VIII

An Expedition

KELLER MET US at Hamburg, with two pieces of news. As I’d expected, 16 Ilmgasse in Vienna was the address of a small café. ‘The security people are keeping an eye on it,’ he said, ‘but as far as they know it’s a perfectly respectable place, with a clientele mainly of musicians from the Opera House. If nothing happens before June 30 we can send a man there with a flat parcel the size of the map, but for myself I doubt if it has anything to do with the case except to divert our attention.’ His second piece of news was unexpected – Frau Baumgarten was English, born Hilda Stevenson. She had worked for a time at the Unol offices in London where, presumably, she had met her husband when he was over on some business connected with his pipeline engineering firm. This seemed mildly interesting, but there was no reason why Heinrich Baumgarten should not have married an English girl, and it was hard to see what bearing, if any, it might have on the case.

We learned these two facts in brief conversation while Keller drove us to the hotel where he had booked a room for us. On dropping us at the hotel he invited us to supper, and arranged to pick us up. It didn’t take long to unpack, and we had an hour or so to ourselves before Keller was due back. I was grateful for the chance to talk to Ruth, told her about my meeting with Ingrid Mitchell and outlined the circumstances of her death.

‘Poor woman, she didn’t have much luck,’ Ruth said. ‘I can understand just how she felt about the man Adrian Stowe – wanting to marry him, and not wanting to marry him. If I’d met you differently I think I should have felt much the same about you.^* You’ve been very good, Peter, in not trying to stop me being a professor, but what’s so difficult about being a woman is that only half of me really wants to be a professor – or rather I do want to be a professor, but another me wants to cook and make curtains and even knit socks for you.’

‘My poor child, I’ve been ill most of the time since we got married. You’ve looked after me marvellously – and you ought to know how proud I am of Professor Ruth.’

‘I don’t think I’m looking after you very well now.’

‘Well, I think you are. Just as I don’t want to stop you being a professor so you don’t want to stop me from trying to get to the bottom of this appalling case.’

‘Half of me, perhaps more than half, does want to stop you. But there’s a bit that understands. Oh Peter, how difficult life is for practically everybody.’

‘We make things difficult for ourselves. It’s not man’s bad luck or hard struggle that really deserve pity – it’s his sheer damned stupidity. Greed is a form of stupidity. Fortunately the greedy are also stupid in other ways. I think there’s been a certain amount of stupidity in this case, but I can’t see yet where it fits in. You’re a mathematician, Ruth, and so was the man Adrian Stowe Ingrid Mitchell was in love with. Tell me how a mathematician fits in with the geographers in studying the Arctic.’

‘Could be all sorts of ways, maths comes into everything somewhere. I’ve been doing some work for you. I’ve been reading up the little that has been published on this Arctic Calorific Syndrome and there’s an immense field for mathematical research. Given the shift in the North Pole and a change in climate coupled with heat retention sufficient to affect sea temperatures somewhere still, you’d have to identify and calculate the other variables before you could find out much about it. There was some maths in a paper by Dr Jackson published in the Proceedings of the Geophysical Society about a year ago. He touches on the maths only briefly, simply to show how complicated it is. Among his variables are rock formation and topsoil – that is sand, mud, remains of countless millions of sea-creatures – on the seabed, varying depths and insulating characteristics of this topsoil over the floor of Arctic seas, shelving of the land mass where it meets the sea, which has a bearing on currents and the movement of ice near the shoreline, rate of formation of surface ice, wind, temperature gradients in the atmosphere . . . and a lot more. He doesn’t go into the details but says that promising work was being done by Adrian Stowe, whom he names, up to the time of what he calls his tragic death. He describes Stowe’s work as brilliant and says that it will be the basis of all future work on the subject.’

‘I wonder where it is. I don’t think Ingrid Mitchell had it.’

‘From the Jackson monograph it’s obvious that Jackson himself had been following it closely, and one would expect at least copies of Stowe’s theoretical reasoning and calculations to be among Jackson’s own papers. You said that they were at the Museum, awaiting editing.’

‘That’s what Mrs Jackson told me, but Ingrid Mitchell said that all the papers were still in Mrs Jackson’s possession, and that she hadn’t wanted to worry her about them. Inspector Richards is going into the question of the papers with Mrs Jackson, but it looks to me as if they’re missing. One would think that they may have been stolen on the night of Dr Jackson’s death, and perhaps that was the real reason for his murder.’

‘We don’t know enough about it yet. Stowe must have left papers – what happened to them? Is anybody going into that?’

‘I heard of Adrian Stowe for the first time yesterday and I got on to Keller about him as soon as I could. He promised an investigation of all the circumstances of Stowe’s death. Maybe we shall hear something about it this evening.’

*

In spite of Hamburg traffic Keller was punctual to the minute. Ruth had ignored my suggestion about pullovers, deciding that she could buy what she needed in Hamburg, and had brought only one small suitcase. From this, however, she extracted a dress that looked stunning and I felt immensely proud of her. Keller was considerate and polite as always, but he worried me by seeming slightly ill at ease. Over a drink before supper he came to the point, saying frankly, ‘Tell me, Herr Colonel, to what extent we can discuss highly secret matters before your wife.’

‘I have no secrets from Ruth,’ I said. ‘We have worked together before and although she is not a member of my Department – she is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford – she is accepted as a valuable colleague. I respect your scruples, the more for stating them so openly, but I can assure you that you have nothing to fear from Ruth – indeed, we may all gain from her own intelligence.’

His manner changed and he poured us all another drink. ‘That makes things easier. I should have known that you would not have brought your wife for merely social reasons. But I have known important men who have had to make concessions to their wives.’

Ruth laughed. ‘I sometimes think that men are really happiest in monasteries or ships at sea where there aren’t any women. And yet we have been known to come in useful.’

Keller bowed. ‘Gnādige Frau, you must forgive me. I am a victim of my training in security.’

‘Judging by results it seems to have been an admirable training,’ I said. ‘Before you came this evening Ruth and I were talking about Adrian Stowe, the man whose death I asked you to look into. Have you been able to make any progress there?’

‘I have looked up the files. It was a curious case. He had a good position in the research division of Universal Oil, and he seems to have been much respected. Frau Braunschweig knew him quite well – he worked closely with her husband, and came to their home quite often. She liked him very much. His suicide astonished as well as grieved them. It puzzled the police at first, but the note he left seemed to be genuine. It was his habit to drink a cup of chocolate before going to sleep, and since he was slightly worried about becoming overweight he sweetened it with saccharine instead of sugar. On the night of his death he added a powerful barbiturate drug to his chocolate – a deliberate overdose, which would inevitably prove fatal. There was a small empty bottle that had contained the barbiturate tablets on a table in his bedroom. They were apparently obtained in England, for the bottle bore the label of a London pharmacist. It was thought at first that his death might have been an accident, that he might have put the barbiturate in his chocolate in mistake for his normal saccharine tablets. But there was saccharine in the chocolate, too, so he must have added two lots of tablets. The note he left ruled out accident. It was addressed to his parents and began by expressing his love for them and his sorrow at the distress his death would cause. He wrote that life had become insupportable for reasons he did not wish to explain, though he could promise they were not dishonourable. He concluded by saying he was sure his parents would understand.

‘The note was puzzling in not being more explicit – suicide notes more commonly attempt to justify the action, and tend to be self-pitying, or to blame someone. Inquiries among Mr Stowe’s colleagues, however, showed him to be a man of deep reserve, accustomed to keep his feelings to himself. He did not have a full-time secretary – his work was in mathematical research – but he would sometimes dictate letters and reports. When he needed secretarial help the same girl was accustomed to work for him, and had done so for nearly two years. She got to know him slightly, and said she thought there was a woman in England whom he wanted to marry but for some reason could not. His father came to Hamburg – his mother was too upset to accompany him – and to some extent he confirmed this story. He said he had known that his son wished to get married, but understood that there were difficulties in the way. He described his son as not exactly secretive but reluctant to discuss personal matters, even with his parents. The officer who interviewed Mr Stowe senior found him also exceedingly reserved. He did say he did not understand why his son should have taken his own life, but in the circumstances there seemed no alternative to a finding of suicide.’

‘The letter was typed, not handwritten?’

‘Yes, but that was in keeping – apparently Mr Stowe always typed in preference to writing by hand. The letter was typed on a machine that was in his bedroom. The signature was accepted by his father, by the bank he used in Hamburg, and by the girl I mentioned who typed office correspondence for him.’

‘The barbiturate tablets were supplied in London – did you discover the doctor who prescribed them?’

‘No. You must understand the circumstances at the time. All that was in England. As far as our police were concerned it seemed a clear case of an unhappy man’s suicide. I think our man made as thorough an investigation as seemed justified. Everything was reported to the British diplomatic mission, and they were satisfied. Knowing what we do now I agree that far more exhaustive inquiries should have been made in England as well as here, but that did not seem necessary at the time.’

‘We must make those inquiries. It is the Cambridge case all over again, a reasonable cause of death and no obvious reason for suspicion. Do you know how Adrian Stowe spent the evening before he died?’

‘Yes, that was gone into. He attended a small dinner party – curiously enough given by the Baumgartens, whom he knew because they are friends of the Braunschweigs. I haven’t been able to talk to the Baumgartens because, as you know, they are abroad, but they were interviewed at the time. They said that Mr Stowe seemed perfectly normal, left shortly before midnight and drove back to his flat in his own car. The doctor’s estimate was that he took the barbiturate tablets at about one a.m., so the times seemed to fit all right.’

‘Everything fits, yet I’m quite sure that it fits an entirely different picture and that Stowe was murdered like Charles Jackson in Cambridge.’

I have no doubt that Keller gave us an admirable supper, but I have no recollection of what we ate. We talked far into the morning, trying to make sense of things. The cases of Dr Jackson, Ingrid Mitchell and Adrian Stowe seemed to be linked with the work that all were doing on the theory of the Arctic Calorific Syndrome and the discovery of a usable North-West Passage, a route that would have as much importance to the world today as Elizabethan seamen realised in their search for an Arctic passage to the riches of the East. We asked Ruth if she could assess the mathematical probabilities of such a route’s existing. She said that given Adrian Stowe’s theories and calculations she might be able to, but without them she didn’t know where to begin. That raised another point – who else may have thought that there was something of the utmost value in the Jackson-Stowe-Mitchell theories? As their records seemed to have vanished, it seemed a reasonable assumption that they had all been murdered by some individual or group of individuals who wanted to get hold of their work. There was a sort of pattern in the killings, with the deaths of Charles Jackson and Adrian Stowe disguised as accident and suicide, and an incompetent attempt to make Ingrid Mitchell’s murder look like suicide. All this seemed reasonable reconstruction, but how did any of it relate to the disappearance of Gustav Braunschweig?

‘The Vienna in the second ransom note seems an absurdity but there is one thing in the note that I think we must take seriously – the date,’ I said.

‘You mean that something is going to happen on June 30?’ Keller asked.

‘Yes. As I see it the kidnappers don’t really expect the map to be delivered, and do intend to murder Gustav Braunschweig on the excuse that their demand has not been met.’

‘The map is now in your possession. The demand could be met.’

‘I don’t think it would make any difference. I think a decision to kill Braunschweig has already been taken, and that the whole kidnap-ransom story is intended to put the blame on some anarchist group that will be named when the “execution” is announced. It may be an entirely imaginary group.’

‘Why demand the map instead of the release of political prisoners, or something more in keeping with the activities of anarchist groups?’

‘Because somebody wants to draw attention to the map. I don’t know why, but I can suggest a variety of possible reasons. When the killing is announced the map will attract enormous publicity. Ingrid Mitchell told me that the map itself is only marginally relevant to the North-West Passage theory. Suppose someone wants to demolish the whole theory – promote interest in the map, and then use it as a basis for showing that wherever old Baffin got to he was no nearer to finding a North-West Passage than anyone else. The three experts on the theory are all dead. There’s opposition to their views, anyway, and a little skilled academic manipulation could do the rest.’

‘Possible, perhaps, and an interesting bit of speculation, but I don’t see any anarchist group going in for kidnapping and murder simply to demolish an academic theory,’ Keller said.

‘They wouldn’t. They could say that they chose the map as a typical example of a useless museum piece maintained in the interests of capitalist culture instead of being sold for the relief of poverty, to provide money for working-class education, for anything else you like. They could go on to say that they’ve deliberately started with a highly specialised old map to prepare for similar demands for the Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s Last Supper, Rembrandt’s masterpieces, the treasures of museums and art galleries throughout the world. There’d be terrific publicity, and quite a few people might have a sneaking sympathy for the idea.’

‘You’d be dangerous as an anarchist public relations officer . . . I suppose it could be something like that. But you destroy your own case, because the rest of your theory implies that there aren’t any anarchists involved.’

‘I said only that they might be imaginary. I’m trying to make sense of what seems a meaningless jumble of murders and an absurd kidnapping.’

‘You’ve recovered the map, and I think we all accept your view that he is on board the yacht, bound probably for the Arctic.’

‘And due to get to wherever he’s going around the end of the month. That’s why I’m bothered about the date June 30 in the latest ransom note.’

My mind went back to the schoolboy algebra I’d played with on the train to Cambridge. We had, I thought, two separate but related cases, the murders and the Braunschweig map affair. Two cases, two equations? What common factors did they have. I turned to Ruth. ‘Look, you’re a real mathematician whereas my maths stops at elementary algebra,’ I said. ‘Can you formulate two equations from the muddled data that we have? Let’s call the murderer or murder-group x and Dr Braunschweig’s group – they may be kidnappers, or they may be voluntary companions – y. What can we say about x and y?’

‘You can say that both are concerned with the Arctic. You could express it algebraically as x plus y equals some Arctic enterprise.’

‘All right, that’s one equation. Now we need another to enable us to try to derive some values for x and y. How would you express x minus y?’

‘If what you call the Braunschweig group didn’t exist the murder-group would presumably have got what they wanted – say all the known facts about the Arctic Calorific Syndrome. If the first equation is to be valid we must assume that because of the existence of the Braunschweig group – our y – the murder-group –x– hasn’t got what it wanted, and can’t get it without taking Dr Braunschweig to the Arctic, or going with him to the Arctic; from the point of view of the maths it doesn’t matter whether he is on a voluntary or involuntary trip. What does matter is that he is in some way imperative to something connected with the Arctic that x wants to secure. So you could say that x minus y equals success in something or other.’

Keller was listening keenly. ‘I think that’s really illuminating,’ he said. ‘True, it’s merely algebra, but it’s a good way of thinking clearly and it does suggest that the murder-group regards the Braunschweig lot, or Braunschweig alone, as in some way inimical to its interests. Inimical – but at the same time important. That would explain the various gaps in time which have puzzled me all along. The murder-group needs Dr Braunschweig for something, but hopes, or expects, that by June 30 it will have got what it wanted from him.’

Ruth shivered. ‘After which he will be disposed of,’ she said.

‘It looks rather like it. We need some more assumptions. What can Braunschweig have that the murder group wants?’ Keller asked.

‘Adrian Stowe’s calculations,’ I suggested. ‘Stowe worked for Braunschweig and they may have had a close relationship. I think Stowe was murdered for his calculations, but perhaps the murderers couldn’t find all they wanted. Perhaps they thought that Braunschweig had them, or knew about them. That may be the reason, or part of the reason, for the murder of Ingrid Mitchell. We can assume that she knew a good deal about Stowe’s work, and perhaps the murder-group felt safer with her out of the way.’

‘The assumptions seem reasonable,’ Keller said. ‘The immediate point is, what do we do about them?’

‘Go after Dr Braunschweig and find him before he is murdered.’

*

There was a long silence. We were all tired, but all too much worked up to think of breaking off. Finally Keller said, ‘Agreed – a splendid course of action. But where, and how? What is the next step in mathematical detection?’

‘Simple,’ Ruth said. ‘All we have to do is to go to the place p.’

Keller laughed. ‘I like mathematical detection. But I’d like still more to get murder-group x locked up. How do we set about finding the place p?’

‘We have some clues,’ I said. ‘First, there’s the map, which for all Ingrid Mitchell’s dismissal of it as of no great importance does indicate some kind of navigable route through Smith Sound and the Robeson Channel to the Lincoln Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Of course it doesn’t follow that what may have been possible in the ice conditions of the seventeenth century will be practicable now, but at least it’s a starting point – we can assume that is the general area of our place p. Regrettably, it’s a big area, and even an air search may not spot a small boat. But we have two other clues – Ingrid Mitchell’s amber beads, and her statement to me that Charles Jackson came across a seam of coal during his own travels in the region. I’ve not had time for much research and I’ve never heard of amber in the Arctic, but the coal undoubtedly exists. A seam was discovered by the Nares Expedition in 1875–76, and it’s mentioned in the Admiralty’s Arctic Pilot as being exposed in a ravine about a mile inshore from the western coast of Hall Basin – that’s a stretch of water lying between Smith Sound and Robeson Channel. The coal is not far from Cape Murchison in Latitude 81 degrees forty-five minutes North, Longitude 64 degrees seventeen minutes West, and it ought still to be identifiable. More important it suggests that wherever we’re looking for is on the west, or Ellesmere Island coast of the sound, and not on the Greenland side. If we could get any idea where the amber came from we might narrow the area of search to quite a small district.’

‘The coal implies the existence of forests at some period in geological time, and amber is a fossilised gum from trees,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m not a geologist, but it would be reasonable to suppose that the climatic conditions which provided the vegetation for coal continued long enough to enable trees to produce the gum for amber.’

‘We can say a bit more than that,’ I went on. ‘Charles Jackson was interested in the sea, and he was studying the coast. The coal is near the coast, and he must have picked up the amber somewhere on the coast. Therefore it seems probable that if we follow the coast northwards from Cape Murchison we shouldn’t go too far wrong. It’s an appalling coast, with sheer cliffs rising to a thousand feet or more, and often no sort of beach. That may help in a way, for if there’s hardly anywhere a boat can get to, we shall have to look only for the few places where there is some kind of open water near the shore. My guess is that we shall find Apfel somewhere near the Lincoln Sea end of Robeson Channel. The cliffs there fall away, and there’s a short stretch where the heavy Arctic ice runs aground up to a couple of hundred yards offshore, leaving a narrow channel between ice and shore. One of the ships in the 1875–76 expedition lay there for eleven months, and horrible as the place sounds she was quite safe. This strange channel may, indeed, have given rise to the idea of a navigable passage so far north. That’s where I think we have to go.’

‘How do you propose to get there?’ Keller asked.

‘The only practicable way is by air. There’s not enough time to attempt the route by sea, and we have none of the specialised knowledge that Dr Braunschweig may have obtained from Stowe. According to the Arctic Pilot, which is all I’ve had a chance to study, a bit south of where we want to go there’s a place called Gould Bay which was visited by an Oxford University expedition in 1935. They found a big patch of gravel, about two miles square, at the head of the bay. The gravel bank had a hard, smooth surface, with occasional patches of snow. They thought that it would make a useful landing place for aircraft. I’d suggest that we make for Gould Bay by air, taking a helicopter with us. The helicopter could be assembled at Gould Bay and from there the rest of the area we want to search would be within the range of quite a small helicopter. This would need cooperation from the Services, but in the circumstances I’m sure we’d get it.’

‘I could get help from our German authorities without any difficulty. They’d welcome the exercise as an unusual form of training,’ Keller said.

‘Well, let’s go ahead and do it. If the German Air Force will help and we can fly direct to Gould Bay in an aircraft big enough to take a helicopter we don’t need to let more than a handful of people know what we’re doing. And since we’ve no idea how widespread the conspiracy we’re up against may be, the fewer people who know about our plans, the better.’

‘Right. I don’t think I need to get anyone out of bed, but I’ll start first thing in the morning. I shall come with you, if I may.’

‘Of course. You will be invaluable.’

‘And I shall come too,’ Ruth said.

We both tried to dissuade her. ‘Gnādige Frau, I am no believer in the superiority of men – I am conscious always of the work that women have done in war, and in my own trade as a policeman,’ Keller said. ‘But there is a fitness in things, and this job is not fit for you. You have heard what your husband said – it is a terrible place, and we may have to meet some terrible people.’

‘My name is Ruth. If we are going on an Arctic expedition together you will have to call me Ruth,’ she said.

‘It’s all very well, my darling, and I know how tough you are, but you have no experience of conditions in the Arctic,’ I tried to argue.

‘You haven’t either. All right, you’ve put in a lot of time in small boats and you’re good at sea, but the Arctic isn’t just sea. We’re not going there by sea in any case. And you are not fit. If you make any more difficulties about my coming with you I shall do what I said I would, and get your surgeon to tell Sir Edmund Pusey that you must go back to hospital.’

That was that. ‘There may be some trouble with the Air Force. You and I have official positions, but what can we say about the lady?’ Keller said.

‘You can say that I am one of your investigating team – after all, I am your mathematical detective. Peter will have to fix it with Sir Edmund to get me put temporarily on the strength of his Department.’

I was afraid Sir Edmund would agree. When I rang him later that morning he accepted Ruth with a readiness I found alarming.

*

Having decided on a course of action Keller pursued it with the efficiency and thoroughness I’d come to expect from the German police. By that afternoon the Air Force had agreed to put a plane at our disposal, and got down to the job of working out details. They wanted two days for an aerial survey of Gould Bay, and said that if the landing area proved suitable the rest of the plan could be carried out. They would provide a transport aircraft capable of carrying a helicopter and fuel for it, and a pilot and co-pilot for the helicopter.

Keller and I had to decide on the strength of our party. ‘Our assumptions may be wildly wrong, but as they’re all we’ve got to go by we must stick to them,’ I said. ‘We’re assuming that Gustav Braunschweig has taken Apfel to the Arctic for some purpose that we don’t yet understand, though in a sense that doesn’t matter because what does matter is to find him before June 30. My further assumption is that he had made up his mind to sail to the Arctic voluntarily, but was put on board Apfel somehow or other by other people, and made, or persuaded, to sail with them. He must have at least two others on board with him, possibly as many as four – I don’t think there can be more than four, because the dinghy would have been a bit crowded and more noticeable. Whether he knows it or not – we still don’t know whose side he’s on – his companions include at least one person who is determined to murder him. I think it’s more likely that the whole crew are related to our murder-group x and in the plot to do away with Braunschweig, but we don’t know that. What we must take into account is that up to four people may be hostile, ready to use any violence to resist our attempt to rescue Braunschweig.’

‘We must assume that they will be armed,’ Keller said.

‘Yes. On the other hand we should have the advantage of complete surprise, and our helicopter will be much more manoeuvrable than their boat. A party of six should be enough to deal with them.’

‘Including the pilot and co-pilot?’

‘That’s a point. We might want to send back for reinforcements, and we couldn’t risk both pilots being injured. But we could use one of them.’

The matter was settled for us by the size of the helicopter which the Air Force wanted to use. It had to be transported to Gould Bay, and the machine judged most suitable was a smallish one with a carrying capacity of six people, including the pilot. The experts considered that Ruth could safely be added, so with Keller and me and the two pilots we could take two other men. There was some discussion about whether they should be airmen or police, and it was decided that as this was a police operation they had better be policemen. Keller selected two men from Hamburg. The big transport plane would have an Air Force crew augmented by half a dozen extra men, so that if necessary the helicopter could be sent back for help. The expedition was to carry a doctor and, partly, perhaps, out of politeness to Ruth, a nurse. They would stay at Gould Bay while we went forward with the helicopter.

While these arrangements were being made an aircraft was dispatched to Gould Bay to inspect the landing site. We used the time collecting kit and studying everything we could get hold of about the region. Kit was not much of a problem, for the Air Force equipped us with the most up-to-date survival clothing, specially designed for air crews who might be forced down in conditions of extreme cold. It was light, comfortable, completely weatherproof and beautifully warm.

Weapons had also to be selected. All of us, including Ruth, were to carry small automatic pistols, and we decided to take rifles as well. We might have no need of such armament, but if we didn’t need rifles they could be left in the helicopter, and if by any chance we did need them it would be as well to have them with us. Keller’s Hamburg men were police marksmen, and he and I could both handle a rifle. The helicopter carried its normal complement of machine guns, so we should be a heavily armed party if it came to a fight.

* See Death in the Caribbean