Page 32 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Some thirty minuteslater, we disembarked at a small, suburban dock.
“She’d better be guilty,” opined Mr. Lutrell. “If I find that we’ve come to this godsforsaken place for nothing I shall be most put out.”
I looked around me at the tidy cobbled streets lined with brightly painted houses and sweet-smelling trees and was hard-pressed to observe anything to which any reasonable person might object. Although, given what I was fast learning about my companion, that was probably the exact issue.
I placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Fear not, Mr. Lutrell. We may yet be attacked by a beast from another dimension or an assassin hell-bent on halting our investigation.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I fear the most deadly weapon we’re likely to be confronted with in a place like this is a sternly worded letter from the borough council. Besides, I’ve been to this sort of salon before. Nothing interesting ever happens at them.”
This, it transpired, would be one of the few occasions on which my companion was wrong. Although she would, when later confronted, refuse to admit it.
It was a short walk up the hillside to the Benamara residence, an eminently respectable detached property commanding a fine view ofthe strait. On Mr. Lutrell’s presentation of his invitation (to this day, I know not where he acquired it) we were ushered inside by a demure maidservant. We followed her into a tastefully appointed chamber, decorated in modern Khelish fashion, which leaned towards geometric designs, bold colours, and abstract patterns. The guests, who were mostly lounging on divans and floor cushions, ran a terribly specific gamut, from the controversial end of bourgeois to the bourgeois end of controversial; which is to say I recognised one or two unorthodox theologians but no outright heretics, a number of famous beauties but no actual courtesans, and a group of celebrated reformers who nevertheless drew the line at revolution.
At the sight of my companion, a louche, long-haired Khelish gentleman, dressed flamboyantly in a somewhat outmoded Athran style of slashed sleeves and half hose, rose from where he had been reclining. “Mr. Lutrell,” he cried. “How dare you show your face in this company? Your review of mySigurd and Ivanwas the most ill-articulated, venomous, petty-minded, plebeian agglomeration of sputum that has ever disgraced print.”
Mr. Lutrell’s pale eyes glinted. “Lord Bahrami—”
Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce for my readers the remainder of his response. Suffice to say, it was short, to the point, and quite spectacularly vulgar, recommending as it did a course of action quite beneath his lordship’s dignity, not to mention his physical capacity. It also garnered a reaction from the room that I, having grown accustomed to moving in circles with no regard whatsoever for social mores, found quite unsettlingly appropriate.
“You”—Lord Bahrami subjected my companion to a look of rather magnificent contempt—“are no gentleman. And, worse, you are no wit.”
Although, of course, I had the utmost respect for Ms. Haas’s abilities in many areas I was becoming concerned that in the art of subterfuge her extraordinary talents were somewhat at odds with her mercurial natureand fondness for the dramatic. Indeed, I was not entirely certain that she was, in this exact moment, cognisant of the fact that she was meant to be playing a part.
“Come now,Mr. Lutrell,” I whispered. “We should avoid making a scene.”
“Ah. Quite right.” He closed his mouth with a snap. “And you are most correct, Lord Bahrami. I am no gentleman, nor no wit. Nor any person of value or consequence. And certainly not possessed of any remarkable gifts of will, intellect, or capacity to command—”
I thought it best to prevent Mr. Lutrell from further disquisition. “Well said, sir. You are, after all, merely a literary critic.”
“You didn’t have to interrupt me, Captain. That’s exactly what I was saying.”
“Believe me, Lutrell, nobody cares what you are saying.” Lord Bahrami turned and, moving with the slightest of limps, vanished through an archway into the perfumed garden beyond.
Unfamiliar as I was with this variety of artistic gathering, I was at a loss as to whether the disruption caused by our arrival was an unforgivable social transgression or an expected element of the evening’s entertainment. This uncertainty, I fear, left me somewhat discombobulated. My companion, however, suffered no such affliction, making directly for a tray of baklava and helping himself with indelicate gusto.
Across the room, a lady extricated herself from a small crowd of guests and came towards us. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, with a grace of bearing and neatness of person I found rather charming. As she walked, her tastefully embroidered abaya fluttered gently in the breeze from the open windows.
“Mr. Lutrell?” she asked.
He paused in his assault on the refreshments. “Yes?”
“I’m so sorry about Bahrami. You know how geniuses are.”
“I can quite confidently say that I do.”
“I’m very glad you could make it to my little gathering. I would love to introduce you to some of my guests.”
With that, the lady—who I presumed to be Mrs. Benamara—took my companion by the arm and drew him firmly away from the pastries. I trailed after them, content to observe and place my possibly misguided faith in Ms. Haas’s judgement and subtlety. We moved first to an eclectic cluster of persons, engaged in an animated discussion of Ilari love poetry.
“... fully aware of the cultural and historical context,” a pallid gentleman was saying in an accent I couldn’t quite place. “But the verses themselves are vilely insipid.”
His interlocutor, a dark-skinnned Khelite in the silk-trimmed robes traditionally worn by fellows of the university, subjected him to a withering glare. “The mere thought that an educated person could hold such an opinion—”
They paused, as if the notion was genuinely too dreadful to countenance, and were immediately interrupted.
“Vasile is not an educated person,” murmured the third guest from behind an elaborate and grotesque carnival mask. “He’s from Pesh.”
Vasile, as the pale gentleman was apparently known, flushed a sickly shade of pink. “As one exile to another, I’d thank you not to use my homeland against me.”
