“Would mine do?” asked Crosetti. “My PC, not my squads of ladies.”
“Yes, if networked to others, which can be done. There are numbers of people in the world who like cracking ciphers for amusement and they will let one borrow computer cycles they are not using, late at night for example, and is always late at night somewheres. I can set this up if you like. Also, we are fortunate this is cipher from the year 1610.”
“Why so?”
“Because there are many less, many fewer, printed texts that could be used as running key source. In fact, taking what your mother has informed me of the character of these people, I would venture that the text is almost certainly the English Bible. So, shall we begin?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Is there objection?”
“Well, it’s kind of late,” said Crosetti.
“Does not matter. I sleep very little.”
Mary Peg said, “I’ve offered Radeslaw Patty’s old room.”
Crosetti finished his vodka and suppressed the usual shudder. He stood up and said, “Well, you seem to have arranged everything, Mom. I guess I’ll just go to bed.”
In the morning, Crosetti woke not to the buzz of his alarm but to the brisk knock and then the vigorous shoulder shaking of his mother. He blinked at her. “What?”
“You have to read this.” She rustled the New York Times at him, opened at the pages devoted to local crime, corruption, and celebrity.
English Professor Found Murdered in Columbia Faculty Housing
This headline brought him up to full wakefulness. He rubbed the blur from his eyes and read the article, then read it again. It was a short one, the police being their usual closemouthed selves, but the reporter had used the word torture, and that was enough to start Crosetti’s belly fluttering.
“Call Patty,” he said.
“I already did,” said Mary Peg, “but I got voice mail. She’ll call back. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look great. He disappears right after I sell him the manuscript, he’s probably in England for a couple of months, maybe with Carolyn, maybe not, and then he comes back here and someone tortures him to death. Maybe the play manuscript really exists and he found out where it was and someone found out he knew and tortured him to get him to give it up.”
“Albert, that’s a movie. Things like that don’t happen to English professors in real life.”
“Then why was he tortured and killed? Not for his ATM password.”
“Maybe the mother of another silly boy he cheated took her revenge. From what we know about his character, he may have been mixed up in any number of sleazy deals.”
“Mom, believe me, movie or not, that’s what went down. I need to get up.”
This was the signal for his mother to leave, and she did. Crosetti in the shower found his thoughts floating back to Rolly and the plot of his movie and the possibility that she could actually be the villainess of the piece, Brigid O’Shaughnessy as played by Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon. His mother was wrong. Not only was life like a movie, movies were why life was like it was. Movies taught people how to behave, how to be a man, how to be a woman, what was funny and what was horrid. The people who made them had no idea of this, they were just trying to make money, but it was so.
And here they were in the Falcon, his next favorite after Chinatown, which was essentially a reimagining of the same movie, updated for the ’70s, and why did he like movies about bad girls? Bonnie and Clyde, naturally, and La Femme Nikita and dozens more. He wondered what part he was playing, the dead Miles Archer, or the dead sea captain in the backstory, or Sam Spade. You killed Miles and you’re going over for it. And, I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over. He had nearly the whole script by heart and now he said those lines to the showerhead with the Bogart hissing lisp and wondered whether, if it ever came to it, he could send Carolyn Rolly over, if she’d really helped kill Bulstrode. Or maybe he would be her sap. The mere imagination of it made his heart race. He turned the temperature of the water down a notch and let it run onto his heated face.
THE FIRST CIPHERED LETTER
My Lord It has now passed two weekes and some daies since I left your howse and have had passing success as I heere shal tell. Upon a Friday I left my lodging at the Vine in Bishopsgate in company with Mr Wales, who hath lain with mee all this tyme & a sore tryall hath it been, he beyng a verey coxcombe cracking sot & oft hazarded the safetie of oure enterpryse with hys hintes & vauntes in tap-room. Oft have I had to carrie hym to oure chamber with a buffett & threat; but when sober is craven & doth then as hee is bid under menace. Whilst not in cuppes, he hath instructed me divers popish tricks and sayinges as they doe in theyre masses & superstitious shewes, so that at need I may pass for one of theyre number.
Of the lodgeres heere the greater parte be drovers & some plaiers; of these last, half of them demi-papists & the rest plain damned atheists, scarce a Christian man among them. Soe we stride down Bishopsgate, hym pale & asweat from drinke & wants to stop heere & about for more sacke, but I doe prevent hym saying mind on oure business Mr Wales & I see feare well-marked in his face. Soe we arrive at the Swan in Leadenhalle Street where he saies W.S. frequently lieth. Mr Wales saies his fancie is to take roomes here and about, when he is not being tabled at some greate house. Formerly he dwelt near Silver Street but no longer & formerly he went every day to the Globe or Black-Friers play-howse but now he withdraweth som from those stewes as he hath grown rich off it, the bawd. A low company at the Swan, players punks decoy-gamesters & other rogues & Waley inquiring of the tapster is told Mr W.S. is up-stayres in a leased chamber, his habit seemingly to lay there the morning at his papers. So Waley do send a wench up to say there is a kinsman of his to see hym: which wase mee. Soon comes he in the room a man scannt-bearded a middling height bald-pated a little fat in a good doublet dead-spaniard coloured & hath the looke of a mercer. Mr Waley doth make us acquainted, Will Shakespur here is your cosen of Warwick, Dick Bracegirdle.
Saith he then it must be through your mother we are cosens for never was there such a name in Warwickshire & I say yes my mother was Arden born. At that he smyles & clapps me upon my backe & carries me to the table & calls for my pleasoure & the pot-boy bringeth us ale, but Mr Waley calls for canary though he wast not asked & calls some varlets he knows & a trull over & proffers them from his jack of wine. Now W.S. speakes me direct but I can not make out a word in three that he sayes, so strange are his accentes; seeing this he makes a halt saying thou wast not Warwick-bred & I say nay but born in London and passed my youth in Titchfield & he says he hast been oft at Titchfield a-visiting my lord of Southhampton & this he says in as plain a Hampshire voice as could have ben mine uncle Matthew, which amaz’d me much. But after I bethought me, he hath ben a playere, ’tis his arte to ape the speache of anie man.
Next we spake of our families and found that his dam was bred ancientlie from Sir Walter Arden of Park Hall as soe wase mine but his hath descent through Thomas that gentlemans eldest son not Richard as mine was & this contenteth hym much & I tell howe my grand-sire wase hanged for papistrie but they sayde traisoun & hee looketh grave sayinge aye mine nuncle was served soe in the olde quenes tyme. Soe wee further converse, hym demanding of me my storie & I tell hym it pretty much in truth, of my lyfe as a boy and prentice in the foundrie, & of the grete gonnes & the Dutch warres; nor have I ne’er met a man so content to heare another man out in fulle; for men chiefly love to tell of them selves & paint them selves out in finer colours than wast in lyfe; but hym not. Herein I spake but the trewth for Mr Piggott saith if wouldst tell a grete lye, guard it close with a thousand trew tales, so that it shalbe passed amongst theyre number. Bye now Mr Wales hath drunk a pint & more of beste canary & wase drunk withal & commenced to rail at W.S. sayinge he hath not employment these manie weekes with players less skilled than he uzed in his roome & W.S. saith nay, hath not Mr Burbadge manie tymes warned thee? If thou attend the play-house as full o’canary as yon butt so you stumble and misremember your lines thou shalt lose thy place; and thou hast soe done; and thou hast indeed lost place, as wase promised; & I can do naught for thee, but here’s an angelet for thee thou wast a goode Portia once. Yet Mr Wales spurns the coin; saith he, thou vain scut Ile see thee hangd & broke & e’en nowe are the snares set for thee that will & then I kick him in his ankle-bone & he cry out & draw or tries to & I serve hym a blow on’s heade with a stone-jack & down goes he in blodd. Now those friends he lately wined make to start affray with me & I stand to draw but W.S. calls sacke & safron cakes for the table & speakes so sweetlie & jestinglie to these low fellowes that they are assuaged & he has a wench & pot-boy to carry off Mr Wales to a settle & payeth alle & then he carries me out of that place saying let us goe to a more quiet howse for I wishe to speake further with thee.