Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar

by Olga Wjotas

  “But by all accounts, that’s just flat and muddy. It wouldn’t be any challenge.”

  “Would you prefer us to live in town?”

  I was about to explain, kindly but unmistakeably, that there was no us and never would be. And then I realised that I could keep him away from Lidia while I was carrying out my investigations in the village of N–.

  “That would certainly be preferable,” I said. “I’m not fond of the country. Or mud.”

  “Matrimony is a matter of compromise,” he said. “I would consider living in town.”

  “And I’ll consider your kind offer,” I said. “In the meantime, don’t go proposing to anyone else.”

  Once I’d bought the train tickets, I headed home. I was passing a drinking den of the most disreputable kind just as half a dozen unkempt individuals were being ejected. There was something familiar about them.

  “Mikhail!” I exclaimed as a figure was strong-armed into the street and collapsed at my feet. I recognised all the members of the band from Lidia’s party who had gone off to enlist in search of certain death. “You’re not in the army?”

  “We were on our way,” he groaned. “But we got sidetracked.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You’re musicians. It’s a pub. It’s only natural. But are you sure I can’t deflect you from the certain death thing?”

  “It’s all that is left to us,” said the leader. “After two days’ drinking, we had to sell our instruments in order to continue.”

  “That would include the accordion that was going to get hurled to the ground and have the kazachok danced on it so that nobody could profane it after I’d played it?” I said, with just the faintest tinge of sarcasm.

  He spread his hands. “What choice did I have? I had run out of money. And now all of us have run out of money and have been thrown out of the inn, which leaves us no choice except to die.”

  I had already saved two people from certain death that day; I felt I was on a roll. And just as I was formulating my plan, I was hailed by Old Vatrushkin from the drozhky.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be painting?” I demanded.

  He hung his head. “I have been looking for you, your excellency. I thought that if the general was killed, you would have no means of returning.”

  “Surely the count would have brought me back in his carriage,” I said.

  Old Vatrushkin looked astonished. “Of course not, your excellency,” he said. “He will never forgive you.”

  I suddenly wondered whether it was the count who had organised the attempt on my life. But there was no point in dwelling on that, since there were more pressing matters. I had a few hours before the train left to get the band sorted out. And I knew just the person who could help.

  “Old Vatrushkin, is Ludwig van Beethoven still in town?” I asked.

  “Indeed he is, your excellency,” said Old Vatrushkin. “He has been hired to conduct concerts every evening this week, although he has never yet appeared in the concert hall.”

  “They really need to get a better system than knocking on his door,” I said. “Do you know where he’s staying?”

  “Of course, your excellency. He’s staying at the home of the concert manager.”

  That was peculiar. You would have thought the concert manager would have worked out an adequate means of communication.

  “Right,” I said, “can you take us all there?”

  “You and these seven–” Old Vatrushkin paused as he searched for an appropriate word.

  “Musicians,” I said, and he gave a nod of understanding. “Yes, just the eight of us – they’ve sold their instruments.”

  “But the drozhky is built for only two passengers,” Old Vatrushkin protested.

  “We’ll just pile them all in on top of one another,” I said. “They’re totally rat-arsed.”

  “Rat-arsed, your excellency?” enquired Old Vatrushkin. “I don’t know this word.”

  I tried some more direct translations into Russian. “Hammered, steaming – oh, just take a look at them and you’ll work it out. Now help me get them in.”

  We heaved them up into the drozhky, taking care to place them in the recovery position.

  “But there is no room for you, your excellency.”

  “I’ll be fine hanging on at the back. Just don’t take the bends too fast.”

  As we set off down the road, an ornate carriage approached from the opposite direction. When we drew level, the window opened and a familiar head appeared.

  “Princess Tamsonova! What are you doing standing on the footplate?” asked the princess.

  “I’ve got an orchestra inside,” I explained as we cantered on.

  “What a marvellous idea!” the princess called back and I heard her instructing her coachman to find the nearest orchestra, and her footman to get off the back of the carriage so that she could stand in his place.

  Old Vatrushkin pulled up gently outside the concert manager’s house. I had been going to take the band with me, but they were all snoring contentedly and it seemed a shame to wake them.

  It was clearly no use knocking on Beethoven’s door if he couldn’t hear, so I decided on the strategy I had thought of during the concert – climbing in a window. The windows at the front were all closed, but one at the back was ajar, and I easily gained access. That room was empty, but when I walked into the next one, I found myself in the presence of the great man himself. When I saw that bulky figure, that brooding expression, that leonine hair, I couldn’t help it: I turned into a total fangirl again.

  “Oh my God!” I gasped in German. “I can’t believe I’m in the same room as Ludwig van Beethoven! This is amazing. I just love all your music, though at the start of the Fifth Symphony, I’ve always wondered why you decided to write the clarinets in unison and not in octaves?”

  His expression changed from brooding to utter terror. He had mistaken me for a mad stalker. I wanted to reassure him, and tell him he was entitled to do what he liked with the clarinets, but I was so star-struck that all I managed was to say “Ludwig van Beethoven!” again.

  “Ja,” he said.

  That was odd. It wasn’t odd that he had replied, since he should surely be able to lip-read his name at the very least. But I had expected a Bonn accent with Viennese overtones, and he sounded Bavarian. Thanks to Marcia Blaine’s language teachers, I have a very well-developed ear. Two, in fact.

  “If I talk slowly, can you follow what I’m saying?” I asked.

  “Ja,” he repeated. I was pretty sure he was Bavarian.

  “Nice to see you in Russia,” I said. “I suppose you’re taking the opportunity to visit Count Razumovsky, who commissioned you to write the Razumovsky string quartets?”

  “Ja.”

  Bavarian, absolutely no doubt about it.

  “You’re not Beethoven,” I said.

  “Yes I am.”

  “No you’re not,” I said. “There’s no way you were born in the Electorate of Cologne. And you can’t visit Count Razumovsky because, as you would know if you were Beethoven, he’s the Russian ambassador in Vienna, where he’s been living in seclusion since 1814 and I know it’s at least 1825.”

  He tugged at his cravat as though it was choking him. “Pavel Pavlovich!” he shouted.

  Immediately, another man entered the room and I dropped into an appropriate martial arts stance for fighting two attackers at once. But the fake Beethoven was backing away and the newcomer was a weaselly bloke who posed no threat whatsoever.

  “Pavel Pavlovich, she knows I’m not Beethoven!” he wailed, still in Bavarian German.

  “You fool, what have you been saying?” hissed the weaselly bloke whose execrable German accent immediately gave him away as Russian.

  I intervened. “He’s said ‘yes’ three times, and ‘Pavel Pavlovich’, which has been quite
enough for me to work out your whole nefarious plan,” I said in Russian and then quickly translated into German for the fake Beethoven’s benefit.

  Pavel Pavlovich was about to speak but I held up my hand. “You’ve been stupid going along with all of this,” I said in German to the fake Beethoven. “But you,” I said in Russian to Pavel Pavlovich, “are the concert manager, and you’re the one I blame. You’re an unscrupulous shyster. You’ve put on a programme of Beethoven, which you know audiences will be suspicious of because it’s modern and difficult. You decide to entice them in by claiming that the composer himself will be conducting. But Beethoven’s hearing has been deteriorating since the turn of the century and he’s had to stop conducting. So you hire this Bavarian doppelganger–” (the fake Beethoven, who clearly didn’t speak Russian, had been looking perplexed but perked up at hearing this reference to himself) “–who looks like the maestro but knows nothing about music, so can’t be allowed near an orchestra. But he can be seen about town so that everyone knows he’s here, and then you come up with excuses for why he hasn’t turned up to conduct. You get massive ticket sales and you don’t have to shell out an enormous fee for the real Beethoven. I’m guessing you’re paying the doppelganger–” (the fake Beethoven looked pleased to get another mention) “–peanuts.”

  “That’s not true. I’m paying him real money, fifty kopecks,” said Pavel Pavlovich and then clapped his hand over his mouth. He turned on the fake Beethoven, addressing him in excruciatingly badly pronounced German. “You must have told her! How else would she know every single detail of our plan?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything!” the fake Beethoven wailed.

  “Someone as crooked as you wouldn’t recognise the truth if it bit you on the ankle,” I said to Pavel Pavlovich, in German, so that the fake Beethoven wouldn’t feel excluded. “But the truth is exactly what he’s telling you.”

  “Then you must be a witch!”

  I shook my head. “I’m not a witch. I’m not an angel. I simply had the finest education in the world, which enables me to assess the evidence in front of me and make logical deductions.”

  I could see grudging admiration in Pavel Pavlovich’s eyes, alongside a strong desire to hack me into tiny pieces. “I suppose you want a proportion of the takings,” he said

  “Don’t insult me,” I said quietly.

  He paled. “You want all of the takings?”

  “I don’t want any money,” I said. “At least, not directly. I’ve got an orchestra outside. Violin, double bass, bassoon, clarinet, trumpet, percussion and an accordion. You’re going to make them famous and very rich. They’re extremely versatile – I suggest in particular that you get the accordionist playing a transcription of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Or Clementi, if you want something a bit more contemporary. But their speciality is Scottish country dance music, which, as you know, is extremely fashionable these days.”

  A greedy expression came over the manager’s face. “I heard there was an astounding orchestra playing Scottish country dance music at a grand party a few days ago. With a truly exceptional female accordionist.”

  Modesty forbade me. “She’s off doing other things,” I said. “But otherwise it’s the same line-up.”

  “So I’ll be very rich as well,” he said thoughtfully.

  “All in good time,” I said. “First, they’ll need a new set of instruments.”

  He sighed. “They’ve sold them for drink?”

  I nodded. “And I’m afraid they’re still a bit drunk. They’re just outside, piled up in my drozhky. You’d better come and have a look at them.”

  We went outside, the fake Beethoven following us. Pavel Pavlovich surveyed the dishevelled snoring heap. “Yes, I can see they’re professionals all right. I agree to the deal.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not just going to accept the word of a crook. Do you think I came up the Dvina on a banana boat?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “No one has ever come up the Dvina on a banana boat.”

  “I’m glad we understand each other. Just a minute.” I signalled to Old Vatrushkin, who jumped down from the drozhky, and took him aside to avoid being overheard.

  “I’m leaving for the village of N– later today, but I don’t want anybody to know. First, I’ve got to stop the band from enlisting and facing certain death. The princess said Kirill Kirillovich was the best lawyer in town. Do you know where his office is?”

  Old Vatrushkin pointed. “Just across the road, your excellency.”

  “Perfect. I’ll sort things out with the concert manager while you go home and get the maid to pack for a couple of days away. I’ll meet you both at the station.”

  I avoided telling Old Vatrushkin about the attempt on my life in the forest, since I knew he would fret.

  “And it might be cold in the country, so make sure she brings my fur coat,” I added. Again, there was no need for him to know I was aiming for protection from more than the weather.

  With some difficulty, Old Vatrushkin, Pavel Pavlovich, the fake Beethoven and I managed to drag the seven musicians out of the drozhky, and then Old Vatrushkin drove away.

  “I believe the best lawyer in town is just over there,” I said, changing to German in order to include the fake Beethoven.

  Pavel Pavlovich nodded.

  “Then that’s where we’re all going.”

  “I don’t think they’re going anywhere,” said Pavel Pavlovich, indicating the inert figures on the ground. “Not until they sober up, which will take hours.”

  In 1817, Beethoven himself referred to Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel’s new invention, subsequently patented by Johann Maelzel.

  “Do you have,” I asked Pavel Pavlovich, “such a thing as a metronome?”

  He looked very smug, like one of those geeks with the latest must-have from the Apple Store. “Of course.”

  “Of course!” repeated the fake Beethoven in sudden understanding, scampering off to get it.

  It was a Maelzel original, a beautiful thing, rosewood and brass. I set it to fifty-six beats per minute and waited. The musicians’ eyes flickered open and they began nodding their heads in time to the ticking. I held the metronome up in front of them, and they staggered to their feet, their bodies swaying to the rhythm. As I set off with the metronome, they clumped along in unison behind me, speeding up as I changed the tempo from lento to adagio.

  I announced myself and my business at the lawyer’s, and a troupe of scriveners rushed to get enough seats for us all in Kirill Kirillovich’s office, the musicians collapsing into them when the metronome stopped.

  I succinctly outlined the contract to be drawn up between Pavel Pavlovich and the band, ensuring that the band’s rights were absolutely watertight. There was a slight hiccup when Pavel Pavlovich tried to insist on a larger percentage but he saw sense when I pointed out that I could completely destroy his career.

  “One last thing,” I said. “There’s going to be an extra concert at the end of this Beethoven series.” The fake Beethoven hadn’t been following the conversation, since we were speaking Russian, but on hearing his name, he smiled and nodded.

  “I thought he was deaf,” the lawyer whispered.

  “He is,” I said, “but he can pick up vibrations. That’s how he still manages to conduct.”

  Pavel Pavlovich was squirming in his chair as though someone was prodding him with the business end of a piccolo.

  “You will of course know,” I said, “that Maestro van Beethoven’s Opus 108 is a set of arrangements of Scottish songs?”

  The lawyer nodded vigorously. People are terrified to admit that they haven’t a clue about contemporary composers.

  “He initially wrote it,” I went on, “for voices, violin, cello and piano, but he has been so impressed by these musicians that he has reconfigured it for violin, double bass and accordion, with the
non-playing band members doing the singing.”

  Pavel Pavlovich now looked as though someone had whacked him over the head with the double bass.

  “So we need a codicil covering that specific performance, which will be conducted by Maestro van Beethoven himself.”

  Pavel Pavlovich sagged, his hands over his face, as I dictated the codicil giving all proceeds to the band.

  Kirill Kirillovich finished writing, laid down his pen and scrutinised me over his glasses. “You are obviously an eminent legal expert,” he said. “How is this possible when your gender cannot attend university?”

  Another tribute to the finest education in the world. “I don’t have any formal qualifications. Jurisprudence is just a bit of a hobby of mine,” I said. “If you could make the necessary copies of the contract, we’ll get these gentlemen to sign it.”

  When the lawyer went out to round up some scriveners, Pavel Pavlovich clutched my arm. “Why are you determined to ruin me?” he moaned.

  “Ruin you?” I said, reverting to German so that the fake Beethoven would know what was going on. “I’m making your fortune. Nobody will realise he isn’t the real thing. All he has to do is stand on the podium, look moody and wave his arms about.”

  “I can do that,” the fake Beethoven said, waving his arms about.

  “But that’s not conducting,” Pavel objected.

  “He doesn’t need to conduct,” I said. “He just needs to look as though he’s conducting. These boys are self-starters. They’ll sort themselves out, the transcription, the singing, everything. They’ll be great. I’ve played alongside them, and I know.”

  Too late, I realised I had given myself away.

  “So it was you!” said Pavel Pavlovich. “You are the virtuoso accordionist who captivated everyone at the grand party.”

  “It was just a wee jam session,” I said.

  “If you will do a concert tour for me, I will give you all the jam you want,” he said.

  I briefly considered it. Playing in front of an audience for a maximum of half an hour, ten minutes’ practice just to make sure I remained at my peak, and the rest of the day to myself. It was appealing. And I like jam. But I was now on the fifth day of my mission and running out of time.