To Sketch a Sphinx - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,62

himself nodding as he studied each note in turn, almost as though he intended to memorize the melody for his own enjoyment. “And does it change…?” He plucked the other sheets up and ran his eyes over them.

Hal sat silently beside him, but he could feel her attention on him, could almost feel the same excitement he felt rising in her.

“Yes,” he whispered, circling his find with a finger. “Brilliant. Right before the eyes, in plain sight, and yet so easily missed…”

A fresh sheet of paper was slid under his left hand, and he glanced at the disruption before looking up at his wife, whose smile brought on one of his own.

She tilted her head to the page. “It seems you’ve got it. Go to it.”

He could have kissed her but settled for taking the paper and pen and jotting down his discovery.

“It’s the music,” he said aloud as he wrote, looking between the notes and his page as he copied everything down. “The actual music itself. The time signature is the letter number, in this case, every fourth. The key signature is the key letter, so as we start, this is D.”

“But it changes so quickly,” Hal pointed out, tapping the page where the key signature changes. “So, the key letter would change as well?”

John nodded, now scribbling away. “Yes. C, in that instance. Now, the distance each note is from the major key letter is the number of letters away from whatever letter is written. Here. The key note is C, and this note is D, which places the corresponding letter of the code as one letter advanced of what we see.” He frowned to himself, tilting his head at the music. “Sharps… flats… Likely as obvious as the rest, so a sharp added to a note would be an additional one ahead, and a flat would be one behind. That would mean a natural sign would correspond with whatever it does to the note in that key signature. If the note is sharped in the key signature, it would be one ahead, if it’s flatted, it would be one behind. Does that make sense?”

He laughed softly to himself, shaking his head. “Marvelous coding. Genius, really. Change in key signature changes the key letter value, but the principle is the same. And here,” he paused to tap the initial find that had settled him on this code as the right one. “A time signature change would indicate a change of which letter we must identify; here, it means we go to every third letter.”

For a long moment, the only sound was that of the nib of his pen scratching away at the page before him, and then he paused again, his mind spinning.

“What?” Hal’s question was faint but insistent.

Poor lamb, she likely had no idea what he was talking about as yet; he was barely making sense to himself. But this was his process, and though he spoke his findings aloud, his explanation wasn’t exactly thorough.

“But what about the value of each note?” he murmured, staring blankly at the music again. “In each measure, the note itself… That could add a new dimension…”

Hal’s hand suddenly covered the music. “John,” she said sternly, taking his chin in hand and forcing him to look at her. “Anyone would already have to spend hours in an attempt to code this. We cannot assume that everyone in the Faction has a brilliant mind like yours. Kindly don’t give them more credit than they deserve, and just see if this works.”

John searched her eyes, the tension of frustrated efforts coiling in his chest. Then, to his surprise, it relaxed and enabled him to breathe as well as smile. “You’re right.”

“I know,” she quipped, patting his cheek, “but it is good practice for you to say so.”

He chuckled and leaned in to give her a quick kiss. “Impudent.”

“Always.”

He winked and returned his focus to the mountain of work they now had before them. “Right. Time to go code hunting.”

Hours later, including a reprieve for supper with the de Rouvroys, John continued staring at the pages before him, the jumble of letters still not offering clues as to the next layer of code.

They’d deciphered every letter Hal had copied from Leclerc’s pocket using the music, and yet, they were somehow far from answers. Closer than they had been before, it was true, but now he was back at the beginning of the process once more.

And his mind was tired.

It wasn’t often he could claim that,