Secrets

Chapter 20

"Why would someone send me music?" the young musician pondered as she paced back and forth in her dormitory room.

The three sheets of paper lay on her desk, shifting slightly in the draft of her open window. She had left her friends in such a strange manner because she sensed that there was something more to this mysterious package. She knew that there was a meaning behind its sudden appearance. It also did not make sense that whoever had sent it, did not leave a name or a return address.

"It's not like any song I've seen before..." She picked up one of the papers and squinted at the bars of music very carefully. "It could be an original song for me."

It was even stranger that Vice-Principal Nero didn't keep the sheet music to himself considering his obsession with playing an instrument he knew nothing about. There were also very many notes squeezed into each bar, which perhaps could be considered too advanced or complicated for the arrogant violinist. It was also likely that he preferred to write his own music and gain the credit for doing so than playing someone else's song.

She took up the proper position and attempted to play a seemingly long and complicated song.

However, she realized something extremely important after playing the first few bars.

"None of these notes make sense!" Holly gasped to herself. It's as though a lightbulb went off in her head and her mood shifted to astonishment and intrigue. She placed her violin down and took out a notepad and pencil from her desk drawer. She squinted very carefully and found that under each note was a letter, some were in the standard chords of music, and others were not. She couldn't believe that she hadn't noticed it before. As she began writing the letters out, they formed a message!

Instantly she was reminded of when Klaus told her about what happened at their Aunt Josephine's house. She had written a suicide note and then jumped out the window but the voracious reader had noticed the grammatical errors, something very important to their guardian, and realized that the errors formed a message, about where their aunt was truly hiding. Sadly, Count Olaf still managed to murder her, but the way the middle Baudelaire described the rush and intrigue of solving a mystery; time seemed to stop and nothing else mattered than decoding the message. He said that it was extremely exhilarating and also a relief that their Aunt Josephine wasn't deceased... at least temporarily.

Holly had begun to feel the same thing as her heart pounded and the world around her seemed to melt into nothing. Time slowed to a crawl as she wrote out every letter under each musical note carefully and double-checked to ensure they were correct. She then drew spaces between groups of letters when they formed proper words. She then looks at her notepad to read the message that she had decoded. Her mind wondered if this was from her father and he was telling her the location of where they could meet up. He always seemed to have a habit of hiding many secrets from her, something that she wanted to stop immediately. Or perhaps it held answers to her many questions about the mysteries in her life.

Once she had finished grouping the words, she took a step back and began to read this coded message. What secrets would be revealed to her?

To H.S.,

I apologize immensely for the coding of this message, but I had to ensure that incompetent or enemy eyes, two things that are often mutually exclusive in such situations, could not decipher this. However, I knew that if you were as clever as your mother, you would recognize the inconsistencies in the notes and know that there was more to this. This message is coming to you at a time that I know is extremely painful for you. I do hope that this letter reaches you on the appropriate date.

Holly paused and checked her calendar. Her emotions darkened as the grief of losing her mother re-emerged; the second thing that would make her wake up in a grumpy and sad mood. Today was the anniversary of her mother's death. 9 years to that exact day she had become half an orphan as Carmelita had so cruelly described many times before.