Nelle's wife was named Stephanie. He shook his head. No clue. Just a final salutation from husband to wife.
Now he wasn't so sure.
He'd decided that leaving the note with the body would ensure a determination of suicide. So he'd grabbed hold of the rope, pulled the corpse back up, and stuffed the paper into Nelle's shirt pocket.
But had the words really been a clue?
"On the night Nelle died, he told me that he solved the cryptogram and offered me this." He grabbed a pencil from the table and wrote GOODBYE STEPHANIE on a pad.
"How's that a solution?" Claridon asked.
"I don't know. I never even thought it was, until this moment. If what you're saying is true, that the journal contains intentional errors, then we were meant to find it. I searched for that journal while Lars Nelle was alive, then after with the son. But Mark Nelle kept it locked away. Then when the son turned up here, at the abbey, I learned he was carrying the journal with him in the avalanche. The master took possession of it and kept it under lock until just a few weeks ago." He thought back to Cassiopeia Vitt's apparent misstep in Avignon. Now he knew it was no mistake. "You're right. The journal's worthless. We were meant to have it." He pointed to the pad. "But maybe these two words have meaning."
"Or maybe they're more misdirection?"
Which was possible.
Claridon studied them with clear interest. "What precisely did Lars say when he gave you this?"
He told him exactly, ending with, "A clue to help you along. If you're smart, you might even solve the puzzle."
"I recall something Lars mentioned to me once." Claridon searched the tabletop until he found some folded papers. "These are the notes I made in Avignon from Stublein's book concerning Marie d'Hautpoul's gravestone. Look here." Claridon pointed to a series of Roman numerals. MDCOLXXXI. "This was carved into the stone and is supposedly her date of death. 1681. And that's discounting the O, since there is no such Roman numeral. But Marie died in 1781, not 1681. And her age is in error, too. She was sixty-eight, not sixty-seven, as noted, when she died." Claridon gripped the pencil and wrote 1681, 67, and GOODBYE STEPHANIE on the pad. "Notice anything?"
He stared at the writing. Nothing stood out, but he was never good with puzzles.
"You have to think like a man in the eighteenth century. Bigou was the person who created the gravestone. The solution would be simple in one respect, but difficult in another because of endless possibilities. Break up the date 1681 into two numbers-16 and 81. One plus six equals seven. Eight plus one equals nine. Seven, nine. Then look at sixty-seven. You can't invert the seven, but the six becomes a nine when turned over. So, seven, nine again. Count the letters in what Lars wrote to you. Seven for GOODBYE. Nine for STEPHANIE. I think he did leave you a clue."
"Open the journal to the cryptogram and try."
Claridon leafed through the pages and found the drawing.
"There are several possibilities. Seven, nine. Nine, seven. Sixteen. One, six. Six, one. I'll start with the most obvious. Seven, nine."
He watched as Claridon counted across the rows of letters and symbols, stopping at the seventh, then the ninth, jotting down the character displayed. When he finished, there appeared ITEGOARCANADEI.
"It's Latin," he said, seeing the words. "I tego arcana dei." He translated. "I conceal the secrets of God."
Damn.
"That journal is useless," he yelled. "Nelle planted his own puzzle."
But another thought surged through his brain. The marshal's report. It, too, had contained a cryptogram, one obtained from the abbe Gelis. One supposedly solved by the abbe. One the marshal had noted was identical to the one Sauniere found.
He must have it.
"There's another drawing in one of the books Mark Nelle has."
Claridon's eyes were aflame. "I assume you're going to get it."
"When the sun rises."