Flowers Stained With Moonlight (21 page)

Dearest Dora,

Annabel and I were awoken this morning by an unexpected commotion in the hall. Raising our sleepy heads from the pillow, we soon determined that a great knocking was going on, not at our door, but very nearby.

‘Good Heavens, whatever can that be?’ I said.

Without answer, Annabel slipped out of bed and padded across the floor to the door, which she opened a tiny crack.

‘Why, it’s Mr Korneck!’ she exclaimed in surprise, shutting the door hastily and turning to face me.

‘Oh my goodness, what time is it? What can he possibly want at this hour,’ I gasped, reaching for my watch which lay on the bedside table. ‘Oh me, it’s eight o’clock. Where did the night go?’

‘Whatever it is, I don’t think he needs to see us girls about it,’ said Annabel. ‘Since we’re awake, let us dress and go down for breakfast. Perhaps we’ll see the others and find out what’s happening. What a lovely day it is,’ she added, drawing the curtains.

We dressed and descended together, and seated ourselves in one corner of a table for four in the hotel’s pretty breakfast salon. The windows of the large room look onto the Rue de Rivoli below. A very few other guests were scattered about, and a young girl in black with a white apron was sweeping the floor and setting out dishes and cups upon the tables.

‘
Oui mesdemoiselles? Qu’est-ce que je vous sers?
’ she said, stopping abruptly in front of us.

‘
Du café noir, s’il vous plaît, et des croissants,
’ I replied. Dora dear, if I can be said to have learnt a single French sentence during my stay here, but really learnt, never to forget, this one is certainly it.

We poured out our coffee and began breakfast in silence. I wished very much to broach a certain subject with Annabel, but could not think how to begin, especially as
she appeared lost in thought. She stirred, however, after some time, and smiled at me.

‘Ah, I am beginning to feel awake,’ she said. ‘Let us make our plans for the day; do you have any more visits to make?’

‘Only one today, but Arthur has said that he will take care of it for me, and it is merely to make an appointment, unless by chance the gentleman can receive him at once.’

‘Really?’ she said in surprise. ‘Are you sending Arthur to keep the appointment for you? Oh, Vanessa – how
can
you involve him?’ She stopped for a moment, then continued, speaking very low. ‘Sometimes I wonder how you can even involve yourself in such a task. Oh, even though you never mention it to me, I know you are trying to find out who murdered that Mr Granger, and I think about it sometimes; a man who stood in front of another, pointing a gun, and pulled the trigger, and walked away, leaving him lying dead! It is such a frightful thing, I cannot even bear to think about it – and you are investigating it! I tell myself that what you are doing is surely right and necessary, but I cannot understand
why
you undertake it all – what makes you do it? Oh, how can you face it all? The risk, and the danger, and the horror of meeting a killer face to face!’

I said nothing. Meeting a killer face to face – it is a horrible image indeed! But for the moment, I find myself utterly unable to put a realistic face upon that anonymous killer, and literally imagine myself standing in front of him.

But there are other eyes … Sylvia’s, which I remember only too well looking into mine, filled with a mixture of
naiveté and fear, troubled and confiding. She asked me for help with something of the absoluteness of a child, and I have no power within me to turn away from such a plea. All the more because Sylvia herself is but vaguely aware of the very real danger which threatens her; her innocence has cast a kind of veil in front of her eyes through which she only dimly perceives the inexorably approaching horrors of arrest, trial, noose … I do not know exactly why I undertook this investigation in the beginning, but I know why I am doing it now.

I found that I could not express these feelings and images to Annabel, and continued silent. Leaning towards me, she spoke again, urgently.

‘Oh Vanessa, I feel certain that you should not involve poor Arthur, whose only desire would be to remain distant from all such things. Something pure may be destroyed; should you not protect it?’

Her words strangely reflected my thoughts.

‘Something pure may have to be destroyed in order to protect something else pure,’ I said slowly. ‘For what concerns Arthur, it is he who insisted on going; with distaste, I know it, but he wanted it this way, and I trust him. Perhaps it is true that he would prefer to remain distant from it all, and yet I believe that such a thing is impossible. What I am doing is not horrible – or perhaps it is, but in the same way as the human condition itself, the realities of life and death and mortal illness. Doctors and surgeons cannot avoid these things, and we are grateful enough that they exist. As for meeting the murderer, I do not feel a sense of intrinsic
revulsion; he is a human being, with a black sin on his soul, but am I such an angel myself as to shudder away at the sight of him? I would certainly feel terrified if I believed that he was actively seeking to prevent me from investigating, but that is another question. At the moment, he seems such a hazy creature that I cannot convince myself that such a menace is a serious thing. No, there is something that troubles and disturbs me more deeply than I can say, but it is not that; it is the idea that were I truly to discover and identify the murderer, and deliver him to the police – then, then I should be responsible for his fate, and that would be a dreadful weight to bear. That is what torments me the most, Annabel! I do not know how to face up to it, and can only continue on the optimistic assumption that the case may never occur.’

‘Never occur? But surely you do not expect to fail!’

‘I do not feel at all confident of success. I have been singularly useless up to now, I find. But there are other possibilities; the police may discover the solution soon, the murderer may give himself up; it may also happen that I somehow believe I have discovered the truth and yet have no proofs that would allow the police to act. It is not desirable, yet it might happen. I do not want to send anyone to the gallows, Annabel! My situation is like that of an unwilling witness to a crime, who must, perhaps, then testify. And I know that a person who has killed successfully once may well kill again, and if I kept silent, I should be partly guilty of those other deaths.’

‘The task is so difficult that it cannot be done to anyone’s satisfaction,’ said Annabel with a little sigh. ‘I do not know
how you can undertake it – but then, I have so few capacities myself that I can certainly not give anyone lessons on how to behave. If I could only use the miserable talents I possess to advantage, that is all I would ask.’

My ears perked up, and I hastened to distance myself from the previous topic, which evokes murky movements deep within a black, viscous pool.

‘What would you like to do, then, in your life?’ I asked quickly.

‘Oh, you will think it very stupid – you have so many ideas and are always so busy; I envy you, but all I really want is a home with, with someone I love heart and soul, and children to raise.’

‘That is what I want, too,’ I said, smiling. ‘It may be banal, but it is beautiful, isn’t it? Everything else I do is just to while away the time of waiting.’ Even as I spoke, I knew that I was not convinced of what I was saying. Annabel pounced on it.

‘Oh, you may think that, but I know it isn’t true!’ she said. ‘You’ll be engaged in a hundred things all your life, teaching and planning and investigating and travelling! You put vital energy into what you do – that’s why I can’t believe it’s just whiling the time away. And even if it is, at least you have only a certain amount of time to while away – you know your future – you know that you will eventually possess what you want. Whereas I …’

‘You know what you want, but not whether you will ever have it,’ I heard myself announce suddenly and quite unexpectedly. She glanced up at me quickly.

‘Yes, that is true,’ she said simply.

‘I know it now,’ I murmured, ‘but it took me a long time to realise it. Now, Annabel, tell me: what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, with something of Sylvia’s stubborn passivity in her tone.

‘No! That’s not a recipe for success!’ I countered energetically.

‘Oh, success, do you think I hope for success?’ she said. ‘I cannot stretch out my hand to grasp for that which resists.’

‘But are you sure it resists?’ I asked, remembering how Charles’ face lit up at the sight of her.

‘It does not come of itself,’ she said simply.

Oh, how impatient I feel with such people! I felt greatly tempted to argue at length, but knew that it would be useless if not counterproductive, so I resolved instead to speak to Charles at the first opportunity, and at least try to detect whether it was worth Annabel entertaining any hope at all, or whether it would be better for her to renounce all at once, and start afresh.

Just as I was pondering upon this, and trying to imagine how I could raise the subject with him, I heard his cheery voice raised in the hall, and he entered the breakfast room with Arthur and Mr Korneck in tow.

They joined us at the table, pulling up an extra chair, and Charles ordered a new pot of coffee, but Mr Korneck interrupted him to ask the young girl to bring out a pitcher of freshly pressed juice, eggs for everyone, a large piece of cheese and an assortment of varied Viennese pastries. Radiant with delight, he beamed upon us all around.

‘Just look at the man,’ said Charles, sitting comfortably in one of the wicker chairs, and serving himself generously of all that the waitress provided. ‘He’s beyond himself with glee, girls – he claims to have proved the great result! Can you believe it?’

‘Is it true?’ I gasped, dumbfounded. Indeed, I realised only at that moment that in spite of all his optimism, I had lent no credence at all to the idea that Korneck was on his way to a true and valid proof of the famous theorem!

‘I can’t tell you,’ responded Charles gaily. ‘He won’t show it to us – he’s keeping it all a secret! I haven’t seen a line of it, and he’s submitted it formally to the Academy already; he sprung the
fait accompli
on us this morning, fresh from the post office!’

‘I still think it might have been better to let simple folks like us have a look at it, before sending it off to Mount Parnassus,’ mumbled Arthur through a
pain au chocolat.

‘But I have checked each and every line of it – I am certain of success!’ beamed Mr Korneck. ‘It is not difficult, my friends; I have done nothing, nothing that Fermat or Germain themselves could not have done. It is long, yes, I will admit that it is long.’

‘How long?’ I enquired with interest.

‘One hundred pages or so,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I wish it could have been shorter. I did not imagine Fermat’s proof to have been so long. But each step appears to be necessary, and I took the time to explain as fully as possible, perhaps too fully; perhaps I wrote too many trivial things.’

‘Well, at a hundred pages, it certainly was not likely to have fit within a margin,’ I exclaimed.

‘The proof Fermat had in his head must surely have been shorter. But perhaps the main ideas were the same, and there are shortcuts I did not see. Or, perhaps, if he had written his entire proof down with care, it would have become quite long. But Fermat almost never wrote things down completely. He very much preferred to give hints and riddles, and he wrote many letters to his colleagues with – how do you say
pari
– with a bet that they would be unable to prove the results he had discovered in secret. Must it not have been very terrible for them?’

‘I do hope he hasn’t bungled,’ whispered Charles discreetly into my ear. ‘One doesn’t like to insist on seeing the thing, you know – it’d look so like one wanted to make off with it or something. Still, it would have been better.’ Catching Mr Korneck’s eye, he continued in a normal voice,

‘So it will be read by some reviewers now, and then discussed in front of the Academy. That’s glory for you!’

Mr Korneck was glowing with sheer happiness, and insisted on taking us all off for the afternoon on a remarkable sightseeing tour, the last part of which consisted of a heart-stoppingly beautiful boat-ride down the Seine on a floating restaurant. We dined in luxury upon duck with orange sauce, with a delicious wine selected after interminable discussion with the obsequiously polite waiter, and followed by a
charlotte aux fraises
which melted upon the tongue. The lights over our heads twinkled up at us from the water’s rippled surface, and the sky was shot with
magical hues of pink moving continuously into the deepest blue. I had never been in any place so utterly romantic, and I saw the reflection of my own quivering heart in the eyes of three of my four companions, while Mr Korneck radiated a satisfaction and pleasure delightful to bask in.

It was a lovely, lovely day. I shall never forget it.

Your very own,

Vanessa

P.S. In the heat of all this, I forgot to tell you that Arthur managed to make a brief stop at the Imperial Russian Embassy, in the Rue de Grenelle, while we waited for him below – Annabel biting her fingernails nervously while I studiedly pretended to ignore it – and he has obtained an appointment with Mr Grigoriev for tomorrow. Perhaps, oh perhaps we shall finally discover something worthwhile.

My dearest sister,

‘The man exists!’ were Arthur’s first words, upon returning from his meeting with Mr Grigoriev and knocking on the door of my hotel room – from which I had not budged an inch during the whole time of anxiously awaiting him.

‘What do you mean? Who exists?’ I exclaimed, jumping to my feet.

‘Why, that Prince Yousoupoff. He is a real person after all; Mr Grigoriev knows him. He even provided me with his personal
address. He lives with a whole Russian household of servants, at an
hôtel particulier
privately rented from an aristocratic family in dire financial straits, in the Rue de Varenne.’

I stared at Arthur, dumbfounded, and digested this totally unexpected piece of information in silence. I could not think what to make of it. A rich and distinguished Russian prince, living in the heart of aristocratic Paris, rushing across the Channel to shoot a wealthy middle-aged businessman for love of Sylvia? It sounded perfectly absurd – yet on the other hand, do not Russians constantly murder each other for love? To be sure, Mme de Vrille had told me that she was hardly sure the young man was Russian, let alone a rich, distinguished and well-known prince – but perhaps she was quite simply mistaken. Impulsively, I gathered my things together.

‘What are you doing?’ said Arthur suspiciously. ‘Not intending to rush off to the Rue de Varenne, are you?’

‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘at least—’

‘No, Vanessa, you are not going to go and converse with a murderer, and certainly not without careful reflection beforehand. I would like to know what you intend to ask him. How do you mean to begin?’

‘Oh, well – I wouldn’t speak to him, I think. I would like to see the house; perhaps he would go in or come out, and then, one might say something to the servants …’ I said feebly.

‘Certainly not alone,’ he said firmly. ‘But before you go rushing off so hot-headedly, don’t you want me to tell you about my meeting with Mr Grigoriev?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, sitting down again and berating myself secretly.

‘The really important thing I have to tell you is that Mr Grigoriev was not at Mrs Hardwick’s party that famous night,’ he began.

‘Oh!’ I said, taken aback. ‘Then how—’

‘Why, I told him the name, quite simply,’ Arthur told me. ‘I said his name was Vassily Semionovich Yousoupoff, and he said “Yousoupoff, why of course, Vassily Trofimovich, not Semionovich, actually”. He is acquainted with him, he said, though he never encountered him at Mrs Hardwick’s. But he said that it is certainly not impossible that he accompanied a young lady there. He is a single man and very rich; he also travels regularly to Deauville. So perhaps the lady who told you Sylvia’s friend didn’t seem Russian was wrong after all.’

‘Oh, Arthur, what shall we
do
? What if we do manage to see this prince – then what?’

‘Then we would need to identify him as the person who accompanied Sylvia,’ he said.

‘We could ask Mme de Vrille, though it might be a little awkward,’ I said.

‘We might have to. But there is someone else who might be useful. Mr Grigoriev told me that as he cannot always attend all the diplomatic
soirées
he is invited to, he has a colleague who acts as his deputy on occasion, and it is most likely that his colleague was there on the night we are talking about, and saw the prince. I have his name, too: Michael Oblonsky, to be contacted at the Russian Embassy as well, right there in the Rue de Grenelle.’

‘Oh Arthur, I do hate to ask you to accompany me, but I
must
go and see both the prince and this Mr Oblonsky, and I know you won’t want me to go alone!’ I said anxiously, dying with impatience to be off.

‘Of course I shall come with you,’ he said, ‘and I want you to remain as invisible as possible when we observe Yousoupoff’s home. Shall we go there first?’

I consulted my map of Paris hastily.

‘Yes, let us – Rue de Varenne is not a long walk from here,’ I said. ‘We need to cross the Seine – do let us go now!’

‘He may be out, or it may be simply impossible to enter his place or talk with anyone,’ he said. ‘Let us not expect too much from all this. And even if we saw him, there is not a lot we could conclude at once. He will not look like a murderer, I take it, and in any case we had better not jump to conclusions. Yes, yes, I am coming,’ and he held the door for me just as I was about to swing it open myself with a gesture indicative of my nervous state of mind.

The walk to the Rue de Varenne was a silent one. I held Arthur’s arm closely and reflected upon a great number of things that are really not worth the retelling. When we arrived in the Rue de Varenne, Arthur stopped to look about.

‘Look at these homes,’ he said, ‘all these gracious buildings belonging to aristocratic families; no poor people ever set foot here, I’ll wager, unless it be the servants.’

We stopped at the house which, according to Mr Grigoriev, was the one presently rented by Prince Yousoupoff, and peered through the
porte cochère,
the great arched opening, large enough to admit a coach and four, which was the only
means by which the house gave onto the street. Through it, we perceived a paved or cobbled courtyard, surrounded by the three wings of a stone building of fair proportions, pierced with enormous arched windows. Nobody appeared to be about. We edged a small way in, but Arthur appeared nervous.

‘What shall we do?’ he whispered.

‘We can hardly simply go up and knock at the door, at least not without some story,’ I said. ‘Shall we wait a while and see if anybody comes out?’

‘Well, let us walk down the street,’ he said. ‘We’ll try to stay in sight of the place, but we could also keep an eye out for the nearest café and ask some questions there.’

We walked down the street very slowly, and rounded the corner. There, we came upon an awning stretched over the wide pavement, underneath which a tiny lane formed by large green trees in pots led up to the glass door of a restaurant called
Chez Victor.

‘Here’s a place,’ said Arthur.

‘Yes, but it isn’t a café,’ I said, ‘it’s a very chic restaurant. Good heavens, they must serve a lovely supper. No, don’t!’ I added, as Arthur walked up to the glass door and pressed his forehead against it, shading his eyes to avoid the reflection and peering indiscreetly within. The door opened immediately, and a young boy in livery popped out his head.

‘
Le restaurant est fermé, monsieur,
’ he said courteously.

‘Of course,’ said Arthur hastily.

‘Ah, you are Engleesh. Can I inform you?’ the youth said, his face lighting up with pleasure at the opportunity
to practise his linguistic talents. ‘I have worked in London some months. Eet ees very beautiful.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ replied Arthur with alacrity. ‘Paris is very beautiful too. We like this street.’

‘Very important people live here, and dine here,’ said the boy proudly, giving us exactly the entry we most desired.

‘Yes, indeed they must! We heard about a Russian prince.’

‘
Oui, oui,
a Russian prince there is with many, many servants, all Russian, and two white dogs, very big.’

‘Does he also dine here?’ Arthur said.

‘Certainly, on occasion.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘The Russian monsieur is very distinguished, very tall, very elegant.’

I tapped my toes impatiently on the pavement and burst in,

‘Black hair?’

He glanced up at me, surprised at my sudden intervention, but seemed just about to answer, when alas, a sharp cry of ‘
Jacquot! Eh, Jacquot!
’ was heard from within the restaurant, and he turned to flee. I gave a little yelp of annoyance, but at that precise moment, the sound of smartly trotting hooves became audible, and a carriage came down the street toward us and turned the corner into the Rue de Varenne. Jacques glanced back.

‘Ah – zat ees he, zat ees ze prince!’ he said. ‘Please – enjoy your stay in Paris very much!’ and he disappeared into the dark interior and closed the door behind him.

‘Quick!’ said Arthur, snatching my hand, and we half
walked, half trotted as quickly as our legs would carry us around the corner and back towards the Yousoupoff residence. The carriage had already pulled up in front of the
porte cochère
and the footman had jumped down and was in the process of opening the door. We slowed to a snail’s pace as we approached and Arthur’s hand tightened on mine. I thought – are we going to set eyes on a murderer? but I felt no sense of reality. The footman gave his arm to the occupant of the carriage, and slowly, a leg emerged, followed by a hand with a cane, and finally the whole gentleman appeared and stood straight and noble upon the pavement.

‘
Spasibo
, Ivan,’ he said. Arthur and I remained staring at him in blank amazement. Although certainly tall, elegant and distinguished, the gentleman who stood in front of us also possessed a shock of white hair and bristling, beetling eyebrows over sharp, deep-set black eyes. Still on the arm of his footman, and leaning upon his cane, he turned and walked slowly under the archway and into the courtyard.

‘Why, he’s an old man!’ I gasped.

‘It’s the wrong person,’ said Arthur.

‘It must be, if it really is the prince – but perhaps it’s someone else. Couldn’t it be?’

With impressive daring, Arthur darted up to the coachman, who was turning the carriage preparatory to guiding it through the arch after the prince.

‘Prince Yousoupoff?’ he asked him, pointing in.

Instead of answering, the coachman leant under the arch and shouted something in Russian after the disappearing backs; it
sounded like ‘
Vashe velitchestvo, vashe velitchestvo!
’ They turned back toward him, and he pointed to Arthur and gabbled in Russian. It was horribly unexpected and most embarrassing. I cringed secretly, and Arthur must surely have cringed as well. He showed no sign, however, and smiled engagingly as the prince returned towards him with a look of distinguished annoyance in the sharp eyes under their bristling brushes.

‘I am so very sorry to trouble you,’ said Arthur, reverting to English and inventing rapidly. ‘I – I am a British journalist, and I am writing a report on – on the Russian community in Paris. I have spoken to Mr Grigoriev from the Imperial Russian Embassy; he told me that Prince Yousoupoff lived here, and I wished to humbly request an interview.’

‘I am Prince Yousoupoff,’ said the gentleman with extreme coldness and excellent English, ‘and I am not interested. I beg you will depart and leave me in peace at once.’

‘Oh, ah!’ said Arthur. ‘But – please do excuse my rudeness – I must have made a mistake. Mr Grigoriev thought he was sending me to visit someone who would be interested in an interview, but – perhaps I have got the name wrong – the description he gave me did not seem to correspond to you at all. He spoke to me of a young man with black hair. Would you know of such a person with a name similar to yours? Your son, perhaps?’

‘There is no such person,’ said Prince Yousoupoff with contempt. ‘Please cease to trouble me.’ He turned away and, leaning on his cane, returned a second time to the interior courtyard, crossed it, and entered the building without a
backward look. The coachman threw us a glance of disgust and trotted in after him. Arthur joined me with a sigh.

‘What a fool I feel,’ he said grumpily.

‘What lies you told about Mr Grigoriev,’ I said. ‘I do hope they do not get him into trouble.’

‘Bah, even if they do, we will be long gone,’ he said.

‘Well, but what if this awful prince has him recalled to Russia in disgrace?’

We looked at each other in dismay.

‘Well, let us not be pessimistic,’ I said finally. ‘That unpleasant old gentleman has probably forgotten about us already. But Arthur – he is obviously not the right person! What can it mean?’

‘Well, we still have one more hope; we must go to see Mr Grigoriev’s colleague Michael Oblonsky. Come along, we are not too far from the Rue de Grenelle now.’

We walked there, but it was not really so very near, and we found the doors locked and barred upon our arrival.

‘Bother!’ said Arthur. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow. Let’s have supper.’

‘
Chez Victor
?’ I proposed hopefully.

‘Certainly not! Please, Vanessa, do let’s stop hunting non-existent Russian princes for the remainder of the evening.’

I was about to protest indignantly – I am really too tenacious and single-minded – when I noticed his brown eyes fixed intensely upon me, and I was suddenly seized with a desire to forget it all, as he said – to slip away, and join him in his dreamy world where ideas count for so much more than deeds, poetry than facts, and symbols than words.

‘Then you take me somewhere,’ I said softly, putting his arm around my shoulder. The rest of the evening bears no relation whatsoever to the mystery I am supposed to be attempting to elucidate.

But tomorrow – tomorrow we shall return to our task!

Your loving twin,

Vanessa