The Coronation (16 page)

Their absence worried me greatly. Several times in the course of the evening and once long after midnight I went outside and looked at their windows. There was no light.

In the morning I was woken by a sharp, nervous knocking. I thought it must be Somov and opened the door in my nightcap and dressing gown. Imagine my embarrassment when I saw Her Highness standing there!

Xenia Georgievna looked pale, and the shadows under her eyes suggested that she had not gone to bed at all.

‘He’s not here,’ she gabbled. ‘Afanasii, he wasn’t here last night!’

‘Who, Your Highness?’ I asked in fright, pulling off my nightcap and bending my legs slightly, so that the hem of the dressing gown touched the floor and concealed my bare ankles.

‘What do you mean? Erast Petrovich! Do you perhaps know where he is?’

‘I have no idea,’ I replied, and my heart sank because I did not like the expression on Her Highness’s face at all.

Fandorin and his servant made their appearance after breakfast, when the grand dukes had already left for the Petrovsky Palace for the preparations for the ceremonial entry into the city. The house was full of police agents because a further message from the kidnappers was expected. I myself stayed as close as possible to the telephone and kept sending Somov out to the entrance to see if another note had been left. In fact, that was quite unnecessary, since Colonel Lasovsky had sleuths on duty in the bushes all the way along the avenue leading to the house. This time no one would be able to climb over the fence and approach the Hermitage unnoticed.

‘Did you see the child?’ Fandorin asked instead of greeting me. ‘Is he alive?’

I told him the bare bones of what had happened the previous day, anticipating another helping of reproaches for letting the newspaper boy get away.

In order to forestall any reprimands, I said: ‘I know I am at fault. I ought to have grabbed that little scoundrel by the scruff of his neck and not gone chasing after the carriage.’

‘The most important thing is that you got a good look at the boy and that he is unharmed,’ said Fandorin.

I could have stomached his reproaches, because they were well deserved, but I found such condescension objectionable.

‘But now the only clue has been lost!’ I exclaimed angrily, letting him see that I had no need of his false magnanimity.

‘What clue?’ he asked with a mild gesture of the hand. ‘A perfectly ordinary mop-headed little scamp, eleven and a half years old. Your Senka Kovalchuk doesn’t know a thing, and there’s noway he could have. Justwho do you think Doctor Lind is?’

My jaw must have dropped, because before I began to speak I felt my lips slap together in a most foolish fashion.

‘Se-Senka? K-Kovalchuk?’ I repeated, suddenly developing a stammer. ‘You mean you have found him? But how?’

‘Nothing to it. I got a good look at him when he dived into your g-gig.’

‘A good look?’ I echoed and felt furious with myself for talking like a parrot. ‘How could you get a look at anything, when you weren’t even there?’

‘How do you mean, I wasn’t there?’ Fandorin protested with a dignified air. He knitted his brows together and suddenly boomed in a deep voice that seemed incredibly familiar: “Come on, servant of God, get a move on!” Didn’t you recognise me? I was there beside you all the time, Ziukin.’

The priest, the priest in the rattletrap with the tarpaulin cover!

I took myself in hand and gave vent to my righteous indignation.

‘So you were there beside us, but you didn’t follow us!’

‘What on earth for?’ The gaze of his blue eyeswas so cool that I suspected he was mocking me. ‘I had s-seen quite enough. The boy had the
Moscow Pilgrim
newspaper in his bag. That is one. The printer’s ink had eaten deep into his fingers, so he really was a newspaper boy who handled hundreds of copies every day. That is two . . .’

‘But there are plenty of boys who sell the
Pilgrim
,’ I exclaimed in frustration. ‘I’ve heard that almost a hundred thousand copies of that yellow rag are sold in Moscow every day!’

‘The boy also had six fingers on his left hand – did you not notice that? And that is three,’ Fandorin concluded serenely. ‘Yesterday evening Masa and I went round all the ten depots where
Moscow Pilgrim
news boys collect their wares and we had no difficulty in establishing the identity of the individual who interests us. We had to search for a while before we found him, it is true, and when we found him we had to run a bit too, but it is quite hard to run away from Masa and me, especially for such a young individual.’

So simple. Lord, it was so simple – that was the the first thought that came into my head. In fact, all I needed to have done was look more closely at the kidnappers’ messenger.

‘What did he tell you?’ I asked impatiently.

‘Nothing of any interest,’ Fandorin replied, suppressing a yawn. ‘A perfectly ordinary little Senka. He sells newspapers to earn his own daily bread and his alcoholic mother’s vodka. Has no contacts with the criminal world. Yesterday he was hired by a certain “mister” who promised him three roubles and explained what he had to do. And he threatened to rip the boy’s belly open if he got anything confused. Senka says he was a serious mister, the kind who really would rip you open.’

‘And what else did he say about this “mister”?’ ‘I asked with a sinking heart. ‘What he looked like? How he was dressed?’

‘Ordnery,’ Fandorin said with a gloomy sigh. ‘You see, Ziukin, our young friend has a very limited vocabulary. His answers to every question are “Ordnery” and “Who knows?” The only distinctive f-feature of his employer that we have established is that he has a “bold face”. But I am afraid that will not be ofmuch help to us . . . All right, I’ll go and get a bit of rest. Wake mewhen the message from Lind arrives.’

And the unpleasant man went to his room.

I, however, still could not bring myself to move far away from the telephone apparatus standing in the hallway. I paced up and down, trying to maintain a dour, pensive air, but the servants were already casting glances of frank bewilderment in my direction. Then I stood at the window and pretended to be observing Lord Banville and Mr Carr, both dressed in white trousers and check caps, as they played croquet.

Properly speaking, they were not actually playing, merely strolling around the croquet pitch with sour expressions on their faces, while His Lordship spoke incessantly about something or other, seeming to become more and more angry. Finally he stopped, turned towards his companion and flew into a genuine fury – he waved his hands and started shouting so loudly that even I could hear him through the glass. I had never seen English lords behave in such a manner before. Mr Carr listened with a bored expression on his face, sniffing at his dyed carnation. Freyby was standing a short distance away, smoking his pipe without looking at his gentlemen at all. The butler had two wooden mallets with long handles tucked under his arm.

Suddenly Lord Banville shouted something especially loudly and gave Mr Carr a resounding slap which knocked the gentleman’s cap off his head. I froze in horror, afraid that the Britons would start up their barbarous ‘boxing’ right there on the lawn, but Mr Carr only threw his flower down at Banville’s feet and walked away.

His Lordship stood there for no more than a few moments, and then dashed after the friend of his heart. He overtook him and grabbed him by the arm, but Mr Carr tore himself free. Then Lord Banville went down on his knees and waddled after the man he had struck in that unflattering position. Freyby followed them with the mallets, yawning.

I didn’t understand what had happened and, to be quite honest, I was not interested in their English passions. And in any case I had just had a good idea that would free me from my enslavement to the telephone. I sent for the senior police agent and asked him to take my place in the hallway and send to the conservatory for me immediately there was a call from the kidnappers.

I believe that when I described the Hermitage I forgot to mention the most delightful space in this old palace – a glass-roofed winter garden with tall windows overlooking the Moscow river.

I chose this secluded spot, so conducive to intimate conversation, in order to deal with a matter that had been tormenting me for three days. I had to overcome my accursed shyness and finally tell poor Mademoiselle Declique that it was high time for her to stop suffering, that she had not done anything for which she deserved to be punished. How on earth could she have known that there was another carriage hidden behind the bushes? Not even the cunning Fandorin, who knewabout Doctor Lind, had guessed that.

I ordered Lipps to lay a table in the conservatory and sent to Mademoiselle to ask whether she would care to take tea with me. (In St Petersburg the two of us often often used to sit for a while over a cup or two of good Buryatian oolong.) I had selected a lovely little corner, completely cut off from the rest of the conservatory by luxuriant bushes of magnolia. I waited for the governess, feeling very nervous as I tried to choose the right words – quite unambiguous and yet at the same time not too intrusive.

However, when Mademoiselle arrived, looking sad in a severe, dark grey dress with a shawl across her shoulders, I could not bring myself to address the ticklish subject immediately.

‘It’s funny,’ I said, ‘there’s a garden in here and a garden out there.’

I meant that we were sitting in the winter garden, and there was a garden outside the window too, only a natural one.

‘Yes,’ she replied, lowering her head and stirring her tea with a spoon.

‘You shouldn’t . . .’ I blurted out, but then she lifted her head and glanced at me with her luminous eyes, and I finished in a way I had not intended ‘. . . dress so warmly. Today is a genuine summer day, even rather hot.’

The light in her eyes went out.

‘I don’t feel hot,’ Mademoiselle said quietly and then neither of us spoke any more.

It was this silence that allowed it all to happen.

There was the sound of footsteps in the conservatory and we heard Xenia Georgievna’s voice: ‘Yes, yes, Erast Petrovich, this is just the right spot. No one will disturb us here.’

I was about to push my chair back and get up, but Mademoiselle Declique suddenly squeezed my wrist in her fingers, and I froze in surprise, because in all the time we had known each other this was the first time she had touched me in that way. By the time I recovered my wits it was already too late to speak up – things had gone too far between Her Highness and Fandorin.

‘What do you want to tell me?’ he asked quietly and – so I thought – cautiously.

‘Just one thing . . .’ Xenia Georgievna replied in a whisper, but she did not add anything else – the only sound was a rustle of material and a very faint squeak.

Concerned, I parted the thick bushes and was absolutely astounded: Her Highness was standing on tiptoe (it was her shoes that had squeaked, I realised) with both of her arms round Fandorin’s neck, pressing her lips against his. The detective adviser’s hand was held out helplessly to one side; the fingers clenched and unclenched and then suddenly, as if they had finally come to some decision, flew up and began stroking the delicate nape of Xenia Georgievna’s neck with its fluffy strands of light hair.

I heard the sound of rapid breathing right beside my ear – it was Mademoiselle, who had also parted the bushes and was watching the kissing couple. I was astounded by the strange expression on her face, her eyebrows seemingly raised in a kind of merry amazement, a half-smile trembling on her lips. The doubly scandalous nature of the situation – the kiss itself and my inadvertent spying – brought me out in a cold sweat. But my accomplice apparently felt no awkwardness at all.

The kissing went on for a very, very long time. I had never imagined that it was possible to kiss for so long without any pause for breath. But I did not actually look at my watch, and perhaps the wait seemed so interminable to me because of the sheer nightmarishness of the situation.

Eventually they released their hold on each other, and I finally saw the radiant glow in Her Highness’s eyes and the perplexed expression, so unlike his usual one, on the face of her seducer. Then Xenia Georgievna took Fandorin by the hand in a most determined fashion and led him away.

‘What do you think; where is she taking him?’ I asked in a whisper, avoiding looking at Mademoiselle.

There was strange sound rather like giggling. I glanced at the governess in surprise, but she looked perfectly serious.

‘Thank you for the tea, Afanasii Stepanovich,’ Mademoiselle said with a demure little bow and left me there alone.

I tried to gather my thoughts. What should I do? The honour of the imperial house was under threat – God only knew what this infatuation might lead to if someone did not intervene in time. Perhaps I should inform Georgii Alexandrovich? But to burden him with this additional problem seemed quite impossible. I had to think of something myself.

However, I was prevented from concentrating effectively on this most important matter by entirely extraneous questions.

Why had Mademoiselle taken hold of my wrist? I could still feel the dry heat of her hand.

And what was the meaning of that giggling – if, of course, I had not imagined it?

The windowpanes sudden quivered from a plangent blowand I heard a mighty rumbling – it was the cannon firing from the Kremlin towers to announce the commencement of the procession. And that meant itwas noon already. And almost that very same moment Iwas called to the hallway. The postman had delivered the daily correspondence, and among the usual envelopes containing all sorts of invitations, notifications and charity appeals, one envelope without a stamp had been discovered.

We assembled round this rectangle of white paper lying in the centre of the small table under the mirror: myself, two police agents and Fandorin – looking unusually ruddy and with his collar distinctly lopsided.

While he questioned the postman about which route he had followed and whether he might have left his bag anywhere, I opened the envelope with trembling fingers and took out, together with a sheet of paper folded into four, a lock of soft, golden hair.