In anger, he came out of his hiding place because he knew he’d hear nothing to reconcile him with Vrila. “You wanted to give me away, so why do you want to find me? It should be convenient for you that I’m gone!”
Vrila stared at him wide-eyed when Hyacinth pushed past Sergei and finally stood only a step below his husband.
Once he was standing opposite Vrila, his anger vanished. His husband seemed in complete despair, beaten down – utterly hopeless. The dark rings under his bloodshot eyes were a stark contrast to the paleness of his skin and looked disturbing. His hair was dishevelled, his clothes messy. He appeared to be at the end of his rope. It distressed Hyacinth to see him in that state.
“Give you away is the last thing I want to do, Hyacinth,” he muttered and held out his coat to him.
Hyacinth was touched by the concern for him, but didn’t care to let it show. In silence, he took the garment and slipped into it to warm himself up a bit.
“Please read this.” With a trembling hand Vrila gave him the notebook that he’d shortly before refused to write in.
Hesitantly he took it and with a loudly pounding heart opened it to read what his husband had written.
I am infinitely sorry that I hurt your feelings. That wasn’t my intention. Truly, hurting you is the last thing in this world that I want. I thought it would make you happy. In my defence I can only offer the excuse that it never occurred to me you might not wish for an annulment of our marriage.
It felt like his hair was standing on end. How could Vrila believe such a thing? Didn’t he at least suspect that Hyacinth… that he… felt something for him?
With a gulp he looked up at Vrila whose head was bowed, resembling a whipped dog. Only when he looked into his husband’s sallow countenance, did he understand what was nevertheless written there. Vrila hadn’t wanted to hurt him. He wanted to make him happy. Just as everyone had told him, that is what he wanted.
Suddenly tears once more welled in his eyes – tears of relief. Vrila didn’t want to give him away at all; he was merely daft! His husband was a frightful idiot, but he still liked him!
“You fool!” he exclaimed with a sob and hugged his half-wit around the neck, nestling against him.
In response, Vrila wheezed softly into his ear and held him so firmly in his arms that he almost squeezed him to death – with affection. Hyacinth smiled.
Vrila lifted him up to the same step he stood on. Their embrace became more intimate. It was almost frightening how much Hyacinth loved to be near him. Gently he drew back enough to look into weepy eyes. How much this man meant to him. A second later he kissed his husband on the mouth. With intense astonishment, Vrila jerked back. Then he sighed with an unbelievably amiable expression and opened his lips to intensify the passion. Hyacinth buried his fingers in jet-black hair and closed his hand to a fist causing Vrila to moan again, though this time not from pleasure, but from pain.
“I’m sorry!” Hyacinth released his hold.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Vrila retorted with a raw voice and cleared his throat to downplay his obvious embarrassment. He was so sweet.
Almighty God, who in this world would have ever thought he’d someday think of this man as sweet?
“Well, let me introduce two people who can’t deal at all with their newly discovered emotions.” Perkovic laughed and reminded them they weren’t alone.
“Shut your fucking mouth, Sergei,” the two admonished as if with one voice and turned from one another as they blushed. Oh Heavens, that was awkward…
Hyacinth patted his stomach and muttered, just to have something to say: “I’m hungry. Do you think we can go get something to eat?”
“Of course we can.” Vrila nodded eagerly and seemed intent on pleasing him to make restitution.
“May I come along? My stomach is already growling.” Sergei grinned and passed between them then stopped at the top step to turn around. “Well, come on! We want to find a warm place somewhere to sit. Or do you prefer it here under the bridge?”
They followed him dutifully and avoided looking at one another as they walked together.
Sergei seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of a free lunch, and no one could blame him. “I know a wonderful place over in Gershwind. We should go there.”
“Whatever you say, Sergei. Show us the way,” Vrila replied imperturbably, and when Hyacinth observed him out of the corner of an eye, he suddenly found the courage to grab hold of his husband’s ice-cold hand and to interlace his fingers with Vrila’s. For that action he was examined with a confused stare, but his hand remained held in his husband’s somewhat larger one. Hyacinth’s pulse was racing, and a smile spread across his lips. They belonged together, and it pleased him to be free to show it.
*
“Isn’t that the beggar who used to hang around your street?” Sergei asked and directed his head toward a young man sitting on the steps to the entranceway of a house. The snow on the shoulders of his overcoat appeared to have melted on the fabric then froze again in the cold air. His hair was tousled and dirty, his face battered by the weather. He was chewing on a slice of bread.
“Yes, that’s him.” Vrila finally nodded and remembered the day the man had knocked on his door to tell him his brother was no longer living. He tensed while rummaging for a coin.
“Do you have any objections to my asking him a few questions?” Hyacinth enquired in a quiet voice and looked at him imploringly. They were both still firmly holding hands.
“Of course not, but what do you expect to learn from him?”
“Nothing at all. I just want to hear what he has to say.” With that and to his regret, his beloved let go of his hand and took the money from him.
“Fine, then.” He shrugged and exchanged puzzled glances with Perkovic who also had no idea what Hyacinth hoped to achieve.
Sceptical, Vrila watched his husband crouch in front of the beggar and show him the coin. The man’s cheerless eyes brightened somewhat at such a sight, and he lowered his meagre lunch to demonstrate his attention and willingness to co-operate.
“Good day, Sir. Do you remember my husband? Gavrila Ardenovic?” Hyacinth pointed with a sweeping hand movement to the man standing diagonally behind him.
The beggar nodded and wiped his face on a sleeve. “Yes.”
“A while back you brought him some very sad news. Can you still remember what that was?”
In the beggar’s expression there flickered a strangely disturbed look which caused Vrila to start. “His brother was killed; lay in the morgue, the poor fellow.”
“That’s correct.” Hyacinth nodded faintly, and the wind wafting through his pretty locks elicited a smile from Vrila despite the circumstances.
“My husband told me his brother was almost unrecognisable. How is it that you were able to tell that it was him?”
Just then the homeless man bared his teeth in an uncertain grin. He gave the impression of being extraordinarily nervous. “Now and then he would come to visit Mr Ardenovic. That’s when I saw him. Why are you asking?“
Something wasn’t quite right, but Vrila couldn’t make rhyme or reason of it. Why the nervousness? What was the man afraid of?
“At the time my husband moved into his house and his brother visited him, it was nearly as cold as it is today,” Hyacinth continued and Vrila slowly began to understand why he was asking. “Dimitri had tattoos on his neck. My husband informed me you allegedly recognised him from those. However, I really don’t believe that. You couldn’t have seen those marks at all because Dimitri was probably wearing an overcoat when he came to visit his brother.”
Vrila could barely maintain his composure. The lad was right. Good God, what was happening here? What had gone on back then?! “How did you know you had my brother lying before you?!” he demanded and took such an abrupt step forward it caused the beggar to flinch.
Hyacinth quickly looked up and gestured to him to remain calm by putting an arm against his shins.
With clenched
teeth, Vrila made an effort to honour his request. In any event, beating up that damn liar wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“Answer his question,” Hyacinth instructed and waved the coin before him to make the whole business more palatable.
The beggar drew a deep breath. “I wasn’t in the morgue at all. A man came to the street where Mr Ardenovic lives and paid me to bring him the news and to keep my mouth shut about it. I… I… didn’t suspect anything dishonest.”
Sergei then interjected: “Who paid you? Don’t make us have to pump everything out of you, you dapper little fellow! We’re on the heels of Dimitri Ardenovic’s murderer and we need your statement!”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me his name and address!”
“Of course not,” Hyacinth said in a soothing tone. “What did the man look like?”
The grimy beggar shrugged his shoulders. “Tall. Blond. Unremarkable. There was nothing in particular about him that caught my attention. I didn’t think there was anything crooked about him, and the stranger said that Mr Ardenovic needed to learn about it without fail. I asked him why he couldn’t tell him himself, but then he held money up to my face, and I was hungry.”
Hyacinth nodded and handed him the coin. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Thank you for your help. I have just one more question for you, then we’ll go and leave you in peace.”
Vrila, completely overwhelmed by all the information, waited anxiously for what his husband still wanted to know.
“Did the man have an accent? Did he speak in a strange or unusual way? Could he pronounce my husband’s Stakian name with no trouble or was it hard for him?”
A smart question which Vrila never would have posed, although it really ought to have come to mind. In any event, he was addressed often enough with ‘Ardenovik’ because many people weren’t aware it ought to be pronounced ‘-vitsh’.
“He pronounced it like everyone else. Like you, Sir, not like him.” His dirty index finger in a glove with holes pointed to Sergei, who – unlike Vrila – had never gotten rid of his accent.
Therefore they could exclude the murderer having come from the Stakreich. In the case that the beggar’s payer and the murderer were actually one and the same person.
Hyacinth stood up and again expressed his gratitude, but Perkovic wasn’t finished yet: “After that event, did you move to this part of town for any particular reason?”
The man cleared his throat and fingered through the knotted strands of his hair. “He made it clear that after I finished the job, I shouldn’t let myself be seen there again.”
Following that, they shrouded themselves in a silence broken only by the talking of passers-by and the hoof beats of passing horses drawing coaches.
Without hesitation, Hyacinth grabbed Vrila’s hand. “Let’s go now.”
After an affirmative nod, without a word Vrila threw another coin to the beggar and turned his back on him.
*
Quietly they sat in the small pub Sergei had insisted on going to. Most of the other guests were engaged in conversations and in a reserved manner were clattering utensils on their dishes. It was pleasantly warm and smelled of various delicacies for which Hyacinth had lost his appetite. Certainly, he was still hungry, but at the moment he needed to think about something more important than the meal.
What was it about that strange blond man who had given the beggar such a peculiar assignment?
After the appetiser had been served, he spoke up: “Why did he tell the man not to show his face again on our street?”
Vrila only shook his head slowly.
“Maybe the blond guy hangs around your house often and didn’t want the beggar to inform you of that later,” Sergei replied with a full mouth, before crumbling bread into his soup then dipping the spoon in to feast on it.
“Do you know anyone fitting the description the beggar gave? Anyone blond?”
His husband turned to him and surprised him with a gentle smile. “Only you,” he whispered. “Except for being blond like him, you’re anything but unremarkable.”
Was that a compliment? He didn’t know, but his cheeks turned red, as if Vrila had flattered him. “I’m also not especially tall,” he added and concentrated on the soup before him smelling of vegetables, various spices and cream. He tasted it and determined Vrila was the better cook.
“There’s no way it could have been anyone from our card playing group,” Sergei interjected and strained for ideas as was visible from the wrinkles on his forehead. “Isn’t your mailman a blond?”
Hyacinth’s breath caught. “Actually, he is.”
“Of course, he has a clearly noticeable scar on one cheek. The beggar would have surely remembered it,” Vrila added with a shake of his head.
They remained silent for a while until Sergei spoke once again: “The next question we need to ask ourselves is why our blond fellow thought it was so important for Vrila to learn that Dimitri was lying dead in the morgue.”
None of them had the answer to that. As hard as Hyacinth thought it over, he could conceive little sense behind such conduct. Why did someone want him to learn about the death of his brother? What had that person expected Vrila to do? Investigate? Kill himself?
“Who would want bad things to happen to you?“ he asked his husband who was half-heartedly stirring his soup as if not hungry.
Vrila raised his slender eyebrows, resembling miniature raven’s wings. “Other than half the city?” He sighed. “I have no real enemies, since I keep myself apart from most people. I wouldn’t know who might mean me harm.”
“You can’t know what kind of sadists are surrounding you at those social occasions, Gavrii. You can never know who wants to watch someone suffer.”
“Before Dimitri’s death, the only events I ever attended were the military balls, which I only went to in order to collect my pension.”
That had been unknown to Hyacinth. “What changed your mind to attend the other balls?”
Vrila opened his lips slightly and exhaled in a joyless laugh. “Do I need to justify myself for my actions?”
“No, but you should answer my question.”
“Maybe I just wanted to be around other people sometimes,” his husband reacted brusquely and cast a side-glance at him from his dark eyes.
“To be around other people? You?” Hyacinth responded in disbelief and tried to convey a mocking tone intended to downplay his curiosity.
“Maybe he went there to see someone in particular,” Sergei suggested with a sly smile while cleaning the dregs in his bowl with another piece of white bread.
“Will you keep your fucking mouth shut?” Vrila demanded so intensely that Hyacinth flinched, and a few of the guests started looking at them. Then his husband turned to him and angrily held up a finger: “Quiet now, I don’t want to hear another thing about it.”
Hyacinth grimaced and enclosed Vrila’s extended index finger in his fist. “Stop that,” he grumbled half annoyed, half amused.
Irritated, Vrila wriggled loose and spooned around in his soup to fend off any further questions. Whom had he wanted to see? Was it a suspect he intended to observe at those events? Possibly it was even Inspector Hathaway whom his husband had wanted to keep in his sights. But why didn’t he simply admit that? Hyacinth already knew so much that this information surely couldn’t expose him to any greater risk than what he was presently subject to. So why all of the secrecy?
Sergei shoved his dishes aside. “What an irony that we seem to repeatedly stumble over new pieces of the puzzle, but everywhere it fails to fit together into a complete picture that might give us the names of the filthy bastards we’re looking for.”
Vrila also gave his nearly full bowl a gentle shove away from himself, only Hyacinth pushed toward him again. “You really ought to eat something,” he muttered and made an effort to sound more commanding than concerned.
Silently Vrila scrutinised him then finally picked up the spoon again with his slender fingers and dutifully c
onsumed his soup.
Hyacinth smiled self-satisfied then thanked Vrila with a fleeting kiss on a cheek which appeared to disconcert him.
Across from them Perkovic chuckled, though anguish flashed in his eyes. They reminded Hyacinth how quickly some people could lose what they needed. A queasiness gripped him, and he attempted to expel it by going through all the notes he’d collected.
A flash of inspiration made him sit up straight. “I haven’t told you what Mr Wiplay said about Fletcher.” Hurriedly he repeated everything the old man had revealed to him about the widower and also didn’t spare them his mentor’s opinion. Moreover, he added that he believed the man couldn’t be trusted.
Whereas Vrila looked pensive, Sergei nodded with a mischievous grin: “I knew it! The bugger’s a dirty liar! Maybe his paranoia is just a masquerade, and he’s actually been spying on us the whole time!”
“I don’t think so,” Vrila defended him. “He displays clear physical reactions. He’s truly afraid; as a doctor I can confirm that. The only question is, what is he afraid of. His wife’s murderers or that we might discover his secret?”
“Most likely the latter,” Hyacinth interjected.
Perkovic agreed with him. “We ought to do something! Confront him!”
“Yes, let’s hear what he has to say,” Hyacinth agreed.
Vrila wasn’t entirely on the same page with them. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Do you just want to leave it at that? And never find out why he’s constantly romanticising about his old lady even though they were always fighting?” Sergei countered.
“On that point I have to agree with Seymour. Just because they argued a lot doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t love her.” The fleeting side-glance that Vrila gave Hyacinth made him feel strangely different – rather warm and tingly in the stomach.
“Of course not, but anyway I think he’s keeping something from us. We can’t afford not to find out whether that’s true and what it is he doesn’t want to tell us.” Perkovic persisted in his point of view.
A Hyacinth for His Hideousness Page 27