The Key in the Attic(20)
“England’s 45 inches
Twice indebted
Katherine at home
Blue and twinkling
Roadside refuge
Turn to the right
Twice beholden
Scotland’s river
Busy sweets maker
Twice obliged
Katherine to her friends”
Alice wrinkled her forehead in thought. “‘Blue and twinkling’ I was thinking could be eyes or maybe just eye, but it doesn’t make sense. Eye Inn? Do you suppose that was a tavern or something back then? Maybe that’s where he hid the next letter Angeline was supposed to find.”
Annie swatted herself on the forehead. “I can’t believe I’m so stupid. The letters she was supposed to find aren’t the kind you write to someone. They’re the kind you write with. They’re all right there. Not the words ‘eye inn’ but the letters ‘IN.’ That spells ‘in’! Ell, the 45-inch unit of length in England, is for the letter L. ‘Katherine to her friends’ must be Kay, the letter K.”
“Wait, wait! I’m trying to write these down. Then a ‘busy sweets maker’ has got to be a bee—the letter B.” Alice giggled. “It’s pretty easy when you know how.”
Annie frowned at the piece of paper she held. “I don’t know. What word starts with L and ends with K and has only three letters? The middle has to be a vowel, but none of them make this a real word. The same with the last three lines. B something K. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. Think about it. ‘Indebted,’ ‘beholden,’ ‘obliged’ all mean the same thing, or the same letter. And the ‘twice’ just means that letter is used two times.”
Annie went through the vowels in her head and suddenly laughed. “Of course. Owe. I can’t believe I didn’t get that right off. That just leaves us with ‘turn to the right’ and ‘Scotland’s river.’”
Alice went to her computer and clicked a few keys. “Well the only river I see that is also a letter would be the river Dee.”
“Perfect.” Annie penciled in the letter D. “Now, what do we have? ‘LOOK IN _OOD BOOK.’ There are only a few letters that would fit there and make a word: F, G, H, M, and W, and I don’t think he would have had a ‘hood book’ or a ‘mood book.’”
Alice snickered.
Annie tapped her pencil on the table, thinking. “So that leaves F, G, and W.”
“A wood book?” Alice asked.
“Maybe, but F and W aren’t words by themselves.”
“And G is? I don’t know. And what does it have to do with turning?”
Annie caught her breath. “No, no, that’s it! Didn’t you ever read the Little House on the Prairie books?”
“No, but I watched the TV show. Does that count?” Alice asked dubiously.
Annie laughed. “Maybe. What we keep forgetting to do is keep in mind when this clue was written: 1861 or so. They used to shout ‘gee’ and ‘haw’ as a voice command to oxen or horses to get them to pull right or left. I never could remember which was which, but going by this, ‘gee’ must have been right.”
“‘LOOK IN GOOD BOOK.’ Umm. And what was his idea of a good book?”
“Alice! Not a good book, the Good Book—the Bible!”
“Oh, duh! That must be where the numbers come in. Let’s see, there are four in each line. Umm … book, chapter, verse and word?”
“We won’t know till we try. Do you have one handy?”
“Yeah,” Alice said, “hang on.”
Alice disappeared into her bedroom and came back with her Bible.
“OK, the fiftieth book is … Philippians.”
“Right,” Annie said. “Listen to make sure we’re doing it right, let’s both look these up and compare answers. Do you have another copy?”
“Sure. The old one my grandmother had. Let me get it.”
They both flipped pages and made notes until Alice finally put down her Bible with a sigh.
“I think we have the wrong book, Annie. Or we have the wrong idea about what the numbers mean. It doesn’t make sense.”
Annie glanced over what she had so far. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“‘Each in the table no the they secret and.’ Something’s wrong, or he’s the worst clue writer ever.”
“Alice—”
“I mean, who writes ‘no the they’?”
“Alice, which Bible are you looking at?”
“The one I always use. The NIV.”
“And how many copies of the New International Version of the Bible did they have in the 1860s?”
“Ohhhhh.” Alice laughed. “OK, so what did you and your King James Version get, smarty?”