The Winter Queen (17 page)

Erast Fandorin tugged the revolver out of his belt and commanded in a whisper, “Miss Bezhetskaya, one sound and I’ll shoot you! Come over here and sit down! Quickly now!”

She approached him without speaking,
gazing
spellbound at him with those unfathomable, gleaming eyes, and sat down beside the writing desk.

“You weren’t expecting me, I suppose?” Erast Fandorin inquired sarcastically. “Took me for a stupid little fool?”

Amalia Bezhetskaya said nothing. Her gaze seemed thoughtful and slightly surprised, as if she were seeing Fandorin for the first time.

“What is the meaning of these lists?” he demanded, brandishing his Colt. “What has Brazil got to do with all this? Who is concealed behind the numbers? Well, answer me!”

“You’ve matured,” Bezhetskaya said unexpectedly in a quiet, pensive voice. “And you seem a bit braver, too.”

She dropped her hand and the peignoir slipped from a rounded shoulder so white that Erast Fandorin swallowed hard.

“Brave, impetuous little fool,” she went on in the same quiet voice, looking him straight in the eyes. “And so very good-looking.”

“If you’re thinking of seducing me, you’re wasting your time,” Erast Fandorin mumbled, blushing. “I am not such a little fool as you imagine.”

Amalia Bezhetskaya said sadly, “You are a poor little boy who doesn’t even understand what he has got mixed up in. A poor, handsome little boy. And now there is nothing I can do to save you…”

“You’d do better to think about saving yourself!” said Erast Fandorin, trying hard not to look at that accursed shoulder, which had become even more exposed. Could skin really be such a glowing, milky white?

Bezhetskaya rose abruptly to her feet, and he started back, holding his gun out in front of him…

“Sit down.”

“Don’t be afraid, silly boy. What rosy cheeks you have. May I touch them?”

She reached out a hand and gently brushed his cheek with her fingers.

“You’re hot…What am I going to do with you?”

She set her other hand gently on his fingers that clutched the revolver. The matte-black, unblinking eyes were so close that Fandorin could see two little pink reflections of the lamp in them. A strange list-lessness came over the young man and he remembered Hippolyte’s warning about the moth, but the memory was strangely abstract—it had nothing to do with him.

Then events moved very rapidly. With her left hand Bezhetskaya pushed the Colt aside. With her right hand she seized Erast Fandorin by the collar and jerked him toward her, simultaneously butting his nose with her forehead. Fandorin was blinded by the sharp pain, but he would not have been able to see anything in any case, because the lamp went crashing to the floor and the room was plunged into darkness. At the next blow—a knee to the groin—he doubled up, his fingers contracted spasmodically, the room was lit by a bright flash, and there was the deafening roar of a shot. Amalia took a convulsive breath, half sobbed and half screamed, and then there was no longer anyone beating Erast Fandorin, no one squeezing his wrist. He heard the sound of a falling body. There was a loud ringing in his ears, twin streams of blood were flowing over his chin, tears were pouring from his eyes, and his lower belly ached so sickeningly that all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and wait for the agony to pass, groan until the unbearable pain went away. But he had no time for bellowing. He could hear loud voices and the sound of heavy footsteps from downstairs.

Fandorin grabbed the attaché case off the desk and threw it out the window, then climbed over the windowsill, and almost fell, because his hand was still clutching the pistol. Later he was unable to recall how he climbed down the drainpipe, terrified all the while of not being able to find the attaché case in the darkness, but in fact it was clearly visible on the white gravel. Erast Fandorin picked it up and set off at a run, fighting his way through the bushes and mumbling rapidly to himself: “A fine diplomatic courier…killed a woman…My God, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?…It’s her own fault…I didn’t want to do it at all…Now where shall I go?…The police will be looking…or these…Murderers…I can’t go to the embassy…Must flee the country, quickly…Can’t do that either…They’ll be watching all the railway stations and ports…They’ll stop at absolutely nothing to get back their attaché case…Have to go into hiding…My God, Mr. Brilling, what shall I do, what shall I do?”

As he ran, Fandorin glanced around and saw something that made him stumble and almost fall. Standing motionless in the bushes was a black figure in a long cloak. The moonlight traced the features of a strangely familiar white face. Count Zurov!

Totally demented by this final blow, Erast Fandorin squealed and scrambled over the fence, darted to the right, then to the left (which direction had the cab come from?), then finally decided that it made no difference and ran off to the right.

which tells the story of a very long night

ON THE ISLE OF DOGS, IN THE MAZE OF NARROW streets behind Millwall Docks, night falls rapidly. Before you can so much as glance over your shoulder the twilight has thickened from gray to brown and one in every two or three of the sparse streetlamps is already glowing. It is dirty and dismal, the Thames ladens the air with damp, the rubbish dumps adding the scent of putrid decay. The streets are deserted, with the only life—both disreputable and dangerous—teeming around the shady pubs and cheap furnished lodgings.

The rooms in the Ferry Road guesthouse are home to decommissioned sailors, petty swindlers, and aging port trollops. Pay sixpence a day and a separate room with a bed is yours to do with as you will—no one will stick his nose into your business—but a condition of the agreement is that for damaging the furniture, brawling, or yelling in the night your host, Fat Hugh, will fine you a shilling, and if anyone refuses to pay up, he will throw him out on his ear.

From morning to night Fat Hugh is at his post behind the counter, by the door, strategically positioned so that he can see anyone either arriving or leaving or bringing anything in or, on the contrary, attempting to take anything out. The clientele here is a mixed bunch, and you never know what they might be getting up to.

Take, for instance, that French artist with the shaggy red hair who has just gone scurrying past his landlord and into the corner room. The frog eater has money, all right—he paid for a week in advance with no arguments. He doesn’t drink, just sits there locked in his room, and this is the first time he’s been out at all. So, naturally, Hugh took the opportunity to glance into his room, and what do you think he found? Him an artist, but never a sign of any paints or canvases in the place! Maybe he’s some murderer or other, who knows—otherwise why would he be hiding his eyes behind those dark glasses? And maybe the constable ought to be told—the money’s been paid in advance anyway…

Meanwhile, the redheaded artist, unaware of the dangerous line taken by Fat Hugh’s train of thought, locked his door and began behaving in a manner that was indeed more than simply suspicious. First of all, he pulled the curtains tightly closed. Then he placed his purchases—a loaf of bread, cheese, and a bottle of porter—on the table, pulled a revolver out of his belt, and hid it under his pillow. But the disarming of this peculiar Frenchman was not complete at that. From the top of his boot he extracted a derringer—a small, single-shot pistol such as is usually employed by ladies and political assassins—and set this toylike firearm beside the bottle of porter. From his sleeve the lodger withdrew a short, narrow stiletto that he stuck into the loaf of bread. Only after all this did he light the candle, remove his blue spectacles, and rub his eyes with a weary hand. Finally, after a glance around at the window to make sure that the curtains were not parting, he lifted the red-haired wig off his head and was revealed as none other than Erast Petrovich Fandorin.

The meal was over and done with in five minutes—the titular counselor and fugitive assassin clearly had more important matters to attend to. Brushing the crumbs from the table, Erast Fandorin wiped his hands on his long bohemian blouse, went over to the tattered armchair standing in the corner, fumbled under its upholstery, and took out a small blue attaché case. Fandorin was impatient to continue the work with which he had been occupied all day and which had already led him to an extremely important discovery.

FOLLOWING THE TRAGIC EVENTS of the previous night Erast Fandorin had been obliged in spite of everything to pay a brief visit to his hotel in order to pick up at least his money and his passport. Now let his good friend Hippolyte—that villainous Judas—and his henchmen search the railway stations and seaports in vain for ‘Erasmus von Dorn.’ Who would pay any attention to a poor French artist who had taken up residence in the very foulest sink of the London slums? And though Fandorin may have been obliged to take his life in his hands and run the risk of going out to the post office, there had been a very good reason for that.

But what should he make of Zurov? His part in the story was not entirely clear, but it was certainly unseemly at the very least. His Excellency was not simple, not simple at all. The gallant hussar and open-hearted soul performed the most devious of maneuvers. How cleverly he had passed on that address, how well he had worked it all out! In a word, a true game master! He knew that the stupid gudgeon would take the bait and swallow the hook as well. But no, His Excellency had used some other allegory, something about a moth. The moth had flown into the flame all right, flown in exactly as expected. And it had almost burned its wings. Serve the fool right. After all, it was clear enough that Bezhetskaya and Hippolyte had some interest in common. Only a romantic blockhead such as a certain titular counselor (who had, in fact, been promoted to that rank over the heads of other, more worthy individuals) could have seriously believed in a fatal passion in the Castilian style! And he had even tried to fill Ivan Franzevich Brilling’s head with all that nonsense. For shame! Ha-ha! How beautifully Count Hippolyte Zurov had expressed it: “I love her and I fear her, the witch. I’ll strangle her with my own hands.” No doubt he had enjoyed toying with the babe in arms! And how exquisitely he had pulled it off, every bit as good as the first time, with the duel. His moves had been calculated simply and unerringly: take up a position at the Winter Queen Hotel and wait there calmly until the stupid moth Erasmus came flying to the candle. This was not Moscow—there was no detective police, no gendarmes. Erast Fandorin could be taken with the greatest of ease. And all the clues securely buried. Might not Zurov perhaps be that Franz whom the butler had mentioned? Ugh, these hideous conspirators! But which one of them was the leader—Zurov or Bezhetskaya? It seemed more likely, after all, that she was…Erast Fandorin shivered as he recalled the events of the previous night and the plaintive shriek with which Amalia had collapsed when she was shot. Perhaps she had been wounded and not killed? But the dismal chill that enveloped his heart told him that she was dead, the beautiful queen was dead, and Fandorin would have to live with that terrible burden to the end of his days.

It was, of course, entirely possible that the end was already near. Zurov knew who had killed her: he had seen Fandorin. The hunt must already be on right across London, right across England, even. But why had Zurov let him go last night? Why had he allowed him to escape? Had he been frightened off by the pistol in Fandorin’s hand? It was a riddle…

There was, however, another, even more puzzling riddle—the contents of the attaché case. For a long time Fandorin had been quite unable to make any sense of the mysterious list. His check had revealed that the number of entries on the sheets of paper was exactly the same as the number of letters and all of the information matched, except that in addition to the date indicated in each letter, Bezhetskaya had also entered the date of its receipt.

There were forty-five entries in all. The very earliest of them was dated the first of June, and the three latest had made their appearance even as Erast Fandorin watched. The ordinal numbers in the letters were all different; the lowest was 47F (the Kingdom of Belgium, director of a governmental department, received on the fifteenth of June) and the highest was 2347F (Italy, a lieutenant of dragoons, received on the ninth of June). The letters had been dispatched from a total of nine countries, of which the most frequently occurring were England and France. Russia only appeared once in the sequence. (N°994F, a full state counselor, received on the twenty-sixth of June, with a St. Petersburg stamp from the seventh of June on the envelope. Ooph, he mustn’t confuse the calendars! The seventh of June would be the nineteenth in the European style. That meant it had taken just a week to arrive.) For the most part, the positions and ranks mentioned were high—generals, senior officers, one admiral, one senator, even one Portuguese government minister—but there were also small fry, such as the lieutenant from Italy, a court investigator from France, and a captain of the Austro-Hungarian border guards.

Taking everything together, Bezhetskaya appeared to be some kind of intermediary, a transmission link or living post box whose duties involved registering incoming information and then forwarding it—evidently to Mr. Nicholas Croog in St. Petersburg. It was reasonable to assume that the lists were forwarded once a month. It was also clear that some other individual had played the role of Miss Olsen before Bezhetskaya, a fact the hotel porter had not suspected.

At that point the obvious came to an end and an urgent need arose to apply the deductive method. If only the chief were here, he would have instantly listed all the possible scenarios and everything would have been neatly sorted into its right place. But he was far away, and the unavoidable conclusion was that Brilling had been right, a thousand times right. There obviously existed a widely ramified secret organization with members in many countries—that was one. Queen Victoria and Disraeli had nothing to do with the case (otherwise why send the reports to St. Petersburg?)—that was two. Erast Fandorin had made a fool of himself with his English spies; this affair very definitely smacked of nihilists—that was three. And all the threads led nowhere else but back to Russia, which possessed the most fearsome and ruthless nihilists of all—that was four. And they included that treacherous werewolf Zurov.