The walk to the Rue de Varenne was a silent one. I held Arthur’s arm closely and reflected upon a great number of things that are really not worth the retelling. When we arrived in the Rue de Varenne, Arthur stopped to look about.
‘Look at these homes,’ he said, ‘all these gracious buildings belonging to aristocratic families; no poor people ever set foot here, I’ll wager, unless it be the servants.’
We stopped at the house which, according to Mr Grigoriev, was the one presently rented by Prince Yousoupoff, and peered through the porte cochère, the great arched opening, large enough to admit a coach and four, which was the only means by which the house gave onto the street. Through it, we perceived a paved or cobbled courtyard, surrounded by the three wings of a stone building of fair proportions, pierced with enormous arched windows. Nobody appeared to be about. We edged a small way in, but Arthur appeared nervous.
‘What shall we do?’ he whispered.
‘We can hardly simply go up and knock at the door, at least not without some story,’ I said. ‘Shall we wait a while and see if anybody comes out?’
‘Well, let us walk down the street,’ he said. ‘We’ll try to stay in sight of the place, but we could also keep an eye out for the nearest café and ask some questions there.’
We walked down the street very slowly, and rounded the corner. There, we came upon an awning stretched over the wide pavement, underneath which a tiny lane formed by large green trees in pots led up to the glass door of a restaurant called Chez Victor.
‘Here’s a place,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes, but it isn’t a café,’ I said, ‘it’s a very chic restaurant. Good heavens, they must serve a lovely supper. No, don’t!’ I added, as Arthur walked up to the glass door and pressed his forehead against it, shading his eyes to avoid the reflection and peering indiscreetly within. The door opened immediately, and a young boy in livery popped out his head.
‘Le restaurant est fermé, monsieur,’ he said courteously.
‘Of course,’ said Arthur hastily.
‘Ah, you are Engleesh. Can I inform you?’ the youth said, his face lighting up with pleasure at the opportunity to practise his linguistic talents. ‘I have worked in London some months. Eet ees very beautiful.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ replied Arthur with alacrity. ‘Paris is very beautiful too. We like this street.’
‘Very important people live here, and dine here,’ said the boy proudly, giving us exactly the entry we most desired.
‘Yes, indeed they must! We heard about a Russian prince.’
‘Oui, oui, a Russian prince there is with many, many servants, all Russian, and two white dogs, very big.’
‘Does he also dine here?’ Arthur said.
‘Certainly, on occasion.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘The Russian monsieur is very distinguished, very tall, very elegant.’
I tapped my toes impatiently on the pavement and burst in,
‘Black hair?’
He glanced up at me, surprised at my sudden intervention, but seemed just about to answer, when alas, a sharp cry of ‘Jacquot! Eh, Jacquot!’ was heard from within the restaurant, and he turned to flee. I gave a little yelp of annoyance, but at that precise moment, the sound of smartly trotting hooves became audible, and a carriage came down the street toward us and turned the corner into the Rue de Varenne. Jacques glanced back.
‘Ah – zat ees he, zat ees ze prince!’ he said. ‘Please – enjoy your stay in Paris very much!’ and he disappeared into the dark interior and closed the door behind him.
‘Quick!’ said Arthur, snatching my hand, and we half walked, half trotted as quickly as our legs would carry us around the corner and back towards the Yousoupoff residence. The carriage had already pulled up in front of the porte cochère and the footman had jumped down and was in the process of opening the door. We slowed to a snail’s pace as we approached and Arthur’s hand tightened on mine. I thought – are we going to set eyes on a murderer? but I felt no sense of reality. The footman gave his arm to the occupant of the carriage, and slowly, a leg emerged, followed by a hand with a cane, and finally the whole gentleman appeared and stood straight and noble upon the pavement.
‘Spasibo, Ivan,’ he said. Arthur and I remained staring at him in blank amazement. Although certainly tall, elegant and distinguished, the gentleman who stood in front of us also possessed a shock of white hair and bristling, beetling eyebrows over sharp, deep-set black eyes. Still on the arm of his footman, and leaning upon his cane, he turned and walked slowly under the archway and into the courtyard.
‘Why, he’s an old man!’ I gasped.
‘It’s the wrong person,’ said Arthur.
‘It must be, if it really is the prince – but perhaps it’s someone else. Couldn’t it be?’
With impressive daring, Arthur darted up to the coachman, who was turning the carriage preparatory to guiding it through the arch after the prince.
‘Prince Yousoupoff?’ he asked him, pointing in.
Instead of answering, the coachman leant under the arch and shouted something in Russian after the disappearing backs; it sounded like ‘Vashe velitchestvo, vashe velitchestvo!’ They turned back toward him, and he pointed to Arthur and gabbled in Russian. It was horribly unexpected and most embarrassing. I cringed secretly, and Arthur must surely have cringed as well. He showed no sign, however, and smiled engagingly as the prince returned towards him with a look of distinguished annoyance in the sharp eyes under their bristling brushes.
‘I am so very sorry to trouble you,’ said Arthur, reverting to English and inventing rapidly. ‘I – I am a British journalist, and I am writing a report on – on the Russian community in Paris. I have spoken to Mr Grigoriev from the Imperial Russian Embassy; he told me that Prince Yousoupoff lived here, and I wished to humbly request an interview.’
‘I am Prince Yousoupoff,’ said the gentleman with extreme coldness and excellent English, ‘and I am not interested. I beg you will depart and leave me in peace at once.’
‘Oh, ah!’ said Arthur. ‘But – please do excuse my rudeness – I must have made a mistake. Mr Grigoriev thought he was sending me to visit someone who would be interested in an interview, but – perhaps I have got the name wrong – the description he gave me did not seem to correspond to you at all. He spoke to me of a young man with black hair. Would you know of such a person with a name similar to yours? Your son, perhaps?’
‘There is no such person,’ said Prince Yousoupoff with contempt. ‘Please cease to trouble me.’ He turned away and, leaning on his cane, returned a second time to the interior courtyard, crossed it, and entered the building without a backward look. The coachman threw us a glance of disgust and trotted in after him. Arthur joined me with a sigh.
‘What a fool I feel,’ he said grumpily.
‘What lies you told about Mr Grigoriev,’ I said. ‘I do hope they do not get him into trouble.’
‘Bah, even if they do, we will be long gone,’ he said.
‘Well, but what if this awful prince has him recalled to Russia in disgrace?’
We looked at each other in dismay.
‘Well, let us not be pessimistic,’ I said finally. ‘That unpleasant old gentleman has probably forgotten about us already. But Arthur – he is obviously not the right person! What can it mean?’
‘Well, we still have one more hope; we must go to see Mr Grigoriev’s colleague Michael Oblonsky. Come along, we are not too far from the Rue de Grenelle now.’
We walked there, but it was not really so very near, and we found the doors locked and barred upon our arrival.
‘Bother!’ said Arthur. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow. Let’s have supper.’
‘Chez Victor?’ I proposed hopefully.
‘Certainly not! Please, Vanessa, do let’s stop hunting non-existent Russian princes for the remainder of the evening.’
I was about to protest indignantly – I am really too tenacious and single-minded – when I noticed his
brown eyes fixed intensely upon me, and I was suddenly seized with a desire to forget it all, as he said – to slip away, and join him in his dreamy world where ideas count for so much more than deeds, poetry than facts, and symbols than words.
‘Then you take me somewhere,’ I said softly, putting his arm around my shoulder. The rest of the evening bears no relation whatsoever to the mystery I am supposed to be attempting to elucidate.
But tomorrow – tomorrow we shall return to our task!
Your loving twin,
Vanessa
Paris, Wednesday, July 13th, 1892
Dear Dora,
Let me waste no time, but recount the result of our visit to the Russian Embassy at once.
We arose and proceeded there quite early, and found the doors unlocked and the place bustling with business, but we were told that Mr Oblonsky would not arrive until shortly before midday. I was about to turn away, but Arthur leant over the burnished desk behind which a charming blonde girl called Natalia was shuffling papers, and smiling at her, he said,
‘We will wait for him. But perhaps you could help us with some information in the meantime.’
‘Ya ne ponimayu, je ne comprends pas bien l’anglais,’ she said hesitatingly.
Arthur attempted a strange mixture of French and English.
‘Do you know Prince Yousoupoff? Le Prince Yousoupoff?’ he began.
‘Ah yes yes. I know,’ she said, smiling with the pleasure of being able to comprehend and communicate.
‘Is he a young man? Jeune? With black hair? Noir?’ he added, pointing to his own head as the word for hair escaped him.
‘Ah no no no,’ said Natalia, with a big smile. ‘C’est un vieux monsieur, he very old.’
‘He does not have a son?’
‘Son?’ she said blankly. ‘Sun?’
‘Un fils,’ I intervened awkwardly, wishing that Annabel were with us.
‘Non, non. He has no family; he is alone.’
‘Do you know a young man called Vassily Semionovich?’
‘Vassily Semionovich?’ Her face lit up with delight. ‘Yes, yes, Vassily Semionovich. Come, come.’ Arising from her chair, Natalia led us down a corridor and before we could emit the slightest objection, she knocked smartly upon a door, and opening it, she proceeded to direct a flow of Russian at the gentleman within. He emerged to greet us. Fortunately, his English was a great deal better than hers.
Arthur and I stared at him with some doubt. Certainly he was a young man, and his hair was very dark and curly, but without being fat, it must be admitted that he was rather plump and somewhat short. His name, written neatly on a card pinned to the door, appeared to be Vassily Semionovich Kropoff.
‘Can I help you?’ he enquired politely. The moment was awkward, although not so bad as with Prince Yousoupoff. Still, it was quite difficult to think of what to say. Even Arthur appeared to be at a loss.
‘We are looking for a friend of a friend of mine in England,’ I said. ‘His name is Vassily Semionovich, but unfortunately, we simply cannot remember his last name.’
‘I do not believe I have friends in England,’ he remarked. ‘What is the name of your friend?’
Arthur trod heavily on my toe, but it seemed too late to change tactic.
‘Sylvia Granger,’ I said, moving my foot out of his reach. ‘She visited Paris last winter and spoke to us of her charming Russian friend.’
His face remained absolutely blank.
‘I am so very sorry,’ he said. ‘I am not familiar with this name.’
‘Her friend accompanied her to a party given by Mr and Mrs Hardwick of the British Embassy,’ I said.
‘Ah, how nice. But it was not I,’ he answered. ‘I have not the duty to attend the British parties. That would be Grigoriev or Oblonsky. My duties are the smaller countries. I attend the parties of the embassies of Belgium and Denmark and Luxemburg.’
It seemed pointless to continue, so we excused ourselves for our error and bid him goodbye. As soon as we rounded the corner of the corridor, Arthur turned upon me furiously.
‘V-V-V-Vanessa,’ he said, speaking with difficulty, so upset was he, ‘are you absolutely out of your mind? What if he is the one! You c-can’t just go around mentioning Sylvia that way! If he killed Granger, he’ll know what’s up at once, and we’ll be in horrendous trouble!’
His words stabbed a little dart of fear inside me. I hadn’t thought –
‘It isn’t he, I’m sure of it,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s too fat, don’t you think? Nobody mentioned that to me. In fact that old lady at Mrs Hardwick’s party said he was romantic-looking and a sensation.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing! A f-fake title and smooth manners can go a very long way to cover up a p-p-potbelly, especially for some foolish old lady with nothing to do! Or maybe he became fat since.’
I took Arthur’s hand, and found to my surprise that it was shaking.
‘Arthur! You don’t seriously think … You do!’ I cried in disbelief.
‘Vanessa, it might be.’
I was about to state the obvious, viz that Sylvia could not possibly have fallen in love with a young fellow who was short, chubby and somewhat moon-faced, and that all the ladies who had described him to us would not have failed to mention those particulars if they had existed. But it crossed my mind that women have adored far uglier men than poor Mr Kropoff, and I began to wonder … in the glamorous atmosphere of a party or a casino, dressed differently …
The foolishness of the step I had taken was borne in upon me. I was about to say that it was all Arthur’s fault for having broached the whole subject so abruptly with Natalia to begin with, but it seemed to be the wrong moment for mutual accusations. Instead, I said feebly,
‘He surely has no idea who we are. Oh, Arthur, perhaps we had better just leave at once.’
‘We can leave, but we must come back. Oblonsky may know something that can solve the problem once and for all,’ he replied, but he took my arm and we slipped quickly out of the main door of the building onto the street. Suddenly, he hesitated, poked his head quickly back inside, and addressed himself to Natalia, who was calmly seated behind her desk again.
‘Monsieur Oblonsky, what is he like?’ he asked her.
‘Is like?’
‘Big, small, young, old, grand, petit, jeune?’
‘Ah! Pas vieux, pas jeune. Pas de cheveux,’ she said, passing her hand over her own thick blonde braids. ‘Nothing here.’ She smiled hopefully.
‘All right. Thank you so much,’ said Arthur, as he shut the door hastily behind us and darted down the stairs. He glanced up anxiously at the windows of the embassy and then pulled me into a café across the street.
‘We’ll keep an eye on everyone going in,’ he said, ‘and try to catch him outside. That Kropoff fellow’s windows don’t look out this way. Surely Oblonsky will arrive within the next hour; it’s eleven now.’
We sat down at a small table near the window and ordered café crème. These having arrived, we stirred them (I enjoyed mine in spite of everything, I am not so sure about Arthur) and waited, watching the door across the street. A few people went in or came out, but for some time we saw no one who appeared sufficiently bald to be our man. However, after more than an hour, when we were almost ready either to give up altogether or to return inside and question Natalia, a likely prospect suddenly appeared upon the steps leading up to the door! I scampered outside quick as lightning to stop him before he entered the building.
‘Excuse me,’ I said breathlessly, chasing him up the stairs. He turned around with some surprise.
‘Are you Mr Oblonsky?’ I asked, trying not to breathe noisily; my sudden lack of air was surely more a consequence of emotion than of running.
‘Yes I am,’ he replied politely. ‘And you are?’
Another awkward moment! Should I give my name, only to have Kropoff eventually find it out and pursue me? I gulped.
‘My name is Miss Case,’ I said using the first word that cam
e into my head. ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, and do hope you are not in a hurry. I should be most grateful for just a few minutes private conversation with you in the café across the street, where I have been waiting for you with a friend. Mr Grigoriev advised us to speak with you,’ I added, seeing his face grow dark with suspicion and surprise.
‘What is this about?’ he enquired, without moving.
‘Oh, it is just a little thing,’ I said with my most winning smile. ‘We are trying to locate a young man whom we have reason to believe that you once encountered at a party given by a friend of ours.’
‘His name?’
‘I would really rather talk about it in the café,’ I insisted, a little fearfully. At that moment something most awful happened. The main door of the Embassy flew open cheerfully, and the man who emerged was no other than Vassily Semionovich Kropoff himself. My heart lurched as he stopped to greet me, with a smile that may or may not have contained a leer.
‘What is the name of the man you seek?’ insisted Oblonsky.
‘Ah, you are still looking for him?’ smiled Kropoff with a friendly air. ‘They are looking for someone called Vassily Semionovich, can you imagine? Natalia brought them to me, but I cannot give satisfaction, I am afraid. It is I who told them to address themselves to you,’ he added, turning to Oblonsky and speaking to him in English for my benefit. ‘The man they want attended one of the Hardwick parties.’
It seemed more and more inconceivable to me that this man could be the murderer, and my heartbeat slowed down considerably.
‘Grigoriev goes to most of those, I haven’t been to one for months,’ said Oblonsky.
At this point, Arthur, who had spotted what was going on from the café window and hastily paid for the coffee, joined us and put his hand protectively upon my shoulder.
‘This was a party last January or February,’ I told him, abandoning all pretence at discretion. ‘We already asked Mr Grigoriev and he doesn’t seem to have attended that particular party, so he supposed you must have been there. What happened there is that a friend of mine, an English girl called Sylvia Granger, came to the party unexpectedly with a young man who called himself Vassily Semionovich Yousoupoff and claimed to be a prince. We thought that surely, as a Russian, he would have been introduced to you.’
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