Manor Hints: The Coded Letter

Have you found the coded letter yet? You’ll find it in the online webmail.

Follow the hints for “Accessing Rick’s Email (Online Content)”  if you’re struggling to gain access to the webmail.

In the online webmail, there is an email from John Hudson with an attachment containing the coded letter. 

The story goes that Pelham gave this coded letter to a servant at Merivale Manor to take to the Post Office, but the servant pocketed it.

You’ll need to link this with another piece of evidence to decrypt it. 

Read the top section of the letter and pay attention to the publisher’s name.

Fields and Day are the publishers. The same publisher was mentioned in the sources section of Rick Fitch’s Project Journal. The book from this publisher is called “Henry Spottiswoode At Sea”

Where else have you read about this book?

In Detective Michael Fitch’s police report, he mentions that one of the items collected as evidence from Astrid’s Room was a brand new copy of the book “Henry Spottiswoode At Sea”. In another piece of evidence, there is a photocopy of a book with a sticky note from Rick, stating that the book is the one “my Great-Grandfather mentioned, and it’s a 1927 edition too” – opened to page 84 as mentioned by Michael Fitch. 

This should give you enough of a reason to believe that the book could be useful for decrypting the coded message. 

To eliminate any sense of doubt that this book is the one Astrid was using, she also nodded toward the author’s name and the year of publication in the top section of the coded note:

…“How Hard France Is” = Howard Francis = H Francis

…“published this year”. The letter is dated “Nineteen Twenty-Seven”. 

Now use the rest of what Astrid wrote at the top of the letter to help you decrypt the note. Most of the “ballots” start with the letter L or R. What might that signify? Use the remaining text in the paragraph at the top of the coded note to help you if you’ve not worked it out yet.

Astrid states “Regarding the recent ballot, there were 84 votes to the left (L) and 85 to the right (R).”. How can you relate this to the book “Henry Spottiswoode At Sea” (The photocopy of the book that contains a sticky note from Rick)? 

“L” implies page 84 and “R” implies page 85. 

The “Ballots” are written in the following format:

 R-5-2

The R represents page 85

The 5 represents the line number.

The 2 represents the word number. 

 For example, the ballot “R-5-2” would mean… page 85, 5th line down, 2nd word across = Dear. 
“(X)” represents the word “Merivale”. We get this from the address at the top right of the coded letter.

The coded note translates to:

dear brother,
I am writing from Merivale manner. clerk
Merivale is the man I’ve been seeing
recently. his parents are such horrible people,
but I bet they have some skeletons
in their closet, I think said skeletons
have some thing to do with some
strange sounds that come from the third
floor. they say it’s the wind but
it’s coming from inside the house. I
had a secret look the sounds come
from behind a book case that revolves
in the study. unfortunately I could not
get it to move, it must need
a key.

If you’ve covered all bases and you’re still stuck, please follow the hint section for “The final hints” to gradually reveal the answer to this case.