16.
IN WHICH INCONGRUOUS
ELATION IS THE ORDER
OF THE DAY

Casebook of Matthew Adelstein

Pertaining to the Nettleblack affair

This is war.

So the truanting wretch thinks she can counter my efforts by striking at Nicholas – at Nicholas’s rats – at Nicholas’s entire rat-breeding business! As if she hasn’t doomed herself infinitely more by doing so! Her murderous creature-weapon is the missing link (hadn’t thought of that, had you, Nettleblack?): the elder sisters have also lost what Edwina Nettleblack refers to as an ermine, and it’s been gone since the night of the youngest sister’s departure. I can only surmise that calling the beastly ferret what it is was far too commonplace for the insufferable family to cope with. They must all be so singular, mustn’t they, these wealthy ladies with their eccentricities?

So! ‘Henry Hyssop’ has a ferret, as well as more than a trace of a Welsh accent, and a suspicious past itinerary, and a face the very shadow of the family portrait! Septimus has clearly reprised her idiocy and thrown her lot in with the mustelid-toting madwoman, everyone sharing that hideous dormitory with her must have known about the ferret – and Keturah Ballestas, who should have known better than all of them, simply sat back and let the subterfuge run wild!

Very well. I am at liberty to dispense with my previous concerns viz. preserving the Division’s reputation. If the Division does not want my help, so be it. If Edwina Nettleblack chooses to shatter the place, well – they can hardly say I didn’t try to prevent it, until they left me with no other choice!

I shall write to Miss Nettleblack the elder at once. An amended version of my previous notes on the case will suffice for evidence, provided any mention of Nicholas is taken out. I won’t highlight the Division’s behaviour (I suppose I owe them that), but neither will I conceal their failure to report the dangerous heiress lurking in their midst. I’ll also be firmly advising Miss Edwina to have her so-called ermine taken out and strangled forthwith.

I would call on her straightaway, but I can’t leave Nicholas alone. The damned ferret bit him – I could strangle it myself! – and he refuses to so much as bandage the wound until his decimated rodents are afforded some retrospective dignity. He’s in our back garden, damp in the downpour, holding a spontaneous funeral for the slaughtered rat. His past and future professions colliding, as they never should have had to. I told him I’d join him before the hour struck (it was the only way I could get him to consent to having his injury looked at), so I’ll have to be quick.

His injury – that she gave him, just to thwart me – and the rain lashing down on him in the garden – and his bite still not tended to –

Right. Right. I shall gather up every bottle of Nettleblack’s Tincture in the house, and I shall line them up on the banisters and push them off one by one, and – then, perhaps, I shall be calm enough to write a sensible letter.

Addendum

Something of a change of plan. Post came as I was smashing the bottles. It can’t wait.

First, a letter from my erstwhile Director. Dire straits, will I come back, and so forth. I shan’t. Ballestas hasn’t even had the presence of mind to dismiss the little imposter. Instead, she’s removed Septimus from the Division’s most important case and hurled her desk-bound daughter into the field instead – why? To make some sort of point? As if this will ameliorate anything! The present strain must be warping her judgment.

(Not that anything of the sort is warping mine.)

But – more pressingly – Ma and Ta.

They want to come. Here.

They’re only twenty minutes away in Gulmere. They could arrive at any moment. Most maddeningly of all, they haven’t given a reason. How am I supposed to dissuade them, without a reason?

And there must be a reason. It could be nothing more sinister than Saturday, and Shabbat Mevarchim, and summoning me to the service. But then – why would they not specify? And why come to me?

Edwina Nettleblack shall have to wait. I must tell my parents that the Division is in crisis, and that I simply cannot host a family visit. But – if I tell them I’ve resigned, they are bound to ask why, and I can hardly confess I did so out of spite over a dead rat and a distraught rat-breeder –

And that wasn’t all of my motivation, was it? It was something far more sensible than that.

Wasn’t it?

Right, never mind. I’ll have to tell them I’ve completed the case, and that the attic building-work has already started.

But then, if they miss my letter, or turn up regardless –

No. I must tell Nicholas to write to Lawrence Tickering. That was my plan, for his alternative accommodation – just in case –

But I as good as threw Tickering’s sister off the Head-Hider case! And Nicholas’s rats were instrumental in the skirmish! Why would he help us, after that?

And how can I even think of making Nicholas do anything, when his ferret-ravaged forearm is still resoundingly unattended to?

Damn it! Damn all of it!

Addendum to the addendum

I’ll go to Gulmere myself. Tomorrow. It is not in panic: if it is Shabbat they mean, I will have to be there on Saturday regardless. There is absolutely no need for them to come here. If worst comes to worst, I’ll tell them that I am still affiliated with the Division, and that in the present climate I fear for their safety in Dallyangle.

Is that too drastic?

No. Mrs. Ballestas was right about one thing in her frantic little correspondence: the Division is certainly dancing with its own demise now.