Page 12 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
She curled her lip at me. “Well, what the —— would you know, Mr. Blessed Are the ——ed. You were falling out of your smock to help me out when you thought I was getting ——ed up the —— by a dirty old man. But now you know I’m doing something about it, you’re all ‘know your ——ing place.’”
“Madam, you did attempt to murder me.”
“Saw an opportunity.” She shrugged. “Took it.”
“I understand. Perhaps I would have done the same had my circumstances been as yours.”
To my surprise, she did not take this reassurance in the spirit in which it was intended. “Oh, go —— yourself, you ——ing piece of god-bothering ——. You do not get to ——ing forgive me or pretend you ——ing know where I’m coming from. I tried to ——ing kill you and I’m not ——ing sorry. At least do me the ——ing courtesy of being ——ing angry about it.”
“This,” declared Ms. Haas, “is so much better than that dismal play.”
That seemed to distract Miss de la Martynière a little. “Tell me about it. Charlie’s ——ing obsessed with these blood ’n’ bosoms numbers.”
“On the subject of the good Mr. du Maurier”—Ms. Haas concealed her pistol within the folds of her frock coat once more—“I’m afraid I do need to speak to him rather urgently.”
“Well, that’s going to take a while, seeing as how you and your friend here —— near pulled this whole place down round our ears. He’s out front giving refunds, and he hates giving refunds.”
“How unfortunate. I feel rather the same way about waiting.” Ms. Haas cast Miss de la Martynière a look that I would have considered inappropriate in most circumstances but felt was even more so given that the lady in question had so recently attempted to orchestrate my demise. “Perhaps you could help me instead.”
“Depends what’s in it for me.”
“While I respect your independent spirit, I fear you have grossly misjudged the balance of power in this situation. Did it not escape your notice that I just plucked your sacrifice from the depths of the Mocking Realm with, though I say so myself, very little effort?”
Miss de la Martynière’s shoulders slumped. “Oh ——. You’re Shaharazad ——ing Haas, aren’t you?”
“Currently only Shaharazad Haas, but I could be ——ing if you play your cards right.”
“For someone with your reputation, you’ve got some really ——ing cheesy lines.”
“I have two modes. Flirting and turning your blood to boiling lye within your veins. Which do you prefer?”
The actress rolled her eyes. “Fine. What do you want?”
“You’re clearly sleeping with du Maurier. And I know for a fact that he’s even more monstrously braggadocious when he’s refractory. Has he told you anything about a woman named Eirene Viola?”
“He was doing her, or leastways trying to, for a while way back when. Said she was an ungrateful, lying, cheating, thieving little ——.”
“Yes, that sounds like Eirene.” Ms. Haas braced her lower body against a rickety wooden item that may once have been a table. “Did he say anything else?”
“Not a lot. He’s not paying much attention to what goes on outside the theatre these days. Sometimes I think he don’t know what year it is.”
“The moral of that story is never move into an alternate reality that you cannot unmake.”
Miss de la Martynière seemed to be growing restless. “We done yet?”
“I believe so.” Ms. Haas came languorously to her feet again, smoothing her coat. “If you hear anything, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
From some interior pocket, Ms. Haas retrieved a mother-of-pearl card case, carved with symbols that seemed to writhe obscenely as one stared at them. And, from that, she produced a plain white calling card, offering it along with a terribly ambiguous smile. “We always have choices. That’s what makes life so unpredictable.”
And so we departed Mise en Abyme and returned, via autonomous hansom, to 221b Martyrs Walk.
For the benefit of those readers who felt, quite understandably, that they would do best to avoid Miss de la Martynière’s testimony entirely I can summarise thus: that she expressed great anger towards me personally, showed no remorse for attempting my murder, and was slow to recognise Ms. Haas but was nevertheless persuaded, having realised her error, to assist us in our enquiries. Owing to her intimate relationship with Mr. du Maurier she was in a position to inform us that while he bore a great deal of ill will towards Miss Viola he had made no immediate plans to inconvenience her.
During our ride home, I enquired with Ms. Haas whether, given her admonitions about the inadvisability of trusting professional dissemblers, she felt that we should take Miss de la Martynière at her word on this matter, and she told me she thought we could. The young woman was plainly ambitious and had no love for du Maurier. Further, the fact that she had attempted to kill me strongly implied, according to Ms. Haas, that she had plumbed some of the deeper secrets of the Mocking Realm. Such knowledge is acquired only by du Maurier’s very personal favourites and only by those who are capable of handling the man with discretion and finesse. Such an individual would never permit the distraction that would inevitably ensue should du Maurier rekindle his interest in a former protégé, even if such interest was vindictive or vengeful in nature.
I must admit that I was rather pleased that Mr. du Maurier did not turn out to be our blackmailer. Although it would, of course, have set Miss Viola’s mind greatly at rest to know the identity of herpersecutor, I was beginning to enjoy both the sense of mystery and the sense of adventure that came with working alongside the sorceress Shaharazad Haas and would have been disappointed for it to have ended so soon. I did not, as it transpired, need to worry on that account.
