Chapter 3

Sherlock and Watson must solve a complex code to understand the mystery.

“Maybe we should look back at that other paper to see if that code has anything to do with it,” suggested Watson, “it might give us a clue as to what the key goes to.”  “Very well,” replied Sherlock as he looked over the page, “let’s see here, the letters are “YMJ PJD TUJSX YMJ HQTHP”, the question is, what kind of code would a businessman use?  Obviously nothing overly complex, after all, he is just a businessman, not a scientist, so that helps narrow things down a bit.”  “Well,” said Watson, “what are some possibilities for the code?”  “I am glad you asked,” replied Sherlock, “it could be some kind of random cipher, in which you replace each particular letter with a random one, and follow that code throughout the code, or it could be a Caesar cipher, which I find the more likely of the two because of its simplicity.  It would be an easy thing for most anyone to create a Caesar cipher, and there are only 25 possible combinations for one, so it is not that hard to figure one out.”  “But how can you be sure?” asked Watson.  “Well, take a good look at the letters, what letters do you notice are repeated the most?” replied Sherlock.  “Well,” said Watson, “The letter ‘J’ is repeated the most, followed by ‘T’, ‘M’, and ‘H’.”  “Precisely,” said Sherlock, and the one of the most common letters is ‘E’, so it could be represented by a ‘J’.  The others are a little more difficult, but not impossible, if you notice, the combination of ‘YMJ’ appears twice, which would imply the same word twice, and what is one of the more commonly used 3-letter words?”  “Why,” replied Watson, “I would say the word ‘the’ would be a fairly common one.”  Exactly!” exclaimed Sherlock, “so we have deciphered that ‘YMJ’ is ‘THE’, from there we can decode the entire thing just from those three letters!”  As he spoke, he rewrote the code, replacing the letters Y, M, and J with ‘THE’ as well as the individual letters.  The partially decoded cipher was as follows: “THE PED TUESX THE HQTHP”.  

  “Now we are getting somewhere,” said Sherlock as he began pacing and rubbing his hands together, “now, the next letter that appears often is ‘H’, and it appears twice in the same word, judging from that, we can deduce that it is a ‘C’, which would change the word to ‘CQTCP’.”  “But Sherlock,” said Watson, “how do you know it is a letter ‘C’?”  “Quite simply,” replied Sherlock, “no other letter could start a word and appear again 3 letters after in a 5 letter word other than a ‘C’ without having two of the same letter between them, which this code does not have, therefore, it is a ‘C’.”  “Where do you get all of this?” asked Watson.  “I have devoted some study to the deciphering of codes, as well as created some of my own,” replied Sherlock “now, the letter ‘P’ occurs twice, so we can assume that it is a consonant, which narrows things down a bit, and we already know that it is followed by an ‘E’ in one word and ends the other.  What do you gather from that, Watson?”  “Not much, to be honest,” replied Watson, “it is all very mysterious to me, I’m afraid.”  

    “Nonsense,” exclaimed Sherlock, “this is a mere exercise for the mind!  To change tracks for a moment, look at the ‘D’ at the end of the second word, now, it appears only once, so it must represent a less common letter, it could be ‘Q’, ‘X’, ‘Y’, or ‘Z’, which are some of the least common.  It makes the most sense for it to be a ‘Y’, however, which would make the ‘P’ stand for a ‘K’.  The letters would now be: “THE KEY TUESX THE CQTCK.”  “So the code makes a reference to the key!” exclaimed Watson, “That means we are on the right trail!”  “Exactly,” replied Sherlock, “and now for the rest of the code, which is now very simple.  The ‘T’ stands for the letter ‘O’, which makes the last word ‘CLOCK’, and the third one is now ‘OUESX’.  This word can only be the word ‘OPENS’, so our code reads ‘THE KEY OPENS THE CLOCK’.”   

  At this, Sherlock grabbed the first key and went straight to the grandfather clock in the living room.  It was over 7 feet tall, and was over 75 years old, but well taken care of.  It was made out of maple wood, and had been recently stained, so it looked much newer than it was.  After looking over the clock, Sherlock pulled out the key and put it into the lock on the clock’s cupboard and gave a quick twist to unlock it. The door creaked open slowly to reveal....nothing.  Upon seeing the empty cupboard, Sherlock looked most disturbed and crestfallen, “It makes no sense, why make a code leading to an empty cupboard?” asked Sherlock, to no one in particular.  He began pacing back and forth, deep in thought, and muttering under his breath, until at last he stopped and rushed back to the cupboard.  “There must be something we missed,” he said, “but we must look harder until we find it!”  He looked all around inside, and then reached up to the top of the cavity in the clock.  “Aha!” he exclaimed, as he withdrew a piece of paper which had been taped to the inside of the cupboard out of sight.  “This is more like it!”  He quickly unfolded the paper, and read the message aloud, “Retrace your steps, and you will know the terrible truth.”  “Well,” said Watson, “this is a strange case indeed, what kind of terrible truth could he be talking about?”  “Elementary, John.” Sherlock replied shortly, “He could only be referring to information that led to his own death.  Now, to retrace our steps, we have been upstairs, nothing out of the ordinary, we have been in every bedroom, and we have been here, in the living room.  That leaves the front porch, and those front steps.  I knew that there was something unusual about them from the beginning!”  

  Just then, Ms. Cutter entered the room with some tea in hand.  “Have you found anything of any use, Mr. Holmes?” she asked.  “Yes, we are well on our way to solving this grand mystery.” Sherlock replied.  “But I have a couple questions for you, have you been having trouble sleeping the past few nights?”  “Why, yes, I have,” she replied, “but how did you know that?”  “Easily,” he replied, “your eyes are slightly bloodshot, and you are beginning to show a little discoloration under your eyes, a good bet that you have been deprived of sleep for several nights.  May I ask what has been keeping you from sleeping?”  “Well,” she answered, “the past few nights I have heard an awful banging noise coming from outside, and was too frightened to leave my room to see what it was.”  “Interesting,” said Sherlock, “and did you hear it last night?”  “No,” she replied, “I slept soundly last night, thank goodness.”  “Very good, very good indeed!” exclaimed Sherlock, “I know exactly what that sound was!”  “Please tell me then,” said Ms. Cutter, “I want to know so I can put my mind at ease.”  “Very well then,” said Sherlock, “if you must know, Mr. White was getting up and hiding something under the front steps.  Let’s take a step outside and take a better look at them.”  

    They went outside and Sherlock examined the steps briefly before continuing with his explanation, “He came out here, removed the steps, and hid something back far enough under the porch so that it would not be seen without actually removing the steps.  But, he did not bring a light with him so that he would not be easily observed by any curious eyes.”  “But how can you tell all that?” asked Watson.  “It is quite simple,” replied Sherlock, “notice that the nails are driven in crookedly, and that there are a good many indentations in the wood where the hammer missed the nail entirely, far too many times to say that he was simply not handy with a hammer, no, it was dark and he brought no light with him.”  “That is amazing.” said Ms. Cutter.  “Well then,” said Watson, “why don’t we just pull up the steps and find whatever is under there?”  “A good idea,” said Sherlock, “however, we won’t find anything there.”  “What!” exclaimed Watson, “How can you know that?”  “Look at the steps,” Sherlock answered, “there is a set of holes in the steps, meaning someone else has pulled the steps up and removed whatever was underneath, and this person was also working in the dark, otherwise they would not have been so careless as to put the nails in without reusing the previous holes, this also explains why Ms. Cutter has heard noises on multiple nights, it should only take one night for one to remove the steps and hide something under and put everything back, however, it would be another night for one to remove something.”  “Oh my,” exclaimed Ms. Cutter, “you mean someone has been prowling around the house at night?”  “I am afraid he does.” answered Watson.  “However,” said Sherlock, “this person has no reason to come back here, so you will be perfectly safe.  The real question is, what did this person take, and why was Mr. White trying to hide it?”  “I have no idea,” replied Watson, “it is too bad that clue was a dead end though.”  “On the contrary,” replied Sherlock, “we know that the man who came and took whatever was under there was approximately 6 feet tall, has a confident stride, and wears high quality boots.”  “How can you tell all that?” asked Ms. Cutter.  “By looking at the dirt in the driveway,” replied Sherlock, “you can see the footprints of the boots, and judging from the distance between the steps, it is a safe bet that he is somewhere around 6 feet tall.  You can also tell that he is confident, not hesitant in his approach to the house.”  “Ok, but how does that help us now?” asked Watson.  “I was getting to it,” replied Sherlock, “in his overconfidence, he inadvertently dropped a slip of paper that is under the bottom step.”  Sure enough, under the step was a slip of paper.  “But how did you know that?” asked Watson.  “It was quite simple really, judging from his overconfident approach and from the way the steps were put back in, it was highly likely that he would leave something behind and not realize it.  Now let’s see that paper.”  

Author's Note

Comments and suggestions are welcome and greatly appreciated!

Reviews

[Kimberly Miller]

I enjoyed it! The whole story is very easy to picture and understand. Great job!

[Jeremy Hiles]

Thank you so much! Glad you liked it! I am going to be posting the fourth chapter in the next few days!

[Kimberly Miller]

Although as a writer I like using cliffhangers, I don't like them as a reader, can't wait to move on to your next chapter!

[Jeremy Hiles]

haha, glad that you are really into it! Good thing I have the next chapter up! Enjoy!