Freeze Frames

Chapter Twenty-Six

Strands of mist washed up all along the shore, lingering among the trees where splintered sunlight seemed suspended in long, slanting fingers. The dew on the grass, almost white, sparkled like frost in the early morning light.

Enzo felt it soak through his slippers as he crossed the lawn, leaving dark tracks in his wake. He pulled his robe tightly around himself as he banged hard on the back door of the house. He knew that Jane was up, because he had seen the smoke drifting lazily into the sunlight from the chimney on the east gable. But like Enzo, she had not yet dressed, and peered at him, dishevelled and a little bleary, through the crack in the door that opened up.

“Oh!” She seemed startled to see him. “I’m still a mess.”

“So am I.”

“I can see that.”

He could barely contain his impatience. “Look, it doesn’t matter what either of us looks like, I’ve made a breakthrough.”

She opened the door a little wider, forgetting her appearance. She looked older in the cold light of day, without make-up to paper over the early morning cracks. “In Papa’s murder?”

“Yes.” He scratched his head. “Listen, you told Charlotte that when Peter was a boy, his father used to play word games with him to increase his vocabulary.”

“That’s right.”

“What games?”

She shrugged. “Peter never said. I have no idea.”

Enzo reached out his hand to take hers. “Well, I do. Come on.”

“Hey! It’s freezing out there!”

“Tell me about it.” Enzo almost dragged her across the lawn behind him. She ran to keep up. They both left wet footprints on the floor as Enzo led her into Killian’s study. She looked at the mess of open books on the desktop, and then at Enzo. “What have you found?”

“Messages. Left in the encyclopaedias. Pages marked with post-its, entries highlighted with a marker pen.”

“What messages?”

“Nothing that makes much sense to me yet. Although that’ll come, I’m sure. But the point is this. Just ask yourself. Where were the clues?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Where did I find these clues?” He waved his hand at the open volumes on the desk.

She shrugged, not fully understanding. “In the books, I guess.”

“Exactly.” He took her hand again and dragged her across the room to the tiny kitchen leading off it. He ripped the post-it off the fridge door and handed it to her. “What does it say?”

Her face was a mask of incomprehension. “You know what it says.”

“Read it out loud.”

She sighed in exasperation. “The cooks have the blues.”

He looked at her expectantly, waiting for the penny to drop. But it didn’t. “Haven’t you ever heard of Doctor Spooner?” She frowned. “Doctor William Archibald Spooner. A professor at New College, Oxford, in the nineteenth century. He was an albino, and had occasional problems with the spoken word, a nervous tendency sometimes to transpose initial letters. It used to amuse his students so much they started inventing their own transpositions, and called them Spoonerisms.” He paused, eyes shining, and she looked again at the post-it in her hand.

“The books have the clues,” she read. And she looked up, her face suddenly flushed. “Oh, my God!” Her eyes turned toward the magnetic message board and she prised it free of its grip on the fridge. This time she read, “A fit of the blood will foil the beast.” Her eyes darted toward Enzo, infected now by his excitement. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea. But we’re going to find out, Jane. I know we are.” He took her hand again. “Come and look at the others.” And they crossed the study to Killian’s desk.

Jane unstuck the Post-it from the desk lamp and read it out. “P, one day you will have to oil my bicycles. Don’t forget.” She turned puzzled eyes on Enzo. “Boil my icicles?”

He made a face that conveyed his own lack of comprehension and pulled the desk diary toward him. This time he read out the transposed message himself. “P, I was fighting a liar, but now there’s no more time, and all I’m left with is a half-formed wish in the roaring pain.”

Concentration furrowed Jane’s brow. “Fighting a liar?” She paused. “Kerjean?”

Enzo shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, if not him, who?”

“I don’t know. Yet.”

“And what is a half-formed wish?”

“I guess it was something he was in the process of doing, but unable to finish. Something that would help him to defeat, or unmask, the liar he was fighting.”

“And the roaring pain must have been the suffering of his illness.” The tide of emotion that had risen in Jane was visible in eyes that brimmed with tears. “Oh, God… Poor Papa.”

Enzo cast his own eyes over the open volumes on the desktop. The Post-its and highlighted entries. And he wondered what any of it had to do with Wiesenthal and Agadir and Ronald Ross. Killian had not made it easy. But, then, he must have been paranoid his killer would find and destroy the evidence after he was dead. He had been relying on his son to see the wordplay at once, and then be inside his mind to unravel the puzzle. Somehow, Enzo had to get himself inside Killian’s head, too.