Wednesday 12 February 2014

VI: To Tynemouth

The next day dawns crisp and sharp and you meet at the station, heading towards Tynemouth along the banks of the Tyne. Tynemouth itself is quite a genteel, well-healed village that is on the very mouth of the river where it meets the North Sea. It has a ruined abbey and various monuments as well as traditional English seaside resort-type attractions.

On the train, with plenty of time to do it, Brindleton attempts to finagle the diary he found open. He manages to do so without breaking it. However the pages are filled with strange pencil scratchings - triangles and other geometric shapes, with dots and lines. It's clearly been written in code.

Any research conducted in the library at The Grey Society has not revealed a great deal about Kabbalah. However, it does reveal that there is way of representing the tree of life as having 11 Sephira rather than 10. The 11th Sephirot is "Da'at", which unites all the others and represents the "divine light". It is not often shown because it cannot be seen by everybody - only those it is revealed to through their self-giving qualities.

First, you stroll to the quays at North Shields, trying to look for Arabic-speaking sailors. Sure enough, there is exactly such a "rest home" as Brindleton postulated - a slightly ramshackle old church that has been converted into a flop house for sailors.


13 comments:

  1. Hodgkiss wonders if he can take a crack at the code, if a moment presents itself. In his sophomore novel, "Bentley and the Bloody Beacon," there was a series of ciphers that he had based on actual encoding methods. While he did not bore the reader with the details he still knows a few things.

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    1. He can tell it's a good code. Presumably the symbols represent letters, but he would have to go through a long and laborious process to decipher it even assuming he could. (Do you have any applicable skill on your character sheet?)

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    2. Mind 5 and Logic 3; also Deduction 2.
      Presumably some reasonable guesses could be made. If it is a substitution code then there are still 26 letters to compare and spot patterns for. If it is in English then Hodgkiss could focus on short words and look for patterns/make guesses. Also looking for similar patterns in suffixes/prefixes and so on.

      (Hodgkiss has little success in courting, and so has looked at many disciplines to occupy his time)

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    3. let's blueprint the diary so we can return it quickly.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueprint
      ...easy to set up at home, I wouldn't be surprised if someone of wide interests like Hodgkiss had everything necessary.

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  2. We ask some sailors what it says, quietly offering a day's pay as reward

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    1. Okay. You have no difficulty in doing that. There is a sailor from East Africa somewhere who is literate in Arabic. He tells you his name is Amin. He is about 40, with yellow teeth, nails and irises, but seems normal enough, with decent English. He says that the Arabic phrases are both the same, and read 'Umr at-Tawil. He says it means something like, "The one with a very prolonged life" or "the most prolonged life".

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    2. "Kaballah, Arabic, living in France... who is this painter, the Wandering Jew?"

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. So. Brindleton is going to telegraph to his contacts in London and ask if they know anything about this Defernex - does he know anyone in the art scene? (possibly - collectors or members of the Royal Academy)
    Also, exactly how long has the young lady been entranced by the painting already?

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    1. You didn't ask, I don't think. As with the telegraph you sent about the stolen books, it'll take a while for you to get a reply - could be a day or two, and you'll have to do it at a post office in Tynemouth and get the reply there. But consider it done nonetheless!

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  5. I feel like we should get to the painter ASAP

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    1. Kitson intends to visit this 'Admiral Nelson' at the Tynemouth Circle (the one who originally recommended Defernex) and question him. He asks Claspington to come with him.

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    2. That's coming up next. Watch this space.

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