Necessary Evil (26 page)

Her eyes welled, but not quite to
overflowing. She stared at Lindsay and Jacob as though grimly determined to
face life without giving way to her feelings.

I had long since ceased doing the dishes –
how could you continue with something so mundane after an admission like that?
I’d never heard Darlene say these things before, at least not to me, and I
didn’t know what to do with the information. Should I try to commiserate? Offer
her a hug? Touching her would likely induce the very tears she was fighting
against, and how could I empathize when I’d never had and then lost a daughter?

As I battled myself, she continued.

“I was robbed,” she said.

“What?” I gasped. Instantly, my mind
turned to the treasure hunters – had they gone from trespassing to
housebreaking?

“I was robbed,” she repeated. “And I was a
fool. I was a fool because I put my career above her at times. I loved her, and
I loved my career and I thought… Well, I thought, ‘She’s young and healthy,
she’ll outlast me, but how long will I have these opportunities?’ I wasn’t to
know that she would…”

She caught herself and took a deep,
shuddering breath. I couldn’t move. The world seemed to have slowed to a halt,
with the giggling teens in an outer orbit around this silent planet that
Darlene and I inhabited. The coffee machine made hissing noises, signaling that
it was nearly finished, and I found myself wondering when Greg would be coming
back in. I wished he wouldn’t. Not until Darlene was composed again.

“I didn’t know that it would end so soon,”
she whispered. “I was robbed of a chance to say goodbye, to finish what I had
started when she was conceived all those years ago. Intellectually I know
she’s…. I know she won’t be coming back. But my heart doesn’t know it. And as
long as we
don’t
know what happened to her, how can I leave the house?
What if she comes home and I’m not there?”

Darlene’s whisper had intensified until it
was almost loud enough for the teens to hear. She stopped abruptly as the
coffeemaker beeped, indicating that it was done. She glanced at me with
embarrassment and put the plate she was drying carefully on the counter.

“I hope she brewed it strong,” Darlene
said.

I was struck by the idea that, for a few
minutes, she had switched roles with Aunt Susanna. I wondered how often her
usual attitude was a mask for her friend’s sake.

For the first time, I was grateful that
we’d been able to bury Uncle Michael. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than
his simple disappearance.

To move past the awkward moment, I said -
a little too enthusiastically - that Aunt Susanna always brewed it too strong.
I pulled out some mugs, and when I turned from the cabinet, Darlene was standing
in front of me.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and held up a hand
when I started to protest. “No, you didn’t need this tonight. But I am going to
give you a piece of advice, as an old, old family friend.”

“Not that old,” I protested, and was
rewarded with a worn smile.

“Older than you might think,” she said.
“But do yourself a favor, Maddie. No matter how busy you are, never forget to
stop and enjoy the people you have now. The people in your life are a gift and,
if you aren’t careful, they’ll slip away before you have the time to enjoy
them.”

I stared into those intense blue eyes,
wondering what she saw that would make her feel that she had to warn me.

It was then that Gregory came back in, waving
two freshly made copies and carrying a stack of worn books under one arm.

“Come on, class,” he said, as he dropped
the books on the table. “We have a mystery to solve.”

Aunt Susanna and Darlene poured the coffee
as we gathered around the table. With our steaming mugs in hand, we examined
the pages in silence for a few minutes while Gregory arranged his materials.

When he was finished, he leaned on his
fists on the table and looked around at each of us.

“All right,” he said. “Since you asked,
you’ve been drafted. What we have here,” he indicated the copy of the Alexander
Chase letter, which had been blown up to twice its size, “is a puzzle with two
questions: One, did Alexander Chase steal from his employer? And if he did, is
it hidden on this property?

“According to the facts that we can
verify, Alexander Chase went to work for McInnis in Charleston in 1860. In
1861, weeks before Sumter, Chase abruptly went home to New Hampshire. Three
weeks after he left, McInnis filed a report, accusing Chase of stealing from
him. Then war broke out, and Alexander joined the New Hampshire regiment, later
dying after Successionville. After the close of the war, the McInnis family
filed suit against the Chases, who denied all knowledge of the affair.

“The existence of the Chase treasure is
supported by three pieces of evidence: the report of the robbery in Charleston,
the testimony of the Chase farm hands during the lawsuit, and the contested
interpretations of this letter. We can’t, from our position here, challenge the
Charleston report. The farmhands testified five years after the fact and were
so vague as to be next to useless – they claim only that they saw Alexander go
out one night with a medium sized trunk and that he returned without it. When
pressed for details, they unable to give anything more.

“We can’t bring the witnesses back to
cross examine them anymore than we can talk to the McInnis family about the
robbery. What we do have to work with is this letter, a strangely constructed
piece that many believe is Alexander’s veiled confession to his mother and
directions to the burial spot. But if he did include directions, they are very
well hidden, leading some to believe that there is nothing to find.”

He didn’t look at me, but Aunt Susanna and
Lindsay did, and I flushed.

Greg said, “Despite the confusion, I
believe there is something buried on this property and that this letter is key
to its location. With your help, I intend to crack the code.”

In a few words, he laid out his reasons for
thinking that the last letter was deliberately written, including what he’d
already told me about the folds and the careful lettering. Then he pulled out
another letter and laid it beside the first.

“This is a letter written by Alexander
shortly after he joined the regiment in Concord,” he said. “According to
Michael Chase’s notes, it was discovered tucked in Mary Chase’s diary and it
was used to verify the authenticity of the last letter. I’ve sent samples to
experts who agree that the same man wrote both letters. Now, I want you to
examine this letter closely.”

We bent over it. He had copied it in full
color, so we could see the water stains on the blue-tinged paper. Like the
other letter, it was one page long - but this page was crammed with text, so full
that Alexander had to sign his name along the side rather than on the bottom.

It was far more poetic – Alexander was
ruminating on the efficacy of the war they were about to fight, and bemoaning
the youth of the men he was fighting alongside of. In fact, the tenor of the
letter was so different than the last that, despite Gregory’s reassurances, I
found myself wondering if they were written by different people.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“This one looks different than the other,”
Jacob pointed out.

Randall nodded. “Yes, it does. Yet all
three of the handwriting experts swore to me that these letters had the same
authors. So let’s examine why they look different.”

He pulled the earlier letter up and held
it out, pointing to various places to demonstrate his theories.

“Look at the construction here,” he said.
“Look at the handwriting. Sloppier than the clue letter, indicating that he was
writing fast in cramped quarters. Understandable enough, but look at the prose.
He writes like a poet, with full sentences and lofty ideas, and with the kind
of rhetoric that you find among these early self-taught philosophers. You can
tell that he’s probably read some of Thoreau and Emerson or at least was aware
of their world view, though you couldn’t escape it if you lived in New England
during that time.”

He paused reflectively. “So here he is,
writing thoughtful passages anticipating reconstruction in this letter,
apparently composing it in normal haste. Then two weeks before he dies, he
spends several days carefully composing his last letter, which is beautifully
penned, oddly constructed, and simplistic – a complete change in tone and
delivery.”

“Indicating that he was in a different
state of mind,” Darlene said.

“Yeah, ‘cause in the first letter, he’s almost
against the war and in this one, he’s talking like he wants to go to battle,”
Lindsay mumbled, scowling.

“And in this second one, he’s almost
saying that death would be welcome,” Aunt Susanna said, tapping the second
letter with a concentrated frown. “In the first he says he has a reason to
live. Something must have happened between these two letters to make him change
his mind. But what was it?”

“Had they, like, seen any action yet?”
Jacob asked.

Gregory shook his head. “No. Except for
some minor skirmishes, this regiment didn’t see any actions until the Battle of
Successionville, which is where Alexander received his mortal injury. It was a
torturous death, but that occurred after this letter had been mailed. I agree
with Susanna. Something must have happened to change his mind about death, but
I can find no indication of what it might have been. His stepfather died
shortly after he departed for the army, but they weren’t close, and it’s
unlikely that he would take so long to mourn a man that he barely got along
with. Mary Chase died a year after Alexander did, and there’s no indication
that there was anyone else in his life besides Avery.” He sighed. “But his
change of mind doesn’t entirely explain this letter. There has simply
got
to
be something else in it. There
is
a message within this letter.”

He spoke with great impatience, but it was
directed at himself. He’d been working on this for days - weeks even - and was
no closer than when he began. I felt sympathetic, but I knew no good would come
out of stewing over lost time. So I asked a dumb question.

“Everyone thinks that the code was in the
postscript of the letter, right? The part where he says that she should look in
his hymnal at number twenty nine?”

“Right,” Gregory answered.

Jacob interjected, saying, “But it says
‘psalmery’ here, not ‘hymnal’.”

“Most hymns at the time are based on the
Psalms,” he explained. “We think that it was shorthand for hymnal.”

“So then it doesn’t indicate Psalm 29?”
Lindsay asked.

There was a moment of dumbfounded silence.
Then Darlene said, “Surely someone checked that?”

We all looked at Gregory.

He muttered, “If they did, I’ve no
evidence of it.”

We were silent for a moment.

Aunt Susanna said, “I’ll get my Bible,” as
she left the room.

Jacob asked, “What I don’t get is, why
did he leave
it in code? Why not just tell his mom, like,
it’s under the apple tree or something?”

“We think that he was trying to keep it
from his stepbrother,” I said. “Avery was a miser and Alexander would have
wanted his mother to be provided for.”

“So he encoded it to keep his brother from
finding it.” Jacob nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Except that it’s pretty obvious,” Lindsay
said, scrolling through her phone. “I mean, anyone in those days would have
known where to look. It’s tricky for us, because we might have the wrong
hymnal, but Avery would have known exactly where to look. Oh, here’s the
psalm!”

“Get the King James Version,” Gregory
ordered, just as Aunt Susanna returned, lugging her big Catholic Study Bible.

Psalm 29:

Give unto the 
Lord
, O
ye
mighty, give unto the 
Lord
 glory
and strength.

Give unto the 
Lord
 the glory due unto his name;
worship the 
Lord
 in the
beauty of holiness.

The voice of the 
Lord
 is upon the waters: the God
of glory thundereth: the
Lord
 is
upon many waters.

The voice of the 
Lord
 is powerful; the voice of
the 
Lord
 is full of
majesty.

The voice of the 
Lord
 breaketh the cedars; yea,
the 
Lord
 breaketh the
cedars of Lebanon.

He maketh them also to skip
like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

The voice of the 
Lord
 divideth the flames of fire.

The voice of the 
Lord
 shaketh the wilderness;
the 
Lord
 shaketh the
wilderness of Kadesh.

The voice of the 
Lord
 maketh the hinds to calve, and
discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.

The 
Lord
 sitteth upon the flood; yea,
the 
Lord
 sitteth King
forever.

The 
Lord
 will give strength unto his
people; the 
Lord
 will
bless his people with peace.

“That’s not exactly specific,” Darlene
sighed. “So the treasure might be buried in the Exeter, or in the woods, or in
the fireplace, or fed it to a unicorn.”

“You said that part of the fields flood
regularly,” Jacob said, turning to me.

“Yes, but that part has been searched a
dozen times with a metal detector,” I answered. “If the treasure was there, we
would have found it by now.”

“Maybe it’s in the woods,” Lindsay said.

Darlene rolled her eyes. “He might as well
have said, ‘I buried it somewhere in Chester.’ If he wanted to tell his mother
were it was, he would have been more specific. And before you say it, no, we
don’t have any cedar trees in the area.”

“Bummer,” Lindsay mumbled.

“I have to go along with Lindsay,” I said
to Greg, who was studying the Psalm with a scowl. “If he was worried about
Avery finding the treasure first, surely he would have made the clue a little
harder to find. Avery’s dad was a deacon. Avery would have been as familiar
with the hymns and the Bible as Alexander himself.”

“Yeah,” Jacob said. “But, like, did they
even have codes then?”

That brought Gregory out of his reverie.
He fixed the poor boy with a withering look that had even the usual oblivious
Jacob looking embarrassed.

“Did they have
codes
?” he repeated.
“Jacob, don’t you remember that class we had on George Washington’s spy
network? If they had codes and counter signs back then, don’t you think they
would have had them in the Civil War?”

Jacob shrugged. “Like, I guess,” he said.

Randall was about to launch into a lecture
when he saw my expression. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and resumed in a milder
tone.

“There were many codes used during the
Civil War, mostly word substitution, symbolism, or encrypting using a common
book. And the use of code wasn’t restricted to just the military – there are
cases of gossipy soldiers encrypting their personal diaries to protect their
careers.

“I think there is an additional code in
this letter: If the intention was to keep the treasure from Avery, the hymnal
clue would be too easy for him to break. But I can’t see where the other code
is hidden. If it were like a Stager code, there would be an odd pattern of
words. If it were Vigenère or Caesar code, there would be a string of letters
somewhere and a clue word to decode it. But I don’t see either.”

“I don’t either,” Jacob said. “It is
written weird, though. Like a sonnet or something, but it, like, doesn’t rhyme
or anything.”

“What’s the Caesar code?” Lindsay asked.

Gregory pulled out a book and flipped it
open to a page that showed a circular decoder. “It’s a letter substitution.
Let’s say the letter A stood for F: in that case, Maddie would be spelt Rfiinj
and Chase would be…”

He stopped, thought for a moment,
then
wrote “HMFXJ” on his pad of paper. He straightened,
looked at the word, then at us.

I was gaping at him. Lindsay said softly,
“Whoa. Dude, that was fast.”

Greg shrugged and grinned. “A simple
frequency analysis will break the Caesar cipher in minutes. During the war,
both sides used it, but it was so simple, it was useless. So the Union started
using the Stager code while the Confederates preferred to use the Vigenère
cipher, which is a little trickier.”