‘Ah, of course! The Russian prince! Yes, indeed – I remember him perfectly,’ cried Mr Oblonsky, throwing back his head and laughing loudly. Arthur glanced at me and I saw that like mine, his suspicion of Kropoff had just gone up in smoke. Somewhere, this may have been a disappointment, but I assure you, Dora dear, that it was first and foremost an immense relief!
‘Well, I did say I would keep the secret,’ smiled Oblonsky, ‘but I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Yes, there was a young man at Mrs Hardwick’s party. Nobody knew who he was, nobody had ever seen him before, and he was enjoying himself greatly posing as a Russian prince and impressing all the old ladies, while the pretty English girl on his arm could not take her eyes from him. And then all of a sudden – the bother! Mrs Hardwick, who never allows her guests to relax but always puts them to work making the conversation with each other, sends him to me. “Oh, look, Prince Yousoupoff, here is our Russian diplomat, Mr Oblonsky! He comes from Moscow as well. You two will surely have so much to talk about.” I look at this young man and he looks at me, and he draws me into a corner, where I greet him politely in Russian, and ask him what branch of the Yousoupoff family he belongs to. He does not understand a single word, but not one word! The young man is no more Russian than you are. It is all just a ridiculous piece of theatre playing!’
‘So that was it after all, as Mme de Vrille thought,’ I said, half to myself, half to Arthur. Turning back to Mr Oblonsky, I began to explain. ‘We are trying to find him, and it is quite difficult, because we know neither his name nor even his nationality – the name Vassily Semionovich was probably a complete invention along with the rest of it.’
‘Oh, very likely,’ he agreed. ‘How amusing that he took the same name and patronymic as Kropoff here; I hadn’t noticed it.’ He laughed, clumping his colleague on the shoulder. ‘So you came here to try and hunt him down? How very amusing!’
Arthur and I did not find it at all amusing, but then, Mr Oblonsky could have no idea of the true nature of our investigation, so we forced ourselves to chuckle complacently.
‘Still, Mr Oblonsky,’ I asked, hoping against hope to obtain at least one morsel of additional information from him, ‘is there anything that you can tell us about him? Do you know anything about who he really was?’
‘No, I am very sorry. He did not say. He simply said he was acting the Russian role as a practical joke.’
‘Or to impress the young lady who was with him, perhaps,’ I suggested.
‘Oh no, certainly not. The young lady was in on the joke; she was standing with us when he told me, she was with him all the time.’
‘Ah!’ I said, quickly putting this piece of information away for future reference. ‘Do you at least know, or can you guess, his real nationality?’
‘Oh, I think he was British! Out of politeness to Mrs Hardwick, I insisted on speaking to him in that language, although I believe he would have preferred to speak French (part of his play-acting, I suppose), but I should say there is almost no question about it. He was not a native French speaker. He had a slight trace of foreign accent in that language. But in English, though he spoke little and quite low, he had no accent at all, quite the opposite. His speech was very elegant and natural. Now,’ he added, looking at his watch, ‘I am very sorry, I must leave you. I am sorry I cannot tell you anything further about the man you seek. Why do you not enquire with your young lady friend?’
‘She has lost him – she did not really know who he was,’ I stammered.
‘I see. A mystery man,’ he said, and winked. ‘Perhaps she wishes to find him again, and you are helping her, is that it? I am very sorry I cannot do more for you. My best wishes in your quest,’ he said, shaking hands vigorously with me, then with Arthur. We bid him goodbye, and accepting also the friendliest salutations from our erstwhile suspect Kropoff, we turned away together down the street.
Oh, Dora, I don’t know what to think any more! All my ideas must be revised. If I am to believe Mr Oblonsky – and it corroborates what Mme de Vrille believed – then the young man we are seeking for was quite simply British, and Sylvia certainly knew it. What could he have been doing here in Paris? And where is he now? Perhaps he is still here, since he came from France when he went to murder Mr Granger. But he could equally well be in England, or anywhere else, for that matter. I cannot imagine what my next step should be.
There always remains the final possibility, which is almost certain to turn into a necessity; I shall have to go home and corner Sylvia. Yet I fear that this final, drastic step may not prove very definitive. What shall I do if she simply speaks to me of a casual acquaintance with whom she played the fool for a few weeks, without even knowing his real name, perhaps? As for the idea that this person could possibly have anything to do with the murder of her husband, it seems clear, unless I understand nothing of Sylvia, that it has not occurred to her for an instant.
Yet – I cannot get around the fact that she lied. Yes, she lied; she told me she had not met anyone special in Paris – and even if her foolish behaviour, observed by so many, constituted nothing of emotional importance to her, she took care to hide it nevertheless. Unquestionably, there is a mystery associated with Sylvia and her behaviour, and the point will come when I shall have to elucidate it!
Yours ever,
Vanessa
Paris, Thursday, July 14th, 1892
My dearest twin,
After I wrote to you yesterday, Arthur and I returned to the hotel; our visit to the Russian Embassy had left us feeling foolish, gloomy and at a loss which the dimness of the evening did nothing to dispel. However, as we stopped at the front desk of the hotel to ask for our keys, the young employee plunged his hand into my pigeonhole and extracted not only a key, but also a white envelope.
‘Un télégramme pour vous, mademoiselle,’ he said respectfully, handing it over.
I tore it open at once.
‘It’s from Pat!’ I cried, and Arthur and I read it together. Pat had expressed himself without heed to expense.
FRENCH POLICE HAVE TOTALLY FAILED TO TRACE SUBJECT STOP FIRST RECORDED OBSERVATION ON GANGPLANK LEADING UP ONTO DOVER-BOUND FERRY STOP APPEARS TO HAVE MATERIALISED THERE BY MAGIC STOP INTERVIEWS OF DOZENS OF SAILORS, WORKERS, PASSENGERS ETC HAVE GIVEN NO RESULT STOP NOBODY OBSERVED THIS PERSON’S ARRIVAL AT THE PORT STOP HE WAS NOT OBSERVED ON ANY TRAIN DESTINATION CALAIS AND DID NOT TAKE CAB IN CALAIS STOP FRENCH POLICE TERMINATING INVESTIGATION STOP WHAT CAN THIS MEAN STOP LOOK IN YESTERDAY’S NEWSPAPER STOP PAT
‘How strange,’ I said, struck by this message and forgetting my troubles. ‘Arthur, look what it says. It is peculiar that they can’t find any trace of him. After all, no matter who the mysterious young man is, surely he must have arrived in Calais somehow!’
‘It probably just means that the French police are not putting a lot of energy into it,’ he replied, reading over the telegram glumly. ‘And even if they are, don’t you think it must be practically impossible to find anyone who can remember one particular person in such a large crowd of people as the passengers who take the ferry every day?’
I reflected for a moment.
‘Well, I don’t know. There are all kinds of people working around a boat; someone must have sold him the ticket, there are people loading luggage, someone welcomes the passengers on board, and he was noticed on the boat, after all, so why not on the way there?’
‘But the people on the boat are shut in with this person for a certain length of time. Even if the boat is rather large, it makes sense that several of them remember seeing him. But in the port, on the quay, you’re looking for someone who caught sight of him as he walked past for a brief moment. That seems much harder.’
‘Well, but he was observed by many people on the train in England, and the English police traced him up from Dover easily enough.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘But one will remember one’s fellow passengers in a train just as one does in a boat. At most, assuming the police have done their work correctly, it’s
fair to conclude that he did not arrive in Calais by train.’
‘How then? By balloon? On horseback? Not by cab – he can hardly have taken a cab from another city!’
‘Perhaps he was already in Calais. Or he drove there in a friend’s carriage,’ he said, thinking aloud.
‘But a person cannot descend from a carriage directly onto the gangplank! He must necessarily have had to walk some distance along the quay, and how could he not be observed then, with that red cloak of his?’
‘Ah, the cloak – I had forgotten about that. Why, that’s the reason he was so amply observed everywhere he went. That makes it simple, Vanessa! He arrived at the boat carrying the cloak over his arm or something; it’s probably a different colour on the inside. And then once he was in the boat, he slipped it over his shoulders.’
‘But why?’
‘Well, that cloak business sounds awfully like he wanted to be observed, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, it really does! But Arthur, why should he want to be observed? It sounds mad, impossible! Would you want to be observed on your way to commit a murder? Why – everyone knows exactly where he came from because of it!’
‘No, that’s not true at all. We don’t know where he came from.’
‘Well, you know what I mean. We know he came over from France. And why would he want anybody to know even that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It would help, maybe, if we knew more about the exact moment he was first observed. Then perhaps we could guess why he wanted to be observed in that particular place.’
I glanced down at the telegram. ‘Oh, Arthur, do let us go out and see if we can buy the newspaper! Pat must have written an article about this.’
‘You think he means the Cambridge Evening News?’
‘Oh – well, I assume so! That’s his newspaper.’
‘You’re right. I thought he just meant the British newspapers had somehow gotten wind of the mystery and were writing about it.’
‘Well, let us buy several,’ I said anxiously, and handing our keys back to the surprised bellhop, we returned out into the streets.
We walked some distance before locating a kiosk with sufficiently international tendencies to carry newspapers of several nationalities, but eventually we discovered one, in the vicinity of Gustave Eiffel’s metallic pointed tower, under whose gigantic spreading feet tourists of all nationalities congregate like flies. The editions were of course those of the day before, but that was just what we wanted. We selected three, and carrying them away, we sat down on a bench to peruse them.
‘There’s nothing about it in these,’ said Arthur at length.
‘Well, at any rate, here is Pat’s article,’ I answered, folding back the pages of the Cambridge Evening News to show it to him.
FRENCH POLICE STYMIED BY PROBLEM OF
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER IN
GRANGER MURDER CASE
The police inquiry into the identity and whereabouts of the mysterious young man seen lurking about the village of Haverhill on the day of the murder of respected citizen George Burton Granger has run into an inexplicable difficulty. Indeed, although diligent and detailed enquiry has succeeded in producing an accurate account of each and every step of the young man’s trip to Haverhill from the time he embarked on the Dover-bound ferry in the French port of Calais, it has proved entirely impossible, even with the close collaboration of the French police, to determine where he had come from before that moment.
At first glance, it may seem an impossible task to determine the trajectory of a single individual, to, from, and within a bustling port such as Calais, crowded with passengers and travellers of every description. But in fact, the police have powerful methods at their disposal; they have combed the town, enquired with every cab driver, every mode of transportation, checked with the young man’s description at every hotel in the town and outlying villages, and questioned dozens upon dozens of merchants and workers whose jobs lead them to remain stationary for long hours at locations in and around the docking pier of the Dover ferry.
Because the young man’s clothing and appearance, as described by the large number of witnesses who noticed him during his journey to Haverhill, were particularly striking and unusual, the British police were able to pinpoint that he was definitely observed at the moment of boarding the boat and handing his ticket to the ticket-taker. Some witnesses have also been found who testify to his having stood in line and mounted the gangplank near them. Thus, he was certainly perceived just at the moment of embarkation. Yet no single person can be found who noticed anyone resembling him prior to that moment, even under the natural assumption that he must have arrived carrying rather than wearing the red cloak subsequently mentioned by so many of the witnesses. The chief detective inspector of the Calais police, M. Lemaire, states that he is terminating his researches at least until further information is forthcoming. The mystery remains complete.
‘What can the meaning of it be?’ I said thoughtfully, as Arthur finished reading over my shoulder.
‘I still can’t believe it means much,’ he answered with a deprecatory wave of his hand. ‘So nobody noticed an ordinary-looking fellow walking past at an ordinary pace, in the middle of a large crowd of people milling around. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a thing myself.’
‘But you’re a mathematician!’ I exclaimed. ‘You never do notice anything, when you’re thinking about some problem. If he was really in the middle of a crowd, then he was surrounded by dozens of people who are not mathematicians, and who might therefore have spotted him. How is it possible that no one has?’
‘The police cannot really have tracked down and questioned most of those people, can they?’
‘I don’t know. There must be a great many people who are not just passing by, but work there around the boats and are there every day. Oh, Arthur – do you know what we should do? We should go and talk to this Monsieur Lemaire and find out exactly how seriously they really did search! We mustn’t miss the opportunity – we’re taking the boat back Sunday – we could go to Calais on Saturday!’
‘But how could we persuade the certainly very busy Monsieur Lemaire to receive us?’ he said.
I thought for a moment.
‘I know! We’ll wire him and say we have important information about the young man. Either he or some other high-ranking person must receive us then! And we’ll pump him.’
‘He’ll pump us, more likely. What if he starts by asking for your information?’
‘Oh dear – well, we’ll set him off on a wrong tangent with some story about Prince Yousoupoff. That can’t be so very bad, can it? The worst that can happen is that they go and see him, and make fools of themselves with him, and he gets even redder and more annoyed than he was with us, and shakes his stick at them.’
Arthur sighed.
‘I’ll come with you, Vanessa, but I leave it to you to do the talking and pumping,’ he said. ‘You might be persuasive enough to find out what you want, although I can hardly see what that could be. I must say – we’ve been here nearly two weeks and I can’t see that we’ve made any progress at all on finding out anything whatsoever.’
‘Oh, I do feel grateful when you say “we”,’ I cried. ‘No, we haven’t failed completely, really we haven’t. We know that Sylvia was going about with someone, and that person still has a good chance of being the one we’re looking for. If no one else can identify him for us, she still can, and if push comes to shove, she must be made to.’
‘It isn’t completely certain that even Sylvia is aware of his real identity, is it? And furthermore, if we draw her attention to him, she will certainly realise (even if she has not yet wanted to think about it or admit it to herself) that he is either guilty or at the very least, in danger.’
‘That’s why questioning her is a last recourse. But it could be tried, I think, with enough tact – and Camilla should be questioned, too. She must know something, and she would be more inclined to understand the rea
lity of Sylvia’s own danger than Sylvia herself would. Still, it would have been so infinitely much better to have been able to find out more here! Whether or not she knows who he is, it is bound to be horrible for her; can you imagine? Feeling that it was her fault, not wanting to betray … yet, a murderer!’
‘It is fishy,’ mused Arthur. ‘I mean, if she knows who he is and remained in contact with him, then how could she not suspect? Can she, after all, be shielding him as the police believe? But if she lost contact with him and it has never occurred to her that he may be the murderer, then how can she have been important enough to him to make him murder someone for her? What a muddle. Well, we will be back in England on Monday and can think about all this then,’ he added, taking my hand. ‘Let us content ourselves with planning our next step, purchasing our tickets to Calais and wiring Monsieur Lemaire. That makes tomorrow our last day here in Paris, then. Are you sad to leave?’
‘No! Oh, Arthur, I want to go home! I haven’t been here for my pleasure, and even the pleasure I did get from admiring all the beauties of this splendid city cannot be compared to what I feel when I’m surrounded by the small things of England – the ancient stones, the cathedral spires, the wild flowers, the fresh breezes and the little birds, the flavour and savour of it all. I miss home.’
‘So do I,’ he said very softly, kissing my hair.
‘Really, Arthur? And you, are you not sorry to leave? For the mathematics, at least?’
‘Not at all. We’ve done some glorious work, but I think we have plenty to go on with for the moment. We have to think things out and let them develop; it will take time. The ideas have got to be nurtured slowly, and that can only be done in peace and quiet. No, I want to go home, but I want you near me, and safe.’
We rose and walked together to the telegraph office. I did not answer Arthur’s last remark. Oh dear, I am rather afraid that it is not merely a brief visit to the tempestuous City of Lights that has not proved conducive to an atmosphere of peace and quiet, but rather something to do with my own activities. But what can I do? Nothing, except try to finish as quickly as I can with this dreadful story.
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