Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79253 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Alissa plays a few notes, her lips twisting at the tinny sound that comes out. “Not much, but you’re right. It’ll do. Can you hand me the music box?”
Bianca hands it to her, along with a piece of scratch paper and a pen.
She winds up the key and listens through the tune once more. She jots some notes down. She listens to it a few more times, each time writing a few more notes down. After five listens total, she shows us what she’s written, her lips pursed.
She sighs. “I’m afraid it’s nonsense. Maybe it’s just a broken music box. The cylinder is off-kilter or something.”
“Hold up,” I say. “That first word could be ‘ace,’ couldn’t it? Maybe it’s referring to me?”
“I don’t think so,” Alissa says. “The word ‘ace’ can be easily written in regular notation, since E is a musical note. It would be more obvious.”
I rub at my forehead. “Right. And this music box was in my car before I dressed as the Ace of Clubs, anyway. So it can’t be referring to that.”
“How are you sure some of the wrong notes are connected?” Bianca asks. “I see you put hyphens between some of them.”
“There is a measure of correct music between each set of wrong notes,” Alissa says. “If it is indeed a message—which, based on this, seems like a lost cause—it denotes three separate words.”
I stroke my chin. “Okay, but that composer you like. Shosta-heiney.”
Alissa chuckles. “Shostakovich.”
“You said he used the German system to spell out his initials, right? The notes he uses in that code are D, S, C, and H. But S and H aren’t notes on the musical scale.”
“Not in our system, no.” She strokes her chin. “In the German system, the note we call B is H, and the note we call E-flat is Es, because the flat is an S in German instead of the little symbol we have that resembles a lower-case B.”
“Okay, so what if the first four notes at the beginning of the tune, the ones that indicate the Shosta-whatsit motif, mean that we’re supposed to use that system?”
“Worth a try,” Alissa says. She rewrites the notes again, this time replacing the B’s with H’s and the E-flat with an S.
She shakes her head. “Still nothing.”
Bianca wrinkles her nose. “Well, he had the word ‘head’ followed by ‘HS.’”
“Head… High School?” I suggest. “Like a principal?”
“Still doesn’t explain what on earth the first few words could mean.” Alissa bites her lip. “And does a high-school principal have anything to do with what we’re doing? Have you met anybody who matches that description?”
“No.” I pace a few steps. “Damn it. Maybe this is a dead end.”
“Hold on.” Bianca touches her finger to her eyebrow. “I think we’re on to something. We just have to think harder.” She closes her eyes. “Whoever planted this in your trunk probably thought we were close to figuring out what Rouge is up to.”
I nod. “The cooler of hearts.” Then a lightbulb. “Wait! The last word. Could it be ‘hearts?’”
Alissa widens her eyes. “Oh my God. The tenth symphony. How could I be so stupid?”
“What about the tenth symphony?” I ask.
“It’s the same symphony that Shostakovich uses his DSCH motif in. There’s another musical code in the third movement. A code honoring a fellow composer, Elmira Nazirova, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. He likely had a romantic interest in her. The theme he wrote around her name and the DSCH motif tangle with each other throughout the movement.”
Bianca blinks. “But that name can’t be spelled out with musical notes, either.”
“Precisely. Shostakovich combined German and Italian notation to write her name out. The notes as we know them spell out E-A-E-D-A. But the Italians don’t use letters for notes. They use the solfège syllables, like in The Sound of Music.” She sings the scale. “Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do. C is Do, D is Re, and so on. Combining the Italian and German notation, the musical theme spells out E-La-Mi-Re-A, which is much closer to Elmira’s name.”
“And this woman has to do with our code because…?” I ask.
“Because we can replace the D and the second H—formerly a B—in the last word of the puzzle with an R for Re and a T for Ti, spelling out the word ‘hearts.’” She erases the letters and presents us with the newest version of our code.
“All right!” Bianca says. “We have the last word.”
“I think we do,” Alissa says. “Unfortunately, the first two words are still nonsense, I’m afraid.”
I pace the room. “Do you think this was trying to tell us about the hearts we were going to find? An extra push in the right direction? If so, it’s a little late. We already found them on our own.”
Bianca sighs. “That could be the case… But it still doesn’t explain the first few words. I don’t see how they could be twisted around to say something like ‘find the hearts in the ladies’ restroom.’”