Page 45 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“I respect the dead when they are not actively attempting to seduce and murder me.”
“How ironic.” Ms. Haas arched an eyebrow. “I respect them only if they are. But you are correct. Entertaining as your amorous interlude may have been, we should return to the task at hand.”
“How should we proceed?” I asked.
She rose from the sofa, collapsed her hat, and set it gently in the space she had just vacated. “You take the papers, I’ll take the books, and we’ll see if we can work out what the deuce this poor fellow was up to.”
I did as instructed and took a seat at the desk, upon which I was relieved to find a brown folder containing a series of notes in handwriting that I recognised from Mr. Wangenheim’s ill-fated letter. They turned out to comprise a summary, presumably for the Contessa’s benefit, of the habits, associates, and likely movements of Miss Cora Beck gleaned from the clerk’s close study and correlation of the municipal, company, and travel records that the Contessa had procured for him. He had been diligent in his work and the materials he had produced were at once concise and comprehensive. I passed them to Ms. Haas, who perused the contents with interest.
“This,” she said, “is unfortunate. One never wants to draw the close attention of a vampire. If I’m any judge, and, let us be very clear, I am, these are the sorts of documents you would order compiled if your intent were to murder their subject as discreetly as possible.”
I glanced towards the late Mr. Wangenheim. “Do you really think discretion has any value to a woman who wantonly murders her house guests?”
“Come now, Captain.Shedid not murder her house guest. Aguest was murderedinher house. It’s a very different thing. And while vampires are creatures of unbridled arrogance and do not always reason as mortals do, I think even the Contessa would understand that butchering someone’s fiancée in front of them is not the most effective way to say you want to get back together. Far more convenient, from her perspective, would be if the lovely Miss Beck were to embark on, say”—Ms. Haas flipped over a few pages in Mr. Wangenheim’s dossier, as if looking for something specific—“this business trip to the salt mines of Aturvash and never return.”
“Why are you so sure she would choose that journey specifically?” I indicated two other entries in the notes. “There’s one here to Tanispont and one to El’avarah.”
Ms. Haas drummed her fingers impatiently against the desk. “I’m not going to explain something you can perfectly well work out for yourself. Now, why do you think a vampire would not pursue her quarry to Tanispont?”
“Tanispont is a port,” I answered after a moment of thought, “and best reached by sea. If my understanding is correct, the undead have difficulty crossing running water.”
She offered me a smile which, unusually, seemed to contain no mockery. “You are, indeed, correct in your understanding. What of El’avarah?”
This took me a little longer, for it required me to consider the matter from a perspective I found frankly distasteful. “I suppose,” I began, “if I were intent upon murder, and keen not to be discovered, I would want to choose an occasion when my victim was isolated. But whatever business the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers has in El’avarah is likely to be prestigious and, therefore, to involve a large deputation, of which Miss Beck would only be part. Therefore, unless I had significant knowledge of that city or the routes to it, which I suspect that the Contessa does not, being native to a wholly different continent, I would struggle to find an appropriate opportunity for malfeasance.”
“Well done, Mr. Wyndham. It reassures me to know that, should you ever be called upon to murder somebody, you will prove at least minimally competent.”
As compliments went, it was not one I was entirely happy to receive.
“All of which,” continued to my companion, “leaves us with the mines. They are inland, isolated, and not so important that Miss Beck would be travelling as part of a larger entourage.”
At that she closed the folder, tossed it back onto the desk, and went to retrieve her hat from where it lay next to the body of Mr. Wangenheim. “Well, I think we’re done here.”
I blinked in some surprise. “Done? But we have no idea where the Contessa is, or what danger she still might pose to Miss Beck.”
“It doesn’t matter where the Contessa is. We know that she plans to murder the fishmonger, and since she has been making preparations towards that end for some time she clearly has not also been sending threatening letters to Eirene.” Ms. Haas unfolded her hat and set it back on her head, adjusting it to an angle that I considered inappropriately jaunty. “Therefore, she is not our blackmailer. Therefore, we have no further business here. What would you say to dinner out this evening? I find myself peckish.”
I had thought my companion had exhausted her capacity to shock me. She had not and, over our long acquaintance, never did. “But... but,” I protested, “she might murder Miss Beck.”
“I daresay she might. What has that to do with us?”
“Ms. Haas!”
“Mr. Wyndham, there were a hundred and twenty-seven recorded cases of murder between Khel, Athra, and Ven in the last year alone.” She heaved a martyred sigh. “You can scarcely expect me to directly intervene in all of them.”
“That is specious reasoning and you know it. The fact that one cannot do every good thing does not mean that one should do no good things.”
“Perhaps not, but I make it a personal policy to do as few good things as possible. They are, after all, so terribly tedious.”
I rapped my cane against the edge of the desk. “Madam, I will not stand by and allow an innocent woman to be hunted and slain by a rapacious monstrosity.”
“You may do as you like. I’m going to dinner.”
“Have you no compassion in your heart?”
“None. I’ve always felt it would be a dreadful waste.”
She attempted to leave but, abandoning all propriety, I interposed myself between her and the door. In the fullness of time, I would become more adept at navigating Ms. Haas’s frequently complex motivations. On this occasion, however, it was mostly by good fortune that I was able to find a line of argument that allowed me to bridge the gap between the principles by which ordinary people live and Ms. Haas’s whims of the present moment.
