Monday, January 2 through Wednesday, January 4, 1893
University Women’s Club, Bond Street (morning briefing)
The Oriental Club, 18 Hanover Square (research)
British Museum Library (research)
A shabby second-floor flat in Shoreditch (the watcher)
St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the morgue
Boarding the Orient Express at Chalon-sur-Marne, late Wednesday night
Smith’s proposal
Smith handed over Demir’s third telegram again: the veil cannot be destroyed, it must be taken to Constantinople, it is extremely dangerous, take care
Smith asked the party outright to make the trip. She is not going herself. She made a bad enemy in Constantinople (see Selima Makryat) and it is not safe for her there
Money is no obstacle. A wealthy patron, Baroness von Hoffler of Austria, will bankroll the expedition. Smith met her at a private gathering of occult-minded people at the Baroness’s estate outside Vienna
The Baroness collects books and occult objects (votive statues, strange garments, staffs, cult paraphernalia) and styles herself a fighter against dark powers. Her money has funded Smith’s research before. She will meet the party in person
Worth and Georgie both noted, in their own ways, that a generous stranger with a cult-artefact collection is worth a second look. Smith vouches for her
The party splits
Oriental Club: Worth, with Saroch along
British Museum: Polat, to keep copying the Apocrypha and dig into names
Shoreditch: Georgie, with Amelia as backup and her gun
The Oriental Club
Worth found Captain Wrexley, a grizzled retired cavalry man who runs the club library whether or not anyone asked him to. The talk of the morning was the Armenian persecutions in the Ottoman Empire and what Britain ought to do about it
Wrexley vouched warmly for Professor Demir: a fine, upright, well-respected scholar, an ally of the Ottoman court and close to the Sultan, married with three nearly grown children. He writes on the primitive cults and religions of the region, an anthropologist of belief. Worth came away with Demir looking more respectable, not less
Wrexley pulled the last book Demir had been studying off the shelf, a Persian volume, the same text as the Apocrypha of the Veil that Polat found at the British Museum
Worth read up on The Whispering Veil: an Ottoman book printed in the 1700s, no copy anywhere in London, not even the British Museum, though it surfaces at auction now and then
Worth also turned up that von Hoffler has donated good books to the British Museum and is respected for her knowledge, though her character is hard to read from a card catalogue
The British Museum
Polat kept filling in the Apocrypha. The more he understands, the more the text gives up
He looked into von Hoffler (donor, respected, character unknown) and tried Selima Makryat, but the library holds almost nothing on living people
Shoreditch: the watcher
The address pressed into the notepad from Durward Street led to a shabby second-floor flat over a reeking slum
Georgie spread a few coins among the local urchins. The tenant is a Mr. Burnham, middle-class in dress but not in habits, recently arrived, keeps criminal company, rarely goes out
The urchins also reported a veiled woman had visited that very day and left a couple of hours earlier, heading south. The eyes, they said, were wrong
Georgie set urchins to tail Burnham when he left, then picked the lock (it was barely locked at all) and went in with Amelia
The flat belongs to a small-time blackmailer. Files of evidence, ugly letters, and press credentials, possibly forged, for the Birmingham Daily Post. Hidden among it, a client notebook with one name fresh in it: Menkaph, dated that very day, beside a sum in pounds. She is paying him
Georgie helped himself to a shirt and two collars for the journey. The urchins came back with Burnham’s route: St John’s Wood (watching Dr. Smith’s house), then the Bond Street area, then the Thomas Cook offices in Victoria
Bentley Burnham
Georgie and Amelia waited in the flat. Georgie built up the fire and let Burnham understand his papers would go in it
Burnham talked. Menkaph hired him to watch the party and find out who they are. He had, in fact, been hired to look for Georgie specifically
Burnham is meeting Menkaph to deliver his report. She is in or near Paris. He boards on Wednesday at Chalon-sur-Marne, the same junction where the English carriage joins the Orient Express, and gets off at Stuttgart
Continuity note (Session 4): Menkaph did not stay in Paris. She took the Monday train only as far as Paris, boarded the same Orient Express there, and is aboard the party’s train the whole time. “Monday train” = the London-to-Paris leg, not a different Express. The party joined that same Express at Chalon.
Deal struck: Georgie keeps the papers, Burnham reports to Menkaph as instructed, and tells the party what he passes on. They will find him on the train
His full name is Bentley Burnham. Georgie’s underworld contacts know him as an information agent for criminals, a man with a bad reputation who likes to make people suffer
St Bartholomew’s
The whole party went to the morgue, Saroch leading. Maria Pook’s body was on the table, mid-autopsy. The wasted frame, the facial skin loosened and hanging in tatters
When the surgeons opened her skull, there was no brain. In its place, a knot of TWITCHING TENTACLES, still moving. Worth took it the hardest
The useful fact: the disease moved fast. Pook lived perhaps four days after the veil took hold. The party now has a clock, and a reason to study the Arrest Veil Decline spell before they need it
Provisions and the train
A lockable wooden box for the veil, replacing the flimsy one
The party’s armament is thin: Amelia’s two pearl-handled revolvers and a box of shells, Georgie’s knife and a new straight razor, Saroch’s laudanum. The scholars carry nothing
Continuity note (Session 4): Amelia also has a heavy .577 revolver she describes as “bought for this trip.” If that purchase happened during this London provisioning, it belongs on this list; flagged for Edmund to confirm when she acquired it. Barrington’s pistol, shotgun, and sabre were also unlisted here.
Captain Roderick Barrington travels in their company as a reserve, an old acquaintance, though not a man likely to fight for them
Continuity note (Session 4): the “won’t fight” framing did not hold. Barrington drew his sabre against the shadows and stood with the party. He carries a pistol, a shotgun, and a sabre.
Thomas Cook tickets cost a staggering £58 each, first class. Georgie nearly fainted
Aboard the Orient Express
Wednesday, near midnight. The English carriage joined at Chalon-sur-Marne and the party climbed into the lap of luxury
The conductor, a slim Belgian named Henri Peters, welcomed them and showed them to their cabins
Sleeping car one: Amelia and Saroch share the first compartment, Georgie and Worth the second, Polat and Barrington the third. The cars are gaslit, panelled in hardwood, the furniture freestanding, the salon stocked with a small European library
Most doors are shut, the train quiet at this hour. Burnham is aboard somewhere. The session closed as the wheels began to turn
Unanswered questions
Where does Burnham get off the truth and start lying? He gave up Chalon-sur-Marne and Stuttgart cheaply
What exactly is Menkaph paying Burnham to find out, and what has he already told her about the party?
Who is Baroness von Hoffler really, and why does an Austrian occult collector want this expedition funded?
Is the veiled woman the urchins saw in Shoreditch the same Menkaph/Leeds, and where did she go heading south?
Can the Arrest Veil Decline spell be tested safely before someone needs it in four days flat?
Is Captain Barrington a help, a liability, or something else?