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Maddock held up the wax paper envelope. If Wainwright had the forethought to put the message inside a protective envelope, it wasn’t something he had written on the spur of the moment. It was possible the killer had interrupted Wainwright while he was planting the clue.
“Where did you get that?” Bones asked.
“Wainwright left it for me.” He explained about the message the old scholar had left for him, how it brought him under suspicion, and how it had led him to look under the bust of Wolfe Tone.
Inside the envelope was a square of paper. He unfolded it to reveal a series of handwritten letters. They didn’t spell anything.
“It’s written in code.” Maddock held out the paper for Bones to see.
“Do you think that’s what Wainwright’s killer was looking for?”
Maddock shrugged. “Could be. There’s more. Doyle said a woman with black hair and purple eyes was lurking around the campus last night.”
“It couldn’t be Lark,” Bones said.
“Who is Lark?” James asked. “An old girlfriend?”
Maddock frowned. They had been speaking softly. The young man had the ears of a guard dog.
“Not his girlfriend, but close,” Bones said.
“She’s someone who has caused problems for us in the past,” Maddock said. Lark was an agent of a group called the Tuatha de Danann. Deriving their name from a legendary race of magical beings said to have once inhabited Ireland, the Tuatha were a quasi-religious terrorist organization that used the language, symbols and relics of paganism and ancient history to further their aims in the same way modern fascists used the trappings of Judeo-Christianity. Maddock had once been taken in by one of their members, had even cared for her, but she had betrayed him. Since then, he and Bones had subsequent run-ins with members of the group, including Lark.
“Also, we saw her die,” Bones said.
James nodded thoughtfully as if what Bones had said made perfect sense to him. “A revenant. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of them. My nan told me a revenant tried to seduce a wealthy Englishwoman a few years back.”
“He reminds me of Orla,” Bones whispered. “Just a touch of eccentricity.”
They looked over the cipher. It was an odd feeling, looking at something written in Wainwright’s familiar scrawl, knowing the man was gone.
“Wainwright loved ciphers and puzzles. I’ll bet he wrote this from memory.”
“And he believed you could decipher it?” Bones said.
“Apparently.” Maddock grinned. “I know you’re pretty good at these, but it might speed things along if we brought in a specialist.”
“What time is it in D.C. right now?” Bones asked, a knowing grin on his face.
“It doesn’t matter. You know he is going to give us crap no matter what time we call.” He took out his phone and punched up the contact information for Jimmy Letson.
Jimmy was an old friend. He had served in the Navy along with Maddock and Bones but had rung out of SEAL training. He had since gone on to a successful career in journalism. On the side, he was an accomplished hacker who regularly helped Maddock and Bones on their searches.
“Calling for another favor?” Jimmy’s voice blared through the speakerphone.
“We could text you instead,” Bones said. “But then you couldn’t guilt trip us as easily.”
Maddock quickly filled their friend in on the day’s events. He then forwarded Jimmy a photo of the clue.
“Best guess is a Vigenère Cipher,” Jimmy said after taking a look at Wainwright’s message.
“That means we need a keyword to decode it,” Bones said. “If the note was intended for Maddock, it must be something he would be able to guess based on their interactions.”
Maddock thought about Wainwright. It seemed an impossible task. They had corresponded on a wide variety of topics. It had to be something big, something obvious.
“The closest we ever worked with Wainwright was searching for the Lost City of Z,” Bones said.
“Following the path of his ancestor Percy Fawcett,” Maddock said. “A heritage Wainwright is quite proud of. “Jimmy, try ‘Fawcett’,” Maddock said.
A few seconds of silence ensued.
“Wrong,” Jimmy said.
“Really?” Maddock blinked. He had been certain he was right.
“What’s wrong? Not as smart as you think you are?”
“That’s why we need you, my friend,” Maddock said.
“How about Trinity, for the college?” Bones said. “That’s where you guys planned to meet.”
Jimmy tried it. “Strike two.”
Maddock looked again at the paper. He noticed for the first time that Wainwright had drawn a tiny shape in the bottom right corner.
“What does this look like to you?” He asked Bones.
“A shamrock. But that’s eight letters. Clover? No, that’s no good.”
Maddock considered other possibilities. The shamrock was a symbol strongly associated with Saint Patrick.
“Try Patrick,” Maddock said.
Tapping of keys at the other end, and then Jimmy let out a whoop of triumph.
“We have a winner! I’ll send you the deciphered message. And don’t forget pick me up a bottle of Scotch before you head home.”
“We’re in Dublin. It will have to be Irish Whiskey.”
“Make it two bottles, then.” With that, Jimmy ended the call. He considered social niceties a waste of his time. Maddock found that endearing.
Jimmy’s message came through a few seconds later. Maddock read it and frowned.
“What does it say?” Bones asked.
“He scratches his pimples and watches over Mary, the keeper of the key.” He looked at Bones. “Keys and pimples. Any idea?”
“Nothing springs to mind.”
“Mary could refer to the Blessed Mother,” James called back.
“Maybe there’s a painting or mosaic of Mary? In a church or museum?” Bones offered. “Somewhere pimply teenagers would go, maybe on a class trip?”
“Only about, I don’t know, a thousand,” James said. “This is Dublin, after all.”
“James is right. It’s too broad to be the Mary of the Bible. My gut tells me Wainwright left something for us in the care of a person named Mary,” Maddock said.
“Mary who is being watched over by a guy scratching his pimples.” Bones tugged at his ponytail, deep in thought. “That’s a very specific phrase and the message was intended for you. It’s got to be code for something you would know.”
Maddock frowned. There was something about the phrase... a memory just out of reach. And then it came to him. He let out a laugh!
“It’s James Joyce!” he said.
“The writer?” Bones asked.
“Lately, when Wainwright emails me, he comments on what he’s reading. It’s always something out of the blue, almost a non-sequitur, but it’s usually something pithy.
Maddock opened the email app on his phone and searched for the quote. “Virginia Woolf called Ulysses, “The work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
“That’s harsh,” Bones said.
“There is a statue of James Joyce only a few minutes from here,” James suggested. “I could drop you off nearby and give you directions.”
“It’s worth a try,” Maddock said.
“Fine,” Bones said. “The sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can get back to touring distilleries.”
