Carrie Bebris - The Intrigue at Highbury

“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.”

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.”

“But you have been to Bath?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Then you understand the standards for which I strive when entertaining. Although our village is small, those of us with connexions and resources can bring touches of elegance to the neighborhood.”

Mrs. Elton had provided the very opening Elizabeth sought. “I am sure your recent soiree was an affair no one will soon forget,” she said. “You must have spent hours simply drawing up the menu. Did your housekeeper prepare the entire dinner herself?”

“Heavens, no. For a party that size, Wright brought in two girls to help her.”

“Of course. Does she do that often — bring in additional help?”

“Mr. E. and I receive so many invitations that we dine out more often than not. But when we entertain, we do so in the proper style.”

“Well-trained servants must be difficult to find in such a small village. Were they local girls?”

“I assume so. I am too busy to attend to those sorts of matters. Wright hired them, and she knows what she is about.”

But did Wright know what the girls had been about on that night? If they had not themselves slipped Frank Churchill the poison, perhaps they had observed something that could lead Darcy and Mr. Knightley to the person who had.

“Mrs. Knightley, does Hartfield ever want additional help?” Elizabeth asked. “Perhaps you might ask the housekeeper — with your approval, of course, Mrs. Elton — for these girls’ names and characters in case you ever have need.”

The expression of Mrs. Knightley’s eyes, visible only to Elizabeth from the angles at which the three of them were seated, said that she would rather go to work as a kitchen maid herself than solicit references from Mrs. Elton or anybody in her employ. Mrs. Knightley, however, kept her features in check as she turned to Mrs. Elton. “I would welcome any such recommendations you are willing to extend.”

The housekeeper was summoned, the names given, and Mrs. Elton’s vanity satisfied. To have been placed in the position of offering domestic guidance to Mrs. Knightley was a coup beyond any she could have anticipated at the start of the call. She radiated triumph as Mrs. Knightley conveyed her gratitude.

“I must thank you also for the word puzzles you recently sent to me,” Mrs. Knightley added.

Mrs. Elton carefully held her expression, but the exultant light in her eyes dimmed. “Puzzles?”

“Yes — the charade that arrived the day we returned to Hartfield. And the enigma last night.”

Mrs. Elton rearranged her skirts, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from them. “I am afraid I have not the slightest idea what you refer to.”

“Indeed?” Mrs. Knightley affected perplexity. “We had just been talking of such entertainments at Abbey Mill Farm, you recall. So when these puzzles arrived, the lines were so clever I thought they certainly must have been penned by you.”

A fleeting look of gratification flickered across Mrs. Elton’s countenance. “I — well — perhaps I might have been inspired to exercise my intellectual resources. But—”

They were interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Elton, who seemed as surprised to discover Mrs. Knightley in his home as his wife had been. “Forgive my intrusion,” he said. “I did not realize you had visitors, Augusta.”