Page 29 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Stirring myself, I went to investigate and found Miss Viola in a state of some consternation, her hair unbound, and a piece of paper clutched in an ungloved hand. She pushed past me and I followed her back to the sitting room.
“Hello, my dear,” purred Ms. Haas, without moving from the chaise or, indeed, opening her eyes. “I take it you’ve had another note.”
Miss Viola attempted to supply her with the offending document, but Ms. Haas waved it away. So I stepped forward and took it instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Second Letter
To the Lady Eirene Viola Delhali, daughter of the late Count of Hyades,
I told you not to test me.
I have been reasonable so far, but if you do not break off your engagement to Miss Cora Beck immediately I will be forced to take action on your behalf.
Be assured my knowledge of your affairs is intimate. I know, for example, that two days ago you took Miss Beck to the Lake of Stars in Little Carcosa. You put your arms around her and showed her your favourite constellations in the dim waters.
This is your final warning.
I hold your future in my hands.
“Tell me you didn’t.” Ms. Haas draped her wrist despairingly across her brow. “I’ve never heard anything so cloyingly sentimental.”
Miss Viola snatched up the untouched cup of tea from the foot of the chaise and upended its contents over Ms. Haas’s head. She then emphasised her displeasure by flinging the now empty receptacle into the fireplace. “Just because you have never cared for anything or anybody, that doesn’t mean you—oh, what’s the use.”
“If this is what caring leads to”—Ms. Haas settled herself morecomfortably as the beverage soaked gradually into the chaise—“I want no part of it. What happened to you, Eirene? We used to do such extraordinary, remarkable, terrible things together. And now you’re canoodling with a fishmonger in front of a magic pond moping about your lost homeland.”
“Because it’s so much more glamorous to live in a dingy set of rooms you rent from a swarm of sentient insects and share with a complete stranger because nobody who has known you for more than six months can stand your company, and to spend your days drugged out of your mind on a dirty sofa because you can’t bear to be alone with the cacophony of demons you call your thoughts?”
A smile curled the corners of Ms. Haas’s lips. “I’m starting to remember why I liked you.”
“Should we,” I suggested, “perhaps turn our attention to what we may deduce from the contents of this latest communication?”
Miss Viola subsided into one of the wingbacks. “I hate the idea that someone’s watching me.”
“On the contrary”—Ms. Haas at last deigned to sit to upright—“I believe you can take enormous comfort in it. Our previous difficulty has been that your enemy gave us scant indication of his, her, their, zir, or its methodology or capabilities. But the means by which an entity observes another entity can be most revealing.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“We have three suspects remaining. One is a mortal woman from the professional classes, one a vampire, and the last a former aristocrat turned party loyalist in a shadow-haunted otherworld. While any one of them might employ anonymous notes as a means of coercion, the resources and strategies that they would have available for the undertaking of surveillance are quite different. Eirene, have you happened to observe anything suspicious of late?”
The sound Miss Viola uttered at that juncture was perilously close to a snort. “I know you think I’ve lost my touch, but I wouldhave noticed if I had a byakhee following me while I go shopping for hats.”
“Gods,” sighed Ms. Haas, “your life has become so bourgeois. Of course, the absence of cadaverous, bat-winged, mole-faced vulture-beasts doesn’t rule out a Carcosan connection entirely. I’m sure your former fiancé has the resources to hire mortal agents as he wishes. But what of—?”
“No, I haven’t seen any wolves, bats, ravens, or mysterious and unseasonable mist trailing after me either.”
“Still, I assume the Contessa has tasted your blood. Then again, haven’t we all?”
Miss Viola lifted a brown glass bottle, mostly denuded of laudanum, from the side table but appeared to think better of throwing it. “Your point being?”
“That such connections can be used to spy upon a person’s thoughts and may, depending on the Contessa’s precise nature, provide her with sufficient power over you as to thwart even the protections of the Mocking Realm. Have you experienced any strange presences in your dreams or an unaccountable sense of being spied upon?”
“I’m Carcosan. There are always strange presences in my dreams.”
“Not helpful.” Ms. Haas began refilling her pipe. “Which means we shall simply have to continue as planned.”
“You mean I’m just supposed to sit here and hope whoever this is doesn’t ruin my life while you’recontinuing as planned.”
