Paint Gold and Blood

by Michael Gilbert

  A few minutes later they were back in their study. Before leaving it, they had fastened a doubled blanket across the narrow lancet window, taping the edges carefully to the woodwork. Stewart switched on the lamp and they dumped the books and papers onto the table.

  The green notebooks were five diaries, each one covering one calendar year. Not all the days were filled up. In some there was very little. In some one word. In some nothing at all. The last one had been written up to the beginning of the previous week. All of them were in some form of shorthand.

  The two red ones were cash books. They went back for several years before the diaries started. The entries in sums of money were straightforward. The explanatory items appeared to be in the same shorthand as the diaries.

  “Now,” said Stewart, “we have a lot of work to do.” The clock in the tower added a full stop to this sentence by sounding the hour of one. “And we’ve got less than five hours to do it in.”

  “You mean—?”

  “It is on occasions like this I am sorry that I’m not a spy. If I was, I should be armed with one of those dinky little cameras. Hold it over each page, click the shutter and Bob’s your uncle. Being ill-equipped we shall have to use a more primitive method.”

  “Copy it all out?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He took some unused notebooks out of the cupboard and said, “We’ll tackle the diaries whilst we’re fresh. Remember, it’s got to be an exact copy. With shorthand the least little squiggle can make a difference.”

  “All right,” said Peter. “Let’s get going.” He knew that this was a job he could do better than Stewart. His mind was more precise and his hand was neater.

  After a bit he said, “’Tisn’t all in shorthand, have you noticed? Some of the proper names are written out in full. Redcliffe. Isn’t that the dewy-eyed young cleric who preached a sermon last term? Got some sort of job at the cathedral.”

  “He’s the Bishop’s Chaplain. And here’s Compton-Smith. He’s the precentor. We’re moving into deep ecclesiastical waters. Push on.”

  Peter became so absorbed in the work that the slow passage of the hours between night and morning swung past unnoticed. He had finished two of the books and was half-way through the third when a sound made him look up.

  Stewart was asleep, his head on the table. He was snoring gently. Peter was delighted.

  ‘I might not,’ he said to himself, ‘have Stewart’s dash and flair, but I have more stamina.’ He had always suspected that this was so. Now he could prove it. Without disturbing Stewart he slid the book he had been working on from under his hand, drew it across the table and added it to his own pile.

  Stewart grunted, sat up blinking and focused his eyes on Peter. He said, “Sorry, I must have dropped off for a minute.”

  “For two hours actually,” said Peter.

  “What!”

  “It’s a quarter to five and I’ve finished. Hadn’t we better be getting the stuff back?”

  He indicated the five green and the two red books neatly stacked on the table. Stewart gaped at them. It was the first time Peter had seen him at such a disadvantage and it increased his affection for him.

  “You’re dead right,” said Stewart. “No time to lose.” They went back by the same route. The only thing that had moved in the study was the moonlight, which now shone coldly on the open drawers of the desk and the mantelpiece despoiled of its silver ornaments.

  Stewart said, “They have served their purpose and must go back exactly where they came from. I hope you can remember.”

  “I think so,” said Peter. When he said this he was standing by the window. “There’s just one snag. Someone seems to have moved the sack.”

  Stewart was so shocked that he almost forgot to whisper. He said, “Are you sure?”

  “I know exactly where I put it.” He was speaking slowly in an effort to control his own panic. “I can see the dent in the earth where I dumped it. Come and look if you don’t believe me.”

  “Clear up in here first.” Stewart was putting back the three small paper packets in the right-hand drawer, arranging them exactly as he had found them. Next he locked the right-hand drawer, put back the green and red books in the left-hand drawer and locked that. Then he sat, for a whole minute, quite still.

  “For God’s sake,” hissed Peter, “let’s get out of here.”

  “Pause for thought,” said Stewart.

  After a further agonising minute during which Peter saw policemen racing across the lawn, headed by an infuriated Brind, Stewart seemed to make his mind up. He gestured to Peter to stand still, unlocked the private side-door and went out. He was away for two minutes, which added two years to Peter’s life. Peter guessed that he was relocking the scullery window. When he came back and had relocked the door he gestured to the French windows and they went out.

  “We’ll leave them open,” he said.

  When they were back in the study and had removed the blanket from the window, Stewart stood looking out. Dawn was coming up and the buildings on the other side of the quadrangle were starting to show, black against the grey sky.

  “What happened?” said Peter. “Who moved the sack?”

  Stewart said, without turning round, “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Just think for a moment. Barker goes away today. It was Alvin who got him kicked out. His obvious riposte would be to pinch anything of Alvin’s he could lay hands on and take it with him.”

  “Of course,” said Peter. The relief was overwhelming. “You must be right. So he was the person I noticed in the hedge. He probably pushed off when he saw the light of your torch inside the room and came back later to try his luck again. And when he saw the sack put out ready for him,” Peter could hardly finish for the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside him, “he must have thought it was Father Christmas.”

  “It’s no joke,” said Stewart, swinging round. Like all tacticians he disliked having his careful plans upset by the brutal intervention of chance. “I’ve got to think this out. On the whole, it may be to our advantage. I don’t suppose Barker was half as careful as we were, so any signs that were left will be his signs, not ours. And he’ll clearly be the number one suspect. But if he’s been sensible enough to bury the silver somewhere and leaves it alone for six months, they probably won’t be able to prove anything against him.”

  “Suppose he is caught and says he found the silver in a sack outside the window.”

  “Do you think anyone would believe him? Would you?”

  “I suppose not,” said Peter. He found it impossible to stop yawning.

  When they got back to their dormitory, Snowball sat up in bed and said, “Where’s you two bin?”

  “We haven’t been anywhere,” said Stewart. “We’ve been in bed and asleep all night like good little boys.”

  “If you say so,” said Snowball agreeably.

  5

  Proof, if proof were needed, that the Reverend Alvin Brind was not popular was afforded by the fact that when the news broke that he had been robbed, the universal reaction was hilarity.

  Barker became a popular hero overnight. No one doubted that he was the burglar. It was also considered unlikely that anything could be proved against him. Indeed, the ever reliable Annie reported that Brind had apparently said as much to the Inspector and the Sergeant from the Chelborough Force when they inspected the scene of the crime.

  “And if he isn’t keen for this chap to be pegged,” said the Inspector, “I don’t see why we should break our necks trying to help him.” The Sergeant had agreed. They were having a cup of coffee in the kitchen at the time. This exchange also was overheard and reported.

  In fact their housemaster not only seemed not to be regretting his losses, he appeared to be in unusually good form, more human and more forthcoming than usual.

  “Oily Alvin,” said Stewart. “Even grabbed my arm in a matey way and asked how the current number of the magazine was coming along.”

  “He’s been better in
class, too,” said Peter. “Instead of dates and things he gave us a really interesting hour on Pepys’ diary. He certainly seemed to know a lot about it. I expect it was the smut that appealed to him.”

  “I can’t see what he’s got to be so bloody cheerful about, all the same.”

  Peter said, “Mightn’t it be because he had all that stuff insured and was glad of the chance to turn it into cash? He probably added in a lot of imaginary things, too, and doubled their value. The insurance company would assume that, being a clergyman, he was honest.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Stewart. “He’s crooked enough for anything.” But he was not happy. They had taken considerable risks. The fruit of success had turned sour. “I know he’s up to something. You saw those packets of papers I took out of the right-hand drawer? Well, each bundle was six copies of the mission account for the last three years. Sent by Father Elphinstone and intended, no doubt, for general distribution. So why did he hang onto them? The answer’s in those diaries, I’m sure. If only we could read it.”

  Their first idea, that the shorthand was of the normal modern type, had been quickly disappointed. One of Lisa’s friends, who had been studying shorthand in her spare time with an eye to a secretarial job, had produced a textbook of the Pitman school which had quickly demonstrated that the symbols used by modern stenographers bore little or no resemblance to the scribbles in the diaries.

  It was on the fourth day, when Stewart’s frustration had become extreme, that Peter had an idea. He said, “One of the things Brindy told us about Pepys’ diary was that it wasn’t written in a private cipher. It was in a system of shorthand invented by a man called Thomas Shelton.” Stewart, who had been slouched in his chair, sat up suddenly. “Well, it occurred to me that if Brindy was nuts on Pepys he might have taught himself the same system.”

  “By God, so he might. That’s brilliant, Peter. Where do we find out about it? Shelton?”

  “I’ll write to my uncle. He knows quite a lot about that sort of thing.”

  The Reverend Dolamore’s answer arrived in a package three days later. He wrote, ‘I am glad indeed, dear boy, that you are starting to take your historical studies more seriously. I am sure Mr. Brind will be pleased. I was, of course, aware of the facts you mention about Pepys’ diary. The idea, which held the field for two hundred years, that it was in some sort of indecipherable code of his own, was dispelled by Lord Braybrooke. He discovered that it was written in a form of shorthand which was becoming popular at that time. The idea originated with the Reverend Timothy Bright, a most interesting man, who was nearly killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres in Paris in 1572, but managed to find refuge in the house of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spy master. He was also a friend of Lord Burleigh and his system of secret writing was, no doubt, used by both of them in dealing with the plots against the Queen. It was refined and improved by the Thomas Shelton you mention and that was the version actually used by Pepys. It seems to have been roughly founded on the Greek 6 ɱ µ ε 1 ο γ ϱ δ Φ 1 δ but very few specimens of this have survived—’

  “Thank God for small mercies,” said Stewart.

  ‘It was subsequently taken up by Cicero and is said to have been based on five thousand arbitrary characters, later increased by Seneca to seven thousand, but it must have been a laborious and impracticable process, because it had been quite forgotten by the Middle Ages and no actual examples of it have ever been found.’

  “Your uncle’s enjoying himself, isn’t he?” said Stewart.

  “Well, it is his special subject,” said Peter apologetically.

  “Suppose we get back to Bright.”

  Skipping a couple of paragraphs dealing with China and Arabia, Peter read out, ‘The most notable of Bright’s books was a treatise on the art of secret writing. It was dedicated to the Queen. As you will see, there is an example of his system, which he called “Charactery” in the frontispiece of the book which I have enclosed with this letter. This is a life of Bright, which was printed at the beginning of this century and is rather a rare book, so I will ask you to take good care of it and let me have it back in due course.’

  Stewart recapped the marmalade jar and moved it out of harm’s way. Peter was studying the frontispiece. It consisted of eighteen closely printed columns of symbols, with a note explaining that it was St. Paul’s Epistle to Titus, written in Charactery by Timothy Bright in 1586.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Stewart. “All you’ve got to do is to compare what’s here with the English version of the Epistle and the key is in your hands. Isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Peter. “There are snags.” He was turning the pages of the book as he spoke. “The first is that this isn’t the system Pepys used. His one may have had some connection with Bright’s Charactery, but actually it was quite a different system, which Shelton invented. He called it Tachygraphy.”

  “So what we really want is a text book of Tachygraphy.”

  “If such a thing exists.”

  “Ask your uncle.”

  The answer arrived three days later, also in a parcel. After expressing renewed satisfaction at Peter’s interest in his historical studies, his uncle said, ‘You are, of course, quite right. Pepys’ diary was in Tachygraphy, not in Charactery. There are, I understand, two extant copies of Shelton’s handbook which he called Zeiglographia. It was printed in 1650 and may have been the very work that Pepys studied from. One copy is in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge, the other in the British Museum. I could probably get you a reader’s ticket in the holidays, though it might have to be in my name since you are still a minor. I will enquire about this next time I am in London.’

  “Next holidays, for God’s sake,” said Stewart. “If it’s going to be any use to us, we want the information right now. Next holidays will be too late.”

  Peter said, “Hold on. There’s a postscript.”

  ‘I have managed to unearth one book from my library which contains an actual example of Tachygraphy. To tell you the truth, I’d quite forgotten that I had it. It is one of a set of volumes of Pepys’ Official Correspondence on naval matters. It comprises the only fifty-six letters, out of a total of nine hundred and forty, which were written in this particular form of shorthand. I would suppose, having glanced at them, that this precaution was adopted because the subjects the letters dealt with were particularly confidential – such as the Prize Goods Scandal or peculation in the purchasing departments.’

  “Is this going to help us?”

  “We shall have to see,” said Peter. “It might do. It’s going to involve a lot of fiddling work.” But Stewart could tell, from the gleam in his eye, that it was the sort of work he relished.

  By that evening he was able to present a preliminary report.

  He said, “There’s one thing which really is helpful. In these letters proper names are written in clear, not in code. Have a look at letter Χ. ‘Two thousand pounds θ < ʘ 2 Alderman Backwill’. In the translation this becomes ‘Two thousand pounds which is sent to Alderman Backwill’.”

  “Then you’ve got four words already.”

  “Sort of. There are other places where θ can’t mean ‘which’, but might mean ‘who’ or ‘where’.”

  “Tricky.”

  “I can see that what I shall have to do is find a passage in Brindy’s diary where the sense of what he’s saying is fairly obvious. Then I’ll fill in any known words from the Pepys letters and it shouldn’t be too hard to guess the missing words, which will give us more symbols.”

  “Right,” said Stewart. “Then we must plan your work methodically. The best time will be from after tea until you go to bed. A straight run of five hours each day.”

  “Always bearing in mind that a lot of that time I’m meant to be doing prep.”

  “What are you at this week?”

  “Latin construe. The Aeneid. Book four.”

  “No problem. I’ll get young Mowbray to do it
for you. Nothing he likes better than turning Virgil’s deathless hexameters into English prose. Devote yourself wholeheartedly to cryptography, my boy. And I’m ensuring that you’re not interrupted.”

  He had written out a notice, in large capital letters, ‘DO NOT DISTURB. VISITORS UNWELCOME.’ and this he now fixed to the outside of the door. It caused some comment, since boys spent much of their time drifting into each others’ studies and gossiping. When Henry Bear queried it, Stewart explained that Peter was going in for a newspaper competition with a £500 prize. Mustn’t be disturbed.

  “Wish I could win a five-hundred-pound prize,” said Bear, who never had any money. “Even a fifty-pound one would be helpful.”

  That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday Peter worked until ten at night. On Thursday he worked until eleven. On Friday, when he proposed to continue until midnight, Stewart put his foot down. There was a red flush over Peter’s cheekbones and his eyes seemed to be sunk further into his head than was at all healthy. He guessed that some unexpected snag had cropped up, but it was not going to be solved by Peter getting brainfever. So far he had refrained from any sort of interference. Now he said, “If you’ll explain what the block is, I might be able to suggest a way round it, or over it, or through it. Dodging difficulties is one of the Ives’ specialities.”

  Peter pushed away the untidy jumble of papers covered with hieroglyphics, ran a hand through his fair hair which was standing up like a halo and said, “I wish you could. Brindy told us that although Pepys wrote most of his diary in straight Tachygraphy, when he came to something indelicate—”

  “Yes. I can see Brindy licking his lips at that point. I suppose he meant when Pepys was tumbling some wench.”