2012/4a.plaintext

   1 My dear Nicholas,
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   3 Your Uncle’s revelation concerning his work on meteorology begins to explain his move into mathematics following the War. I always wondered why he had left the laboratories and factories, but his experience of industry must have soured as he saw the suffering that new inventions were causing on the battlefields. I have no knowledge of the work he subsequently did, and the few people I have asked have been strangely unable, or perhaps reluctant, to tell me anything of value.
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   5 The detective you hired to look into the mysterious figures on the island has contacted me with a report on his investigations. He was able to trace two men who had been making enquiries about your circumstances, but unfortunately they seem to have been alerted to his investigations and left Malta two weeks ago. He has a contact in the shipping company who was able to track their movements via the wireless telegraph, and they disembarked from a commercial ship in Tilbury. At his urging a clerk was assigned to follow them and they were last seen entering a building in Whitehall. I fear that you may be of interest to the government, but I am at a loss to know why. Even having deciphered the fourth section of the will, which again was encrypted using a keyword cipher, it is still not clear how the events of so long ago could pose a risk to you now. On the other hand it is clear that Tiberius did not entirely trust the VERONA agents. I hope that the fifth chapter, which I will leave to you, will begin to explain why.
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   8 Kind regards,
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  10 Charles