A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

“I can’t say.”

Penelope went to the sideboard and poured herself a glass of soda water from the gasogene. “Now I wish I’d paid closer attention to the notice columns. So much eccentricity and clandestineness in that space.”

“My sister Livia has long been a devotee. She was the one who first taught me about substitution ciphers. But she doesn’t have the patience for more complicated codes.”

“Patience is an overrated virtue. It’s much more fun to have what you want now—especially since there is no guarantee that a longer wait will produce better results.”

Miss Holmes was quiet for some time. “Do you see Lady Ingram as the patient kind?”

“No. Well, I didn’t, in any case. But I suppose she has proved herself extraordinarily patient, at least in one sense. An entire year’s wait for one fleeting look? That is downright painful.”

Penelope took a sip of her soda water—she liked how the bubbles tickled the roof of her mouth. “Although it could be said that her arrangement was dictated by circumstances, rather than temperament. Still, if it were me, I might have grabbed Mr. Finch by the lapels when he passed by and compelled him to give me his address and whatnot.”

“I meant,” said Miss Holmes softly, “do you think Lady Ingram will wait calmly and uncomplainingly while Sherlock Holmes works?”

Penelope laughed ruefully. “Ah, that. Well, I don’t see it. She is posting daily notices in the papers, even as Sherlock Holmes works.”

“In her position I would, too. The papers have far greater reach, empirically, than does Sherlock Holmes, whose only advantage is that he is obliged to report his findings, unlike Mr. Finch, who can ignore the notices until the presses run out of ink.” Miss Holmes carefully folded the paper. “But this makes me wonder. How does Lady Ingram manage all these notices? Surely she can’t be going every day to the papers.”

“She can do it easily via cable. Text and money can both be wired.”

“But that would still require her to make daily trips to the post office. A woman like her attracts attention. She can’t keep going to the same post office, and she can’t use the locations most convenient to her—her code isn’t difficult to break and she would hardly want word to get out that she’s sending desperate pleas via the papers.”

“She can send her personal maid,” suggested Penelope. “She must have one.”

The lady’s maid enjoyed a closer rapport with her mistress than most of the other servants, given that her services were of such a personal nature. And since she typically did not follow the lady around on her calls or errands—that was the purview of the pair of footmen matched in height, for the households that could afford them—she could act with a far greater degree of anonymity.

“The lady’s maid she had when she first married had served Lord Ingram’s mother for many years,” pointed out Miss Holmes.

“Hmm, that would present difficulties, if the maid feels greater loyalty to him than to her.”

“Then again, I don’t know whether she still has the same maid. It was years ago. But in any case, does Lady Ingram strike you as the kind to trust a servant with matters that are so personal?”

Penelope drained her glass. “Not really. But we’ve learned, haven’t we, that we don’t really know her, which makes it difficult to say what would be in character for her, and what wouldn’t be.”

“You are right,” said Miss Holmes slowly. “At this moment we can’t say anything with certainty.”



SATURDAY

The table of distances was, in fact, the easier part of the deciphering. Once Charlotte settled on the length of the keyword—five letters, in this case—she still had to test each of the five positions. To test a given position, she started with T, the most commonly used letter in the English language. Working backward from that, she decoded every fifth letter in the cipher text, then recorded all the letters and their frequencies, to see whether they conformed to the relative ratio of letter usage for the English language.

It wasn’t easy in theory and it was ten times more troublesome in practice, as this particular piece of text had noticeably fewer O’s than she would have expected, skewing the general proportions.

But in the end she managed. The keyword was TRUTH. After punctuation had been inserted, the deciphered text read:


MUCH THAT REMAINED IN THE ANCIENT VALLEY HAD BEEN RANSACKED BY RAIDERS IN LATER CENTURIES. THE RUINS WERE A SAD SIGHT, DECREPITUDE SANS GRANDEUR, AN INSIPID PAST THAT INSPIRED LITTLE BEYOND A GLOOMY SIGH. WE WERE GLAD AS WE DEPARTED, LEAVING BEHIND MOUNDS OF RUBBLE AND THAT GENERAL AIR OF MOURNFULNESS. ONWARD! LUCKY FOR US, OUR NEXT DESTINATION, A THOUSAND YARDS EASTWARD AS THE HAWK FLIES, WAS AS MAGNIFICENT AS THIS ONE WAS INFERIOR. THE GRANITE EDIFICE MUST HAVE BEEN A PALACE IN ITS HEYDAY AND THE TREASURES WITHIN MUST HAVE BEEN ASTONISHING. MY FRIEND, PRAY EXCUSE MY BREVITY. LET ME DIG INSTEAD AND WRITE AGAIN WHEN I HAVE UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS AND OTHER ARCHAIC GEMS.

Her work matched with the answer that had been provided. But since no background information had been given, she had no idea what she was looking at. She could only hope there had been actual “archaic gems” involved, their worth in thousands of pounds. Otherwise the work involved in the encoding would have been a pure waste, a manifestation of paranoia rather than any true need for secrecy.

She would have liked to take a nap—it was only eleven o’clock in the morning but she felt as if she had been awake for more than forty-eight hours. The de Blois ladies, however, had arrived for a call. Twenty minutes later, Charlotte, Mrs. Watson, Miss Redmayne, and their visitors were out in Regent’s Park for a promenade, taking advantage of clear air and bright sky after several days of intermittent drizzle.

Mrs. Watson cast fretful glances in her direction once in a while. Charlotte had kept to her room a great deal, even taken her suppers there once or twice. And when she did appear for meals, she had been happy to let Miss Redmayne take charge of the conversation, and spoke rarely unless first spoken to.

Mrs. Watson no doubt believed she had been preoccupied by thoughts of her half brother’s disappearance, Lord Ingram’s marriage, and the connection between the two. Certainly, from her perspective, it should be difficult for anyone to think of anything else.

But at the moment Charlotte wasn’t thinking of those things at all.

The decoded text of the Vigenère cipher. Something about it compelled her to examine it more closely. This minute.