The Winter Queen

CHAPTER FOUR

which tells of the ruinous power of beauty

SHORTLY AFTER TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING the following day, Erast Fandorin, endowed not only with his chief’s blessing but also with three rubles for exceptional expenses, arrived at the yellow university building on Mokhovaya Street. His mission was simple enough in principle but would require a certain degree of luck: to locate a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat pimply student with a slouch and a pince-nez on a silk ribbon. It was entirely possible that this suspicious individual did not study at the premises on Mokhovaya Street at all but in the Higher Technical College or the Forestry Academy or some other institute of learning, but Xavier Grushin (regarding his young assistant with a mixture of astonishment and joy) had concurred wholeheartedly in Fandorin’s surmise that in all probability the ‘sloucher,’ like the deceased Kokorin, pursued his studies at the university, and there was a very good chance that he did so in the self-same Faculty of Law.

Dressed in his civilian clothes, Fandorin dashed headlong up the cast-iron steps of the front porch, rushed past the bearded attendant in green livery, and took up a convenient position in the semicircular window embrasure—a vantage point that afforded an excellent view of the vestibule, with its cloakroom, and the courtyard, and even the entrances to both wings of the building. For the first time since his father had died and the young man’s life had been diverted from the clear road straight ahead, Erast Fandorin beheld the venerable yellow walls of the university without an aching in his heart for what might have been. Who could say which mode of existence was the more fascinating and more useful for society: the book learning of a student or the grueling life of a detective pursuing an investigation into an important and dangerous case? (Well, perhaps not dangerous, exactly, but certainly crucially important and highly mysterious.)

Approximately one out of every four students who hove into this attentive observer’s field of view was wearing a pince-nez, and in many cases it hung precisely on a silk ribbon. Approximately one student out of every five was sporting a certain quantity of pimples about his face. Nor was there any shortage of students with a slouch. However, all three of these features seemed stubbornly disinclined to combine together in the person of a single individual.

When it was already after one o’clock, Erast Fandorin extracted a salami sandwich from his pocket and fortified himself without leaving his post. By this time he had succeeded in establishing thoroughly amicable relations with the bearded doorkeeper, who told Fandorin to call him Mitrich and had already imparted to the young man several extremely valuable pieces of advice concerning entry to the ‘nuversity.’ Fandorin, who had represented himself to the garrulous old man as a young provincial cherishing fond dreams of buttons adorned with the university crest, was already wondering whether or not he ought to change his story and interrogate Mitrich directly about the pimpled sloucher, when the doorman suddenly became animated, grabbing the peaked cap off his head and pulling open the door—this was Mitrich’s regular procedure whenever one of the professors or rich students passed by, for which he would every now and again receive a kopeck or perhaps even a five-kopeck piece. Glancing around, Erast Fandorin noticed a student approaching the exit, clad in a sumptuous velvet cloak newly retrieved from the cloakroom, with clasps in the form of lion’s feet. Gleaming on the bridge of the fop’s nose was a pince-nez, and adorning his forehead was a scattering of pink pimples. Fandorin strained hard in order to diagnose the condition of this student’s posture, but the confounded cape of the cloak and its raised collar thwarted his efforts.

“Good evening, Nikolai Stepanovich. Would you like me to call you a cab?” the doorkeeper said with a bow.

“Tell me, Mitrich, has it stopped raining yet?” the pimply student inquired in a high-pitched voice. “Then I’ll take a stroll. I’m tired of sitting.” And he dropped a coin into the outstretched palm from between the finger and thumb of his white-gloved hand.

“Who’s that?” Fandorin asked in a whisper, straining his eyes to follow the dandy’s receding back. “Doesn’t he have a bit of a slouch?”

“Nikolai Stepanich Akhtyrtsev. Rich as they come, royal blood,” Mitrich declared reverentially. “Doles out at least fifteen kopecks every time.”

Fandorin suddenly felt feverish. Akhtyrtsev! Surely he was the one who had been named as executor in Kokorin’s will!

Mitrich bowed respectfully to yet another teacher, the long-haired lecturer in physics, and on turning back discovered to his surprise that the respectable young provincial gentleman had vanished into thin air.

THE BLACK VELVET CLOAK was easily visible from a distance, and Fandorin had overtaken his suspect in a trice but he hesitated to hail him by name. What accusation could he actually put to him? Even supposing he were to be identified by the shopkeeper Kukin and the spinster Pfühl (at this point Erast Fandorin sighed heavily as he recalled Lizanka yet again for the umpteenth time), then what of it? Would it not be better to follow the guidance of the great Fouché,* that incomparable luminary of criminal investigation, and shadow the object of his interest?

No sooner said than done. Especially as shadowing the student proved to be quite easy: Akhtyrtsev was strolling at a leisurely pace in the direction of Tverskaya Street, without looking around, merely glancing after the pretty young milliners every now and then. Several times Erast Fandorin boldly stole up very close to the student and even heard him carelessly whistling Smith’s serenade from The Fair Maid of Perth. The failed suicide (if, indeed, this were he) was clearly in the most cheerful of moods. The student halted outside Korf’s tobacco shop and spent a long time surveying the boxes of cigars in the window, but he did not go in.

Fandorin was beginning to feel convinced that his mark was idling away the minutes until some appointed time. This conviction was reinforced when Akhtyrtsev took out a gold pocket watch and nicked open its lid, then increased his pace as he set off up the sidewalk, switching into a rendition of the more decisive ‘Boys’ Chorus’ from the new-style opera Carmen.

Turning into Kamergersky Lane, the student stopped whistling and stepped out so briskly that Erast Fandorin was obliged to drop back a little, otherwise it would have looked too suspicious. Fortunately, before he reached the fashionable ladies’ salon of Darzans, the mark slowed his pace and shortly thereafter came to a complete halt. Fandorin crossed over to the opposite side of the street and took up his post beside a bakery that breathed out the fragrant aromas of fancy pastries.

For about fifteen minutes, perhaps even twenty, Akhtyrtsev, displaying ever more obvious signs of nervousness, strode to and fro in front of the decorative oak doors of the shop, into which from time to time busy-looking ladies disappeared and from which deliverymen emerged bearing elegantly wrapped bundles and boxes. Waiting in a line along the pavement were several carriages, some even with coats of arms on their lacquered doors. At seventeen minutes past two (Erast Fandorin noted the time from a clock in the shop window) the student suddenly roused himself and dashed over to a slim, elegant lady wearing a short veil, who had emerged from the shop. Doffing his peaked cap, he began saying something, gesturing with his arms. Fandorin crossed the road with an expression of boredom on his face—after all, why should he not also wish to drop into Darzans?

“I have no time for you just at present,” he heard the lady declare in a clear voice. She was dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, in a dress of lilac watered silk with a train. “Later. Come after seven, as usual. Everything will be decided there.”

Paying no more attention to the agitated Akhtyrtsev, she walked off toward a two-seater phaeton with an open roof.

“But, Amalia! Amalia Kazimirovna, by your leave!” the student called out after her. “I was rather counting on a discussion in private.”

“Later, later!” the lady flung back at him. “I’m in a hurry at the moment!”

A faint breath of wind lifted the light, gauzy veil from her face, and Erast Fandorin froze in astonishment. He had seen those languid, night-black eyes, that Egyptian oval face, those capriciously curving lips before, and once seen, such a face can never be forgotten. It was she, the mysterious A.B., who had bidden the unfortunate Kokorin never to forswear his love! Now the case was certainly assuming a completely different complexion.

Akhtyrtsev halted in dismay on the pavement, his head drawn back gracelessly into his shoulders (a slouch, a quite distinct slouch, Erast Fandorin noted conclusively), and meanwhile the phaeton unhurriedly bore the Egyptian queen away in the direction of Petrovka Street. Fandorin had to make a decision, and judging that the student would be easy enough to locate again, he abandoned him to his fate and set off at a run toward the corner of Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street, where a line of taxi-cabs was standing.

“Police,” he hissed at the drowsy Ivan in a peaked cap and padded caftan. “Quick, follow that carriage! And get a move on! Don’t worry, you’ll be paid the full fare.”

His Ivan drew himself up, pushed back his sleeves with exaggerated zeal, shook the reins, gave a bark, and his dappled nag set off, its hoofs clip-clopping loudly against the cobbles of the road.

At the corner of Rozhdestvenka Street a dray carrying a load of planks swung out across the roadway, blocking it completely. In extreme agitation Erast Fandorin leapt to his feet and even rose up on the tips of his toes, gazing after the phaeton, which had slipped through ahead of the obstruction. He was fortunate in just managing to catch a glimpse of it as it turned onto Bolshaya Lubyanka Street.

Never mind, God was merciful. They caught up with the phaeton at Sretenka Street, just as it plunged into a narrow and hunchbacked side street. The wheels of the cab began bouncing over potholes. Fandorin saw the phaeton halt, and he prodded his cabby in the back to tell him to drive on and not give the game away. He deliberately turned to face the opposite direction, but out of the very corner of his eye he saw the lilac lady being greeted with a bow from some tall, liveried servant at the entrance to a neat little stone mansion. Around the first corner Erast Fandorin let his cab go and set off slowly in the direction from which he had come, as if he were out for a stroll. This time as he approached the neat little mansion he was able to take a good look at it: a mezzanine with a green roof, curtains covering the windows, a front porch with a projecting roof. But he was unable to discern any brass plaque on the door.

There was, however, a yardkeeper in an apron and a battered peaked cap sitting in idle boredom on a bench by the wall. It was toward him that Erast Fandorin directed his steps.

“Tell me, my friend,” he began as he approached, extracting twenty kopecks of state funds from his pocket, “whose house is this?”

“That’s no secret,” the yardkeeper replied vaguely, following the movement of Fandorin’s fingers with interest.

“Take that. Who was that lady who arrived not long ago?”

The yardkeeper took the money and replied gravely, “The house belongs to General Maslov’s wife, only she doesn’t live here—she rents it out. And the lady is the tenant, Miss Bezhetskaya, Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya.”

“And who is she?” Erast Fandorin pressed him. “Has she been living here long? Does she have many visitors?”

The yardkeeper stared at him in silence, chewing on his lips. Some incomprehensible process was working itself out in his brain.

“I’ll tell you what, boss,” he said, rising to his feet and suddenly seizing tight hold of Fandorin’s sleeve. “You just hang on a moment.”

He dragged the vainly resisting Fandorin across to the porch and gave a tug on the clapper of a small bronze bell.

“What are you doing?” the horrified sleuth exclaimed, making futile attempts to free himself. “I’ll show you…Have you any idea who…”

The door opened and the doorway was filled by a tall servant in livery with immense, sandy-colored side-whiskers and a clean-shaven chin. It was clear at a glance that he was no Russian.

“He’s been snooping around asking questions about Amalia Kazimirovna,” the villainous yardkeeper reported in a sugary voice. “And offering money, too, sir. I didn’t take it, sir. So what I thought, John Karlich, was…”

The butler (for a butler is what he was, since he was an Englishman) ran the impassive gaze of his small, sharp eyes over the prisoner, handed the Judas a silver fifty-kopeck piece, and moved aside slightly to make way.

“Really, this is all nothing but a misunderstanding!” said Fandorin, still struggling to collect his wits. He switched into English: “It’s ridiculous, a complete misunderstanding!”

“Oh, no, please do go in, sir, please do,” the yardkeeper droned from behind him, and to make quite sure he grabbed hold of Fandorin’s other sleeve and shoved him in through the door.

Erast Fandorin found himself in a rather wide hallway opposite a stuffed bear holding a silver tray for receiving visiting cards. The shaggy beast’s small glass eyes contemplated the collegiate registrar’s predicament without the slightest trace of sympathy.

“Who? What for?” the butler asked succinctly in strongly accented Russian, entirely ignoring Fandorin’s perfectly good English.

Erast Fandorin said nothing, under no circumstances wishing to reveal the secret of his identity.

“What’s the matter, John?” Fandorin heard a clear voice that was already familiar to him ask in English. Standing on the carpeted stairs that must lead to the mezzanine was the mistress of the house, who had already removed her hat and veil.

“Aha, the young brunet!” she exclaimed in a mocking tone, turning toward Fandorin, who was devouring her with his eyes. “I spotted you back there on Kamergersky Lane. One really should not glare at strange ladies in that way! Clever, though I must say, you managed to follow me! Are you a student or just another idle ne’er-do-well?”

“Fandorin, Erast Petrovich,” he introduced himself, uncertain what else to add, but Cleopatra had apparently already found a satisfactory explanation for his appearance.

“I do like the bold ones,” she said with a laugh, “especially when they’re so good-looking. But it’s not nice to spy on people. If you find my person so very interesting, then come this evening—all sorts of people come visiting here. You will be quite able to satisfy your curiosity then. But wear tails. The manners in my house are free, but men who are not in the military must wear tails—that’s the law.”

WHEN EVENING ARRIVED it found Erast Fandorin fully equipped. It was true, certainly, that his father’s tailcoat had proved to be a little broad for him in the shoulders, but the splendid Agrafena Kondratievna, the provincial secretary’s wife from whom Fandorin rented his little room, had pinned it in along the seams and it had really turned out quite respectable, especially if he did not button it. An extensive wardrobe, containing five pairs of white gloves alone, was the only property that the failed bank investor had bequeathed to his son. The items that looked best on him were the silk waistcoat from Burgess and the patent leather shoes from Pironet. The almost new top hat from Blanc was not too bad either, except that it tended to creep down over his eyes. But that was all right—hand it to the servant at the door and the problem was solved. Erast Fandorin decided not to take a cane; he felt that would be in rather bad taste. He rotated in front of the chipped mirror in the dark hallway and was pleased by what he saw, above all by the waistline that was maintained so ideally by the strict Lord Byron. In his waistcoat pocket lay a silver ruble, provided by Xavier Grushin for a bouquet (“a decent one, but nothing too fancy”). What kind of fancy bouquet would a ruble get you? Erast Fandorin sighed to himself, and he decided to add fifty kopecks of his own—then he could afford Parma violets.

The bouquet meant that he had to go without a cab, and Erast Fandorin did not arrive at the palace of Cleopatra (the sobriquet which suited Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya best of all) until a quarter past eight.

The guests were already assembled. While he was still in the front hall after being admitted by the maid, Fandorin heard the droning of a large number of men’s voices, punctuated every now and again by that voice, with its magical, silver-and-crystal tones. Lingering for a second at the threshold, Erast Fandorin gathered his courage and strode in with a distinct nonchalance, hoping to produce the impression of an experienced man of the world. He need not have bothered—no one even turned to look at the new arrival.

Fandorin’s gaze encountered a hall furnished with comfortable morocco leather divans, velvet chairs, and elegant little tables—it was all very stylish and modern. At the center, her feet planted on a tiger-skin rug, stood the mistress of the house, dressed in Spanish costume—a scarlet dress with a corsage and a crimson camellia set in her hair. She looked so lovely that Fandorin caught his breath. He did not immediately examine the guests, merely registering the fact that they were all men and that Akhtyrtsev was there, sitting somewhat apart from the others and looking terribly pale.

“Ah, here is the new admirer,” Bezhetskaya announced, glancing with an ironic smile in Fandorin’s direction. “That makes it a perfect baker’s dozen. I shan’t introduce everybody—it would take too long. You must tell us your name. I recall that you are a student, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Fandorin,” Erast Fandorin squeaked in a voice that trembled treacherously, then repeated the name again, more firmly, “Fandorin.”

Everybody glanced across at him but only cursorily; it was evident that the newly arrived young fellow did not really interest them. It quite soon became clear that in this company there was only one center of interest. The guests scarcely spoke to one another at all, addressing themselves predominantly to their hostess. Each of them, even a grave-looking old man wearing a diamond star, vied with the others to achieve a single goal—to attract her attention and eclipse the others, if only for an instant. There were only two who behaved differently—the taciturn Akhtyrtsev, who swigged incessantly from a bottle of champagne, and an officer of the hussars, a well-set-up young fellow with a slight slant to his eyes and a smile that was all white teeth and black mustache. He gave the appearance of being rather bored and hardly even looked at Amalia Bezhetskaya, contemplating the other guests with a wry grin of contempt. Cleopatra clearly favored this rascal, calling him simply ‘Hippolyte,’ and on a couple of occasions she cast him a glance that sent a melancholy pang through Erast Fandorin’s heart.

Suddenly he roused himself. A certain plump gentleman with a white cross hanging around his neck had just taken advantage of a pause to interpose his word. “Amalia Kazimirovna, you recently forbade us to gossip about Kokorin, but I have learned something rather curious.”

He stopped for a moment, pleased by the effect this had produced, and everyone turned to look at him.

“Don’t be so tiresome, Anton Ivanovich, tell us,” said a fat man with a high forehead who looked like a prosperous lawyer.

“Yes, don’t be tiresome.” The others took up the refrain.

“He didn’t simply shoot himself, it was a case of American roulette, or so the governor-general whispered to me today in the chancellery,” the plump gentleman informed them in a meaningful tone of voice. “Do you know what that is?”

“It’s common knowledge,” said Hippolyte, shrugging his shoulders.

“You take a revolver and put in one cartridge. It’s stupid but exciting. A shame the Americans thought of it before we did.”

“But what has that to do with roulette, Count?” the old man with the diamond star asked, mystified.

“Odds or evens, red or black, anything but zero!” Akhtyrtsev cried out and burst into loud, unnatural laughter, gazing challengingly at Amalia Bezhetskaya (or at least so it seemed to Fandorin).

“I warned you that I would throw out anyone who mentioned that,” said their hostess, now angry in earnest, “and banish them from my house forever! A fine subject for gossip!”

An awkward silence fell.

“But you won’t dare banish me from the house,” Akhtyrtsev declared in the same familiar tone. “I would say I have earned the right to speak my mind freely.”

“And how exactly, may I inquire?” interjected a stocky captain in a guards uniform.

“By getting plastered, the snot-nosed pup,” said Hippolyte (whom the old man had addressed as ‘count’), deliberately attempting to provoke a scandal. “With your permission, Amelia, I’ll take him outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“When I require your intervention, Hippolyte Alexandrovich, you may be sure that I shall request it,” Cleopatra replied with a hint of malice, and the confrontation was nipped in the bud. “I’ll tell you what, gentlemen. Since there is no interesting conversation to be got out of you, let’s play a game of forfeits. Last time when Frol Lukich lost, it was quite amusing to see him embroidering that flower and pricking his poor fingers so badly with the needle!”

Everyone laughed merrily, apart from one bearded gentleman with a bobbed haircut whose tailcoat sat on him slightly askew.

“Well, my dear Amalia Kazimirovna, you’ve had your fun at the old merchant’s expense…Serves me right for being such a fool,” he said humbly, with a northern provincial accent. “But honest traders always pay their debts. The other day we risked our dignity in front of you, so today why don’t you take the risk?”

“Why, the commercial counselor is quite right!” exclaimed the lawyer. “A fine mind! Let Amalia Kazimirovna show some courage. Gentlemen, a proposal! Whichever one of us draws the forfeit will ask our radiant one to…well…to do something quite extraordinary.”

“Quite right! Bravo!” The cries came from all sides.

“Could this be rebellion? Pugachev’s revolt?” Their dazzling hostess laughed. “What on earth do you want from me?”

“I know!” put in Akhtyrtsev. “A candid answer to any question. No prevaricating, no playing cat and mouse. And it must be tête—à—tête.”

“Why tête—à—tête?” protested the captain. “Everybody will be curious to hear.”

“If ‘everybody’ is to hear, then it won’t be candid,” said Bezhetskaya with a twinkle in her eye. “Very well, then, let us play at being candid—have it your way. But will the lucky winner not be afraid to hear the truth from me? The truth could prove rather unpalatable.”

Rolling his r like a true Parisian, the count interjected: “J’en ai le frisson d’y penser.* To hell with the truth, gentlemen. Who needs it? Why don’t we have a game of American roulette instead? Well—not tempted?”

“Hippolyte, I believe I warned you!” The goddess hurled her thunderbolt at him. “I shall not say it again! Not a single word about that!”

Hippolyte instantly fell silent and even spread his arms wide as if to show that his lips were sealed.

Meanwhile, the adroit captain was already collecting forfeits in his cap. Erast Fandorin put in his father’s cambric handkerchief with the monogram P.F.

Plump Anton Ivanovich was entrusted with making the draw.

First he drew out of the cap the cigar that he himself had placed there and asked ingratiatingly, “What am I bid for this fine thing?”

“The hole from a doughnut,” replied Cleopatra, with her face turned toward the wall, and everyone except the plump gentleman laughed in malicious delight.

“And for this?” Anton Ivanovich indifferently drew out the captain’s silver pencil.

“Last year’s snow.”

Then came a medallion watch (‘a fish’s ears’), a playing card (‘mes condoléances), some phosphorous matches (‘Napoleon’s right eye’), an amber cigarette holder (‘much ado about nothing’), a hundred-ruble banknote (‘three times nothing’), a tortoiseshell comb (‘four times nothing’), a grape (‘Orest Kirillovich’s thick locks’—prolonged laughter at the expense of an absolutely bald gentleman wearing the order of St. Vladimir in his buttonhole), a carnation (‘to that one—never, not for anything’). Only two forfeits remained in the cap: Erast Fandorin’s handkerchief and Akhtyrtsev’s gold ring. When the ring gleamed and sparkled in the caller’s fingers, the student leaned forward urgently, and Fandorin saw beads of sweat stand out on the pimply forehead.

“Shall I give it to this one, then?” drawled Amalia Bezhetskaya, who was clearly a little bored with amusing her public. Akhtyrtsev rose halfway to his feet, unable to believe his luck, and lifted the pince-nez off his nose. “But, no, I don’t think so—not this one, the final one,” their tormentress concluded.

Everyone turned toward Erast Fandorin, paying serious attention to him for the first time. During the preceding minutes, as his chances had improved, his mind had been working ever more frantically to decide what he should do if he won. Now his doubts had been settled. It must be fate.

And then Akhtyrtsev jumped to his feet, came running over to him, and whispered fervently, “Let me have it, I implore you. What is it to you…you’re here for the first time, but my fate depends on it…Sell it to me, at least. How much? Do you want five hundred? A thousand? More?”

With a calm decisiveness that surprised even him, Erast Fandorin pushed the whispering student aside, walked over to their hostess, and asked with a bow, “Where shall we go?”

She looked at Fandorin with amused curiosity. Her stare set his head spinning.

“Over there will do—in the corner. I should be afraid to go somewhere alone with anyone as bold as you.”

Disregarding the mocking laughter of the others, Erast Fandorin followed her to the far corner of the hall and lowered himself onto a divan with a carved wooden back. Amalia Kazimirovna set apakhitosa in a silver cigarette holder, lit it from a candle, and inhaled deliriously.

“Well, and how much did Nikolai Stepanich offer you for me? I could tell what he was whispering to you.”

“A thousand rubles,” Fandorin replied honestly, “and then he offered more.”

Cleopatra’s agate eyes glinted maliciously. “Oho, how very impatient he is! So you must be a millionaire?”

“No, I’m not rich,” Erast Fandorin said modestly. “But I consider it dishonorable to sell my luck.”

The other guests grew weary of trying to eavesdrop on their conversation—they could not hear anything in any case—and they broke up into small groups and struck up conversations of their own, although from time to time every one of them kept glancing over at the far corner.

Meanwhile, Cleopatra surveyed her temporary lord and sovereign with frank derision. “What do you wish to ask about?”

Erast Fandorin hesitated. “Will the answer be honest?”

“Honesty is for the honest, and in our games there is but little honesty.” Bezhetskaya laughed with a barely perceptible hint of bitterness. “I can promise candor, though. But please don’t disappoint me by asking anything stupid. I regard you as an interesting specimen.”

Fandorin hurled himself recklessly into the attack. “What do you know about the death of Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin?”

His hostess was not frightened—she did not flinch—but Erast Fandorin imagined that he saw her eyes narrow for an instant. “Why do you want to know that?”

“I will explain afterward. First answer the question.”

“All right, I will. Kokorin was killed by a certain very cruel lady.” Bezhetskaya lowered her thick black lashes for a moment and from beneath them darted a rapid, scorching glance at him, like a rapier thrust. “And that lady goes by the name of love.”

“Love for you? Did he used to come here?”

“He did. And apart from me I believe there is no one here with whom to fall in love. Except perhaps Orest Kirillovich.” She laughed.

“And do you feel no pity at all for Kokorin?” asked Fandorin, amazed at such callousness.

The queen of Egypt shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Everyone is master of his own fate. But is that not enough questions for you?”

“No,” Erast Fandorin said hurriedly. “How was Akhtyrtsev involved? And what is the significance of the bequest to Lady Astair?”

The buzz of voices suddenly grew louder, and Fandorin glanced around in annoyance.

“You don’t care for my tone?” Hippolyte asked in a thunderous voice, harassing the drunken Akhtyrtsev. “Then how do you care for this, my dear fellow?” And he shoved the student’s forehead with the palm of his hand, apparently without any great strength, but the miserable Akhtyrtsev went flying back against an armchair, plumped down into it, and stayed sitting there, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.

“By your leave, Count, but this will not do!” said Erast Fandorin, dashing across. “You may be stronger, but that does not give you any right…”

However, his faltering speech, at which the count had scarcely even glanced around, was drowned out by the resounding tones of the mistress of the house.

“Hippolyte! Get out! And do not dare set foot in here again until you are sober!”

The count swore and stomped off toward the door. The other guests gazed curiously at the wretchedly abject, limp form of Akhtyrtsev, who was not making the slightest effort to rise to his feet.

“You are the only one here who is anything like a man,” Amalia Kazimirovna whispered to Fandorin, as she set off toward the corridor. “Take him away. And be sure to stay with him.”

Almost immediately the lanky butler John appeared, having exchanged his livery for a black frock coat and starched shirtfront. He helped to get Akhtyrtsev as far as the door and then rammed his top hat onto his head. Bezhetskaya did not come out to take her leave, and a glance at the butler’s dour face told Erast Fandorin that he had best be on his way.