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I arrived in the Hague on the 18th of October and reported to the French embassy, where M. le comte d’Avaux saw to it that what remained of my clothing was burned in the street; that the body of my manservant was given a Christian burial; that my horse was destroyed so that he would not infect the others; and that my pitchfork-wounds and torch-burns were tended to by a French barber-surgeon who dwells in that city. On the following day I began my investigation, which naturally was erected upon the solid foundation that had been laid by d’Avaux during the weeks since his letter to me. As it happened, it was on this very day-the 19th of October, a
My first task, as I have suggested, was to familiarize myself with all that d’Avaux had learned of the matter during the previous weeks. The Hofgebied, or diplomatic quarter of the Hague, may not contain as many servants and courtiers as its counterpart in France, but there are more than enough; those who are venal, d’Avaux has bought, and those who are venereal, he has compromised in one way or another, so that he may know practically anything he wishes to of what goes on in that neighborhood, provided only that he has the diligence to interview his sources, and the wit to combine their fragmentary accounts into a coherent story. Your majesty will in no way be surprised to learn that he had done so by the time of my arrival. D’Avaux imparted to me the following:
First,that the Countess de la Zeur, unlike all of the other refugees on the canal-ship, had not taken it all the way from Heidelberg. Rather, she had embarked at Nijmegen, filthy and exhausted, and accompanied by two young gentlemen, also much the worse for wear, whose accents marked them as men of the Rhineland.
This in itself told me much. It had already been obvious that on that August day at St. Cloud, Madame had made some arrangement to spirit the Countess aboard a boat on the Seine. By working its way upstream to Paris, such a vessel could take the left fork at Charenton and go up the Marne deep into the northeastern reaches of your majesty’s realm, within a few days’ overland journey of Madame’s homeland. It is not the purpose of this letter to cast aspersions on the loyalty of your sister-in-law; I suspect that the Countess de la Zeur, so notorious for her cu
Your majesty during his i
Second, all who saw her on the Nijmegen-Hague route agree that she had practically nothing with her. She had no luggage. Her personal effects, such as they were, were stored in the saddlebag of one of her German companions. Everything was soaked through, for in the days before her appearance at Nijmegen the weather had been rainy. During the voyage on the canal-ship, she and the two Germans emptied the saddlebags and spread out their contents on the deck to dry. At no time were any books, papers, or documents of any kind observed, and no quills or ink. In her hands she carried a small bag and an embroidery frame with a piece of crewel-work mounted on it. There was nothing else. All of this is confirmed by d’Avaux’s informants in the Bi
(Item) The dress on the Countess’s back. Mildewed and creased from (one assumes) a lengthy journey in the bottom of a saddlebag, this was torn up for rags as soon as she peeled it off. Nothing was hidden beneath.
(Item) A set of boy’s clothing approximately the Countess’s size, badly worn and filthy.
(Item) The embroidery frame and crewel-work, which had been ruined by repeated soakings and dryings (the colors of the thread had run into the fabric).
(Item) Her handbag, which turned out to contain nothing but a scrap of soap, a comb, an assortment of rags, a sewing-kit, and a nearly empty coin-purse.
Of the items mentioned, all were removed or destroyed save the coins, the sewing-kit, and the embroidery project. The Countess showed a curiously strong attachment to the latter, mentioning to the servants that they were not to touch it, be it never so badly damaged, and even keeping it under her pillow when she slept, for fear that it might be taken away by mistake and used as a rag.
Third, after she had recuperated for a day, and been supplied with presentable clothing, she went to the forest-hut of the Prince of Orange that is out in the wilderness nearby, and met with him and his advisors on three consecutive days. Immediately thereafter the Prince withdrew his regiments from the south and set in motion his invasion of England. It is said that the Countess produced, as if by sorcery, a voluminous report filled with names, facts, figures, maps, and other details difficult to retain in the memory.
So much for d’Avaux’s work. He had given me all that I could have asked for as a cryptologist. It remained only for me to apply Occam’s Razor to the facts that d’Avaux had amassed. My conclusion was that the Countess had made her notes, not with ink on paper, but with needle and thread on a work of embroidery. The technique, though extraordinary, had certain advantages. A woman who is forever writing things down on paper makes herself extremely conspicuous, but no one pays any notice to a woman doing needle-work. If a person is suspected of being a spy, and their possessions searched, paper is the first thing an investigator looks for. Crewel-work will be ignored. Finally, paper-and-ink documents fare poorly in damp conditions, but a textile document would have to be unraveled thread by thread before its information was destroyed.
By the time of my arrival in the Hague, the Countess had vacated her chambers in the Bi