LITMIR.BIZ

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lost what he came to fetch . . .”

      “Let’s get out of here. I look like a beggar, I have to change before I can think.”

      They hailed a cab and returned to The Langham, London. As soon as they arrived, Canterel arranged to meet them at the hotel bar, then rushed to his room.

      “Ah, there you are!” said Miss Sherrington when she saw him. “Where did you run off to? The slums of Southwark?”

      “Think again. It was only a variety show; it is impossible to attend boulevard theatre without coming back a little splattered.”

      It seemed to him that the gunshot had contaminated his whole outfit. He removed all his clothes, giving the order to dispose of them.

      “Do I make myself clear?”

      “Yes, Monsieur. As usual. I will go directly and throw these in the municipal incinerator. Just as well, I can’t imagine what sort of unfortunate would wear your cast-offs on his back! He’d be sent straight to Bedlam . . .”

      “For this evening, I will stay in my cream silk ensemble, white shirt, and dove gray socks.”

      “And for your shoes? High altitudes, mountain pastures, damp undergrowth?”

      “Alice! Enough of your impertinences, please! My Guyanese python shoes will do nicely.”

      Still in his underclothes, walking around the room, he examined the ribbon for the first time. Letters from the Latin and Greek alphabets, numbers, a backslash . . . The puzzle promised to be gripping.

      Miss Sherrington reappeared, her arms full of clothes.

      “And now he’s throwing streamers!” she said, snorting.

      Canterel started to get dressed, though not before he updated the tally that kept track of how many times he had worn each garment. After three marks for shirts and ties—fifteen for suits, hats, and overcoats—he got rid of them.

      When he joined them in the hotel bar an hour later, Holmes and Grimod were already seated in heavy brown leather armchairs. Sitting two tables away, three elderly gentlemen talked loudly, deep in an impassioned conversation that was quite obviously, thanks to certain recurring words, on the subject of Talleyrand and the Congress of Erfurt.

      “So,” asked Holmes, “have you had time to take a look?”

      “Yes, but I haven’t gotten far, I’m afraid.”

      He handed Holmes the ribbon and got out a paper onto which the message had been scrupulously copied.

      “It’s very odd, it does not resemble anything that I have had the chance to study. If it is merely a matter of a simple encryption through the transposal of letters, the presence of the Greek characters will complicate any frequency analysis, but I should be able to figure it out in a few hours. If we are dealing with a code involving the substitution of words starting from a unique key, it will be much more difficult . . . And, in any case, I will need my notes, which I left in Scotland.”

      “We’re losing precious time,” said Holmes, disappointed. “Waiter! Another scotch, please. What are you drinking?”

      “Tea with milk.”

      “How would one go about doing a frequency analysis?” asked Grimod, who was scrutinizing the message doubtfully.

      “In any given language, the frequency of the letters remains the same in the event of a simple transposition. In French, for example, the letter ‘e’ is the most common, then ‘a,’ ‘s,’ ‘i,’ etc. If the encryptor made each letter correspond to another letter in the alphabet, all one has to do is replace the most frequent letter in the message with ‘e,’ and so on.”

      At the neighboring table, the tone had gone up another notch. In the midst of their heated debate, the three diners had forgotten their manners. Half up onto the table, one of them seemed ready to come to blows. “And what if Talleyrand wasn’t a traitor, eh? Try thinking about that for two seconds!”

      Canterel turned toward them, ready to give them a piece of his mind, but froze and picked up the ribbon. “If Talleyrand . . .” he repeated. “How did I not think of it sooner!”

      “If you could enlighten us . . .”

      “A scytale, Holmes! The method the Spartans used to send secret messages. The generals who needed to send correspondence to each other would keep perfectly identical sticks. When one of them wanted to send a letter, he would encircle his stick with a thin strip of paper, then write his message on it. Then he would unroll the strip, rendering the text unreadable, and send it along to the other general. To decipher it, the second general had only to roll it around his own stick. Simple, but effective!”

      “And in our case?” asked Grimod.

      “This system amounts to a kind of encryption through transposal. If it is indeed the method used here, I will eventually crack it. But there is still something that rings a little strange. Scytales produce groups of the same number of letters, but here we have decreasing numbers . . .”

      “We’ll have to go back to the theater,” said Holmes, “and try to dig up that damned stick.”

      Canterel suddenly sat up straight. “Call the car, quickly!”

      “Where are we going? Wood Green Empire?”

      “No, the morgue.”

       VIII

       Dead Stars above the Bed

      “Hello, Charlotte, how are you?”

      “Alright, and you?”

      “I’m a little . . .”

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Oh, everything’s fine, but I’m always tired. You know, with my old bones and all, it’s normal . . . And you?”

      “I’m fine, fine.”

      Marthe is in her usual place, on the landing, in front of her open door, just across from Charlotte Dufrène’s studio apartment. She looks like she has just escaped an assassination attempt; wide, bloodshot eyes, her hair stiffened into three plumes by the strength of the blast. She is a fright to see.

      “And, well, sometimes I talk real loud, because Chonchon is deaf and can’t hear. But he’s going to get into trouble. He was at the clinic, but he didn’t want to wait for his appointment. He’s out of medication. What’s going to happen to him?”

      “I have no idea. And you, what about your doctor, and your benefits?”

      “Who, me?”

      “You have to move.”

      “Oh, there’s no rush, the city does all that . . .”

      She slumps a little. Dirt stains have merged with the garish pattern of her dress, which she has been wearing for several weeks. She enunciates every syllable when she speaks, with a tic that makes her close her eyes tightly each time, as if the slightest word could trigger a catastrophe.

      “Gotta look for a piece of a man’s glasses.”

      “What?”

      “Wait, come here . . . Look, look a little.”

      She brings Charlotte into her hallway and shows her a shard of glass.

      “Do you think that’s a lens from a pair of men’s glasses?”

      “It’s possible. Yes, it does look like it. Whose glasses, though?”

      “Well, it’s just, I found them on the floor, in my apartment. I’m worried they’re Chonchon’s . . .”

      “Does

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