31 March 1872, Easter Sunday

Dear James,

I wish you a joyous Easter. All is as well as can be expected at here at the Cowperthwaites. Tattvik and I have been joined in our duties by the newly engaged nursery maid. Denu arrived in February and has settled in nicely. The nursery has been kitted out to her satisfaction and now she only needs the baby to arrive for her full duties to commence.

Lady Cowperthwaite’s grandmother arrived a two weeks ago to be on hand for the confinement. I can’t remember if you have met her or not. I don’t know if she and Great-Aunt Hethelyn would have gotten along but they do see the world in a similar light.

I have had a break in my studies while we all wait on Lady Cowperthwaite. I miss the routine of teaching and being taught but I owe a great deal to Lady Cowperthwaite and would not miss this Event. My own Condition is just becoming noticeable to others so I doubt I would have been able to keep up the pace I had established in London. I seem to take naps at any opportunity. The rest of the staff have been very solicitous of my health and that of my passenger.

Mr Salmalin is well and sends his greetings. I hope you are keeping well and that your students are not giving you more trouble than you can handle.

Your loving sister,
Victoria

3 April 1872, Wednesday

Lady Cowperthwaite was delivered safely of a baby boy early this morning. The child seems to be robust in both health and lung power. Nanny Chigwidgeon and Mrs Cuthbert saw to the midwifery, while Mrs Frazer and I assisted where necessary. Mrs Frazer weighed and measured the little fellow and found him to be a satisfactory 18 inches long and 6 pounds in weight. Thanks to, or in spite of, the alternating and sometimes contradictory advice of the three experienced mothers in the room, the young man was convinced to nurse. I took notes.

It was rather disturbing to be in on a birth given my own Condition. For so long I thought I was incapable of bearing a child and so had grown somewhat indifferent to the birth process. Now that I know I will be going through it myself in a few short months, and without the aid Lady Cowperthwaite’s youth or Mrs Frazer’s equanimity I find the future to be somewhat daunting.

For now, however, I can distract myself with fussing over my Mistress and her child.

4 April 1872, Thursday

Yesterday and today are consumed with sending out notices of the young master’s birth. I have spend many hours at my desk writing and responding to various notes of congratulation. It doesn’t help that if I sit for too long I fall asleep in my chair.

~Later~
Lady Cowperthwaite and Sir Cosmo have asked me to stand as Godmother to baby Galen! I am very honoured and excited! He is to be named Galen Robert after his grandfathers. Mr Ichabod Balderstoke is to stand as Godfather.

5 April 1872, Friday

You’d think some people would have the decency to wait to call on a household so recently stirred up. Leave it to Lillian de Vere to push the limits. She and her new husband, the Comte de Brabant arrived during our lunch to pay their respects and leave a gift for the Christening.

While we were sitting down to lunch, Mrs Cuthbert suddenly had a strong vision of her and Lillian facing off followed by an even stronger vision of Lillian arriving at the house. When she mentioned this to me, I extended my senses and could feel the obnoxious woman’s arrival as well.

Miss Pinker as acting hostess, agreed to receive That Woman. Lady Cowperthwaite is not at home to visitors. I can’t think what the Comtesse was thinking. Personally I think she couldn’t wait to rub Mrs Cuthbert’s nose in the fact of her new husband and his showy ways. I couldn’t help noticing was that the new Mr Lillian is a mage in his own right and probably a quite powerful one. He is rather well favoured with a shock of white hair that seems to resist combs and dark evenly set eyes. He is well preserved but appears to be older than Lillian by a substantial amount.

We found the Christening gift on the table after the Comte and Comtesse had departed. It was inspected for various harmful influences and set aside for later.

Mr O’Flaherty arrived in the afternoon. Now we are only missing Inspector MacGregor and Mr Frazer.

~Much later~
Why I thought the powers that be might have allowed Sir Cosmo and Lady Cowperthwaite some respite during this time I don’t know– certainly none was granted to Mrs Frazer. This trend is somewhat worrisome and makes me wonder what will happen during my confinement. I can only hope to prove the exception to the rule.

The excitement is this: Inspector MacGreggor and Mr Frazer, having been released from their work for the weekend and travelling by train to Edenfield for some time with their wives, and in Mr Frazer’s case, children, instead arrived in at the platform only to be asked to look in at a suspicious death a the first class car.

The train car was moved to a siding to allow further investigation while allowing the train itself to proceed. Various members of the league made it their business to investigate.

Mrs Cuthbert and I arrived to find both the new Comtesse and Mrs Earwig on the platform observing the stricken car.
We could tell from some distance that a very powerful Presence had visited the train car. It was likely that which attracted the attention of the other two witches.

What we found was a train car that had been visited, quite literally, by an Angel. If Bernard MacGreggor’s testimony is to be believed (and he certainly has experience in such matters) it was the Angel of Death. The victim, a Colonel Dunbar, was an acquaintance of Sir Cosmo. The colonel had wired to say he was coming to visit Sir Cosmo on some shared business of Our Employer’s.

Mrs Cuthbert was able to determine that whatever the Angel had done, The Colonel was not quite as dead as the conductor had presumed. He had aged greatly– Sir Cosmo said he looked more than 20 years older than his 40 years. Wilhelmina and Mrs Wooster were sent to collect Mrs MacGreggor and Mr Shorrock, in the hopes that Mr Shorrock’s research of a year ago could be made to serve this man until we could get his soul back from whatever had stolen it.

Mrs Cuthbert and I set up a summoning ritual in the train car. Mr O’Flaherty assisted and Lady Cowperthwaite could not be dissuaded from joining us. We soon had enough power to try to speak to the spirit of the Colonel. Mrs Cuthbert could see him reaching toward us. Suddenly the summoning was overwhelmed by the Angelic Force we had felt a echo of. I could see a new hand reaching down toward Mrs Cuthbert. She was concentrating intensely on Colonel Dunbar. I had no idea how to warn her without breaking the circle and possible causing our spell to go wild. Fortunately, the Inspector, egged on by his ghostly father, tackled Mrs Cuthbert, breaking the spell and pulling her away from the Angel’s grasp in the nick of time. Unfortunately the summoning spell proceeded to spin out of control.

The Inspector tried to hustle us out of the train car, not realising that we needed to focus all of our attention on bringing the wild spell back under control. I’m afraid I was rather curt with him. I forget sometimes that he cannot see the mystical forces as I can and so had to take on faith that A: something is indeed occurring, and B: that one of us is in charge of making sure it goes as planned.

Once we had our mess cleaned up and the Colonel was safely in the care of Helen and her father we returned to Edenfield Court to examine the evidence collected and consult on the next steps to take.

Inspector MacGreggor told us of the suspicious death investigation that he and Mr Frazer had been conducting in London. It seemed to have a bearing on this case as a witness had encountered an Angel near where the first man, a doctor, had died. The witness was a burglar by trade who was so shaken by his experience that he turned himself in and spent several days confessing, in detail, his life of crime. His description of the Angel had caught the deceased Mr MacGreggor’s attention and at his urging Inspector MacGreggor and Mr Frazer had begun to look more closely into the case.

Dr Kenyon, the London victim, had been found dead in his consulting room, it had been presumed that his death had been a natural one, there had been no signs of attack or struggle and no obvious signs of poison. The odd thing had been that a window on a lower floor bedroom had been broken out and the housekeeper reported that a girl who had been staying at the doctor’s house was missing.

The girl’s name is Evie Botley. She is an orphan who had been taken in, first by a distant cousin and then when that elderly relative had died, by the owner of an estate in Woostershire a Sir Robert Plank. Miss Botley had been diagnosed as an imbecile early in life. Sir Robert had brought in Dr Kenyon to consult on the case and he had taken the girl to his London office to examine her case more throughly. His notes indicated that he felt her diagnosis to be in error. The housekeeper believed the girl to be ‘touched’. Miss Botley has a birthmark across her face and acted ‘strange’.

While all this was going on, Sir Cosmo discovered that Colonel Dunbar had just been to visit Sir Robert– the selfsame Sir Robert who had asked Dr Kenyon to examine his ward, Miss Botley. Sir Cosmo sent out a telegram asking Our Employer for more information on the Colonel and his activities.

Edward also sent off a telegram, alerting some of his confederates in London to be on the lookout for young Evie. She is only 10-12 years old and, if she is alone on the streets, she will need some protection from more mundane threats as well.

I sent telegrams off to Mr Moody and Mrs Godwin. The notebook that Colonel Dunbar had been carrying had a drawing of what appears to be a Greek cross. It has four arms all of the same length and no ornamentation. I saw a note like it in Rimbaldi’s papers during my research these past few months. It was a marginal drawing on the pages relating to “the Vessel”, a design Rimbaldi had outlined that would theoretically create a mechanical body for a disembodied spirit, either human, divine, or diabolical. There was no indication in Rimbaldi’s notes as to the success or failure of such an experiment. His writing did seem to indicate (if the translation is correct) that the spirit could be summoned and bound to the device against its will. In my telegrams I asked who else might have access to Rimbaldi material, if the Colonel had used the Watcher Library, and alerted both agencies to the unwanted Angel activity.

6 April 1872, Saturday

This morning Mr O’Flaherty and I called upon the Comtesse. Mr O’Flaherty had observed her at the train platform yesterday. She had been using some sort of glass or crystal to look at the train car and had appeared to hurt her hand. Though when he asked after her she denied she was in any difficulty.

We were invited in for tea. I was somewhat surprised that she didn’t leave us standing on the doorstep give our relative lack of status. Her new husband joined us and we talked around many subjects only lightly touching on the powerful echo left behind. I did thank them for their help in subduing the wild spell. I did my best to be gracious and well mannered. Mr O’Flaherty was much more forthright, as is his wont. We did see evidence that the Comtesse’s right hand was injured. She was doing nearly everything either awkwardly with her left hand or heavily favouring her right. I suggested that Sir Cosmo had access to quite good doctors and medicines but no further mention was made of the issue.
We returned home in time for lunch. There was a spirited debate at the table as to what steps we should take next to unravel this mystery (preferably without having any of our souls untimely snatched from this plain of exisistance). Mrs Cuthbert and I offered to cast a history spell and Inspector MacGreggor loaned us Miss Botley’s blanket as the focus.

Mrs Cuthbert, Mr O’Flaherty, Lady Cowperthwaite and I gathered in an upstairs parlour. to cast the spell.

The vision showed us first the consulting room of the Dr Kenyon. He met with the girl and apparently talked with her late into the night. He sent her off to bed and continued writing up his notes. I presume those are the case notes later found my Inspector MacGreggor and Mr Frazer. We felt the vision shift to Miss Botley’s room. She read for a time from a bird book similar to the one given to Edward by the Bookseller. She put out the light and then fell asleep. A shone under the crack in her door. She awoke and was quite obviously frightened by the light. She used a blanket to shield her hand, broke out the window and scrambled out into the street where she ran into a wiry older man who we later confirmed was the burglar ‘witness’.

A seraph appeared above the girl and asked “Who are you?” in a powerful and overwhelming voice. Even seeing it the second-hand in the vision was stunning.

The man fell to his knees, the first seraph vanished from view the girl ran off and a second angel appeared and asked the same question. The girl ran. She finally hid under a train platform, scratched a rudimentary spell circle around herself and the vison ended abruptly. We surmise that she successfully cast some sort of veil spell to hide from the Angel. This all argues that she is not the imbecile others in her home village thought her. She may, in fact, be a witch in her own right, and, I presume, in some danger from at least one of the Angels.

We did not try to break her veil, as we do not have any idea where she might be or what she might need protection from.

We did try a second history spell to try to see the same events from Dr Kenyon’s point of view. We saw him writing up his notes, then the bell to the surgery rang. He answered it and a young man was at the door, apparently assisting an elderly woman in black crepe and veil. They came into the consulting room and the form in black seemed to throw off its wrappings and become an Angel. It asked the doctor, “Who are you?” The doctor took fright and fell down, dead, in a faint, or with his soul stolen like Colonel Dunbar, we do not know. He was alone for several hours before the housekeeper found him.

We know from Inspector MacGreggor that an autopsy was subsequently performed. We can only hope that he had already expired by that point. Inspector MacGreggor has sent out a telegram warning his colleagues that all suspicious deaths should be treated with extreme caution, as it is possible the victim might still be alive.

I joined Mrs Frazer in planning an expedition to Manchester to look for signs of the mysterious figures that Mr Frazer had seen briefly from the train yesterday.

In the end, Mr Frazer, Mrs Frazer, Violet, the babies, Inspector MacGreggor, Mr Salmalin and I all travelled to Manchester to see if any further evidence in the mystery of Colonel Dunbar’s strange incapacitation could be found. It seems that Benton had seen two figures similar to those described by the would-be-burglar on the platform at Manchester. Unfortunately the glimpse was fleeting and the train was already moving a good clip when he spotted them but he wanted to go back and investigate as did Mrs Frazer.

Benton had formed the opinion that the two figures had exited the train at Manchester and might have been in first class with the unfortunate Colonel.

We spent an interesting afternoon searching. We did not find our quarry but did run into Lillian’s new husband in an alley we were investigating. We had followed the tracks of an odd three-wheeled cart that had travelled from the train station to this dead-end alley, where all trace of it seemed to disappear. The Comte de Brabant used his own spell to make time run backward. Somehow he included me in his spell even though I was not an active part of its workings.

His mode of spell casting was very interesting. It involves using what appear to be complex mathematical symbols. I expressed interest and he suggested that its mode might conflict with the styles of magic I practise. He claims, almost jokingly, to be the last practitioner of his particular art. He smiled as he said it, but the smile did not reach his eyes. He seems quite interesting in his own right. I just wish he did not have so close and association with Lillian.

During the spell, I saw a young man who might match the description given by the burglar and who had a similar ‘feel’ to the young man in the history spell we cast on Dr Kenyon’s consulting room. He was with an awkward figure dressed all in black with a black veil. The figure seemed to stand or ride in the three-wheeled cart, which the young man manoeuvred from the Manchester platform to the alley we were standing in. Then the being in the cart picked up both cart and man and flew away.

After the Comte left us to our own devices, I shared what I had seen. It was getting late by then and we returned to the platform to catch the last train back to Edenfield. The Comte was on the same train. We all managed to be polite to one another. It took one of my inevitable naps on the ride home.

We shared what we had learned with the rest of the household. No telegrams had come for me while I was out. I am not terribly surprised, as it will take my correspondents some time to come up with answers to my rather odd questions.

One distressing telegram had come for Sir Cosmo, however. Sir Robert had lapsed in unconsciousness earlier today. His family was being summoned and his death was considered imminent.

Now everything is on hold as we finish preparations for the Christening on the morrow.

7 April 1872, Sunday

The Christening and Churching went off without a hitch. I am now godmother to Galen Robert Cowperthwaite.

Lillian’s gift was opened by Lieutenant Wooster and given to Edward to experiment on. He finally settled on hanging the mobile made of mirrors (for that is what it was) in a mirrored box. It is to be hoped that it will give Lillian a headache.

~Later~
After an quiet reception for Galen and Lady Cowperthwaite we returned to Edenfield Court and our labours on behalf of our employers.

Inspector MacGreggor and Sir Cosmo both received telegrams that Sir Robert had died. Inspector MacGreggor was ordered to Snodbury to investigate. Sir Cosmo was encouraged to find a way to insert himself into the investigation. Not long after that, Mrs Travers, who was here for the Christening, invited Sir Cosmo and Lady Cowperthwaite to Brinkley Court in Snodbury. Telegrams have flown back and forth and we are working out the details now as to who will travel on which trains. I have put for the idea that Mr Salmalin and I could leave on the earliest train for Snodbury and prepare the way for Lady Cowperthwaite, the baby, Denu, Sir Cosmo, and others of the household who will travel with them.

I am packing and waiting on Lady Cowperthwaite’s word....

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