The Winter Queen (15 page)

And then Fandorin played his trump card.

“Not the mill and not even the money! Do you remember the inventory of their property? I didn’t pay any attention to it at first either. Among his other companies Kokorin had a shipbuilding yard in Libava, and the armed forces place orders there—I made inquiries.”

“When did you find time for that?”

“While I was waiting for you. I sent an inquiry by telegraph to the Ministry of the Navy. They work a night shift there, too.”

“I see. Well, well. What else?”

“The fact that apart from his land, houses, and capital, Akhtyrtsev also had an oil well in Baku, from his aunt. I read in the newspapers that the English are dreaming of getting their hands on Caspian oil. And here you have it—by perfectly legal means! And see how securely planned it is: either the shipyard in Libava or the oil, in either case the English come out of it with something! You act as you wish, Ivan Franzevich,” said Fandorin, becoming impassioned, “but I won’t leave it at this. I’ll carry out all your assignments, but after work I’ll go digging for clues myself. And I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Brilling began gazing out the window again, and this time he was silent for even longer than before. Erast Fandorin was a bundle of raw nerves, but his character stood the test.

Finally Brilling sighed and began speaking—slowly, hesitantly, still thinking something through as he went along. “Most likely it’s all nonsense. Edgar Allan Poe, Eugene Sue. Meaningless coincidences. However, you are right about one thing—we won’t contact the English…We can’t act through our agent at the London embassy either. If you are mistaken—and you are most certainly mistaken—we shall make total fools of ourselves. If we are to assume that you are correct, the embassy will not be able to do anything in any case. The English will hide Bezhetskaya or tell us some pack of lies…And the hands of our embassy staff are tied—they’re too exposed…So it’s decided!” Ivan Brilling swung his fist energetically through the air. “Of course, Fandorin, you would have come in useful to me here, but, as the common folk say, love won’t be forced. I’ve read your file. I know you speak not only French but also German and English. Have your own way—go to London to see your femme fatale. I won’t impose any instructions on you—I believe in your intuition. I’ll give you one man in the embassy—Pyzhov is his name. His post is that of a humble clerk, like your own, but he deals with other matters. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs he is listed as a provincial secretary, but in our line he holds a different rank, a higher one. A gentleman of many and varied talents. When you get there, go straight to him. He is extremely efficient. I remain convinced, however, that your journey will be wasted. But in the final analysis you have earned the right to make a mistake. You’ll get a look at Europe, travel a bit at the state’s expense. Although I believe you now have means of your own?” Brilling squinted at the bundle lying unattended on a chair.

Erast Fandorin started, dumbfounded at these words.

“My apologies, those are my winnings. Nine thousand six hundred rubles—I counted them. I wanted to hand them in at the cashier’s office, but it was closed.”

“Why, dammit?” said Brilling dismissively. “Are you in your right mind? What do you think the cashier would write in the receipts ledger? Revenue from Collegiate Registrar Fandorin’s game of stoss?…Hmm, wait a moment. It’s not really proper for a mere registrar to go on a foreign assignment.”

He sat down at the desk, dipped a pen into the inkwell, and began writing, speaking the words aloud. “Now then. “Urgent telegram. To Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich Korchakov, personally. Copy to Adjutant General Lavrentii; Arkadievich Mizinov. Your Excellency, in the interests of a matter of which you are aware, and also in recognition of exceptional services rendered, I request you to promote Collegiate Registrar Erast Petrovich Fandorin immediately and without taking into account his length of service…” Ah, all right then, straight up to titular. Not such a very big cheese, either, but even so…“to titular counselor. I also request you to list Fandorin temporarily in the department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the post of diplomatic courier, first class.” That’s so that you won’t be delayed at the border,” Brilling explained. “Right. Date. Signature. By the way, you really will deliver diplomatic post along the way—to Berlin, Vienna, and Paris. For the sake of secrecy, in order not to arouse unnecessary suspicion. No objections?” Ivan Brilling’s eyes glinted mischievously.

“None at all,” Erast Fandorin mumbled, his thoughts still lagging behind the pace of events.

“And from Paris, already under a false identity, you will make your way to London. What was the name of that hotel?”

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.