“Meaning?” asked Saitou-san.
“Meaning they discuss the weather, charity balls, dinner parties, and Abigail Rockefeller’s idle artistic contributions to the sisters of St. Rose Convent’s annual Christmas fund-raiser,” Gabriella said. “They give no direct instruction for finding the lyre.”
“We’ve put all our hope into Abigail Rockefeller,” Bruno said. “What if we’ve been wrong?”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Mother Innocenta’s role in these exchanges,” Gabriella said, glancing at Verlaine. “She was known as a woman of remarkable subtlety, and she could persuade others in the art of subtlety as well.”
Verlaine sat silently examining the cards. Finally he stood, took a folder from his messenger bag, and placed four letters on the table next to the cards. The fifth letter remained at the convent, where Evangeline had left it. “These are Innocenta’s letters,” he said, smiling sheepishly at Evangeline, as if even now she judged him for stealing them from the Rockefeller Archive. He placed Rockefeller’s cards and Innocenta’s letters side by side in chronological order. In quick succession he extracted four of Rockefeller’s cards and, putting them before him, studied each cover. Evangeline was perplexed by Verlaine’s actions, and she only became more so when he began to smile as if something in the cards amused him. At last he said, “I think Mrs. Rockefeller was even more clever than we have given her credit for.”
“I’m sorry,” Saitou-san said, leaning over the cards, “but I don’t understand how the letters convey a thing.”
“Let me show you,” Verlaine said. “Everything is here in the cards. This is the correspondence in chronological order. Because of the absence of overt directions about the lyre’s location, we can assume the content of Rockefeller’s half of the correspondence is null, a kind of white space upon which Innocenta’s responses project meaning. As I pointed out to Gabriella this morning, there is a recurring pattern in Innocenta’s letters. In four of them, she comments upon the nature of some kind of design that Abigail Rockefeller has included in her correspondence. I see now,” Verlaine concluded, gesturing to Mrs. Rockefeller’s cards on the table before him, “that Innocenta was commenting specifically on these four pieces of stationery.”
“Read these remarks to us, Verlaine,” Gabriella said.
Verlaine picked up Innocenta’s letters and read aloud the sentences that praised Abigail Rockefeller’s artistic taste, repeating the passages he had read to Gabriella that morning.
“At first I believed Innocenta was refering to drawings, perhaps even original artworks included in the letters, which would have been the find of a century for a scholar of modern art like myself. But realistically, the inclusion of such designs would have been highly unlike Mrs. Rockefeller. She was a collector and lover of art, not an artist in her own right.”
Verlaine pulled four creamy cards from the progression of papers and distributed them to the angelologists.
“These are the four cards Innocenta admired,” he said.
Evangeline examined the card Verlaine had given her. She saw it had been stamped by an inked plate that left a remarkably fine rendering of two antique lyres held in the hands of twin cherubs. The cards were pleasing to look at and very much in keeping with a woman of Abigail Rockefeller’s taste, but Evangeline saw nothing that would unlock the mystery before them.
“Look closely at the twin cherubs,” Verlaine said. “Notice the composition of the lyres.”
The angelologists peered at the cards, exchanging them so that they could see each one in turn.
Finally, after some examination, Vladimir said, “There is an anomaly in the prints. The lyres are different on each card.”
“Yes,” Bruno said. “The number of strings on the left lyre varies from the number on the right.”
Evangeline saw her grandmother examine her card and, as if she had begun to understand Verlaine’s point, smile. “Evangeline,” Gabriella said. “How many strings do you count on each of the lyres?”
Evangeline looked more closely at her card and saw that Vladimir and Bruno were correct-the strings were different on each lyre-although it struck her as an oddity in the cards rather than anything of serious consequence. “Two and eight,” Evangeline said, “but what does it mean?”
Verlaine took a pencil from his pocket and, in barely legible lead, wrote numbers below the lyres. He passed the pencil around and asked the others to do the same.
“It seems to me that we are making much of a highly unrealistic rendition of a musical instrument,” Vladimir said dismissively.
“The number of strings on each lyre must have been a method of coding information,” Gabriella said.
Verlaine collected the cards from Evangeline, Saitou-san, Vladimir, and Bruno. “Here you have them: twenty-eight, thirty-eight, thirty, and thirty-nine. In that order. If I’m right, these numbers come together to give the location of the lyre.”
Evangeline stared at Verlaine, wondering if she’d missed something. To her the numbers appeared to be utterly meaningless. “You believe that these numbers give an address?”
“Not directly,” Verlaine said, “but there might be something in the sequence that points to an address.”
“Or coordinates on a map,” Saitou-san suggested.
“But where?” Vladimir said, his brow furrowing as he thought of the possibilities. “There are hundreds of thousands of addresses in New York City.”
“This is where I’m stumped,” Verlaine said. “Obviously these numbers must have been extremely important to Abigail Rockefeller, but there is no way to know how they’re to be used.”
“What sort of information could be conveyed in eight numbers?” Saitou-san asked, as if running the possibilities through her mind.
“Or, possibly, four two-digit numbers,” Bruno said, clearly amused by the dubiousness of the exercise.
“And all the numbers are between twenty and forty,” Vladimir offered.
“There must be more in the cards,” Saitou-san said. “These numbers are too random.”
“To most people,” Gabriella said, “this would seem random. To Abigail Rockefeller, however, these numbers must have formed a logical order.”
“Where did the Rockefellers live?” Evangeline asked Verlaine, knowing that this was his area of expertise. “Perhaps these numbers point to their address.”
“They lived at a few different addresses in New York City,” Verlaine said. “But their West Fifty-fourth Street residence is known best. Eventually Abigail Rockefeller donated the site to the Museum of Modern Art.”
“Fifty-four is not one of our numbers,” Bruno said.
“Wait a moment,” Verlaine said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see this before. The Museum of Modern Art was one of Abigail Rockefeller’s most important endeavors. It was also one of the first in a series of public museums and monuments that she and her husband funded. The Museum of Modern Art was opened in 1928.”
“Twenty-eight is the first number from the cards,” Gabriella said.
“Exactly,” Verlaine said, his excitement growing. “The numbers two and eight from the lyre etching could point to this address.”
“If that is the case,” Evangeline said, “there would have to be three other locations that match the three other lyre renderings.”
“What are the remaining numbers?” Bruno asked.
“Three and eight, three and zero, and three and nine,” Saitou-san replied.
Gabriella leaned closer to Verlaine. “Is it possible,” she said, “that there is a correspondence?”
Verlaine’s expression was one of intense concentration. “Actually,” he said at last. “The Cloisters, which was John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s great love, opened in 1938.”