The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

by Alexis Hall

  I remain forever,

  Your loving Jonathan

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Manor at Quatreface,

  Part the Third

  I replaced the letter and left the room hurriedly. I did not like to speculate as to the fate of its occupant but, given that we found the house in darkness on arrival and that his missive was dated two days earlier and had still not been sent, it seemed to me likely that he had either escaped, perished, or met some worse fate. I sent a silent prayer that it would prove to be the former, then endeavoured to put the matter out of mind.

  The only section of the house I had thus far failed to search was the tower, and so it was towards this that I now proceeded. That I had yet to cross paths with Ms. Haas concerned me a little, but I took consolation in the knowledge that she was more than the equal of anything she might encounter, and further consolation in the fact that I had come thus far without falling prey to any of the building’s supernatural inhabitants.

  The rooms in the tower seemed better maintained on average than those in the main house. Even those primarily dedicated to storage were neatly arranged in a manner that spoke of regular use. One of them was dedicated entirely to clothing of the feminine variety. Although this was very much not my area of expertise, I noted that the garments therein were divided into two distinct collections that differed from each other in style, cut, and size. The more extensive of them consisted of a great many sombre gowns in tones of black, red, and silver and represented a bewildering range of fashions stretching back at least four hundred years. The others, by contrast, seemed to belong to no era with which I was familiar. Many of them, frankly, more closely resembled nightwear (and inadequate nightwear at that). These items, from what I could tell by brief examination of their gauzy fabric, had been designed for a person whose stature much resembled Miss Viola’s.

  I climbed another flight of stairs and found myself in a study, the second most notable feature of which was the large array of journals, codices, papers, and memoranda that were piled upon its shelves and scattered across its floor. Its most notable feature, however, was the corpse. He lay pallid and lifeless upon the sofa, his clothing dishevelled and his throat, wrists, and chest marked with puncture wounds. Doubtless, this was the unfortunate Mr. Wangenheim, and though I was sorry for his fate, I had no wish to share it. I drew my pistol.

  Out of nowhere, fingers closed upon my wrist, holding me with a gentleness that belied their unnatural strength. I turned my head and beheld a golden-haired gentleman with penetrating sapphire eyes and red, voluptuous lips.

  “You will not need that here,” he said, his voice soft and touched with a Mircallan accent.

  Some distant part of my mind felt strongly that I did, in fact, very much need my firearm. But, even so, my fingers opened, and the weapon fell unheeded to the ground. The blond gentleman smiled approvingly, though his teeth were too white and too sharp.

  “Come, my brothers.” He drew my now empty hand to his mouth and subjected it to several liberties that, even these decades later, I blush to relate. “We have a new guest to entertain us.”

  There was a flicker of movement by the window and I saw two more gentlemen, like the first, dark where he was fair but possessed of the same terrible lasciviousness. They lingered in the moonlight, their shirts unfastened to the sternum and their pale skin gleaming wantonly.

  I hesitate to describe the perilous delights to which the vampiric gentlemen enticed me, but honesty forces me to disclose to my readers that the temptation towards acquiescence was considerable and exposed me to dangers both physical and spiritual. The blond gentleman, having initiated matters, drew me fully—and, I confess, unresistingly—into his embrace, though the nature of my attire, which accorded with my homeland’s strict standards of modesty, delayed his more intimate advances.

  His brothers, if brothers they were, and I sincerely hoped they were not, for the attentions they paid one another went somewhat beyond the fraternal, insinuated themselves also about my person, one of them removing my collar with delicate fingers, the other caressing me in a manner utterly impossible to commit to print. As the four of us sank entwined to the carpet, and my world became nothing but soft kisses and cruel fangs, I felt very certain that I would die. But, under the seductive influence of the vampires, so darkly pleasurable was the notion that I welcomed it. Indeed, I encouraged it.

  I was on the verge of losing consciousness entirely when the three gentlemen sprang away from me, hissing. Looking up blearily I beheld the unmistakable figure of the sorceress Shaharazad Haas. Her eyes seethed with white fire and, as I listened in horror, she spoke aloud the dread syllables of the private name of the Creator. My culture has many taboos, but there are few as absolute as that against the words Ms. Haas now uttered. Outsiders may presume that our habit of referring to the deity only indirectly and euphemistically is a simple matter of respect but, in actuality, invoking the Creator explicitly is not merely presumptuous but foolhardy. His power, if called upon correctly, sears body and soul alike and can easily overwhelm one who calls upon it with devastating consequence. To my relief, Ms. Haas stopped short of incanting the final syllable, which is known to only a few and unleashes the full curse of the Creator’s might. But even this fraction of His power had been sufficient to drive my erstwhile attackers cowering to the darkest corners of the room, their skin blackening and blistering.

  “Why have you come?” snarled the fairer of the three. “There is nothing for you here.”

  “I am the sorceress Shaharazad Haas. There is something for me everywhere.” My companion sauntered over to the sofa and took a seat beside the late Mr. Wangenheim. “For example, I have a personal interest in this gentleman you recently killed, that gentleman you were about to kill, and those papers—which I hope you haven’t disturbed too badly. Now do be good boys and slink back to your coffins.”

  If they were inclined to protest, they thought better of it, scuttling from the study like beetles from an overturned log. I rose gradually, and somewhat abashedly, to my feet, acutely aware of the disordered state of my garments.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I . . . That is to say . . . I . . .”

  Ms. Haas cast me an amused look. “Mr. Wyndham, if you are really so keen to be brought to the unholy precipice of ecstatic oblivion by the comely spawn of primal darkness, I can direct you to at least a dozen highly regarded specialists who can arrange it for you in a safe, sane, and consensual manner.”

  “Madam, I assure you I am not in the habit of consorting with such beings.”

  “You should be.” Her gaze alighted on my loosened doublet. “It looks terribly good on you.”

  “You have very much misunderstood my tastes. But this is not the time. The corpse, Ms. Haas, the corpse.”

  “Well, he’s hardly going anywhere, is he?”

  “It is a matter of respect for the dead.”

  Her lips curled into a wicked smile. “My dear man, you were about to consort with the dead.” She did not say “consort.” “I’m not sure you’re in any position to be lecturing.”

  “They were monsters driven by abominable lusts. He was a clerk.”

  “Ah, so you respect the dead only if they are dreary.”

  “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 se
ries 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. She did not murder her house guest. A guest was murdered in her 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.

  “Do you not think,” I tried, “that Miss Viola might be somewhat put out if, having secured your assistance in saving her relationship with Miss Beck, you were to choose a course of action that left the engagement intact but rendered the lady herself an exsanguinated cadaver?”

  My companion paused thoughtfully. “She has been awfully sentimental lately, hasn’t she? And it would be just like her to hold it against me if her fiancée were to be brutally eviscerated.” She sighed again, more deeply this time. “Very well, Wyndham. Let us save the fishmonger.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Mr. Jonathan Wangenheim

  Having persuaded Ms. Haas that our client might prefer that we not permit the murder of her fiancée, we returned to the documents in the hope that they would grant us deeper insight into the Contessa’s plan of attack. To my dismay, and to Ms. Haas’s mild irritation, the journey to the salt mines of Aturvash had been scheduled to begin on the previous day. More problematically still, we had advised Miss Viola that it would be in her best interests if she were able to persuade Miss Beck to abandon that commitment and, instead, disappear with her to parts unknown. And we had no idea whether she had attempted this, if she had attempted it, whether she had succeeded, and, if she had succeeded, where they had gone. Worse, we had no idea if the Contessa was, or was not, aware of this last-minute change of itinerary, if such a change of itinerary even existed.

  “Are you sure,” asked Ms. Haas, “you wouldn’t rather go to dinner? We seem to be encountering a wearying quantity of variables. Either Miss Beck is in Aturvash or she is not. Either Eirene is in Aturvash or she is not. Either the Contessa is in Aturvash or she is not. Either the Contessa knows Miss Beck’s current location or she does not. Those factors alone give us sixteen possible permutations to consider, and they multiply exponentially if we start trying to predict the Contessa’s response to any points of data she might or might not have discovered.”

  “I assume her response will be to attempt to kill Miss Beck.”

  Ms. Haas cast a sheaf of papers to the floor in frustration. “Knowing what she will attempt does not help us. We must know where she will attempt it. And, on that matter, I have no insight.” She paused, gazing speculatively at the late Mr. Wangenheim.

  “Ms. Haas,�
�� I gasped. “I sincerely hope you are not contemplating what I suspect you are contemplating.”

  “It seems an expedient solution.”

  “You have made it quite clear that you care little for laws, either municipal or natural, but surely even you would hesitate to further provoke the Ossuary Bank.”

  She laughed softly. “No, John, I wouldn’t.”

  “But what if this gentleman doesn’t want to have his spirit ripped from the afterlife?”

  “I find it most vexing that when I was willing to let Miss Beck die because I was more interested in getting dinner you thought I was being terribly selfish. But now you are apparently willing to let her die because you’d rather preserve some silly taboo about disturbing the rest of dead souls. Doesn’t that strike you as a little hypocritical?”

  “You can’t compare the sanctity of the grave to your passing appetites.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Wyndham, my appetites have done far more for me than your principles will ever do for you. Now help me pull this gentleman onto the floor.”

  To say I was unhappy at the thought of participating in a necromantic ritual would be something of an understatement, but Mr. Wangenheim’s life was over and Miss Beck’s was in danger. I am sure there will be many amongst my readership who do not approve of my complicity in this act and to you I will say only that I did what I felt best at the time and, in retrospect, I do not regret it. In the interests of painting a fuller picture of events as they unfolded I have recorded some details of the sorcery Ms. Haas performed on this occasion, but I have consulted with my lawyer, Ms. Gwendolyn Puppinghorn, of Shah, Shah & Puppinghorn, and she assures me that, provided readers could not themselves reconstruct the ritual from the information supplied, its inclusion is in accordance with the proper regulations.