Page 6 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Miss Viola gave a little sigh. “He’s also an inconceivable braggart, which means he could have told anybody. Which means the letter could have come from anybody.”
“Not anybody.” Ms. Haas turned the letter over and peered closely at its obverse. “Just not necessarily someone directly connected to that incident. You know, you’ve been a wonderfully naughty girl over the years. I’m sure you’ve left a veritable legion of jilted lovers, double-crossed associates, and good old-fashioned victims who’d relish the opportunity to even the score.”
“Which means,” said Miss Viola, rather sharply, “that you’ve narrowed the list of suspects down from ‘everyone’ to ‘everyone I’ve ever annoyed.’ I’m so glad I came to you, Shaharazad. Your reputation is nothing if not deserved.”
“Are you like this with the fishmonger? If so, a little blackmail is likely to be the least of your matrimonial impediments.”
“You bring out the worst in me. As you do in most people.”
“You flatter me, dear.” Ms. Haas took a turn about the room. “But to return to your current problem, it is a simple matter of triangulation. We know that whoever sent this letter has reason to wish you harm and has access to at least a small amount of personal information, some of which must have originated at Mise en Abyme. Further, the specific harm they seem to wish you speaks volumes as to their motives. No attempt has been made to extort you financially, suggesting that they have no especial need for money. Nor have theythreatened you with violence, suggesting someone comfortable with casual cruelty but held back from more direct interventions by conscience or cowardice. Finally, we know that this individual is right-handed and expected you to recognise their script. It is really very straightforward.”
My own pen had been near flying off the page as I attempted to keep pace with Ms. Haas’s rapid exposition. “I wouldn’t use that word exactly, but I believe I can follow your reasoning,” I said. “At least until you reached the subject of handedness.”
“Whatever is the matter with you, Mr. Wyndham?” She spun round to confront me. “Was it not obvious the moment you looked at the letter that the writer had used the hand they did not favour? Why do such a thing if not to disguise your handwriting from the intended recipient? And since the sloping of the ascenders and descenders is quite characteristic of the use of the left hand, it follows that our blackmailer is ordinarily right-handed.”
I took the note back and considered it with fresh eyes. Now it had been pointed out to me, I could indeed discern that the writing was shaky and ill formed, as if written with the off hand, and that the letters sloped backwards. It would simply never have occurred to me to see such details as significant. Over the coming years, I would learn to observe things a little more as Ms. Haas did, an exercise from which I have derived both satisfaction and utility, although I never attained her facility.
Setting the paper aside, I asked, “Is there anything else we can conclude from the letter?”
“Not by casual examination. The paper is of ordinary quality and could likely have been purchased from any stationer’s in the city. The ink likewise. There was no postmark so I assume it was hand delivered, but messengers are only a little more expensive than...” And here, I am sorry to say, Ms. Haas made a most inappropriate comparison that I would prefer not to repeat. “If you think yourself able,Captain, perhaps you could employ your professional training to test this letter and the envelope for any alchemical traces that may indicate who has handled it or where it has come from.”
“I should be glad to.”
She retrieved her tobacco and refilled her pipe. “Meanwhile, Eirene, I recommend you return home and begin compiling a list of possible suspects. Start with everyone who might want to harm you, and then eliminate those who are in no position to do so or who would choose to do so by other methods. Of those who remain, discard the ones who are left-handed or who have never written you a letter.”
Having given us our instructions, Ms. Haas retired abruptly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Five Names
I scarcely sawMs. Haas for the next day or so, although I heard her moving about 221b Martyrs Walk at odd hours. For my part, I took the letter into the hospital and began the lengthy process of testing it alchemically for any clues as to its origin. To my considerable regret and frustration, all of the spiritual residues—the transubstantially detectable traces that all sentient beings leave on everything they touch, interact with, or, in extreme cases, think too much about—I was able to distil were quickly identified as belonging to either myself, Ms. Haas, or Miss Viola. Having concluded my shift, I hurried home to report my findings.
I discovered Ms. Haas in the sitting room, surrounded by an undulating cityscape of newspapers, reference works, and handwritten notes. “Ah,” she said, “Captain. What news?”
I settled into the wingback chair. “Very little, I fear. As you suspected, the paper is of very ordinary manufacture and my analyses revealed no evidence of the letter’s having been handled by a third party.”
“And what does that tell you?”
“It would have been difficult to write, seal, and deliver a letter without leaving any alchemical trace of your presence. This wouldsuggest that the blackmailer took great care and may even have had specific knowledge of the transubstantial sciences.”
She gazed at me for a moment. Having grown accustomed to her personal habits, it was startling, and a little unsettling, to find myself the subject of her unwavering scrutiny. “That is certainly one explanation,” she murmured.
“Are there others?”
“Always, Mr. Wyndham. In my world, to disregard the impossible is to limit oneself needlessly. In this case, however, we shall begin with what is merely probable.” She indicated the carnage of printed matter scattered about her. “I have narrowed Eirene’s accomplished list of enemies to the five most promising names. The sixth file”—she gestured to a slew of papers piled haphazardly against one wall—“concerns the associates of Miss Cora Beck. While it is most likely that our blackmailer comes from our client’s past, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are, in fact, targeting her fiancée indirectly.”
Having served in the Company of Strangers, my life has not been wholly without incident, but warfare, in my experience, is long periods of tedium punctuated by flashes of terror. What I now felt was something rather different: the sense that one was about to embark upon a true adventure. Of course, I was cognisant of the fact that my present excitement was possible only because Miss Viola found herself in a thoroughly unpleasant situation, a reflection that tempered my enthusiasm less than it should have.
I leaned forward a little in my chair and enquired, “Will you tell me a little of your findings?”
“I suppose that I could.” For all the nonchalance of her tone, Ms. Haas launched eagerly into an exegesis. “Charles du Maurier is the first, most obvious, and least interesting suspect.”
“Because he knew of the unfortunate Mr. Roux?”
“That, and because he’s...” Here Ms. Haas gave me a detailed and unflattering summary of Mr. du Maurier’s character in termssufficiently colourful that I would not even attempt to put them before my readers. “Which,” she concluded, “makes him exactly the sort of person to stoop to blackmail. He considered both Eirene and me his protégés at one time or another, a belief in which, I should stress, he was profoundly mistaken, at least in my case. Before I even met the man I had stolen curses from the Elder Witches of the Hundred Kingdoms and caught spirits in nets spun from moonlight. And while he was drinking cheap brandy and bothering actresses I was walking the Vitrine Road and reading the tales of the Other Kind of Glass. He’s a petty, grasping, arrogant coward who, in a rare display of good taste, was briefly obsessed with Eirene. Trying to ruin her marriage is exactly the kind of uninspired excuse for spite I’d expect from him.”
As it seemed likely that my companion would extemporise on the gentleman’s faults indefinitely, I thought it best to move the matter on. “You mentioned that he operated a theatre?”
