‘And how if you look at something differently, you can work out how it was made…’ Fen pushed herself out of the armchair and held her finger up. ‘Hold that thought…’ She went to the wall between the windows and unhooked the small Impressionist painting from where it had been rehung on the wall.
‘Good thing I bought it for Simone…’ James’s voice almost cracked when he mentioned her name, and Fen squeezed his shoulder as she passed by him on the way back to her chair, painting in hand.
‘I saw Rose once, correcting its position on the wall.’ Fen felt around the edges of the painting where the brown backing paper was loosely taped to the frame. ‘Aha…’ She picked a corner of the framer’s tape free and carefully unpeeled it from the frame and backing paper. ‘That was easy,’ she told the others, ‘perhaps a little too easy. I think this tape has been removed and restuck more than once.’
Fen held the painting up and tipped it on its side so that anything hiding within would fall out from the untaped edge. And, sure enough, there appeared on her lap an envelope. Fen carefully put the painting down beside her chair and held the envelope up for the others to see.
‘Go on then, open it.’
Fen quickly opened the envelope to find two discs of card within it.
‘What is it?’ Magda asked. Fen handed them to her and she passed them onto Joseph, who saw what they had seen: just two circles of brown card, one slightly smaller than the other, both with the alphabet listed around the edge of the circles.
‘One of the circles has the alphabet in the right order…’ Joseph noticed.
‘… And one will be in random order.’ James completed his sentence. He held his hand out and Joseph passed the discs to him. He looked at them and smiled to himself then told the others what he was thinking. ‘This is a classic Alberti cipher.’
‘Alberti?’ Fen questioned.
‘Leon Battista Alberti. A Renaissance architect. You should know that from your art lessons, Fen.’ He looked up at her and she was pleased to finally see something of a twinkle in his eye.
‘Of course,’ Fen shook her head. ‘How apt for an artist to use a cipher created by another artist.’
‘He designed Santa Maria Novella in Florence,’ Magda offered, but Joseph shushed her gently and asked James to carry on.
‘He did indeed, Magda,’ James agreed with her. ‘He was also a linguist and cryptographer. We had a short cryptography lesson during our SOE training. The smaller disc sits on the larger one – easy enough to see how that works. Each letter on the disc then translates to one on the other one. The only problem is knowing where to place the smaller disc, which letter is the key.’
‘Well, we know that.’ Fen blurted out and got up again and fetched the Cezanne painting from where it had been sitting since the Bernheims had gratefully received it. ‘Here, look. We know that EWJGZWON spells Bernheim. So you just have to spin it around to match B on the normal alphabet circle to E on the random one.’
James did just that and, sure enough, each letter of Bernheim matched up with the code chalked on the back of the painting.
‘You’ve done it!’ Joseph almost jumped up, but his wife’s leg on his lap curtailed his celebrations. Instead, he clapped his hands together, but his excitement was infectious and soon all four of them were laughing and clapping, just so pleased to have finally found the cipher and have broken the code.
A few minutes later and they had decoded EWJWGYUG, which was chalked quite faintly on the base of the statuette, to Berenson, and then worked out that the Rensteins had owned the Matisse and Signac.
‘She always said the Impressionists were the best puzzlers all right,’ Fen remarked, holding the cipher in her hand. ‘But I think Rose might have been right up there with the best puzzlers of the lot!’
Epilogue
Hotel de Lille, Paris
October 1945
Dear Kitty (and Mrs B & Dilys),
Your letter cheered me up no end, thank you! I must say, Paris hasn’t been quite as expected, what with Rose’s murder and James being devastated by the fact that he was growing rather attached to the murderess. I’ll tell you all about it when I’m home, if an invitation stands to come and bed down with you three at the farm?
I just wish James could have such good friends as I have to help him through his grief at the moment. Thank you for looking into his family circs for me, I had no inkling that he’d been through so much. Well, that’s not true – I had an inkling… he said he’d lost someone special when I first met him and told him about Arthur, and just recently he was so quick to throw his lot in with the first pretty girl who showed an interest. Finding out she was a cold-blooded killer – and double agent! – was a bit of blow for the poor chap. I think I’m starting to understand him now; he’s noble all right, and not just in a born-with-a-silver-spoon type way. I’ll keep an eye out for him, though; it’s what Arthur would have wanted.
Good luck with the winter beet, ladies, and don’t let Mr Travers name a cow after me like he did last time. One Fenella the Friesian is quite enough! Oh, and Kitty, here’s one more clue to keep you busy til I see you again. This flower floated up, we hear (4). Hint: I think she’s looking down on me now and hopefully laughing through her cigarette smoke.
Much love,
Fen xx
Fen sealed the envelope up and put it to one side, ready to take down to reception. James had, indeed, been very generous in stumping up the cost of a room for Fen, who felt it wasn’t right to lodge with Joseph and Magda, even though they’d offered.
