Constantine Capers: The Pennington Perplexity by Natalie Brianne (new ebook reader TXT) 📕

analyzed either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. The smugglers weren’t at the butcher shop when the police arrived. They made a clean break. Lastly, I believe that I mentioned that we should check over the scene of the crime again. I was looking over my notes of the objects in the bedroom and realized that I had completely overlooked something.”

“You had?”

“Yes. Blotting paper. He had a desk, writing utensils, and paper. It’s only logical that he would have blotting paper as well. He may have written something before he died. We need to check that.”

He stood and grabbed his satchel, placing his journal into it and then headed for the door.

“Are you coming?” he said over his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She stood and followed him out the door.

The landlord let them in without any trouble once they got to Pennington’s place.

“You’re lucky,” Doyle said. “I’m having the cleaners come in tomorrow. The police have given me permission to, and I’d like to get it back on the market as soon as possible.”

Byron nodded to him and took the key. “Lucky indeed.” He then led the way up the stairs and into the rooms themselves. Another layer of dust had joined the first and nothing had been disturbed. Byron looked around a bit before finding the bedroom. He went to the desk and opened the drawer. After rummaging through a few papers, he pulled out a piece of blotting paper with several marks on it. It looked as if Pennington reused it several times. Byron smiled.

“We’ll just have to decipher this.”

He rummaged a bit more and retrieved a piece of wafer-thin paper used for tracing. Then he took a pen and the pad of paper and sat on the bed. He gestured for Mira to take a seat next to him, which she did.

“Mira, have you ever used tracing paper before?”

“Several times. It’s convenient for copying drawings.”

“It is also useful when you want to reverse something. These words are backwards because when you blot a letter, it bleeds onto the blotting paper in reverse. So, if we simply trace it…” He took the tracing paper and placed it over the blotting paper and began to trace the backward remains of the words on the page. She watched him work meticulously. Some words seemed to be incomplete as if the ink had already dried on the original page. When he was done, he flipped the transparent paper over, and they could read it normally.

“Brilliant.” She looked from the paper up to him. He grinned.

“Now we only have to decipher what might have been written, seeing as there are several different letters that must have been written using this.”

He took the pad of paper and wrote every word that was seen in the order they appeared on the blotting page. He turned it as he needed to see new sets of words.

March 11, Vaporidge, it, attention, company, blueprints, “true”, police, 30, anon.

March 14, Vaporidge, identity, risk, money, box, post, details, agreed, anon

April 18, increase, stipend, pounds, oblige, police, evidence, anon.

June 6, last, increase, 70, continue, post, late, anon.

He looked at it for a few moments then handed the pad of paper over to Mira.

“What do you take from this?”

She read over each word a couple of times. “Well, we are missing most of the letters.”

“But?”

“We have dates that correspond with things. The first two letters might be to Vaporidge or about it. Something about police and blueprints, maybe. We already know that he found the smuggling hold. He may have been asking Vaporidge about it. Saying that it wasn’t in the blueprints and that he thought he would let them know.”

“That could be a possible answer. Continue.”

“I thought you were the detective?”

“I like listening to your deductions while I’m formulating mine.”

She nodded and continued. “Every single one of these has a date and ‘anon’ in them. The date at the beginning, the ‘anon’ at the end, which means he must have signed each of the letters anonymously.”

“Very good. Since he signed them anonymously, he doesn’t want Vaporidge, or whoever it is that he is writing to, to know who he is,” he said.

“Alright then. I bet Vaporidge asked him in the next letter who he was, since identity is in the next letter. He might have written that he won’t tell them his identity.”

“Now what is in common between the second and third letters Mira?”

“Both mention something about money, but don’t have any numbers. The first and fourth have numbers.” She pointed to each in turn.

“Excellent. Now here is something to consider. The second letter was sent shortly before his influx of money to the bank, meaning they could be connected.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mira, he was blackmailing them.”

“He was?”

“Yes. He found the secret compartment, figured out what it was, and must have made some sort of blueprint of it. Then he threatened the airship company, telling them that they needed to pay him or else he would go to the police.”

“There’s our motive for murder!”

“But we still don’t know who did it. I would say one of your smuggler friends, but they’ve fled their resting spot for now. They’ll be lying low for a while, I would bet.”

“He must have quit his job thinking he could live off the income of the blackmail, and since he wasn’t even helping them anymore, well…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“They killed him. Yes, I think you pegged it perfectly.” He stood up, placing the stationary he used into his satchel. “We should probably inform the chief inspector of the new developments.”

“Byron?”

“Yes?”

“If he had blueprints of the way the airship actually was, where are they?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, wouldn’t they have been found?” she said. Byron paused for a moment deep in thought. Then he pulled out his journal and flipped through it.

“I think I remember reading about some sort of cache.”

“In the piano, Byron.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.” He closed his journal and went to the piano, moving the glass