Fiction: Correspondence

Welby —

So deucedly sorry to do this to you, rushing off like a fox with hounds baying aft, but you know how I am.

You have told me you’ve paid the last of my gambling debts you intend to, and I admit you’ve been more than generous in that area. And you fixed that little misunderstanding between myself and the museum over that damaged painting — which I maintain I was not to be blamed for. Oh, and that jeweler’s concerns over the diamond brooch that somehow slipped into my pocket at his establishment. Along with various incidents at the club. But I sense I’ve come to the end of much of your kindness, and that’s only too easy to understand.

Thus, I am asking for nothing more than your forbearance as I toddle quietly and quickly away from London for some unknown length of time. Oh, and for the £100 I’ve liberated from the company safe for expenses. (No safe is safe from me, ha!)

But, you see, there’s a matter of the young woman I’ve been seeing — I believe I’ve introduced you to Beatrice — and her unborn child, which she insists upon a stack of Bibles is my doing. Now, it may be or it may not be, but she’s talking the most hideous rot about marriage and family. To be frank, it’s deeply unsettling.

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