Patterns, they’d said. Always look for patterns. The pattern she saw here was repeated notes, with half rests separating some, whole rests others. Different words? Different letters? The whole rest separated the word, she thought. The half rest might have divided multiples of the same notes into separate letters.
She nodded to herself. Suddenly feeling a little less lost, she pulled a sheet of foolscap from the little red lacquer escritoire that sat beneath her window. Finally, something that felt familiar.
If the notes stood for letters, there couldn’t be a one-to-one substitution. There simply weren’t enough letters in music. Only A to G. Which meant the rest would have to simply be a repetition of the first seven.
She laid out a grid.
A B C D E F G
H I J K L M N
O P Q R S T U
V X Y Z
If she was right, then the translation would be as easy as using that top line in repetition to identify other letters. O would be AAA. N would be GG. Working off her grid, she worked through the first page, separating the letters into words according to the rests.
As she suspected, it wasn’t enough. She sat back and considered. Her repeated letters, which should have translated into something recognizable, didn’t.
dddcfff?ffgfff became RQTMUT
ddddg? gaagg became ZUUHGG
Hmm, she thought, considering her patterns.What was it Bucky had said? He needed the list. And he needed the locket.
The locket.
Suddenly she was grinning. Of course. Every code needed a key, and he’d been looking for it. And if the locket meant anything, the key was G. As in the musical key of G.
But how did it fit? The key signature of the music was in B, but all transposing it to G would do would be to remove two sharps. It wouldn’t change the letters.
B. G.
B, C, D, E, F, G. Five steps. Could it be that simple? Just transpose the letters up five steps?
She shook her head. Bless poor Bucky. He was a good musician. He was a far less proficient code maker. She bent back to her work with a will. But instead of translating the notes as she had, she raised the notes by five. An A became an F. B became G. She transposed again.
Nothing.
It should have fit. The key was G. It had to be. She sat for a moment and looked at her grid. Then she laid her letters out on a treble clef, as if teaching music. That was when she saw that she had another option. G was five steps above B. It was also two stepsbelowB. Two steps down.
And there it was.
dddcfff?ffgfff became PARKER.
ddddg? gaagg became WEEMS.
She smiled to herself, a hunter spotting the prey peeking through the brush. And for a moment, she was back in school, trying to smother her giggles so the headmistress wouldn’t know what she and the other girls were up after lights out in order to outwit the staff.
* * *
By the time she finished, the hour was late. She thought of sneaking down to Flint’s room to share her results, but decided against it. They were safe in this lovely old house for the moment. And for just a few more hours, she would like to pretend that the last name she had translated had not been Lassiter. That Mary would grow up in peace and safety.
Looking down at the fourteen names she had translated, some of which belonged to girls she had shared classrooms with, she considered that just perhaps it was a good thing she had no name but the one she had created for herself. She wouldn’t have to face a betrayal from her own family.
Tucking her papers under her pillow, she changed into her threadbare old cotton night rail and blew out the candles. She was exhausted and knew she would have to rise in just a few hours, but she still found sleep long in coming. She couldn’t stop thinking of the reception she would get from Flint when she showed him her work.
* * *
