Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  We learned it a bit sooner than either of us expected; not from our unwashed sentries, but from the owner of the livery stable from which we always hired our traveling wagons. He and I were haggling amiably enough over feed costs for our customary autumn tour of the provinces when he mentioned that his good humor arose from a recent arrangement personally to deliver two passengers to the Bucharest railway station in his one caleche, behind his best team. It took remarkably few Serbian dinars to buy the names of his new clients from him, along with the time—eleven o’clock, tomorrow night!—and only a few more to get him to agree to take us with him when he went to collect them. Treachery is, I fear, the Selmiri national sport. It requires fewer people than football and no uniforms at all.

  I wanted to bring the whole matter before the police at this point, but Sigerson assured me that there would be no need for this. “From what I have seen of the St. Radomir constabulary, they are even more thick-witted than those of”—did he stumble momentarily? —“the gendarmes of Oslo, which I never thought possible. Trust me, our quarry will not slip the net now.” He did preen himself slightly then. “Should Dr. Nastase offer physical resistance, I happen to be a practitioner of the ancient art of baritsu—and you should be well able to cope with any skirmish with Frau Andrichev.” I honestly think that was not meant as condescension, though with Sigerson it was hard to tell. A month of surveillance had made it clear to us both that Lyudmilla Plaschka, when not on her deathbed, was certainly a spirited woman.

  A full rehearsal was scheduled for the following night; I elected to cancel it entirely rather than abridge it, musicians being easily distressed by interruptions in routine. There were some questions, some grumbling, but nothing I could not fob off with partial explanations. Sigerson and I were at the livery stable by ten o’clock, and it was still some minutes before eleven when the caleche drew up before the Andrichev house and the coachman blew his horn to announce our arrival.

  The luggage was already on the threshold, as was an impatient Lyudmilla Plaschka, clad in sensible gray traveling skirt and shirtwaist, cleverly choosing no hat but a peasant’s rough shawl to hide her hair and shadow her features. She had, however, been unable to resist wearing what must have been her best traveling cloak, furred richly enough for a Siberian winter; it must have cost Volodya Andrichev six months’ pay. She looked as eager as a child bound for a birthday party, but I truly felt my heart harden, watching her.

  I stepped down from the caleche on the near side, Sigerson on the other, as Dr. Nastase came through the door. He was dressed even more nattily than usual, from his shoes—which even I could recognize as London-made—to his lamb’s-wool Russian-style hat. When he saw us—and the coachman on his box, leaning forward as though waiting like any theatergoer for the curtain to rise—he arched his eyebrows, but only said mildly, “I understood that this was to be a private carriage.”

  “And so it is indeed,” Sigerson answered him, his own voice light and amused. “But the destination may not be entirely to your liking, Doctor.” He came around the coach, moving very deliberately, as though trying not to startle a wild animal. He went on, “I am advised that the cuisine of the St. Radomir jail is considered”—he paused to ponder the mot juste—“questionable.”

  Dr. Nastase blinked at him, showing neither guilt nor fear, but only the beginning of irritation. “I do not understand you.” Lyudmilla Plaschka put him aside, smoothly enough, but quite firmly, and came forward to demand, “Just what is your business here? We have no time for you.” To the coachman she snapped, “The price we agreed on does not include other passengers. Take up our baggage and let them walk home.”

  The coachman spat tobacco juice and stayed where he was. Sigerson said, speaking pointedly to her and ignoring the doctor, “Madam, you know why we are here. The hospice is closed; the masquerade is over. You would be well-advised to accompany us peaceably to the police station.”

  I have known people whose consciences were almost unnaturally clean look guiltier than they. Lyudmilla Plaschka faltered, “Police station? Are you the police? But what have we done?”

  My confidence wavered somewhat itself at those words—she might have been a schoolgirl wrongfully accused of cribbing the answers to an examination—but Sigerson remained perfectly self-assured. “You are accused of defrauding your husband of a large sum of money by feigning chronic, incurable illness, and of attempting further to flee the country with your ill-gotten gains and your lover. whatever you have to say to this charge, you may say to the authorities.” And he stepped up to take her arm, for all the world as though he were an authority himself.

  Dr. Nastase rallied then, indignantly striking Sigerson’s hand away before it had ever closed on Lyudmilla Plaschka’s elbow. “You will not touch her!” he barked. “It is true that we have long been planning to elope, to begin our new life together in a warmer, more open land”—the elbow found his ribs at that point, but he pressed on—“but at no time did we ever consider cheating Volodya Andrichev out of a single dinar, zloty, ruble, or any other coin. We are leaving tonight with nothing but what is in my purse at this moment, and supported by nothing but my medical talents, such as they are, and Frau Andrichev’s vocal gifts. By these we will survive, and discover our happiness.”

  Yes, yes, I know—he was not only an adulterer and a betrayer, but a very bad orator as well. And all the same, I could not help admiring him, at least at the time. Even bad orators can be sincere, and I could not avoid the troubling sense that this man meant what he was saying. It did not seem to trouble Sigerson, who responded coolly, “I will not contradict you, Dr. Nastase. I will merely ask you to open the small traveling case next to Lyudmilla Plaschka’s valise—that one there, yes. If you will? Thank you.”

  I may or may not be a forbidding personality; he could certainly, when he chose, be a far more commanding one than I had ever imagined. I would have opened any kit of mine to his inspection at that point. Dr. Nastase hesitated only a moment before he silently requested the key from Lyudmilla Plaschka and turned it in the dainty silver lock of the traveling case. I remember that he stepped back then, to allow her to open the lid herself. Love grants some men manners, and I still choose to believe that Dr. Nastase loved Volodya Andrichev’s wife, rightly or wrongly.

  There was no money in the traveling case. I looked, I was there. Nothing except a vast array of creams, lotions, salves, ointments, unguents, decoctions … all the sort of things, my doddering brain finally deduced, that an anxious Juliet, some years the senior of her Romeo, might bring along on an elopement to retain the illicit magic of the relationship. I had only to glance at Lyudmilla Plaschka’s shamed face for the truth of that.

  To do Sigerson justice, his resolve never abated for an instant. He simply said, “By your leave,” and began going through Dr. Nastase and Lyudmilla Plaschka’s belongings just as though he had a legal right to do so. They stood silently watching him, somehow become bedraggled and forlorn, clinging together without touching or looking at each other. And I watched them all, as detached as the coachman: half-hoping that Sigerson would find the evidence that Volodya Andrichev had been viciously swindled by the person he loved most; with the rest of myself hoping … I don’t know. I don’t know what I finally hoped.

  He found the money. A slab of notes the size of a brick; a small but tightly packed bag of coins; both tucked snugly into the false lid of a shabby steamer trunk, as were the tickets he had discovered earlier. The faithless wife and the devious doctor gaped in such theatrically incredulous shock that it seemed to make their culpability more transparent. They offered no resistance when Sigerson took them by the arm, gently enough, and ordered the coachman to take us back to town.

  At the police station they made formal protest of their innocence, insisting that they had never seen the money, nor ever demanded any from Volodya Andrichev; but they seemed so dazed with disbelief that I could see it registering as guilt and shame with the constables on duty. They were placed in a cell�
�together, yes, how many cells do you think we have in St. Radomir?—and remanded for trial pending the arrival of the traveling magistrate, who was due any day. The doctor, ankles manacled, hobbled off with his warder without a backward glance; but Lyudmilla Plaschka—herself unchained—turned to cast Sigerson and me a look at once proud and pitiful. She said aloud, “You know what we have done, and what we did not do. You cannot evade your knowledge.” And she walked away from us, following Dr. Nastase.

  Sigerson and I went home. When we parted in front of my house, I said, “A wretched, sorry business. I grieve for everyone involved. Including ourselves.” Sigerson nodded without replying. I stood looking after him as he started on toward the Widow Ridnak’s. His hands were clasped behind him, his high, lean shoulders stooped, and he was staring intently at the ground.

  Our tour began the next day—we did well in Gradja, very well in Plint, decently in Srikeldt, Djindji, Gavric, and Bachacni, and dreadfully in Boskvila, as always. I cannot tell you why I still insist on scheduling us to perform in Boskvila every year, knowing so much better, but it should tell you at least something about me.

  But even in foul Boskvila, Volodya Andrichev played better than I had ever heard him. I detest people who are forever prattling about art in terms of human emotions, but there was certainly a new—not power, not exactly warmth, but a kind of deep, majestic heartbeat, if you will—to his music, and so to all of ours as well. He said nothing to anyone about his wife’s arrest with her lover, nor did anyone—including Sigerson and his friend Progorny—ask him any questions, nor speak to him at all, except in praise. We did not see St. Radomir again for a week and a half, and the moment we arrived Andrichev tried to commit suicide.

  No, no, not the precise moment, of course not, nor did it occur just as the wagons rolled past the town limits. Nor did anyone recognize his action for what it was, except Sigerson. As though he had been waiting for exactly this to happen, he leaned swiftly forward almost before Andrichev toppled over the side in a fall that would have landed him directly under our team’s hooves and our wagon’s ironbound wheels. A one-armed scoop, a single grunt, and Andrichev was sprawling at our feet before the rest of the company had drawn breath to cry out. Sigerson looked down at him and remarked placidly, “Come now, Herr Andrichev, we did not play that poorly in Boskvila.” The incipient screams were overtaken by laughter, quickly dissolving any suggestion of anything more sinister than an accident. At the livery stable, before shambling away, Andrichev thanked Sigerson gruffly, apologizing several times for his clumsiness. It was early in the evening, and I remember that a few snowflakes were beginning to fall, a very few, twinkling for an instant in his mustache.

  This night, for some unspoken reason, I passed up my own house and walked on silently with Sigerson, all the way to the Ridnak farm. The widow and her sons were already asleep. Sigerson invited me into the back kitchen, poured us each a glass of the widow’s home-brewed kvass, and we toasted each other at the kitchen table, all without speaking. Sigerson finally said, “A sorry business indeed, Herr Takesti. I could wish us well out of it.”

  “But surely we are,” I answered him, “out and finished, and at least some kind of justice done. The magistrate has already passed sentence—three years in prison for the woman, five for the man, as the natural instigator of the plot—and the money will be restored to Volodya Andrichev within a few days. A miserable matter, beyond doubt—but not without a righteous conclusion, surely.”

  Sigerson shook his head, oddly reluctantly, it seemed to me. “Nothing would please me better than to agree with you, concertmaster. Yet something about this affair still disturbs me, and I cannot bring it forward from the back of my mind, into the light. The evidence is almost absurdly incontrovertible—the culprits are patently guilty—everything is properly tied up … and still, and still, something …” He fell silent again, and we drank our kvass and I watched him as he sat with his eyes closed and his fingertips pressed tightly against each other. For the first time in some while—for there is nothing to which one cannot become accustomed—I remembered to be irritated by that habit of his, and all the solitary self-importance that it implied. And even so, I understood also that this strange man had not been placed on earth solely to puzzle and provoke me; that he had a soul and a struggle like the rest of us. That may not seem, to you, like a revelation, but it was one to me, and it continues so.

  How long we might have remained in that farm kitchen, motionless, unspeaking, sharing nothing but that vile bathtub brandy, it is impossible to say. The spell was broken when Sigerson, with no warning, was suddenly on his feet, and to one side, in the same motion, flattening his back against the near wall. I opened my mouth, but Sigerson hushed me with a single fierce gesture. Moving as slowly as a lizard stalking a moth, he eased himself soundlessly along the wall, until he was close enough to the back door to whip it open with one hand, and with the other seize the bulky figure on the threshold by the collar and drag it inside, protesting, but not really resisting. Sigerson snatched off the man’s battered cap and stepped back, for all the world like an artist unveiling his latest portrait. It was Volodya Andrichev.

  “Yes,” Sigerson said. “I thought perhaps it might be you.” For a moment Andrichev stood there, breathing harshly, his blue eyes gone almost black in his pale, desperate face. Then with dramatic abruptness he thrust his hands towards Sigerson, crossing them at the wrists and whispering, “Arrest me. You must arrest me now.”

  “Alas, all my manacles are old and rusted shut,” Sigerson replied mildly. “However, there is some drink here which should certainly serve the same purpose. Sit down with us, Herr Andrichev.”

  A commanding person, as I have said, but one who did not seem to command. Andrichev fell into a kitchen chair as limply as he had rolled out of the wagon, only an hour or two before. He was sweating in great, thick drops, and he looked like a madman, but his eyes were clear. He said, “They should not be in prison. I am the one. You must arrest me. I have done a terrible, terrible thing.”

  I said firmly, “Andrichev, calm yourself this instant. I have known you for a long time. I do not believe you capable of any evil. Drunkenness, yes, and occasional vulgarity of attack when we play Schubert. Spite, vindictiveness, cruelty—never.”

  “No, no one ever believes that of me,” he cried out distractedly. “I know how I am seen: good old Volodya—a bit brusque, perhaps, a bit rough, but a fine fellow when you really get to know him. A heart of gold, and a devil of a cellist, but all he ever thinks of is music, music and vodka. The man couldn’t plan a picnic—let alone a revenge.”

  Sigerson had the presence of mind to press a drink into his hand, while I sat just as slack-jawed as Lyudmilla Plaschka and Dr. Nastase themselves at the sight of the money they were accused of swindling from Lyudmilla’s besotted husband. Andrichev peered around the glass at us in an odd, coy way, his eyes now glinting with a sly pride that I had never seen there before.

  “Yes, revenge,” he said again, clearly savoring the taste and smell and texture of the word. “Revenge, not for all the men, all the deceptions, all the silly little ruses, the childish lies—they are simply what she is. As well condemn a butterfly to live on yogurt as her to share the same bed forever. Her doctor will learn that soon enough.” And he smiled, tasting the thought.

  The words, the reasoning, the sound—they were all so vastly removed from the Volodya Andrichev I was sure I knew that I still could not close my mouth. Sigerson appeared much cooler, nodding eagerly as Andrichev spoke, as though he were receiving confirmation of the success of some great gamble, instead of receiving proof positive that he and I had been thoroughly hoodwinked. He said, “The doctor made it different.”

  Andrichev’s face changed strikingly then, all the strong features seeming to crowd closer together, even the forehead drawing down. He repeated the word different as he had the word revenge, but the taste puckered his mouth. “That fool, that wicked, wicked fool! He thinks he loves her, and he ha
s made her think so herself. For that one, she would have left me, gone away forever. I had to stop her.” But he sounded now as though he were reassuring himself that he had had no choice.

  “The money,” Sigerson prompted him gently. “That was indeed your money that I found in the steamer trunk?”

  The furtively smug look returned to Andrichev’s face, and he took a swig of his drink. “Oh, yes, every bit of it. Everything I could raise, no matter what I had to sell, or pawn, or beg, no matter how I had to live. The cello—that was hard for me, but not as hard as all of you thought. One can get another cello, but another Lyudmilla …” He fell silent for a moment, looking at the floor, then raised his eyes to us defiantly. “Not in this life. Not in my life. It had to be done.”

  Nor will we find another such cellist, I thought bitterly and selfishly. Sigerson said, “It was you alone who spread the tale of Frau Andrichev’s chronic mortal illness. She and Dr. Nastase knew nothing.”

  “No, the doctor himself was a great help there,” Andrichev said with a curious acrid humor. “He quarantined her to keep her to himself, and to give them leisure to plan their flight. We merely circulated the story rather more widely, Progorny and I, and in somewhat more detail. It was easy enough to manage; the difficulty lay in keeping it from reaching Lyudmilla’s ears, or Nastase’s. Progorny is a real friend”—he looked directly at me for the first time—“though he will never be a real cellist. But I am happy that he has the Fabregas.”

  I realized that I had been constantly shaking my head since he began speaking, unable truly to see this new Volodya Andrichev; trying to bring my mind into focus, if you will. I asked, lamely and foolishly, “Progorny put the money into the trunk lid, then?”