by Pavel Kornev
Afterward, we returned to the concessions area. Meanwhile, Albert Brandt walked up a side stair and leaned over the balustrade.
"What's he doing over there?" Liliana asked in surprise.
"Shh," I raised my finger to my lips and quietly walked back to the arch behind me, but not because I was afraid the poet was up to another of his tricks. I knew exactly what was he was doing.
Albert couldn't bear performing in unfamiliar places and always did his best to come early and check the acoustics. And that was what he was doing now.
The poet quickly brought his hands together, and I nearly jumped in place when a clap rang out right above my head. Brandt thought it over briefly, moved to the side and asked:
"How do I sound from up here?"
There couldn't have been less than fifty meters between us. And though the poet hadn't raised his voice, I could make out every word as if he was just a few steps away. The amphitheater's acoustics were simply unbelievable.
"We can hear you perfectly!" Adriano Tacini shouted in response and pointed to the small platform over the entrance arch. We can put the microphone up there! The acoustics are important, but we don't want anything distracting you from the poem.
"Thank you." With a light bow, the poet placed his hand over his heart and cleared his throat. "Ladies and gentlemen, I hope five minutes of my verses will not be too great a bore?"
"Please! Please!" the guests called back, overjoyed.
I took another step back and was already in the inner corridor when his voice started carrying through the amphitheater, amplified by the surprising acoustics of the place.
"Wings of night behind me! Sword of fate above!"
Brandt's talent didn't charm me and make me forget the purpose of my visit to the amphitheater, though. I quickly walked through the corridor, looking into each door one after the next. Then I ran.
As soon as my eyes caught on a stairwell to a lower level, I removed my dark glasses and headed off with my hidden electric torch to study the crypts. Incidentally, looking over the little chambers that once served as ancillary spaces and dressing rooms for the gladiators was a complete waste of time.
Unlike the restored tribunes and external walls, down here, everything was still totally dilapidated, as if the architect hadn’t given a single thought to the basement. There could have been a whole arsenal hidden among the tools and building materials, but I was sure that Thomas Smith, here as the official cameraman, had managed to stick his curious nose into literally every nook and cranny. And what was more, the police must have looked over the space before me.
I was much more interested in the dirigible docking tower, but it was filled up with dressing rooms for the performers. Knowing such people tended to be nosy, quarrelsome and thieving, I felt only an incorrigible optimist would try to hide something within arm’s reach of there. To clear my conscious, though, I walked through the empty artist quarters, finding nothing of interest, just as expected. And I returned to the arena.
"Where have you been?" Liliana asked in surprise as soon as I emerged from under the arch. Albert's rehearsal was over and the poet had already come down from the rostrum.
"I was looking for a bathroom," I told her and hurried to distract her by pointing to the Incredible Orlando, who was trying to get nearer to the guests, but appeared to find himself trapped behind an invisible sheet of glass.
Liliana laughed. After her, everyone else also started to turn toward the mime. I, meanwhile, noticed that the dirigible had descended significantly, and its gondola was now nearly touching the platform on top of the docking tower.
"Sir and mademoiselle!" Liliana and I were deftly swooped up by Adriano Tacini, who'd gotten near us unnoticed. He said quietly: "Our sponsor is setting up a voyage through the air for our very closest friends. I hope you won't refuse this entertaining adventure?"
Lily looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't want to waste time, but continuing to search the amphitheater would be of no use whatsoever. If something was hidden here, finding it would mean turning over the whole place to the last stone.
"We agree!" Liliana decided for the two of us. "Isn't that right, Leo? It's so romantic!"
"Leo?" the architect asked in surprise. "I'm sorry, but didn’t the Marquess call you Lev...?"
I frowned internally, but didn't express it in any way.
"Lev is the name in my passport, but I left my homeland long ago, so I'm used to answering to both names."
"That’s funny, because even though Lev and Leopold both seem to refer to Lions, many now think Leopold is unrelated. Did you know that?"
"I know that. You know that," I smiled. "But believe me Adriano, it is extremely tiresome every time I hear someone bring it up."
"Oh, no arguing with that! Just imagine all the ways my last name has been butchered!" The architect blocked Brandt's path to the buffet table and asked: "Albert, will you come with us?"
With sorrow in his eyes, the poet looked at the dirigible, but didn't refuse and waved a hand:
"Sure!"
Accompanied by ten selected guests, we went up to the tower roof. All along the railing, there were small stacks of short gas tanks with a marking indicating Helium: He. The dirigible gondola was pulled down with cables, tied up, and the gangway was lowered. Even still, gusts of wind were causing it to noticeably rock from side to side.
I was used to such things, but Liliana was digging her nails into my arm the way a terrified kitten latches into a person. It was cute, yet very painful.
We were met at the entrance by Joseph Malone. Obvious incomprehension was flickering in the millionaire's eyes, but after a second of hesitation, he smiled cordially and invited us to come into the state room. The table there was already set. Albert and Lily each took a glass of champagne. I looked dejectedly on, but didn't take anything. I didn't want to eat. I wanted all the less so to consume alcohol.
Liliana noticed my despondency, wrote it up to me being easily embarrassed and started to whisper the names of guests into my ear but, to be honest, all my thoughts were occupied with the upcoming conversation with Thomas Smith. I only shuddered when I saw Adriano and Belinda Tacini enter the room. I had only ever seen the architect's wife before in passing, but now, the fiery brunette, wearing an evening dress with open shoulders and long gloves, drew my gaze and held it. She really was unbelievably beautiful. But at that, she was somewhat disengaged from life, like the work of a genius portrait artist come to life.
Perhaps even Charles Malacarre.
I spent some time mulling that over and shook my head; if the blind illustrator really could pull such an image from someone's subconscious, it certainly wasn't mine. Her beauty was too dangerous yet fragile. I can't imagine why, but vamps always scared me more than they attracted me. There was a certain feebleness in that, I suppose.
Liliana followed my gaze and demanded with slight notes of envy:
"Don't stare! It isn't polite!"
I tapped my finger on the arch of my glasses.
"I simply cannot do without my dark glasses, dear."
"Not long ago, my mom let slip that Belinda cut her own veins. Seriously, they barely got to her in time," Lily told me, her voice peaking. "Ever since, she wears gloves everywhere, to conceal her wrists."
In the time I worked with the police, I had to deal with suicidal people time and again. I might even had said that, if she was rolled out on a stretcher, it couldn't be called "serious," and was more likely a game for the public, but I didn't want to ruin the evening. What's more, one must always make a discount for happenstance and human stupidity. Certain characters are smart enough to miss when holding a revolver to their own temple.
Incidentally, it only took Liliana a moment to forget her envy, turn to me and start to whisper.
"You just look, they're such a fine couple! It's horribly offensive that they cannot conceive children. Their children would simply be marvelous!"
And that was true. Adriano and Belinda se
emed made for one another. They were both tall, stately, and dark-haired, with a subtle similarity in their facial features. But together with that, the pair were as different as fire and ice. She – a raging fire of nerves, he – a cool pragmatist to the very marrow.
Incidentally, that did nothing to guarantee their ill-fated offspring particular beauty,
"You mustn't forget how inheritance works," I reminded my companion. "The children could easily come to resemble their grandmother or grandfather, and that could make for some truly unbelievable combinations."
"Pish, Leo!" Liliana grew angry. "All your talk is putting me off wanting to have your babies!"
I froze in surprise, while Lily slightly poked me under the rib and winked.
"Too much for you? I’ll teach you how to talk rubbish!"
"I won't do it again," I promised and pulled my companion to the window. The dirigible was slowly gaining height, giving us a bird's eye view of the city lights below. The spectacle was spellbinding.
The boulevards radiating out from the central square stood out distinctly in the twilight, which blanketed Montecalida. Although the tram line was not a perfect circle, it was near to it. The gas lights there had already been traded out for electric ones, and the strip of light lined the city like a defensive ring, cutting off the darkness that crept up on the city from all sides.
"It looks like a pentagram," Liliana whispered.
"More like a burnt cart wheel!" Brandt laughed, drinking to his heart’s content and now several glasses of sparkling wine deep.
Lily didn't crawl in her pocket for a response. These two could have gone back and forth to the death, competing to see who could make more vivid and poetic analogies. I just stayed out of it and looked in silence out the window.
Electricity is stronger than magic. Everyone knew that, but only one this bird's eye view of the light ensconcing the city allowed me to recognize the full depth of that assertion.
"The future belongs to science..." I shuddered from the thought which entered my head out of nowhere and suddenly realized it was the very thesis that had just been announced for all to hear by the event’s host.
"The future belongs to science!" Joseph Malone repeated and raised a bulbous cognac snifter to the ceiling. "So, let's drink to the future! To science and independence! Independence from the laws of nature, which is what science gives to us!"
Everyone drank and again split up into separate groups. Most were gravitating around either Adriano Tacini or Joseph Malone. The first was telling a story of the restoration works, while the second was discussing the inevitable rise of his corporation’s stock-market value of after tomorrow's gala-concert. The architect would occasionally point to the amphitheater below for clarity; the millionaire was gracefully juggling figures with a respectable number of zeroes. Grateful listeners could be found around both.
Franz Ruber stood out from the rest with his despondency. He was pouring glass after glass down his gullet, and from time to time, reached for a small silver flask. I ventured a guess that it might contain absinthe.
Albert Brandt was sauntering from one group to the other carrying on conversation, not at all embarrassed at the extreme difference in social status between him and the other guests. The majority of the gentlemen invited by Joseph Malone had at least a six-figure fortune, but the poet easily found a common tongue with all of them, as if he was in his more usual bohemian atmosphere.
Liliana pulled me away to hear Adriano's speech, although, to be perfectly honest, the technical details were too complex for me. Meanwhile, ogling the architect’s wife would be, at the very least, inappropriate. The only thing that saved me from boredom was the view out the window.
Fortunately, the dirigible soon came in to land and we were invited to the exit. By that time, it had finally grown dark, and I gave an involuntary shudder on the gangway when three white spots appeared in the thick twilight. One was hovering in the air, two others were flittering like moths to a flame.
"The mime!" I realized and got distracted holding up my companion. Meanwhile, the performer bowed down and started spinning his arms in the air, pretending he was loosening the gasket of one of the air tanks.
An echo of someone's fear poked into my back, and Joseph Malone, last to get down from the gondola, barked angrily:
"Who let that buffoon up here? Get him off the roof!"
The strong men of the guard team pulled the Incredible Orlando away from the air tanks, and none of the guests paid the incident the slightest bit of mind. Meanwhile, gear wheels were starting to spin in my head.
"Gas! Gas! Gas!" They hissed out as they turned, one after the other.
The millionaire was afraid, but why? Even if the magician had let the helium out of one gas tank, it was just one. Only a real miser would consider that a serious loss, certainly not our gracious host. So, why was he so upset?
"So, what kind of gas tanks were those?" I asked Adriano Tacini, as if in passing, coming down the stairs in front of him.
"If the dirigible loses pressure," he explained, "the valves will slightly loosen, evening it back out."
It was a logical explanation, but it didn't satisfy me. And the fault in that lie with the millionaire's fear. What was he afraid of?
Helium is lighter than air, you'd never poison someone with it. You also couldn't place an explosive among the air tanks – her highness's guard team would be checking the landing platform directly before her arrival. There was no way there was already a bomb in one of the tanks, right?
The guess looked logical, but there was still something nagging away at me – a half-forgotten memory spinning about on the very edge of my memory. I had no way of grabbing onto it, and that put me beside myself.
It seemed I only needed a bit and I would be able to put all the pieces together into a unified whole, but I hadn't done that yet.
The reception was over and the guests were heading for the exit. Beyond the gates, there were blinding magnesium sparks flickering up in quick succession. Photographers were hurrying to take photographs of the famous guests and, while they were dealing with their cameras, I managed to get Liliana aside.
"See you tomorrow?" I smiled, sitting my sweetheart in the carriage awaiting her.
"You don't want to come over for tea?" she asked, taking me by the hand.
"Hmm," I sighed. "I’m afraid I have some things that need doing."
"At such an hour?"
"I promised to meet someone, and he's only free in the evening."
"Should I start getting jealous?" Lily squinted.
"Oh, come off it!"
I pressed my lips to the tips of her fingers, waved farewell and nodded to Thomas Smith, who was looming not far away. He was sure that he had been noticed and walked into the bar.
The drinking establishment wasn't quite right for a private conversation, but that was also its main advantage: it was simply unthinkable to run into a common acquaintance here. At the very least, I couldn't imagine the millionaire Malone or the other important gentlemen from his circle just sitting in a place like this drinking with the common vacationers.
Inside, it was brutally smoky. An out of tune guitar clinked away. A gypsy-looking lady was drawing out a sorrowful, mournful ballad. Thomas Smith took a free table in the very farthest corner and waved a hand from there. When I joined him, we were both given a mug of cream stout.
"Did you find anything out?" the investigator asked, demanding a report.
I took a cautious sip of the beer, appreciated its complex flavor with a hint of milky toffee, but didn't drink any more. Beer had never particularly attracted me, even sweet and weakly alcoholic varieties. I also wanted to retain my clarity of thought.
"Lev!" the alarmed Smith jerked me. "Don't hold back on me!"
"Coroner's report?" I asked, slightly lowering my dark glasses. "Do you have it?"
"First tell me what you managed to find out!"
"All in good time," I smiled. "But now, I need a copy of the c
oroner’s findings on the Indian."
"We didn't agree to that!"
"When we did agree, I didn't especially count on finding a clue. But I did. I'm afraid you'll run away without holding up your end of the bargain."
"To hell with you!" the investigator gave in, moving the clip-board hanging from his shoulders to his knees and starting to mess with the clasp. "Just don't stretch it!" he demanded, handing me the thin stack of papers, made with a printing machine.
I took them over to the gas wall lamp and ran my eyes over the text, because there wasn't really much to read.
"Cause of death – 'strangulation.' Murder weapon – a soft flexible garrote, which didn't leave any visible marks on the skin. No signs of a struggle were found."
The coroner hadn't taken the pains to establish a time of death, writing only that Roshan had been killed on the day of his disappearance. After that, there were some barely comprehensible medical details. I gleaned from them only that the Indian had been strangled immediately after consuming a meal, because pieces of undigested "white-flour dough and minced meat" were found in his stomach. What that exotic meal was, and most importantly, what dump the victim had consumed them in was not a subject the report attempted to cover.
"And?" the investigator hurried me along, having finished his mug of beer. A layer of white foam remained clinging to the bottom.
I returned the coroner's report to him and asked:
"Who discovered the body and where?"
"Lev!" Thomas Smith exploded. "That crosses all imaginable bounds!"
"Who, and where?"
The investigator flared his nostrils in rage, but didn't cause a scandal. He wiped the remainder of the beer foam off his mustache and told me:
"A vacationer was walking outside of the city and happened upon a shallow grave. It wasn't even properly covered."
"And everyone's talking about the thugees, right?" I forwarded. "Indian, strangled, shallow grave."
Thomas threw himself back in his chair and smiled.
"Expecting that question, I purposely asked the detective where the investigation was now. Yes, the thugees are the main theory. But stranglers in the city would be bad for business. For a tourist town like this, it's a death knell, so they're going to pursue all possible theories before making an announcement" Smith leaned on the table and stared gloomily at me. "If you don't want to end up back on the suspects list, tell me what you found!"