‘Not even for the sake of the headlines.’
‘I thought not. Even publicity isn’t what it was. See here,’ Superintendent, will you take a bet that Alexis didn’t commit suicide and that he wasn’t murdered by Bolsheviks?’
The Superintendent replied cautiously that he wasn’t a sporting, man.
‘Crushed again!’ moaned his lordship. ‘All the same,’ he added, with a flash of his old spirit, ‘I’lI break that alibi if I die for it.’
Chapter XXVI. The Evidence Of The Bay Mare
‘Hail, shrine of blood!’
— The Bride’s Tragedy
Wednesday, I July
THE photographs of the paper found on the corpse duly arrived next morning, together with the original and Wimsey, comparing them together in the presence of Glaisher and Umpelty, had to confess that the experts had made a good job of it. Even the original paper was far more legible than it had been before. The chemicals that remove bloodstains and the stains of dyed leather, and the chemical that restore the lost colour to washed-out ink had done their work well, and the colour-screen that so ingeniously aid the lens to record one colour and cut out the next had produced from the original, thus modified, a result in which only a few letters here and there were irretrievably lost. But to read is one thing; to decipher; another. They gazed sadly at the inextricable jumble of letters.
XNATNX
RBEXMG
PRBFX ALI MKMG BFFY, MGTSQ JMRRY. ZBZE FLOX P.M. MSIU FKX FLDYPC FKAP — RPD KL DONA FMKPC FM NOR ANXP.
SOLFA TGMZ DXL LKKZM VXI BWHNZ MBFFY
MG, TSQ A NVPD NMM VFYQ CJU ROGA K.C. RAC RRMTN S.B. IF H.R HNZ ME? SSPXLZ DFAX LRAEL TLMK XATL RPX BM AEBF HS MPIKATL TO HOKCCI HNRY. TYM VDSM SUSSX GAMKR, BG AIL AXH NZMLF HVUL KNN RAGY QWMCK, MNQS TOIL AXFA AN IHMZS RPT HO KFLTI M. IF;MTGNLU H. M. CLM KLZM AHPE ALF AKMSM, ZULPR FH. Q— CMZT SXS RSMKRS GNKS FVMP RACY OSS QESBH NAE UZCK CON MGBNRY RMAL RSH NZM, BKTQAP MSH NZM TO ILG MELMS NAGMJU KC KC.
TQKFX BQZ NMEZLI BM ZLFA AYZ MARS UP QOS KMXBJ SUE UMIL PRKBG MSK QD.
NAP DZMTB N.B. OBE XMG SREFZ DBS AM IMHY GAKY R. MULBY M.S. SZLKO GKG LKL GAW XNTED BHMB XZD NRKZH PSMSKMN A.M. MHIZP DK MIM, XNKSAK C KOK MNRL CFL INXF HDA GAIQ.
GATLM Z DLFA A QPHND MV AK MV MAG C.P.R. XNATNX PD GUN MBKL I OLKA GLDAGA KQB FTQO SKMX GPDH NW LX SULMY ILLE MKH BEALF MRSK UFHA AKTS.
At the end of a strenuous hour or two, the following facts were established:
I. The letter was written on a thin but tough paper which bore no resemblance to any paper found among the effects of Paul Alexis. The probability was thus increased that it was a letter received, and not written by him.
2. It was written by hand in a purplish ink, which, again, was not like that used by, Alexis. The additional inference was drawn that the writer either possessed no typewriter or was afraid that his typewriter might be traced.
3. It was not written in wheel-cipher, or in any cipher which involved the regular substitution of one letter of the alphabet for another.
‘At any rate,’ said Wimsey, cheerfully, ‘we have plenty of material to work on. This isn’t one of those brief, snappy “Put goods on sundial’ messages which leave you wondering whether E really is or is not the most frequently recurring letter in the English language. If you ask me, it’s either one of those devilish codes founded on a book — in which case it must be one of the books in the dead man’s possession, and we only have to go through them — or it’s a different kind of code altogether — the kind I was thinking about last night, when we saw those marked words in the dictionary.’
‘What kind’s that, my lord?’.
‘It’s a good code,’ said Wimsey, ‘and pretty baffling if you don’t know the key-word. It was used during the War. I used it myself, as a matter of fact, during a brief interval of detecting under a German alias: But it isn’t the exclusive property of the War Office. In fact, I met it not so long ago in a detective story. It’s just-’
He paused, and the policemen waited expectantly.
‘I was going to say, its just the thing an amateur English plotter might readily get hold of and cotton on to. It’s not obvious, but it’s accessible and very simple to work. It’s the kind of thing that young Alexis could easily learn to encode and decode; it doesn’t want a lot of bulky apparatus; and it uses practically the same number of letters as the original message, so that it’s highly suitable for long epistles of this kind.’
‘How’s it worked?’ asked Glaisher.
‘Very prettily. You choose a key-word of six letters or more, none of which recurs. Such as, for example, SQUANDER, which was on Alexis’ list. Then you make a diagram of five squares each way and write the key-word in the squares like this:
S
Q
U
A
N
D
E
R
Then you fill up the remaining spaces with the rest of the.alphabet in order, leaving out the ones you’ve already got.’
‘You, can’t put twenty-six letters into twenty-five spaces,’ objected Glaisher.
‘No; so you pretend you’re an ancient Roman or’ a medieval monk and treat I and J as one letter. So you get this.’
S
Q
U
A
N
D
E
R
B
C
F
G
H
IJ
K
L
M
O
P
T
V
W
X
Y
Z
Now, let’s take a message What shall me say? “All is known, fly at once”—that classic hardy perennial. We write it down all of a piece and break it into groups of two letters, reading from left to right. It won’t do to have two of the same letters coming together, so where that happens we shove-in Q or Z or something which won’t confuse the reader. So now our message runs AL QL IS KN O W NF LYAT ON CE.’
‘Suppose there was an odd letter at the end?’
‘Well, then we’d add on another Q or Z or something to square it up. Now, we take our first group, AL We see that they come at the corners of a rectangle in which the other corners are SP. So we put down SP for the first two letters of the coded message. In the same way QL becomes SM and ISbecomes FA.’
‘Ah!’ cried Glaisher, ‘but here’s KN. They, both come on the same vertical line. What happens, then?’
‘You take the letter next below each — TC. Next comes OW, which you can do for yourself by taking the corners of the square.’
‘MX?’
‘MX it is. Go on.’
‘SK,’ said Glaisher, happily taking diagonals from corner to corner, PV, NP, UT
‘No, TU. If your first diagonal went from bottom to top, you must take it the same way again. ON=TU, NO would be UT.’
‘Of course, of course. TU. Hullo!’’ ‘What’s the matter?’
‘CE come on the same horizontal line.’
‘In that case you take the next letter to the right of each.’
‘But there isn’t a letter to the right of C.’
‘Then start again at the begining of the. Line’
This confused the Superintendent for a moment, but he finally produced DR
‘That’s right. So your coded message stands now: SP SM FA TC MX SK PV NP TU DR. To make it look prettier and not give the method away, you can break it up into any lengths you like. For instance. SPSM FAT CMXS KPV NPTUDR. Or you can embellish it with punctuation at hapazard. S.P. SMFA. TCMXS, KPVN, PT! UDR It doesn’t matter. The man who gets it will ignore all that. He will simply break it up into pairs of letters again and read it with the help of the code diagram. Taking the diagonals as before, and the next letter above, where they come on the same vertical line, and the next to the left where they come on the same horizontal.’
The two policemen pored over the diagram
. Then Umpelty said:
‘I see, my lord. — It’s very ingenious. You can’t guess it by way of the most frequent letter, because you get a different letter for it each time, according as it’s grouped to the next letter. And you can’t guess individual words, because you don’t know where the words begin and end. Is it at all possible to decode it without the key-’word?’
‘Oh dear, yes,’ said Wimsey. ‘Any code ever coded can be decoded with pains and patience — except possibly some of the book codes. I know a man who spent years doing nothing else. The code diagram got so bitten into him that when he caught: measles he came out in checks instead of spots.’
‘Then he could decode this,’ said Glaisher, eagerly.
‘On his head. We’ll send him a copy if you like. I don’t know where he is, but I know those that do. Shall I bung it off? It would save us a lot of time.’
‘I wish you would, my lord.’
Wimsey took a copy of the letter, pushed it into an envelope and enclosed a brief note.
‘DEAR CLUMPS, — Here’s a cipher message. Probably Playfair, but old Bungo will know. Can you push it off to him and say I’d ‘ be grateful for a construe? Said to hail from Central Europe, but ten to one it’s in English. How goes?
‘Yours,
‘WIMBLES.’
‘Seen’ anything of Trotters lately?’
He addressed the envelope to an official at the Foreign Office, and picked up another copy of the cipher.
‘I’ll take this if I may. We’ll try it out with some of Alexis’ selected words. It’ll be a nice job for Miss Vane, and a healthy change from crosswords. Now, what’s the next item?’
‘Nothing very much yet, my lord. We haven’t found anybody who saw Perkins pass through Darley at any time, but we’ve found the chemist who served him in Wilvercombe. He says Perkins was there at eleven o’clock, which gives him ample time to be at Darley by 1.15. And Perkins has had a bad relapse and can’t be interrogated. And we’ve seen Newcombe, the farmer, who corroborates finding the mare wandering, on the shore on Friday morning. He says, too, that she was in the field O.K. when his man was down there on the Wednesday, and that he is quite sure she couldn’t have got through the gap in the hedge by herself. But then, naturally, nobody ever believes his own neglect is to blame for anything.’
‘Naturally not. I think I’ll run over and see Farmer Newcombe. In the meantime, Miss Vane is going to do her damnedest; with the cipher — trying out all the marked words on it. Aren’t you?’
‘If you like.’
‘Noble woman! It would be fun if we got ahead of the official interpreter. I suppose the Weldons show no signs of moving.
‘Not the slightest. But I haven’t seen much of them since the funeral. Henry seems a bit stand-offish — can’t get over the snake episode, I suppose. And his mother—’
‘Well?’
‘Oh, nothing. But she seems to be trying to get fresh information out of Antoine.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. Antoine is being very sympathetic.’ ‘Good luck to him. Well, cheerio!’
Wimsey drove over to Darley, interviewed the farmer and asked for the loan of the-bay mare and
moment at which he himself should come into view, and thence time his progress. The farmer, surmising with a wink that the loosing of the mare and the, tragedy at the Flat-Iron had some connection with one another, readily agreed, and, himself mounting a sturdy white nag, took his departure along the shore, while Wimsey, glancing at his watch, set out in pursuit of the bay mare.
She came up to be caught with remarkable readiness, no doubt connecting Wimsey; in her simple equine mind with oats. The gap in the hedge had been opened again, by permission, and Wimsey, having bridled her, rode her through it and stirred her up to a canter.
The mare, though willing enough, had, as he expected, no exceptional turn of speed, and since their progress had to be made actually through the water, it was a trifle impeded and remarkably noisy. As he rode, Wimsey kept his eye on the cliffs above. Nobody, and nothing was in sight, with the exception of a few grazing animals. The road was hidden. He made good time to the cottages, and then began to look about for Ormond’s break in the cliff. He recognised it when he came to it by the fallen rocks and the fragments of broken fence above, and looked at his watch. He was a little ahead of time. Glancing along the shore, he saw the Flat-Iron well in view, with Farmer Newcombe seated upon it, a little dark lump at a mile’s distance. He left the break in the cliff to be explored on the return journey, and urged the mare to her best pace. She responded vigorously, and they made the final mile in fine style, the water spraying about them. Wimsey could see the farmer clearly now; he had the white horse tethered to the famous ring-bolt and was standing on the rock, watch conscientiously in hand, to time them.
It was not till they were within a few score paces of the rock that the bay mare seemed to realise what was happening. Then she started as if she had been shot, flung up her head and slewed round so violently that Wimsey, jerked nearly on to her neck by the plunge, was within an ace of being spun off altogether. He dug his knees into her bare sides and’ hauled hard upon the bridle, but, like many farm nags, she had a mouth of iron, and the snaffle made little impression upon her. She was off, tearing back in her tracks as if the devil was after her. Wimsey, cynically telling himself that he had under-estimated her power of speed, clung grimly to her withers and concentrated on shortening his left-hand rein so as to wrench her head, round to the sea. Presently, finding it hard to go, forward against this determined drag, she slacked pace, skirmishing sideways.
‘Bless and save you, my girl,’ said Wimsey, mildly, ‘what s the matter with you?’
The mare panted and shuddered.
But this’ll never do,’ said Wimsey. He stroked her sweaty shoulder reassuringly. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you, you know.’
She stood quietly enough, but shook as she stood.
‘There, there,’ said Wimsey.
He turned her head once more in the direction of the Flat-Iron and was aware of the hurried approach of Mr Newcombe, on the white horse.
‘Lord a’mighty,’ exclaimed Mr Newcombe, ‘what’s come to the mare? I thought she’d have you off surely. Done a bit of riding, ain’t you.
‘Something must have frightened her,’ said Wimsey., ‘Has she ever been there before?’
‘Not as I know on,’ said the farmer.
‘You weren’t waving your arms or anything, were you?? ‘Not I. I was looking at my watch — and there! Dang me if I haven’t clean forgot what time I made it. I was fair mazed with her taking fright so all of a sudden.’ ‘Is she given to shying?’
‘Never known her take and do such a thing before.’ ‘Queer,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’ll try her again. Keep behind
us, and we’ll know it wasn’t you that startled her.’
He urged the mare back towards the rock at a gentle trot. She moved forward uneasily, chucking her head about.
Then, as before, she stopped dead and stood trembling.
They tried her half-a-dozen times, cajoling and encouraging her, but to no purpose. She would not go near the Flat-Iron — not even when Wimsey dismounted and led her step by step. She flatly refused to budge, standing with her shaking legs rooted to the sand, and rolling white and terrified eyes. Out of sheer mercy for her they had to give up the attempt.
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