Bristol House (32 page)

Cohen was more interested in the Hebrew. He was studying the five pieces of paper she’d handed him. “I’m not sure,” he murmured, “but it may be gibberish.”

“No!” Annie practically wailed the objection. “I didn’t drag you all the way here for gibberish! It can’t be! Besides, what about the shove, and my cell, and—”

Geoff appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

“Rabbi Cohen thinks it’s gibberish.”

“Hebrew gibberish?” Geoff asked. “At least that?”

“Definitely Hebrew characters,” Cohen said. “And I said maybe it’s gibberish. I’m not sure.”

“I also found the letters
E.R.
written in a tree,” Annie said. “Western alphabet, not Hebrew.”

“Time for a cup of tea,” Geoff said. “You must be getting cross-eyed.” He extended a hand and helped Annie to her feet. The three of them went back to the dining room.

Geoff disappeared into the kitchen. Cohen spread Annie’s papers on the table and stared intently at them. After a few minutes he said, “The radios, Annie, if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

“Of course. Sorry. Mostly I don’t hear them anymore.” She went down the hall, found the remote, and switched off the stream of sound. On her way back she stopped in her bedroom and spent another five minutes with the loupe. When she returned to the dining room, Rabbi Cohen was still shuffling the papers, and Geoff had just carried a tea tray in from the kitchen.

“I’ve got something else,” Annie announced. “Extraordinary.”

“Okay,” Geoff said, “drop the other shoe. What?”

Annie pushed away an image of red stilettos. “I’ve found another few trees with letters in them. I think there may be more. It’s always
E.R.
written in the leaves.”

***

Number eight Bristol House was as quiet as a library.

Annie had returned to the mural.

Geoff was working at her laptop, paging through one after another of the seemingly limitless pages of information his Nexis connection made available.

Rabbi Cohen continued to shuffle papers, a mug of tea going cold at his elbow while he filled a notebook with various notations. Every once in a while he glanced at his watch. When she first called him about the Hebrew in the mural, Annie had suggested she draw what she saw and bring the information to him, or maybe take a picture with her cell and send it as an e-mail attachment. Cohen insisted he would come to her. “I can leave the house for a couple of hours,” he’d said. “Perhaps seeing what you’ve found in situ will be important.” She didn’t argue. Even a man as devoted to his ill wife as Simon Cohen had a right to jump on an occasional excuse to get out of the house.

After half an hour Annie returned bleary-eyed to the dining room. “No more Hebrew that I can see. But look at this.” She put her sketchbook on the table, moving it so both Geoff and Rabbi Cohen could see. She’d done a stylized drawing that showed the position of the trees with the initials in the leaves, and put in random lines to indicate the parts of the mural between them. “So far the pattern’s absolutely clear,” Annie said. “The occurrences of
E.R.
form a chain that creates capital letter
A
’s.”

“Holy shit,” Geoff said softly, “the code—excuse me, Rabbi.”

“I can,” Cohen said, “think of some stronger expletives. It appears Maggie was right. There is a connection between the phenomena in this flat and Philip Weinraub. But so far I can’t see what it is.”

None of them could. “The artist’s name was Stephen Fox,” Annie said. “So it’s not him. Could E.R. be a relative? A woman? Maybe a lover or a wife or—”

“No one survived him,” Geoff said, “and no reason to think he’d ever been married.”

“How do you know that?”

“Come take a look.”

Annie went to where he was sitting and leaned over his shoulder, studying the screen of the laptop. Geoff didn’t wait for her to read the information. “According to the General Register Office,” he said, “three people named Stephen Fox died in London in 1959. One is definitely our man. His residence at the time of death was this flat. He was killed during one of the last of the great London fogs.”

“That’s him. I remember Mrs. Walton saying he was run over in a pea-souper. I can’t imagine green fog.”

“Yellow fog,” Simon Cohen said, still playing with his notes and Annie’s sketches of Hebrew characters. “English pea soup, made with yellow split peas.”

“There’s almost no other information.” Geoff hit a couple of keys, then shook his head. “Fox’s date of birth is given as approximately 1900, but there’s nothing else. Not even where he was born.”

“Mrs. Walton told me he moved here in 1930.”

“Fair enough. Where was he the thirty years before that? I’ve nothing on that, and I can’t find a single obit anywhere. I’m thinking maybe he wasn’t born in England. Maybe he—”

“Aha!” Cohen looked up. He was beaming. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I interrupted. You first, Geoff.”

“No, please. Go ahead. The Hebrew’s the main event.”

“Indeed. But it isn’t Hebrew.”

“But you said it was.” Annie sat down between the two men.

“I mean Hebrew is used only for the alphabet. A way to confuse. Hebrew,” Cohen said, “is written from right to left. Not just the words, the letters as well.” He picked up a pen and scribbled something on a sheet and passed it to them.

“T-a-h e-h-t n-i-t-a-c,” Geoff read aloud.

“Gibberish,” Cohen said. “But read it the other—”

“The other way it says ‘cat in the hat,’” Geoff said.

“That’s what Stephen Fox wrote?” Annie demanded incredulously. “His mural’s not Waldo, it’s Dr. Seuss?”

Cohen laughed. “No, it’s what I wrote, to demonstrate. I began by reading these words in Hebrew the way Hebrew is written. Right to left. That way they made no sense. Then I realized our Mr. Fox used Hebrew characters to write in Western alphabetic sequence, left to right. And to make it more difficult he mixed up the letters in each word, made them anagrams. But what made this bit of code breaking take over an hour,” he sounded apologetic, as if a world-class professional had made a rookie error, “is that he capped his little puzzle by writing not in English but in—”

“French,” Geoff said.

“No. Why do you think that?”

“Later,” Geoff said. “Sorry to interrupt. Please go on, Rabbi.”

“Fox was writing in Latin.” Cohen tore another sheet out of the sketchbook. “And here is what he wrote.”

“‘
Collus Aventinus,
’” Annie read aloud. “The Aventine Hill. Then the single letter
a
. Then ‘
Arco,
’ which is arch, of course. Followed by”—glancing once more at the note—“‘
Vespasianif.
’”

“Vespasian’s Arch?” Geoff asked. “I never heard of it.”

Annie shook her head. “That’s not what it means. This inscription occurs on one of the most famous arches in all of Rome. The Romans didn’t separate words in lettering of this sort. The
i
and
f
at the end of
Vespasian
stand for ‘son of.’ His son was Titus. Stephen Fox was using a crude bit of code to describe the Arch of Titus.”

“It’s a long time since I cracked a book on Roman history,” Geoff said, “but if memory serves, that’s the same Titus who commanded the Roman legions during the Jewish War.”

“The very same,” Cohen said. “And pictured on his arch are the sorts of things Philip Weinraub supposedly sent Annie to find here in London. Ancient Judaica. A menorah and trumpets from the Second Temple, which the Romans pillaged and destroyed. And of course your de rigueur addition to any Roman celebration of victory, captives in chains. In this case, enslaved Jews.” He looked again at his notes. “And between the two phrases—‘Aventine Hill’ and ‘Arch of Titus’—is our old friend, the
aleph
symbol. Hebrew’s silent and frequently unwritten letter
a.
In this instance I have no idea what it means.”

“I think I do,” Geoff said. “In fact, I’d bet money on it. It stands for
à,
the word ‘to’ in French. In English, therefore, the message reads ‘Aventine Hill to Arch of Titus.’ Note that the key words begin with the letter
A
. So you could write
A-A-A
and that might signify exactly what we have here.
Aventine à Arc.
”

“And to emphasize that connection with the code,” Cohen said, “he made a graphic map of initials that form still more letters
A
.” He thought for a moment. “It doesn’t explain everything, but it’s definitely possible.”

“The Aventine Hill is one of the legendary seven,” Annie said. “So in that sense it was always there. I’m pretty sure the Arch of Titus was dedicated around the year 84. So the message could mean from the founding of Rome to then, but why the sudden introduction of French?”

“I suppose,” Geoff said, “since he wrote Hebrew letters, Stephen Fox was a Jew, but his native language was French.”

“How do you know that?” Rabbi Cohen asked.

“I don’t—I’m guessing. But I’d wager a fair sum I’m right. I think the reason I couldn’t find any birth info on the man who died in this flat is because I was searching British records, and he was born in France.”

“Why France?” Annie demanded. “Why not Tibet, or Australia?”

“Because in French,” Geoff said, “the English name Stephen is Étienne.”

“But the initials are
E.R.
His last name was Fox, so—”

“Exactly,” Geoff said. “Fox in French is Renard.”

“Ah,” Rabbi Cohen said softly and with satisfaction. “He was signing his painting, his obsessive mural, with his true initials.”

“In a pattern,” Annie said, “reinforcing the significance of the letter
A
as found in the code that’s hidden in the documents I was given by the Shalom Foundation.”

“Which code,” Cohen said, “is based on kabbalistic numerology, so I’m guessing Geoffrey is correct and our Mr. Fox or Mr. Renard was Jewish. But the meaning of the letter
A
,” Cohen said. “That I am not yet sure we completely understand.”

Annie let out a little gasp. “There’s something else. I was so excited when I found the Hebrew letters, I forgot about it. I think I know what the speckled egg refers to. In Tudor times it was the person who led a group of schismatics who called themselves the True Obedience of Avignon. Church scholars, my father among them apparently, lump them in with a group called sedevacantists. People who, for one reason or another, insist the pope isn’t legitimate and the chair of Peter is empty.”

Geoff was typing things into the computer. Rabbi Cohen was scribbling in his notebook. “The True Obedience,” he said. “And what was the word you used?”

“Sedevacantists,” Annie repeated. “It’s a generic term for a type of schism that has occurred within Catholicism any number of times.”

“Nothing in Nexis about any True Obedience,” Geoff said. “Doesn’t surprise me. History’s not what they’re about.”

“Dominicans,” Annie said.

Geoff looked puzzled. “You’re not talking about the Dominican Republic, are you? Nexis would have plenty on that, but—”

“Dominican priests,” Annie said. “They were founded in twelve-something to hound heretics and schismatics. Originally the Cathars in southern France, but they extended their reach.”

Rabbi Cohen made a face.

“I don’t think,” Annie said, “they’ve been presiding over any inquisitions of late, but they used to be real pros.”

“Not lately. You’re right. In fact, you should excuse the expression,” Cohen said wryly, “some of my best friends are Dominicans.”

Annie made a note on the corner of one of her sketchbooks. “I’ll pursue the True Obedience thread.”

Cohen stood up. “Each puzzle is more intriguing than the last,” he said, “but now I must go. Thank you for a fascinating time. And for the memories. It was good to see my old stomping ground again.”

“You’ve been in Bristol House before?” Annie’s tone betrayed her astonishment. “Do you know Mrs. Walton?”

Cohen laughed. “My dear, you must think me London’s secret Lothario. Not true, I’m afraid. I meant only that years ago this part of Holborn was very familiar to me. Lately, as you know, I don’t get out much.” It was obvious they were waiting for more. “There isn’t time now,” he said. “Someday perhaps. But since we’re dealing in mysteries, I’ll leave you with one clue. Have you noticed the barred gates in the middle of the junction between Southampton Road and Kingsway?”

“Looks like an old underpass,” Geoff said. “It’s been out of use at least since I’ve lived in the neighborhood.”

“Much longer than that,” Cohen said. “Since the fifties. What you’re calling an underpass was built in the nineteenth century. It was a tram tunnel that ran from Kingsway to Waterloo Bridge. But that’s not all. Take a good look the next time you go out. You’re seeing history.”

25

They took Maggie to dinner that evening. “You can debrief us,” Geoff said by way of persuasion when he phoned to set it up, and his mother said she didn’t feel like going out. “You can’t live on soup, Maggie. We’ll have an early meal at that Greek place you like down the road.”

When they arrived, Maggie was at a choice table, sipping a glass of white wine. The restaurant, a Primrose Hill standby, was called Lemonia. Even at quarter to six it was busy, but the waiters obviously cherished Maggie. Each time one of them passed, he would leave a small temptation in the form of olives, or stuffed vine leaves, or tiny morsels of feta cheese. Maggie pretended to nibble each offering. After Geoff and Annie arrived, he ordered shashlik and pilaf and tsatsiki for the three of them. When the food came, Maggie pronounced it delicious, but mostly she pushed things around on her plate. Nonetheless, as the meal wore on, her spirits and her color improved.

Annie banished thoughts of cancer and concentrated on telling the story of Rabbi Hazan and his river of time, and the discovery that it was Geoff’s former producer who had broken into her flat, and how five hundred years ago there had been a schismatic group who called their leader the Speckled Egg. Then Geoff explained about Weinraub having been Wein and the family emigrating to America, and he said he’d sent Clary Colbert to France to try and get more information. By that time they were sipping larger-than-usual cups of insanely strong Greek coffee—Lemonia’s staff apparently knew Geoff as well as they did his mother—and Maggie was flushed and laughing, and her eyes sparkled. “Then today,” Geoff said, “Annie found writing in that mural we told you about.”