A Talent for Trickery

by Alissa Johnson

  Unless Gabriel was right and the murderer didn’t want the letters deciphered, or it was gibberish, or there was no keyword and the encryption was beyond her…

  Lottie’s hand hovered over the page.

  No keyword. Not a keyword.

  She tossed down her pen and rifled through her notes, pulling out all the attempts she’d made to manipulate the numbers into something useful—something that could be converted into the letters of a keyword.

  But what if the numbers didn’t correspond to the letters of the alphabet? What if they were a clue of their own? They could be an address, a date, time, longitude and latitude, a ransom amount for the artwork. They could be nearly anything.

  Finding her last page of attempts, she set it atop her now completely disordered desk and studied the simple mathematical work with a new eye. All she had done was add the numbers in pairs, or threes, where necessary. The first two numbers, then the second two, and so on. But she hadn’t taken the time to consider those immediate results. She’d jumped right ahead to trying to turn them into a keyword.

  Now she took the time to look at the sets of numbers themselves. The first set meant nothing to her, but the second set read 52772. That was something. She sifted through more paper and found her notes on the third crime. A painting had been stolen from Lord Thadwist on the night of May twenty-eighth.

  “Dates,” she whispered into the dark. “They’re dates.”

  Well, one date—the night before the crime. The numbers from the other letters didn’t add up to anything helpful. But surely the near match of one date was not a coincidence.

  Lottie stifled the urge to rush to Owen with the news. If she could match one date, if it really was not a coincidence, then she could find them all.

  She spent the next hour manipulating the numbers. It was easier, faster, and tidier to start over from the beginning than to sort through the notes she’d loosely organized on the basis of possible keywords.

  “There was no keyword,” she mumbled to herself. “Wrong sort of pattern, entirely.”

  Slowly, surely, she found success. When the numbers on the first page were added in threes, then divided in half, they became the day before the second crime occurred. Unlike the second letter, the year was not included, but it was still a clear match. After eliminating every third number and subtracting the second of each remaining pair from the first, the numbers on the third letter became the day before Mrs. Popple’s murder.

  Even as the pattern emerged and the excitement of success sent her heart racing, a chill began to spread through her veins. A new pattern was coming to the forefront. One she’d never considered.

  The numbers weren’t hints at the keyword. They were time limits. And they had stopped when Owen came to Willowbend.

  Sixteen

  Much as she had the first night, Lottie let herself into Owen’s bedroom without knocking. And just as she had before, she took a moment to study the supine figure on the bed. He was in his clothes, as he likely was every night. She rather doubted he even owned a nightshirt. But unlike that first night, she had the sense to stop midway across the room, out of arm’s reach.

  Filled with eagerness and anxiety, it was all she could do not to close the distance between them and rouse him with a shake and a shout. “Owen. Owen, wake up.”

  Owen bolted upright before she’d gotten his name out the second time. “Lottie? What’s wrong?”

  Though it made her feel rather silly, she couldn’t stop from dancing from foot to foot in her excitement. “Owen, it’s me.”

  “I can see it’s you. What—”

  “No, it’s me. Well, it’s us, really. The Walkers.” She came close and held up the papers she’d brought along. “We’re the sharpest pebble.”

  “The sharpest…? The what…?” He leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “Why the devil are you walking on that leg?”

  Ignoring the third question altogether, she forced herself to start from the beginning. “I deciphered part of the letters. The numbers. They’re dates. The dates before each crime.”

  Owen pushed aside the covers and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Let me see.”

  She lit a lamp while he squinted at her notes. “Every letter is the same,” she explained. “The numbers on each note indicate the date before the next crime occurs.”

  “You figured it out.”

  “Only the numbers. It wasn’t especially difficult in the end. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t see it at first. I expected something more complicated, more involved. This was just a bit of adding, subtracting, and so on. It was more a guessing game than anything else. Does that seem odd to you?”

  He glanced up from the papers. “Should it?”

  “I thought he’d be cleverer, I suppose.”

  “Haven’t you been guessing at the keyword?”

  “Only because I couldn’t find another way. I assumed he left a way for us and we just needed to find it. But this was rather like the codes passed between men with whom my father often worked.”

  “Simple men,” he said and handed her the papers.

  “The simplest, in this case.”

  “There are the rest of the letters, yet.”

  “True.” She didn’t understand why anyone would want to use two codes, each a different level of complexity, in a single letter. It didn’t make any sense. But she could start on that part of the puzzle tomorrow. For now, the results from the numbers concerned her most. “There’s a pattern in the dates.”

  “A pattern of pointy rocks, by chance?”

  “No, it leads to the pointed rock. You found the first letter at the site of the first burglary. It held a time limit, I’m sure of it. Here. See?” She held up her notes and pointed at the top page. “The day after it passed, there was another theft, another letter, and another date.” She indicated the next set of numbers. “The day after it passed, there was yet another theft and so on. Mrs. Popple was murdered the day after the third time limit. I’ve deciphered them all and they’re all the same. Until the fourth letter. The one you found with Mrs. Popple.” She shuffled the papers in her hands and held up a single page. “That time limit passed the day after you arrived at Willowbend.”

  “That can’t be right. Gabriel contacted London just a few days ago. There hasn’t been another theft or murder.”

  “Because you beat the time limit. Our villain has what he wants. The Walkers.”

  His eyes flicked to the papers, then back to her. “No.”

  “Yes. You brought the letters to me before the last time limit.”

  “Coincidence.”

  “Not if one is aware of the nature of your work with my father. And me.” She shook the pages a little. “Look at these burglaries. The victims were men of station and means. Men who—”

  “He wanted items of value,” Owen broke in. “Where else would he find them but at the homes of the ton?”

  “If it was coin he’d been after, he would have targeted modestly well-to-do tradesmen and nicked items that could be easily and safely pawned. No one but the victims would have batted a lash. But he stole art, which is notoriously difficult to fence, from men of power, and he left behind letters encrypted in a style similar to something my father might have done. The crimes brought him attention. The attention and the letters brought you. You brought him to Willowbend. And then the letters stopped and the attacks here began.”

  He swore softly and shook his head. “Mrs. Popple was not a member of the ton, nor did she possess any art of value.”

  “No, but she knew the Walker family. Two people my father knew drawn into this—?”

  “Lottie,” he cut in, again. Then he trailed off and seemed to struggle to produce any additional argument, until he finally arrived at, “You’re tired.”

  “What?” Offended, she drew herself up. “Don’t patronize me.”
>
  “I’m not. I’m stating the obvious. You’re exhausted. No one thinks clearly when exhausted.”

  “I am thinking clearly.” He was the one who appeared to have lost the ability to reason properly. “Listen to me. It is a good principle to explain a phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”

  “I… God.” He briefly pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. When he dropped his arms, his expression was one of resignation and thinly stretched patience. “Ptolemy. More or less.”

  “Yes. Or William Punch, if you like. Thomas Aquinas, Sir William Ockham. There are others, but they all professed the same principle. A convoluted explanation is unnecessary when a simple explanation is at hand.”

  “I’m finding this conversation and your theory exceedingly convoluted.”

  “Our villain stopped when the letters came here.” How was that not simple?

  “It does not necessarily follow that he stopped because I came here. You’ve found a correlation, that’s all. It could be nothing more than a coincidence.”

  “You would insist on explaining this away as a mere coincidence?”

  “Damn right I will,” he all but snarled.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Why are you so adamant in your denial? I might be wrong, yes, but it’s a sound hypothesis and the best—no, the only—one we have. Is it so difficult for you to admit I might be right?”

  “Yes.”

  The quick dismissal took her aback. “I’d not have thought you… Why did you ask for my help at all, if you hoped I would get it all wrong in the end?”

  “That’s not it.” He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving the dark locks in tousled disarray. “I don’t want you to be wrong in a general sense.”

  “Only about this?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes. For pity’s sake, Lottie.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  On an oath, he snatched the pages out of her hand and shook them at her. “These are the letters of a murderer. And you tell me they’re meant for you? Addressed to you? Yes, I bloody well want you to be wrong.”

  “Oh.” Insult slipped away. When viewed in that light, she rather hoped she’d come to the wrong conclusion as well. “I don’t know that they are addressed to me, exactly. It’s really more that they were addressed to you and pointing toward the Walkers.”

  Not surprisingly, he had absolutely nothing to say to that.

  “And,” she continued in a bid to allay his fears, “looking at the circumstances objectively, I’m not in any more danger than I was ten minutes ago.”

  “Cold comfort, Lottie.”

  It was, rather. Unfortunately, it was the best she could manage at present. “They’re from the man in the woods, aren’t they? The Ferret.”

  “There can only be so many coincidences. He followed my trail from London.” He glared at the papers in his hand. “I wish to God I’d never brought these letters here.”

  “They’re my notes, actually. It’s good you brought the letters,” she added quickly when his expression darkened and his fingers curled into the pages. Gingerly, she reached out and retrieved her notes before he could damage them further. “Isn’t it better that we know? If his desire to find the Walkers was so great that it led him to murder a woman, then he would have found us eventually. One way or another, he would have found us. I’m glad you brought the letters here. I’m glad you’re here.” She scowled at her own words. “That sounds selfish. I didn’t mean—”

  “It didn’t. It doesn’t.” Stepping close, he stroked a finger down her cheek. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

  Without thought, she reached up and closed her hand over his. Here was warm comfort. In his strength, his touch. It was tempting to lean into that comfort, to lean into him, but now wasn’t the time. There was still work to be done. “Father must have stolen from him. Crossed him somehow.”

  “And he seeks retribution the only way he can,” Owen replied, letting his hand fall away. “Through the children. But why target you now? Will has been gone for eight years.”

  And honest for four before, Lottie thought, though it was possible her father had betrayed the Ferret in working for Owen. “It is a long time to wait before seeking revenge.”

  She had no doubt that there were men and women who would strike out at the Walker family for the sins of their father, but she suspected many wouldn’t bother unless the Walker family happened to be standing in front of them, or at least easily found. The Ferret had gone to terrible lengths to discover the family’s whereabouts. Why, if his need for revenge was so great, had he waited years to begin his search?

  “He may have been imprisoned,” Owen said thoughtfully.

  “Or he has been looking all along,” she ventured. “And frustration at repeated failure has pushed him to take extreme measures. Or perhaps he is mad, above and beyond being a murderer, that is.”

  She saw by Owen’s expression that the latter possibility had occurred to him. “If that madness is recent—” he began.

  “It would also explain why he is only now seeking his revenge,” she finished for him. “I’ve no experience with madness. Can a man create such a scheme as this without full use of his faculties?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Possible,” she repeated. There were so many possibilities. Maybe the dates really were a coincidence. Maybe the Ferret wasn’t out to settle a score with her father, but with her. She couldn’t recall having met a man matching Esther’s description of the Ferret, but that didn’t mean their paths had never crossed. He could be one of many her father had cheated while she worked behind the scenes.

  What if he knew it? What if all of it—the thefts, the shooting, the fire, the murder, the danger Owen had put himself in—was because of her past as the Tulip?

  “Lottie, what is it?”

  She glanced up from the papers to find Owen looking at her with concern. “Sorry? No. Nothing. I was just thinking.” She cast about for a suitable diversion. “It’s all connected. My father, the murder, the man in the woods. We can’t hope to keep the police out of this now. You can’t simply exile him without anyone being the wiser. Your colleague in London will want answers.”

  “He’ll have them. I promise.”

  “But not the truth,” she guessed. “You’ll lie.”

  He stepped closer and bent his head to catch and hold her gaze. “I will keep you safe.”

  “The safest thing to do would be for the Walker family to leave Willowbend once this is all over.” And you’ve gone, she added silently, and she discovered the former no longer troubled her nearly so much as the latter. Strange how greatly things could change in a few short days.

  “It would be best,” he agreed, straightening. “At least until we can be certain the Ferret is acting alone.” He smiled warmly, then, and reached out to toy with the ruffled lapel of her dressing gown. “I’ll take the lot of you to Derbyshire, to Greenly House.”

  She found herself smiling in return, reassured by his confident tone, enthralled by the sensation of his fingers dancing along the very edge of her gown. “Greenly House?”

  “The Renderwell country estate, though few know it. It’s a secluded country manor I purchased as a haven for my family during the height of my fame. It isn’t a grand residence, mind you, but I think you’ll like it, and my sisters. I make no promises where my mother is concerned.”

  “You…you would introduce us to your family?” Introduce her to his mother? Hope, fear, and confusion filled her so quickly she couldn’t hope to keep them hidden. “Owen, you can’t. We’re not respectable.” As the Bales family, they were, certainly. But they were not the Bales family to Owen. They were the Walkers.

  He gave her a look of rebuke. “On the contrary. I have a great deal of respect for you, Charlotte.”

  It was not the same thing, not by miles and
miles and miles, but just then, she didn’t care. Hope and warmth edged out fear and confusion. “I respect you too.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to say. It felt like a careless exchange of compliments.

  Lovely hat, that.

  And yours.

  No, not what she wanted to say at all.

  “I respect you more than any man I’ve ever known,” she offered and silently wished she had the nerve to add the rest.

  I love the way you smile, and laugh, and fold down the pages of your books. I admire your unyielding sense of right and wrong, your bravery and tenacity, even your arrogance and stubbornness. I want to walk in the garden with you again. I want to kiss you in the sunlight and again under the starlight.

  I want the courage to tell you the truth.

  I want the courage to tell you I love you.

  But she didn’t have it, not tonight.

  “It’s late,” she said softly and, gathering what courage she had, stepped close to place a single kiss on his cheek.

  His arm curved around her waist, but she backed away, slipping out of his reach. “Good night, Owen.”

  * * *

  Though it was not his turn to keep watch, Owen relieved Gabriel of his guard duties for the remainder of the night. He couldn’t hope to sleep, and if he was going to pace about like a trapped animal, he might as well pace where it would do some good.

  He would have preferred the thrill of the hunt in the woods, but he knew better than to signal Samuel back to the house early. Tracking at night required a clearer head and sharper focus than he could manage at present.

  He checked doors and windows instead and scanned the front and back lawns from the attic windows. Then he began his patrol of the house, keeping his ears and eyes trained for anything out of the ordinary, while his mind went over his conversation with Lottie again and again.

  After all this time, after all that had been done, all that had been sacrificed to keep the Walker family safe, in the end, he’d brought a monster to Lottie’s door.