She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin (15 page)

Someone giggled hysterically – Columbine thought it was Petya. Caliban stood there as if he had been struck by lightning.

Then he croaked, ‘I’m not forgiven! I’m rejected!’ And he dashed towards the door, sobbing desolately.

Prospero sighed and said: ‘As you can see, Death informs us of her will unambiguously. Well now, would you care to try your luck?’

The question was addressed to Genji, who nodded politely and performed the necessary procedure quickly and efficiently, with no affectation: he span the roulette wheel gently, casually dropped in the ball and then didn’t even watch it, but looked at the Doge.

‘The skull!’ squealed the Lioness.

‘Ha! That’s quite a trick!’ Gdlevsky declared in a ringing voice.

Then everyone started shouting and talking at once and Columbine involuntarily groaned: ‘No!’

She didn’t understand why herself.

No, perhaps she did.

This man whom she had only known for such a short time radiated an aura of calm, confident strength. When she was with him the world somehow felt bright and clear, it was if she were transformed from Columbine, who had strayed into the dark wings of the stage, back into the old Masha Mironova. But there was clearly no way back – Genji’s fatal throw was the proof of that.

‘Please accept my congratulations,’ Prospero said solemnly. ‘You are a lucky man and we all envy you. Goodbye until tomorrow, my friends. Let us go, Genji.’

The Doge turned away and walked slowly through into the next room, leaving the doors open.

Before he followed him, Genji turned towards Columbine and smiled – as if he were trying to comfort her.

But he failed.

She ran out into the street, choking on her sobs.

III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File

To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov
(Private and confidential)

Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,

An entirely new side has been revealed to the story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ and the part played by the Doge in all of these events.

I am writing this letter at night, with recent impressions still fresh in my mind. I have just returned from the Doge’s apartment, where I was witness to truly astounding events. Oh, how easy it is to be mistaken about people!

I beg your pardon for a certain degree of incoherence – I am still very excited. Let me try to set everything out in the correct order.

Today the society resumed its regular meetings, which had been interrupted by the disappearance of the medium. I must confess that I had expected the loss of our Vestal Virgin to throw the Doge into disarray and deprive him of his most dangerous weapon, but he has proved extremely enterprising and inventive. The substitute that he has found for spiritualism is brilliantly simple: a roulette wheel on which one of the divisions is marked with a skull and crossbones. If anyone lands on this grim symbol of death, he has to drink poison prepared by the Doge in person.

I felt encouraged when I heard all this, since I decided that the man whom I regarded as the devil incarnate had finally abandoned his habit of caution and now it would be possible to catch him red-handed.

I was lucky. Today, on the very first evening of this game, which is certainly the most hazardous known to mortal man, there was a winner – the very same Stammerer concerning whom I have already had the honour of reporting to you, and whom you, for some reason, found so very interesting. He is a most unusual individual, I have seen and heard enough to be quite sure of that, but how could you know him? A mystery.

However, I must not deviate from my subject.

When all the other members had left, I hid in the hallway and then went back into the drawing room, where the candles and the
brazier
had already been extinguished. It was very helpful that for certain reasons of principle the Doge does not believe in having servants.

My plan was very simple. I was counting on obtaining direct proof of the Doge’s guilt. To do that, it was sufficient to slip through the dining room, open the door into the study slightly (all the doors in the house are upholstered with soft leather, and so they do not close tightly) and wait for the master of the house to offer the Stammerer the cup of poisoned wine with his own hands. After painful deliberations, I had come to the conclusion that the Stammerer would have to be sacrificed for the sake of the cause – there was nothing that could be done about that. In the final analysis, I reasoned, the life of one man does not outweigh the chance to avert a threat to dozens, or perhaps even hundreds, of immature souls.

I was going to wait for the Stammerer to drink the poison and go out to die on the boulevard (that was the arrangement reached earlier) and then call the constable who always stands on Trubnaya Square. The death by poisoning would be recorded by a representative of authority, and if the Stammerer had not lost consciousness by the time the policeman appeared, and if he had even a shred of conscience, he would still be able to testify against the Doge, and his testimony would be incorporated in the report. But even without this testimony, I thought, the very fact of the death and my evidence would still be enough. The constable and I would immediately set out for the Doge’s apartment and detain the criminal at the scene of his crime. He would be unlikely to have already washed the glass, and there would still be traces of cyanide on it. And in addition there would be a live witness – me. And also the roulette wheel with the skull.

You must admit that it was rather a good plan. At the very least, the Doge’s part in everything would have been revealed in a most unattractive light: he had organised a deadly dangerous game at his own home, but he himself did not take part; he had prepared the poison and served it to the victim himself. And there would have been the result of all these actions – a body that was still warm. This is quite obviously a serious criminal offence. At the same time, I had reason to hope that I would be able to persuade two, if not three, of the least convinced ‘lovers’ to give evidence for the prosecution if the case went as far as court proceedings.

But now let me tell you what actually happened.

I managed to open the door slightly without making a sound, and since it was quite dark in the drawing room I could not only hear, but also see what was happening in the study without any risk of being discovered.

The Master was sitting in his chair at the desk with a triumphant, almost majestic air. Glinting on the polished surface of the desk was a crystal goblet, containing a liquid the colour of pomegranate juice.

The Stammerer was standing by the desk, and so the scene was rather reminiscent of the artist Ge’s picture
Peter the Great Questioning the Tsarevich Alexei
. How often I have imagined myself as the captive Tsarevich: I stand in front of the formidable Peter, wholly and completely in his power, and my heart is wrung by a sweet feeling in which the awareness that I am absolutely defenceless, the fear of punishment and the hope of paternal mercy are all mingled together. But then, unlike the Tsarevich, the Stammerer was gazing straight at the seated man without the slightest sign of fear. I could not help being amazed at such presence of mind in a man who was destined to depart from this life in a matter of only a few minutes.

Neither of them spoke, and the pause seemed to go on forever. The Stammerer was looking hard straight into the Doge’s eyes, and the Doge started to seem a little bewildered.

‘I really do feel quite sorry,’ he said, sounding slightly embarrassed, which in ordinary circumstances is not typical of him at all, ‘that this lot has fallen to you.’

‘Why so?’ the Stammerer asked in a steady voice. ‘After all, this is the greatest good fortune, is it not?’

Seeming even more embarrassed, the Doge hastily agreed: ‘Yes, yes, of course. I am certain that all the other seekers – or almost all of them – would be glad to be in your place . . . All I meant to say was that I regret parting with you so soon. You intrigue me, and we still haven’t had a chance for a heart-to-heart talk.’

‘Well, then,’ the Stammerer said, in the same even voice. ‘Let’s have a heart-to-heart talk now. I’m not in any hurry. Are you?’

I had the impression that the Doge was glad to hear these words. ‘Excellent, let us talk,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t really understand why a mature and apparently self-sufficient individual like you was so eager to become one of my disciples. In fact, the more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. By character you are an individualist, and not at all like the seeker who recently hanged himself. If you have serious reasons to wish to die, you could quite easily have managed without all these ceremonies.’

‘But the ceremonies you invent are so amusing. And I, sir, am a very curious man.’

‘Ah, yes,’ the Doge mused, looking up at the other man. ‘You certainly are a curious man.’

‘Oh, no more so than yourself, Mr Blagovolsky,’ the Stammerer said.

Later it will become clear to you why I now consider it possible to reveal to you the Doge’s real name (by the way, in the club he goes by the name of ‘Prospero’). But then, I should also say that I had not known his name previously and heard it spoken for the first time by the Stammerer.

The Doge shrugged. ‘Well, so you have made enquiries about me and found out my real name. Why did you need to do that?’

‘I had to find out as much about you as possible. And I managed to do it. Moscow is my city. I have many acquaintances here, some of them in the most surprising places.’

‘Then what have your acquaintances who inhabit the most surprising places discovered about me?’ the Doge enquired ironically, but I could see that he was uneasy.

‘A lot. For instance, that while you were serving a seventeen-year sentence in the Schliesselburg Fortress, you tried to end your own life on three occasions. The first time, in 1879, you went on hunger strike in protest against the conditions imposed on your comrades, who had been deprived of the right to take exercise outside their cells by the prison authorities. There were three of you on the strike. On the twenty-first day you, and only you, agreed to take food. The other two remained intransigent and died.’

The Doge cringed against the back of his armchair, but the Stammerer continued implacably: ‘The second time was even worse. In April 1881 you attempted to commit self-immolation after the prison commandant sentenced you to an exemplary flogging for replying disrespectfully to an inspector. Somehow you managed to obtain matches, pour the kerosene out of a lamp and impregnate your prison robe with it, but you couldn’t bring yourself to ignite the blaze. After you were subjected to corporal punishment, you wove a noose out of threads, hung it from one of the bars on the window and were on the point of hanging yourself, but once again at the last moment you changed your mind and did not wish to die. When you were already floundering in the noose, you grabbed hold of the window ledge and started calling loudly for help. The jailers took you down and sent you to the punishment cell . . . From that time until you were released on the occasion of the coronation of His Majesty the Emperor, you caused no more trouble and made no more attempts at suicide. Your relations with the Death whom you adore seem rather strange, Sergei Irinarkhovich.’

I assume, Vissarion Vissarionovich, that it will not be difficult for you to check the correctness of the information adduced by the Stammerer through your own professional connections, but I do not have the slightest doubt concerning its authenticity – it was enough for me to see the Doge’s response. He covered his face with his hands, sobbed several times and generally looked pitiful in the extreme. If the aspirants had been shown their godlike Teacher at that moment, it would have caused a real furore. I remember thinking: It is beyond all understanding how Death could choose a sniveller like this as her instrument! Surely a more worthy helper could have been found? I even felt sorry for her, the poor noseless creature.

There was another lengthy pause. The Doge carried on sobbing and blowing his nose, and the Stammerer waited for him to pull himself together. Eventually Blagovolsky (how strange it feels for me to call him that) said: ‘Are you from the police? Yes, of course, how else could you have found out . . . But then, no, you can’t be from the police – you wouldn’t have toyed with Death so lightly when you spun the drum of the Bulldog. It’s my revolver, after all, and the bullets in it were real, I ought to know. Who are you? By the way, would you like to sit down?’ He indicated a heavy oak armchair facing the desk.

The Stammerer shook his head, laughed and said: ‘Well, let’s just say that I represent the secret club of “Lovers of Life”. Consider that I have been sent to inspect your establishment – to see if you are breaking any of the rules, not playing fair. I am resolutely opposed to suicide, with the exception of certain special cases when to leave this life is not really suicide at all. At the same time, unlike the fathers of the Christian church, I believe that every man is free to do as he wishes with his own life, and if he has decided to destroy himself, then that is his right. But only if, Sergei Irinarkhovich, the fatal decision was really taken independently, with no urging or compulsion. It is quite a different matter when someone else soaps the noose for an individual who is highly impressionable or easily influenced, especially someone very young, or helpfully hands them the revolver, or sets out the cup of poison.’

‘Oh, how mistaken you are about me!’ the Doge cried out in extreme agitation, interrupting the Stammerer (who, as it happens, had not stammered even once in the course of the above speech). ‘I am a weak, sinful man! Yes I am terribly afraid of Death, she petrifies me! More than that, I hate her! She is my very worst enemy. I am scorched and poisoned forever by the foul stench that she has breathed into my face three times. No doubt you were only speaking figuratively about the “Lovers of Life”, but if such an organisation really did exist, I would be its most fanatical member!’

The Stammerer shook his head incredulously. ‘Really? Then how am I to explain your activities?’