The Intrigue at Highbury

“I do not — I am simply trying to comprehend the message. You have not yet convinced me that it is from Mrs. Elton. What has she to gain by sending such a note?”

“The satisfaction of vexing me.”

“Then do not give her that satisfaction,” Mr. Knightley said. “Let us consider this more objectively. The message arrived addressed to both of us, on the day following an attempt on Frank Churchill’s life. The first note, you say, arrived yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“So, two days after Edgar died. And it was addressed solely to you?”

Emma nodded.

“What did it say?”

“It was a charade. The solution was ‘hopeless.’ ”

“Unfortunately, that could just as easily refer to our investigation. What made you believe the note was from Mrs. Elton?”

“The penmanship appeared to be hers. And she and I are… having a bit of a disagreement.”

Mr. Knightley regarded her suspiciously. “On what matter?”

She hesitated. “Mrs. Elton is quite put out by my recent attention to Miss Bates.”

“I see. So put out that she was inspired to write verse on the subject?”

To avoid his gaze — and her increasing self-doubt — Emma once more studied the sentence. This time she took particular note of the penmanship. Though she did not have yesterday’s charade at hand for comparison, it appeared to her that these block letters were larger, scribed in bolder strokes than Mrs. Elton’s feminine script. “Perhaps someone else did write it,” she conceded.

“The letter bears a local postmark, and Highbury is a small village,” Mr. Darcy said. “Would not the postmaster recall who brought it to the post office?”

Emma laughed. “We can ask him, but I doubt he will be able to enlighten us. Mr. Fletcher is a man of rather advanced years, as deaf as Mrs. Bates and even more prone to nodding off in his chair. People leave letters on the counter all the time rather than disturb his naps. Jane Fairfax managed to conduct a secret correspondence with Frank Churchill all last winter and spring without anybody in the village being the wiser.”

“I am afraid my wife is correct in her description of the postmaster,” Mr. Knightley said. “I will visit him tomorrow, but we are more likely to determine this note’s author through our own deduction.”

“Might the author be the ‘unkind individual’?” Emma offered.

“Unkind persons generally do not recognize that failing in themselves,” Mrs. Darcy said. “If this was written by someone in attendance at either party, it most likely refers to one of the other guests.”

“The writer went to this much trouble to advise us that someone unkind was among the company? One need look no further than Mrs. Elton to know that.”

“Your dislike of the vicar’s wife is blinding you, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley. “I believe Mrs. Elton is neither the composer of this message, nor the person the author wishes to bring to our attention.”

“You spoke with every guest following both parties,” Emma said, “and most of them are people you have known for years. Of all the individuals present, who is more unkind than Mrs. Elton?”

“The person bent on killing the Churchills.”

Emma was silent. Despite the mounting evidence that Edgar Churchill’s death was no accident, and Frank’s indisposition no coincidence, she did not want to believe that a murderer roamed Highbury. She cast about for some better explanation, one that would not involve such appalling suspicions about so many persons of her acquaintance.

“I think our anonymous correspondent wants us to know that the unkind individual was one of the guests,” Mr. Knightley said more gently. “The poisoner was at the party.”

Twenty-Two

Mr. Elton had retreated… looking (Emma trusted) very foolish. She did not think he was quite so hardened as his wife, though growing very like her.

— Emma

The following day saw an excursion to the vicarage, contender for the title Elevated Religious House.

Elizabeth found it neither elevated nor particularly religious. It sat in a low spot at the end of Vicarage Lane, rising only by virtue of its being the only two-story domicile on the road, and the one in best repair. It must be approached by passing several lesser dwellings exhibiting various degrees of deterioration and equally assorted shabbily clothed children spilling out of them in search of more entertaining occupation than could be had by assisting their mothers within. At present, these fair innocents found diversion in watching three crows compete for the choicest parts of an unfortunate creature that looked to have once been a squirrel.

Elizabeth and Mrs. Knightley left the children — and the crows — to their amusement and continued towards the vicarage. They were on a scavenging errand of their own.

Mrs. Knightley was determined to prove Mrs. Elton the author of the two enigmatic messages, her motive malice, and their meaning mundane. Elizabeth hoped to induce the vicar’s wife to betray more knowledge of the poisonings than Darcy and Mr. Knightley had been able to draw out of her, and that perhaps she herself did not realize she possessed.

“Let us hope she is at home.” Mrs. Knightley lifted the knocker, a heavy, ornate piece of ironwork more suited to a mansion than a clergyman’s abode. “I would just as soon not have to return.”

Seen up close, the vicarage boasted more age than beauty; its architecture was uninspired, and it sat so near to the road that the windowed front parlor might have staged theatricals for passers-by. Within, for all of Mrs. Elton’s obvious effort, the house lacked the charm of even Harriet Martin’s smaller cottage. While the sitting room of Abbey Mill Farm was crowded with objects meant to welcome and comfort, the vicarage parlor, where the housekeeper left them to await Mrs. Elton, was crowded by objects meant to impress. In their abundance, the impression they made was one of overweening pride, that most deadly sin of all.

Mrs. Elton greeted their arrival with no small amount of surprise. Elizabeth gathered that Mrs. Knightley was not a frequent visitor.

“Mrs. Knightley. Mrs. Darcy. I was just departing to call at Randalls.”

“Then we shall not keep you long,” Mrs. Knightley said.

“I want to assure Jane that I do not hold her to account for her husband’s recent comportment, howsoever it might have embarrassed me,” Mrs. Elton continued. “I understand now that Frank Churchill was feeling indisposed. Poor man! And yet he would come to my little gathering, with no concern for his own discomfort, so as not to incommode me after all the trouble I took to arrange the evening. Not that I would have minded, of course. What would have been the inconvenience to me, when one is suffering a loss such as his? A trifle. I shall insist that he and Jane think no more upon it.”

“I rather imagine they will not,” Mrs. Knightley replied.

“I am sure they appreciate all you have done on their behalf,” Elizabeth added. “Indeed, I wish I enjoyed such attention from our own vicar’s wife back in Derbyshire. She is a fine woman, but you, Mrs. Elton, have proven yourself so very attentive in the short time I have known you, that I confess myself envious of those who have the good fortune to live in this parish.”

Mrs. Elton curled her lips into a self-satisfied smile and straightened her posture. “I only do my duty.”

“But you perform it so charitably.”

“Mr. E. said that very thing to me this morning! ‘My dear Augusta,’ he said, ‘you are charity itself.’ As the vicar’s wife, you know, I must set a proper example for those who look up to me.” At this, she tilted her chin so high that anybody who did happen to look up at the vicar’s wife would experience a view of her nostrils that was not altogether desirable. “I do not suppose, Mrs. Darcy, that you are acquainted with my brother-in-law, Mr. Suckling, of Maple Grove?”

“I have not the pleasure.”