Erast Fandorin 01 - The Winter Queen

by Boris Akunin

  “And then in the morning Pierre turned up dressed like a dandy, in a white waistcoat, terribly cheerful. He was a lucky sort, and obviously he was hoping his luck would hold in this, too. We threw the dice in my study. He got nine and I got three. I was prepared for that. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’d rather die here.” I spun the cylinder and put the barrel to my heart. “Stop!” he said to me. “Don’t fire at your heart. If the bullet goes crooked you’ll be in agony for ages. Shoot yourself in the temple or the mouth instead.” “Thank you for your concern,” I said, and at that moment I hated him so much I could easily have shot him without any duel. But I took his advice. I’ll never forget that click, the very first one. It clanged so loudly right in my ear, like…”

  Akhtyrtsev shuddered convulsively and poured himself another glass. The singer, a fat Gypsy woman in a shimmering golden shawl, began crooning some heartrending melody in a low voice.

  “I heard Pierre’s voice say, ‘Right, now it’s my turn. Let’s go out into the air.’ Only then did I realize I was alive. We went to Shvivaya Hill, where there’s a view over the city, Kokorin walking in front with me about twenty paces behind. He stood for a while on the edge of the cliff—I couldn’t see his face—then he raised the hand holding the gun so that I could see it, spun the cylinder, and quickly set it against his head—click. But I knew nothing would happen to him, I hadn’t even been hoping it would. We threw the dice again. And I lost again. I went down to the Yauza—there wasn’t a single soul around. I climbed up on a bollard by the bridge, in order to fall straight into the water…Again I was spared. We went off to one side, and Pierre said to me, ‘This is becoming a bit of a bore. Let’s give the philistines a fright, shall we?’ He was putting a brave face on it, I must give him that. We came out on a side street, and there were people there and carriages driving along. I stood on the far side of the road. Kokorin doffed his hat, bowed to the right and the left, raised his hand, gave the cylinder a spin—and nothing. Well, we had to scoot out of there quickly. There was uproar and screaming and ladies squealing. We turned into a gateway, down on Maroseika Street already. We threw the dice, and what do you think? My turn again! He had two sixes, and I threw a two, I swear it. That’s it, I thought, finite, nothing could be more symbolic than that. One gets everything, the other gets nothing. I tried to shoot myself for the third time outside the church of Kosma and Damian—that’s where I was christened. I stood up on the porch, where the beggars are, gave them each a ruble, then took off my cap…When I opened my eyes I was alive. And one holy fool there said to me, ‘If the soul itches—the Lord will forgive.’ If the soul itches—the Lord will forgive; I remembered that. Right, so we ran away from there. Kokorin chose a rather grander place, right beside the Galofteevsky Passage. He went into a confectioner’s on Neglinny Lane and sat down—I stood outside the window. He said something to the lady at the next table and she smiled. He took out his revolver and pressed the trigger—I saw it. The lady laughed even more. He put the revolver away, chatted with her for a bit about something or other, and had a cup of coffee. I was already in a daze—I couldn’t feel a thing. There was only one thought in my mind: now we have to throw the dice again.”

  “We threw them on Okhotny Ryad, beside the Hotel Loskutnaya, and this time the first turn fell to him. I threw seven and he threw six. Seven and six, only one point in the difference. We walked together as far as Gurov’s inn, and there, where they’re building the Historical Museum, we separated. He went into the Alexander Gardens, walking along the alley, and I walked along the pavement outside the fence. The last thing he said to me was, “We’re a pair of stupid fools, Kolya. If nothing happens this time, to hell with the whole damn business.” I wanted to stop him, I swear to God, but I didn’t. Why, I don’t know myself. But that’s a lie, I do know…I had a mean thought—let him twirl the cylinder one more time, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll be finished up then…I’m only telling you this, Fandorin. This is like a confessional…”

  Akhtyrtsev took another drink. Behind the pince-nez his eyes were dull and red. Fandorin waited with bated breath, even though the general course of subsequent events was already known to him. Akhtyrtsev took a cigar out of his pocket and struck a match with a trembling hand. The long thick cigar looked remarkably out of place with his unattractive, puerile face. Wafting the cloud of smoke away from his eyes, Akhtyrtsev rose sharply to his feet.

  “Waiter, our bill! I can’t stay here any longer. Too noisy, too stuffy.” He tugged at the silk tie around his throat. “Let’s take a cab somewhere. Or just take a stroll.”

  Out on the porch they halted. The lane was dismal and deserted; in all the buildings except the Crimea the windows were dark. The gas flame in the nearest streetlamp fluttered and flickered.

  “Or perhapsh I will go home?” Akhtyrtsev slurred, with the cigar clasped in his teeth. “There should be cabs jusht ‘round the corner.”

  The door opened and their recent neighbor, the white-eyed functionary, emerged onto the porch with a peaked cap tilted to one side of his head. Hiccuping loudly, he reached into the pocket of his uniform jacket and took out a cigar.

  “Would you mind giving me a light?” he asked, moving closer to the young men. Fandorin detected a slight accent—possibly Baltic German, possibly Finnish.

  Akhtyrtsev slapped first one pocket, then another, and there was a rattle of matches. Erast Fandorin waited patiently. Suddenly the appearance of the white-eyed man underwent an incomprehensible transformation. He seemed to become slightly shorter in height and he slumped over a little to one side. The next instant a broad, short blade seemed to appear out of nowhere in his left hand, and with an economical, elastic movement the functionary thrust the blade into Akhtyrtsev’s right side.

  The subsequent events occurred very quickly, taking no more than two or three seconds, but to Erast Fandorin time seemed to be standing still. He had time to notice many things, time to think about many things, but he was quite unable to move, as if the glint of light on steel had hypnotized him.

  Erast Fandorin’s first thought was, He’s stabbed him in the liver, and from somewhere or other his memory cast up a sentence from the gymnasium textbook on biology—“Liver—an organ in the body of an animal that separates blood from bile.” Then he saw Akhtyrtsev die. Erast Fandorin had never seen anyone die before, but somehow he knew immediately that Akhtyrtsev had died. His eyes seemed to turn to glass, his lips distended spasmodically, and from between them there erupted a jet of dark, cherry-red blood. Very slowly and even, it seemed to Fandorin, elegantly, the white-eyed man pulled out the knife, which was no longer gleaming, and turned calmly and slowly toward Erast Fandorin so that his face was very close: luminous eyes with black dots for pupils, thin bloodless lips. The lips moved, distinctly articulating a word: “Azazel.” And then time’s expansion came to an end. Time contracted like a spring, then straightened out and struck Erast Fandorin in the right side with a force so great that he fell backward and banged the back of his head painfully against the edge of the porch’s parapet. What is this? What is this ‘azazel’?—wondered Fandorin. Am I asleep, then? And he also thought, His knife must have hit the Lord Byron. Whalebone. An inch-thin waist.

  The doors burst open and a jolly company came tumbling out, laughing, onto the porch.

  “Oho, gentlemen, we have an entire battle of Borodino here,” a drunken merchant’s voice cried out merrily. “Weren’t up to it, poor chaps! Can’t take their drink!”

  Erast Fandorin raised himself up a little, pressing one hand against his hot, wet side, to take a look at the man with the white eyes.

  But strange to tell, there was no man with white eyes. Akhtyrtsev was lying where he had fallen—facedown across the steps—and his top hat lay where it had rolled a little further away, but the functionary had disappeared without trace, vanished into thin air. And there was not a single soul to be seen anywhere in the street. Nothing but the dull glow of the streetlamps.

&
nbsp; Then suddenly the streetlamps did the oddest thing—they began turning and then spinning around and around, faster and faster. First everything became very bright, and then it went absolutely dark.

  CHAPTER SIX

  in which the man of the future makes his appearance

  “LIE DOWN, LIE DOWN, THERE’S A GOOD CHAP.” said Xavier Grushin from the doorway when the embarrassed Erast Fandorin lowered his legs from the hard divan. “What did the doctor tell you to do? I know all about it—I made inquiries: two weeks in bed after discharge, so that the cut can heal up properly and your concussed brain can settle back into place, and you haven’t even been lying down for ten days yet.”

  He sat down and mopped his crimson bald spot with a checkered handkerchief.

  “O-oh, that sun’s really warm today, really warm. Here, I’ve brought you some marzipan and fresh cherries—help yourself. Where shall I put them?”

  Grushin surveyed the dark, narrow box of a room in which Fandorin lodged. There was nowhere to put his bundle of presents: the host was lying on the divan, Xavier Grushin himself was sitting on the chair, and the table was cluttered with heaps of books. The room contained no other furniture, not even a cupboard, and the numerous items of the tenant’s wardrobe were hanging on nails hammered into the walls.

  “Does it ache a bit?”

  “Not at all,” Erast Fandorin said, not entirely truthfully. “The stitches could come out tomorrow. It just scraped my ribs a bit, but otherwise it’s fine. And my head is in perfectly good order.”

  “You might as well be sick for a while anyway—your salary’s going through.” Xavier Grushin gave a little frown of guilt. “Don’t be angry with me, my dear fellow, for not popping ‘round to see you for so long. I dare say you were thinking badly of the old man—when he needed to get his report written he was ‘round to the hospital in a flash, but since then he has no more use for me, doesn’t even show his face. I sent someone to the doctor to inquire, but I just couldn’t get away to see you myself. The things that are going on in our department—we’re in there all day and all night, too, and that’s the honest truth.” Grushin shook his head and lowered his voice confidentially. “That Akhtyrtsev of yours wasn’t just anybody: he was the grandson of His Highness Chancellor Korchakov, no less.”

  “You don’t say!” Fandorin gasped.

  “His father’s the ambassador in Holland, married for the second time, and your acquaintance here in Moscow used to live with his aunt, the Princess Korchakova, in a private palace on Goncharnaya Street. The princess passed away last year and left her entire estate to him, and he already had plenty from his deceased mother. It’s pandemonium down in the office now, let me tell you. First of all they demanded that the case should be personally supervised by the governor-general, Prince Dolgoruky himself. But there is no case, and no leads to make a start on. Apart from you, nobody saw the killer. As I told you last time, Bezhetskaya has vanished into thin air. The house is empty. No servants and no papers. It’s a wild-goose chase. Who she is, is a mystery; where she came from no one knows. According to her passport she’s a noblewoman from Vilnius. They sent an inquiry to Vilnius, and there’s no such person registered there. All right. His Excellency called me in to see him a week ago. “Don’t take this amiss, Xavier,” he said. “I’ve known you for a long time and I respect you as a conscientious officer, but this affair is just too big for you to handle. There’s a special investigator coming from St. Petersburg, a special assignments officer attached to the chief of gendarmes and head of the Third Section, His Excellency Adjutant General Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov.” You get the idea—a really big noise. One of the new men, a man of the people, a man of the future. Does everything scientifically. An expert in all sorts of clever business—we’re no match for him.” Xavier Grushin snorted angrily. “So he’s a man of the future, and Grushin is a man of the past. All right. He got here three days ago, in the morning. That would make it Wednesday the twenty-second. He’s called Ivan Franzevich Brilling, a state counselor. At thirty years of age! The whole office has been set on its ear! It’s Saturday today, and I was in from nine o’clock this morning. And last night till eleven o’clock everyone was in meetings, drawing charts. Remember the refreshment room, where we used to drink tea. Well, now where the samovar used to stand there’s a telegraph apparatus and a telegrapher on duty ‘round the clock. You can send a telegram to Vladivostok, even to Berlin if you like, and the answer comes back straightaway. He’s kicked out half the agents and brought down half of his own from Peter, and they obey only his orders. He questioned me meticulously about everything and listened to what I said very carefully. I thought he would retire me, but, no, apparently Superintendent Grushin still has his uses. Actually, my dear chap, that’s the reason I came to see you,” Xavier Feofi-laktovich Grushin suddenly recalled. “I wanted to warn you. He was intending to come here himself today. He wants to question you in person. Don’t you be upset—there’s no blame attached to you. You were even wounded in the course of carrying out your duty. But be sure not to put the old man on the spot, will you? Who could have known that the case would take a turn like this?”

  Erast Fandorin cast a miserable glance around his wretched abode. A fine impression the big man from St. Petersburg would get of him.

  “Maybe I’d better come in to the department? Honestly, I’m feeling perfectly all right now.”

  “Don’t you even think about it!” said Grushin with a flurry of his arms. “Do you want to give me away for coming to warn you? You lie down. He made a note of your address. He’ll definitely be here today.”

  The ‘man of the future’ arrived that evening after six o’clock, by which time Erast Fandorin had managed to make thorough preparations. He told Agrafena Kondratievna that a general would be coming, so Malashka should wash the floor in the hallway, remove the rotten old trunk, and not even dare to think of boiling up any cabbage soup. In his own room the injured man carried out a major cleanup: he hung the clothes to greater advantage on the nails and hid the books under the bed, leaving on the table only a French novel, the Philosophical Essays of David Hume in English, and Jean Debret’s Memoirs of a Paris Detective. Then he hid Debret away and replaced him with Instructions for Correct Breathing from the True Indian Brahmin Chandra Johnson, from which he took the fortifying respiratory gymnastics that he performed every morning. Let this master of clever business see that the man who lives here might be poor, but he had not allowed himself to go to seed. In order to emphasize the graveness of his injury, Erast Fandorin stood a bottle containing some mixture or other (he borrowed it from Agrafena Kondratievna) on the chair, then he lay down and wrapped a white scarf around his head. He thought it created the appropriate effect—manly courage in the face of affliction.

  At long last, when he was already thoroughly tired of lying there, there came a short, sharp knock at the door. Then immediately, without waiting for any reply, an energetic gentleman entered the room, wearing a light, comfortable jacket with light-colored pantaloons and no hat at all. The precisely combed brown hair revealed a tall forehead; two sardonic creases lay at the corners of the strong-willed mouth, and the cleanshaven, dimpled chin positively exuded self-confidence. The penetrating gray eyes surveyed the room in an instant and came to rest on Fandorin.

  “I see there is no need to introduce myself,” the visitor said merrily. “You already have the basic facts about me but presented in a rather unflattering light. Did Grushin complain about the telegraph?”

  Erast Fandorin fluttered his eyelids and said nothing in reply.

  “It’s the deductive method, my dear Fandorin. Building up the over all picture from a few small details. The main thing is not to rush things, not to jump to the wrong conclusion, if the available evidence allows for different interpretations. But we can talk about that later—we’ll have plenty of time. And as far as Grushin is concerned, it’s very simple. Your landlady bowed to me almost down to the floor and called me Excellency—that’s one
. As you can see, I do not even remotely resemble an Excellency, nor am I one yet, since the level of my rank only merits Your Worship—that’s two. Apart from Grushin I told no one that I was intending to visit you—that’s three. It is also perfectly clear that the only opinion the detective superintendent can express of my activities is an unflattering one—that’s four. Well, and as for the telegraph, without which, you must admit, modern detective work is quite impossible, it produced a genuinely indelible impression on the whole of your department, and our drowsy Xavier Grushin simply could not have failed to mention it—that’s five. Well, am I right?”

  “Yes,” said the astounded Fandorin, ignominiously betraying the kindhearted Grushin.

  “What’s this—have you got hemorrhoids already at your age?” the astute visitor asked, transferring the mixture to the table and taking a seat.

  “No!” said Fandorin, blushing furiously and at the same time breaking faith with Agrafena Kondratievna too. “It’s—it’s—my landlady got things mixed up. She’s always getting things mixed up, Your Worship. Such a stupid woman…”