小写字母案

文/杰克·德拉尼 译/陈丽

小写字母案

文/杰克·德拉尼 译/陈丽

一个寒冷的九月清晨，她翩然走进我的办公室。我当时正在啜饮一杯星巴克顶级热咖啡，同时上网浏览当地新闻。著名的词汇语义学家，埃德加·内特尔斯顿教授被发现死亡，头上有一个枪击伤口。警方判断是自杀。

She breezed into my of fi ce one cold September morning. I’d been enjoying a hot cup of Starbuck’s finest and sur fi ng the web for local news. The famous lexical semanticist Professor Edgar Nettleston had been found dead, a gunshot wound to the head. The police verdict was suicide.

[2]她向我悠悠走来的同时伸出一只漂亮的手。我瞥见一枚婚戒，上面的宝石足有一颗MM花生牛奶巧克力豆那么大。

[2] She held out an elegant hand as she fl oated towards me and I glimpsed a wedding band with a stone the size of a peanut M&M1MM豆或译M&M豆，是美国的一种巧克力豆品牌，有各种口味和颜色，这里的peanut M&M是它的一款经典口味。.

[3]“我是伊迪丝·内特尔斯顿。”

“你先生的事，真遗憾。”

“我不遗憾。他爱过我，不过他更爱研究词语。我长话短说吧，我丈夫去世前正在写一篇论文，它能撼动词汇语义学的根基。它用在巡回讲学中可值钱了，但是谁也找不到它了。我认为他自杀时留下的便条能提供些线索。”

[3] “I’m Edith Nettleston.”

“Sorry about the old man.”

“I’m not. He loved me, but he loved words more. I’ll be brief. My husband was working on a paper that will rock the very foundation of lexical semantics. It’s worth a fortune in lecture tours, but nobody can fi nd it. I believe his suicide note is a clue to its whereabouts.”

[4]她从衬衫口袋掏出一小片纸。

“伊迪丝，我没什么可抱怨的，我这一辈子过得挺好。作为一名教师、一个兜售知识的人，我既挣到了钱，也享受了乐趣。但是我感觉沮丧至极，无药可救……所以我选择了这一刻以这一方式来结束我的生命。我对你一直不好。我要求你把棕色卷发染成金色。我以为花钱就能买来你，而其实我应该赢得你的爱。我还骂你女巫。我还抱怨：跟我结婚的那个女人怎么全变了？我批评你吃得太多。假如我想改变你的话，我其实应该用胡萝卜而不是用大棒。你或许想过要拧断我的脖子。原谅我。再见。”

“这封信全是用小写字母写成的。我丈夫是个非常注重语法正确的人。我不相信他这么做没有什么深义。”

[4] She removed a scrap of paper from her blouse.

“edith. i’m not going to whine, i’ve had a good life. i’ve found wealth and happiness as a teacher, a seller of knowledge. but i find myself depressed beyond hope ... and so i’m choosing the hour and manner of my own demise. i have treated you badly. i demanded you dyed your brown curls blonde. i thought i could buy you when i should have won your love. i called you a witch. i’d complain: where’s the woman i married? i said you ate too much. if i wanted change, i could have used a carrot rather than a stick2此处使用了“胡萝卜加大棒政策”的典故，起源于在拉车的骡马前放胡萝卜诱使它前进，同时在后面用大棒驱赶着它前行。后来该词语常用于国际关系领域，指用怀柔政策（胡萝卜）和强硬外交（大棒）来达成某一目的。. you probably wanted to wring my neck. forgive me. farewell.”

“It’s all written in lower case. My husband was a stickler for correct grammar. I refuse to believe it doesn’t mean something.”

[5]“内特尔斯顿夫人，我想我能对您有所帮助。这封信有几处很古怪。首先，正如您所说，它全部使用小写字母。内特尔斯顿先生是世界知名的词汇语义学家，可不是正给铁哥们发短信的中学生。

“其次，这封信里的同音异义词出乎寻常得多，有些词与它们读音相同，但是拼写和意义却不相同。既然作者是一位词汇语义学家，那么这种情况就肯定不是偶然了。

“我们按顺序来念这些词：whine、seller、hour、 manner。将它们转换成各自的同音异义词，就得到了：wine cellar our manor （酒窖，我们的庄园）。”

[5] “Mrs. Nettleston, I think I can help you. There’s a couple of odd things about this letter. Firstly, as you say, it’s written entirely in lower case. Mr. Nettleston was a world-renowned lexical semanticist, not a teenager texting his BFFs3BFF = Best Friend Forever，首字母缩略词。.”

“Secondly, it has a more than usual number of homophones, words where there is another word with the same sound but different spelling and meaning. When dealing with a lexical semanticist, that’s surely no accident.”

“If we read those homophones in order, we have: whine, seller, hour, manner. And translating to their homophones: wine cellar our manor.”

[6]几个小时后，我们就到达了内特尔斯顿的乡间宅邸，直奔地窖而去。灯光一打开，展露在我们面前的就是一排排隧道，架子上满是黑黑的瓶子。

[6] Several hours later, we arrived at the Nettlestons’country house and immediately headed for the basement. A fl ip of a light switch revealed tunnels fi lled with rows of dark bottles.

[7]“它在哪儿呢？这地方要花好几年时间才能翻个遍啊。”

“不用这么着急，内特尔斯顿夫人。首先我想问您个问题：您的婚戒钻石，它有多大？”

“8克拉。埃德加以前总是把这事挂在嘴上。”

“果然被我不幸猜中了。”我拔出我可靠的左轮手枪。“你该是多么痛恨他和他的词汇语义学啊！你以为你能杀掉他，然后独吞那篇论文的钱。你强迫他写下那个自杀便条，以为你知道论文在哪里。但是他早有所察觉，先把论文藏起来了。而且他还给你准备了一个惊喜：便条的剩余部分并没有指出论文藏在哪里，它反而指出了凶手是谁。最后几个同音异义词是dyed buy won witch where’s ate carrot wring，也 即 died by one which wears eight carat ring（被一个戴8克拉钻戒的人杀死）。”

[7] “Where is it? It would take years to search this place.”

“Not so fast, Mrs. Nettleston. First I have to ask you something: your wedding ring diamond, how large is it?”

“It’s eight carats. Edgar wouldn’t stop talking about it.”

“That’s what I feared.” I pulled out my trusty revolver. “How you must have hated him and his lexical semantics! You figured you’d kill him and keep the money from the paper yourself. You forced him to write that suicide note, thinking you knew where it was. But he was suspicious and he’d already hidden it. And he had another surprise for you: the rest of the note, it doesn’t reveal where the paper is, it reveals his killer. The fi nal homophones: dyed buy won witch where’s ate carrot wring. That is: died by one which wears eight carat ring. ”

[8]警察押着内特尔斯顿夫人离开之后，我迅速地在那个隧道迷宫里走了一圈，没花多少时间就找到了它。大多数的酒都是没开封地安放在架子上，但是在一个角落里，两个盒子随意摞在一起，一个盒子压在另一个的上面。我小心翼翼地打开了下面那盒。 □

[8] As the cops left with Mrs. Nettleston I took a quick trip round the maze of tunnels. It didn’t take me long to fi nd it. Most of the wine lay unpacked on racks but in one corner two cases sat stacked, one on top of each other. Carefully, I opened the lower one4自杀便条上的小写字母（lower case）是关键的线索，它在此处是个双关语，既指小写字母，也指下面的盒子。.

The Case of the Lower Case Letter

ByJack Delany