“Let me explain—there’s context to all this…” Yvette met the piercing gazes of the Thought Labyrinth Club members and reluctantly recounted a sanitized version of events.
“…So you understand—my uncle detests notoriety. Had you dug elsewhere, you’d have found no mention of his role in this affair. Yet without him identifying the bitter salt in the wine and the cyanide poisoning, the case would’ve gone unsolved. Out of respect for his privacy, I kept silent. It wasn’t meant to deceive you.”
Absence forfeits the right to protest. She blamed Ulysses without composure, confident none would challenge the club’s least-liked figure.
The perfect patsy~
“Ah, Sir Ulysses… eccentric as ever, God forgive my frankness,” Aconite murmured, nodding.
“Unfair,” objected Strychnine, once Ulysses’ fiercest critic, now softened by owing the man his life during the Moulin Rouge debacle. “Reclusive, yes—but honorable.”
“With Mandrake’s firsthand account, my novel shall brim with authenticity! Sit—spare no detail about the Silver Star!” Curare slapped down fresh parchment, quill dancing across the page.
Yvette obliged, relieved the murder lacked supernatural complications. Only Ulysses’ uncanny deductions required omission.
Hours later, five ink-glazed sheets dried beside Curare’s cramped hand. Flexing his fingers, he halted Yvette’s retreat.
“A moment, Mandrake! Another matter!”
He produced a cheque for over ￡1,000—a king’s ransom.
“Miss Fisher,” he intoned, invoking her true name. “My books owe their success to your exploits. The proceeds rightly belong to you.”
Too generous.
Yvette knew Curare’s earnings barely matched this sum. Yet here he stood, a baron’s heir untouched by pecuniary instinct, offering her windfall. Mrs. Palmer had died for less aboard the Silver Star.
She declined. His labor—the sleepless drafting, the obsessive edits—deserved reward. Moreover, his fiction masquerading truth sanitized London’s strangeness, covertly aiding the Special Missions Bureau.
Let Faulkner keep writing. Tame the rumors, spare the masses.
If only she weren’t his muse…
“Keep it,” she insisted, then unveiled her gambit. “Let’s found a Consulting Detective Agency. Wealth in amusement, if not coffers.”
“Consulting… detectives?” The club savored the exotic phrase.
“Precisely. Physicians have their consultants—experts guiding common practitioners. Why not detectives advising their lesser peers? London swells with crime, yet most ‘detectives’ chase lost terriers and pilfering maids. We shall tackle enigmas beyond their grasp.”
The notion—lifted from Sherlock Holmes in her past life—electrified the room. “Detectives’ detective”—how deliciously elitist! Profit paled against prestige.
Better still, the agency served her covert aims. Curare’s literary fame would draw clients aplenty. Yvette could feed them trivial cases, reserving eldritch horrors for herself, then veil solutions in plausibility. After Moulin Rouge, Bell Street, and the Silver Star, the club worshipped her deductive genius—they’d swallow any tale.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
As the members bickered over agency names and newspaper ads, Yvette slipped away. Let them squabble—she’d return to harvest their labors.
At Canterbury Cathedral, the doorman recoiled. That Frenchman again—hat on in the Holy Seat’s sanctum!
As he lunged to reprimand, the interloper vanished toward the archbishop’s chambers.
Impertinent wretch! His grace shall revoke your liberties!
Indeed, the Holy Seat startled—not at the intrusion, but at Ulysses’ bared head.
Blood crusted his scalp. Amid the gore, twin spurs of bone protruded.
“Contained,” Ulysses rasped. “No breach. I’ll convalesce here.”
“This isn’t about civility!” The Holy Seat glowered. “Any lapse risks catastrophe. Explain yourself!”
“An omen led me to heretics defiling life’s sanctity. Took a novice agent. Contained without its aid. Lingering… residue.”
“A novice? Madness! Seasoned hands abound!”
“Novelty ensures loyalty,” Ulysses retorted. “Without treachery, the Great Fire of ’66 might’ve been spared.”
The Holy Seat winced. London’s inferno—a festering wound.
“Your gamble endangered us all.”
“An isle adrift. Had things soured, the damage was quarantined.”
“I’ll dispatch Mr. Mundane to verify.”
Ulysses exhaled inwardly—the ruse held.
The Fire…
Embers haunted him still. Fetid smoke, furnace winds, timber screaming—a purgatory etched in memory.
It taught him trust’s frailty. Confronting the abyss’s secrets could twist comrades into foes. Thus, he’d breathe no word of the omens now whispered to two souls.
The world was Pandora’s artifice—a gilded lie caging mortal and mystic alike. This fractured reality could ill survive another schism… or another toll of the Doomsday Clock.
With Ulysses away, the newspaper had fallen under Yvette's charge. She haunted Fleet Street each afternoon these past weeks, schooling the editors in modern media tactics from her former life – strategic leaks, celebrity exclusives, the machinery of public persuasion.
The café hummed with the clatter of typewriters and heated debates. Through its frosted windows, Yvette watched Fleet Street's daily ballet: ink-stained compositors darting between printshops, newsboys shouldering paper avalanches, starry-eyed scribes ambushing critics with manuscripts. Above it all, St. Paul's dome watched like a stony patriarch.
Today's triumph sat sweet as the lemon cake on her plate. She'd bagged Faulkner – current darling of the literati – for an interview peppered with juicy teases about his next novel. Let competitors scrabble for scandal; "FAULKNER EXTRA!" blazing across tomorrow's mastheads would empty newsstands by noon.
The editors, liberated from their usual deadline frenzy, debated everything from Browning's verse to the Mars-Jupiter conjunction. Their sudden dive into star charts and birth signs made Yvette stifle a laugh. Grown men arguing astrological houses with academic rigor – it was like catching one's uncle at a séance.
"Since when did Fleet Street hire sibyls?" she teased.
"Join the celestial conclave, Fisher!" Cocker brandished his horoscope manual like scripture. "The stars don't lie."
"Neither do charlatans."
Her skepticism only fired Cocker's evangelism. "This isn't crystal-gazing nonsense! Kepler himself–"
Yvette tuned out, marveling at the age's contradictions. Steam-powered presses churned out starry prophecies; learned men worshipped both slide rules and zodiac charts. Even Newton wasted years seeking alchemical gold. Truth and folly danced their eternal waltz.
Stars... She'd humor them. Tomorrow brought a meeting with inventor von Stein – and perhaps more pressing matters at college.
The university quad felt ghostly without Julie's laughter. Her latest letter described telegraph wires buzzing with secret camaraderie – operators flirting in dots and dashes, sharing jokes no censor could decode. But the veteran she'd replaced had left traps: sudden codebarrages meant to overwhelm rookies. Julie's solution remained mysterious, though her tone hinted at delicious vengeance.
Only Gary haunted the rose garden now, jerking upright when Yvette materialized beside him. "Easy there! Where's the brigade?"
"Carol's blue-deviled." The scholarship boy who traded Latin translations for opera tickets had lost his muse – prima donna Soret struck by mysterious ailment. Yvette needed his polyglot talents to trace serpent gods across mythologies: Egyptian chaos dragons, plumed Aztec spirits. With Ulysses vanished and colleagues dodging divine talk, dusty tomes offered her only compass.
"I'll roust him!" Gary vowed. "Ale and Aristotle – best cure for lovesick scholars."
"You'll both earn silver for this," Yvette insisted. Gary's protest died at her raised palm. "Knowledge exacts its price. Consider it tuition from Dame Wisdom herself."
