The Death of Achilles (6 page)

Fandorin was dismayed to read that. Among the Russian diplomats in Japan it was considered good tone to praise Turgenev and Shchedrin. How very far he had fallen behind the literary scene in Russia during his absence of almost six years! But what was new in the field of technology?

Tunnel Under the English Channel

The length of the railway tunnel under the English Channel is already approaching 1,200 meters. The engineer Brunton is excavating the galleries with a ram-drill powered by compressed air. According to the plans, the total length of the underground passage should be a little over thirty versts. The initial design envisaged that the English and French digs would link up after five years, but skeptics claim that the labor-intensive work of facing the walls and laying the rails will delay the opening of the line until at least 1890…

With his keen sensitivity to progress, Fandorin found the digging of the Anglo- French tunnel quite fascinating, but something prevented him from reading this interesting article to the end. A certain gentleman in a gray two-piece suit, whom Fandorin had only recently spotted beside the head porter in the vestibule, had now been hovering around the buffet counter for several minutes. The isolated words that reached the collegiate assessor’s ears (and his hearing was quite excellent) seemed to Fandorin so curious that he immediately stopped reading, although he continued to hold the newspaper in front of his face.

“Don’t you try putting one over on me,” the gray-suited gentleman pressed the man behind the counter. “Were you on duty last night or not?”

“I was asleep, Yer Onner,” droned the man, a fat-faced, rosy-cheeked hulk with a greasy beard combed to both sides. “The only one here from the night shift is Senka.” He jerked his beard in the direction of a boy serving cakes and tea.

The man in gray beckoned Senka to him. A police sleuth, Erast Petrovich thought with absolute certainty and without any great surprise. So our chief of police Evgeny Osipovich was feeling jealous — he didn’t want all the laurels to go to the governor’s deputy for special assignments.

“Now tell me, Senka,” the inquisitive gentleman said ingratiatingly, “was there a general and some officers at Mam’selle Wanda’s place last night?”

Senka twitched his nose, fluttered his white eyelashes, and asked: “Lasnigh’? A gen’ral?”

“Yes, yes, a gen’ral,” said the sleuth, nodding.

“ ‘Ere?” asked the boy, wrinkling up his forehead.

“Yes here, here, where else?”

“But does gen’rals drive out at nigh’?” Senka inquired suspiciously.

“And why wouldn’t they?”

The boy replied with deep conviction: “Nah, gen’rals sleeps at nigh’. Tha’s what gen’rals does.”

“You just watch it, you… little idiot!” the man in gray exclaimed furiously. “Or I’ll take you down to the station and soon have you singing a different tune.”

“I’m an orphan, mister,” Senka responded swiftly, and his foolish eyes were instantly flooded with tears. “You can’t take me down the station, it gives me the fainting fits.”

“Are you all in this plot together, or what?” the police agent snapped viciously and stormed out, slamming the door loudly behind him.

“A serious gent’man,” said Senka, looking at the door.

“Yesterday’s were more serious,” the counterman whispered and smacked the lad on the back of his close-cropped head. “The sort of gentlemen who’d rip your head off without any police or anything. You take care, Senka, keep your mouth shut. Anyway, they probably slipped you something, didn’t they?”

“Prof. Semyonich, by Christ the Lord,” the boy jabbered, blinking rapidly. “I can swear on a sacred holy icon! All they give me was fifteen kopecks, and I took that to the chapel and lit a candle for the peace of my mother’s soul…”

“What d’you mean, fifteen kopecks! Don’t give me any of your lies. Took it to the chapel!” The man raised his hand to strike Senka, but the boy dodged away nimbly, picked up his tray, and dashed off to answer a summons from a customer.

Erast Petrovich set aside his
Moscow Gazette
and went up to the counter.

“Was that man from the police?” he asked with an air of extreme displeasure. “I haven’t come here just to d-drink tea, my dear fellow, I am waiting for Miss Wanda. Why are the police interested in her?”

The counterman looked him up and down and asked cautiously: “You mean to say you’ve got an appointment, sir?”

“I should say I have an appointment! Didn’t I tell you I was waiting?” The young man’s blue eyes expressed extreme concern. “But I don’t want anything to do with the police. Mademoiselle Wanda was recommended to me as a respectable girl, and now I find the p-police here! It’s a good thing I’m wearing a frock coat and not my uniform.”

“Don’t worry, Yer Onner,” the counterman reassured the nervous customer. “The young lady’s not some cheap bar girl; it’s all top-class service with her. There’s others come in their uniform and don’t count it no shame.”

“In uniform?” The young man couldn’t believe it. “What, even officers?”

The counterman and young Senka, who had reappeared, exchanged glances and laughed.

“Aim a bit higher,” the boy chortled. “Even gen’rals comes visiting. And the manner of their visiting is a sight to see. Arrives on their own two feet, they does, then afterward they ‘as to be carried out. That’s the kind of gay mam’selle she is!”

Prof. Semyonich gave the joker a clout on the ear.

“Don’t go talking nonsense, Senka. I told you to keep your mouth shut.”

Erast Petrovich frowned squeamishly and went back to his table, but he did not feel like reading about the tunnel any longer. He was far too impatient to have a talk with Mademoiselle Helga Ivanovna Tolle.

The collegiate assessor’s wait was mercifully brief. After about five minutes the waiter he had spoken to came darting into the buffet and bent down and whispered in his ear: “The lady’s arrived. How shall I announce you?”

Fandorin took a calling card out of his tortoiseshell wallet and after a moment’s thought wrote several words on it with a little silver pencil.

“There, g-give her that.”

The waiter carried out his commission and was back in a trice to announce: “She asks you to come. Kindly follow me. I’ll show you through.”

Outside it was already getting dark. Erast Petrovich examined the annex, of which Miss Wanda occupied the entire ground floor. It was clear enough why this lady required a separate entrance — her visitors evidently preferred matters to remain discreet. Protruding above the tall ground-floor windows was a first-floor balcony, perched on the shoulders of an entire brood of caryatids. Generally speaking, the amount of molding on the facade was clearly excessive, in keeping with the bad taste of the 1860s, which all the signs indicated was when this frivolous building had been erected.

The waiter rang the electric bell and, having received his ruble, withdrew with a bow, striving so diligently to display absolute tact and understanding that he actually tiptoed all the way back across the yard.

The door opened and Fandorin saw before him a slim, slight woman with high- combed, ash-blond hair and huge, tantalizing green eyes — although at that moment he read caution rather than mockery in the gaze of their owner.

“Come in, mysterious visitor,” the woman said in a low, resonant voice for which the most fitting epithet would have to be the poetic term ‘bewitching’. Despite the tenant’s German name, Fandorin did not catch even the slightest trace of an accent in her speech.

The suite occupied by Mademoiselle Wanda consisted of a hallway and a spacious drawing room, which apparently also served as a boudoir.

It occurred to Erast Petrovich that in view of his hostess’s profession this was entirely natural, and he felt embarrassed at the thought, for Miss Wanda did not resemble a woman of easy virtue. She showed her visitor into the room, sat down in a soft Turkish armchair, crossed one leg over the other, and stared in anticipation at the young man, who had halted motionless in the doorway. The electric lighting gave Fandorin an opportunity to examine Wanda and her accommodations more closely.

She was not a classic beauty — that was the first thing that Erast Petrovich noted. A little too snub-nosed, he thought, and her mouth was a little too wide, and her cheekbones protruded more noticeably than was permitted by the classical canon. But none of these imperfections weakened the overall impression of quite uncommon loveliness — on the contrary, in some strange manner they actually reinforced it. He felt as if he could simply go on and on looking at that face — there was so much life and feeling in it, as well as that magical quality known as femininity, which defies description in words, but is unerringly discerned by any man. Well, then, if Mademoiselle Wanda was so popular in Moscow, it meant that Muscovite taste was not so very bad, reasoned Erast Petrovich, and he regretfully tore himself away from the contemplation of the amazing face to look carefully around the room. An absolutely Parisian interior in a color range from claret to mauve, with a deep carpet, comfortable and expensive furniture, numerous table and floor lamps with colorful shades, Chinese figurines, and, on the wall — the very latest chic — Japanese prints of geishas and Kabuki-theater actors. In the far corner there was an alcove behind two columns, but a sense of delicacy obliged Fandorin to avert his gaze from that direction.

“What is ‘everything’?” asked his hostess, breaking a silence that had clearly lasted too long, and Erast Petrovich shivered at the almost physical sensation of that magical voice setting the secret, rarely touched strings of his heart quivering.

The collegiate assessor’s face expressed polite incomprehension, and Wanda declared impatiently: “Mr. Fandorin, on your card it says ‘I know everything’. What is ‘everything’? And who are you, as a matter of fact?”

“Deputy for special assignments to Governor-General Prince Dolgorukoi,” Erast Petrovich replied calmly. “Assigned to investigate the circumstances of the demise of Adjutant General Sobolev.”

Seeing his hostess’s slim eyebrows shoot up, Fandorin remarked: “Do not pretend, mademoiselle, that you did not know about the general’s death. As for the note on my card, that was written to deceive you. I know far from everything, but I do know the most important thing. Mikhail Dmitrievich Sobolev died in this room at about one o’clock this morning.”

Wanda shuddered and put her thin hands to her throat, as though she suddenly felt cold, but she said nothing. Erast Petrovich nodded in satisfaction and continued: “You have not given anyone away, mademoiselle, or broken the word that you gave. The officers themselves are to blame — they covered their tracks far too clumsily. I shall b-be frank with you in the hope of receiving equal frankness in return. I am in possession of the following information.” He closed his eyes in order not to be distracted by the subtle pattern of white and pink tones that had appeared on the woman’s agitated face. “From the Dusseaux restaurant you came directly here with Sobolev and his retinue. It was then shortly before midnight. An hour later the general was already dead. The officers carried him out of here, pretending that he was drunk, and took him back to the hotel. If you will complete the picture of what happened, I will try to spare you interrogation at the police station. And, by the way, the police have already been here — the hotel staff will probably tell you about it. So let me assure you that it would be much better to make your explanations to me.”

The collegiate assessor paused, calculating that more than enough had already been said. Wanda rose abruptly to her feet, took a Persian shawl from the back of a chair, and threw it across her shoulders, although the evening was warm, almost hot. She walked around the room twice, glancing from time to time at the expectant functionary. Finally she stopped, facing him.

“Well, at least you don’t look like a policeman. Have a seat. This story might take some time.”

She indicated a plump divan covered with embroidered cushions, but Erast Petrovich preferred to take a seat on a chair. An intelligent woman, he decided. Strong. Coolheaded. She won’t tell me the whole truth, but she won’t lie to me, either.

“I met the great hero yesterday, in the restaurant at the Dusseaux,” Wanda said, taking a small brocade pouffe and sitting beside Fandorin, positioning herself, in fact, so close to him that she was looking up into his face from below. In this foreshortened perspective she appeared alluringly helpless, like some oriental slave girl at the feet of a pasha. Erast Petrovich shifted uncomfortably on his chair, but to move away would have been ridiculous.

“A handsome man. Of course, I had heard a lot about him, but I never suspected that he was so very good-looking. Especially his cornflower-blue eyes.” Wanda pensively ran one hand across her brow, as if she were driving away the memory. “I sang for him. He invited me to sit at his table. I don’t know what you have been told about me, but I am sure most of it is lies. I am no hypocrite; I am a free, modern woman, and I decide for myself who to love.” She glanced defiantly at Fandorin and he saw that now she was talking without pretense or affectation. “If I take a liking to a man and decide that he must be mine, I don’t drag him to the altar, the way your ‘respectable’ women do. No, I am not ‘respectable’ — in the sense that I do not accept your definition of respectability.”

This is no slave girl, there is no defenselessness here, Erast Petrovich thought in astonishment, looking down at those sparkling emerald-green eyes; she is more like the queen of the Amazons. He could easily imagine her driving men insane with these impetuous transitions from arrogant defiance to submissiveness and back again.

“Could you please stick more c-closely to the subject,” Fandorin said dryly out loud, trying hard not to give way to inappropriate feelings.

“I could hardly be closer,” the Amazon queen teased him. “It is not you who buy me, it is I who take you, and I make you pay me for it! How many of your ‘respectable’ women would be only too happy to be unfaithful to their husbands with the White General in secret, skulking like thieves? But I am free and I have no need to hide. Yes, I found Sobolev attractive,” she said, suddenly changing her tone of voice again, from challenging to cunning. “Yes, why should I pretend I was not flattered by the idea of adding such a big, bright specimen to my butterfly collection? And after that…” Wanda twitched her shoulder. “It was the usual thing. We came here, drank some wine. But what occurred then, I don’t remember very well. My head was spinning. Before I knew what was going on, we were over there, in the alcove.” She laughed hoarsely, but almost immediately her laughter broke off and the light in her eyes faded. “After that it was horrible, I don’t want to remember it. Don’t make me tell you the physiological details, all right? You wouldn’t wish that on anyone — a lover in the very height of his passion suddenly stopping like that and falling on you like a deadweight…”