Flowers Stained With Moonlight (20 page)

‘Accompanied? Really accompanied? Or were they simply casual acquaintances of the evening?’ I asked, hiding the excitement his words engendered within me.

‘Oh, really accompanied!’ he laughed. ‘They were inseparable, and Katherine was in high dudgeon because they mixed so badly. A most interesting young gentleman – he would have been perfect for the old ladies, but Sylvia hardly let him speak to anyone.’

‘Do you know who he was?’ I asked, but I knew the answer would be negative before the words left my mouth.

‘Not at all, never saw him again. I really don’t know where she found him. He was the sensation of the evening among the old ladies, as a matter of fact. I can’t recall what he said his name was, but it was something highly exotic, at any rate. Dear me, you had better circulate, hadn’t you,’ he added quickly, as a group of new arrivals, having paid court to Mrs Hardwick, bore down upon him. ‘Here – come along,’ and guiding me just a few steps towards the edge of the room, where chairs were lined up against the wall for those who were too elderly or tired to make continuous use of their legs, he presented me to a clump of ladies who sat there, gossiping and fanning themselves.

‘Mrs Thurmond, Mrs Hilton, here’s Miss Duncan, a friend of Sylvia Granger’s, just arrived from England,’ he said, pushing me forward slightly with his hand in the small
of my back. ‘You do remember Mrs Granger, of course; it was she who came here in … January, was it? Yes of course – it was the New Year’s celebration, for there were fireworks over the city at midnight. She came with an interesting young foreign gentleman – Miss Duncan is most interested to hear more about him. I thought you ladies would be sure to remember everything he said and did.’ He slid away smoothly, leaving me in the hands of the dowagers, who shifted in their places, drew up a chair for me, and installing me in their midst, transformed me in a single gesture into one of themselves: I felt myself to be rather aged and bodily weary, and perhaps even somewhat heavy; much decked out and tightly constricted in my stays, a little too warm but acutely interested, in spite of all this, in the sayings and doings of every human being unlucky enough to stray into the radius of my small influence. As I sat, I spied Arthur, at some little distance, laughing wholeheartedly with the Spanish girl and bringing a melancholic smile to her lips. I felt a little twinge, as though my identity were slipping away from me.

However, I brought myself severely back to the matter at hand, and turned the conversation without the slightest difficulty onto the subject of my friendship with Sylvia and her fascinating masculine acquaintance, about whom I implied that she had told me many obscure and deeply intriguing facts.

‘Oh, he was a
sensation
,’ said the lady called Mrs Hilton, who wore a bonnet with an alarming amount of lace and appeared positively short of breath, whether from
excitement or the tightness of her dress I could not be sure. ‘He was so
very
romantic! A Russian prince, he was.’

‘A Russian prince!’ I was astonished at this unexpected piece of information, more worthy, seemingly, of a fairy tale than of bitter and sordid reality. But Mrs Hilton did not consider that being Russian was anything so very exotic.

‘Paris is simply crawling with Russians,’ she said. ‘That’s because the French lost the war in Russia eighty years ago; they’ve been swarming over here ever since. They learn French there as children, and then when they come here, they marry French girls as often as not and stay forever, living a life of parties and gambling.’

‘Some of them are just here because they’re diplomats,’ observed another lady. ‘We’ve a couple right here in this room, haven’t we, dear?’ and she turned to her friend Mrs Thurmond for confirmation.

‘Why, certainly,’ said this lady. ‘There’s Mr Grigoriev over there now, by the curtains; he’s the gentleman petting the dog. He shouldn’t do that,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Katherine’s dogs don’t much like to be petted – there! He’s snapped at his hand. I’m not in the least bit surprised.’

I fixed Mr Grigoriev with a fascinated gaze, and had to admit that although he wore pouches under his eyes, he bore no other noticeable resemblance to the image of a Russian gentleman which extensive reading had bred within me. He was not romantic, he did not fling himself to his knees nor challenge anyone to a duel, nor did he even wear a large fur hat. He did, however, according to
my informants, possess a name and patronymic, and as a matter of fact, so did Sylvia’s mysterious friend.

‘Vassily somethingvich, what was it?’ fluttered Mrs Thurmond.

‘Vassily Semionovich, Prince Yousoupoff,’ said Mrs Highsmith, with a sniff of superior knowledge. ‘I have never understood exactly what is meant by a prince in Russia; they seem to have far too many of them.’

‘Well, so do they here in France,’ murmured Mrs Thurmond. ‘It seems to be something quite different from the sons of the King. I’ve never quite understood it.’

‘Huh. Well, the title clearly does not carry the same weight in other countries as it does in England. Still, it is certainly a title, and Vassily Semionovich looked the part.’

‘What was he like?’ I enquired eagerly.

‘Perfect manners, of course, but very reserved. He didn’t speak much – and that little Mrs Granger never left his side. Her behaviour would have been positively shocking in London! But here in Paris we are used to seeing everything, and have lost all sense of surprise. At any rate, we exchanged only a few remarks, though I should certainly have liked to converse more with him. He wouldn’t speak English with us, only French; he said his English was poor, although it was probably vanity disguised as modesty. He obviously came from a social class in which such things are learnt as a matter of course. His French was delightful; the merest trace of an accent. He had been raised by a French governess, as so many of these young Russian nobles are.’

To my disappointment, this conversation essentially
exhausted the ladies’ store of information. I was eventually rescued by Mrs Hardwick from the dowagers’ corner, and returned to Arthur’s side; the Spanish girl had moved off to join a group of lugubrious-looking Spaniards dressed in black. Arthur was holding a glass of champagne; his third, as it appeared. He drew me close to him as I approached, and kissed my hair.

‘Arthur!’ I said, glancing around.

‘
Les dames et demoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas la coutume de France?,
’ he began to quote teasingly, but snapped to attention as Mrs Hardwick bore down upon us. We were (a little grudgingly) allowed to remain together, but only on the unstated but clearly implied condition that we busy ourselves as much as possible with the gliding and sliding, fanning and circulating, and above all, chatting, chatting endlessly with an endless series of faces, all of which comes together to make a party end up being pronounced ‘a great success’. I did try, while thus engaged, to bring up the subject of the mysterious Vassily Semionovich, Prince Yousoupoff as often as I reasonably could, but few people possessed the accurate memory of Mr Hardwick, or the pointed interest in her fellow creatures of Mrs Hilton. I would have liked to approach the Russian diplomat, for I thought that he must have spoken to his countryman, but he had left early. The principal piece of information I obtained was a physical description several times confirmed; oh so vague, as a physical description of someone one has never seen must necessarily be, but still, a description which in no way contradicts that of the young man seen by Martha in Haverhill, and by other witnesses, no doubt, upon his way
there. Of medium height, dark-haired, elegant and suave, he came here dressed in a billowing Russian blouse, clearly with a view to impress; exactly the kind of behaviour, in fact, which one would expect from the thumbnail sketch of the unknown young man in the vivid red cloak.

As the evening wore on, I confess that I thought progressively less and less about the romantic Russian prince. Indeed, I ceased to think at all after some time, and felt myself to be floating about the room, between the lights and candles, the
petits fours
and glasses of champagne on trays carried by silently gliding servants, and the unending swirl of conversation, followed later by music and dancing. After a certain hour, the more elderly members of the party appeared to have disappeared, and only those who had sufficient energy remained, but those had energy for twenty; speaking a medley of languages, dancing indefatigably and laughing a great deal, they made us feel quite gay and distracted, so that it was far after midnight before we finally took our leave. Mrs Hardwick shook my hand vigorously. I felt dizzy, exhausted and far too warm. She herself seemed absolutely unscathed by the evening’s activities.

‘Give my greetings to Eleanor and that silly daughter of hers,’ were her last words as we took our departure.

There, I believe I have told you everything of importance; I hardly remember what I have written, but I shall read it all over carefully tomorrow morning before posting this. And now – I shall blow out this candle, and finally collapse into my bed!

Your most alarmingly tired

Vanessa

My dearest sister,

My Russian prince appears to be evaporating, and I myself begin to feel lost in a quagmire of shifting sands! I must tell you what happened during my much-looked-forward-to visit with Mrs Clemming’s friend Jane de la Brière.

As promised, I was introduced to her husband Monsieur de la Brière, his sister Victoire, and Victoire’s husband, who bears the impressive title of le Baron de Vrille. I had no difficulty, after an ample dose of the usual society conversation on politics and the weather, in leading the two ladies around to the topic of Sylvia’s shocking behaviour in the casino in Deauville, for Mrs de la Brière desired nothing more than to emit shocked criticism while listening to her sister-in-law recount the details of evenings spent in the casino. By her description, this casino is a place in which not only gambling takes place, but also dining, drinking, dancing and romantic promenades under false marble arches decorated with rather depressing palm trees in pots (in a desperate attempt to give an impression of being in Monte Carlo, even in the depths of winter – during which the palm trees are taken indoors).

The casino is frequented by all classes of society except the very poor, and even plays host to masked balls during which misbehaviour is a fully expected and recognised activity. On the night that Mme de Vrille remembers encountering Sylvia, however, the casino had organised a public ball more classical in style, and she was not
particularly surprised to encounter Sylvia; she knew her, for she had met her in Jane’s drawing room, just as she was now meeting me. (I did wonder why this lady and her noble husband should deign to grace our humble society with their presence, which was obviously considered by all as something quite stellar, but eventually I was able to attribute this astonishing fact to something quite simple: the deep though quiet affection which unites Mme de Vrille and her brother M. de la Brière, witnessed only by sundry small looks, smiles and gestures between the two.)

‘I was not at all surprised to see little Mrs Granger at ze ball,’ Mme de Vrille told me with a very cosmopolitan smile, ‘everybody goes zere, you should certainly visit eet yourself,’ as though ladies travelling from England gravitated to the casino quite as a matter of course.

‘Yet I heard that you found her behaviour surprising,’ I said, with what I hoped was an easy smile denoting the complicity of extensive social experience, ‘even you, who are used to the Parisian style of living.’

‘Ah, her behaviour would have had nothing surprising in it for a lady of Paris!’ she laughed. ‘Many ladies of my acquaintance behave in quite the same way, yes, even married ones, and where ees the harm, if none ees meant? No, I was not
shocked
, as the British so often say. I was surprised, yes, I can certainly say I was surprised, not at the badness of her behaviour, thees makes me very much laugh, but because she seemed so different from the dull, quiet young lady I had met here in this house. She was quite a different person in Deauville.’

‘Was she really? How did she seem, then?’

‘Ah – she seemed so happy, so free. She danced and danced, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were shining.’

I leant forward, wondering how to justify the distressingly pointed questions I so longed to pose.

‘And – is it true that she danced always with the same person?’ I breathed, holding my fingers in front of my mouth, trying to look as though I had never heard of anything so shocking in my life, so as to stimulate her into more revelations calculated to horrify the staid English girl.

‘Yes indeed, always with the same young man, and they took no pains to hide their deep interest in each other,’ replied Mme de Vrille, smiling at me benevolently, as though behind my (feigned) dismay, she detected a little envy, a longing to live such brilliant, exciting moments, and wished to satisfy me vicariously. ‘When they were not dancing, I must admit it, they were always hand in hand.’

‘Well I never,’ said Mrs de la Brière with disgust. ‘If I knew her mother as Alice Clemming does, I’d have written to her instantly. Such goings-on.’

‘I heard that the young man was a Russian prince,’ I said, directing my remarks confidentially to Mme de Vrille. ‘Do you know anything about him? Is it true?’

‘A Russian prince?’ she laughed, still with the same relaxed demeanour. ‘I really do not think so! Certainly, the casino is full of Russians – what crazy people zey are, are zey not? Always gambling so madly. But I do not think that Sylvia’s friend was a Russian (let alone a prince). Eet did not occur to me at the time. I spent an hour standing
at the baccarat table, where he was playing between two Russians, and he spoke to them only in French. Indeed, I did believe zat he understood nothing of what they were saying, for zey appeared to be cheating mercilessly and he lost many times.’

I remained silent for several moments, confused, not sure what to think. Mme de Vrille appeared to pity me, as she would a child who learns that fairies do not really exist.

‘I really cannot believe he was a Russian prince,’ she said. ‘Yet who knows, my dear. Perhaps he was, and did not wish to show eet. Eet did not seem elegant, perhaps, to communicate with the cheaters at gambling. Perhaps he preferred only to speak to his beloved of wild steppes and sleighs drawn over the snow by white wolves,’ she said. ‘
Après tout, où est le mal?
’

‘Well, she took him to another party where there were real Russians,’ I said, thinking of Mr Grigoriev. I paused, recalling Mrs Hardwick’s diplomatic party – could it be thought for a single instant that a young man announcing himself as Russian could have avoided being thrust together with Mr Grigoriev for forced conversation within two minutes of his arrival? No, they must have encountered each other there, and Mr Grigoriev would know whether or not he was Russian. I made an urgent mental note to make an appointment with him, wondering why I had not thought of it before, and leaving the invention of the excuses I should have to make for such odd behaviour to a more propitious moment.

‘What was his French like?’ I asked. ‘Sometimes one can
recognise a person’s nationality by his accent in a foreign language.’

‘His French was excellent,’ she answered. ‘Yet I did notice a slight trace of something foreign, but eet was not a typically Russian accent. Eet was very faint; I could not identify it. But he told me that he had spent all his school years in France. Such a long time spent in the country during youth does much to erase the accent, does eet not? Indeed, a long time in a foreign country often has a strange effect on the mother tongue, I have noticed. Eet makes eet difficult, sometimes, to guess from where a person comes. Have you not noticed, for example, that Jane, for instance, bears a little trace of the French sound in her English?’

It was true, although I had not attributed her slight vocal peculiarity to the constant effect of a foreign language upon the ears, but (I admit) to a conscious effort to pose. However, it is undeniable that the ladies I have spoken to since I have been here all have some little oddities of language borrowed from the French, or at the very least, are heard to occasionally use English expressions which were the fashion of many years ago but which have been replaced by quite different terms since then.

‘You did not catch the young man’s name by any chance?’ I asked, and then added, ‘A name is certainly indicative of nationality, though of course it can be invented for the occasion!’

‘No, the casino is not a place where people decline their identities,’ she said. I smiled at the word ‘decline’, but I was
most impressed by her English, really – if only my French were half as good!

Mme de Vrille could not supply any further details about the anonymous young man; she had told me all she knew, and could not even suggest a source of further information. Indeed, she said that he had shown himself very reserved during the evening, concentrating most of his attention on Sylvia, and the remainder on the outcome of the baccarat.

I ruminated over her information in silence, wondering what I could do with it. I asked myself if I might not, daringly, confront Sylvia with all this and ask for an explanation, but it seemed premature; she would most probably answer that she had struck up a casual acquaintance with a young gentleman while in Paris and allowed him to accompany her hither and thither on occasion, nothing further.

And of course, this could also be the simple truth of the matter. Why is it that my mind is so firmly fixed on the idea that this man and no other is the author of Mr Granger’s untimely death?

There is the matter of his description, which agrees with that of the murderer; then the matter of Sylvia’s publicly observed behaviour with him, which goes far beyond a casual attachment. The main problem is now to find and identify him. I determined to pay a visit to Mr Grigoriev at the earliest opportunity, and applied myself to pushing my sulky frown to the inner depths of my being, and behaving as sociably as possible for the remainder of the visit, winning the good will of Mrs de la Brière in response to the respectful deference I displayed to the titled members of her family.

The visit over, I returned to the hotel with a heavy step, eager to talk with Arthur and ask his advice on what I had learnt. It was a relief to pour out my heart, and a balm to feel the warm expression of his sympathy, in spite of the deep reservations I knew he held about the whole operation.

‘Now, let’s be methodical,’ he said. ‘After all, that’s what one does in mathematics when one observes a surprising and seemingly inexplicable phenomenon. If one cannot find the explanation straight away, one tries out examples, in order to show up either a contradiction or a general rule. Now, first of all, how can you be sure that there was only one young man? Perhaps there was a Russian one at the Hardwicks, and another one in Deauville.’

‘Oh, no,’ I cried, ‘I cannot believe that! Sylvia is not so light – and the descriptions concur.’

‘All right. Then let us temporarily make the assumption that there really was only one. The thing to do is to discover as many people as you can who saw them together, and ask them about him.’

‘That is exactly what I have been doing,’ I argued. ‘But I am at something of a dead end. People describe him briefly, and then they know nothing further about him. I haven’t even been able to find out whether or not he was really Russian – but I’m inclined to believe he can’t have been, for those silly old ladies at the Hardwicks must have been very easy to take in by anyone who amused himself by posing with a fancy name like “Prince Yousoupoff”, while the baroness is no fool. Still, Mr Grigoriev may hold the key to this question, although I hardly dare to hope.’

‘You should be careful, Vanessa,’ he said suddenly. ‘What you are doing really could be dangerous. What if the man learns somehow that you are making enquiries about him?’

‘How could he? Who would tell him? Nobody that I have spoken to appears to know him.’

‘So far.’

‘But you know, I don’t really ask questions about him directly,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it can really be so noticeable that I am trying to find out about him. I mean, I do always talk about ever so many other things all around it, and disguise my interest as mere curiosity about a friend.’ (Dora, this is true, do believe me! I simply leave out all the nonsensical conversation about the weather and the state of the world, and the differences between the English and the French, when I write to you – for when I write to you, in a way, I am writing to myself also; organising my thoughts, reflecting, reasoning and clarifying. And asking for your help, also, of course, whenever you feel you have any to give me.)

‘But still,’ Arthur insisted, ‘what if it gets back to Sylvia that you have heard about him, and she tells him?’

We were both silent for a moment.

‘Let me go and see Mr Grigoriev for you,’ said Arthur finally.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘But I must talk with him. I must at least come with you.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I can find out what he knows. I would rather you didn’t come. This way, if any news does get back to the fellow, it will be that a gentleman is asking about him, and your presence in the matter will not be known.
You shall brief me, as they say, and tell me exactly what you would like me to ask him, and I shall do my best to succeed.’

‘But you won’t be able to tell me what he says properly,’ I moaned. ‘Men never can repeat a conversation.’

‘Don’t be so difficult,’ he said, a little crossly, as though I were casting doubt upon his capacities. ‘After all, your main point is just to learn whether or not he was really Russian, and whether Mr Grigoriev can give you any further information about his identity or whereabouts. Surely I can accomplish that task for you without needing to render it as a theatre play!’

I was compelled to be satisfied with this. Tomorrow Arthur will go to make an appointment with Mr Grigoriev, and as soon as he has been there, I shall tell you everything about it. I cannot deny that I am worried. Extremely worried. Sometimes I have the impression of discovering nothing at all – and at other moments, I feel as though a sinister net were closing in, whether on the murderer or on myself I cannot say.

Your loving twin,

Vanessa