on. All of the clues together at the end will make some kind of sense.’
‘For crying out loud.’ Grace slumped back in her chair. ‘How on earth did he expect me to solve this? He was the literary genius in our house, not me. He might have called me Amazing Grace to his students, but he used to tell me I was an Amazon. That’s why he called me Hippo – it’s short for Hippolyta. She was an Amazon queen.’
‘Oh, good. I thought it might be an extra clue.’ Deira grinned. ‘I should’ve guessed. The professor often gave students nicknames from Greek mythology. All the same, it’s a travesty calling you Hippo. You’re a sylph.’
‘He abbreviated Hippolyta when I got pregnant and absolutely ballooned,’ said Grace. ‘It sort of stuck.’
‘That wasn’t very kind.’ The words were out of Deira’s mouth before she could stop them.
‘Kindness wasn’t Ken’s forte,’ said Grace. Then she shrugged. ‘Oh look, I’m being unfair. He didn’t mean to be unkind. It simply never occurred to him that his words could hurt. Not that I was hurt by it,’ she added. ‘When I was expecting the children, I put hippos to shame.’
Deira tried and failed to imagine Grace as anyone other than the slender woman in front of her.
‘Anyhow,’ said Grace, after they’d lapsed into a slightly awkward silence, ‘we still have to figure out what he’s trying to say here.’
‘The first part is almost self-explanatory,’ said Deira slowly. ‘It’s the rest that’s stumping me.’
‘Self-explanatory?’ Grace looked at her in astonishment. ‘You’re way ahead of me in that case, because I haven’t a clue what it means.’
‘Well, I’m pretty sure the first element is still about Jules Verne,’ Deira said. ‘Verne wrote Journey to the Centre of the Earth as well as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I’m guessing 2 is the answer to how deep did he go, as it’s the first number in twenty thousand.’
‘OK.’ Grace nodded. ‘That makes sense. So what about the portholes? Was the ship in Twenty Thousand Leagues called the Atlantique?’
‘Strictly speaking, it was a submarine,’ said Deira. She closed her eyes for a moment while she thought. ‘Not the Atlantique. The Nautilus. He could have written a book about a ship called the Atlantique but I don’t know it if he did.’
‘I haven’t a notion,’ said Grace. ‘I never read any of them. I’m not a sci-fi buff.’
‘Hardly sci-fi now,’ said Deira. ‘I think his first book was published in the 1860s. Let’s forget about the book for a moment.’ She frowned as she studied the document. ‘The next part of the clue is the door of his very own space. I’m wondering if it’s his house – it might have a plaque or something outside the door. What d’you think?’
‘It must be!’ Grace’s eyes lit up. ‘You’re good at this, Deira.’
Deira opened the laptop’s browser. ‘Good but wrong,’ she said after she’d googled it. ‘Verne’s house is in Amiens, near Paris. But . . .’ her fingers flew over the keyboard, ‘there’s a museum in Nantes. The Musée Jules Verne.’ She clicked on Google Maps and entered the museum’s address. ‘Gosh, it’s not far from where we ate last night.’
‘Really?’ Grace moved closer to have a look.
‘Street View,’ said Deira as she dragged the icon onto the map.
The view of the street was perfect. Deira used the cursor to rotate the picture until a small whitewashed building with red brick around the windows filled the screen.
‘Musée Jules Verne.’ Grace read the sign on the wall beside the door ‘Oh my God, Deira, you’ve cracked it.’
‘Fingers crossed,’ said Deira. ‘So basically you have to take a photo of the door and upload it. Probably include the sign, too. I guess it’s some kind of program that compares it with one the professor uploaded before.’
‘But how would he . . .’ Grace’s voice faltered. ‘The last time he was here, he was well. He couldn’t have known then that he’d be setting this up.’
‘Maybe he took a photo when he was there and it gave him the idea later,’ said Deira. ‘I’m surprised at him being so tech-savvy as to put all this together. Back in the day, he used a massive Filofax and used to wander around the college with piles of folders covered in Post-it notes.’
‘Oh, he totally embraced technology,’ said Grace. ‘He said it was a great tool for researchers, although I didn’t realise he’d gone so far as setting up a program to compare uploaded photos.