Chapter Text
It had been three weeks since Miss Barrow had written.
He noticed at the end of the first week. Surfacing briefly from the second cellar, his eye had lit upon the dusty chessboard. He a), made a note to dust, and b), wondered what had become of Leonie’s next move. His last had pinned her knight in a particularly stylish way. Possibly she was wrestling with her reply. No matter. An impasse had arisen in his research; he was away for a week.
Two weeks was unusual. She was avoiding her inevitable defeat.
Two weeks and three days after her last letter he looked at the board on his way to bed, and it occurred to him that something might be wrong.
Not wrong. The terse but regular correspondence was dispensable, was it not? But it was odd. Miss Barrow had applied herself to the games tenaciously, undiscouraged by her comprehensive losing streak. She was even improving. Why would she abandon them now? If she had bored of the game, would she not have written?
Miss Barrow;
You are conceding the game?
C
He sealed the note with a little quirk in his lips. That, surely, would provoke a reply. But it had been three weeks now, and no reply had arrived.
****
Cabal’s grocery order had been dropped hurriedly at the end of his walk. The envelope propped on top of the box had blown into the garden. When recovered from the fairies, it proved to be from the telegraph operator. A telegram? He frowned and took it upstairs to his desk.
SHE IS GONE STOP
SHE IS GONE STOP
IT WAS NOT ME STOP
STOP HER DISCLOSURE OR I WILL KILL YOU ALL STOP
Arthur Twiccian had a distinctive prose style. He and Arthur Twiccian had only one mutual female acquaintance. It had been three weeks.
Cabal sat very still. He felt the fizz in his lower back as his adrenal glands dumped epinephrine into his system. A chill and then warmth passed through him, and he knew his face was darkening. His senses sharpened; he could smell the primulas in the garden and hear a bird being mugged by the fairies. He felt a sudden hormonally-enhanced desire to commit atrocities on a person or persons unknown.
He observed the convulsions of his endocrine system with disapproval and did his best to consider the situation calmly. Miss Barrow, who knew a great deal about him - knew the location of his home, knew the contents of the second cellar - had gone missing. Dead or alive, she might have been induced to share what she knew.
He cursed his carelessness. Everything was at risk. Everything. He would prepare the house for an invasion and set out to fix his mistake.