Mystery Woman

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> *"What we're doing can't be made public; what you uncover can and it should."* - **Mystery Woman**, to Matthew Heawood
>
>

The **Mystery Woman** is a Department of Works operative who worked undercover during their investigation into Henry Akeley and his disappearance.

The Mystery Woman made contact with Matthew Heawood after he had approached his contact, Ben, about a possible numbers station running out of Orford Ness. Keen to maintain her anonymity on their first meeting, the woman disguised her voice on the phone and when they met in Bloomsbury Square Car Park she kept her distance in a dark area of the car park and used a speaker that obscured her voice. She told Heawood that the radio signal was being broadcast locally and that the real question he needed to get to the bottom of what not so much *who* was transmitting but *why*. It was this woman who first made the Mystery Machine aware of the ECHELON trigger phrase, 'Pleasant Green', and its possible connection to Babalon. Their meeting was ended abruptly when unknown men raced into the car park searching for Heawood, but not before the woman gave Heawood a final warning not to trust his partner, Kennedy Fisher.

The woman arranged a second meeting with Heawood this time on Westminster Bridge. For the sake of expediency and clarity, she dispensed with hiding in the shadows and using a voice modulator and simply had a colleague disguise her voice on Heawood's recording post-production. This time she revealed her motivations for helping - feeling that while her job prevented making certain things public, it was in the greater good that the general public be made aware of events in Rendlesham. Having limited time to explain things to Heawood, the woman merely told him about a Times article from 1869 and about the Blake House Mystery in Capel St. Andrew, Suffolk. She also confirmed a connection between the Akeley case and the Charles Dexter Ward case the Mystery Machine had investigated the previous year. The Times article went some way to explaining the Mystery Woman's distrust of Fisher, seeing that there was a familial connection to associates of the Tillinghast family. It was later discovered that around this same time, the Mystery Woman was interrogating Melody Cartwright in Iraq after she had recently escaped from Dr. Allen and Daisy Marsh. The strong family resemblance between Marsh and Fisher was likely another indication to the Mystery Woman that Fisher could not be trusted.

It later emerged that the Mystery Woman had also been embedded as an undercover operative. This was particularly deep cover as the woman was posing as **Isabel Marston**, wife to April Marston who was a follower of the Thelemic belief in Babalon as a Goddess of Mother Earth. This all indicates that the Department was aware of the threat of another Babalon Working attempt in Rendlesham a long time before Henry Akeley disappeared. While undercover, Isabel drugged Fisher as April had wished and took her to speak to Henry Akeley, now possessed by Babalon. Isabel also explained to Fisher that her partner, Heawood, didn't trust her and was investigating her. It remains unclear why the Mystery Woman sought to drive a wedge between the podcasters at this point.

When Heawood, along with other Department operatives Parker and John Silence, entered Rendlesham Forest to rescue Fisher, the Mystery Woman warned Heawood off interfering by impressing on him the danger of people who would seek to summon Azathoth from the Dreamlands. However, Heawood was not receptive to this and therefore he and his associate, Dean Perry, were trapped in a temporary time-loop so they would not be able to hinder the Department's sabotage of Akeley's Babalon Working attempt. It was only upon listening back to their various recordings that Fisher identified that the Mystery Woman and Isabel Marston were one and the same.

## Appearances

* *The Lovecraft Investigations*
	+ The Whisperer in Darkness
		- "Episode 3"
		- "Episode 4"
		- "Episode 5"
		- "Episode 7" (as Isabel Marston)
		- "Episode 8"
	+ The Shadow over Innsmouth
		- "Apartment 6" (mentioned)

## References

1. ↑ TWiD: "Episode 3"
2. ↑ TWiD: "Episode 5"
3. ↑ TSoI: "Apartment 6"
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 TWiD: "Episode 8"
5. ↑ TWiD: "Episode 7"