Page 30 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“Eirene, my dear, when you brought this case to me I developed a stratagem. This new information has not allowed me to formulate a superior alternative. Therefore, I shall carry on exactly as I am.”
Miss Viola rolled her eyes. “We’ll carve that on your tombstone. But what amIto do?”
“If you must do something, then I suggest you take Miss Beck away for a while. Removing yourself from your usual haunts may make it harder for this blackmailer to follow you.”
It seemed an eminently sensible suggestion to me, but Miss Viola did not look reassured. “You’re using me as bait again, aren’t you?”
“Amongst other things.” Ms. Haas issued forth a stream of smoke. “A change of scenery would clearly do you good and if your nemesis proves able to track you no matter where you go that will tell us more about their capabilities. You should also have ample opportunity to indulge your new fondness for holding hands in twee environments. It’s a win-win.”
“Cora’s going to Aturvash on business next week. I suppose I could go with her.”
Ms. Haas curled her lip contemptuously. “Charming though I find the idea of you taking a walking tour of a salt mine, I think you’d be better off if you were both somewhere less expected. With a little more time, I’m sure we’ll find whoever is sending these letters, but blackmailers are fundamentally cowardly creatures. And if this person fears exposure, they may decide to intervene with Miss Beck directly, in which case it would be awfully convenient if she was hard to contact.”
“Shaharazad,” protested Miss Viola, “I can’t just yank my fiancée away from her duties until this all gets sorted out.”
“Well, you could tell her the truth instead, but I thought the whole point of this exercise was to avoid that.”
“And of course she won’t get at all suspicious if I turn up tomorrow saying, ‘Darling, I’ve had a wonderful idea, let’s take a spontaneous holiday of indefinite duration and not tell anybody where we’re going.’”
“Eirene, my dear, I have absolute faith in your talent for duplicity.” Ms. Haas flicked ash casually over the back of the chaise longue. “Now go take the fishmonger somewhere fun. I hear the City of Blood and Glass is wonderful during the current astrological configuration.”
Miss Viola departed soon after and I, leaving my companion fullyinsensible in the sitting room, was obliged to make my way rather unsteadily in to work. It was not my finest eight hours of labour, since not only had I scarcely slept the night before but my mind was abuzz with the new and mysterious possibilities laid out before us in the latest missive. And indeed in my fatigued state I indulged in several rather fanciful speculations about the blackmailer’s possible identity, although as it transpired not even my wildest imaginings came close to the remarkable truth of the situation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mr. Percy Lutrell
The next fewdays passed quietly. I ran the same tests on the second letter as I had run on the first and came to the same conclusions: that it had been touched by nobody save Miss Viola and myself, Ms. Haas on this occasion having avoided contact with it entirely. The paper and ink were of the same stock as those used previously and still offered no insight into the nature or origins of the writer. Now that the excitement of our recent adventures had subsided, I became conscious of some doubt regarding our ability to bring this matter to a swift and satisfactory conclusion. Ms. Haas, for her part, spent the time engaged in sundry activities, many of which did not seem directly applicable to the task at hand, but which also included researches into the life and habits of our next suspect, Mrs. Yasmine Benamara.
In the years since heraffaire de coeurwith Miss Viola, Mrs. Benamara had achieved some notability as a poet in her own right. Her first volume,Two Parts of the Moon, was well received amongst the literary set in Khel and Athra, or as well received as any such work can be, which is to say it was condemned as reactionary by progressives and as immoral by traditionalists. She was also in the habit of hosting regular literary salons to which she would invite that particular class of intellectual neither too high born nor too high minded to attend upon a barrister’s wife. Unusually, this was a social circle to which I, as avarsity man from no especially exalted background, had greater access than Ms. Haas, who had no time whatsoever for the lives and interests of ordinary people. I was in the process of reaching out to see if any of my university friends might have crossed paths with Mrs. Benamara when Ms. Haas, never overendowed with patience, elected to expedite the situation.
My first inkling as to her preferred methodology came when I arrived home one evening to discover a strange gentleman in the sitting room. He was a little taller than I, thin lipped and white haired, with a faint hunch to his shoulders. His demeanour managed at once to be unprepossessing and judgemental.
I eyed the stranger in some consternation. “I beg your pardon. Are you waiting for Ms. Haas?”
“On the contrary,” he returned, in a voice that aspired to both aristocracy and authority, achieving neither, “I am waiting for you. We have secured an invitation to Mrs. Benamara’s salon and you are to change and come with me directly.”
“I’m afraid you have the advantage of me, sir.”
“My name is Percy Lutrell. I am the literary critic forThe Esoteric Review.”
“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here or why you’re waiting for me personally.”
Mr. Lutrell raised a meagre crescent moon of an eyebrow. “You appear to be an intelligent man, Mr. Wyndham. Surely you can work that out for yourself.”
Ordinarily, I would have had no inclination to play such a game with a total stranger who had appeared out of nowhere in my sitting room. But my brief acquaintance with the sorceress Shaharazad Haas had somewhat eroded my sense of normalcy. “I am certain I have no idea. I can think of no reason that a celebrated literary critic in the employ of a respectable periodical would have any connection with myself or Ms. Haas.”
“Then begin from there.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“You have said yourself that it seems highly improbable that a celebrated literary critic in the employ of a respectable periodical would have any connection with you or Ms. Haas. Yet here I stand. What may you conclude from that?”
I considered it a moment. “That something very improbable has occurred or that you are not, in fact, a celebrated literary critic in the employ of a respectable periodical.”
“Bravo, Captain.” Mr. Lutrell disposed himself with disconcerting languor upon the chaise longue. “So who am I?”
“I haven’t the faintest—”
