Finding Arcadia Read online

  “How very odd.”

  “But there must be a connection, some reason for you to be brought into this also.”

  “I can’t imagine what it is. I would remember meeting someone as unusual as yourself. And how many teenagers have access to explosives of this kind?”

  Think. Somehow this M character knew that she was travelling to Oxford today. Also why. Enough C-4 to bring down the building. Far more than would be needed to kill just her and the doctor. But sufficient to bury the records of her birth also.

  She opens her bag and removes the medical file of Euphemia Hebron, passing it to Dr. Bell. “Do you know this woman?”

  A flicker of recognition. But also suspicion. “Where did you get this, young lady? Medical files contain sensitive personal information.”

  Even after what he has just been through, his first instinct is medical ethics. There is no point dissembling. “I’m sorry, but I stole it from the basement. She’s the reason I’m here today—and possibly the explanation for what happened to you. I need to know who she is and what happened to her. I was told she was my birth mother, and that after she died I was adopted. But look at the file: there’s no record of her ever having any children. In the electronic files, however, my brother and I are recorded as hers.”

  He looks at the file more closely. “I do remember this woman. Partly because of her unusual name; partly because it was such a sad case. Husband and wife, local couple. Their car smashed into a telephone pole.”

  “Did they have children?”

  “They had no relatives at all. Each was an only child whose parents had passed away.”

  “That was more than sixteen years ago,” she says. “Did you know the Hebrons?”

  “Not really, but I was the attending physician when they came in after the accident. There was nothing to be done, as they had passed away before reaching the hospital. It’s highly likely that they died immediately upon impact. I certified the deaths myself.” He squints at the file and then shows her a swirling “B” on the notation indicating time of death.

  “What happens to the body when there is no family?”

  “In the past they might have been buried in what’s called a potter’s field. These days, it is up to the local council to ensure that bodies are properly buried or cremated. I’m sorry that I don’t know what happened in this case.” He tugs at his earlobe, lost in thought. “One of my students could probably tell you. As I recall, Lysander took quite an interest in them.”

  “Lysander Starr?”

  “Why, yes. Do you know him? I’ve hardly seen him since he went off to Reading more than ten years ago. A fine man, but sometimes a little too driven. Very ambitious.”

  “Dr. Starr recently began teaching at my school.”

  The older man shakes his head in disbelief. “Now that is a coincidence.”

  She no longer believes in coincidences. “Do the names Charles Milton or Sophia Alderman mean anything to you?”

  He shakes his head once more. “I’m afraid not. What do you think all this means, Miss Arcadia?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I’m half a step closer to finding out.”

  Unlike the incident at the Priory School, it is not possible to pretend that the bomb threat at the John Radcliffe Hospital never happened. Seeing her wariness about going to the police, however, Dr. Bell offers to do that on his own.

  “I’ll tell them the truth,” he says. “Well, most of the truth. As I appear to owe you my life, it behoves me to help you also.” He looks at the engraved metal panel and the instructions for disarming the bomb, both bearing her name. “I suppose I can play the absent-minded professor and forget about these for a couple of days. But this is a serious business. If we don’t find this M person in two days, then I shall have to tell all to the constabulary. She sounds quite the savage.”

  She looks around the ceiling. “Are there CCTV cameras in this building? I haven’t seen any.”

  “No,” he replies. “As this is a teaching hospital, we combine both patient confidentiality and the rather quaint views about privacy held by many students. A proposal to install such cameras was voted down almost unanimously three years ago.”

  Dr. Bell places the panel in a desk drawer and straightens his jacket once more. “Very well, I shall now go and invite the relevant authorities to come and collect this device. I suggest that you exit through the fire escape while I depart through the main entrance.” He points to a door further down the hallway. “There is one more thing I can do, Miss Arcadia. You came here to learn about the circumstances of your adoption. I have a friend within the Oxfordshire County Council, who may be able to shed some light on the matter. Perhaps you and I could pay her a visit tomorrow?”

  A promising offer to which she agrees.

  “I would hazard a guess, however”—he looks her up and down—“that you had not planned on overnighting in Oxford. Can I therefore invite you to join us at Hall in my college for dinner? We should be able to find a visitor’s room for you also. It is the least I can do, by way of thanks for your bravery today.”

  She knows better than to accept offers from strangers, but communal dinner and rooms in college should be safe enough. Such a chance to find out more about her parentage might not recur. She agrees to meet him in the early evening and heads towards the fire escape.

  Turning back to say farewell, she sees Dr. Bell holding the explosive device once again and looking at it with—admiration? He looks up and their eyes meet. “It’s a remarkable piece of work—real craftsmanship.” He places it back carefully on the chair. “A shame that it was only meant to be used once.”

  She nods and opens the door to the fire escape. Stairs take her down to an exterior exit, some two hundred yards from the nearest gathering of patients and staff. She strides purposefully away from the hospital and begins the two-mile journey into Oxford proper.

  The John Radcliffe is Oxford’s main teaching hospital, though it is a considerable distance from any of the colleges. The name is regarded by some as ironic, since the seventeenth century physician John Radcliffe famously wrote almost nothing and claimed to read very little either.

  Having an institution named after oneself at Oxford has long been a useful way of transforming one’s legacy. Years earlier, Mother gave her the novel Zuleika Dobson, the story of the outrage caused in the early twentieth century when a woman attended classes at what was then an all-male Oxford. Max Beerbohm named the fictional institution in which his novel was set “Judas College”—partly to avoid embarrassing his alma mater, Merton College, but also to make the point that no one was so base that the naming of an Oxford college in their honour could not redeem them.

  This is not a sightseeing trip, however. She has a few hours before dinner and takes the opportunity to follow up two leads on the substitute teacher formerly known as Miss Alderman. Biology at Oxford is a joint programme between the Departments of Plant Sciences and Zoology, though her efforts to access paper files of all students who studied in the period 1995–2005 are politely but firmly rebuffed. Colleges have photographs of their students, but more than thirty colleges and similar concerns about privacy make the task of reviewing them impractical. If Miss Alderman had completed her doctorate, it would have been possible to locate the finished work in the Bodleian Library. Given that she withdrew, there is likely no trace beyond the paper files that have already been denied to her.

  She is no more successful at the Oxford University Dramatic Society. A student-run organisation, its approach to archiving appears to be episodic at best. In any case, with something in the order of a hundred productions being staged each year, the chances of stumbling upon a photograph within a reasonable period of time are remote. Given the lengths to which Miss Alderman has gone to construct a fake identity, it is also possible that she has erased some or all of her past.

  As evening sets in, she finds herself walking back through the historic centre of Oxford. The crowds of tourists, pausing
to ruin photographs of the architecture by positioning their heads in front of it, have now dissipated. The charm of the place emerges—narrow streets flanked by limestone walls, buildings adorned by gargoyles and grotesques, blind turns that open onto spectacular structures like the Radcliffe Camera.

  Lifted from a nineteenth century poem, Oxford is routinely called a city of dreaming spires. Yet much of its beauty remains gated, jealously guarded by the colleges that make up the University. A Byzantine administrative structure preserves many policies from the same era as its oldest architecture. How many Oxford dons does it take to change a lightbulb? So goes the joke, she has been told, with the outraged answer: Change? What do you mean, change?

  As a light drizzle begins to fall, she arrives at the Porter’s Lodge of Magdalen College. Behind the desk, a small television shows a local news broadcast on which the crawling text at the bottom of the screen reads “Suspected gas leak at John Radcliffe Hospital”. Interesting. Misdirection spread by journalists, or by the police?

  Dr. Bell has left word at the Lodge for her to be given a robe and brought up to the Senior Common Room. She arrives to find her host in the middle of explaining a riddle to another fellow of the college.

  “Come now, Lucian,” Dr. Bell is saying. “I thought you were a mathematician—this is surely much simpler than what you do for a living?”

  The younger man takes a sip of his drink, unimpressed. “As I explained, Joseph, I work on number theory—not matchsticks and Roman numerals.”

  “Ah Miss Arcadia!” Dr. Bell sees her and ushers her over. “May I introduce Lucian Smythe, one of our newer fellows. I was just inviting him to solve a puzzle I came across recently. But I rather think he feels it is below him—or perhaps above him. Might you be able to assist?” He gestures to a seven matches that have been arranged on a sideboard to form an equation:

  “So here we have the equation VII = I, or ‘seven equals one’. In this kind of puzzle, your task is to transform it into a true equation with the minimum movement of matchsticks.”

  Echoes of an earlier challenge. “I’m familiar with the form,” she says. “In fact, I had a teacher once, who particularly liked matchstick puzzles.”

  “Oh? What does he teach?” Dr. Bell raises his own glass to his lips. Sherry, by the look of it.

  She accepts a sparkling water from the tray offered by a passing student waiter. If he is offended by serving someone younger than himself he does not show it.

  “Nothing—now.”

  “Is he retired?”

  She drains the sparkling water, suddenly realising how thirsty she is. A burp is stifled. “After a fashion,” she says, covering her mouth.

  Dr. Bell returns his attention to the puzzle. “So, that’s enough time for you to ponder this. You’ve surely got at least one solution.”

  She has three, but none is satisfactory. Straightening the two matches in the “V” and putting the next match horizontally would make II – I = I. Inelegant and almost certainly incorrect at three moves. Moving only two matches, the V could be transformed into an X and one of the vertical matches shifted to the left, making I x I = I. Another dubious solution. Moving only one match by taking one of the vertical matches on the left and laying it across the equals sign makes VI ≠ I. Even less elegant.

  Think laterally. The matchsticks are not matchsticks but lines. Roman numerals are made up of lines. The Romans used letters because they had no numbers as such—they had no number for zero and very limited mathematical operations.

  A different operation, with only one match. “Interesting,” she says, taking one of the vertical matches in “VII” and laying it across the top and to the right of the “V”. Broadly interpreted, it now becomes a square root sign—and the equation reads √1 = 1.

  Lucian Smythe is unimpressed. “This is childish,” he snorts. “Why don’t you go back to torturing your monkeys, Joseph?” He moves off in search of a refill of his sherry.

  Dr. Bell raises his eyebrows. “I apologise for my colleague, Miss Arcadia. He’s new and can be a little direct.”

  A bell rings, signalling that it is time to go in.

  “It’s very kind of you to invite me to dinner,” she says as they walk along a passageway and into the medieval Hall that stands above the cloisters. “What was Dr. Smythe saying about monkeys?”

  Dr. Bell waved a hand in annoyance. “Many years ago I was involved in some experiments with monkeys. It was important work, but preceded our modern understanding of animal rights. Today we have more formal processes—institutional review boards and so on—to ensure that ethical standards are maintained.”

  “What were you working on at the time?” She feigns indifference, looking at the paintings and the timber buttresses above them.

  “Attachment, but also the development of intelligence.” He is momentarily lost in thought. “Lysander—Dr. Starr was always fascinated by the social aspects. You may have heard of Harry Harlow’s controversial experiments in the United States during the 1950s and 60s. He did some important work on the development of infant monkeys, until it was derailed by the animal liberationists. In some ways I think Lysander was born a generation too late. His disposition was always to put science ahead of ethics.”

  They sit at a long table at one end of Hall, slightly elevated. Dr. Bell’s sherry has been replaced by red wine. He takes a drink and looks into the glass, a momentary sadness crossing his brow.

  “But tell me about yourself, Miss Arcadia,” he turns to her, brightening. “All I really know about you is who you are not—not, apparently, the daughter of the poor Hebron family. So who are you?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” she replies.

  Another student waiter appears, this time depositing plates of soup in front of the diners. It appears that only her table, made up mostly of fellows of the college and a few guests, is served. The rest of the long tables are filled with students who have collected their food on the way in.

  From the centre of her table, she sees a man with untidy hair rise.

  “Behold the President of our college,” whispers Dr. Bell. “Now he will say a Latin grace before dinner.”

  At a cough by the President, all bow their heads. Back in the seventeenth century, she has read, Magdalen’s refusal to accept a Catholic president imposed by James II was a turning point in the Glorious Revolution. Centuries later, the college’s embrace of traditions like Latin, as well as incense and ritual chimes—smells and bells—still put it at the very high end of High Anglican.

  She has learned some Latin at school, but it is rare to hear it spoken. Head still bowed, she leans forward as the President opens his mouth, watching him from the corner of her eye.

  “Benedictus benedicat.”

  The President sits down again.

  Well, that was underwhelming.

  Within seconds the various fellows—and indeed the vast majority are men—are slurping away at their soup. Across the table, Dr. Smythe remarks that it tastes surprisingly good and asks for the menu. “Jerusalem artichoke,” he reads. “Odd. I thought artichokes were mainly grown in Italy.”

  She cannot resist. “Actually it doesn’t come from Jerusalem and it isn’t an artichoke. It’s a type of North American sunflower.” Mother explained this to her many years ago, taking rare pleasure in knowing more about something than her children. She sees Dr. Smythe’s confusion. “Italians referred to it using the Italian name for sunflower: girasole. This was misunderstood by the Americans as being “Jerusalem”. And though it’s a root rather than a flower bud, someone thought it tasted a bit like an artichoke. So from being misheard and mis-tasted, we get Jerusalem artichoke.”

  Dr. Smythe looks at her with a puzzled expression. “How utterly fascinating,” he says, turning to attempt conversation with the person on his left.

  Beside her, Dr. Bell stifles a laugh. “Don’t mind Lucian. He seems to think that being an Oxford don requires you to be boring. On the contrary! I say, Lucian.�
�� The don on Dr. Smythe’s left has similarly cold-shouldered him, and so the mathematician begrudgingly turns back to Dr. Bell. “Lucian, do tell Miss Arcadia here about your theory on artificial intelligence.” The older academic then says in a stage whisper: “Some people think Dr. Smythe here might be on the way to a Nobel Prize.”

  “Fields Medal,” he corrects irritably.

  “So what is your theory, Dr. Smythe?” she asks to nudge things along.

  He hesitates for only a second. “So you’ve probably heard of the Turing Test, named after the mathematician Alan Turing. In 1950, he posited that the question of whether a machine exhibited intelligence should be based on its ability to fool people into believing it was human. He came up with a very imaginative way to test this. The ‘imitation game’ was a parlour game at the time, in which a man and a woman would provide written answers to questions and the other participants had to guess, from studying the answers, who provided which answer. Substitute a computer for the man or the woman and you get the general idea.”

  She knows something of these early attempts to explore artificial intelligence. “The problem is that this isn’t really testing whether a machine is intelligent, but whether it can act like a human. Humans are often far from intelligent.”

  “Exactly!” Dr. Smythe hits the table a little too firmly, earning a warning glance from the President of the college. He raises an apologetic hand and continues: “The earliest successes in the 1960s were programmes like Eliza, which simply responded to text according to a set of rules. People were told that Eliza was a psychotherapist. In fact it used a fairly simple list-processing language. If the user typed in a recognised phrase, it might be reframed as a question and repeated back to him. So if the user entered ‘My head hurts’, the computer might reply ‘Why do you say your head hurts?’ If it didn’t recognise the phrase, it would offer something generic, like ‘Can you elaborate on that?’”