Vavasor Papers

The Vavasor Papers are a collection of the writings of the Vavasor twins on various aspects of mathematics. Since their deaths, a number of people have been permitted to view the contents of the papers but their attempts at interpretation have mostly been defeated by the rambling nature of much of the mathematical arguments and the brothers' appalling handwriting.

There isn't even any real consensus as to which problems the Vavasors were working on at the time of their death, although there is a rumour that they were about to announce a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. This has developed its own mythology in which the proof was so complex it could only be formulated by a pair of identical twins. There is a more extreme corollary to this, which was that this proof could only be understood by pairs of identical twins. This has led to several candidates including the Russian Korsakov twins, the Austrian Dolmetsches and two of the Indian Kumar triplets being given privileged access to the Vavasor papers, although this all came to an end following the notorious Glühwein incident.

The Marginalia (always with a capital M) are also of considerable interest as a clue to the brothers' psychological state at the time of their deaths, although once again these scribbles are open to many interpretations, as George Burgess found to his cost.

At the start of The Truth About Archie and Pye, the papers are locked safely away in George Burgess's case, which he leaves on the train when he gets off at Swindon, shortly before he is murdered by Rufus Fairbanks. Tom takes possession of the case, and after a long series of twists and turns he eventually manages to open it, with the help of Dorothy Chan. Not long after this, Dorothy is kidnapped by the Gretzky gang and Tom is required to hand over the papers as ransom. But first he asks Arkady to get his compatriot Sergei to attach a tracking device. Instead, Sergei places a bomb inside the case as revenge for the Gretzkys' murder of his brother Maxim.

The present whereabouts of the papers are uncertain. It is possible that they were destroyed in the explosion that blew up the Gretzkys just as Dorothy was freed, but it is equally possible that Sergei retained them, either on behalf of Isaac Vavasor or for himself.

Incidentally, there is generally reckoned to be only one copy of the papers, as they are protected by a EURion to prevent duplication.