The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes

by Leonard Goldberg

  I concentrated on the conversation we’d had with the Harrelstons and searched for the informative portions Joanna was referring to. The only obvious one was the comment that Charles Harrelston and Benjamin Levy had planned to cash in for funds to begin their new business venture. Surely they were speaking of the hidden treasure in Moran’s safe.

  “Ah, yes!” Joanna announced. “Now I have the chain of events that links all together. Let us begin with malaria, which I would wager Watson is quite familiar with.”

  “Indeed I am,” my father said. “During my service in India and Afghanistan, I saw more cases of that dreaded disease than I care to count. It can be a most awful disorder, which, in its most vicious form, may cause death.”

  “From Mary Harrelston’s description, do you believe Derek Cardogan has the vicious form?”

  “I doubt it, for if he had that type of malaria he would be dead,” my father explained. “He most likely has the chronic form of the disease, which can become quite nasty when it resists treatment.”

  “But it is fair to say that he acquired the disease while serving in the Second Afghan War, is it not?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “And according to Moran, this must be one of the fevers the quartet suffered while recuperating in Peshawar.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Good.” Joanna checked off the first item on her list. “Next, you will note that the secret code was invented by the quartet while recuperating in Afghanistan. What does that tell us?”

  My father and I shrugged and gave each other perplexed looks.

  “Come, come now!” Joanna urged. “You must reason backward here, for that is how most crimes are solved. With that in mind, ask yourselves why the group would invent a secret code.”

  “To hide the meaning of their messages,” I answered promptly.

  “Why hide the meaning?”

  “To prevent others from learning their contents.”

  “And what is this content that so desperately needs to remain hidden?”

  “The treasure in the safe!” I exclaimed.

  “Precisely so,” Joanna said, and checked off the second item on her list. “We now know that their treasure was illegally obtained in Afghanistan and had to remain hidden for a prolonged period. We can also reason that this treasure is not money.”

  “Because it had to be cashed in,” I deduced.

  “Very good, John. So we can conclude this treasure is not money, was illegally obtained in Afghanistan and thus cannot be sold immediately on the open market, and must fit inside a modest-sized Chubb safe. What meets all of these criteria?”

  After long deliberation, my father raised his hand and spoke out. “I think I know.”

  “Pray tell,” Joanna beseeched.

  “It is an ancient, priceless work of art that a museum or collector would pay dearly for,” my father replied.

  “And it would have to be relatively small, such as a rolled-up painting or statuette, which they could bring back to England without it being seen or arousing suspicion,” I added. “I believe that covers all the necessary criteria.”

  “Your answer has some merit,” Joanna said, yet her tone indicated she was not convinced. “But there are problems with your selection. They fought in the barren mountains and deserts of Afghanistan where priceless works of art rarely exist. Moreover, how would these four young men know how to recognize and appraise some obscure Afghan work of art?”

  “Perhaps it was bejeweled,” I suggested.

  Joanna shook her head briefly. “They would not know if the gems were real or, if they were, what value to place on them. Still, your last guess is within the realm of possibility and one we should not exclude altogether.” She glanced down at her list once again and said, “There is another important clue in Moran’s last message to Charles Harrelston, that being the admonishment ‘SOME OF YOUR ALIGNMENTS ARE AGAIN OFF THE MARK.’ In regard to her brother’s ability to solve the anagram, Mary Harrelston was less than correct. The admonishment I just mentioned tells us that the coded message is not a mind-bending anagram, but a simple one that only requires attention to the alignment of a limited number of lines. It is one that a poor speller like Charles Harrelston could still master.”

  “You are of course assuming that Christopher Moran was being truthful with his explanation that the message was in the form of an anagram,” I argued mildly.

  “It is an assumption we have to make, for it is the only clue at our disposal and we have no choice but to follow it.”

  “If this is the case, the expert you mentioned will certainly be able to decipher the code,” I hoped.

  “It is we who will decipher the code, John. The expert I was referring to is a chapter dealing with ciphers and anagrams. This chapter is in a recently translated Russian monograph that I have yet to read.”

  “Where is this monograph?”

  “On Sherlock Holmes’s workbench at 221b Baker Street.”

  * * *

  Joanna Blalock was wrong in her conjecture that the code would be a simple anagram that we could finally unravel with the help of a monograph on that very subject. We worked diligently through the entire afternoon and, despite our best efforts, remained baffled by the coded message, which read:

  The strange symbols made no sense, regardless of the order we placed them in. There were no letters or numbers to guide us, nor any apostrophes, which would have been most helpful since, according to our notes, they were always followed by the letters s, t, d, m, ll or re. We forged on for yet another hour, but made no progress in unraveling the mysterious code. Evening was falling, and so was our mood, but we persevered and again applied Sir David’s rules to decipher the message.

  His first instruction was to determine which of the symbols appeared most frequently, for the three most commonly used letters in the English language were e, t, and a, in that order, with e predominating by far. We found one symbol that presented itself four times and another one three times, and thus believed them to represent the letters e and t:

  But we could advance it no further, for there were three symbols that appeared twice. Even if we arbitrarily chose one of these symbols to signify the letter a, it would leave us with e, t, and a, which could only form a number of small words, such as a, at, eat, ate, and tea, none of which served our purposes. And to confuse matters even more, the words when lined up together may have been part of an anagram. We soon realized it would have been an endless task to try each combination until a meaning was arrived at.

  “Perhaps it is not merely an anagram,” I suggested. “There must be twists and turns we are neglecting.”

  “It cannot be complex,” Joanna insisted. “A simple anagram is the only code that four young men could devise under the circumstances. They were at war and they were sick, so they had to construct a code they could all easily remember.”

  “But if it is that easy, why are we having so much difficulty?”

  “Because we are going about solving it in the wrong manner,” Joanna said, nodding to herself. “We are searching for a hidden anagram in the code, while we should be concentrating on just the code itself. Our most important task is to find the key that will unlock the first word. That mechanism can then be employed to unlock all the other words in the code.”

  “But how do we determine the key?” I asked.

  “By guessing,” Joanna replied. “It is the only avenue open to us.”

  “That is what we have been doing for hours,” I said wearily. “But the solution continues to elude us.”

  My father reached for his timepiece and glanced at it briefly. “Perhaps we should adjourn for dinner and refresh ourselves. I am afraid we are facing a very late night.”

  Joanna stared at my father for a long moment, then quickly returned to the coded message and began counting silently to herself over and over. She performed this task at least three times before tilting her head to the side and counting yet again, finally stopping at the number 12. As
her eyes came back to us, a Mona Lisa smile crossed her face. “There is no need for refreshment, for I have deciphered the code,” she announced.

  “How?” my father cried out. “Pray tell how?”

  “Why, you told me, my dear Watson.”

  “But I said nothing, other than to suggest an early dinner.”

  “It was not your words, but your actions.”

  “Which were?”

  “Gazing at your timepiece,” Joanna explained. “For that was the clue that deciphered the code.”

  My father gave her a most quizzical look. “I must say this is far beyond me.”

  “Please view your timepiece, Watson, and tell me the time.”

  “It is 5:25.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because the timepiece so informs me.”

  “No, no! You are missing the point. I wish you to describe exactly what you see when you study your timepiece.”

  “Both hands are clearly directed to the 5.”

  “The number 5 indeed, which represents the fifth letter in the alphabet and thus signifies the letter e.”

  My father’s eyes suddenly widened as the deciphering mechanism came to him. “How clever! The lines in the code symbolize the short hand on a timepiece that points to a given number, with the number corresponding to a letter in the alphabet. And the little bead at the end of each line informs us of its direction.”

  “Spot on, Watson! Thus, if the line is directed at one o’clock on the timepiece, it translates to the letter a, which is the first letter in the alphabet. If it says two o’clock, it represents the letter b, the second letter in the alphabet, and so on.”

  “But I see a problem,” I interrupted at once. “There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and only twelve on the face of a timepiece. How does one account for the letters farther down the alphabet?”

  “I too was aware of this discrepancy and it took a moment to see how they circumvent it,” Joanna elucidated. “Again, it was done simply. Any letters that come after the number 12 were drawn in a difficult-to-recognize form. Allow me to return to the message and demonstrate. For reference, I will pencil in two timepieces next to the message, which should help orient you.”

  “You will note that in the first timepiece the hand points to one o’clock, which is the number 1 or the letter a. Of more importance is the second timepiece in which the hand is directed at the 9, which corresponds to the ninth letter in the alphabet or i. This could represent either the small letter i or the capital I. In this instance I assumed it was the capital I and was correct. Therefore, in our message the initial symbol represents I, which is the first word in the code. Now please follow my finger as we proceed down the line of symbols that come after the I. Next we have three interconnected, slanted lines that are a stretched-out version of the letter N. Then we have two lines pointed at five o’clock or the letters EE, and finally a line directed at four o’clock which is D. Thus we have the words I NEED. Next is a line to one o’clock which is A, followed by another D, another A, and a peculiarly shaped R, and then the letters C, A, and H, all of which comprise the word DARCAH. The message now reads I NEED A DARCAH.”

  “The last word appears to be one that has been concocted,” I surmised.

  “Perhaps,” Joanna said. “But let us hold that in abeyance until we decipher the remaining symbols. After DARCAH, we have another A, then the letter T slanted on its side, followed by a distorted O, another N, then C and E. Thus, the entire message reads:”

  I NEED A DARCAH AT ONCE.

  “By Jove, Joanna! You have truly outdone yourself,” my father lauded warmly. “I doubt that even Sir David has reached a solution.”

  “Oh, he eventually will,” Joanna said, waving off the compliment. “But how ingenious was Moran to employ a timepiece in constructing the code. It was simple to use, easy to conceal, and always at their disposal, even during the war. And more ingenious yet was his plan to hide the key word deeper within the deciphered code. For if we do not understand the term DARCAH, the decoded message has no meaning and we are once again in the dark.”

  The three of us stared down at the strange word and shook our heads in bewilderment. We were now faced with yet another riddle within a riddle.

  “There is no such word in the English language,” I stated.

  “Nor does it appear to be German,” Joanna said, but she consulted the German-English dictionary to be certain. “It does not exist.”

  “Nor is it French,” said my father who was fluent in that language.

  “Perhaps it is the anagram Moran spoke of,” I ventured.

  “I think not,” Joanna said. “The word we are searching for is a noun, and few nouns can be made from darcah. Arc, cad, car, and card come to mind, but none fit here.”

  “Nor does rad, which is a measure of radiation,” my father added.

  “I still favor an anagram,” I persisted.

  “Most unlikely,” Joanna said. “Charles Harrelston was a poor speller and even simple anagrams would be beyond him.”

  “But he could have employed the Caesar shift that Sir David mentioned,” my father proposed.

  “Let us see,” Joanna said and, using pen and paper, went about shifting individual letters a given number of spaces in the alphabet. “We will begin by moving the letters one space over, and so d becomes e, a becomes b, and so on. Thus, darcah is transformed into ebsdb, which makes no sense at all.”

  Joanna strived on, going through each possible combination without success. It was a most time-consuming ordeal and time was something we had little of. Two lives had already been lost and a third was now at stake. We waited anxiously, hoping against hope that Joanna could provide an answer to our dilemma.

  After an hour of diligent effort, Joanna stood and stretched her back, then announced, “It is all gibberish. The Caesar shift was not used.”

  “Could the word darcah be an abbreviation of some sort?” I suggested.

  “It is certainly not one that I have ever encountered,” Joanna said, and thought for a moment before asking, “Watson, might darcah be a military term they acquired during their stay in Afghanistan?”

  “It is most assuredly not a term I heard while serving in the Second Afghan War,” my father replied.

  “But it might be an Afghan word,” Joanna said quickly. “Do you recall how many languages are spoken there?”

  “Two primarily,” my father answered. “Pashto and Dari.”

  “Which of the two is the most commonly used in the area of Peshawar, where the quartet spent a long period of recuperation?”

  “Pashto, by far.”

  “Does Sir David speak Pashto?”

  “Fluently,” my father replied. “He was frequently used as a translator during the Afghan War.”

  “Please call him, Watson, for he may be our last, best hope.”

  My father looked up Sir David’s phone number and had the language expert on the line without delay. “David, sorry to intrude on you at this late hour, but we have come across a word that may be Afghan in nature. Might we ask for your assistance?… Thank you, my friend. The word we are interested in is darcah, which is spelled D-A-R-C-A-H.”

  I kept my eyes on my father’s expression, but it remained impassive. Seconds seemed to drag by.

  “No such word, eh?” my father said without inflection. “Neither Pashto nor Dari?… Would you check and determine if it belongs to any nearby languages?… I see. Not Persian either?” … My father pressed the phone to his ear. “You say there is a similar Persian word, but with one letter of difference … Please spell and translate it … D-A-R-G-A-H, which denotes the tomb of a Muslim saint. That does not seem—” Joanna stepped in closer and whispered, “Charles Harrelston may have misspelled the word we are after. Ask Sir David if objects of great value are ever buried with the holy man.” My father repeated the question, then waited a moment before shaking his head. “Never, eh? The body is wrapped in a shroud and nothing more … I am a
fraid the Persian word does not suffice here … Yes, yes. That is precisely how it’s spelled in the code. D-A-R-C-A-H … I have no idea how it is pronounced. As it is written I would—”

  Joanna abruptly reached for the phone in my father’s hand. “May I, Watson?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sir David,” she began. “This is Joanna Blalock whom I trust you recall meeting at the museum … Exactly. The amateur detective. I wonder if I could intrude a bit more on your valuable time … Excellent. Now here is an important piece of information you must consider. The sender of the coded message was a poor speller and he may have misspelled the word that has confounded us. As you no doubt are aware, individuals with spelling difficulties often write words phonetically, and that may be the case here. For example, the letter c can be pronounced with an s sound as in celebrate or a k sound as in silica. Let us apply these two sounds and see where they take us. We shall begin with the s, which phonetically changes darcah to darsah. Are there any Afghan words of this nature?… No, eh? Then let us try the k sound, and the word becomes darkah.”

  Joanna’s brow went up. “There is a word that is quite close in Pashto, you say. Please spell it … D-A-R-K-H-A, with the emphasis on the H-A. Very good. Now please tell me what it means … Ah, yes! That appears to be a good fit. Thank you, Sir David. You have been of considerable help.”

  Joanna slowly placed the phone down, then gazed out the window, obviously lost in thought. She remained expressionless and silent, with the only sound in the room coming from the traffic below on Baker Street. Moments later we heard a horn blow and brakes screeching, so my father rushed over and closed the window to mute the noise. Joanna seemed not to notice.

  I could not restrain myself further and asked, “Have you deciphered the message?”

  “In large measure,” Joanna replied and turned to us. “According to Sir David, the word darcah phonetically resembles the Afghan word darkha, D-A-R-K-H-A, which means a share or portion. Thus, Charles Harrelston’s last message to Christopher Moran reads, I NEED A SHARE AT ONCE.”

  “Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!” my father praised. “You surmised he wrote it the way it sounded. DARK-HA! DARK-HA! Who would have ever guessed?”