Erast Fandorin 01 - The Winter Queen

by Boris Akunin

  Evincing not the slightest sign of surprise at the order to follow the man in gray livery, the cabby cracked his long whip, and phase one of the plan was under way.

  It grew dark. The streetlamps were lit, but not knowing London, Erast Fandorin very quickly lost his bearings among the tangle of identical stone buildings in this alien, menacingly silent city. After a certain time the houses became lower and more scattered, and he thought he could see the indistinct outlines of trees drifting through the gloom. After another fifteen minutes there were large detached houses surrounded by gardens. The ‘egotist’ halted at one of these and disgorged a giant silhouette, which opened the tall barred gates. Leaning out of the cab, Fandorin saw the small carriage drive inside, following which the gates were closed again.

  The quick-witted cabby stopped his horse, then looked around and asked, “Should I report this journey to the police, sir?”

  “Here’s a crown for you, and decide that question for yourself,” replied Erast Fandorin, deciding that he would not ask the driver to wait—he was too smart by half. And Fandorin had no idea when he would be going back. Ahead lay total uncertainty.

  Slipping over the fence proved to be quite simple—in his schooldays at the gymnasium he had overcome higher obstacles.

  The garden menaced him with its shadows and poked him inhospitably in the face with its branches. Ahead through the trees he could make out the vague white form of a two-story house surmounted by a hipped roof. Attempting to crunch as quietly as possible, Fandorin stole as far as the final bushes (they smelled like lilac—probably it was some English kind of lilac) and surveyed the lay of the land. It was not just a house, rather more like a villa. There was a lantern over the door. The windows on the first floor were brightly lit, but it looked as though the domestic offices were located there. Far more interesting was a lighted window on the second floor (at this point he recalled that for some reason the English referred to it as the ‘first floor’), but how could he get up to it? Fortunately there was a drainpipe running close beside it, and the wall was overgrown with some kind of climbing vegetation that appeared to have taken a solid grip. The skills of his recent childhood might prove useful once again.

  Like a black shadow Erast Fandorin dashed across to the wall and gave the drainpipe a shake. It seemed secure and it didn’t rattle. Since it was vitally important not to make any noise, the ascent proceeded more slowly than Erast Fandorin would have wished. Eventually his foot found the projecting ledge that encircled the second floor of the house most conveniently, and taking a cautious grip on the ivy—wild vine, liana, whatever the hell these serpentine stems were called—Fandorin began edging his way in tiny steps toward the cherished goal of the window.

  For one instant he was overwhelmed by bitter disappointment—there was no one in the room. A lamp with a pink shade illuminated an elegant writing desk with some papers, and in the corner he thought he could see the white form of a bed. Erast Fandorin waited for about five minutes, but nothing happened except that a fat moth settled on the lamp, its shaggy wings fluttering. Would he really have to climb back down again? Or should he take a risk and clamber inside? He gave the window frame a gentle push and it swung open slightly. Fandorin hesitated, berating himself for his indecision and procrastination, but he had been right to delay, for just then the door opened and a man and a woman entered the room. At the sight of the woman Erast Fandorin very nearly gave a whoop of triumph—it was Bezhetskaya! With her smoothly combed black hair tied back with a red ribbon, in a lacy peignoir over which she had thrown a brightly colored Gypsy shawl, to his eyes she appeared blindingly beautiful. Oh, such a woman could be forgiven any transgressions!

  Turning toward the man—his face remained in shadow, but to judge from his stature it was Morbid—Amalia Bezhetskaya spoke in impeccable English (a spy, most indubitably a spy!). “So it was definitely him?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Absolutely no doubt about it.”

  “How can you be so certain? Did you actually see him?”

  “No, ma’am. Franz was keeping watch there today. He informed me that the boy arrived at seven o’clock. The description matched perfectly; even your guess about the mustache was correct.”

  Bezhetskaya laughed her clear, musical laugh. “Nevertheless, we must not underestimate him, John. This boy is one of the lucky breed, and I know that kind of person very well—they are unpredictable and very dangerous.”

  Erast Fandorin’s heart sank. Surely they could not be talking about him? No, it was impossible.

  “Nothing simpler, ma’am. You only have to say the word…Franz and I will go over there and finish him off. Room fifteen, on the second floor.”

  They were talking about him! Erast Fandorin was staying in room number fifteen on the third floor (the second floor English style). But how had they found out? From where? Fandorin tore off his ignominious, useless mustache, ignoring the pain.

  Amalia Bezhetskaya, or whatever her real name might be, frowned, and a harsh metallic note sounded in her voice. “Don’t you dare! It’s my fault, and I shall correct my own mistake. For once in my life I trusted a man…but I am surprised that we did not get word of his arrival from the embassy.”

  Fandorin was all ears now. They had their own people in the Russian embassy! Well, well, well! And Ivan Brilling had been doubtful. Say who, say it!

  But Bezhetskaya began talking of other matters. “Are there any letters?”

  “Three today, ma’am.” The butler handed over the envelopes with a bow.

  “Good. You may go to bed, John. I shall not require you any further today.” She stifled a yawn.

  When the door closed behind Mr. Morbid, Amalia Bezhetskaya tossed the letters carelessly on the bureau and walked over to the window. Fandorin shrank back behind the projecting masonry, his heart pounding furiously. Gazing out blankly into the murky drizzle with her huge black eyes, Bezhetskaya (if not for the glass, he could have reached out and touched her) muttered pensively in Russian, “How deadly boring, God help me. Stuck in this miserable place…”

  Then she began behaving very strangely. She went up to a frivolous wall lamp in the form of a Cupid and pressed the god of love’s bronze navel. The engraving hanging beside it (it appeared to be a hunting scene of some kind) slid soundlessly to one side, revealing a small copper door with a round handle. Bezhetskaya freed a slim, naked hand from its gauzy sleeve, turned the handle this way and that, and the door opened with a melodic thrumming sound. Erast Fandorin pressed his nose against the windowpane, afraid of missing the most important part of the action.

  Amalia Bezhetskaya, looking more than ever like an Egyptian queen, reached gracefully into the safe, took something out of it, and turned around. She was holding a light blue velvet attaché case.

  She sat down at the bureau, extracted a large yellow envelope from the attaché case, and from the envelope she extracted a sheet of paper covered in fine writing. She slit open the newly received letters with a knife and copied something from them onto the paper. It all took no longer than two minutes. Then, having replaced the letters and the sheet of paper in the attaché case, Bezhetskaya lit a pakhitoska and inhaled deeply several times, gazing pensively into space.

  The hand with which Erast Fandorin was gripping the vegetation had gone numb, the handle of his Colt was sticking painfully into his side, and his feet had begun to ache from being so unnaturally splayed. He could not continue standing in that position for long.

  Eventually Cleopatra extinguished her pakhitoska, stood up, and withdrew into the dimly lit far corner of the room, where a low door opened then closed again, and then there was the sound of running water. Evidently that was where the bathroom was located.

  The blue attaché case remained lying enticingly on the writing desk, and women, as everyone knows, spend a long time over their evening toilette…Fandorin pushed against the window frame, set his knee on the windowsill, and in an instant was inside the room. Glancing now and again in the direction of the b
athroom, from where he could still hear the sound of running water, he set about relieving the attaché case of its contents.

  It proved to contain a large bundle of letters and the envelope he had already seen. Written on the envelope was an address:

  MR. NICHOLAS M. CROOG, POSTS RESTANTE

  L’HOTEL DES POSTES, S.-PETERSBOURG, RUSSIE

  This was already progress. Inside the envelope there were sheets of paper divided into columns and squares containing English writing in the slanting hand now so familiar to Erast Fandorin. The first column contained some kind of number, the second the name of a country, the third a rank or title, the fourth a date, and the fifth another date—different dates in June in ascending numerical order. For instance, the last three entries, which to judge from the ink had only just been made, appeared as follows:

  N°1053F Brazil head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard sent 30 May received 28 June 1876

  N°825F United States of America deputy chairman of a Senate committee sent 10 June received 28 June 1876

  N°354F Germany chairman of the district court sent 25 June received 28 June 1876

  Wait! The letters that had arrived at the hotel for Miss Olsen today had been from Rio de Janeiro, Washington, and Stuttgart. Erast Fan-dorin rummaged through the bundle of letters and found the one from Brazil. It contained a sheet of paper with no salutation or signature, nothing but a single line of writing:

  30 May, head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard, N°1053F.

  So for some reason Bezhetskaya was copying the contents of the letters she received onto sheets of paper that she then sent to a certain Nikolai Croog in St. Petersburg, or rather Mr. Nicholas Croog. To what end? And why to St. Petersburg? What could it all mean?

  The questions came thick and fast, jostling each other for space in his mind, but he had no time to deal with them—the water had stopped running in the bathroom. Fandorin hastily stuffed the papers back into the attaché case, but it was too late to retreat to the window. A slim white figure was already standing motionless in the doorway.

  Erast Fandorin tugged the revolver out of his belt and commanded in a whisper, “Miss Bezhetskaya, one sound and I’ll shoot you! Come over here and sit down! Quickly now!”

  She approached him without speaking, gazing spellbound at him with those unfathomable, gleaming eyes, and sat down beside the writing desk.

  “You weren’t expecting me, I suppose?” Erast Fandorin inquired sarcastically. “Took me for a stupid little fool?”

  Amalia Bezhetskaya said nothing. Her gaze seemed thoughtful and slightly surprised, as if she were seeing Fandorin for the first time.

  “What is the meaning of these lists?” he demanded, brandishing his Colt. “What has Brazil got to do with all this? Who is concealed behind the numbers? Well, answer me!”

  “You’ve matured,” Bezhetskaya said unexpectedly in a quiet, pensive voice. “And you seem a bit braver, too.”

  She dropped her hand and the peignoir slipped from a rounded shoulder so white that Erast Fandorin swallowed hard.

  “Brave, impetuous little fool,” she went on in the same quiet voice, looking him straight in the eyes. “And so very good-looking.”

  “If you’re thinking of seducing me, you’re wasting your time,” Erast Fandorin mumbled, blushing. “I am not such a little fool as you imagine.”

  Amalia Bezhetskaya said sadly, “You are a poor little boy who doesn’t even understand what he has got mixed up in. A poor, handsome little boy. And now there is nothing I can do to save you…”

  “You’d do better to think about saving yourself!” said Erast Fandorin, trying hard not to look at that accursed shoulder, which had become even more exposed. Could skin really be such a glowing, milky white?

  Bezhetskaya rose abruptly to her feet, and he started back, holding his gun out in front of him…

  “Sit down.”

  “Don’t be afraid, silly boy. What rosy cheeks you have. May I touch them?”

  She reached out a hand and gently brushed his cheek with her fingers.

  “You’re hot…What am I going to do with you?”

  She set her other hand gently on his fingers that clutched the revolver. The matte-black, unblinking eyes were so close that Fandorin could see two little pink reflections of the lamp in them. A strange list-lessness came over the young man and he remembered Hippolyte’s warning about the moth, but the memory was strangely abstract—it had nothing to do with him.

  Then events moved very rapidly. With her left hand Bezhetskaya pushed the Colt aside. With her right hand she seized Erast Fandorin by the collar and jerked him toward her, simultaneously butting his nose with her forehead. Fandorin was blinded by the sharp pain, but he would not have been able to see anything in any case, because the lamp went crashing to the floor and the room was plunged into darkness. At the next blow—a knee to the groin—he doubled up, his fingers contracted spasmodically, the room was lit by a bright flash, and there was the deafening roar of a shot. Amalia took a convulsive breath, half sobbed and half screamed, and then there was no longer anyone beating Erast Fandorin, no one squeezing his wrist. He heard the sound of a falling body. There was a loud ringing in his ears, twin streams of blood were flowing over his chin, tears were pouring from his eyes, and his lower belly ached so sickeningly that all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and wait for the agony to pass, groan until the unbearable pain went away. But he had no time for bellowing. He could hear loud voices and the sound of heavy footsteps from downstairs.

  Fandorin grabbed the attaché case off the desk and threw it out the window, then climbed over the windowsill, and almost fell, because his hand was still clutching the pistol. Later he was unable to recall how he climbed down the drainpipe, terrified all the while of not being able to find the attaché case in the darkness, but in fact it was clearly visible on the white gravel. Erast Fandorin picked it up and set off at a run, fighting his way through the bushes and mumbling rapidly to himself: “A fine diplomatic courier…killed a woman…My God, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?…It’s her own fault…I didn’t want to do it at all…Now where shall I go?…The police will be looking…or these…Murderers…I can’t go to the embassy…Must flee the country, quickly…Can’t do that either…They’ll be watching all the railway stations and ports…They’ll stop at absolutely nothing to get back their attaché case…Have to go into hiding…My God, Mr. Brilling, what shall I do, what shall I do?”

  As he ran, Fandorin glanced around and saw something that made him stumble and almost fall. Standing motionless in the bushes was a black figure in a long cloak. The moonlight traced the features of a strangely familiar white face. Count Zurov!

  Totally demented by this final blow, Erast Fandorin squealed and scrambled over the fence, darted to the right, then to the left (which direction had the cab come from?), then finally decided that it made no difference and ran off to the right.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  which tells the story of a very long night

  ON THE ISLE OF DOGS, IN THE MAZE OF NARROW streets behind Millwall Docks, night falls rapidly. Before you can so much as glance over your shoulder the twilight has thickened from gray to brown and one in every two or three of the sparse streetlamps is already glowing. It is dirty and dismal, the Thames ladens the air with damp, the rubbish dumps adding the scent of putrid decay. The streets are deserted, with the only life—both disreputable and dangerous—teeming around the shady pubs and cheap furnished lodgings.

  The rooms in the Ferry Road guesthouse are home to decommissioned sailors, petty swindlers, and aging port trollops. Pay sixpence a day and a separate room with a bed is yours to do with as you will—no one will stick his nose into your business—but a condition of the agreement is that for damaging the furniture, brawling, or yelling in the night your host, Fat Hugh, will fine you a shilling, and if anyone refuses to pay up, he will throw him out on his ear.

  From morning to night Fat Hugh is at his post behind the c
ounter, by the door, strategically positioned so that he can see anyone either arriving or leaving or bringing anything in or, on the contrary, attempting to take anything out. The clientele here is a mixed bunch, and you never know what they might be getting up to.

  Take, for instance, that French artist with the shaggy red hair who has just gone scurrying past his landlord and into the corner room. The frog eater has money, all right—he paid for a week in advance with no arguments. He doesn’t drink, just sits there locked in his room, and this is the first time he’s been out at all. So, naturally, Hugh took the opportunity to glance into his room, and what do you think he found? Him an artist, but never a sign of any paints or canvases in the place! Maybe he’s some murderer or other, who knows—otherwise why would he be hiding his eyes behind those dark glasses? And maybe the constable ought to be told—the money’s been paid in advance anyway…

  Meanwhile, the redheaded artist, unaware of the dangerous line taken by Fat Hugh’s train of thought, locked his door and began behaving in a manner that was indeed more than simply suspicious. First of all, he pulled the curtains tightly closed. Then he placed his purchases—a loaf of bread, cheese, and a bottle of porter—on the table, pulled a revolver out of his belt, and hid it under his pillow. But the disarming of this peculiar Frenchman was not complete at that. From the top of his boot he extracted a derringer—a small, single-shot pistol such as is usually employed by ladies and political assassins—and set this toylike firearm beside the bottle of porter. From his sleeve the lodger withdrew a short, narrow stiletto that he stuck into the loaf of bread. Only after all this did he light the candle, remove his blue spectacles, and rub his eyes with a weary hand. Finally, after a glance around at the window to make sure that the curtains were not parting, he lifted the red-haired wig off his head and was revealed as none other than Erast Petrovich Fandorin.