The Three-Body Problem (29 page)

‘Mr Beddoes and Mr Crawford must have been very angry, and argued with him. Mathematicians tend to be extremely prickly about the possession of ideas, and it is quite probable that if Mr Beddoes and Mr Crawford had been entirely convinced that Mr Akers’ idea was absolutely independent and original, they would have been ready to congratulate him. However, from whatever he let fall, they must have perceived that his idea was not so much a new direction, as a brilliant way of making Mr
Crawford’s idea work. Then I believe a serious quarrel occurred, during which Mr Crawford downed an entire half-bottle of whisky, as he tended to do in moments of extreme stress or excitement, observed by both Mr Akers and Mr Beddoes.

‘Mr Akers left Mr Crawford’s rooms, and went to the library, his mind filled with his discovery to the exclusion of moral considerations. Mr Crawford remained in his rooms and began to reflect hard on his own idea, no doubt feeling that if Mr Akers had been able to make it work, he might have a chance at arriving at the same result, although his talents lay in a different direction. For his part, Mr Beddoes must have considered Mr Akers’ behaviour quite simply unacceptable, and he must have determined within himself to prevent him from continuing his work alone, and to compel him to share it. At any rate, he betook himself to the mathematics library of the university, and there, he saw his colleague Mr Akers, talking quietly among the bookshelves to Mr Weatherburn. Mr Beddoes heard how he was unable to keep the triumph of his discovery to himself, and he heard him invite Mr Weatherburn to dinner at the Irish pub, no doubt, as Mr Beddoes thought, to gloat. He determined to slip into Mr Akers’ rooms in college during the dinner, and search them to find any trace of written work expressing the idea which he felt that Mr Akers had no right to keep to himself.

‘It must have been rather difficult for him to locate the manuscript, of whose existence he may not even have been completely certain; Mr Akers’ papers were always in a
great state of disarray, and his handwriting was difficult. Mr Beddoes must have searched among them at some length, finding it necessary to decipher several papers before reaching the conclusion that they concerned mathematics irrelevant to the n-body problem.

‘While Mr Beddoes was searching Mr Akers’ rooms, the latter was having dinner with Mr Weatherburn. During dinner, unable to contain his pride and delight in his original and brilliant discovery, he began once again to refer to it to his dinner companion, even going so far as to pull a scrap of paper from his pocket, and write down the most important formula upon it. He then, however, thought better of revealing so much to a third party, and pressed the paper back into his waistcoat pocket. I have it here, and submit it to you as my third piece of evidence. I obtained it from Mr Akers’ next of kin, his sister living in Belgium, to whom it was sent together with the rest of his personal effects.

‘Let me remind you of one other point raised in Mr Weatherburn’s testimony: that of Mr Akers’ medicine. Mr Akers’ doctor testified that Mr Akers suffered from arhythmia of the heart, and took steady doses of digitalin to control it, at a rate of ten drops, three times a day. During the dinner with Mr Weatherburn, Mr Akers asked for a pitcher of water, poured some into a glass, and took a medicine bottle from his pocket. Mr Weatherburn testified that he poured a drop or two into the glass and then said ‘What am I doing’ or words to that effect, stopped up the bottle, and thrust it back into
his pocket. No explanation has been offered for this peculiar behaviour, although it does not seem that Mr Weatherburn would have any motivation whatsoever to have invented it. The bottle of digitalin was not found on Mr Akers’ dead body. I propose to explain these facts shortly.

‘It took Mr Beddoes quite some time before finally, in some dusty corner, he lit upon the manuscript he was looking for, and recognised it for what it was. He took it up, perhaps with some idea of looking through it sufficiently to grasp its import, or perhaps carrying it off altogether. At that precise moment, the entrance door to Mr Akers’ rooms opened, and the resident entered, the dinner at the Irish pub not having been unduly prolonged. If he had merely seen Mr Beddoes waiting for him in his rooms, he would perhaps not have been particularly surprised, but seeing him standing in the doorway of the study with the fatal manuscript in his hands, he became enraged and quite probably launched an accusation if not a threat, or possibly even a threatening gesture. Mr Beddoes reacted by seizing the poker and striking out with it at the man who was ready to attack him professionally and perhaps even physically. Mr Akers fell to the ground, and Mr Beddoes dropped the poker, slipped out of the tower and returned quietly home, clutching the manuscript. He may have verified immediately that Mr Akers was dead, or else he must have spent a very dreadful night, wondering about the effects of his desperate blow. But the following day brought him the official news of Mr Akers’ death. He came
under no suspicion whatsoever, and as days followed days, he perhaps came to feel that Mr Akers had deserved what came to him, and that no untoward effects would follow from his act.

‘Now, Mr Beddoes was a passionate mathematician, if less creative than his colleagues. He was afraid to keep the stolen manuscript, so he copied the entire thing out in his own neat handwriting, got rid of the original, and hid his copy in a special place known only to himself. He studied the manuscript with great care and attention, as witnessed by the many questions and annotations he added in the margins. I submit this copy to you as my fourth piece of evidence. It was found quite by accident after Mr Beddoes’ death, in the secret hiding place where Mr Beddoes kept it, namely under the mattress of one of the cat baskets in the cat house at the bottom of his garden. One might be tempted to ask at first what makes me believe that this paper is not a mathematical manuscript due to Mr Beddoes himself, but closer examination shows that the formulae and results are often annotated with question marks and even explicit questions, and it would certainly be strange if Mr Beddoes did not understand his own theorems!

‘Mr Beddoes probably conceived of the possibility of understanding Mr Akers’ idea completely by himself. Whether he then would have made himself the master of these ideas, and submitted an independent manuscript to the competition, will never be known, but it is very likely that such thoughts were in his mind; at any rate, it is clear
that he hesitated to mention his find to Mr Crawford, not wishing to awaken any suspicion.

‘I was present at a certain dinner party, a few days after Mr Akers’ murder, and heard several people asking Mr Weatherburn to describe his last dinner with Mr Akers. Mr Beddoes was also present, and it was there that he first became aware that Mr Akers had told Mr Weatherburn something about his discovery, and worse still, that he had written down the main formula on a paper which he had then thrust into his pocket. This paper, and Mr Weatherburn’s knowledge of it, became a threat to Mr Beddoes’ desire to claim the result for himself, and he determined to get hold of it. He attempted to have it shown to him at the police station, but was told that it had already been sent away to Mr Akers’ next of kin, his sister living in Belgium. Mr Beddoes then discovered the name and address of the sister, and near Easter, he travelled to visit her, and representing himself as a mathematician who wished to save the lost but brilliant ideas of her murdered brother from oblivion, he tried to obtain from her not only the fatal paper but also Mr Akers’ pocket diary, containing the dates of the ABC meetings. She suspected him, however, and refused to deliver them, offering him to copy them down instead. He refused, and left quite angry, foiled in his intentions. If necessary, this lady, Madame Walters, has accepted to travel to England and identify her visitor, at least from a photograph.

‘Mr Beddoes must soon have found that alone, he was not able to come to a satisfactory understanding
of Mr Akers’ computations, and finally resolved to obtain Mr Crawford’s help by hook or by crook. An ABC meeting had already been planned for April 17th, and even though Mr Akers was dead, Mr Beddoes went to Mr Crawford’s rooms on that day, at two o’clock. Recall from Mrs Wiggins’ testimony that in mid-April, Mr Crawford had an afternoon visitor, and both took a glass of red wine. There, showing him only his own handwritten version of the manuscript, he attempted to obtain explanations of the difficult points from Mr Crawford, while simultaneously attempting to claim the ideas for himself. It was an awkward procedure, and such an experienced mathematician as Mr Crawford is unlikely to have been taken in by it. He must have understood that Mr Beddoes had obtained access to Mr Akers’ idea by some method or another. By this time, Mr Crawford had worked steadily and ceaselessly on his own idea without a break for two entire months, wearing himself out with trying every possibility that occurred to him, but all in vain. He must have been extremely frustrated, and all of a sudden, in the most unexpected manner, the key to solving all his difficulties appeared in Mr Beddoes’ hands – and Mr Beddoes himself did not really understand it! During their discussion of Mr Beddoes’ questions, Mr Crawford must have obtained at least a certain amount of information as to what lay in the manuscript. Still, I can well imagine that Mr Crawford wanted to look over the whole manuscript carefully himself, and was highly suspicious of Mr Beddoes’ refusal to allow him to do so;
this is probably what engendered the quarrel between the two of them described by Mrs Beddoes in her testimony.

‘However, as Mr Crawford had thought long and hard about every aspect of the problem, he was able to seize the key idea hidden in the central formula even from the small amount of information that he could glean from Mr Beddoes’ questions, and then his only desire was to lock himself up alone once again in his ivory tower and work it out until he reached a final, complete version of what he considered to be a blossoming out of his own original idea. The moment the door closed behind Mr Beddoes, Mr Crawford went back to work, and after a lapse of a week or so spent in working out details, he believed himself to be in possession of a full and complete solution of the so-called perturbative three-body problem.

‘Now, his fevered brain began to envision himself as the winner of the King’s Birthday Competition, internationally famous, honoured and considered on a par with the famous Henri Poincaré. This vision soon became an obsession, and day after day, he convinced himself that only Beddoes, with all his knowledge of the true provenance of the ideas contained in the manuscript, stood between himself and glory. Moreover, the ideas which Beddoes claimed as his own were very unlikely to really be his own, and indeed, the fact that he had them in his possession at all was extremely suspicious; Mr Crawford probably, at least half-consciously, identified Mr Beddoes as the murderer of Mr Akers.

‘For a week or so, Mr Crawford was so busy writing and thinking that he kept these ideas at bay, but then came the day on which the manuscript was complete, and only the danger due to Mr Beddoes’ knowledge of the true situation prevented him from sending it off. This brings us to around the day of the garden party, the 23rd of April. Mr Crawford decided to lay his plans very carefully. To begin with, he knew that a manuscript submitted in English to the competition would attract attention, as no English specialists in the subject were expected to submit. Naturally, he wished his manuscript to attract attention
if it were to win the prize
, but if that were not the case, then he surely felt that it would be a very dangerous thing that anyone should make even a superficial connection between a manuscript from England and murder in Cambridge. Therefore, he sent his manuscript to be translated into both French and German, so as to make it virtually impossible to guess where it came from. The rules of the competition stipulated that the manuscripts were to be submitted anonymously, with only an epigraph in lieu of signature, and that the true names of the authors were to be supplied in sealed envelopes marked with the epigraphs. Only the envelopes corresponding to the winning entries were to be opened. Therefore, by submitting French and German versions of his manuscript, Mr Crawford thought to protect himself from identification forever, in the case of his manuscript not being considered a winning entry (for example, if M. Poincaré of France had provided an even more astonishing solution). In case his manuscript would be the winner of
the competition, Mr Crawford’s desire for the fame and honour which would ensue was so great that he was ready to take any risk.

‘He also took advantage of naturally running into Mr Beddoes at the garden party to show him that he held no grudge over their quarrel, and let him know that he wished to dine with him. I saw this myself; Mr Beddoes appeared very surprised when Mr Crawford spoke to him. At the time, I merely thought that he was taken aback by Mr Crawford’s brusque manner, but now I realise that his surprise was due to the fact that the last time the two men had met, a week earlier, they had quarrelled bitterly.

‘He then proceeded to an extraordinarily evil action. On April 30th, he invited Mr Beddoes and Mr Weatherburn to dine together with him at the Irish pub, and at the last minute, he excused himself, alleging ill-health. The inclusion of Mr Weatherburn in this invitation was obviously intended to throw suspicion on him, as he had already dined with the victim of the previous murder, and the manoeuvre succeeded only too well.’

I paused here in my speech, and looked directly at Arthur, as did everyone else in the courtroom. For the very first time since the beginning of this painful trial, I saw his eyes fixed, burningly, upon me. It strengthened me.

‘Mr Crawford then installed himself just within the front gate of Mr Beddoes’ garden, in the shadow of some large lilac bushes, and waited in the darkness with a large rock gathered from the garden in his hand. Eventually, he heard
Mr Weatherburn and Mr Beddoes return from their dinner, and bid each other goodnight at the gate. Mr Weatherburn turned away, and Mr Beddoes closed the gate and turned towards the house. He received the blow suddenly, silently and powerfully on the back of his head. Mr Crawford was a very large, strong man. The blow fell instantaneously, Mr Beddoes uttered no cry, and no one was aware of anything. Mr Crawford let fall the rock and returned home; Mrs Beddoes discovered her husband’s body only later in the evening, as she was leaning out of the front door in the hopes of spotting his arrival.