A Study in Revenge: A Novel

by Kieran Shields

  Lean gave a cautious smile.

  “Is that good news?” she asked.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. But it may be good news to somebody I know.”

  [ Chapter 50 ]

  YOU KNOW I’M A SOMEWHAT RESPECTED DEPUTY OF THE city police, not a delivery boy,” Lean said as he entered Grey’s study and hung his hat.

  Grey hadn’t greeted him yet, and as Lean took in the room, he understood why. Grey sat cross-legged in front of his large chalkboard. At the center of the board were the chalk outlines of two dozen small rectangles arranged in a circle. These were labeled 1 through 24, and they bore evidence of various entries’ having been crossed out and erased. Grey himself sat surrounded by a circle of twenty-four white paper rectangles. Lean instantly recognized those two dozen sheets of paper.

  He’d received the special delivery the prior afternoon, marked from Boston but with no return address. Inside had been twenty-three small sheets of paper, each bearing a hand-drawn copy of a symbol from Professor Horsford’s book. Grey already had the final page from their first visit to the Athenaeum.

  “You got the envelope I left with Mrs. Philbrick last night, I take it. You were out.” Lean waited for Grey to offer an explanation of his whereabouts, but none was forthcoming.

  “So you’ve got the full set of twenty-four symbols from Horsford’s Viking book. What do you make of them?”

  The quick, unamused look from Grey confirmed that he hadn’t made much progress in his attempt to uncover some sort of hidden pattern in the sets of markings from the book and the thunderstone. Lean decided to change the subject to one that he found more important and distressing. Grey had broken his own silence yesterday, arranging a clandestine meeting with Lean where each provided updates to the case, including Dastine’s memories and Father Leadbetter’s sad fate on the train two nights earlier.

  “On a much more distressing matter, I haven’t seen any mention of Leadbetter in the Boston papers,” Lean said.

  “Nor has McCutcheon made contact. He’ll alert me as soon as word reaches the Boston police. If Leadbetter’s body was cast off the train, it will turn up sooner or later along the B&M line. If it doesn’t happen today, McCutcheon’s agreed to take the train himself. He’ll man the rear platform so he can spot Leadbetter and have the poor man’s body recovered.”

  A grumbling sound rattled around in Lean’s throat for a few seconds before he finally put his annoyance into words. “That harmless old man gunned down. I can’t stand the notion of doing nothing about it. I could arrest Marsh on your word.”

  “He’s already bought off the conductor once. Essentially making that man an unwitting accomplice to murder. He’ll have no trouble paying the conductor to say that Leadbetter was alone in the last car with me before he was killed, and he never saw Marsh on board. Then it’s me who ends up facing murder charges.”

  “So I get to the conductor first, force the truth out of him. Have him identify Marsh.”

  Grey shook his head. “He wouldn’t be careless enough to let the conductor see his face. I’m sure he had his crony handle the details and the payment. Besides, he’s probably already got a dozen witnesses who’ll swear they were with Marsh the entire night.”

  “Maybe, but what about Cosgrove’s murder? You said he all but confessed to it,” Lean protested.

  “True, but there’s even less evidence to convict him of that crime. Sorry, Lean, justice for Dr. Jotham Marsh will have to wait until I can find ironclad proof against him.”

  “Or die trying,” Lean said.

  “Your confidence in me is heartwarming. As for Leadbetter, I share your frustration, believe me. But there is nothing we can do on that front. For now.”

  “Then when? Sooner or later Marsh has to answer for this.”

  Grey nodded his agreement. “Among his many other crimes. The best I can do for Father Leadbetter at the moment is to see his dying wish come to fruition. And that means preventing Marsh from solving this riddle of Old Tom Webster’s and finding this supposed alchemical artifact.”

  “That’s what you’re choosing to focus on?” Lean asked. “Not the real-life murders of two men but finding some mystical artifact that you’ve assured me doesn’t actually exist.”

  “Correction, I’ve assured you that no actual alchemical device that creates gold and grants eternal life exists anywhere, least of all buried somewhere beneath the ground of Portland, Maine. However, it does seem quite probable that if Tom Webster went through all the trouble to create the thunderstone and this convoluted code of twenty-four symbols, then he would have completed his hoax. As you told me, Dastine LaVallee’s grandmother told of Old Tom’s having some golden item he guarded jealously. He obviously had faith in its hidden alchemical powers, and I suspect he did indeed bury it somewhere for safekeeping.”

  “If it’s not real, why bother trying to find it at all?” Lean asked. “I think you’ve lost sight of the real crimes that have been committed.”

  “On the contrary, the fact that Marsh is willing to kill for the artifact makes it worth pursuing. I might be able to use his desperation to obtain the item against him. Cause him to make a fatal misstep. At the very least, we’d have the item in hand, the motive for these murders he’s orchestrated.”

  “You confident that you can do that? Find it before Marsh, I mean. Judging by the sorry state of that chalkboard, I’d wager you haven’t made great progress.”

  “It’s true that I haven’t yet had much success. But I take some degree of comfort in the knowledge that Marsh is having a harder go of it than I am. His set is missing the mercury symbol that I originally recovered at the scene of Chester Sears’s fatal jump. In addition, once my suspicions were aroused that Father Leadbetter was under duress in Boston, I took the precaution of making duplicates of my drawings. I sent this set to you, in case I met some harm. I kept the second set of pages on my person, after I shuffled them. So now Marsh is attempting to decode a series of symbols that have been randomly reordered. His task will be almost infinitely more difficult than my own.”

  “So let’s have it, then. What have you figured so far?” Lean made a show of studying the chalkboard.

  “The twenty-four symbols are those carved into the ledge along the Presumpscot. Those are the symbols in Horsford’s book. According to Dastine, the original news reporter accurately recorded the order in which the symbols appeared. But since they were carved in a circular pattern on the ledge, we don’t know in what order Tom Webster meant them to be read.”

  “But you got from Leadbetter the proper order in which to read the seven on the thunderstone?”

  “Yes, and if the thunderstone’s intended as a code, as I believe it is, that order is vital. Those seven figures are the specific message that Old Tom Webster has drawn out of the code of the twenty-four.”

  “So it’s down to a matter of deciphering what the twenty-four are meant to represent.” Lean cracked his knuckles. “Two shy of the alphabet. I suppose that would have been too obvious.”

  “I’ve tried certain variations omitting pairs of letters, but to no use. The Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters, but I could discern no obvious code.”

  “Might not be letters. Twenty-four hours in the day?”

  “I considered that, a numeric code instead of an alphabetical one, but I feel confident that’s a false trail.”

  Lean stared at the chalkboard, then began a slow walk around the circular formation of pages arrayed on the floor.

  “It could be anything. Stare at it all long enough and you’re likely to see anything you can imagine—or nothing at all. This is just grasping at straws.”

  “Yes, without knowing the key to the code, it would be next to impossible to ever decipher Tom Webster’s riddle,” Grey admitted.

  “A key?” Lean asked. “Like what? Something common that anyone might know?”

  “Unlikely. He’s made efforts at concealment elsewhere. The key is apt to be something private
. Something only his family would have access to. I was hoping it might be in the only other document actually handed down from Old Tom.” Grey motioned toward the desk. “It took all manner of promises and veiled threats to get it out of the attorney’s hands, but I did manage to take temporary possession of Thomas Webster’s original bequest of the thunderstone.”

  “Well, that sounds promising.” Lean moved to the desk and glanced down at the old paper.

  “So I hoped,” Grey said. “But I’ve read it two dozen times, and while I spy certain hints and references, I haven’t yet grasped any overarching pattern for the code.” Grey regarded Lean with a quizzical look and added, “Why don’t you give it a read?”

  Lean shrugged and sat down at the desk to get a closer look at the old page without having to touch it. The thunderstone sat beside it. He began to read the handwritten words.

  Grey said, “Tom Webster stuck a line in there about heeding his voice. I think he meant it to be read aloud.”

  “Fair enough.” Lean cleared his throat and glanced at Grey, who was still peering at him. Lean couldn’t help feeling like a caged animal on display, being studied. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Sorry, like what?”

  “Like you’re waiting for me to say something off the mark. I’m only going to read what’s written,” Lean said.

  “Of course, go on,” Grey said.

  Lean couldn’t shake his feeling but went on with the reading anyway.

  “Vary you not from these instructions or else the keepers appointed by me shall reclaim the thunderstone for as many of the earth’s revelation about the Sun as shall be appointed you and until such time as you shall pass into the earth, and then the next generation shall have the right to claim the stone. In no company other than mine own blood shall you let the thunderstone be seen, nor shall its markings be presented in any form to others. To gather in the stone’s meaning will won a soul a treasure beyond conception. Read what has been writ in the earth before you and do not be verse to the teachings of the Lord. I alone should appear true and clear to you, and know my meaning is not to enumerate for you, each time I am seen among other fallacies. One can only find the measure of a man at the ends of his days, and understand that his true nature cannot be the base materials of his bodily wants, the needs of the flesh, what he shall drink and ate, but only what he has stood for. Look not to letters or words other than those of the thunderstone but heed my voice, only then shall you be rewarded, not in my name, nor truly in any human form.”

  Lean stood up and gave a shrug. “Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

  “At first I attributed that to outdated speech and an exaggerated need to sound official. But I’ve begun to think that there’s a method to his madly ineloquent phrasing.” Grey approached and pointed toward the latter part of the document. “He says to ignore letters or words other than those of the thunderstone. That verifies the thunderstone’s seven symbols as the specific words or letters he’s trying to convey.”

  “He says that earlier as well, don’t you think?” Lean asked, and pointed to the middle of the long paragraph. ‘My meaning is not to enumerate for you.’ He’s stressing it’s not numbers he’s after.”

  “Agreed. I was also struck by that sentence. ‘I alone should appear true and clear to you …’ Then the bit about not enumerating anything. Followed by ‘each time I am seen among other fallacies.’ ”

  “What’s he mean? When would Tom Webster appear among fallacies?” Lean asked.

  “I don’t believe he’s referring to himself. Look at the phrasing he chooses. ‘I alone should appear clear and true … each time I am seen among other fallacies.’ ”

  Lean looked at Grey, trying to guess his meaning. Grey nodded in the direction of the floor, where his twenty-four pages of copied symbols still lay arranged in a circle. At first Lean’s eyes were drawn to the most familiar sketch of mercury’s symbol. But after a moment his gaze moved over the other symbols and came to rest upon the only pair that was not unique. Two “I” symbols located adjacent to each other now leaped out, demanding his attention.

  “The ‘I’ symbols,” Lean said. “They’re not to enumerate, not Roman numerals—he’s using them in the sense of a pronoun. They’re the true ones, and the others are the fallacies?”

  “The twenty-four symbols are the code hiding the meaning of the thunderstone’s seven, and yes, the ‘I’ symbols are meant to be the key. Exactly how remains a mystery.”

  Lean read the bequest again, this time to himself.

  “It’d be a hell of a lot easier if the crazy old bastard just came out and talked straight. He can’t even get half his words right.” He noticed that Grey was staring at him again and had reverted back to his earlier quizzical look.

  “What? It’s true,” Lean said. “He mentions the earth’s ‘revelation about the Sun’ and not to be ‘verse to the teachings’ and all that.”

  “Obviously he means ‘revolution’ and ‘averse,’ not ‘verse.’ He, for one”—Grey stared at Lean—“has the good sense not to be distracted by poetry.”

  “Thank God,” Lean declared. “With prose that bad, I’d hate the thought of him writing in verse. I can only imagine …” Lean’s voice trailed off as the look on Grey’s face went from amused to intensely focused. “It’s happened, hasn’t it? What you were expecting before, when you asked me to read. I said something—”

  “Brilliantly asinine,” Grey completed the sentence for him.

  “Off the mark, is how I was going to say it.” Lean’s tone was offended, but he couldn’t completely stifle a smirk.

  “Poetry indeed!” Grey grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil from the desktop. “We may just have it! Look on the page: Find all the instances where he misused a word.”

  Lean stood shoulder to shoulder with Grey and scanned the page. “Well, he says ‘revelation’ instead of ‘revolution.’ ”

  Grey finished jotting down that first word even as Lean spoke. He pointed ahead on the page. “He uses ‘won’ when he meant ‘win.’ ”

  “There’s ‘verse’ instead of ‘averse,’ ” Lean said as he watched Grey slide his finger back and forth across the lines of the yellowed page.

  “He says ‘drink and ate’ when he should have said ‘eat.’ ”

  “That looks like all the mistakes.” Lean rolled his hand, almost as if he were working a fishing reel, urging Grey to hurry on. “Read them back.”

  “Revelation, won, verse, ate,” Grey recited with a grin.

  Understanding slapped Lean in the face. “Your Bible! Where’s your Bible?”

  Grey spun half around on the spot, taking in his wide shelves of books all at once. “Not here. I left it at my grandfather’s.”

  “What? The clue you’ve been waiting for—‘Don’t be verse to the Lord’s teachings’—and you don’t have a stinking copy of the Bible?”

  Grey snapped his fingers, the look of defeat on his face giving way to hope. “Mrs. Philbrick.”

  The two men practically tripped over each other racing out of the room and down the stairs, arriving in a crescendo of thumps at the landlady’s threshold. Grey pounded on the door, and they burst in as soon as she turned the knob. Lean managed an apology as both men stormed through the room, looking high and low for anything resembling a book.

  “Your copy of the Bible, Mrs. Philbrick?” Grey demanded.

  The landlady stood in the center of the front room wearing a troubled expression, very much confused by this turn of events.

  “Please,” Lean said in as calm a tone as he could, “we’re really quite desperate to get our hands on a Bible.”

  She retreated back to what Lean guessed was her bedroom and emerged with the black-covered book outstretched. She eyed the two detectives with a hint of disapproval. “Can’t say I’m surprised it’s come to this.”

  Grey snatched the book from her and mumbled something that might have been appreciative in nature. He flipped it open towa
rd the rear and began turning pages with more care as he neared this goal.

  “Book of Revelation, chapter one, verse eight.” He was silent a moment, handed the Good Book to Lean, and strode to the exit

  “ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega …’ ” Lean read.

  He gently handed the book back to Mrs. Philbrick, smiled, and apologized for the inconvenience. He eased her door closed behind him and then pounded up the stairs.

  Grey was already kneeling on the floor near the chalkboard, frantically rotating his circle of symbol-covered pages. Lean approached and saw that when facing the chalkboard and looking down at the circle, one of the “I” symbols now sat in the twelve-o’clock position.

  Grey seized the thunderstone from his desk and handed it to Lean, whom he directed to the center of the circle of symbols arrayed on the floor.

  “The code is in the Greek alphabet after all. The two ‘I’ symbols are the alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The one on the right represents the alpha. The next symbol is the letter beta and so on until the circle is complete and the last symbol, the other ‘I,’ stands for omega. So start with the first symbol on the thunderstone, which according to Leadbetter should be the element lead.” Grey pointed out the figure. “Match it to the position of the identical lead symbol in our circle of twenty-four.”

  “Done,” Lean said as he rotated slightly to his right and counted off. “If ‘I’ is the first spot, then lead is the symbol located in the ninth spot in the circle.”

  “The ninth letter of the Greek alphabet is iota. Next.”

  Lean turned the thunderstone in his hand to the second marking, found the corresponding symbol for tin among the papers on the floor, and counted off its numerical position.

  “The second symbol, tin, is located in the thirteenth spot.”

  Grey ran the Greek alphabet through his head, announced it as nu, and wrote that letter down on the chalkboard. They repeated the process until all seven of the thunderstone’s symbols were compared to the positions of the twenty-four symbols in the circle and the corresponding Greek letters determined, falling in spots nine, thirteen, five, twenty-one, fifteen, three, and seven.