Page 66 of The Art of Theft
For a moment Livia looked as if she might argue further, but then she came forward, took the code from Charlotte, and sat down on the spare chair.
Charlotte put a kettle in the grate. “Some tea?”
Livia looked up. “You must be missing hot cocoa. That’s what you prefer for long winter nights, isn’t it?”
“I miss hot cocoa with a burning passion,” Charlotte sighed. “Every time I approach Maximum Tolerable Chins, I make solemn resolutions to be more moderate in my cake intake. And then a year passes and I’m at Maximum Tolerable Chins again.”
This made Livia chortle.
She had a lovely laugh, but she didn’t laugh very often. Maybe, Charlotte thought, her sister would laugh more if Mr. Marbleton were a permanent part of her life.
“Did you want to speak to me about something?” Charlotte asked.
Livia nodded, sliding her fingertips along the edge of Charlotte’s desk.
Charlotte waited.
After a few seconds, Livia said, “I’m almost done with my Sherlock Holmes story—and I’m stuck.”
“Stuck in what way?” Charlotte was not familiar with the process by which fiction was produced, but she understood it to be closer to handicraft than to manufacturing and might not turn out as specified.
“In a strange way.” Livia bit her lower lip. “I was making decent progress until I realized that I had much less to write than I thoughtI did, only a few thousand words left. Almost immediately I couldn’t write anymore. I knew exactly what I wanted the next sentence to say. And the next paragraph. But somehow putting pen to paper became impossible. I kept jumping up from my chair. I couldn’t do anything useful at all.
“I thought that was an anomaly. I thought it was just a fit of nerves. But I haven’t been able to write since either. Granted, that was the day you and Mrs. Watson came back and said you needed to go to France and we’d had plenty to do since. But I hadn’t beenthatbusy that I couldn’t have written a single word. Just now I sat for a while with Bernadine and didn’t make any progress. I sat for a while in my own room and still didn’t make any progress.”
Livia pressed her fingers against her temples. “I’ve been in worse surroundings, worse moods, worse company, and I’ve managed to write. I would think that maybe Mrs. Watson’s house doesn’t agree with me, except I wrote just fine here after I came, before I realized that I was near ‘the end.’”
The kettle whistled. Charlotte put two cups of tea to steep and asked, “What would have happened had you finished your story?”
Livia looked at her in puzzlement. “I... would have finished it?”
“When Mr. Marbleton called on me to deliver the letter you wanted forged in his mother’s handwriting, he told me, with great delight and even greater details, of his meetings with you during his family’s visit to ours. I believe, when the two of you went for a walk, you promised him he would be the first to read your finished story.”
Livia’s jaw dropped. “You think I don’t want him to read my story?”
Charlotte tilted her head. “I think you would be ecstatic if he loved your story and devastated if he didn’t. If I didn’t like your story, you would still be crestfallen, but you would be able to tell yourself that we have very different taste in fiction. That, in fact, I have no taste for fiction at all.
“But Mr. Marbleton is a reader of fiction. And he enjoys the same books you do. If he didn’t like it, you wouldn’t know what to tell yourself.”
Livia picked up her teacup and held it with both hands. “What should I do then?”
“Do you like your story?”
“I...”
“Don’t think about everything that needs improvement. Do youlikeyour story?”
Livia breathed in and out heavily, almost as if she were panting. “I do.”
“Then you finish it. As much as Mr. Marbleton’s views matter to you, your own should matter still more.”
Livia was silent for some time, looking down into her tea. “Do you think I’ll ever manage that?”
“Maybe,” said Charlotte, “but only after a great deal of practice.”
Livia snorted. Charlotte allowed herself a small smile. “Now come help me with the code.”
?Around midnight Livia asked whether the code should be interpreted as numbers, rather than letters. Charlotte had always kept that in mind as a possibility, but numbers presented the same problem as letters: too many possibilities, and too many paths to nonsense. Not to mention, in Morse code, some digits were represented by four or more consecutive dots or dashes, but the cipher did not feature any such easily noticeable strings.
