The Stonehouse Mysteries - Preface
#1 of Stonehouse Mysteries
So basically I have decided to do a little more writing. Specifically i am going to do smaller, shorter chapters with the new stuff I'm going to work on. Not for the Daylight stuff, that will probably still be done in a novella/wall of text style. So I'm going to try just setting aside an hour or two to write a small, self-contained chapter as part of the Stonehouse series. That will let me fill up some time with writing without producing something that needs about an hour to read. I hope it works! Here is the first attempt.
I wish to begin with the words 'Dear readers', as is my habit. However for all I know this document will remain locked in some dusty cabinet somewhere without being so much as glanced over. If it ever is read by someone outside that most secretive branch of the government with which I am intimately connected, it will probably be dismissed as the ravings of a doddering old woman who's good sense has finally left her. 'Monsters and spirits? Pah!' What are these in the age of air-travel and television? Who is this silly biddy trying to fool?
It is silliness, and vanity, that finally causes me to set down these other mysteries to print for the first time. You see, when I first decided to leave the life of a private detective and turn my now rather arthritic paws to writing, the government sent a man to see me. He was rather handsome, I recall, in a sober suit and little black hat. 'Now, Miss Stonehouse,' he said sipping the tea I brought him, 'you aren't going to do something silly are you?' He made me feel so old, although I was barely sixty. I don't know if it was the 'miss' that did it, or the fact that he looked like he was barely out of his childhood.
Oh I laughed at him then. I had plenty of files to write about, more even than that pushy little Belgian or that prudish village gossip. Tales of midnight train rides and sudden heists, daring escapes and secret thefts. Oh those could very easily fill volume after volume quite safely and keep me in biscuits and cigarettes well into my dotage. It would indeed be quite silly to have ruined my reputation and years of my life trying to sell tabloid stories of half-men and un-things living in the dark places of the world. And in doing so pour a hefty measure of egg upon the face of a government that denies such things exist in our neat, sober little world.
So I put aside the boxes with my 'difficult' cases in the attic and thought nothing of them as I wrote of more pleasant things. Well, as pleasant as locked-room murders can get at any rate. It didn't stop them sending a nice young lady to my publishers to check all the documents in case I had hidden some sort of code in them. Lovely girl, one of the best editors I ever had. I wonder if she'll sit down to look over all this mess one day?
In any case, it was on one expedition to the attic that I finally looked over those crates and lockers that I had stuffed my bad memories away in. And I have decided to do something silly. What, exactly will they do to me if I clatter away on my old typewriter for a year or so, organising my hazy recollections into another few volumes? Lock me in a home so I can be surly to the nurses and pinch the bottoms of handsome young doctors? Maybe I will finally put my feet up and let my brain turn to mush watching television and playing whist with old men that think they are Napoleon.
No, I think I have earned myself a little silliness in my old age. And so, dear readers, I am going to tell you about the worst cases I have ever had to deal with. I doubt that I will do so in order, for some of these affairs must be approached obliquely, like stalking big game. Some pain me even now. Of course, you already know the outcome, which blunts the horror for you. After all if the world ever ended or the terrors of the night had swallowed Bristol then you'd have hear of it. And since I am sat here swaddled in blankets and smoking like a chimney, in the rudest of health for my age, it is clear I survived. But just detach yourself from that for now and let me take you somewhere dark and terrible, as seen through my eyes.
I swear that all of this is as true as any of my memories. Make of that what you will.
Emelia Pointer-Stonehouse