Chapter Sixteen
That night, she had her maid order up her supper on a tray.
She was weary of all those whom she had met, all their worries and plans. She had work to do.
Candles burning around her, she sat in her favorite chair before a high fire. With a pencil in one hand, she opened the little red leather book that once had belonged to the man who was the nemesis of her friends. Gus, Amber, Viv, Giselle, Inès, and Liesel had each suffered his machinations.
She allowed satisfaction to flow through her blood as she began to riffle through the book of numbers.
Whatever this was, whatever she found, good or bad, insignificant or earth-shattering, Rafe would be pleased. He would be astonished.
I am too!
She pressed on, recalling how she had found the books. Sitting back in her comfortable chair with the flames of the fire warming her senses, her body cuddled by her quilted banyan, her toes wiggling in her thick slippers, she recalled the utter surprise of her discovery.
One night at a party in Vaillancourt’s home, she had feigned illness and disappeared from the gathering.
She had rummaged through Vaillancourt’s desk.
Found a key. Turned the little lock on a drawer and found two notebooks.
One was bound in old, tanned leather. The other was in a red so vibrant, it was a shocking Chinese vermilion.
She had opened the red and seen only numbers. Numbers of differing configurations. Numbers in sets across the page. Numbers beneath.
Five numbers on one line. Six on another. Some as sets. Ten on another.
No rhyme. No reason.
One page after another.
Some pages had two sets of numbers. Others had four, ten.
No order struck her as logical.
The tanned leather book she had seized was confiscated by the gendarmes who arrested her.
The faded volume listed names and figures.
The names were those of men and women in Society, and the amounts of their debts to Vaillancourt were sizable.
That book was readily understood. Even the Left Bank publishers of gossip sheets could read the entries quickly and easily.
She had allowed them a view, but not possession, of the book.
But that night, when she discovered both books, she had stuffed both back into his little drawer and locked them up. One week later, she stole the tanned leather. Two weeks after that, she took the red book.
From that first night when she had discovered both books, she’d made a point to accept all of Vaillancourt’s social invitations. She even talked and danced with him at other events. All the while, she observed his behavior.
Of those whose names she recalled from the tanned leather book, she noticed they would come to Vaillancourt, engage him—and their manner? Oh, that was always the same. They were meek, jovial, and subservient.
It was no small leap of logic to conclude that the notations in the books meant that these people owed the great and infamous Monsieur René Vaillancourt vast sums of money.
She had bided her time, deciding how to deal with her knowledge and hurt Vaillancourt as best she could. The tanned notebook had eventually done its work. It was gone. After the contents were published and the harm done, her future uncertain, she had burned the pages in her fireplace. Ashes, all.
But she had kept this red one. Given it to Cosette to take with her to England because Cosette was leaving…and Zeph knew Vaillancourt would come for her.
Now she let her finger slide down the first page of the red book. Its contents had fascinated her, and she’d thought long and hard about its use and value.
One evening, before she took it from him, she was obsessed with the meaning of the numbers. She was curious to view a page of it again so that she could ponder their use at home. She had snuck into Vaillancourt’s study and availed herself of the key, the lock, the drawer, and the first page.
There she saw what her mind, in numerous minutes of spare time, had speculated.
The first page, first line, read: 12/4/14/4/4/14.
A word? She considered the formation. Was this a code that used numbers to replace letters?
If this was a word, then a letter repeated at the second, third, and fourth spot.
If this were French, many words had two vowels in a row.
But what if Vaillancourt’s code were so simple that the same number system applied to vowels and consonants?
A vowel, she concluded. The same one. One evening, as she danced with one man who was really quite clumsy, she allowed her mind to ponder what words had such a configuration.
She discovered none with two vowels repeating.
But one letter did repeat at the third and sixth position.
She thought it to be a consonant. The only one that struck her was London!
But if either were the words, how would that denote valuable information in the three numbered lines beneath?
Vaillancourt was coding the alphabet?
At length, only one word would do. London.
And revealed therein was Vaillancourt’s code, because when she turned to the next page the code was 4/2/1/12, and when she applied the same logic, she got Deal.
Beneath Deal was another set of numbers that read: 1/12/12/1/14. Allan. If this were the name of a town on the coast like Deal, she had no idea. But she would ask Gus or Kane. Rafe would certainly know.
But she rushed on to the next line that read: 13/2/18/2. She stared at her description. Mere. La Mère!
This was the spy who had followed Rafe, Halsey, and Inès to Paris. The one who had sought to do away with Inès and with us all—and who died in the Seine!
This was more than she had imagined the book would yield.
She had to get up and pace to keep herself from bursting at her discovery.
Studying the sequence of that first line gave away his method. From that, it was child’s play.
Monsieur Vaillancourt was no genius. A master of manipulations and terror, especially to women, but no great creator of code.
Just to satisfy her sense of triumph, she quickly scanned the other pages. At the top of one was 2/1/-/8.
She grinned, deliciously happy. Even without the third letter that Vaillancourt had failed to insert—poor man—she knew the town. Bath.
Zeph’s triumph swept through her like a storm. Her first thought was to run to Rafe and tell him, but of course, ten o’clock at night was not a time that she could be running out to knock on a man’s door. Not after her rash visit to Cosette today.
She took a turn about her room, stoked the fire, and returned to her chair. She needed more.
She turned the page back to Deal.
She grinned.
Six lines listed here.
Some of the names were French euphemisms, like La Mère. Chat and Fleur. Names for females? One seemed more English and male, like Allan. Some had other numbers after them in long lines.
When the hall clock chimed two, Zeph took the red book to bed with her and tucked it under her mattress. In the morning, she would figure out a way to lock it away from prying eyes. Until she managed that, she would carry it with her.
And tomorrow, she would figure out whom to tell first. Rafe should be the one. But others would want the information, too. Gus. Kane. Scarlett.
The list went on: Carlisle, Halsey, O’Neill. They were all involved together.
They were spy catchers. Spies themselves. That she had learned from sitting there, listening to their stories.
And now?
She rubbed her arms and sank beneath her covers.
Now I am one too.