A Hyacinth for His Hideousness
Page 16
Vrila was certain no sign had been on the door. “Pardon me, I must have failed to see it,” he muttered nevertheless and went into the kitchen to pour the man a cup of tea.
“God bless you, Sir,” Timothy stated with joyful surprise as he wrapped his wrinkled hands around the porcelain. “It was only a few days ago I cut myself horribly on an old tea kettle. Then I bled, and everything looked like a butcher shop.”
He talked about his mother and brother. That explained the pictures. And the injury to his right hand was the reason for the splotches of blood.
“We picked him up inside that house. Perkovic wanted to let you know immediately who struck you,” Haggard interjected softly.
“Now we know.” Vrila leaned on the edge of the table. “You spoke of your brother, Mr Fowler. What happened to him?”
“Killed him they did! Murdered! Ripped him out of this life, those bastards,” Fowlers eyes were bulging and he gritted the few remaining teeth in his mouth.
Vrila cast a concerned and simultaneously hopeful glance at Sergei, but the latter gave a dismissive wave and shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“Who killed him?” Vrila asked anyhow because he wanted to hear it for himself that the old man’s information was worthless.
For an instant it became gravely silent, and the mood seemed to change.
Fowler’s sad eyes bored through him. “The devils fetched him.”
Heaving a sigh, Gavrila admitted to himself that Perkovic was right. “The devils?”
Just then, Hyacinth came out of the bathroom. Nothing on other than a linen towel wrapped around his hips and another draped over his shoulders.
“Hello, hello.” Sergei nodded amused, clearly affected by what he was viewing. Who wouldn’t have been?
Contrary to his intention, Vrila examined his husband and furtively licked his lips. A few drops of bath water still pearled up on his narrow chest and ran down his flat stomach. His curls were damp, framed his face in an unaccustomed but exceedingly charming manner.
A hot sensation seized him at that unfavourable moment – immediately afterwards he became enraged. The lad must have heard they had visitors! Was he intentionally showing himself off? To even things up with Perkovic after he’d seen him naked?
“Whom did the Devil fetch?” Hyacinth asked.
“Perhaps you’ll go put something on?” Vrila said between his crooked teeth and, only with great effort, held his anger in check.
“First I want to know what’s going on here.” Hyacinth waved him off and wrinkled his forehead. His beautiful face looked glum, his eyes mist-shrouded with unabashed anxiety.
“You’ll get dressed now or I’ll blister your backside!” Vrila threatened so loudly that Fowler cringed with fright.
Hyacinth remained calm and also appeared completely delighted, which he seemed to be trying to conceal. “Here in front of all these people or do we go to the bedroom for that?”
“Oh, I’d be more than happy to see it.” Perkovic grinned like a fool and winked at the young man who belonged to Vrila, by the Devil!
For what felt like an eternity, Vrila stood there completely entrapped in his perplexed resentment and looked his husband in the eyes. Then he stroked his hair with a gruff gesture. “Hyacinth, please,” he implored hoarsely.
The lad looked thunderstruck and without a word went into the bedroom, emerged several moments later fully dressed and threw himself on the sofa with apparent spontaneity. But Vrila noticed the irritated scrutiny he was being subjected to.
“Now, Fowler. Tell us your story,” Vrila encouraged, although he knew the homeless man’s mad statements wouldn’t yield them anything – except headaches.
“One evening my brother, Vincent, and I were sitting on the steps of our house,” Fowler began with a dreamy expression on his face. “We often liked to sit there. Otherwise, as you probably know, we don’t have much to do. Vincent was working in one of the slaughter houses. He was a few years younger than I.” He laughed feebly. “He often teased me about that. He was the baby of our family, until it fell apart. Well, but that’s a whole different story.” He let out a deep sigh and took a sip of tea. “So, we were sitting there, and he was telling me about his day and the events that took place in the city. I don’t often get out of Elwood, so it’s nice to learn some news… was nice, that is. Now that Vincent’s dead, nobody comes anymore to tell me the news.”
“How did he lose his life?” Vrila enquired.
”The devils,” the old man repeated in a depressed and anxious tone. “They often roved around in Elwood in those days. The forest in which the Devil carried out his terror was cut down centuries ago, but it drew him back there again, to his favourite place of horror. And this time he had company, had his henchman along who was no less than Satan.”
“What did the devils do to your brother?” Hyacinth asked with a raw tone of voice, and it could be seen that the account struck a chord in him. His heart was too good-natured for stories like this… perhaps even for a world like this.
“They dragged him off, kicked him, beat him, injured him with their knife-sharp claws,” Fowler remembered with a shudder that made his frail body shake. “They cried and howled like wolves. I wanted to help him, but one of them grabbed me with his gigantic paws, holding me back from Vincent.” A single tear ran down the old man’s ashen cheek. He didn’t even take the trouble to wipe it away. Most likely, he feared other tears would beset him anyway. “They dragged him away. He... he was no longer alive by then, but they took him along to Hell. They took his body with them!” he added with a wail. “They stole his body.”
“What did these devils look like, Timothy?” Sergei enquired, although he also obviously doubted they could get a reliable witness statement from the old fellow.
Undeniably bad things had happened to Fowler, but reality and delusions had blended so well in his head they couldn’t discern the truth anymore.
“Like the Devil incarnate. With long fangs and wild manes. One of them was blond, the other one all black,” Fowler related in a tone as if he were sitting at a campfire making an effort to frighten some children.
He appeared to have succeeded with Haggard. The man, despite his size and broad appearance, had a highly sensitive nature and shivered as he listened.
“Did you speak with the police about it?” Hyacinth looked with manifest sympathy at the old man.
“Naturally,” Fowler replied expansively and pursed his lips into a thin line. “They tried to put me in prison because they thought I’d done something to Vincent!”
“Obviously they didn’t lock you up,” Vrila concluded. “Why did they change their minds?”
“I had to go before a judge. I told him everything in the minutest details. Like with you now.”
After which they surely declared the man insane.
“The judge thought I belonged in a madhouse,” Fowler continued and confirmed the suspicion. But why was he free then? Was the affair with Vincent from so long ago that they had finally released him? The asylum didn’t care one bit about its occupants. They were kept for six months then declared healed – regardless of whether they were or not – and thrown out to take care of themselves. Though they usually couldn’t and landed, like Fowler, on the street – or in Elwood.
“How long ago was your brother dragged off by the devils?” Sergei obviously had the same thoughts.
“I don’t know, my dear fellow,” Fowler responded with a faint shake of his head and looked into the nearly empty cup. “I’ve lost all sense of time after that terrible event. My brother was all I had left after the death of our mother. Maybe it was last year. Or a few months ago, when… No, no, it wasn’t that. Could it have happened only yesterday?! No, surely not. Surely not.”
“Were you released from the asylum early, or did they keep you the full half-year?” Vrila asked so he could limit the time frame.
“No, I… I believe I stayed there until I was released in the usual way.”
Fowler raised his scruffy head and directed a rigid look at Hyacinth. “It won’t come to me anymore. The only thing I can think of when I remember that day are the devils who stole Vincent from me.”
He fell silent and so did everyone else in the room. In this stillness Vrila wondered what had actually happened to Vincent Fowler back then.
*
Hyacinth slipped into the first of almost thirty shirts which the gentleman’s outfitter had hung in front of him before leaving them in the back room to make their choices in peace.
Few words were spoken on the way there, as both were absorbed in their own thoughts.
After Sergei and Murphy Haggard had offered to take poor Mr Fowler home, Vrila had inconspicuously dropped a few coins into the old man’s pocket. Hyacinth wondered why his husband seemed so dead-set on hiding from the world that he had good intentions and acted in a quite chivalrous manner. At all costs, Vrila appeared intent on projecting a hard-bitten and cold-hearted impression, but why? It only brought him enemies and mistrust. Why didn’t he want to show his thoroughly likeable, sensitive side? A side, by the way, that Hyacinth liked very much…
He coughed to clear the scratchiness from his throat and those ideas from his head and instead concentrated on a large, silver-framed mirror.
He was already wearing a new pair of trousers. They were the first he’d tried on, but he knew instantly he had to have them. The smooth fabric caressed his skin as if it were a part of him. Never before had he felt so comfortable in a piece of clothing. Maybe he’d even fallen in love somewhat with the fine trousers, which was atypical for him. Ordinarily, he wasn’t the kind of person to fall for anything material.
Given his impoverished origins, it was almost a miracle that lustre and appearances left him cold. As he well knew, many members of his class thought differently and did everything they could to climb the social ladder and adorn themselves in silk and silver. He set no store by any of that.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want anything custom-tailored?” Vrila asked from outside the fitting room, thereby letting him know he had not read his thoughts.
“I’m not a dandy.” Hyacinth smiled broadly at his reflection. He wouldn’t openly admit how proud he was of his new trousers. “And didn’t you say before we came in, I should go easy on your thin pocketbook?”
“I didn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have anything custom-fit,” came a lax and peculiarly gentle tone in reply.
Hyacinth shook his head and started to respond when a thought caused him to pause. His fingers ceased fastening the buttons, and his mouth remained slightly open. “The way you talk, someone might think you wanted to make me happy,” he stated and tried to sound teasing, but his voice was a bit too raspy.
“It might be because I’d like to do so,” Vrila replied just as hoarsely. That admission was certainly not easy for him.
A smile broke out on Hyacinth’s lips, and he unconsciously lowered his head as he blushed. “Custom-fit clothes on my body aren’t necessary for that. I’m very easy to please.”
He thought he could tell Vrila wanted to say something else, but no sound came from the other side of the curtain.
As discretely as possible, he coughed into a hand, again started fastening the buttons then stepped out into Vrila’s presence.
His husband was seated in a comfortably oversized armchair whose red hue was in sharp contrast to his ashen skin and black garments as well as with his equally dark hair. In an elegant manner, he had crossed his long legs, and his right elbow was propped on an armrest to brace his head with a hand.
Hyacinth had to take a deep breath. The sight touched him in a completely unexpected way. “Well?” he asked softly and – hesitently, because an unusual attack of shyness befell him – held out his arms to present himself. “Is it acceptable to you if your husband gads about in this suit, Sir?”
Vrila’s neck stiffened perceptibly while he plucked at his cravat and shirt collar as if they had suddenly become too tight. His dark gaze measured him from head to toe, produced in him a languorous shudder which coursed down his back. And when Vrila looked up at him under half-closed eyelids and muttered a soft ‘very acceptable’, he felt quite special. He pleased his husband, and that meant a great deal to him.
“I’ll try on the rest, not that anything finer slips through our fingers because we made up our minds too soon.” He hurried to disappear behind the curtain again. There he took a deep breath and made an effort to change the subject. “What do you think about the old man’s story?”
“I believe his assertion that his brother was murdered. Of course, I cannot believe the part about the Devil.”
“If we just knew what happened to make him so terribly confused. Do you believe we should investigate?”
“My enthusiasm holds itself in check whenever I hear your manipulative tone of voice. I don’t want you to be dragged into such tragedies.”
“My whole life up to now has been a tragedy. Nothing can rattle me that easily.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Vrila sighed from outside the room, and Hyacinth wondered what he’d meant by that. “It’s too dangerous, boy.”
That statement brought him to the point of rolling his eyes. Without a shirt on, he halfway opened the curtain to lean out and regale Vrila with a mocking regard. “What’s the harm? We go to Fortlock, ask when they had a Mr Fowler imprisoned then leave.”
Vrila turned an unsteady gaze on him, squirmed uncomfortably in the armchair and quickly moistened his lips before saying something at last: “And what does that get us?”
“Then we’ll know when Vincent’s murder was committed without anyone knowing that we’ve been sticking our noses into this case. They won’t connect our question to the brother. At least, theoretically not.”
Instead of the usual contradictory words, he encountered a wry grin. “My nose is not so inconspicuous that no one would notice if I stuck it into anyone’s business.”
Hyacinth had to smile and once again disappeared into the dressing room. “Then we’ll send Sergei. He’s eager and willing to get to the bottom of things. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble of searching for your attacker in Elwood. He could say Mr Fowler was an old friend, and to others it would seem much less peculiar for him to be asking about the old man.”
His husband allowed his sigh to be heard. It told him he had won this minor battle. “If it matters so much to you, then Sergei should enquire. But as for now, you keep yourself out of it.”
“As you command, Sir. Whatever you say, Sir,” Hyacinth countered in the tone of a soldier and pulled the next shirt over his head because he didn’t care to be bothered with buttons again.
“Not bloody likely,” Vrila muttered with precious little conviction.
Hyacinth smiled to himself and tucked the shirt-tail into his trousers to show his spouse the next garment.
*
After a sparse lunch at home, they set out to give Sergei the assignment to investigate at Fortlock. Vrila did it to please the lad but expected very little to come from it.
The weather was unfavourable. A light drizzle fell from thick clouds darkening the sky, shrouding the city in mist.
“Have you been living very long in your house?” Hyacinth asked abruptly in the silence as they followed the route of the main street.
“No. It didn’t become available until a few months before… before Dimitri’s passing. Seymour thought I should take a look at it. I did so and bought it,” he replied and added unintentionally: “To my brother’s chagrin.”
“Why is that? What did your brother have to do with it?”
“Until then we’d lived toget
her in his villa. He wasn’t happy when I moved out.”
“You lived such a long time with your brother?”
“There’s nothing unusual about that,” he snapped back because he felt attacked and knew Hyacinth was right. A part of him was ashamed of the dependence on Dimitri he’d shown during the latter’s lifetime.
His husband scrutinised his profile. “Vrila, you must… already be about… fifty?” Finally, the accusation had been turned into a question.
“Thank you so much,” he exclaimed with sarcasm. “About fifty!”
“Then tell me how old you really are,” Hyacinth demanded reproachfully, though Vrila perceived an embarrassed undertone.
“Forty-three,” he blurted out as if the number were really that much better – considering his husband’s youth. God, he could be his father!
Out of the corner of an eye he noticed how Hyacinth bit his lips. “Sorry I estimated so poorly,” he muttered timidly.
Estimated poorly? In reality, estimated rather appropriately. In any event, the young man wasn’t to blame for how he looked. So ill. And so grotesque. Vrila lowered his gaze to the damp, glistening flagstones.
“Did you live alone in the house with your brother?”
“For a while he had a steward. Stephen Bishop. A lad who was too inept for him. My brother couldn’t abide anything like that.”
“What became of Bishop?”
“At some point he disappeared, by night and fog.”
“Why did he?”
“I don’t know. I accepted the news without asking questions because he tried my patience. The fellow had the bad habit of meddling in other people’s business.” It was only a mild jab at Hyacinth.
Bishop had known a lot about the... circumstances and events in the house. That hadn’t sat well with Vrila because it caused him to feel ashamed. Quite truthfully, he’d been relieved when Bishop took to his heels.
“Did anyone question him about Dimitri’s death?”