It was a dilemma for me. I should have begun the process of dampening the leather for the cover of Jane Eyre, but once I started that job, I would be forced to see it all the way through. Knowing our big plans for the evening, I decided that today was not the day to begin anything too complicated.
Instead, I took an hour and completed the rest of the work on Jane Eyre, everything but the leather cover. For the endpapers, I picked out a sheet of mottled navy and burgundy I’d made a few months ago. The blend of colors would suit the navy leather I’d chosen for the cover. Then I glued the boards and spine to the text block and slipped Jane into the book press for the rest of the day.
I tidied up my workshop, then dashed into the dining room to join the others. It was all too fascinating, but I was stumped from the get-go. “How on earth do you figure out the code when there are such random symbols and numbers and squiggles like this?”
Savannah agreed. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Is it just trial and error or are there certain patterns you follow?”
Dalton was happy to explain to his rapt audience. “These days, we depend on computers to help establish algorithmic codes. It makes decryption faster, though not necessarily easier. Believe me, none of it is a walk in the park.”
Savannah shook her head. “I can’t imagine anything more difficult. You’re basically starting with nothing.”
Dalton smiled at her. “I suppose digging ditches is a more difficult way to earn a living, but this does tax my mind a bit.” He pointed to one of the cookbook pages. “The problem with these old codes is that they required the different parties to work together. Each of them needed access to the code pattern as well as a decoder book of some sort.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You need the super-secret decoder ring.”
His lips curved. “Yes, like the ones that used to come in our breakfast cereal.”
Savannah stared at the page in front of her. “So without the secret passbook, how do you decode this?”
“There’s always a method and a pattern to it, whether it’s obvious or not.” Dalton sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Whoever was sending these coded messages back and forth through this cookbook had to have a decryption chart or booklet. So there is a pattern. And I believe I’m close to breaking it.”
“Really?” I said, hoping he didn’t hear the doubt in my voice. “How exciting.”
Dalton frowned. “Yes. What threw me off at first was the fact that some of these symbols equal a letter of the alphabet, while the same symbol sometimes refers to a whole word or phrase. For instance, I believe this pinwheel design here is a W, so it’s used with other symbols or numbers to spell out a word. But it also refers to Washington, the general, as well as, occasionally, his headquarters or his camp or his next maneuver. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, it does,” I said, allowing myself to feel a smidgen of excitement. “So a coded sentence might actually spell out the word water using all the letters, w-a-t-e-r. But if it was something related to General Washington’s next move, the pinwheel alone would be sufficient to indicate the entire word.”
“Exactly.”
“I can see how that would make things very complicated and confusing for you,” Savannah said, gazing at Dalton with even more adoration than usual.
“It can be complicated,” Dalton said, with a humble nod of his head. “Luckily, though, I’m very good at what I do.”
“And modest,” Derek muttered.
“So true,” Dalton said with a self-effacing shrug. Then he grinned. “Now, regardless of whether I break the code completely or not, my gut feeling is that this gentlewoman, Obedience Green, was recruited by the Yanks to spy on her employer, the British Army general Blakeslee.”
“But why would a woman in that position agree to do something that would endanger her very livelihood?” Savannah wondered.
“And quite possibly her life,” Derek added.
I walked over to the kitchen to start a new pot of coffee. “Maybe she was being blackmailed,” I said. Because blackmail seemed to be an ongoing theme, I thought, as I poured water into the coffeemaker.
“It’s possible the Yanks were using her,” Derek said. “Tricked her, played on her emotions. Perhaps convinced her that one of their men was in love with her and coerced the information out of her that way.”
“And she would’ve had plenty to reveal,” I said. “She must’ve heard Blakeslee telling his men all sorts of things during meals or after dinner with his fellow officers gathered around. They would be talking about troop movements and stuff like that all the time, right?”
“And poor Obedience would report it all to her lover,” Savannah said. She had clearly taken the cook’s side in this dastardly plot.