The Winter Queen (3 page)

Erast Fandorin blushed, afraid that his impetuous suggestion of a mystery might appear too puerile, but Ivan Prokofievich failed to notice anything strange about the notion.

“You’re right there. We should at least have looked through the papers in the study,” he admitted. “Egor Nikiforich is always in a hurry. There’s eight of them in the family, so he always tries to sneak off home as quick as he can from inspections and investigations. He’s an old man—only a year to go to his pension—so what else can you expect…I’ll tell you what, Mr. Fandorin. What would you say to going around there yourself? We could take a look together. And then I’ll put up a new seal—that’s easy enough. Egor Nikiforich won’t take it amiss. Not in the least; he’ll only thank us for not bothering him one more time. I’ll tell him there was a request from the Division, eh?”

It seemed to Erast Fandorin that Ivan Prokofievich simply wished to examine the ‘posh’ apartment a bit more closely, and the idea of ‘putting up’ a new seal had not sounded too convincing either, but the temptation was simply too great. There truly was an air of mystery about this business…

Erast Fandorin was not greatly impressed by the decor of the deceased Pyotr Kokorin’s residence (
the piano nobile
of a rich apartment building beside the Prechistenskie Gates), since he himself had lived in mansions that were its equal during the period of his father’s precipitately acquired wealth. The collegiate registrar did not, therefore, linger in the marble entrance hall with the Venetian mirror three
arshins
* in height and the gilded molding on the ceiling, but strode straight through into the drawing room, a lavish interior with a row of six windows, decorated in the highly fashionable Russian Style, with brightly painted wooden trunks, carved oak on the walls, and a smart tiled stove.

“Didn’t I say he had a taste for stylish living?” Fandorin’s guide said to the back of his head, for some reason speaking in a whisper.

At this point Fandorin bore a remarkable resemblance to a year-old setter who has been allowed out into the forest for the first time and is crazed by the pungent and alluring scent of nearby game. Turning his head to the right and the left, he unerringly identified his target.

“That door over there, is that the study?”

“It is indeed, sir.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

The leather blotter was not long in the seeking. It was lying in the center of a massive writing desk, between a malachite inkstand and a mother-of-pearl shell that served as an ashtray. But before Fandorin could lay his impatient hands on the squeaky brown leather, his gaze fell on a portrait photograph set in a silver frame that was standing in the most conspicuous position on the desk. The face in the portrait was so remarkable that it completely drove all thought of the blotter from Fandorin’s mind. Gazing out at him in semiprofile was a veritable Cleopatra with a dense mane of hair and immense black eyes, her long neck set in a haughty curve and a slight hint of cruelty evident in the willful line of her mouth. Above all the collegiate registrar was bewitched by her expression of calm and confident authority, so unexpected on a girl’s face (for some reason Fandorin very decidedly wanted her to be a girl, and not a married lady).

“She’s a looker,” said Ivan Prokofievich with a whistle, popping up beside him. “Wonder who she is? If you’ll pardon me…”

And without the slightest trembling of those sacrilegious fingers he extracted the enchanting face from its frame and turned the photograph over. Inscribed on it in a broad, slanting hand were the words:

To Pyotr K.

And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Once having given your love, never forswear it!

A.B.

“So she compares him with the apostle Peter and herself with Jesus, does she? A little arrogant, perhaps!” snorted Ivan Prokofievich. “Maybe this creature was the reason our student did away with himself, eh? Aha, there’s the blotter. So our journey wasn’t wasted.”

Ivan Prokofievich opened the leather cover and extracted the solitary sheet of light blue notepaper covered in writing with which Erast Fandorin was already familiar. This time, however, there was a notary’s seal and several signatures at the bottom.

“Excellent,” said Ivan Prokofievich, nodding in satisfaction. “So we’ve found the will and testament, too. Now I wonder what it says.”

It took him no more than a minute to run his eyes over the document, but that minute seemed an eternity to Fandorin, and he regarded it as beneath his dignity to peer over someone else’s shoulder.

“That’s a fine St. George’s Day present for you, granny! And a fine little present for the third cousins!” Ivan Prokofievich exclaimed in a voice filled with incomprehensible gloating. “Well done, Kokorin—he’s shown them all what’s what. That’s the way to do it, the Russian way! Only it does seem a bit unpatriotic somehow. Anyway, that explains the bit about the ‘absolute swine.’ ”

Finally abandoning in his impatience all notion of decorum and respect for rank, Erast Fandorin grabbed the sheet of paper out of his senior officer’s hand and read as follows:

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

I, the undersigned Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin, being of sound mind and perfect memory, do hereby declare, in the presence of the witnesses named hereunder, my will concerning the property belonging to me.

All my salable property, of which a full inventory is held by my solicitor, Semyon Efimovich Berenson, I bequeath to the Baroness Margaret Astair, a British citizen, so that all these resources may be used entirely as she shall deem fit for purposes of the education and upbringing of orphans. I’m sure that Madarn Astair will out these funds to more sensible and honest use than our own Russian captains of philanthropy.

This is my final and definitive will and testament; it is valid in law and supersedes my previous will and testament.

I name as my executors the solicitor Semyon Efimovich Berenson and the student of Moscow University Nikolai Stepanovich Akhtyrtsev.

This will and testament has been drawn up in two copies, of which I am retaining one; the other is to be delivered for safekeeping to the office of Mr. Berenson.

Moscow, 12 May 1876

PYOTR KOKORIN

which consists entirely of conversation

“SAY WHAT YOU WILL, MR. GRUSHIN, BUT IT’S still odd!” Fandorin repeated vehemently. “There’s some kind of mystery here, I swear there is!” He said it again with stubborn emphasis. “Yes, that’s it precisely, a mystery! Judge for yourself. In the first place, the way he shot himself is absurd somehow, by pure chance, with the only bullet in the cylinder, as if he didn’t really intend to shoot himself at all. What kind of infernal bad luck is that? And then there’s the tone of the suicide note. You must admit that’s a bit strange—as if it had just been dashed off in some odd moment, and yet it raises an extremely important problem. The very devil of a problem.” The strength of Fandorin’s feelings lent his voice a new resonance. “But I’ll tell you about the problem later. Meanwhile, what about the will? Surely that’s suspicious?”

“And just what exactly do you find so suspicious about it, my dear young fellow?” Xavier Grushin purred as he glanced listlessly through the Police Municipal Incidents, Report for the last twenty-four hours. Usually arriving during the afternoon, this was more or less uninformative reading, since matters of great importance were not included. For the most part it was a hodgepodge of trivial incident and absolute nonsense, but just occasionally something curious might turn up in it. In this edition there was a report on the previous day’s suicide in the Alexander Gardens, but as the highly experienced Xavier Grushin had anticipated, it provided no details and, of course, it did not give the text of the suicide note.

“I’ll tell you what! Although it looks as if Kokorin didn’t really mean to shoot himself, the will, for all its defiant tone, is drawn up in full and proper order—notarized, signed by witnesses, and with the executors named,” said Fandorin, bending down a ringer as he made each point. “And I should think so—it’s an immense fortune. I made enquiries: two mills, three factories, houses in various towns, shipyards in Libava, half a million alone in interest-bearing securities in the state bank!”

“Half a million!” gasped Xavier Grushin, glancing up sharply from his papers. “The Englishwoman’s a very lucky lady, very lucky.”

“And, by the way, can you explain to me how Lady Astair is involved in all this? Why has everything been left to her and not to anyone else? Just what is the connection between her and Kokorin? That’s what we need to find out!”

“He wrote himself that he doesn’t trust our own Russian embezzlers of public funds, and the newspapers have been singing the Englishwoman’s praises for months now. No, my dear fellow, why don’t you explain to me why your generation holds life so cheap? The slightest excuse and—bang! And all with such pomp, such pathos, such contempt for the entire world. And just how have you earned the right to show such contempt?” Grushin asked, growing angry as he remembered how impudently and disrespectfully he had been addressed the evening before by his beloved daughter Sasha, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. The question, however, was largely rhetorical, since a young clerk’s opinion on the matter was of little interest to the venerable superintendent, and he immediately stuck his nose back into the summary report.

In response Erast Fandorin became even more animated. “Ah, that is the very problem I specially wanted to mention. Take a man like Kokorin. Life gives him everything—riches and freedom and education and good looks”—Fandorin threw in good looks simply to round out the phrase, although he had not the slightest idea of the deceased’s appearance—“but he dices with death and eventually kills himself. Do you want to know why? Living in your world makes us young people feel sick—Kokorin wrote that in so many words, only he didn’t expand on it. Your ideals—a career, money, public honors—for many of us they mean absolutely nothing. That’s not the kind of thing we dream about now. Do you think there’s nothing behind the things they write about an epidemic of suicides? The very best of the educated young people are simply giving up on life—they’re suffocated by a lack of spiritual oxygen—and you, the elders of society, fail completely to draw the appropriate conclusions!”

The entire emotional force of this denunciation was apparently directed against Xavier Feofilaktovich Grushin in person, since there were no other ‘elders of society’ to be observed in the vicinity, but not only did Grushin not take offense, he actually nodded his head in evident satisfaction.

“Ah yes,” he said with a derisive chuckle as he glanced into the text of the report. “Here’s something concerning the lack of spiritual oxygen.”

The body of the cobbler Ivan Eremeev Buldygin, twenty-seven years of age, who had hanged himself, was discovered in Chikhachevsky Lane in the third district of the Meshchanskaya Precinct at ten o’clock in the morning. According to the testimony of the yardkeeper Pyotr Silin, the reason for the suicide was lack of funds for drink to relieve a hangover.

“That’s the way all the best ones will leave us. There’ll be no one but us old fools left soon.”

“You may mock,” Erast Fandorin said bitterly, “but in Petersburg and Warsaw not a day goes by without university students, and even school students, poisoning or shooting or drowning themselves.You think it’s funny…”

Repent, Mr. Xavier Grushin, before it’s too late
, he thought vengefully, although until that moment the idea of suicide had never entered his head—he was a young man of far too vivacious a character for that. Silence ensued: while Fandorin imagined a modest little grave without a cross outside the fence of the churchyard, Grushin carried on running his finger along the lines of print and turning the rustling pages.

“But, really, this is dreadful nonsense,” he muttered. “Have they all lost their minds or what? Look here, two reports, one from the third district of the Miasnitskaya Precinct, on page eight, another from the first district of the Rogozhskaya Precinct, on page nine. Listen.”

At thirty-five minutes past twelve police inspector Fedoruk was summoned from his station to the building of the Moscow Fire Insurance Company on Podkolokolny Lane at the request of the Kaluga landowner’s wife Avdotya Filippovna Spitsyna (temporarily resident at the Boyar Hotel). Mrs. Spitsyna testified that beside the entrance to the bookshop a certain respectably dressed gentleman, who appeared to be about twenty-five years of age, had attempted to shoot himself. He set a pistol to his temple, but apparently it misfired and the failed suicide fled the scene. Mrs. Spitsyna demanded that the police find the young man and hand him over to the spiritual authorities for the imposition of a religious penance. No search was undertaken because no crime had been committed.

“There you are—isn’t that just what I was saying!” Erast Fandorin cried triumphantly, feeling himself totally vindicated.

“Wait a moment, young man, that’s not all,” Grushin interrupted. “Listen to what comes next. Page nine.”

Report of police officer Semenov
(he’s from the Rogozhskaya Precinct).
Between ten and eleven he was summoned by the petty bourgeois Nikolai Kukin, the shopkeeper at the grocery store Brykin and Sons, opposite the Malaya Yauza Bridge. Kukin informed him that a few minutes earlier a student had climbed onto one of the stone bollards of the bridge and set a pistol to his head, clearly intending to shoot himself. Kukin heard a metallic click, but there was no shot. After the click the student jumped down onto the road and walked away quickly in the direction of Yauza Street. No other eyewitnesses have been found. Kukin is petitioning for a police post to be set up on the bridge, since last year a girl of loose morals drowned herself there and this is damaging his trade.

“I don’t understand it at all,” Fandorin said with a shrug. “What strange kind of ritual is this? Could it be some secret society of suicides?”