Page 5 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Here Ms. Haas described in far greater detail than was necessary the nature of her prior relationship with Miss Viola. Modesty forbids me from repeating any of it in these pages.
When my companion showed no sign of concluding her discourse, I awaited an appropriate pause and enquired, “What manner of assistance did you require, madam?”
“She’s being blackmailed.”
At this, Miss Viola turned a sharp gaze upon my companion. “She’s also capable of speaking for herself.”
“Then by all means tell the good captain what you have already intimated to me.” Ms. Haas lit her pipe, this time without the use of forbidden sorcery, and put it to her lips. “I shall endeavour to amuse myself.”
I readied my pen and bade Miss Viola tell me her story. The substance of it was thus. She had come to Khelathra-Ven following the popular uprising in Carcosa, that strange city so ancient and so famed that I am given to understand its notoriety has reached even the most backward of realities. Immediately following her arrival, she had fallen in with a bad crowd, of which I understood Ms. Haas had been a part. The lady was vague on the details of her life since, but I had a strong sense she had been a thief and an adventuress and had dabbled in sorcery. Any one of these would have disqualified her from marriage to any respectable person, even in Khelathra-Ven.
In the last year she had met and fallen in love with a warden of the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers (which, for those unfamiliar with the social and commercial institutions of Khelathra-Ven, is one of the city’s many influential trade guilds) by the name of Cora Beck. Miss Beck’s family had already expressed misgivings about their daughter’s engagement to a Carcosan immigrant, and Miss Viola was concerned that any hint of scandal would destroy all hope of their formal union. The blackmail material had so far consisted of a single anonymous letter demanding that Miss Viola break off the engagement on pain of certain secrets being made public. This letter she produced and handed to me for my perusal.
CHAPTER SIX
The Mysterious Letter
To the Lady Eirene Viola Delhali, daughter of the late Count of Hyades,
You are to break your engagement with Miss Cora Beck or else she, her family, and all society will learn precisely what happened to Benoit Roux.
Do not try me. Do not test me.
I hold your future in my hands.
“If I might ask,” I said, having examined the epistle, “whatdidhappen to Benoit Roux?”
Ms. Haas opened her eyes. “He was one of the four.”
“The four?”
“Do pay attention, Wyndham. The four persons Eirene accused me of feeding to the Princes of the Mocking Realm. She neglected to mention she was as much a part of that affair as I was.”
“I was seventeen,” protested Miss Viola. “I had just fled my homeland and was hiding in fear for my life from armed and fanatical militants. You were two decades my senior and I truly believed I was in love with you.”
“You can hardly holdmeresponsible foryouryouthful follies.”
“But I can hold you responsible for persuading me that my surestchance of evading my pursuers was to strike a pact with the lords of a psychedelic otherworld.”
Ms. Haas blew a perfectly formed smoke ring. “Well, it worked.”
I glanced once more at the letter and then at my notes. “Might we perhaps further address the question of the gentleman you murdered?”
“He wasn’t a gentleman,” drawled Ms. Haas. “He was new money at best. And a thoroughly unpleasant fellow.”
“I’m not sure that makes it right to kill him.”
“How dare you, Captain. I certainly did not kill him. Eirene and I simply contrived a situation in which Master Roux, of his own free will, exposed himself to extradimensional forces that tragically consumed him. Had he been less venal, he would be with us today. Not in this room, of course. Ghastly man.”
As I’ve said before, and will say again over the course of this manuscript, I strive never to judge others. I was nonetheless given serious pause by the content of this conversation. And, in truth, I am not entirely certain why I remained part of it or continued to keep company with Ms. Haas afterwards. I can only say that I have never made excuses for my friend’s behaviour and do, on some level, know that she has done heinous things. But I have also never known her to act without purpose nor with wanton malice, and I believe I must have understood this fact even then. Besides which, to be in the presence of the sorceress Shaharazad Haas was to glimpse a world more beautiful, more terrible, and more limitless than anything I could hitherto have imagined.
Miss Viola drew another pin from her hair, letting the whole mass of it come tumbling down, and then began the complex work of rebinding it. “So you see why I came here. Apart from you and I, very few people know what happened to Benoit.”
Tapping out her pipe on the cover of a blameless volume of Ilari love poetry, Ms. Haas rose and snatched the letter from my hand. “Twelve years ago, precisely three people knew: you, me, and duMaurier. All it takes is for one of us to have told one person at some point over the past decade and, suddenly, we have no idea who knows what.”
“If I might ask,” I asked, “who is du Maurier?”
“Another ghastly man,” returned Ms. Haas. “Although he is the chief servant of the Princes of the Mocking Realm, they have thus far failed to devour him. He runs an extradimensional fleapit of a theatre called Mise en Abyme.”
