17 Chapter 17

Matty often wondered how long Arthur had been investigating this. Was it something he’d come across during his time in London? He’d gone from Oxford to work at the Evening Trumpeterwhen he’d gone down in 1897. He had travelled abroad to cover the war in the Sudan. He’d been to Afghanistan to write about the Pathans for the same paper. “Perhaps he picked up the brown book in India,” he mused, out loud. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? A lot of the notes are about that area.”

“Perhaps,” Rob agreed. “I’m not sure it matters, though. Look at this.” He pointed to an untidy page of writing on the flyleaf at the back of the book, scratched in pencil. It contrasted sharply with the reasonably neat pages of the rest of the notebook. He recognised the hand as the one filling the second half of the book. “Here, look, it’s a translation of the cypher.”

“I thought you said it was Trench Code,” Matty asked.