Since Mr. Marbleton had already gone through so much trouble, Charlotte deemed that the cipher must be a Wheatstone, nearly impossible to solve if one didn’t already know the key.
But the first opening sentence they tried, from The Moonstone, did turn out to be the key.
Deciphered, the text read,
image is for yr brother
to know what it concerns compose small notice to ellie hartford start with the word mycenae make the rest a wheatstone cipher with it is a truth universally acknowledged as the key
my regards to yr sister
Mr. Marbleton had left the ticket stub at a meeting with Charlotte. The cipher needed Livia’s input. But no matter to whom the note was addressed, yr brother could refer only to Mr. Myron Finch, their illegitimate half brother, who had once worked for Moriarty but escaped the organization the year before.
“Interesting,” murmured Charlotte, seated in the chair she always took when receiving clients. “Last summer Mr. Marbleton sought Mr. Finch. But Mr. Finch, when I last saw him, wasn’t terribly enamored of the idea of meeting with the Marbletons.”
“But they did meet on that very night, when Mr. Marbleton came to warn you and Mr. Finch that Mr. Finch was no longer safe. Who is to say they didn’t manage to meet again later?” said Lord Ingram, still at the desk.
Indeed the situation had been dire enough that night that Mr. Finch had donned woman’s clothes to facilitate his escape. Livia hadn’t known then that he was her half brother, or the real reason he was fleeing. To her he’d been only the groom hired for the London Season who had been surprisingly considerate and helpful. And she’d fretted for months about what became of him, until Charlotte had told her the truth, after which her worries had only sharpened.
Livia, standing by the mantel, took another swallow of the whisky Lord Ingram had poured for her earlier—and wished that liquid courage, rather than liquid anxiety, flowed through her veins. “Charlotte, Lord Ingram told me that you had news recently from Mr. Finch.”
Charlotte tapped her pencil against the notebook on her lap, in which she’d done her portion of the deciphering. “He’d sent me two messages last year, which read exactly the same: ‘Dear Caesar, how fares Rome? Here in Italy all is well. 3 N N.’
“The mention of Italy meant that he was in Britain. The number indicated the level of danger he was in: three out of ten was not too terrible for someone pursued by Moriarty. The first N signaled that he was north of London, in relative position. The second N meant that no, the message would not be followed by a more detailed letter to be called for at the General Post Office under an alias.
“The message from this January, however, is shorter. ‘Dear Caesar, how fares Rome? 5.’ Increased danger. No indication of location. But that he was able to send a message at all was good news.”
That was what Lord Ingram had said too when he’d told Livia about the most recent message, that any communication from Mr. Finch constituted an assurance of his safety, at least as of the time of its dispatch.
“Do you suppose Mr. Marbleton knew where to find Mr. Finch?” Livia asked Charlotte, then immediately shook her head. “Of course not. If he did, he wouldn’t need to pass the message through us.”
“What I’m struck by is that this is the last thing Mr. Marbleton did, before he surrendered himself to Moriarty,” said Mrs. Watson from the sideboard, a small quaver to her voice. “I don’t know the procedures necessary for reducing an image to such miniature scale, but even with that task done, it could not have been easy to cut out such a tiny dot, affix it to the right spot on the ticket, and apply soot in such a way as to both conceal the dot and make the ticket appear naturally trodden.”
Charlotte nodded. “He left that day in tears. Still, afterward, he took the time to do this. One could argue that he didn’t want to meet his future yet, but all the same, it had to have been extraordinarily important for him to convey this image to Mr. Finch.”
He left that day in tears.
Livia had not known this. She had left earlier that day, in shock because he had abruptly announced to her that they ought to never see each other again, or even write. She had realized later that he had done so to protect her and had understood that he must have hurt as much as she had.
But to hear that detail from Charlotte—the tears she had not shed that day rushed to her eyes. She blinked them back.
Mrs. Watson came and took her hand. Livia managed a weak smile. She could not free Mr. Marbleton from Moriarty’s grip—not yet—but she would do everything in her power to make sure that the image reached Mr. Finch.
“Shall we begin composing our message to Ellie Hartford?” she asked, a catch to her voice. “If we finish and encrypt it fast enough, I’d like to personally take the message to the papers before I must return to the hotel.”
20
After drafting and encrypting a message to Ellie Hartford, also known as Miss Marbleton, Mr. Marbleton’s sister, the company dispersed.
Lord Ingram, who had the most experience in evading followers, took Miss Olivia to the papers to post small notices, the first of his many errands. Miss Charlotte dispatched cables. Mrs. Watson gathered her staff for a meeting—arrangements must be made before anyone could flee from Moriarty.
Everyone who worked for her had lived eventful lives before settling down into domestic service. Mrs. Watson had feared that they, even more than she, would be distressed to lose the stability on which they’d come to depend. Instead they consoled her—and assured her that Moriarty would be but a minor disturbance, and that they looked forward to their small adventures much as those who dined on steak and fois gras daily anticipated an occasional serving of eel pie.
Mrs. Watson left the council with her heart full of both sorrow and gratitude. She found Miss Charlotte in the afternoon parlor, hunched over the writing desk, a notebook spread open before her, a pair of telegrams to the side.
Mrs. Watson picked up the cables. They were from Mr. Mears, sent today, concerning what he’d found in the archives of various Cornish newspapers. Miss Charlotte had asked him to examine those specific issues Miss Baxter had in her collection, copy down small notices that caught his attention, and take note of relevant articles.
Mr. Mears indeed reported some small notices in code. He also came across two articles that mentioned Sherlock Holmes, one on the detective’s first case investigating an apparent accidental overdose in nearby Devonshire, the other about the recent scandal involving Inspector Treadles.
“Was that how Miss Baxter learned about Sherlock Holmes?” Mrs. Watson wondered aloud.
Miss Holmes stared out of the window at Regent’s Park across the street. The sun had once again emerged from the clouds, but trees were still denuded, and grass on the ground irregular patches of short stubbles.
“I believe Miss Baxter had other means,” she said, and returned to her ciphers.
By eight o’clock in the evening two more cables had arrived from Mr. Mears. Dinner consisted of Miss Charlotte eating at the same desk, scribbling in her notebook, and Mrs. Watson in her favorite chair nearby, making one list after another. After their meal, Miss Charlotte asked for help in mounting a search of their own archives--Mrs. Watson kept every letter that had ever come for Sherlock Holmes, those containing legitimate inquiries as well as those written by members of the public with too much idle time on their hands.