I immediately decided not to attack Valeria directly. I would let her do that. Passive-aggressive would be my stance. It would make her look so bad, too...
The impostor Doom did not act guilty—he acted irritated. "What does it look like?" he asked in return, removing his hand from my shoulder and using it to wave at the flame-retardant mess that stained the carpet and walls. "Owing to your faulty policy of indulging the boy in everything, he has reached a point of degeneracy where, while my mother hovers on the brink of death, he makes lewd advances to a woman half again his age, and when thwarted, explodes in rage. Moreover, he has acquired a cocaine habit."
"I know he made no such advances; he just called me from the lab and told me all about it. You're treating him like a criminal—and on what grounds? Her word against his? She insulted him and lied to you! She knows more than she ought to know." Valeria cast a fulminating glance at me. I blinked, wide-eyed, and looked from one to the other.
"Her word against his? He lied to me! Or did this innocent woman break in and administer the cocaine to him, and then hide more in his room? No, that won't hold up. He finally admitted the drugs were his, and no doubt when he realizes there is no other course but to tell the truth, he will own up to the rest. Nor am I treating him as a criminal—if I were, he would have been taken out and shot by this time." growled the false Doom.
She was taken aback by the intensity of his anger. "But to lock him up in his room—and all over a few lines of coke!" Valeria gave a little laugh, trying to pass off Kristoff's offense as a minor matter. I almost winced for her—the pretender would have to be very dense indeed to miss what she had let slip. I wasn't going to have to do much here. The dominoes were in motion all ready.
He wasn't that dense. "All over a few lines of coke." He repeated, looking at her with dawning disgust in his eyes. "You say that with uncommon casualness, madam. Even, I should say, with familiarity. Cocaine addiction is a monstrous thing. I doubt there can be anyone in the modern world who does not know that. Those who try to pretend otherwise are those who have some reason. Why do you want to make light of it?"
"Because—it isn't as bad as you make out. He only does a little, now and then—he's not addicted, not really. He told me so." Valeria spread her hands.
"When?" His eyes were narrowed.
"When he called me." She answered.
"He must have said a lot in a very short time." He said, suspiciously.
"He was talking very fast."
"Valeria. I have known you my entire life, and have been married to you for half of it. You have no mood, humors, or mannerisms that I do not know—and you are acting now as you did when you stole your grandmother's wedding ring and pawned it for money to buy sweets. What are you concealing?"
"You are my husband, not my father, and you should not be speaking to me in that way."
"You are my wife, and not a child. Have you more knowledge of Kristoff's drug habits than you should? Or, to cut to the point, if I were to send my guard with a sniffer to your room, and have you give the same samples to the lab, what would I find?"
"You're accusing me of using cocaine? Your own wife?" She was getting very high and shrill-voiced. That wasn't good—at least not for her.
"I only wonder why you speak so casually of it." His words were lightly said, but very cold.
"Because—it's such a common thing, in our circles. You find it everywhere. Of course I don't—." She abandoned defending herself, and then turned to attack. "What I want to know is—why, when I came in, were you touching her? Why did you spend the better part of an hour talking to her, privately? What is going on?"
"My lady," I put in, "there was no part of that conversation which you could not have been present for. It was entirely innocent and harmless." Saying that fanned the flames…
"She is correct." The impostor confirmed. "We met, not in private, but in the art gallery, and discussed my collection. It was a pleasure to talk to a well-educated woman who thinks about something other than what bauble or garment she covets next—for a change."
She hauled off and slapped him, with both her hand and her powers. At the look on his face, she froze, and raised both hands to cover her mouth. "Oh, Victor, I—I'm—."
"The ring." He said, and held out his hand. "The emerald."
"What of it?" she asked.
"Give it to me. Now."
"Why?" she shrugged.
"Because I wish it." His tone of voice said he would brook no argument.
She drew it off, and handed it to him. Without turning or taking his eyes off his wife, he held it out in my direction. "Your ring, Madame. My wife thanks you for the loan of it."
She cried out, "You're giving it back to her? Why?"
"Because she asked after my mother's health, and expressed a decent human sympathy. Neither my wife nor my son had the courtesy to do as much."
Valeria drew in her breath with a little hiss.
I took the ring, looked at it and said faintly, my voice wavering a little, "There is blood—dried blood—in the crevices of the setting. It was not there when I gave it to her." It was true. My horror and surprise were not. I knew already where it had come from.
"More fascinating discoveries." said the pretender, sourly. "Well, wife? Where did the blood come from? It is not mine."
"I cut my finger." She supplied hastily.
"You have no scab nor mark on your hand." The pretender was scowling again. "Try again."
"I don't know." She said, blankly. "Or—it was my maid's. She was—brushing my hair, and pulled some of it out by the roots."
"How did she come to bleed on the ring?" her husband pressed.
"She bled on the ring because I reprimanded her! And it's no more than what you have done yourself dozens of times, so I can't see where you're getting so righteous all of a sudden." She flared up. "And as for you—." she turned to me, and made as if to strike me, but for some curious reason (connected to my careful maneuverings,) her foot came down in the middle of the flame-retardant mess, and she slipped and had to catch at the table to keep her balance.
"Bitch!" she spat at me, and stormed off down the hall, flinging back over her shoulder at us, "I'm going to my son!"