The Book Missing Its Final Words

Name: The Book Missing Its Final Words
Genre: Documentary

The hidden scrap leads to a torn poetry book containing a telephone number and letters that look like a secret code.

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Transcript

A hidden trouser pocket held a rolled scrap reading “Tamam Shud.”
“Tamam Shud” means “it is finished” in Persian.
The scrap matched the torn final page of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
A man came forward with a copy whose last page had been torn out.
In the book's back, investigators found faint indentations, numbers, and a local telephone number.
Rows of letters looked like a secret code, yet attempts to decipher them were fruitless.
The phone number led to Jessica Thomson, who lived hundreds of feet from the body.
In July 1949, Thomson denied knowing the man.
A few faint marks had turned an unknown man's belongings into a personal theory.
Investigator Abbott proposed that the marks were initials, not a code.
Abbott and Fitzpatrick built a family tree containing about 4,000 people.
The reframing redirected researchers toward ordinary phrases behind the initials.
The text has not been deciphered in a way satisfying authorities.

Decades later, Derek Abbott would argue that the Rubáiyát's famous “code” was not a code at all.

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