing — but you’ll think me terribly immature.’

‘More than for owning a Harry Potter costume?’ asked Rachel.

‘Ouch,’ laughed Pelham. ‘Okay. Ashmole sometimes published under a pseudonym.’

‘What’s so immature about that?’

‘I only remember because of the name he chose: James Asshole.’

Rachel couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘Sadly, no. It was actually James Hasolle. But close enough, you know. Hey, I was an undergraduate. And, to be fair, it is an anagram of his name.’

‘They loved their anagrammatic pseudonyms back then,’ said Luke. ‘Newton called himself Jeova Sanctus Unus: One holy god.’

‘No way is that an anagram of Isaac Newton,’ protested Rachel.

‘Of Isaacus Neuutonus, it is,’ said Luke. ‘If you allow a little latitude, at least: “i” for “j”; a “u” for a “v”. That kind of thing.’

‘One holy god,’ smiled Rachel. ‘Didn’t think much of himself, did he?’

‘He could be pretty conceited,’ agreed Luke. ‘He believed he was some kind of seventeenth-century counterpart of the prophets. An adept with special insight into the true nature of God and His universe. And not just any adept, but the greatest of the modern age, the successor of Moses, Elijah and Solomon, a man whose lifework was an important prelude to the Second Coming.’

‘Honestly?’

‘Scout’s honour. He was convinced he had a destiny. Loners often do, of course; particularly the brilliant ones. And he was born on Christmas Day, which can’t have helped. He kept it to himself, of course, along with his Antitrinitarianism and his other heresies, because you couldn’t exactly go around talking about that kind of thing, not in polite company; but it’s implicit in his private papers.’

Rachel was only half listening. Her mind had moved on. Or, more accurately, back.

‘Anagrammatic pseudonyms,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t have a pen, do you?’

‘A pencil.’ He rummaged through the glove compartment, handed it to her, along with a notepad. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’

She shook her head. ‘Probably nothing.’

‘Come on. Share.’

‘Okay. You said earlier that Bacon deliberately misspelled “Solomon” as “Salomon” by changing the first “o” to an “a”. That’s right, yes?’

‘Yes. So?’

She tapped the page. ‘That’s not how Newton spells it here.’ She held it up for him to see. ‘He’s changed the final “o” of Solomon to an “a” as well.’

‘I wouldn’t read too much into that,’ said Pelham. ‘Spelling was pretty arbitrary back then. An honourable tradition that I choose to follow myself.’

‘Yes, but Salomon was deliberately misspelled. That’s what Luke said. Newton would surely have known that. And he’d surely have known how Bacon had misspelled it too. Anyway, why put it all in capitals and then underline it if you don’t want to draw attention to it? And isn’t there something odd about the construction of that whole bottom line?’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, I know crosswords didn’t exist back then, but doesn’t it read almost like a cryptic clue? And when you were talking just now, I couldn’t help notice that the letters in Ashmole are also in Saloman’s House.’

Luke frowned and looked closer. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

‘I know I’m right,’ she said. ‘That’s why I said it.’

‘And if you take those letters out? What does that leave?’

Rachel jotted SALOMANS HOUSE down on the pad, struck out the letters A S H M O L and E. ‘A, N, S, O, U and another S,’ she said. They looked at it together, but nothing leapt out. ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I really thought I was onto something.’

‘You are,’ said Luke. He leaned over and took the pencil from her, his fingers just brushing her skin. ‘But it’s not Ashmole,’ he said. ‘It’s Ashmolean.’ He struck out the A and N, underlined the four remaining letters left sitting there already in the right order, just begging to be read out.

‘Sous Ashmolean,’ murmured Rachel, meeting his gaze with something akin to awe. ‘Beneath the Ashmolean.’