My dear daughter Pinchblossom,
I agree that it was a near thing for your woman recently, especially since her frequenting of those parties could have come in handy for her. There, as you know, she has befriended someone who specialises in, as they so commonly put it, "taking care of little problems." She is indeed one of our ignoblest Shadies, with her soul all but fed to us with spoons. Not only do we delight in her shattering one of the Enemy's Commandments the way she does, but she also puts such young women as seek her out into wondrously close range. She will make us a fine lunch one day -- but no one, especially not she, can make us a free one.
While it is true that your woman's "friend" has well-nigh delivered herself to us, she cannot exactly deaden all souls who cross her path. For those, the Enemy's breath falls on those troublesome little coals called Conscience. One hefty gust of His wind, and some of those women begin to feel that horrid Remorse over it; once they get there, the Enemy can gain a foothold in doing something none of us here in Hell can fathom. He looks to restore those wretched creatures into a relationship with Him. For some of them, none of us can scream the truth so loudly that He or they pay us any heed. They are back in His camp faster than we can tell it.
The children of those human creatures -- indeed, all human children in general -- are things Our Father Below has taught us all very well to loathe and to despise. Nothing gives us a quick burst of pleasure in quite the same way as to see a successful strike against one of their lives. In too many cases, however, our pleasure expires to know that they shall one day be carried straightaway into the presence of the Enemy. This is even truer of those whose lives your woman's friend, and others like her, crush out as they do.
After this point, I shall close the topic. This point is really little more than sugar-frosting atop a cake: of very little consequence, but plenty sweet in its own right. Your woman's friend, by serving us with such craven conduct, is also in violation of criminal statutes in the city and country of her world. Our Father Below, though, has shown me that within twenty-five of the World of Men's years, we shall lose that sweetness when those laws in your woman's country will be cast down, but many more shall set their paths toward us that way. We stand to lose quite a number of small souls, but what we lose among them, we shall gain in larger souls who permit its happening.
At any rate, I am sure that it served your woman as a relief to find her body in proper working order, delayed three days that she was in getting there.
Now. Let us be about the business you told me was urgent -- and so it is. The rail crash wherein your woman lost her family, also claimed the life of someone else we lost to the Enemy -- an old professor in a far-off part of the same country. Before we lost him, he went before a solicitor and drew a Testament. In it, he made a provision for your woman. What exactly that provision is, I will not know until I see it with you.
There is a reason your woman belongs to you -- you, who graduated with the lowest Dishonors the Tempters' College has seen in many ages. Certainly you remember that banquet where Mr Screwtape recited a prayer directed at the Enemy -- "O God, make me a normal twentieth century girl!" -- and decoded its true meaning, on which only Our Father Below could properly deliver: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite." Never let it leave your mind that it was your woman who said that. Seal her mouth if need be, but let her body reflect that true meaning. Cause her eyes to dart here and there while the will is read. Clench her fingers so that only we may see them grasping. At the mention of money, should there be any, make her uneasy in her chair, and cause a smile to play on her face.
This last, I cannot stress enough. Even if you have to move Hell and Earth to do it, you must see that your woman gets no contact whatever with the solicitor's wife. Let her make eyes at the solicitor, put a little more bounce to her walk, but that man's wife is wholly to be off-limits to her. If you are unfortunate enough to do so in her stead -- and I was, when in the first part of that marriage, I was unsuccessful in helping Waterstrange pick out young men to turn that wife's head -- you will find that since she was a small child, she has radiated the Enemy, drawing strength from Him and from His love for her. Waterstrange, as you know, is still being served up for our having lost the solicitor's mother-in-law to Him. Permit me to be confident that you will not come to a similar end as Waterstrange.
Now do as this letter is doing -- be about your way. Good luck, and Our-Father-Below-speed.
Your affectionate mother,
Slumtrimpet