The Winter Queen

CHAPTER TEN

which a blue attaché case features prominently

ON THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OF JUNE IN THE western style, or the sixteenth of June in the Russian style, a hired carriage pulled up in front of the Winter Queen Hotel on Grey Street. The driver in his top hat and white gloves jumped down from his box, folded out the step, and bowed as he opened the black lacquered door bearing the legend:

DUNSTER & DUNSTER

Since 1848

LONDON REGAL TOURS

The first item to emerge from the door was a morocco traveling boot studded with silver nails, which was followed by a prosperous-looking youthful gentleman sporting a bushy mustache that suited his fresh-faced complexion remarkably badly, a Tyrolean hat with a feather, and a broad Alpine cloak. The young man leapt down to the pavement in sprightly fashion, glanced around him at the quiet, entirely unremark able little street, and fixed his agitated gaze on the hotel, a rather unprepossessing four-story detached structure in the Georgian style that had clearly seen better times.

After hesitating for a moment, the gentleman pronounced in Russian, “Ah, all right then.”

He then followed this enigmatic phrase by walking up the steps and entering the vestibule.

Literally one second later someone in a black cloak emerged from the public house located across the road, pulled a tall cap with a shiny peak down over his eyes, and began striding to and fro in front of the doors of the hotel.

This remarkable circumstance, however, escaped the attention of the new arrival, who was already standing at the counter and surveying a bleary portrait of some medieval lady in a gorgeous jabot—no doubt the ‘Winter Queen’ herself. The porter, who had been dozing behind the counter, greeted the foreigner rather indifferently, but on observing him give the boy, who had done no more than carry in his traveling bag, an entire shilling for his trouble, he welcomed him again far more affably, this time addressing the new arrival not merely as ‘sir,’ but ‘Your Honor.’

The young man inquired whether there were any rooms available and demanded the very best, with hot water and newspapers, before entering himself in the hotel’s register of guests as Erasmus von Dorn from Helsingfors, following which, for doing absolutely nothing at all, the porter received a half sovereign and promptly began addressing this half-witted foreigner as ‘your lordship.’

Meanwhile, ‘Mr. von Dorn’ found himself suffering rather grave doubts. It was hard to believe that the brilliant Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya could be staying at this third-rate hotel. Something here was clearly not right.

In his bewilderment and dismay, he even asked the zealously attentive porter, now bent almost double, whether there was not another hotel of the same name in London. He received in reply a sworn oath assuring him that indeed there was not, nor ever had been, if one did not take into account the Winter Queen Hotel that had stood on the very same site but had burned to ashes more than a hundred years previously.

Could it really all have been in vain—the twenty-day round-trip through Europe, and the false mustache, and the luxurious carriage hired at Waterloo station instead of an ordinary cab and, finally, the half sovereign expended to no effect?

Well, you’ll just have to earn your baksheesh from me, my dear chap, thought Erast Fandorin—for let us call him so, disregarding his false identity.

“Tell me, my good man, has there not been a guest staying here by the name of Miss Olsen?” he asked with poorly feigned casualness, leaning his elbows on the counter.

Entirely predictable as the reply was, it pierced Erast Fandorin to the heart.

“No, my lord, no lady by that name is staying here, or ever has.”

Discerning the dismay in the guest’s eyes, the porter paused for effect before declaring reticently, “However, the name mentioned by your lordship is not entirely unfamiliar to me.”

Swaying slightly to one side, Erast Fandorin fished another gold coin out of his pocket. “Go on.”

The porter leaned forward in a gust of cheap eau de cologne and whispered, “Post arrives here in the name of that individual. Every evening at ten o’clock a certain Mr. Morbid—apparently a servant or a butler—arrives and collects the letters.”

“Immensely tall, with big, light-colored side-whiskers, looking as if he has never smiled in all his life?” Erast Fandorin asked quickly.

“Yes, my lord, that’s him.”

“And do the letters come often?”

“Yes, my lord, almost every day, and sometimes more than one. Today, for instance”—the porter cast a meaningful glance behind himself in the direction of the pigeonholes on the wall—“there are actually three of them.”

The hint was immediately taken.

“I would quite like to take a glance at the envelopes, merely out of idle curiosity,” Fandorin remarked, tapping on the counter with the next half sovereign.

The porter’s eyes began glittering feverishly. Something quite incredible was happening, something beyond the grasp of reason but extremely pleasant.

“Generally speaking, that is most strictly forbidden, milord, but…if it’s just a matter of glancing at the envelopes…”

Erast Fandorin seized the envelopes avidly, but there was a disappointment in store for him—the envelopes carried no return address. His third piece of gold had apparently been expended in vain. But then his chief had sanctioned all outlays “within reason and in the interests of the case.” What did the postmarks say?

The postmarks gave Fandorin cause for reflection: one letter was from Stuttgart, another from Washington, and the third all the way from Rio de Janeiro. Well now!

“And has Miss Olsen been receiving correspondence here for long?” Erast Fandorin asked, calculating in his head how long it would take letters to cross the ocean. And the address here also had had to be communicated to Brazil! That put a rather strange complexion on the whole business. Bezhetskaya could not possibly have arrived in England more than four weeks previously.

The reply was unexpected.

“For a long time, my lord. When I started working here—and that’s four years ago now—the letters were already arriving.”

“How’s that? Are you not confusing things?”

“I assure you, my lord. Mr. Morbid, it is true, only began working for Miss Olsen recently, from the early summer, I believe. In any case, before him a Mr. Mobius used to come to collect the correspondence, and before that a Mr…mm, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten what his name was. He was such an inconspicuous gentleman and not very talkative.”

Erast Fandorin desperately wanted to take a look inside the envelopes. He cast a quizzical glance at his informer. He would probably not hold out against a further proposition. At this point, however, our newly fledged titular counselor and diplomatic courier, first class, had a rather better idea.

“You say this Mr. Morbid comes every evening at ten?”

“Like clockwork, my lord.”

Erast Fandorin laid a fourth half sovereign on the counter, then leaned across and whispered something in the lucky porter’s ear.

THE TIME REMAINING until ten o’clock was employed in a most productive fashion.

First of all, Erast Fandorin oiled and loaded his courier’s Colt. Then he retreated to the bathroom and by alternately pressing the hot water and cold water pedals, in fifteen minutes or so he had filled the bath. He luxuriated for half an hour, and by the time the water cooled, his plan of subsequent action was already fully formed.

After gluing his mustache back into place and admiring himself briefly in the mirror, Fandorin attired himself as an inconspicuous Englishman in black bowler hat, black jacket, black trousers, and black necktie. In Moscow he would probably have been taken for an undertaker, but in London he felt certain that he would pass for the invisible man. And it would be just the thing for the night: conceal the shirtfront with the lapels, pull down the cuffs, and dissolve into the embrace of darkness—and that was extremely important for his plan.

There still remained an hour and a half for a stroll to familiarize himself with the neighborhood. Erast Fandorin turned off Grey Street onto a broad thoroughfare entirely filled with carriages and almost immediately found himself in front of the famous Old Vic Theatre, which was described in detail in his guidebook. Walking on a little further he spied—oh, wonder!—the familiar profile of Waterloo Station, from which the carriage had taken a good forty minutes to transport him to the Winter Queen—that scoundrel of a driver had charged him five shillings! And then there hove into view the gray Thames, bleak and uninviting in the evening twilight. Gazing at its dirty waters, Erast Fandorin shivered as he was inexplicably seized by some macabre presentiment. The fact was that he simply did not feel at ease in this strange city. The people he met looked straight past him, and not one of them so much as glanced at his face, which you must admit would have been quite inconceivable in Moscow. And yet Fandorin was haunted by the strange feeling that some hostile gaze was trained on his back. Several times the young man glanced around, and once he even thought he noticed a figure in black dodge back behind a tall, round theater billboard. After that, Erast Fandorin took a firm grip on himself, abused himself for being overanxious, and did not look back over his shoulder again. Confound those nerves of his! He even began wondering whether he ought to delay putting his plan into action until the following evening. Then it would be possible to pay a visit to the embassy in the morning and meet the mysterious clerk Pyzhov who had been mentioned by his chief. But such a cowardly excess of caution was dishonorable, and he did not wish to lose any more time. Almost three weeks had been wasted on trifling matters already.

The journey around Europe had proved less pleasant than Fandorin had anticipated in his first access of elation. Beyond the border post of Verzhbolov he had been depressed by the quite striking dissimilarity of the locality to the unpretentious open spaces of his homeland. As he looked out the window of his train, Erast Fandorin had kept expecting that the neat little villages and toy towns would come to an end and a normal landscape would begin, but the farther the train traveled from the Russian border, the whiter the houses became and the more picturesque the towns. Fandorin’s mood became grimmer and grimmer, but he had refused to allow himself to be reduced to sniveling. In the final analysis, he told himself, all that glisters is not gold, but nonetheless at heart he still felt a little nauseated.

After a while he had grown used to it and it did not seem so bad. It even began to seem as though Moscow was not so very much dirtier than Berlin, and the Kremlin with its gold-domed churches was finer than anything that the Germans had ever dreamed of. It was something else that had really played on his nerves: the military agent at the Russian embassy, to whom Fandorin had transmitted a sealed package, had ordered him to travel no further and await the arrival of secret correspondence for delivery to Vienna. The waiting had stretched into a week, and Erast Fandorin had grown weary of sauntering along the shady Unter den Linden, and weary of admiring the plump swans in the Berlin parks.

The same story was repeated in Vienna, only this time he had been obliged to wait five days for a package destined for the military agent in Paris. Erast Fandorin had fretted nervously, imagining that ‘Miss Olsen,’ not having received any word from her Hippolyte, must have moved out of the hotel and now it would never be possible to find her again. To calm his nerves Fandorin had spent long periods sitting in the cafes, eating large numbers of sweet almond pastries and drinking cream soda by the liter.

When it came to Paris, he had taken matters into his own hands, calling into the Russian legation for just five minutes, handing the documents to the colonel from the embassy, and declaring that he was on a special assignment and could not delay even for an hour. To punish himself for the fruitless waste of so much time he had not even looked around Paris, beyond taking a drive in a fiacre along the boulevards that had been so recently extended by Baron Haussmann, and then going straight to the Gare du Nord. There would be time for all that afterward, on his return journey.

AT A QUARTER TO TEN Erast Fandorin was already seated in the foyer of the Winter Queen Hotel, having concealed himself behind a copy of The Times with a hole pierced in it for purposes of observation. Waiting outside was a cab prudently hired in advance. Following instructions received, the porter demonstratively avoided looking in the direction of the guest who was rather overdressed for summer, even striving to turn his back on him completely.

At three minutes past ten the bell jangled, the door swung open, and a giant of a man clad in gray livery entered. It was him, the butler, John Karlovich! Fandorin pressed his eye up against a page bearing a description of a ball given by the Prince of Wales.

The porter cast a furtive glance at Mr. van Dorn, who had become so engrossed in his reading, and the villain even began raising and lowering his shaggy eyebrows, but fortunately the object of study either failed to notice this or else he regarded it as beneath his dignity to look around.

The waiting cab proved most opportune, for it turned out that the butler had not arrived on foot but in an ‘egotist,’ a single-seater carriage, to which a sturdy little black horse was harnessed. No less opportune was the persistent drizzle, which obliged John Karlovich to raise the carriage’s leather hood, so that now, no matter how hard he might try, he would be unable to detect anyone shadowing him.

Evincing not the slightest sign of surprise at the order to follow the man in gray livery, the cabby cracked his long whip, and phase one of the plan was under way.

It grew dark. The streetlamps were lit, but not knowing London, Erast Fandorin very quickly lost his bearings among the tangle of identical stone buildings in this alien, menacingly silent city. After a certain time the houses became lower and more scattered, and he thought he could see the indistinct outlines of trees drifting through the gloom. After another fifteen minutes there were large detached houses surrounded by gardens. The ‘egotist’ halted at one of these and disgorged a giant silhouette, which opened the tall barred gates. Leaning out of the cab, Fandorin saw the small carriage drive inside, following which the gates were closed again.

The quick-witted cabby stopped his horse, then looked around and asked, “Should I report this journey to the police, sir?”

“Here’s a crown for you, and decide that question for yourself,” replied Erast Fandorin, deciding that he would not ask the driver to wait—he was too smart by half. And Fandorin had no idea when he would be going back. Ahead lay total uncertainty.

Slipping over the fence proved to be quite simple—in his schooldays at the gymnasium he had overcome higher obstacles.

The garden menaced him with its shadows and poked him inhospitably in the face with its branches. Ahead through the trees he could make out the vague white form of a two-story house surmounted by a hipped roof. Attempting to crunch as quietly as possible, Fandorin stole as far as the final bushes (they smelled like lilac—probably it was some English kind of lilac) and surveyed the lay of the land. It was not just a house, rather more like a villa. There was a lantern over the door. The windows on the first floor were brightly lit, but it looked as though the domestic offices were located there. Far more interesting was a lighted window on the second floor (at this point he recalled that for some reason the English referred to it as the ‘first floor’), but how could he get up to it? Fortunately there was a drainpipe running close beside it, and the wall was overgrown with some kind of climbing vegetation that appeared to have taken a solid grip. The skills of his recent childhood might prove useful once again.

Like a black shadow Erast Fandorin dashed across to the wall and gave the drainpipe a shake. It seemed secure and it didn’t rattle. Since it was vitally important not to make any noise, the ascent proceeded more slowly than Erast Fandorin would have wished. Eventually his foot found the projecting ledge that encircled the second floor of the house most conveniently, and taking a cautious grip on the ivy—wild vine, liana, whatever the hell these serpentine stems were called—Fandorin began edging his way in tiny steps toward the cherished goal of the window.

For one instant he was overwhelmed by bitter disappointment—there was no one in the room. A lamp with a pink shade illuminated an elegant writing desk with some papers, and in the corner he thought he could see the white form of a bed. Erast Fandorin waited for about five minutes, but nothing happened except that a fat moth settled on the lamp, its shaggy wings fluttering. Would he really have to climb back down again? Or should he take a risk and clamber inside? He gave the window frame a gentle push and it swung open slightly. Fandorin hesitated, berating himself for his indecision and procrastination, but he had been right to delay, for just then the door opened and a man and a woman entered the room. At the sight of the woman Erast Fandorin very nearly gave a whoop of triumph—it was Bezhetskaya! With her smoothly combed black hair tied back with a red ribbon, in a lacy peignoir over which she had thrown a brightly colored Gypsy shawl, to his eyes she appeared blindingly beautiful. Oh, such a woman could be forgiven any transgressions!

Turning toward the man—his face remained in shadow, but to judge from his stature it was Morbid—Amalia Bezhetskaya spoke in impeccable English (a spy, most indubitably a spy!). “So it was definitely him?”

“Yes, ma’am. Absolutely no doubt about it.”

“How can you be so certain? Did you actually see him?”

“No, ma’am. Franz was keeping watch there today. He informed me that the boy arrived at seven o’clock. The description matched perfectly; even your guess about the mustache was correct.”

Bezhetskaya laughed her clear, musical laugh. “Nevertheless, we must not underestimate him, John. This boy is one of the lucky breed, and I know that kind of person very well—they are unpredictable and very dangerous.”

Erast Fandorin’s heart sank. Surely they could not be talking about him? No, it was impossible.

“Nothing simpler, ma’am. You only have to say the word…Franz and I will go over there and finish him off. Room fifteen, on the second floor.”

They were talking about him! Erast Fandorin was staying in room number fifteen on the third floor (the second floor English style). But how had they found out? From where? Fandorin tore off his ignominious, useless mustache, ignoring the pain.

Amalia Bezhetskaya, or whatever her real name might be, frowned, and a harsh metallic note sounded in her voice. “Don’t you dare! It’s my fault, and I shall correct my own mistake. For once in my life I trusted a man…but I am surprised that we did not get word of his arrival from the embassy.”

Fandorin was all ears now. They had their own people in the Russian embassy! Well, well, well! And Ivan Brilling had been doubtful. Say who, say it!

But Bezhetskaya began talking of other matters. “Are there any letters?”

“Three today, ma’am.” The butler handed over the envelopes with a bow.

“Good. You may go to bed, John. I shall not require you any further today.” She stifled a yawn.

When the door closed behind Mr. Morbid, Amalia Bezhetskaya tossed the letters carelessly on the bureau and walked over to the window. Fandorin shrank back behind the projecting masonry, his heart pounding furiously. Gazing out blankly into the murky drizzle with her huge black eyes, Bezhetskaya (if not for the glass, he could have reached out and touched her) muttered pensively in Russian, “How deadly boring, God help me. Stuck in this miserable place…”

Then she began behaving very strangely. She went up to a frivolous wall lamp in the form of a Cupid and pressed the god of love’s bronze navel. The engraving hanging beside it (it appeared to be a hunting scene of some kind) slid soundlessly to one side, revealing a small copper door with a round handle. Bezhetskaya freed a slim, naked hand from its gauzy sleeve, turned the handle this way and that, and the door opened with a melodic thrumming sound. Erast Fandorin pressed his nose against the windowpane, afraid of missing the most important part of the action.

Amalia Bezhetskaya, looking more than ever like an Egyptian queen, reached gracefully into the safe, took something out of it, and turned around. She was holding a light blue velvet attaché case.

She sat down at the bureau, extracted a large yellow envelope from the attaché case, and from the envelope she extracted a sheet of paper covered in fine writing. She slit open the newly received letters with a knife and copied something from them onto the paper. It all took no longer than two minutes. Then, having replaced the letters and the sheet of paper in the attaché case, Bezhetskaya lit a pakhitoska and inhaled deeply several times, gazing pensively into space.

The hand with which Erast Fandorin was gripping the vegetation had gone numb, the handle of his Colt was sticking painfully into his side, and his feet had begun to ache from being so unnaturally splayed. He could not continue standing in that position for long.

Eventually Cleopatra extinguished her pakhitoska, stood up, and withdrew into the dimly lit far corner of the room, where a low door opened then closed again, and then there was the sound of running water. Evidently that was where the bathroom was located.

The blue attaché case remained lying enticingly on the writing desk, and women, as everyone knows, spend a long time over their evening toilette…Fandorin pushed against the window frame, set his knee on the windowsill, and in an instant was inside the room. Glancing now and again in the direction of the bathroom, from where he could still hear the sound of running water, he set about relieving the attaché case of its contents.

It proved to contain a large bundle of letters and the envelope he had already seen. Written on the envelope was an address:

MR. NICHOLAS M. CROOG, POSTS RESTANTE

L’HOTEL DES POSTES, S.-PETERSBOURG, RUSSIE

This was already progress. Inside the envelope there were sheets of paper divided into columns and squares containing English writing in the slanting hand now so familiar to Erast Fandorin. The first column contained some kind of number, the second the name of a country, the third a rank or title, the fourth a date, and the fifth another date—different dates in June in ascending numerical order. For instance, the last three entries, which to judge from the ink had only just been made, appeared as follows:

N°1053F

Brazil head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard

sent 30 May

received 28 June 1876

N°825F

United States of America deputy chairman of a Senate committee

sent 10 June

received 28 June 1876

N°354F

Germany chairman of the district court

sent 25 June

received 28 June 1876

Wait! The letters that had arrived at the hotel for Miss Olsen today had been from Rio de Janeiro, Washington, and Stuttgart. Erast Fan-dorin rummaged through the bundle of letters and found the one from Brazil. It contained a sheet of paper with no salutation or signature, nothing but a single line of writing:

30 May, head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard, N°1053F.

So for some reason Bezhetskaya was copying the contents of the letters she received onto sheets of paper that she then sent to a certain Nikolai Croog in St. Petersburg, or rather Mr. Nicholas Croog. To what end? And why to St. Petersburg? What could it all mean?

The questions came thick and fast, jostling each other for space in his mind, but he had no time to deal with them—the water had stopped running in the bathroom. Fandorin hastily stuffed the papers back into the attaché case, but it was too late to retreat to the window. A slim white figure was already standing motionless in the doorway.

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.