I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path.

At present I find myself increasingly stymied by Ste.Croix’s almost patronising refusals to deal with me plainly. Her cryptic and sarcastic responses to many of my more specific inquiries about their organisation and prior relationships to one another is becoming increasingly frustrating.

While I have respect for her desire to keep the group’s secrets her stonewalling tactics make my position as a researcher increasingly difficult. I pressed her this week for the reason why – if she and the others were going to insist upon maintaining their secrets – she agreed to permit me to study them and their audiences in the first place.

Her response was simply that it was ‘intended to be so’. I am not the sort of person inclined to believe in or rely upon the notion of fate or providence, and I would estimate that a woman of Ste.Croix’s intelligence would be unlikely to place such a heavy reliance upon the intangible. Which leaves me with the conclusion that there is something she is keeping from me – whether for her own amusement or because there is something she is concerned about me discovering.

–VKB Angell

My interview with Ms Delilah DuMort went essentially as expected – she, like her colleagues, insisted upon an impossible biography and refused to break character. I have become resigned to this sort of behaviour and can only hope that eventually they will decide to take me into their confidence.

DuMort claims Canada as her birthplace, which seems plausible enough. Her essential lack of an accent pinpoints her as North American Midwestern but likely metropolitan. She claims to have left home early in life and to have made her way south by taking advantage of whatever she could. The implication of course was that her advantages were sexual in nature. Given her general demeanour, I would be unsurprised to find out if that were the case.

DuMort is very aware that her assets lie in her appearance rather than in her intellect. Unlike her compatriots she has no delusions of ego about her role in the company. She seems content enough with her position with relation to the others, although occasionally resentful of Ste.Croix’s authority from time to time. The way she speaks about Ste.Croix indicates both a grudging respect for her as a person and also jealousy of the deference with which both Stone and Ritter treat her.

It is clear that DuMort has little in the way of personal inhibitions regarding sex, alcohol or even bribery. Nor does she have any concerns about this lack of inhibition – she in fact is willing to flaunt the fact when it is to her advantage.

In her description of her relationship with Mr John Carmine, however, I noticed the only true evidence of genuine affection for another human being. I believe she did love him, although in her own somewhat self-interested way. She claims little more than affection – but the depth of sadness behind her flippancy indicates a much stronger attachment. It made me like her more, and although I know her less well than her cohorts, I would venture to say that I could find myself developing a kind of fondness for her. Certainly, I would rather spend time with DuMort than with Stone or Ritter.

– VKB Angell