Flowers Stained With Moonlight (22 page)

Dear Dora,

Let me waste no time, but recount the result of our visit to the Russian Embassy at once.

We arose and proceeded there quite early, and found the doors unlocked and the place bustling with business, but we were told that Mr Oblonsky would not arrive until shortly before midday. I was about to turn away, but Arthur leant over the burnished desk behind which a charming blonde girl called Natalia was shuffling papers, and smiling at her, he said,

‘We will wait for him. But perhaps you could help us with some information in the meantime.’

‘
Ya ne ponimayu, je ne comprends pas bien l’anglais,
’ she said hesitatingly.

Arthur attempted a strange mixture of French and English.

‘Do you know Prince Yousoupoff?
Le Prince Yousoupoff?
’ he began.

‘Ah yes yes. I know,’ she said, smiling with the pleasure of being able to comprehend and communicate.

‘Is he a young man?
Jeune?
With black hair?
Noir?
’ he added, pointing to his own head as the word for hair escaped him.

‘Ah no no no,’ said Natalia, with a big smile. ‘
C’est un vieux monsieur,
he very old.’

‘He does not have a son?’

‘Son?’ she said blankly. ‘Sun?’

‘
Un fils,
’ I intervened awkwardly, wishing that Annabel were with us.

‘
Non, non.
He has no family; he is alone.’

‘Do you know a young man called Vassily Semionovich?’

‘Vassily Semionovich?’ Her face lit up with delight. ‘Yes, yes, Vassily Semionovich. Come, come.’ Arising from her chair, Natalia led us down a corridor and before we could emit the slightest objection, she knocked smartly upon a door, and opening it, she proceeded to direct a flow of Russian at the gentleman within. He emerged to greet us. Fortunately, his English was a great deal better than hers.

Arthur and I stared at him with some doubt. Certainly he was a young man, and his hair was very dark and curly, but without being fat, it must be admitted that he was rather plump and somewhat short. His name, written neatly on a card pinned to the door, appeared to be Vassily Semionovich Kropoff.

‘Can I help you?’ he enquired politely. The moment was awkward, although not so bad as with Prince Yousoupoff. Still, it was quite difficult to think of what to say. Even Arthur appeared to be at a loss.

‘We are looking for a friend of a friend of mine in
England,’ I said. ‘His name is Vassily Semionovich, but unfortunately, we simply cannot remember his last name.’

‘I do not believe I have friends in England,’ he remarked. ‘What is the name of your friend?’

Arthur trod heavily on my toe, but it seemed too late to change tactic.

‘Sylvia Granger,’ I said, moving my foot out of his reach. ‘She visited Paris last winter and spoke to us of her charming Russian friend.’

His face remained absolutely blank.

‘I am so very sorry,’ he said. ‘I am not familiar with this name.’

‘Her friend accompanied her to a party given by Mr and Mrs Hardwick of the British Embassy,’ I said.

‘Ah, how nice. But it was not I,’ he answered. ‘I have not the duty to attend the British parties. That would be Grigoriev or Oblonsky. My duties are the smaller countries. I attend the parties of the embassies of Belgium and Denmark and Luxemburg.’

It seemed pointless to continue, so we excused ourselves for our error and bid him goodbye. As soon as we rounded the corner of the corridor, Arthur turned upon me furiously.

‘V-V-V-Vanessa,’ he said, speaking with difficulty, so upset was he, ‘are you absolutely out of your mind? What if he is the one! You c-can’t just go around mentioning Sylvia that way! If he killed Granger, he’ll know what’s up at once, and we’ll be in horrendous trouble!’

His words stabbed a little dart of fear inside me. I hadn’t thought –

‘It isn’t he, I’m sure of it,’ I said quickly. ‘He’s too fat, don’t you think? Nobody mentioned that to me. In fact that old lady at Mrs Hardwick’s party said he was romantic-looking and a sensation.’

‘That doesn’t mean a thing! A f-fake title and smooth manners can go a very long way to cover up a p-p-potbelly, especially for some foolish old lady with nothing to do! Or maybe he became fat since.’

I took Arthur’s hand, and found to my surprise that it was shaking.

‘Arthur! You don’t seriously think … You do!’ I cried in disbelief.

‘Vanessa, it might be.’

I was about to state the obvious, viz that Sylvia could not possibly have fallen in love with a young fellow who was short, chubby and somewhat moon-faced, and that all the ladies who had described him to us would not have failed to mention those particulars if they had existed. But it crossed my mind that women have adored far uglier men than poor Mr Kropoff, and I began to wonder … in the glamorous atmosphere of a party or a casino, dressed differently …

The foolishness of the step I had taken was borne in upon me. I was about to say that it was all Arthur’s fault for having broached the whole subject so abruptly with Natalia to begin with, but it seemed to be the wrong moment for mutual accusations. Instead, I said feebly,

‘He surely has no idea who we are. Oh, Arthur, perhaps we had better just leave at once.’

‘We can leave, but we
must
come back. Oblonsky may know something that can solve the problem once and for all,’ he replied, but he took my arm and we slipped quickly out of the main door of the building onto the street. Suddenly, he hesitated, poked his head quickly back inside, and addressed himself to Natalia, who was calmly seated behind her desk again.

‘Monsieur Oblonsky, what is he like?’ he asked her.

‘Is like?’

‘Big, small, young, old,
grand, petit, jeune
?’

‘Ah!
Pas vieux, pas jeune. Pas de cheveux,
’ she said, passing her hand over her own thick blonde braids. ‘Nothing here.’ She smiled hopefully.

‘All right. Thank you so much,’ said Arthur, as he shut the door hastily behind us and darted down the stairs. He glanced up anxiously at the windows of the embassy and then pulled me into a café across the street.

‘We’ll keep an eye on everyone going in,’ he said, ‘and try to catch him outside. That Kropoff fellow’s windows don’t look out this way. Surely Oblonsky will arrive within the next hour; it’s eleven now.’

We sat down at a small table near the window and ordered
café crème.
These having arrived, we stirred them (I enjoyed mine in spite of everything, I am not so sure about Arthur) and waited, watching the door across the street. A few people went in or came out, but for some time we saw no one who appeared sufficiently bald to be our man. However, after more than an hour, when we were almost ready either to give up altogether or to return inside and
question Natalia, a likely prospect suddenly appeared upon the steps leading up to the door! I scampered outside quick as lightning to stop him before he entered the building.

‘Excuse me,’ I said breathlessly, chasing him up the stairs. He turned around with some surprise.

‘Are you Mr Oblonsky?’ I asked, trying not to breathe noisily; my sudden lack of air was surely more a consequence of emotion than of running.

‘Yes I am,’ he replied politely. ‘And you are?’

Another awkward moment! Should I give my name, only to have Kropoff eventually find it out and pursue me? I gulped.

‘My name is Miss Case,’ I said using the first word that came into my head. ‘I am so sorry to disturb you, and do hope you are not in a hurry. I should be most grateful for just a few minutes private conversation with you in the café across the street, where I have been waiting for you with a friend. Mr Grigoriev advised us to speak with you,’ I added, seeing his face grow dark with suspicion and surprise.

‘What is this about?’ he enquired, without moving.

‘Oh, it is just a little thing,’ I said with my most winning smile. ‘We are trying to locate a young man whom we have reason to believe that you once encountered at a party given by a friend of ours.’

‘His name?’

‘I would really rather talk about it in the café,’ I insisted, a little fearfully. At that moment something most awful happened. The main door of the Embassy flew open cheerfully, and the man who emerged was no other than
Vassily Semionovich Kropoff himself. My heart lurched as he stopped to greet me, with a smile that may or may not have contained a leer.

‘What is the name of the man you seek?’ insisted Oblonsky.

‘Ah, you are still looking for him?’ smiled Kropoff with a friendly air. ‘They are looking for someone called Vassily Semionovich, can you imagine? Natalia brought them to me, but I cannot give satisfaction, I am afraid. It is I who told them to address themselves to you,’ he added, turning to Oblonsky and speaking to him in English for my benefit. ‘The man they want attended one of the Hardwick parties.’

It seemed more and more inconceivable to me that this man could be the murderer, and my heartbeat slowed down considerably.

‘Grigoriev goes to most of those, I haven’t been to one for months,’ said Oblonsky.

At this point, Arthur, who had spotted what was going on from the café window and hastily paid for the coffee, joined us and put his hand protectively upon my shoulder.

‘This was a party last January or February,’ I told him, abandoning all pretence at discretion. ‘We already asked Mr Grigoriev and he doesn’t seem to have attended that particular party, so he supposed you must have been there. What happened there is that a friend of mine, an English girl called Sylvia Granger, came to the party unexpectedly with a young man who called himself Vassily Semionovich Yousoupoff and claimed to be a prince. We thought that surely, as a Russian, he would have been introduced to you.’

‘Ah, of course! The Russian prince! Yes, indeed – I remember him perfectly,’ cried Mr Oblonsky, throwing back his head and laughing loudly. Arthur glanced at me and I saw that like mine, his suspicion of Kropoff had just gone up in smoke. Somewhere, this may have been a disappointment, but I assure you, Dora dear, that it was first and foremost an immense relief!

‘Well, I did say I would keep the secret,’ smiled Oblonsky, ‘but I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Yes, there was a young man at Mrs Hardwick’s party. Nobody knew who he was, nobody had ever seen him before, and he was enjoying himself greatly posing as a Russian prince and impressing all the old ladies, while the pretty English girl on his arm could not take her eyes from him. And then all of a sudden – the bother! Mrs Hardwick, who never allows her guests to relax but always puts them to work making the conversation with each other, sends him to me. “Oh, look, Prince Yousoupoff, here is our Russian diplomat, Mr Oblonsky! He comes from Moscow as well. You two will surely have so much to talk about.” I look at this young man and he looks at me, and he draws me into a corner, where I greet him politely in Russian, and ask him what branch of the Yousoupoff family he belongs to. He does not understand a single word, but not one word! The young man is no more Russian than you are. It is all just a ridiculous piece of theatre playing!’

‘So that was it after all, as Mme de Vrille thought,’ I said, half to myself, half to Arthur. Turning back to Mr Oblonsky, I began to explain. ‘We are trying to find him, and it is quite
difficult, because we know neither his name nor even his nationality – the name Vassily Semionovich was probably a complete invention along with the rest of it.’

‘Oh, very likely,’ he agreed. ‘How amusing that he took the same name and patronymic as Kropoff here; I hadn’t noticed it.’ He laughed, clumping his colleague on the shoulder. ‘So you came here to try and hunt him down? How very amusing!’

Arthur and I did not find it at all amusing, but then, Mr Oblonsky could have no idea of the true nature of our investigation, so we forced ourselves to chuckle complacently.

‘Still, Mr Oblonsky,’ I asked, hoping against hope to obtain at least one morsel of additional information from him, ‘is there anything that you can tell us about him? Do you know anything about who he really was?’

‘No, I am very sorry. He did not say. He simply said he was acting the Russian role as a practical joke.’

‘Or to impress the young lady who was with him, perhaps,’ I suggested.

‘Oh no, certainly not. The young lady was in on the joke; she was standing with us when he told me, she was with him all the time.’

‘Ah!’ I said, quickly putting this piece of information away for future reference. ‘Do you at least know, or can you guess, his real nationality?’

‘Oh, I think he was British! Out of politeness to Mrs Hardwick, I insisted on speaking to him in that language, although I believe he would have preferred to
speak French (part of his play-acting, I suppose), but I should say there is almost no question about it. He was not a native French speaker. He had a slight trace of foreign accent in that language. But in English, though he spoke little and quite low, he had no accent at all, quite the opposite. His speech was very elegant and natural. Now,’ he added, looking at his watch, ‘I am very sorry, I must leave you. I am sorry I cannot tell you anything further about the man you seek. Why do you not enquire with your young lady friend?’

‘She has lost him – she did not really know who he was,’ I stammered.

‘I see. A mystery man,’ he said, and winked. ‘Perhaps she wishes to find him again, and you are helping her, is that it? I am very sorry I cannot do more for you. My best wishes in your quest,’ he said, shaking hands vigorously with me, then with Arthur. We bid him goodbye, and accepting also the friendliest salutations from our erstwhile suspect Kropoff, we turned away together down the street.

Oh, Dora, I don’t know what to think any more! All my ideas must be revised. If I am to believe Mr Oblonsky – and it corroborates what Mme de Vrille believed – then the young man we are seeking for was quite simply British, and Sylvia certainly knew it. What could he have been doing here in Paris? And where is he now? Perhaps he is still here, since he came from France when he went to murder Mr Granger. But he could equally well be in England, or anywhere else, for that matter. I cannot imagine what my next step should be.