'Hmm. Not the Caesar cipher,' he muttered to himself. 'No vowels at all. Probably substituted numerals. Wonder why? A substitution cipher, indeed. Must count frequencies…'
He reached out blindly for a piece of blank paper, found a silver pencil in his coat, and began taking notes to his own dictation. For now, he had moved to another world. Hoare did not want to bring him back from it. He scribbled a message that told Watt that he was to sleep at the Swallowed Anchor that night and tiptoed out of the room.
On his way to Jaggery's lair, he decided to make a detour, view the body of Peregrine Kingsley, late second lieutenant in Vantage, and question the newly widowed Katerina Hay.
Hoare was pleased to find that the corpse had yet to be released to the man's relatives-whoever they were. The attendant made no trouble but promptly pointed Kingsley out from among Portsmouth's other recent naval casualties.
'Ball went into the head, like you can see, sir,' the man said. 'Stopped there, though. Surgeon took 'er out.'
Gladden had been mistaken in this detail, then. This was evident to Hoare from the coarse trephining work that had completed the destruction of the late licentious lieutenant's beauty.
'Where's the bullet?' Hoare asked.
In answer, the attendant rummaged about in a drawer underneath the cadaver. ' 'Ere,' he said at last, handing it to Hoare.
'I'll want this,' Hoare whispered.
The bullet, he saw, bore small slightly canted ridges. It was a rifle bullet, then. If so, it could have been fired from a considerable distance. Furthermore, the killing had been done at night. Thus, he thought, the murderer had to have been no mean marksman.
'You'll 'ave to give me a paper, then,' the attendant said.
Hoare sighed but wrote two notes, one to himself, identifying the bullet as being what it was, and one to the attendant. Each signed one note. Pocketing his grisly prize, Hoare tipped the man sixpence and went his way.
Captain Hay's relict had not yet moved from the apartment she had shared with her late husband on the second story of the Three Suns Inn. Hoare had seldom patronized the Three Suns; it catered to flag officers and post captains at the top of the list. Even Captain Hay must have been lucky in his prize money, if he could support an extensive stay there.
That the three gilded spheres of the Medici crest that overhung the inn's portal also served to identify pawnbroking establishments apparently troubled the proprietors of the Three Suns not at all. Their establishment was too exalted for any confusion. Hoare would not have been at all surprised to find Sir Thomas Frobisher in residence. It was his sort of place.
The doorkeeper of the Three Suns made it clear that his masters discouraged the presence of officers below the rank of commander except on Admiralty business.
'You will either admit me forthwith and have me announced to Mrs. Hay,' Hoare said at last, 'or suffer the loss of your protection, be pressed, and go to sea again. You have five seconds in which to make your choice.'
He had several impressive-looking, meaningless documents stuffed in his uniform pocket for occasions like this. He drew one of them out and pulled out a silver-cased pencil.
'One. Two…'
The porter fled. 'Mrs. Hay will receive you,' he said humbly when he reappeared. 'This way, please.'
Though he had never been introduced, Hoare had seen Mrs. Adam Hay-Katerina Hay-on stage several times. She was a skilled performer, of near-professional quality. Her acting was a trifle florid for Hoare's taste, but she was a favorite among the serving officers. Since she greeted him standing in the middle of the inn's second-best drawing room, Hoare made her his second-best leg.
Katerina Hay was big, blonde and Dutch. As she stood there in tasteful mourning, her opulent lines reminded Hoare of Oranienboom, the two-decker from which he had once fled incontinently. He had been first in Staghound, 36, then, and it was just before the day his voice had been taken from him. She looked just as dangerous.
'Please accept my condolences, ma'am, on your tragic loss,' he whispered.
'You need not whisp-oh! Of course. You're Admiral Hardcastle's 'Whispering Ferret!' ' Mrs. Hay lost all trace of her formidable mien. As it did on the stage, her accent lent piquancy to her voice. 'Sit down, sir, I pray!' With massive grace, she seated herself at one end of a chaise longue and gestured for him to take his place beside her. 'Thank you for your good wishes, Mr. Hoare. But let us come to the point, for you must be a busy man with this inquiry of yours.' She smiled at him knowingly. 'Oh, yes. After your success with Amazon, it would be obvious-no? — for dear Sir George to direct you onto the murder of my husband.'
Taken full aback, Hoare could only laugh.
Katerina Hay laughed back. 'Did anyone ever tell you, sir? Your laugh sounds like a will-o'-the-wisp in one of our Zee-land bogs. So. What do you wish to ask me?'
'I believe-forgive me-that your husband was aware of your relationship with the late Lieutenant Peregrine Kingsley.'
Katerina Hay laughed again-somewhat scornfully, Hoare thought. 'Of course he was 'aware,' sir. Indeed, he more or less approved of it.'
Then, if the husband of Kingsley's mistress already knew of the affair, what had been Kingsley's motive in killing him?
'Do not look shocked, Mr. Hoare,' Katerina Hay went on. 'My husband and I remained fond of each other. But Adam had long since become incapable, and I… I am a full-blooded woman.'
Had she moved an inch or two along the chaise?
'Then that explains the reference in this letter to 'he' or 'his.' You knew your husband would know whom you referred to.'
'Exactly, Mr. Hoare. My husband may have condoned my placing horns upon him, so long as no open scandal ensued. But he, and I, would have drawn the line at my consorting with a traitor.'
'Then it might follow,' Hoare said, 'that Kingsley killed your husband, not because he feared discovery as your… er…'
'Cicisbeo, Mr. Hoare. Lover.'
'Yes… but because of the cipher he allowed you to find.'
'Exactly I was foolish myself, perhaps, and must take some of the guilt for poor Adam's death, for I told Peregrine Kingsley what I had done with the message, and gave him his conge on the spot. I was right to do so, nie?'
With this question in her native tongue, Mrs. Hay definitely edged closer.
The bunch of Grapes, where Hoare knew he would either find Jaggery himself or learn of his whereabouts, was a known haunt of men who lived on the wrong side of the law. Yet it was not the filthy, dark lair a stranger would therefore expect. It did not reek of bad gin, used beer, or stale tobacco. It was full of neither drunks nor drabs, and none of the occupants were bedraggled. The small smugglers, illegal tradesmen, master crooked craftsmen, and other well-behaved criminals of Jaggery's sort had better taste than to frequent a den and enough money to support that taste.
So the Bunch of Grapes was a tidy if slightly battered place, well lit and smelling faintly of good ale. The only occupants Hoare could see were several groups of what looked like respectable workingmen and a small party of young sprigs.
The occupants all looked up when they saw an officer enter, then returned to talking-one quartet, quite openly, about last week's raid of the revenue men on a well-traveled smuggler's route. They seemed to think a rival gang had ratted on them.
'They better not start anything with us,' one said. 'We'll sort 'em out like we did last time.'
'Wasn't us as done it,' said a tidy man at another table. 'Must have been Ackerley's boys stung 'em out.'
'They didn't do no such thing,' said Jaggery, whom Hoare now sighted in a corner, accompanied by a very small, wan girl child with enormous black eyes that seemed to look him through and through. 'I 'appen to know.'
The child caught the man's attention with a yank on his sleeve. Upon sight of Hoare, his eyes went wide.
