The Nine Tailors (28 page)

* * *

Curiously enough, it was the Rector who solved the cipher. He came into the schoolroom that night as the hall-clock struck eleven, thoughtfully bearing a glass of hot toddy in one hand and an old-fashioned foot-muff in the other.

“I do hope you are not working yourself to death,” he said, apologetically. “I have ventured to bring a little comfort for the inner man. These nights of early summer are so chilly. And my wife thinks you might like to put your feet in this. There is always a draught under that door. Allow me—it is slightly moth-eaten, I fear, but still affords protection. Now, you must not let me disturb you. Dear me! What is that? Are you pricking out a peal? Oh, no—I see they are letters, not figures. My eyesight is not as good as it was. But I am rudely prying into your affairs.”

“Not a bit, padre. It does look rather like a peal. It’s still this wretched cipher. Finding that the number of letters formed a multiple of eight, I had written it out in eight columns, hoping forlornly that something might come of it. Now you mention it, I suppose one might make a simple sort of cipher out of a set of changes.”

“How could you do that?”

“Well, by taking the movements of one bell and writing the letters of your message in the appropriate places and then filling up the places of the other bells with arbitraries. For instance. Take a Plain Course of Grandsire Doubles,
[1]
and suppose you want to convey the simple and pious message ‘Come and worship.’ You would select one bell to carry the significants—let us say, No. 5. Then you would write out the beginning of your plain course, and wherever No. 5 came you would put in one letter of your message. Look.”

He rapidly scribbled down the two columns:

• 123456
  
• 213546
  
• 231456
  
• 324156
  
• 342516
  
• 435216
  
• 453126
  
• 541326
  
• 514236
  
• 152436
  
• 125346
  
• 215436
  
• 251346
  
• 523146
  
• 532416
  
• etc.
  

• * * * C* *
  
• * * * * * O*
  
• * * * * * M*
  
• * * * E* *
  
• * * A* * *
  
• * N* * * *
  
• D* * * * *
  
• W* * * * *
  
• * O* * * *
  
• * * R* * *
  
• * * S* * *
  
• * H* * * *
  
• I* * * * *
  
• P* * * * *
  

“Then you could fill up the other places with any sort of nonsense letters—say XLOCMP JQIWON, NAEMMB TSHEZP and so on. Then you would write the whole thing out in one paragraph, dividing it so as to look like words.”

“Why?” inquired the Rector.

“Oh, just to make it more difficult. You could write, for example, ‘XLOC MPJQI. WON, NAE M MBTS! HEZP?’ and so on to the end. It wouldn’t matter what you did. The man who received the message and had the key would simply divide the letters into six columns again, run his pencil along the course of No. 5, and read the message.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Venables, “so he would! How very ingenious. And I suppose that with a little further ingenuity, the cipher might be made to convey some superficial and misleading information. I see, for instance, that you already have the word WON and the Scotch expression NAE. Could not the idea be extended further, so that the entire passage might appear completely innocuous?”

“Of course it could. It might look like this.” Wimsey flicked Jean Legros’ communication with his finger.

“Have you—? But pardon me. I am unwarrantably interfering. Still—have you tried this method on the cryptogram?”

“Well, I haven’t,” admitted Wimsey. “I’ve only just thought of it. Besides, what would be the good of sending a message like that to Cranton, who probably knows nothing about bell-ringing? And it would take a bell-ringer to write it, and we have no reason to suppose that Jean Legros was a ringer. It is true,” he added thoughtfully, “that we have no reason to suppose he was not.”

“Well, then,” said the Rector. “Why not try? You told me, I think, that this paper was picked up in the belfry. Might not the person to whom it was sent, though not himself a ringer and not knowing how to interpret it, have connected it in his mind with the bells and supposed that the key was to be found in the belfry? No doubt I am very foolish, but it appears to me to be possible.”

Wimsey struck his hand on the table. “Padre, that’s an idea! When Cranton came to Fenchurch St. Paul, he asked for Paul Taylor, because Deacon had told him that Tailor Paul or Batty Thomas knew where the emeralds were. Come on! Have at it. We’ll ask Tailor Paul ourselves.”

He picked up the paper on which he had already written the cryptogram in eight columns.

“We don’t know what method the fellow used, or which bell to follow. But we’ll take it that the bell is either Batty Thomas or Tailor Paul. If the method is Grandsire Triples, it can’t be Tailor Paul, for the Tenor would be rung behind the whole way and we should find the message running down the last column. And it’s not likely to be Grandsire Major, because you never ring that method here. Let us try Batty Thomas. What does the 7th bell give us? GHILSTETHGWA. That’s not very encouraging. For form’s sake we’ll try the other bells. No. No. No. Could the man possibly have started off with a bob or single?”

“Surely not.”

“Well, you never know. He’s not pricking a peal, he’s only making a cipher and he might do something unusual on purpose.”

His pencil traced the letters again. “No. I can’t make anything of it. Wash out Grandsires. And I think we can probably wash out Stedman’s, too—that would keep the significants too close together. Try Kent Treble Bob, and we’ll take Tailor Paul first, since the Tenor is the usual observation bell for that method. She starts in the 7th place, H. Then 8th place, E. Back to 7th, S; to 6ths, I; to 4ths, T. ‘HESIT.’ Well, it’s pronounceable, at any rate. Dodge up into 6ths place, T again. Down to 5ths, E; to 4ths, T; to 3rds, H. ‘HESITTETH.’ Hullo, Padre! we’ve got two words, anyhow. ‘He sitteth.’ Perhaps ‘He’ is the necklace. We’ll carry on with this.”

The Rector, his glasses sliding down his long nose with excitement, pored over the paper as the pencil made its rapid way down the letters.

“‘He sitteth between’—it’s part of a verse from Psalm xcix—there, what did I tell you? ‘He sitteth between the Cherubims.’ Now, what can that mean? Oh, dear! there is some mistake—the next letter should be a B—‘be the earth never so unquiet.’”

“Well, it isn’t a B; it’s another T. There isn’t a B anywhere. Wait a moment. THE is coming—no, THEI—no, as you were. It’s THE ISLES. I can’t help it. Padre. It couldn’t come like that by accident. Just a second, and we’ll have it all sorted out and then you can say what you like.... Oy! what’s happened here at the end? Oh, dash it! I was forgetting. This must be the end of the lead. Yes”—he calculated rapidly—“it is, and we’ve got to make the 3rds and 4ths. There you are. Message complete; and what it means is more than I can tell you.”

The Rector polished his glasses and stared. “It’s verses from three psalms,” he said. “Most singular. ‘He sitteth between the cherubims; that’s Ps. xcix. i. Then ‘The isles may be glad thereof’; that’s Ps. xcvii. i. Both those psalms begin alike: ‘Dominus regnavit,’ ‘The Lord is King.’ And then we get, ‘as the rivers in the south.’ That’s Ps. cxxvi. 5, ‘In convertendo,’ ‘When the Lord turned the captivity of Sion.’ This is a case of
obscurum per obscuriora
—the interpretation is even more perplexing than the cipher.”

“Yes,” said Wimsey. “Perhaps the figures have something to do with it. We have 99. 1. 97. 1. 126. 5. Are they to be taken as one figure 9919711265? or to be left as they are? or re-divided? The permutations are almost endless. Or perhaps they ought to be added. Or converted into letters on some system we haven’t discovered yet. It can’t be a simple a=1 substitution. I refuse to believe in a message that runs IIAIGIABFE.I shall have to wrestle with this quite a lot more. But you have been simply marvellous. Padre. You ought to take to deciphering codes as a profession.”

“It was pure accident,” said Mr. Venables, simply, “and due entirely to my failing vision. That is a curious thing. It has given me the idea for a sermon about evil being over-ruled for good. But I should never have thought of the possibility that one might make a cipher out of change-ringing. Most ingenious.”

“It could have been done still more ingeniously,” said Wimsey. “I can think of lots of ways to improve it. Suppose—but I won’t waste time with supposing. The point is, what the dickens is one to do with 99.1.97.1 126.5?”

He clutched his head between his hands, and the Rector, after watching him for a few minutes, tiptoed away to bed.

I T H O U G
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NOTE

[1]
“Doubles” is the name given to a set of changes rung on 5 bells, the tenor (No. 6) being rung last or “behind” in each change.

EMILY TURNS BUNTER FROM BEHIND

Let the bell that the Treble turns from behind make thirds place, and return behind again.

Rules for Change-Making on Four Bells.

“I should like,” panted Emily between her sobs, “to give my week’s warning.”

“Good gracious, Emily!” cried Mrs. Venables, pausing as she passed through the kitchen with a pail of chickenfeed, “what on earth is the matter with you?”

“I’m sure,” said Emily, “I ain’t got no fault to find with you and Rector as has always been that kind, but if I’m to be spoken to so by Mr. Bunter, which I’m not his servant and never want to be and ain’t no part of my duties, and anyway how was I to know? I’m sure I’d have cut my right hand off rather than disoblige his lordship, but I did ought to have been told and it ain’t my fault and so I told Mr. Bunter.”

Mrs. Venables turned a little pale. Lord Peter presented no difficulties, but Bunter she found rather alarming. But she was of the bulldog breed, and had been brought up in the knowledge that a servant was a servant, and that to be afraid of a servant (one’s own or anybody else’s) was the first step to an Avernus of domestic inefficiency. She turned to Bunter, standing white and awful in the background.

“Well now, Bunter,” she said, firmly. “What is all this trouble about?”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” said Bunter in a stifled manner. “I fear that I forgot myself. But I have been in his lordship’s service now for going on fifteen years (counting my service under him in the War), and such a thing has never yet befallen me. In the sudden shock and the bitter mortification of my mind, I spoke with considerable heat. I beg, madam, that you will overlook it. I should have controlled myself better. I assure you that it will not occur again.”

Mrs. Venables put down the chicken-pail.

“But what was it all about?”

Emily gulped, and Bunter pointed a tragic finger at a beer-bottle which stood on the kitchen table. “That bottle, madam, was entrusted to me yesterday by his lordship. I placed it in a cupboard in my bedroom, with the intention of photographing it this morning, before despatching it to Scotland Yard. Yesterday evening, it seems that this young woman entered the room during my absence, investigated the cupboard and removed the bottle. Not content with removing it, she dusted it.”

“If you please ’m,” said Emily, “how was I to know it was wanted? A nasty, dirty old thing. I was only a-dusting the room, ’m, and I see this old bottle on the cupboard shelf, and I says to myself, ‘Look at that dusty old bottle, why, however did that get there? It must have got left accidental.’ So I takes it down and when Cook see it she says, ‘Why, whatever have you got there, Emily? That’ll just do,’ she says, ‘to put the methylated.’ So I gives it a dust—”