Chapter Nineteen #3
In fact, on paper they were a nearly perfect match: He had proved himself to be as unconventional and as cool of temperament as she.
“Now that you understand my initial reaction to the point of your visit, let me address your request.” He leaned back in his chair.
“I’m afraid you have it backward, Miss Holmes.
If you have discovered Moriarty’s modus operandi, then it’s incumbent upon you to disclose said method to me.
And I will have my subordinates check to see whether your discovery is valid. ”
This was not the response she had hoped for. Lord Bancroft was letting her know, not at all subtly, that a woman who wasn’t about to marry him could not count on continued access to his work. “Will you inform me of the results? And how soon?”
“Only agents of the crown will be informed of the results. However, I can see my way to an exception.”
She knew exactly what that exception would be. She tilted her head. “Do please elucidate.”
“I will furnish what you seek, if I have a firm promise that you will shortly become Lady Bancroft.”
If he knew of the theories that were beginning to coalesce in her head, he would not be so quick to play games with vital information. But the problem was, she was not ready for him to know these theories.
In fact, it was imperative that he not have any idea of them.
But could she truly agree to his capricious demand? Was it really so important that she must enter reluctantly into marriage—marriage—in order to obtain what she needed?
This was where their ideal-on-paper match unraveled.
Charlotte was not without a streak of ruthlessness.
But if she had cold water flowing through her veins, then Lord Bancroft had glaciers in his.
And the thing was, she had no doubt he would hold her to her promise, even though she would consider any agreement to have been extracted under duress.
So on the one hand, decades with a man she would not have chosen on her own, the thought of which made her lungs feel as if they had been caught in a hydraulic press. And on the other hand . . . something far, far worse?
“Agreed,” she said, looking him in the eye.
Sometimes one must pay one’s debts—and hers were both deep and extensive.
Lord Bancroft allowed himself a small smile. He was surprised, no doubt, but also very, very pleased.
“But,” she added, “I stipulate that our accord will only prove valid should what you give me turn out to be useful.”
“And how would I know that?”
“Oh, you will know, my lord.” She returned his smile, because sometimes she had an iceberg or two drifting through her veins, too. “And since you are demanding so much of me, I will also need to borrow a man who has your complete trust.”
The intercepted telegram Lord Bancroft gave Charlotte—or rather, the copied text, which she checked against the original three times to make sure there had been no mistranscribing—was dated two days before she had discovered the secret of the house in Hounslow.
Which meant that she didn’t need to consult the archive room at the Times again—or even work to decipher any additional small notices in the back of the paper: Because of Lady Ingram’s inquiry, Charlotte already had all the small notices from around that time recorded and decoded in her notebook.
And the fact that the telegram had a date written in plaintext gave credence to her idea that those who received encoded messages needed to know when it was composed, so they would know which keyword to use to solve the cipher.
The newspaper notices that used Encyclopedia Britannica or the First Folio as a point of departure all arrived unambiguously at a single word in those pages.
But with the biblical verses, she wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed.
Since the verses themselves weren’t encrypted, it made sense, given the secretive nature of Moriarty’s organization, that the keywords wouldn’t be words visible in the advertised verses themselves.
But if a verse served as a pointer, what did it point to?
And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.
Isaiah 8:15.
She tried the first and last word of the chapter, followed by the first and last word of the Book of Isaiah, none of which decoded anything.
The title of the book? Still nothing.
She rubbed her temples. Of course she was going about it the wrong way: She was solving for a Vigenère cipher. The books in which the keywords would be found had changed at least twice in the past ten years. Yet she was still assuming that the basic cipher form had stayed the same.
What would it have changed to? Since the clues to the keywords now had a less opaque veil over them, it should follow that the cipher itself had graduated to one that was even more difficult to solve.
A Wheatstone cipher? Those, without knowledge of the keyword, were practically impossible.
But she did have keywords at hand—or candidates, at least, if her chain of reasoning had been correct so far.
She drew up a five-by-five square, divided the letters of the cipher text into pairs, and went to work.
And when she had verified, late at night, that indeed ISAIAH served as that ten-day period’s keyword, she laid her head down on her desk.
Then she sighed, consulted her notebook again, pulled out a sheaf of paper, and began to write.