them. If everyone knew how their burgers were really produced they would be bankrupt in a week. It is all illusion. Taste is nothing.” He struck his chest. “This is where it matters. You cook with your heart and people will eat.”
Theo knew what his grandfather was saying. Understand the customer before thinking about the ingredients. One person’s nectar could be pretentious and tasteless to most others. He had spent his young life looking in the wrong direction.
So there was no culinary degree for Theo. He went to work for his grandfather, getting to know customers, and cooking chips and garlic bread.
Fortunately, his sense of taste never fully returned.
The Puzzle Box
There was only one way to tease out this tangled thread called life - for Deanna anyway. It was to hold her breath and wish that it would all go away. It never did of course, but she always felt better afterwards. Only then did she realise that life wasn’t quite tangled enough for her. The lack of intellect in others and their limited conversation was what perplexed Deanna. It was the perpetual f.....g this and f.....g that, which replaced more suitable words and, inevitably, the need to think. Her mother used the word on her children, her friends dropped it into casual conversation... and now she had heard her sainted older brother use the expletive in a radio interview - live! The star of the local football club, role model for wayward youth, and her idol since infancy had let the F word slip in public. Deanna had felt so embarrassed she dare not look him in the eye for days. Nobody else had paid any attention. As ‘bloody’ was regarded as offensive in the fifties, the F word was becoming just as acceptable. Deanna wanted to push a thesaurus under the noses of everyone who used it, though that would have meant felling several forests to print them.
So what could she do? Give up and join in? Try not to flinch whenever she heard it? Or go and visit Mrs Solomon, the one person guaranteed to always know the right word, correct punctuation and form of address for every dignitary you could name? Her shop of antique knick-knacks, ancient books and Tiffany lanterns between a bookmaker and mobile phone outlet sat like cut glass crystal flanked by garish plastic mugs. The odd drunk from the bookmaker would occasionally wander in to find something to squander his winnings on and, when she opened up, Mrs Solomon frequently found on the doormat mobile phones discarded by users who had upgraded. These were donated to a charity for recycling.
Deanna was one of those few visitors who helped liven up the day for the antique dealer and a panacea to the less discerning who wandered in to search for the million pound item she might have mistaken for junk - like that would happen! Mrs Solomon was able to afford her prime position in the high street and open at erratic times because of an unwavering acumen in identifying the rare and precious (her website was testimony to that). And in Deanna she could also see that rarity, a young woman who was genuinely interested in what was going on around her.
So Mrs Solomon decided to show her friend a mysterious puzzle box acquired from an inventory of goods surrendered for tax purposes. Apart from it being crafted in English yew there was little else the knowledgeable Mrs Solomon could deduce about it, even from the faded parchment concealed in a secret compartment. On it was the Georgian equivalent of a crossword puzzle with archaic clues for no doubt equally archaic solutions. The heads of the wooden keys locking the box together had strange symbols carved on them, inviting the curious to push them in the correct sequence to unlock it.
The puzzle box had been waiting under the glass counter in anticipation of Deanna’s occasional, hesitant appearance. The self-effacing teenager had never quite understood why a much older person regarded her as an equal, and always felt that she was invading Mrs Solomon’s authoritative space. That was the feeling most other adults gave her: they either expected appreciation for their condescending attempts to communicate with the young or deference to everything they did, however stupid. The antique dealer was a one-off, with an integrity that must have come from an interesting past history. That was why Deanna found her company so stimulating, and she really wanted to know about that past history.
The door bell tinkled its bright tune as Deanna entered the shop. The puzzle box was on the counter waiting for her, but no Mrs Solomon who must have been in her back parlour. The temptation was too great. Deanna picked up the box and prodded the ornate characters. It didn’t take long for her to work out that it was a locking device.
There was a familiar voice behind her. “You know what those are, don’t you?”
Mrs Solomon always moved noiselessly so Deanna should have been used to her by now, but those deep, plummy tones never failed to make her jump.
“Look like cryptic letters to me. They’re either back to front or upside down so could be compositor’s leads, but wouldn’t print anything sensible even if they were pulled out.”
“There are only 26, so are probably English.”
Deanna started to jot down the layout of the letters in the notebook she always carried with her. “Yes, definitely the alphabet.”
“Go for it kid. Your brain is more agile than mine.” Mrs Solomon handed Deanna the ancient parchment with its list of clues to open the puzzle box. “You should be able to work out this as well.”
Deanna’s jaw dropped. She was good with words, but these clues in copperplate handwriting were baffling. Googling them wouldn’t have helped. This called for a very old dictionary.
Mrs Solomon read her thoughts. “Samuel Johnson.”
“You’ve got his dictionary?” Deanna asked hopefully.
“Sold the last original edition, but there is an abridged version you can use.”
Deanna shook the box to check if there was anything inside. It sounded like a large key.
“Take it home with you,” the antique dealer suggested.
“I’d rather not. My family is mental. It would be impossible to concentrate.”
“You’d better use the back parlour then. Don’t mind the cat. She’ll sit on your lap, but won’t be any bother as long as you let her. Keeps the knees warm.”
Deanna took the puzzle box, list of clues and abridged Samuel Johnson dictionary into Mrs Solomon’s parlour. As soon as everything was placed on the velvet tablecloth and she had sat down, Tabitha jumped onto her lap and made it clear with needle claws that she intended to stay there.
Deanna carefully unfolded the parchment and read the first clue:- A foul odour from Virginia: stink.
Putrid smell? Stench? She fancied there was an element of JK Rowling about it. One of her characters was quite smelly. And his name was Mundungus.
Second clue:- One part of a cloven hoof multiplied by two.
Pig, antelope, camel, satyr? No, it was more obvious than that. Separating one hoof would be to cleave. There was no cleave in this abridged dictionary, but there was clees.
Third clue:- A fowl that feeds in silt.
Could be any of a dozen birds, but Deanna doubted that Johnson was much of a twitcher, so the primary word had to be silt. A synonym for what birds waded in; marsh, water margin - Not here. A more basic term was mud. And there it was - mudsucker.
Fourth clue:- A bundle to take far.
Bundle could be a package... or, portmanteau... No. So it had to be take or far. Take was no help, so it had to be far, as in fardel.
Clue five:- A ragged fellow.
This looked easier. It was either fellow or ragged. Too many synonyms for fellow - ragged was easier, and tattered the best match. And there it was - tatterdemalion.
Now Deanna had them all. The only way to find out if her solutions were right was to spell out the words by pushing the keys on the puzzle box.
Should she do it? This device was far more fiendish than a Rubik’s cube. The Georgian who designed the puzzle box must have had a lot of time on their hands. Just as it was crossing her mind that it might have been a bobby trap, Mrs Solomon pulled the parlour door curtain aside.
“You’ve solved it then?”
“Might have.” Deanna was sure the a
ntique dealer could have done it just as easily if she had set her mind to it but, like most adults, probably had far too many other things to do. “Would you like to open it?”
Mrs Solomon sounded genuinely impressed. “Goodness no, you solved it.”
Deanna pushed in the letters to spell out mundungus. There was a ‘click’ as a lock deep inside the device sprang open. She hesitated, surprised that it had worked. Something this sophisticated could only have been invented by Charles Babbage and programmed by Ada Lovelace.
“Carry on,” urged Mrs Solomon.
Deanna entered the other solutions. Each time another lock inside the puzzle box opened. At last tattermalion. She pushed the last letter home and sat back for fear of something leaping out at her.
With a loud ‘click!’ the lid sprang open and woke Tabitha. The cat’s claws sank into her leg.
Nestling amongst the bars of the wooden posts was, as she had expected, a large, ornate key. Underneath it was a slip of card, battered from the vigorous shaking the box had received over the centuries. Mrs Solomon lifted Tabitha from Deanna’s lap as she tipped them out.
The writing was still legible. It was an address.
“Probably demolished by now.” Deanna took out her smartphone from a zipped inside pocket where she hid it from her siblings. She tapped in the address. “Couldn’t be some sort of elaborate scam, could it?”
“I wouldn’t know. You’re probably