Dead Past

Frank.
    Jin handed him the paper, and Frank unrolled the page and examined the letters.
    “This is the code that was in the doll you were telling me about?” asked Frank.
    “Yes,” said Diane.
    “Have you tried other decoding techniques? If it’s not a simple cryptogram, it might be another kind of cipher.”
    “Do you think you can decode it?” said Diane.
    “Don’t know till I try,” said Frank.
    Jin looked more depressed than when the cigarette butts were stolen from him.
    “Jin,” said Neva, “you can’t know everything. Don’t look so glum.”
    “It’s just, I’m really good at codes,” he said. His entire face was turned down in a frown as he watched Frank studying the string of letters on the wrinkled paper.
    “Do you know anything about the guy who wrote it?” asked Frank.
    “A little,” said Diane. She related the story of Leo Parrish, the treasure train, and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.
    “So,” said Frank, “this whole thing may be a hoax.”
    “That’s what I think,” said Jin. “It’s just a string of random letters.”
    “Could be,” said Frank. “You know it’s not a cryptogram because the frequency of occurrence of the letters didn’t lend itself to an answer, right?”
    “No,” said Jin. “Nor does looking at the two- and three-letter words or the endings or beginnings of words. Nothing makes sense.”
    “Then we need to look at another type of encryption method. You say Leo did his thing in the 1930s?”
    “Yes,” said Diane.
    “OK, so it’s not modern. No computer to help him with it. Maybe it’s something popular among coders of his time, like Vigenere’s method,” said Frank. “Where, for example, the cipher letter for e in one word isn’t necessarily the same cipher letter for an e in another word.”
    “Well, you’ve completely lost me,” said Neva.
    “Wow,” said Jin, leaning forward, his eyes now sparkling with interest. “No wonder I couldn’t decipher it. How do you know about this stuff, Frank?”
    “It’s only what he does for a living,” said David.
    “No kidding. I didn’t know that’s what you do,” said Jin.
    “It’s part of what I do,” said Frank. “A lot of cybercrime involves hiding things by use of encryption.”
    “Can you decipher it?” Diane asked.
    “Probably. It will be easier if I have the keyword,” he said.
    “Keyword?” they all said in unison.
    “Several of the early ciphers required a keyword. Even without the keyword, there are other ways it can be deciphered and a good computer program can work it out, but if I have the keyword, I can do it fairly quickly. Are there any possible keywords from this story of yours?”
    “How about a key sentence?” said Diane. “ The making of palimpsests was possible even with papyri. ”
    Frank raised his eyebrows and she explained about the amazing coincidence of hearing that phrase in the library, Juliet’s fear of the word palimpsest and her dramatic reaction to hearing the complete sentence.
    “Well that’s certainly odd,” said Frank.
    David, Neva, and Jin stared at her with their mouths open.
    “Wow,” said Jin again. “We hadn’t heard that story, Boss.”
    “There’s been so much going on lately,” Diane said. She turned back to Frank. “Do you think palimpsest could be the keyword?”
    “Could be. I’ll give it a try. Can I use a computer?” said Frank. “You do have word processing programs on your computers, don’t you?”
    “Of course,” said David.
    He led Frank to his computer and called up Word-Perfect. Frank sat down and started typing.
    David moved an empty chair next to Frank, and Diane sat down. She was feeling a little weak, and her headache was back, but she didn’t want to mention it. David probably guessed, she thought. Frank reached over and squeezed her hand. He probably senses my weakness too, damn it.
    Frank made a grid twenty-seven by twenty-six. On the top row he keyed in each letter of the alphabet in lowercase. Under the a in the first column, he repeated the alphabet starting with an uppercase B and putting the uppercase A on the bottom of the column after Z . He did the same thing in the next column—under the lowercase b he put an uppercase C and put the uppercase A and B at the bottom of the column after Z . Each successive uppercase alphabet was shifted one letter with respect to the previous column.
    “This is called a Vigenere square,” said Frank when he finished. “The lowercase letters