Chapter 13
Nimble had answered the telephone, but by the time we returned to the parlor, it began to ring again.
George grimaced. “I know you were waiting to give this Wickham fellow the scoop, but you may need to reconsider.”
“You might be right,” I conceded with a sigh. Or else the newspapermen might give us no peace. I could only imagine Anderson and Sturgis’s arrival had heightened their rapacity. “If I don’t hear from Wick soon, I’ll have to,” I declared as I sank down on the sofa.
I would reach out to his editor at the Irish Independent. Or perhaps, given the circumstances, it would be better to speak with one of the papers that more strictly towed the line of the government’s censorship? It was something to ponder, at least for appearances’ sake.
“Could you hear any of our conversation?” I asked Max and George, tilting my head in the direction of the drawing room.
“Little more than the rumble of voices,” Max replied with a glance at George.
A small smile played across my lips for, of course, both of these men would be too honorable to press their ears to the wall. “Well, it would have been all right if you had.”
Sidney and I proceeded to fill them in on everything the undersecretary and the assistant undersecretary had told us. Once we’d finished, both men had a number of questions, which in the end boiled down to one thing.
“Do you actually think he killed him?” Max stood gazing out the window at the garden below. What I could see of his profile was troubled. He might have been speaking of Lieutenant Harlow, but it was clear he was also thinking of his father.
“If you’re asking whether I think Ardmore is capable of committing murder with his own two hands, then …
yes. If push came to shove, I believe he could do it.
” I scowled. “He certainly has a blatant disregard for human life. But if you’re asking whether I believe he killed Harlow, I don’t know.
Not with only Anderson’s suspicions to base my judgment on.
” My mouth twisted disdainfully. “Though, I admit, it’s rather nice not to be the first person to point out Ardmore’s potential culpability for once. ”
Sidney leaned back against the edge of the sideboard, crossing his arms and legs in front of him. “If investigating Harlow’s murder might enable us to finally apprehend Ardmore, then it’s worth the effort.”
“But that doesn’t mean we’re abandoning our other endeavors,” I stated before turning to George. “Smith’s journal?”
“I’ve got it with me,” he confirmed, rising to collect the leatherbound book from the top of the writing desk where he’d been seated when I returned to the parlor.
He picked it up along with a notebook he’d been jotting the decrypted text inside, leaving the copy of Fanny Hill by John Cleland, which had proven to be the key to the journal’s cipher on the desk.
That Smith had chosen such an erotic novel for his purposes proved unsurprising, given his reputation.
It also explained his jibe that I might not be clever enough to figure it out.
The man had been a lout, even in the moments before death.
But his journal had proved crucial in locating the phosgene cylinders, and for that I would be forever grateful to him for giving it to us.
George rejoined me on the sofa, sitting closer so that I could read the words scrawled across the pages of his notebook containing the decrypted text.
It was laid out neatly, with one page in the notebook corresponding to one page in the journal.
Per my instructions, he had been working in reverse, decoding the later pages of the journal which were the most recent chronologically.
Congruently, he was also transcribing them into the notebook in reverse, starting with the last page and moving forward.
Sidney and Max moved to stand behind the sofa, reading over George’s shoulder as he opened the notebook.
“I’m more than halfway finished decoding it,” George said.
“But I must confess that I’m uncertain of much of its usefulness.
There are some reoccurring listings”—he flipped to a particular page, pointing to a column—“that I feel must be some sort of weapons or explosives. I recognize the trench slang.”
“Yes,” Sidney confirmed, having leaned closer to read it more closely.
“But their origins and destinations are obscured by more jargon, of which I’m unfamiliar.”
I turned to look up at Sidney and Max, hoping that they might know it, but their brows were ruffled in confusion, and they shook their heads.
“For all we know, it might not be soldiers’ slang,” George continued.
“But rather Smith’s own peculiar verbiage.
He used it often enough elsewhere.” He ruffled the pages of the book, his nose wrinkling in disapproval.
“And he had a disreputable habit of recounting his exploits in unpleasant detail and referring to the women involved by what I supposed he saw as their distinguishing attributes. In addition to his own gratification, I suspect he used the references to help differentiate one place or situation from another, for at times he cites a location as ‘long legs’ or an incident as ‘cherry nobs.’” He cleared his throat upon recounting this one, leaving me no doubt as to what it denoted.
Sidney muttered a curse I heartily agreed with.
“It appears Smith was far shrewder than we gave him credit for,” I grumbled. His disrespectful behavior aside, referencing events and locations by something only he would connect them to was ingenious, and stellar intelligence work. No wonder he had baited me about my cleverness.
It also raised an unsettling question. One Max dared to voice.
“So why did he refer to the location of the phosgene in more … if not open, let’s say, easily decipherable terms?”
WILL OWE DUB LIN 22 OCTOBER 1917 RY AN FERRY MAN SAILOR REST ROCK HAM GIRL.
That was how Smith had encoded the phosgene’s location.
Which would have been far from comprehensible to most people.
It was only because of our painstakingly accrued knowledge of the city, the people involved, and the history of their involvement with each other that we’d been able to understand.
So, definitely not open, but decipherable to those with the right information, yes.
“He does orient other sites in a similar manner,” George countered. “But why that is, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe he simply didn’t have anything else to correlate them with.”
“Perhaps,” Sidney conceded, his voice dry. “But I’m not sure I want to chalk up the difference to Smith’s failure to secure a dame’s favors.”
“There is one woman he refers to openly by name, though that might be a pseudonym.” George finished flipping through the pages of the notebook to find the one he wanted. “He calls her Adele.”
My gaze flew to Sidney’s, feeling somehow I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
“I take it that you know of whom he’s speaking,” George prodded.
“Adele Baverel,” my husband answered for us, a hard glint in his eyes.
“She was a courier who posed as the mistress of traitors like Walter Ponsonby and passed on their messages so that they reached the Germans.” Walter, who had been Sidney’s friend and fellow officer, had shot him and left him for dead when he’d feared Sidney was too close to uncovering his crimes.
Max straightened in recognition as Sidney continued.
“I managed to track her down and question her during the months when I was presumed dead and searching for proof to bring down the traitors in my battalion.” His eyes locked with mine again.
“And earlier this year in March she refused to speak to anyone but me when the French arrested her for looting.”
“She wanted to trade what she knew about the courier networks she worked for during the war and after for her release,” I murmured. “Names, dates, routes. But she was murdered before she could do so.”
“By Smith?” George guessed.
I shook my head. “No. Smith was actually her lover. In fact, she seems to have been the love of his life. He nearly killed me and Sidney, trying to avenge her death.”
Sidney rested a hand on my shoulder, perhaps recalling the terrifying minutes when Smith had taken me hostage. “We have no proof, but the implications seem to point to the courier networks being controlled by Ardmore.”
I eyed Smith’s journal in George’s lap, wondering if it contained any of the information Miss Baverel had promised to tell us in exchange for being given her freedom and safe passage to the United States. It seemed plausible that Smith had known at least some of what she had alleged.
George seemed to divine my thoughts for he passed me the notebook. “You and Kent should look through my decryption. Maybe you’ll comprehend something I haven’t. And I’ll continue decoding the rest.”
“Has he named anyone else openly?” Max asked as he rounded the sofa to sink into the chair adjacent.
George seemed to understand Max was asking about his father as much as Ardmore and any others.
“Occasionally. There a few mentions of Lord Rockham, but mostly in relation to something or someone else, like ‘ROCK HAM GIRL.’ You’ll note a few other names sprinkled throughout.
” He nodded at the notebook in my hands.
“But for the most part, he denotes people by nicknames, either to keep their identities a secret or, just as likely, because there was no easy way to decrypt their name.” Since Smith had been using a book cipher, he was limited to the words published in its key, in this instance, an edition of Fanny Hill.
“You’ll notice he does manage to transcribe Willoughby as WILL OWE BE twice, but he calls Ardmore ‘His Nibs.’ Or at least, that’s my deduction. ”
That sounded like a sobriquet Smith would use.
“And what does he have to say about His Nibs?” Sidney asked as he lit one of his Turkish cigarettes. He took a long drag as he resumed his slouch against the sideboard.