The Circle Code Conundrum Read online

  "You have the note, then?" Irene stood and held out her hand. She'd been worried that the case was a simple dispute between man and wife, and she'd have to scold Eddy, but Grouper's story had now piqued her curiosity.

  Grouper opened his jacket and drew out a small piece of paper, handing it to Irene. She slowly unfolded the note, studying the composition of the paper.

  Taken from an ordinary notepad, no staining around the edges, no particular smell.

  She unfolded it carefully, eyes widening with intrigue at the note inside:

  Irene rotated the paper, looking over each letter.

  A man's writing, steady and confident.

  She handed the paper to Joe.

  "What does it say?" Joe asked.

  "I'm not sure," Grouper said.

  "Did you ask your wife?" Irene asked. "Did she not tell you anything about it? Or why it scared her so?"

  "Of course I asked," Grouper said. "But she refused to tell me, even after I persisted to the point of anger. I don't usually pry into my wife's business, so I felt badly afterwards, and I let the matter be. Besides, I had a doctor take a look at her and he said she was in shock and to never mention this note again. To do so, would put her into fits. I can't have my wife turning ill. She just had a baby, for heaven's sake."

  Irene sunk back down on the armrest. "But she knows what this means?"

  "I'm sure that's why it scared her," Grouper said.

  "I'm confused, Mr. Grouper," Irene said. "You told me you had a mystery that needed solving. But all I gather is a wife who is in some sort of panic, and could easily tell you why, and yet you won't ask her."

  "She refuses to acknowledge it, Miss Holmes," Grouper said. "And I refuse to ask her again. I inquired how she was fairing a few days ago and she seemed distracted. I pointed out as much and she ignored me and scolded me for prying."

  Irene stood and wandered to the kitchenette. As she filled the kettle, she sighed. While this message was tempting to decipher, if someone out there already knew the code, why would Irene waste her time?

  "Are you going to help me, Miss Holmes?" Grouper called.

  She turned to him.

  "Your wife already knows the answer to this mystery," she said. "Perhaps you could be a bit more assertive and ask her what the message means as it is impacting your home life."

  "Please, Miss Holmes," he said. "She is not herself and she is not as quick to get to her when she cries, not as hands-on as she usually is."

  "Point all that out to her," Irene said. "Then perhaps-"

  "Miss Holmes." Grouper stood, face reddening. Irene stood taller, on the balls of her feet, ready for whatever challenge Mr. Grouper was about to throw at her.

  Joe leapt from his chair and stood in between them.

  "Mr. Grouper," he said, hands out, calming the angry man. "We understand your concern. This is an unusual case for us. Will you give us a moment?"

  He nodded and sat back on the couch. Joe took Irene's arm, but she stood her ground, more out of stubborn habit than anything else. Joe pursed his lips in determination and tugged her arm again. She resigned and followed him into her bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

  Before he spoke, he glanced around her room. She folded her arms across her chest and stood between a pile of unwashed clothes and a stack of open textbooks.

  "Are you going to scold me for my messy room?" she asked. "Or for the way I treated Mr Grouper? Pick one, because I don't want to leave him alone in our flat for long."

  Joe pried his eyes away from the mess. "I know you're frustrated, but he is very worried about his wife. Who cares if she knows the key to the cypher? We have the opportunity to figure it out. Like we're spies."

  "You read too many novels, Joe," she said.

  "Then solve this for their little girl," he said. "You heard him. This is affecting her ability to be a good mother to her child. Maybe that's why she can't tell him anything about the message. Maybe she's worried she will be revealed as an unfit mother."

  Irene stared at him. Joe's desperation for this case was quite apparent, likely because this mystery didn't involve murder or anything remotely dangerous. He was right about Grouper's daughter, and Irene was surprised at how much that tugged at her heartstrings. If this whole affair was going to negatively affect the little girl's time with her parents, and Irene could prevent that, then she would.

  "Fine," she said. "I will do it if only to bring normalcy back to this family."

  "Jolly good." Joe rubbed her shoulders like a football coach urging on his players. "I shall go out and let Mr. Grouper know."

  "Give him our telephone number," Irene said. "Tell him to call if there are any more messages."

  Joe looked around her room again. "How does one small woman make such a mess?"

  He left and Irene pushed the pile of clothes with her foot. The bedroom wasn't even the worst it's been.

  She exited her room as Joe walked Mr. Grouper to the door.

  He shook Grouper's hand, then handed him a business card with their telephone number.

  "Please call us with any new developments," he said.

  Irene met them at the door and held out her hand. "Nice to meet you Mr. Grouper. We will do our best to get to the bottom of this."

  Grouper shook her hand, then looked back at Joe as he stuck his hat on.

  "You must be a miracle worker," he said. "To change her mind like that."

  Irene rolled her eyes, but before she could snap at Mr. Grouper, Joe ushered him out of the flat.

  He shut the door as Irene stepped up to their board. She flipped it over to the clean side, and Joe handed her the paper. If they were going to solve this case, then she would put her full ability behind decoding this message. She'd attempt to forget the fact that Mrs. Grouper knew the key, and would act under the assumption that this was all very serious and unknown.

  "The code," she said. "Is only one part of this puzzle, Joe. I think a key to this mystery lies with what happened that week in March when Henriette left for the night. If we figure that out, it will open this case right up."

  Chapter II

  Treasures in the Library

  The next morning, Joe hurried down the stairs from his bedroom on the third floor, pushing up his sleeves as he descended. He made no effort to hide his excitement for this case. The murder they’d solved a few weeks ago had been complex and not without its dangers, and though he didn’t mind either of those things, this case was more to his liking. He loved puzzles and knew he could be much more helpful to Irene because of that.

  He entered the living room and found Irene standing in front of the board. Not heeding Miss Hudson’s advice from yesterday at all, she was still in her pyjamas, housecoat hastily tied around her, mismatched slippers on her feet. She grasped a piece of chalk in her closed hand and pressed her fist to her mouth, brow furrowed in contemplation.

  “I thought about the code last night,” Joe said, helping himself to the tea kettle on their small dining table. “If it is indeed a sentence, there must be a starting point and...Irene?”

  She hadn’t moved or acknowledged him at all. As he made his tea, he stared at her, wondering if she was even breathing. He wandered to his armchair and sat, knowing that she’d turn from the board eventually and notice him.

  Irene scowled at the board and spun on her heel. She saw Joe and jumped back, startled.

  “Joe,” she said. “When did you come in?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “About five minutes ago.”

  “Hm,” she said, as if disappointed in his answer, then she noticed the cup in his hand and took it from him. “Tea! How lovely.”

  Before he could even get a word out, she sipped the tea and shook her head.

  “Too much sugar,” she said, handing it back to him. She saw the tray on the dining table and wandered over to make her own.

  Joe looked at his cup, half the liquid missing. He sighed and started drinking the rest, trying his first sentence again.

&n
bsp; “There must be a starting point somewhere,” he said, looking up at the code. “That singular letter should be our starting point. If I were to guess-”

  “Oh, goodness no.” Irene hurried to the couch, perching on the cushions, teacup in her hand. “You shouldn’t go through life guessing, my dear Joe.”

  He laughed despite himself. “That’s how I spend most of my life.”

  She gave a sharp, brief snort from her nose. “My father always knew when I was pulling answers out of thin air and he’d chide me harshly saying ‘Never guess, my child. It’s a terrible habit and destructive to the logical faculty.’ For years I couldn’t figure out what it meant.”

  She sipped her tea and Joe stared at her. This was the first time she’d quoted her father directly. She’d put on an aristocratic accent, only slightly more proper than her own, and she rolled her 'R’s'. Her father must’ve been highly educated before he turned consulting detective.

  Over the past few weeks, Irene spoke more freely about her father and uncle, but she was still cautious with the anecdotes she told. As curious as Joe was, he bit his tongue and never pressed her for information. He hadn’t even sought out the stories written about Sherlock Holmes yet.

  Of course, he was even less forthcoming with his past, and still evaded triggers that would cause a panic-induced episode.

  “So, if we are not to guess,” he said. “Then what are we to do?”

  She gave him a sly smile and drank her tea, still perched on the pillows. “Theories and hypotheses are not guesses. Experiments are not guesses. You may guess that Eddy's preferred colour is green based on nothing. A hypothesis is your belief that Eddy’s favourite colour is green because his decor is green, he chooses green paint for any art project, and he remarks on different shades of green when he is out and about.”

  Joe nodded like a student to his teacher. He had to admit that he was learning a lot from Irene about how to observe the world. Her lessons had aided him in avoiding cues that set off his episodes, but he still found himself slightly frustrated and sometimes in awe of her talents.

  “So, we hypothesize.” Joe set his teacup down on the small table beside his chair. He stood and studied the message:

  “This letter 'O' stands alone,” he said. “There aren't too many singular-letter words in the English language that the 'O' could translate to. In fact, I can only think of two.”

  He wrote the two letters below the code:

  I or A

  Irene stood beside him. “That same letter 'O' appears in this word.”

  “We need a starting point,” Joe said. “Let’s put the solo letter at the beginning. It’s easy for us to go off of, even if it turns out to be in the middle of a sentence.”

  Below the piece of paper, Joe wrote out two lines of translation, one with an A and one with an I:

  I ______ ___ __ ____I_

  A _____ ___ __ ____A_

  Irene stared at the board, then sighed.

  “We need more, Joe,” she said. “Another message.”

  She peered around the board, looking at the telephone that sat on the small table beside the door.

  Joe laughed. “Were you expecting it to ring on cue?”

  “I was hoping-”

  The phone rang, sharp and loud. Irene and Joe scrambled around the board and Irene grabbed the receiver.

  “Irene Holmes speaking,” she said.

  Joe stood shoulder to shoulder with her, pressing his ear next to the receiver, listening to the phone call.

  “Miss Holmes? It’s Mr. Grouper.”

  “How is your wife?” She asked.

  “Another message was left,” Mr. Grouper said. “Painted on our garden house.”

  Joe hurried to his chair, grabbing his notebook, then rushed back to Irene. He laid a blank page down and handed her a pen.

  “Before you relay me the new message,” she said. “I want you to study it and think hard. We need to find a start.”

  Joe pressed his ear to the phone again.

  “Well, there are two the same,” Grouper said. “Two words, or clusters of letters.”

  “Excellent.” Irene grinned, leaning over the table, ready to write. “Start with one, relay the message, and end with the second one.”

  As Irene wrote the new message, Miss Hudson came in with breakfast. Joe put his finger to his lips for her to be quiet and she tiptoed to the table, setting the food down.

  “Is this a new case?” She whispered.

  “Yes,” Joe said. “A tricky one.”

  Miss Hudson’s eyes widened with excitement. “Another murder, then?”

  Joe shook his head. “A code that we have to decipher. It could say anything.”

  Miss Hudson nodded, expression falling. “A code. Well then. I shall leave you to it.”

  Her brow furrowed in disappointing confusion as she left the room.

  “I’d advise you to lock your doors and keep your wife safe,” Irene said into the phone, then after a brief pause, rolled her eyes. “Because sometimes people aren’t very nice, and we do not know who we are dealing with.”

  She hung up and hurried to the board and wrote the second message just below the first:

  NGX*QKT*DOFT*QFR*O*VOSS*IQCT*NGX

  “If we insert our I’s and A’s,” she said to Joe, handing him back his notebook. “It may help us.”

  She wrote a line below the encrypted message:

  ___ ___ _I__ ___ I _I__ ____ ___

  Before she wrote the line inserting the A’s, she paused.

  “Joe,” she said. “This ‘Q’ often appears too, meaning it’s quite possibly a vowel.”

  She grasped the chalk in her hand again. “I require silence.”

  Joe sighed. “You want me to leave?”

  “I want you to go to the library,” she said.

  “On it.” He tucked his notebook close to his chest and started for the door.

  “Wait,” she said. “I haven’t told you for what.”

  He pivoted back to her. “Right, sorry. I just heard ‘library’ and my feet took over. What am I getting?”

  “Newspapers,” she said. “If Petworth has a local paper, take out any and all copies from March fourteenth right through the following week.”

  ✽✽✽

  Joe clutched his bag tight as he stepped off the bus in front of the library. The drizzle coming from the sky was warm from the summer heat, but still rather unpleasant.

  He made it into the library and turned his collar down, a smile spreading over his face. Irene hadn’t told him to hurry back, and she seemed to want a long stretch of silence, so Joe would take all the time he wanted.

  Reading had always been a favourite of his. Novels and stories offered an escape from his three younger sisters growing up and a chance to visit worlds he knew he’d never get to and live adventures he’d never see. Of course, his life now was something of an adventure, but he still devoured any novel he could get his hands on.

  After spending far too long in the fiction section, he came away with half a dozen new novels. Satisfied, he started toward the large exit desk, then remembered his actual purpose for being in the library in the first place.

  A young woman stood behind the information desk, shuffling books across the old wood. She was pretty and petite and he slowed his steps as he approached. Usually, there was an elderly gentleman behind the desk. Joe’s nerves fluttered and he thought about heading to the exit desk, checking out his novels, and heading back to Baker Street.

  Irene would kill him if he came home without finishing his task, and he certainly couldn’t tell her it was because someone new stood behind the desk.

  He’d never seen her nervous about new people, and though she seemed to hate change, she never shied away from anything because something was different. She probably wouldn’t even understand his trepidation.

  He barely understood the ways his anxieties worked.

  He did need those papers, though. He took a deep breath, clutching his novel
s tight to his chest. The young woman smiled as he approached.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice was soft and she blinked up at him with long eyelashes and rosy cheeks.

  “I need the newspaper archives,” he said, then his nerves took over. “For a case I’m working on.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, how exciting. Follow me, sir.”

  She led him toward the back of the library. “I’ve never helped an inspector before. You’re just as handsome as I’ve always pictured them to be, if not a tad wrinkled. Is your case exciting?”

  “Um, yes,” Joe said, fixing his hair and glancing down at his trousers. “I suppose it is. We’re dealing with a cypher I need to translate.”

  She stopped at a long row of bins and furrowed her brow. “That sounds complicated. Here you are, though. Good luck, Inspector.”

  She smiled at him again and her gaze lingered on him as she walked away. He set his books down on the corner of the bin and wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers. Perhaps he did need to iron his clothes a little more often.

  He flipped through the papers and found what he was looking for. He took several copies, all from the week of March fourteenth, and even a few papers from the surrounding towns, in case they proved to have further insight.

  As he headed to the check-out desk, a sign for the section on cyphers and codes stopped him. He quickly skimmed the shelves, seeking out any book that jumped out at him. A small blue hardcover tucked between two large volumes of language history caught his eye.