“I did. I think Mademoiselle de Blois enjoyed it even more, though. She was afraid her English wouldn’t be good enough to understandeverything, so she purchased a copy of the libretto ahead of time. I was worried that might ruin the fun, but she loved it.”
“Always surprising, isn’t it, what people enjoy?”
“But you never appear to be surprised at all.”
“It’s my face—takes rather a great deal of feeling to move it. Shock, rather than surprise. And while I’m frequently surprised, I’m not usually shocked.”
Now Penelope was curious. She had no idea Miss Holmes could be shocked. “So what does shock you?”
Miss Holmes thought for a moment. “I’m surprised when people are not me. I’m shocked when they are not them.”
“You mean, we are so much who we are that it’s staggering when we do something truly out of character.”
“Yes. Normally when people are shocked by someone, it’s because they didn’t know that person sufficiently well. We are asked to judge one another on such things as parentage, attire, and demeanor, as substitutes for character. So we know others primarily by how they present themselves in public, which is often the furthest thing from who they are.”
Penelope opted to be cheeky. “So when you ran away from home, the only people knocked speechless were those who’d had no idea who you truly were.”
Miss Holmes did not appear at all offended. “Exactly. And those who had every idea of my character were no less dismayed, but probably thought—seethingly—Stupid woman. I knew this would happen.”
“Lord Ingram. Would he have thought that?”
Her aunt would be appalled at her forwardness. But Penelope had long ago decided that while the meek might inherit the earth, the nonmeek enjoyed far more interesting conversations—to say the least.
Miss Holmes’s lips curved. “I’d be shocked to the core if he didn’t.”
“Speaking of Lord Ingram...” Penelope walked up to the desk and tapped her fingers on the paper. “Is Lady Ingram still sending coded messages to Mr. Finch?”
Miss Holmes flipped the open notebook on the desk a few pages back, then nudged it toward Penelope. “I keep track of all the coded messages among the small notices. These are hers.”
The top of the page gave the construct of the cipher:Numbers 1–26 correspond to letters. Resultant letters need to be left-shifted seven places in the alphabet. Below that, each day’s coded message had been copied down and deciphered.
M, I still await your answer. A
M, I will not give up. A
M, please give me a signal. A
M, are you all right? A
“What’s in the rest of the notebook?” Penelope asked. “The other coded messages?”
Miss Holmes nodded. “So I’ll know when a new one comes up—in case Mr. Finch responds.”
“That must have taken a great deal of work.”
“It consumed some time, especially in the beginning. But the codes tend to be unimaginative.”
The latest edition of the paper was on the desk, opened to the small notices, which had been carefully marked. The majority of them were not in code and almost all of those had a small dot next to them, likely indicating that no further investigation was warranted. One coded message had the letter A next to it—from Lady Ingram, presumably. Most of the other coded messages had smallsquares to the side, which probably marked that they were “unimaginative.”
Three notices, however, were unusual enough to merit question marks. “What’s unusual about this one?”
“The plaintext of the cipher is in German. It may not mean anything—but it’s different from the others, so I keep an eye on it.”
The second listed five different kinds of flowers. “And this one?”
“My guess is it’s code for which horses to bet on.”
The third notice was also in plaintext.And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.“Is that an actual biblical verse?”
