by Dan Willis
“I’ll be,” Nicholson said. “That was hidden really well. I’ll have to get someone up here to drill it out before Harcourt shows up again.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said, pointing to the large dial in the center of the door.
“You know the combination?” Nicholson asked.
Alex nodded.
“And unless I miss my guess, so do you.”
Nicholson looked startled, then nodded.
“Nineteen, seven, and eleven,” he said. “The numbers Alice wrote in her own blood.”
“Told you it sounded like the combination to a safe,” Alex said with a self-satisfied grin. He gave the dial on the safe a spin, then dialed it around to nineteen, then back to seven, and finally to eleven. Taking hold of the locking handle, Alex twisted it and the safe door popped open.
“So what does a woman like Alice Cartwright keep in a safe?” Nicholson mused as Alex peered inside.
“Looks like about a thousand dollars in cash,” Alex said, pulling out a medium sized stack of wrapped bills and handing them to Nicholson. “Here’s a couple of files, a stack of letters, and a box of…” Alex opened the little box. “Looks like receipts.”
Checking to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, Alex carried the files, letters, and the box to the desk.
“You take these,” Alex said, passing the folders to Nicholson. “I’ll take a look at the letters.”
Nicholson sat in the single chair in front of the desk while Alex sat behind it. The letters had been folded in thirds, as they would be if they’d arrived in envelopes, and a strand of orange ribbon was tied around them, keeping them together. Removing the ribbon, Alex picked up the first letter and began to read.
Or rather he would have, if the letters had been written in English.
At first he thought the language was German, but while the letters were the standard alphabet, they weren’t in any order that made sense. He quickly moved to the next and found it similarly unintelligible.
“I hope you’re having better luck than I am,” Nicholson said. “This,” he held up one of the folders, “is Alice Cartwright’s will. This one,” he picked up another, “is the lease agreement for this office. One for her apartment, one with her bank records, safe deposit box information.” He dropped the folders back on the desk. “Nothing that gives any clue to why she might have been murdered. What have you got?”
Alex just shook his head and handed over the letter he’d been looking at.
“I have no idea,” he said.
“What’s this?” Nicholson said after giving the letter the once over.
“It’s a code of some kind,” Alex said, picking up another letter.
“Who writes to someone in code?”
“Someone who doesn’t want their letters intercepted,” Alex said.
Nicholson sat up straight at that.
“Do you think she was a spy?” he asked, holding up the letter Alex had given him. “And these are her orders from whatever government she worked for?”
“I doubt it,” Alex said. “I don’t know much about spies, but I doubt they’re in the habit of keeping coded messages that could prove their guilt. Secondly, these letters all have names on the bottom.”
Alex pointed to the bottom of the note where four letters stood alone on the last line.
“That’s someone’s name?” Nicholson asked.
“Probably,” Alex said, picking up several more of the notes. “There are four random letters on the bottom of each of these.”
Nicholson looked at his letter, then at the ones Alex was holding up.
“They’re all different though.”
“I’m guessing the code changes with each letter,” Alex said. “What it does tell us, though, is that someone with a four-letter name was writing to Alice.” He dropped the letters and picked up the orange ribbon, holding it up. “And she not only kept these letters, but wrapped them up like a keepsake.”
“She had a beau,” Nicholson said. “One that didn’t want anyone to find out that he was writing to her.”
“Could be married,” Alex guessed. “Or maybe the code is some kind of math puzzle, something Miss Cartwright would enjoy.”
“Beats me,” Nicholson said, tossing his letter on the pile. “So far we haven’t been able to find any men in Miss Cartwright’s life.”
He was about to continue when there was a knock at the office door.
“Alice?” a man’s voice called out. “Is everything okay?”
Alex and Detective Nicholson exchanged glances, then they both rose and headed for the front room. A slender, good-looking man with short brown hair and an expensive suit stood in the open door with a look of concern on his face.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where is Miss Cartwright?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Nicholson said, flashing his badge. “Just who might you be?”
The well-dressed man hesitated a moment, then he got hold of himself.
“My name is Matthew Crabtree,” he said.
“Matt,” Alex whispered. “Four letters.”
“What are you doing here, Mr. Crabtree?” Nicholson asked.
“My office is down the hall,” Crabtree said. “I saw Alice…I mean Miss Cartwright’s door open and thought I’d better look in on her. She never leaves her door open. Now,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height. “I must insist you tell me where Miss Cartwright is.”
Alex exchanged a meaningful glance with Nicholson. If Crabtree murdered Alice Cartwright, he was a damn good actor. His concern for her welfare seemed genuine.
“I’m sorry to inform you, but Alice Cartwright was murdered in her home four days ago,” Nicholson said.
Crabtree seemed to crumple at the news, and he sagged against the doorframe.
“That’s terrible,” he said, recovering himself quickly. “What happened?”
“Right now, it looks like a crime of passion,” Alex said. “Did Miss Cartwright have a romantic interest? Maybe someone she was close with?”
Crabtree shook his head.
“As far as I could tell, Alice…Miss Cartwright didn’t have any interests outside of her work. She loved math. Well, math and pictures, she went to the theater at least once a week.”
“Did you ever ask Miss Cartwright out to a picture?” Detective Nicholson asked.
Crabtree nodded.
“Once,” he said. “And once to hear a lecture on the life of Lewis Carroll. She turned me down both times.”
“Lewis Carroll the author?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” Crabtree said. “He was also a mathematician. I thought Miss Cartwright might find it interesting.”
“Do you work with math, Mr. Crabtree?” Alex said.
The man laughed and nodded.
“I do, but not like Miss Cartwright,” he explained. “I only do boring math. I’m an accountant.”
“Did you ever see anyone come in or out of this office?” Nicholson asked. “Other than Miss Cartwright, I mean.”
Crabtree thought about that for a minute then shook his head.
“Never.”
Nicholson thanked the man and sent him on his way.
“What do you think?” the Detective asked once Crabtree had boarded the elevator outside.
“I think Alice Cartwright had a lover,” Alex said. “Not Crabtree. He seemed genuinely shocked to hear of her death, but someone. Someone well versed in mathematics and codes.”
“So how do we find this person?”
“Find a codebreaker,” Alex said with a shrug. “The sooner you crack that code, the sooner you’ll know the name of the four-lettered man.”
Nicholson chuckled darkly at that.
“There are a lot of men with four-lettered names, Alex,” Nicholson said. “Like Alex, for example.”
“I have an alibi,” Alex said with a grin.
“And what’s that?”
“I hate math.”
18
Lore
>
Just like the night before, Alex slept in his vault. This time he woke up in his spare bed, but he felt even less rested than when he’d been unconscious on the floor in a drug-laden stupor. After finishing up with Detective Nicholson, he’d returned to his office and spent the rest of the evening writing runes. He’d managed to replace many of his important ones, but there were still a few holes in his book. At least he had a dozen finding runes for Mike.
By the time Alex had finished, it was well after midnight and he was exhausted. He’d barely made it to his vault bed, to say nothing of returning to the brownstone or his apartment.
Since there was no bedside clock in the vault bedroom, Alex fumbled for his pocketwatch, forcing his eyes to focus on it once he managed to push in the crown and flip the cover open. Predictably, he’d overslept, but it wasn’t yet nine o’clock, so he could still make it into the office at a decent hour.
Groaning, he rolled out of bed and carried his clothes through to his brownstone bedroom. After a quick shower and a shave, Alex put on a clean shirt, his dark suit, and headed downstairs.
“Another late night,” Iggy said as he sat at the table reading the morning paper. It was a statement rather than a question.
“Business is good,” Alex said, heading for the coffee pot. “I’m constantly out of runes and Mike is taking lost pet cases like he’s getting paid by the rune.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Iggy said, setting the paper aside. “I can take an hour or two during the day to help out.”
“I appreciate that,” Alex said, sitting down opposite his mentor and blowing on his coffee. “But at some point, I’ve got to be able to supply myself. Besides, aren’t you getting a life transference rune ready for tonight?”
“Tosh,” Iggy said with a dismissive gesture. “I’ve had that ready for a week now, and I’ve already made arrangements with Silas Green.”
Silas was the owner of the slaughterhouse where Alex and Iggy purchased the pigs they used for life transference.
Alex shrugged and sipped his coffee.
“Was there something else you wanted to discuss?” Iggy went on. “You’re late for work and you haven’t asked for a plate of eggs, so I deduce you have a question.”
“Are there eggs?” Alex asked, looking around.
Iggy chuckled and rose, moving to the stove to turn on the gas.
“A few fried eggs will take about two minutes once the iron heats up,” he said, taking three eggs from the icebox. “So let’s hear your question.”
Alex hesitated a minute, not sure how to ask what he wanted.
“When you first met me, selling runes on the street, how did you know I had any potential?”
Iggy chuckled as he applied lard to the large iron griddle he’d placed on the burner.
“It was the efficiency of your barrier runes,” he said. “Your line work was excellent, but that could have just been artistic flair. No, what impressed me was how your line work flowed through the construct. I could tell immediately that you had a strong connection to your magic.”
Alex thought back to his early days living in the brownstone and learning the craft. He’d spent many hours in the basement office writing and rewriting runes. Simple ones at first, then gradually more and more complex. Each time it would be the same — he’d struggle just to get the form down, then once he knew it, he could begin to feel the magic flow through him and onto the paper. Each time he’d fail and fail until he got it. After that, he almost never botched a rune that he knew. Once he understood a construct, it was like the magic inside him remembered it and would push his pen along as he drew.
“So my talent is what made it possible for me to learn what I’ve learned?” he said. “Does that mean that if I’m not talented enough, I’ll never be able to write life restoration runes?”
He expected Iggy to reply right away, but the old man just stood at the stove flipping eggs.
“No,” he said at last. “I never really thought about it, but I suspect that as long as you keep pushing yourself to write more and more complex runes, your ability will continue to expand.”
“So the reason most runewrights can’t manage advanced constructs is that they just don’t know them?” Alex postulated.
“Quite possibly. If a runewright had access to a decent sized lore book, I expect he could master the whole thing with enough time.”
“And assuming he had the talent to begin with,” Alex said.
“Well that’s a given,” Iggy said, scooping the cooked eggs onto a plate. “If a person doesn’t have the magic, then runes are just fancy pictures.”
Alex thought about that as he ate his fried eggs. The fact that he had been incredibly lucky to meet Iggy and win the man’s favor was not lost on him. The lore book Alex inherited from his father was anemically thin with only a dozen useful runes, none of which would sell for more than a quarter on the street. Without access to more complex runes to lead him forward, Alex would never have developed his talent beyond that.
“Why all these questions about magic?” Iggy asked.
Alex shrugged.
“No reason,” he said. “That occultist fellow, Theodore Bell, he wanted to know.”
“I have no stomach for spiritualists,” Iggy said, turning back to his paper. “In my youth I sought them out, but it always turned out the same. Con men, the lot of them.”
Alex finished his eggs and excused himself.
“Don’t forget we’re going to the spa tonight at nine,” Iggy called after.
“I’ll be back before then,” Alex promised, then headed upstairs. He entered his vault, but instead of proceeding through to his office, he stopped in his workshop. Taking two large jars of powdered components off one of his shelves, Alex removed the panel behind it, revealing his secret safe.
With deft twists of the dial, Alex unlocked the safe and pulled out a leather-backed book about an inch thick. This was his lore book, the repository of all his runic knowledge.
Or rather all he knew up to about three years ago.
It had been a while since he had added to it and he needed to bring it up to date. That wasn’t why he’d retrieved it this time, though. Leaving the safe open, he moved to his writing desk and opened the book. The old runes from his father’s book were first, and he smiled at the memory of them. When he’d first seen them as a child, they’d seemed impossibly complex and arcane. Now he could write any one of them in less than three minutes, most in less than one.
Turning the pages reverently, he found the spot where his father’s runes ended and his began. These were the runes Iggy had taught him in the beginning. Even they seemed simple and basic to Alex now.
Alex took out three sheets of plain paper from the top drawer of his rollaway cabinet, then quickly wrote out a minor binding rune, a quick-dry rune, and a minor purity rune. These were all fairly simple, but still above the skill level of most runewrights.
Once Alex was done, he jotted down the notes he’d taken about each rune, including the order of symbols when writing it and the effect it was supposed to have. When he finished, he took out another sheet and wrote out a list of needed equipment and ingredients for making the runes.
Satisfied he was ready, Alex returned his lore book to the safe and replaced the concealing panel and the ingredient jars.
It was almost ten when he finally emerged from his vault into the back hallway of his office. Figuring he’d better check in, he made his way down to the waiting room door and pulled it open. He was surprised to find Mike Fitzgerald sitting at the desk instead of Sherry, but his tired mind caught up quickly, reminding him that he’d sent Sherry to the library in search of stories about the Paris murders. She must have tapped Mike to fill in as receptionist.
“Morning, Mr. Lockerby,” Mike said, rising as Alex came in. Mike had spent the better part of the last fifteen years selling runes for cash on Runewright Row and he was grateful for the job Alex had given him. He made significantly more than he had b
efore, and he did most of it without having to stand out in the weather. All of that conspired to make Mike very keen to be a model employee.
Alex didn’t want to laugh, but he did.
“First of all, Mike, sit. I’m not the Duke of Ellington.”
Mike got a sheepish look for a second, but then he sat down.
“Second, call me Alex. Sherry and I are a family, now you’re part of that family too.”
“Sherry calls you ‘boss,’” Mike pointed out.
“You can call me boss if you want,” Alex said. “You just don’t have to, and neither does Sherry.”
“Yes, Mr…boss.”
“Third,” Alex continued. He pulled a stack of rune papers out of his pocket and put them on the desk. “Here are a dozen finding runes, but try not to use them all today.”
“We’re not quite that busy,” Mike said, picking up the runes and tucking them into his inside jacket pocket. “But I do have a client anxiously waiting. I’ll call her to come over now that I have these.”
Alex reached into his inside pocket and took out the paper that contained his shopping list, dropping it on the desk.
“That’s a list of runewright supplies I need,” Alex said. “Call over to Vanderwaller and Sons and have them delivered today.”
“Yes sir, boss,” Mike said, sliding the list over by the phone. “Anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Alex said, taking out the three pages he’d copied from his lore book. “After Sherry gets back and once you’ve seen to your client, I have a job for you.”
He handed over the pages. Mike’s eyebrows went up when he unfolded the papers.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said.
“I know,” Alex said. “But I’m confident you can master them. I want you to take the supplies on that list and set up in the spare office. When you’re not working on a case, I want you to practice writing those. When you think you’ve got one right, come show me.”
Mike paged through the three runes, examining them and the instructions Alex had written.