‘No.’ Poe’s dark eyes smouldered. ‘I have little love for the police – I think they’re damned fools, for one thing – and I’ve spent a few too many nights in the cells myself to believe they’re the guardians of anything except each other and their own pocketbooks.’
January had heard Poe’s dragging steps almost pass the parlor door and had recalled he’d been meeting with an Indiana congressman about the possibility of a postmaster’s job. But at the sight of January he’d come in, and as he’d listened to the précis of the afternoon’s events he’d seemed to come alive again.
‘But what can we do, then? Surely this wretched woman can’t be allowed to get away with it—’
‘Not if I can help it.’ January pushed across to him the papers he’d been studying since he and Dominique had returned, late and footsore, from Georgetown that afternoon. ‘Personally, I don’t care what we get her on, so long as it’s damning.’
The Reverend Perkins came into the parlor, hung up hat and coat and kissed his wife, who came hurrying downstairs with a proud account of their daughter’s progress at reading. A moment later Trigg came in with Seth Berger, worriedly discussing the events of ball practice, which had evidently included further interference from the Irish. At a glance from Poe, January collected the litter of papers and slate, and the two men crossed the hall to the smaller ‘white folks’ parlor’. A fire had already been kindled against the nip of the evening, and the lamp lit.
Poe shut the door against the noise. ‘What have you so far?’
‘Not a great deal.’ January spread the papers on the marquetry table. ‘I thought the magic squares might be a cipher key. The alphabet can be written into a square of five, if you count I and J as a single letter, and you can see there’s a distinction made between an open zero and one that’s crossed. The message starts with the number eleven and then two crossed zeros, and if you’ll notice there are no crossed zeros – no independent zeros at all, in fact – in any of the magic squares.’
‘I’d assume the crossed zeros are placeholders.’ Poe studied the thin sheet of notepaper close to the lamplight. ‘Or dividers. How would you know if ten-one-two means a thousand and twelve, or a hundred and one and then two? But if you mark off a single-digit number – one through nine – with a crossed zero before it, there’s no confusion. Two crossed zeros together would act as a space.’
January studied the paper. ‘So the message begins with eleven, followed by three crossed zeroes – marking the number out as something important. Eleven is the top left-hand number in one of the five squares. Bray must have found these squares in his wife’s desk and copied them, suspecting something but not knowing what they were. It would make sense to tell the recipient which key to use at the outset … Only, I’ve attempted to transpose letters with numbers with all five of the squares and have gotten only gibberish.’
‘No, it isn’t a simple transposition.’ Poe picked up the fine notepaper – from Mrs Bray’s desk, the same as that found inside Bray’s watch. ‘Not a regular transposition, anyway. I’m assuming the original message was written in English – although there’s no reason Mrs Bray wouldn’t code her letters into Latin first, or French or German or Tahitian for that matter. It would certainly thwart any attempt from her husband to decode it. Simple transposition is always given away by recurring letters and patterns. In English the most commonly used letter is E, followed by T, A and O – this applies to any substitution, whether you’ve got numbers in your five-by-five block or something else. A five-by-five block works just as well with letters of the Greek alphabet, or astrological symbols, or whatever you can think of. You’re still fairly safe in assuming – if your sender is an English-speaking amateur – that the most common symbol is going to turn out to be an E.’
‘You sound like a man who’s studied this.’
The poet looked a little self-conscious, like a schoolgirl who’s been given a compliment. ‘Well, one of the mathematics masters at West Point also taught cryptography, to the very few of my classmates who had the turn of mind for anything beyond the simple logistics of murdering our nation’s foes. I’ve always been fascinated with codes – my friends and I came up with dozens as boys. He said – Professor Larson, that is – that the way to defeat this business of letter frequency is either to treat whole words as single units – which is what one does in a book code – or to keep changing the transposition.’
‘I’ve seen transpositional tables,’ said January thoughtfully, ‘that alternated which letter was substituted depending on which line of the document one was reading. Sugar planters use them to communicate with their agents.’
‘Who have the keys. And the use of random numbers has the advantage that most people don’t remember long sequences of numbers. It looks like Mrs Bray – and whoever she’s sending messages to, I assume Mr Oldmixton at the Ministry – uses these five-line squares, probably alternating them.’
‘Indicating that they are neither amateurs,’ said January, ‘nor do they expect to be dealing with amateurs. Luke Bray works in the Department of the Navy.’
‘Ah,’ said Poe, and there was a moment of silence.
‘And his wife is the daughter of a banker. She must have grown up around people who used commercial ciphers all the time. There are daughters of bankers,’ he added, ‘who are content to know nothing more of the matter, beyond that dearest Papa pays for their wardrobes. But I think you and I have seen proof that Rowena Bray is not such a woman. I’m wondering if she simply got the idea of using a five-line magic square as a cipher key from Selwyn Singletary, or if it’s something Singletary invented, that’s routinely used in the bank.’
‘Either way,’ said Poe, ‘it has to be something that’s fairly simple to learn, once both parties have the key. Professor Larson used a method – he called it “tumbling blocks” – as a means of constantly altering your cipher without changing your key.’ He drew the slate toward him.
‘As I said, it’s simple if you have the key – and nearly incomprehensible if you don’t. You say one of those squares has eleven in the first position?’
January laid it before him.
‘Then we’ll mark the alphabet into the twenty-five squares of our Number Eleven grid. I’m assuming that first sequence is the date – since there is no number thirty-seven in a grid on the order of five …’
‘So that 1837 really is 1837.’
‘I believe so. The way “tumbling blocks” works is that you divide your message up into two-letter couplets, usually inserting an X or a Q between doubled letters in words like “meet” and “butter”. You find their corresponding numbers on the grid, which will give you smaller squares within the grid. You see how three – or zero-three – and seventeen correspond to E and L? Make them two corners of a square, and their opposite corners are—’
‘A and P,’ said January. ‘April?’
‘Ninth of April of last year.’
‘Bray must have found a half-written message on his wife’s desk last spring. He was suspicious enough to copy it—’
‘But couldn’t make heads or tails of it, not even when he found – and copied – the keys.’ Poe’s chalk flicked over the slate as he spoke, transcribing and transposing. ‘Since, as the lovely Madame Viellard says, Mrs Bray is not herself a mathematician, I should guess that Oldmixton – who also knew Singletary – was the one who realized that magic-squares on the order of five could be used for code-keys. They simply look like puzzles, should anyone find them, and most peoples’ minds, as I said, simply turn blank when they see … Good lord.’
He sat back, black forelock hanging in his eyes, and stared at the scribbled slate before him.
‘I think that word is President. 9 April 1837 – Emergency meeting President’s cabinet …’
There was silence as Poe finished transcribing the lines.
TWENTY-FIVE
11Ø ØØ Ap 9, 1837 Emergency meeting Presidents cabinet x Papinau Resolution rejected x Preparations for military action dis
cussed in event of British show of force x Send regiments to Detroit, Buffalo, Presque Isle x Station Iroqouis, Inflexible at Presque Isle.
‘Papineau was one of the leaders of the Canadian revolt last year, wasn’t he?’ asked January, after a few minutes’ study of the decryption. ‘I heard there was talk of the British invading Canada to crush the rebellion, but I didn’t know we’d gone so far as to station regiments at the border.’
‘Neither did I – nor anyone, I expect.’
‘Where and what is Presque Isle?’
‘It’s a bay on Lake Erie. Perry launched his fleet from there, to defeat the British on the Great Lakes during the war. The Iroquois and the Inflexible are gun brigs.’
‘War with England would be just what some people in Congress are looking for,’ mused January, ‘as an excuse to seize the Oregon country … if we won.’
‘What, America lose?’ Poe flung up his hands. ‘Perish the thought!’ Then he was silent for a time, turning the chalk in his long fingers. ‘Are they in it together, do you think? Bray and his wife?’
‘I doubt it. He’d never have freed Mede, if he knew there were things going on in the household that Mede might have seen or guessed.’
‘He was drunk,’ said Poe. ‘God knows the blamed stupid things I’ve done when drunk …’
‘He was sober the following morning when he signed Mede’s freedom papers,’ pointed out January. ‘He was suspicious enough to copy the messages he found, and the keys. And he may have remembered that Oldmixton put Mrs Bray on to him.’
I feel responsible, the Ministerial Secretary had said.
And Mede: He couldn’t wait to go back to Fayette County … but by then he’d met Mrs Bray …
‘As long as Mede was a slave in the household,’ January continued softly, ‘Mrs Bray was safe. Most Southerners barely notice their slaves – one of our neighbors used to have male slaves bring in hot water for her while she was bathing. But although he could never testify against her in court, the minute Mede became a free man he was away from Mrs Bray’s control. And someone might listen to what he said.’
‘About a foreigner, they would,’ said Poe thoughtfully. ‘From the country we’re close to war with. She couldn’t let him live.’
January considered the papers for a few minutes more, the blocks and strings of numbers that a man’s eye would skim right over …
Unless he knew it was a code.
Or unless he was a man who saw numbers differently than did other men.
He turned to the little morocco notebook, opened it to the last page of numbers. Then he studied the long columns that preceded it, noting that the numbers were short, in two distinct columns rather than a block-like text, and that they included no Ø symbols.
‘Look at this,’ he said, and put the notebook before the furiously scribbling Poe. ‘Both columns start with 61836. Look down them – on the first, the fifteenth entry is 71836, then further down 81836. And the numbers are roughly close: 13076 here, 12953 opposite it … They’re household accounts.’
‘By Jove, I think you’re right.’ Poe set down his chalk, shoved the hair from his high, pale forehead with chalky fingers. ‘That’s June of 1836, then further down is July, then August—’
‘They carry on up to 91837.’ January flipped over two pages of columned numbers. ‘The month that Selwyn Singletary disappeared. Now compare that second column with the first. Identical numbers, but with interpolations in the second column: 25015 here, between what I’m guessing by its size is a month’s expenses for either clothing or feed for horses – 15050 …’
‘A hundred and fifty dollars, fifty cents. He was just in too much of a hurry to mark the decimal point or the symbol for dollars—’
‘Or didn’t use one if he was just making notes to himself. He knew what he meant. Still in June, another hundred and seventy-five thirty extracted, and in October of ’36 three hundred …’
‘The wretched girl is cooking the books!’ Poe flung down his chalk and regarded January in mingled bemusement and rage. ‘That twelve thousand that’s the first item in June, September, and December – or a hundred and twenty dollars – that would be quarterly rent for a house that size. The next item is always somewhere between thirteen thousand and sixteen thousand—’
‘A hundred and thirty and a hundred and sixty dollars,’ interpreted January. ‘Food for a household that includes eight slaves. But she’s skimming out those extra sums – a hundred and fifty dollars, a hundred and seventy-five, three hundred, sums that she told me Bray was paying out in blackmail – and putting them somewhere …’
‘Putting them in banks,’ said Poe grimly. ‘Under another name – or four other names.’ He tapped the slate sharply. ‘That short block of text at the end of the notebook: Rothschild’s bank in Philadelphia, under the name of Rodger Allen of Water Street, Lynn; Bethmann’s of New York, as Jonas Sinter of Pine Street, Providence; Barclays of New York …’
‘All foreign banks.’ January studied the decryption. ‘She married Bray right about the time Jackson started to dismember the National Bank. As a banker’s daughter, she wouldn’t trust a state bank. Rothschild’s is French; I think Bethmann’s headquarters are in Frankfurt. And none of those aliases hails from the city the bank is in. I was interrupted in my search of her room, but I’ll go bail that’s what those packets of papers were, hidden under the fireplace bricks. Bank books and letters of identity.’
‘So between what she gets from selling the naval information she finds in her husband’s study—’
‘—to Oldmixton, I’ll be bound—’
‘—and picking her husband’s pocket every month …’
‘Our Mrs Bray,’ concluded January, ‘has been a busy young lady indeed.’
At that point, January considered sending a note to Deke Bellwether at Gurry’s madhouse, cancelling – or at least postponing – his appointment to impersonate a piano tuner on Monday. Given the labels on the bottles he’d seen in Rowena Bray’s armoire – not only opiates, but toxic salts of mercury which many physicians considered medicinal – he had no doubt what fate had befallen Selwyn Singletary, once Mrs Bray had guessed what he’d learned of her peculations.
‘It must have been she, who broke into his hotel room,’ said January, when supper was done and Poe had joined him in a corner of the main parlor, mostly so that January could have an after-dinner cup of tea without violating anyone’s sense of the proprieties about who was allowed to share food or drink with whom. It was perfectly acceptable for a white man to have tea in the dwelling-area of black folk – as a guest doing them a social politeness – without acquiring, even in his own eyes, the stigma of a man who ‘ate with Negroes’.
The parlor was quiet. Darius Trigg had gone out to play at a soirée being given at the house of Senators Buchanan and King, and the Reverend Perkins was at choir practice. Under Musette’s watchful eye, the household children played dominoes at the big table, and their laughter and talk covered the quiet voices of January and his white guest in the corner.
‘She may have said something to him the following day that made him realize it was she. Or maybe she was simply called away and he got a chance to look at her account books. They’re in an office just off the parlor; you can see them from almost anywhere in the room. Or he might have marked his assailant somehow, and then glimpsed the mark on her.’
‘He panicked,’ surmised Poe. ‘God knows I would have, if I’d begun to suspect my employer’s daughter was not only a very clever thief but also a spy. He handed his notebook over to the only person at hand he thought he could trust, intending to get it later. Although why Mrs Bray thought her father would object to her doing a little spying for King and Country—’
‘Queen,’ corrected January, and remembered to add, ‘sir. And for all we know, Jeremiah Hurlstone may be a Conservative and have no use for anything that will help Lord Melbourne’s government. One can never count on a man choosing – or even seeing – what’s good for his c
ountry, if it will hurt the faction he wants to see remain in power.’
‘You have a Machiavellian turn of mind, my friend.’ Poe slowly thumbed through the various transcriptions they had worked on until the supper gong. ‘And a hard way of looking at the world. I dare say you’re right.’
‘Spying – particularly spying professionally – is a dirty game. It isn’t like it sounds in novels. At the very least it would raise a tremendous scandal with her family, especially if Mrs Bray’s father was at loggerheads with her. He may have sent Singletary via Washington particularly to inquire into her affairs. Given the situation in Canada, if word got out, Mrs Bray would lose her position in Washington society and might well be faced with the choice of either going home to a family she detests, or more likely sent to ruralize on a small plantation in Fayette County, Kentucky, far from good music, interesting books, political power and the company of anyone but one or two plantation wives …’
‘Much like Acropolis, Indiana, in fact,’ said Poe glumly. ‘The town to which I shall, it seems, shortly become postmaster … I was offered the position today, pending my interview with Senator Thumbtwiddle on Monday. I sympathize with the woman.’ His jaw tightened, and for a moment a bleak desperation flickered in his eyes. ‘Or I would, had she not killed an innocent man to get out of such a fate.’
‘Two innocent men.’
Poe nodded. On the other side of the room, the dominoes game had been abandoned in favor of an extensive building-project with the tiles, amid cries of, ‘You’re going to crash it!’ and, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to have a house like that …’
‘You think Singletary is dead, then?’
‘Once she put him into a madhouse to establish an alternate identity for his corpse,’ said January, ‘there’s no reason she would need him to remain alive – and every reason to finish him quickly. The medicines I saw in her armoire would be more than sufficient. All she’d need – either in her own persona or in disguise as one of her banking alter egos, Allen or Sinter or whoever – would be to tell Gurry that her “uncle’s” physician back home recommends that Uncle be dosed with mercury. She disposes of his personal effects in such a way that there’s no chance anyone who knew Singletary will ever see them, Singletary is buried under whatever name she committed him under—’
Good Man Friday Page 24