“Oh, do allow her, Mr. Elton,” Loretta said.
Mr. Elton gave his consent, Mrs. Elton sat down, and tea was ordered.
As it arrived, Mrs. Knightley and Mr. Dixon entered. The room seemed to brighten immediately, though whether from Thomas Dixon’s warm greeting to the Eltons or the high polish of his top hat, leather boots, and silver-handled walking stick, Elizabeth could not decide.
Mrs. Knightley’s greeting to the Eltons was cooler but gracious. She gestured towards the tea. “Are you having your fortune read?”
“Why, yes! Mr. E. and Miss Jones simply insisted. It is all in sport, of course. Perhaps when we have done, you would like a turn?”
“Not today.”
“I should think you would enjoy the entertainment. It would be a change of pace from the word games that have lately occupied you.” Mrs. Elton forced a smile. “Have you identified the author of that other puzzle you said arrived in the post?”
“No, not yet.”
“How very frustrating. Does not the handwriting offer some clue?”
“It was penned in block letters, which are not very revealing.”
“Well, I should think that Mr. Knightley could determine their writer, if he turned his mind to it.”
Mrs. Knightley managed a polite smile. “Mr. Knightley’s mind has been occupied with weightier matters.”
“Ah, yes — Mr. Churchill’s death. It must indeed weigh upon you both that he died at your house. He was such a good man! Generosity itself towards Frank, and Frank not even Edgar Churchill’s blood son.” She shook her head and sighed. “I grieve for the whole family.”
“I am sure we all do,” Mrs. Knightley said.
“With tragedy such as that surrounding you, I understand why you do not wish to have your fortune told, even for amusement. I would dread to hear that more ill luck awaited me.” She turned to Miss Jones. “Or do you tell only happy fortunes?”
Miss Jones had grown quiet during the exchange between Mrs. Knightley and Mrs. Elton. Elizabeth was hardly surprised. Though their words were perfectly civil, the undercurrent was strong and deep, and no one of sense would have intentionally ventured into those waters unprepared.
“I speak the truth as I see it,” Loretta said.
Mrs. Elton appeared flustered for a moment, but then adopted a bright smile. “What about you, Mr. Dixon? You must have your fortune read!”
Thomas Dixon, who had seemed to be concentrating more intensely on the shabby state of the room’s wallpaper than on the conversation taking place before him, gave a start at Mrs. Elton’s suggestion. His gaze shifted from the Eltons, to Mrs. Knightley, to the Darcys. He barely glanced at Miss Jones. “Thank you, no.”
Elizabeth had expected a gentleman whose life was so wholly given over to idleness and pleasure to have seized the opportunity for a novel form of entertainment.
“Why not, sir?” Loretta challenged him with a bold gaze. “Do you fear what I might reveal?”
Mr. Dixon adjusted the cuffs of his coat and picked an imaginary piece of lint off his left sleeve. “Not at all.”
“Then what is the harm?” Her tone turned teasing. “Perhaps we might learn the name of your true love.”
The very notion seemed to appall him. With a stiff bow, he encouraged the others to enjoy their diversion and told Mrs. Knightley that she would find him waiting outside whenever it pleased her to return to Hartfield.
Elizabeth watched with disappointment as he quit the inn. She had wanted very much to learn that name.
As much as Mr. Dixon apparently wanted to keep it secret.
“She will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.”
— Mrs. Weston to Mr. Knightley, Emma
Emma was beginning to dread the arrival of the post.
Each day brought something more vexing. First the charade. Then the riddle. Now a word puzzle of yet another sort.
GRAL IRNIE DNOMHC
VEIHTTS HTSASE LYE DEVI
EWDEH LL MADE GNO
What vexed her most was not the challenges presented by the puzzles. It was the fact that their continued accumulation rendered it increasingly unlikely that Mrs. Elton had authored all of them.
When the third note arrived, addressed solely to Mr. Knightley, Emma had at first ascribed it to Mrs. Elton along with the others. The infuriating woman had, after all, brought up the subject of the puzzles only the day before, as Miss Jones prepared to tell her fortune. Like the first two, this latest bore a local postmark. But each puzzle had become successively more difficult to decipher; Mr. Knightley and Mr. Darcy still awaited a response regarding the second one from the friend they thought might be of assistance. They were not even entirely certain as to the nature of the third.
“I believe it is a cipher puzzle.” Mr. Darcy cast it back onto the writing table in Mr. Knightley’s study. “Though I cannot begin to guess how we are to determine the key.”
“There may be no method to it at all,” Elizabeth said. “The arrangement could be random — a simple anagram.”
“Not so simple when one is trying to work out the solution.” Mr. Knightley picked up the note and scanned it once more. “If it is indeed an anagram, one cannot form ‘Churchill’ or ‘murder’—there is no U.”
“That is why I favor the cipher,” Darcy replied.
Cipher or anagram, Emma grudgingly conceded to herself that Mrs. Elton could not possibly have created all three word puzzles. The woman was simply not that clever. Which meant that Emma had been wrong.
Emma despised being wrong. Particularly when in the process, her husband was proved right. Emma loved Mr. Knightley beyond expression, felt blessed indeed to be the recipient of not only his affection, but also his wisdom and experience. But she could not help wishing that events would prove her correct on occasion.
As the Darcys deliberated solution tactics, Mr. Knightley noticed Emma’s state of glum contemplation.
“I daresay Mrs. Knightley has more experience with word puzzles than any of us. Last year she and a friend compiled a book of riddles, conundrums, and so forth. Emma, what strategy would you recommend for solving this?”
The question drew her from her brooding. “The original letters could have been systematically rearranged, such as moving the first letter of each word to its end,” she said. “Or they might have been substituted one for one — A becomes B, B becomes C, and so on. I propose that we each copy out the lines and work independently on different methods. Perhaps the gentlemen could attempt to determine a substitution alphabet, while Mrs. Darcy and I experiment with rearranging the existing letters.”
It was agreed. Three copies of the message were made and, equipped with pencils and large sheets of foolscap, all four of them settled down to apply themselves.
Elizabeth, wanting no distractions, retired to the library to work.
As she had in Mr. Knightley’s study, she stared at the message again. This time, however, she thought not of the letters on the page, but of the unknown person who had arranged them.
This was not a conundrum in a book, written to amuse and entertain. It was a communiqué, written to deliver information. The puzzle’s author wanted the message to be deciphered, or he would not have sent it. If his goal was to challenge, not to thwart, the solution might not prove as difficult as they anticipated.