Darya chuckled. ‘She’ll do so until I’m out of Sibiu, and safe and sound,’ she replied. ‘She’s a good friend.’
After a few more half-hearted pleasantries, Darya resumed where she’d left.
Oleg had been detained for twenty-four hours and questioned by the police, but they hadn’t been able to get a confession out of him. He had a celebrity lawyer, whom Helenka said was both expensive and experienced, and who continued to put roadblocks in the way of the investigation. Oleg was let go on the understanding that he wasn’t going to leave Sibiu and would make himself available for further questioning, whenever needed. Meanwhile, the police were looking for clues to confirm him as a suspect and be able to arrest him.
‘He has Brian’s backpack,’ Darya said quietly. ‘You could tell the police that. He likely had it when they found him at the farmhouse.’
Ana-Maria seemed to mull over this. ‘I see.’
‘But Oleg wasn’t doing all this alone,’ Darya said. ‘As you must have already guessed.’
Ana-Maria waited, body poised, fingers intertwined.
‘He had an accomplice.’
‘Who?’
‘Have you heard of the Arlechins?’ Darya asked.
Ana-Maria shook her head and wore a puzzled look on her face. But did Darya imagine the caginess that crept into her eyes?
She told Ana-Maria the story which had been pieced together using painstaking research, local memories, and a forgotten documentary movie she’d accidentally found in the city’s public archives.
‘In the early twentieth century, a hobby cult started in the rural pastures of Moldova, in the north of Romania. It spread word-of-mouth across Romania and some neighbouring countries. This group could only be joined if an aspirant was recommended by another member. There were no formal entry criteria, rules, or rites of passage. The members were usually well-to-do and united by their need to hunt and kill. Clusters occasionally met to boast about their kills during the year. Their inspiration was Archangel Michael—the chief of angels, the saviour of heaven—but this group had twisted the Archangel’s story to justify their own. Because theirs was merely a thirst to kill, a lust for power. They considered themselves slaves of the Archangel and they adopted as their mascot the motley fool, a mortal man who was a comic version of the Archangel.’ Darya paused to breathe. ‘I won’t get into all the details right now. You’ll find it in the file I gave you the last time. I don’t think you’ve had the time to go through it yet, have you? Well, the important thing to know is that the Arlechins are an informal group of rich people with a single promise binding them.’
Ana-Maria’s lips pursed, as if trying to subdue a sigh. Or a yawn. ‘And what promise is that?’
‘To rid the world of misfits, the weak and poor,’ Darya said. ‘In a privileged world, they assumed they, and others like them, deserved to inherit the earth and the rest were scourges to be eliminated. All this, to make it a better place to live in.’
Ana-Maria held Darya’s eyes. Barely twitching a muscle, ‘And how do you know all this?’ she asked. ‘It sounds truly fantastical.’
‘I’ll come to that,’ Darya murmured. There were other things to address before. ‘Oleg was a part of the Arlechins. His motivation was many things. Money, prestige, love.’
Ana-Maria extended an arm and tapped the tabletop. ‘Leave aside this bizarre group you talk about for a second. Are you sure the killer was Oleg? He continues to deny any wrongdoing,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to have my own doubts, as are the police.’
Darya shrugged. ‘I found Brian, didn’t I?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That I am not wrong,’ Darya said firmly. ‘Oleg killed Brian. There is reasonable evidence Oleg is connected to the Arlechins.’
‘And what evidence is that? Oleg says he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time,’ Ana-Maria said, and added with a small smile, ‘and … this Arlechin sounds imaginary, like a fable. Like Dracula.’
Darya knew what she was telling Ana-Maria wasn’t news to her, and therefore, Darya wasn’t inclined to waste time playing games.
It was time now to reveal the next important bit of her story.
‘Oleg is guilty,’ she told Ana-Maria. ‘But he wasn’t working alone. Heck, he wasn’t even the main player in all this. Someone was helping him. Directing him. Egging him on.’
‘Who?’
Darya stared at Ana-Maria. ‘You know, don’t you?’
She stared back, impassive.
‘Irina.’
A slow exhale. ‘Nu este posibil.’ But her words lacked conviction.
Darya took out the photos and lay them in front of Ana-Maria.
Her eyes widened. ‘But she’s such a sweet … and she’s a religious woman,’ she murmured in disbelief.
‘Was,’ Darya corrected. ‘Once.’
Ana-Maria’s eyes swept through the photos again. Her fingers stacked and unstacked them. The questions came rapidly alongside. ‘Was she the one directing Oleg? She planned all this?’ She looked up. ‘But … it sounds impossible. How could she? She is …’
‘A woman? Too young? Pious?’
Ana-Maria didn’t seem to hear her. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said softly. Darya wondered mildly if she couldn’t believe Irina was sleeping with Oleg or that Darya had found evidence of a connection between the two.
‘But it wasn’t Irina alone.’
Ana-Maria looked flustered. ‘What do you mean? I thought you said …’
‘She was part of the Arlechins or used to be. The Arlechins stopped existing a long time ago. I suspect her granduncle was a part of them and trained her in its ways. And therefore, I think she was also involved in the murders at the farmhouse. It reeks of the principles the Arlechins follow. But even so, she wasn’t the main player, the one directing all this.’
‘Then who was?’
Was it possible that she did not know? It had happened right before her eyes, after all. But we so often turn a blind eye to the faults of our own blood, because admitting a weakness in them is like admitting it in ourselves.
‘Do you remember Draco?’ asked Darya.
‘Everyone does.’
‘What do you think had happened to him?’
‘If you’re asking me, you know already,’ she remarked.
‘I didn’t know about him when you gave me this assignment,’ Darya said. ‘You should’ve told me.’
‘How are the two connected?’
‘Are they not?’ Darya asked, her tone mocking. ‘The same place of crime. A similar modus operandi.’
‘Committed half-a-century apart.’
Darya was about to speak when they heard a commotion outside. Nights were eerily quiet in the bylanes of Sibiu, but every now and then, revellers walked past, cutting through the stillness. At that instance, they heard whistles, pealing laughter, a clank of beer cans, raucous footfalls.
A few minutes later, the room grew silent again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Darya said.
‘I only wanted you to find Brian.’
‘They were connected,’ Darya said. ‘It would’ve been easier for me if I’d known before.’
Ana-Maria’s face wore a perplexed look. ‘How so?’
‘The house … the farmhouse … it held a vital clue. The paralysis of the victims. The broken bones,’ Darya said. ‘That was how the gypsies had died. Draco, too. And the bodies they found in Biertan, and the other places where the Arlechins operated.’
‘You know about the gypsies?’
‘Alina took me to Sighișoara to talk to her grandaunt.’
Ana-Maria jolted upright. ‘You spoke to Smaranda?’ she asked, her voice tense.
Darya nodded. ‘You haven’t gone to meet her since you’ve been back,’ Darya commented. ‘Ten years.’
Ana-Maria grimaced as if she’d known this was coming. ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said shortly.
‘It would’ve been much easie
r if you’d arranged this meeting for me,’ Darya said. ‘But Alina said she didn’t mind helping and you wouldn’t mind if she did either. Smaranda used to dote on you. And I was doing this for you, after all.’
‘No one doted on me,’ Ana-Maria said dryly.
In a staccato tone, Darya repeated what she’d heard at least a few times before.
‘But everyone doted on Ana-Maria.’
She waved a dismissive hand. ‘That’s not true. You know nothing,’ she scoffed. ‘What did Smaranda tell you?’
Darya didn’t want to go into the details of how she’d managed to arrange a meeting with Smaranda. She’d casually mentioned in the café she’d like to speak to an old-timer, preferably someone who knew the Rosettis from before, and Alina had suggested she speak to Smaranda.
Darya had had to swear Alina to silence though. ‘This is a key part of the mystery,’ she’d told Alina. ‘And it’s important you keep the visit to yourself, until I find about everything that happened. Don’t even tell Ana-Maria that I met Smaranda and what she told me.’
Now Ana-Maria made a show of looking pointedly at her watch. ‘Go on. What did Smaranda say? You need to hurry. Don’t you have a train to catch?’
Week 10: 1 week after Brian is found
Darya is done moping over Brian’s death and picks up the threads of her investigations. She goes to an unlikely source to learn more about the Rosettis and the old farmhouse.
It had been hard to talk to Smaranda; she had not been able to understand a word Darya had said, and Darya wasn’t sure how much Alina had been able to correctly translate.
Darya had liked the large, wry Romanian matriarch as soon as she’d lain eyes on her. Entering the room through a low door, she hadn’t seen her at first, until Alina gently veered Darya to the left. Smaranda was sitting hunched on a wooden bed, rolling a ball of wool in her palms. She cocked her head towards Darya when she took a few steps forward. A shy smile lit her heavily crinkled face. She was almost eighty—Alina had told her—and Smaranda looked every year of it. The parts of her, peeping out from the baggy jumper and the ankle length skirt she wore, was waxy and stretched over popping veins. The knot of her floral headscarf hugged her hairy double chin. Her eyes were brown and cloudy; she could apparently neither see nor hear very well.
‘Bună ziua,’ Darya greeted. Smaranda shyly returned the greeting, adding to Alina she thought Darya was beautiful. And even though Darya knew she didn’t see well and was only being polite, she blushed and reciprocated with an awkward ‘thank you’ bow.
‘She’s not the queen,’ Alina scoffed. Darya pinched her forearm in response.
Alina moved closer to Smaranda and Darya watched as the two ribbed about this and that. They were obviously fond of each other and not short on stories either. Darya caught a few phrases every now and then.
The room they were in was done up in rural Romanian style: wooden interiors, dark wood furniture, low ceiling, enamelled pots and pans hanging from iron hooks on the wall, a frescoed fireplace and a ceramic stove, red and green cross-stitch pillows and throws on the bed and chairs, a gorgeous rushnyk on the floor. Religious icons lined the wall above the dining table, draped in white scarves. Smaranda’s husband had died many years ago; her children had homes of their own close by, and she’d made this house—two rooms, a wrap-around balcony, an animal coop, and a well-tended garden—her very own.
The curtains to the room had been drawn apart and the warm afternoon sun tumbled in through the windows. Outside, Darya saw the glowing golden meadows, and heard the jangling of cow bells as they feasted on the grass.
… it’s like being transported to the medieval times.
Alina nudged Darya. ‘She gets tired easily. And she forgets things. If you want to ask something, do it now.’
Darya nodded, looking down at the piece of paper in her hand. She prayed Alina would do a good job of translating for her.
She began.
‘Do you remember Draco’s death?’ she asked.
Smaranda had already been prepared by Alina and showed little surprise at the question. She answered, and Alina interpreted, almost in sync.
‘Yes, of course, who can forget that? His poor mother used to work for the Popescus; Draco was the only family she had. I heard some more bodies were found at the same place?’
Alina took a breather to answer Smaranda. ‘Yes, the police are investigating.’
‘What can you tell me about Draco?’ Darya asked.
‘That poor boy, Draco. Such a young age to have died. And like that. In the chimney.’
‘How had he died?’
‘They said he’d gone to play in the house, went up to the roof, fell into the chimney because of a misstep, and couldn’t come out. The house had been left locked after the gypsy deaths. So, no one found him until Andrea did.’
‘How did Andrea find him?’
‘Andrea had made Mihai go on a picnic with her. She was always doing these things and he followed her like a puppy, just like he did her father, Zaltan. They had a fight. She left him sleeping in the garden and climbed the farmhouse’s roof. She said she’d wanted to get inside the house. The main door was locked and going in through the chimney was the only way. Then she saw Draco wedged inside it. The sight left her traumatised for years after that.’
‘What happened next … after Draco was found?’
‘Several people were questioned but they found nothing. No one could say how the poor gypsy boy had died.’
‘I heard you say … there had been other deaths in that farmhouse?’
‘It’d happened once before. A gypsy family had come to live in that house—mother, father, a five-year-old girl—living there illegally. One day, the girl came to the city, weak and famished, wailing that something had happened to her parents. She’d crawled on her knees for an hour before someone saw her on the road, took pity on her, and brought her to meet the mayor. The girl told the mayor her parents had drunk water from the pond at the farmhouse after which they’d been unable to move. She’d had only a little sip, but her faculties were already failing. When the townsfolk reached the parents, they’d already died. The girl died soon afterwards. It was a tragedy. We thought the same happened to Draco when he was found. He drank the pond’s water, went to the roof, was paralysed, fell into the chimney, and later, died.’
This was news to Darya. She looked at Alina who shrugged back in response.
‘The farmhouse pond is poisoned?’ Darya asked.
‘Poisonous plants grow inside it. They have contaminated the water. You cannot drink the water straight away. You need to remove the plant first of all. That’s what my son told me,’ said Smaranda.
‘But Draco was found in the chimney. How did he go there after being poisoned by the water?’
Alina turned to Darya. ‘But we don’t know how long it takes for the poison to take effect, do we? Perhaps, it merely worked to slow him down and he couldn’t come out later when he fell into the chimney.’
Darya nodded. She continued: ‘With so many deaths, why didn’t Zaltan just raze the farmhouse and dry the pond?’
Smaranda gave a low laugh. ‘He was a busy man,’ she answered. ‘Besides, it’s an old family property. Lots of memories are associated with it.’
‘So, Zaltan didn’t have anything to do with the deaths?’ Darya asked slowly.
Both Alina and Smaranda looked startled at the question.
Darya improvised. ‘What I mean is, none of the investigators or newspapers thought to ask him about the deaths … hold him responsible?’
After Alina translated for her, Smaranda shook her head: ‘Zaltan was a good man. He was also powerful and well respected in society. Why would he go around killing urchins? He had better things to do. Someone had drawn an eye on a wall. They said a cult did it. That Zaltan was a part of it. People say all sorts of things. It was later painted over.’
‘Well … do you know about the Arlechins?’
‘What of them?’ Al
ina asked, turning to Darya. ‘Yeah, we know of them. We Romanians are not short on gossip and tall tales.’
Darya spoke rapidly. ‘I think Oleg was a part of them. And that’s why he killed Brian. I suspect there are … were more of them in Sibiu.’ She stopped short of adding who else she thought had been a part.
Alina shrugged. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she stated emphatically. ‘No one likes to talk of them anymore. I doubt Oleg is in any way connected to them. He is simply a psychopath who likes killing people.’
‘But …’
‘This angle doesn’t work. Like I said, tall tales. Several Rosettis were accused of being Arlechins but nothing was ever proven. Just vicious gossip. It would upset Smaranda. You cannot ask her about it. See how she’s behaving right now.’
Her face was turned away. Her lips moved silently as if praying. Darya realised she would have to find other means to find out more.
‘Okay, moving on, what happened after Draco?’ Darya asked.
‘The house was boarded up. The Rosettis left the country. We heard from them only through postcards and letters. Ceausescu came to power and we had other things to worry about. We never thought the Rosettis would return,’ said Smaranda.
‘They did not visit in between?’
‘During the communist rule it was impossible to do so unless you had connections at the top. We were allowed to travel to only other eastern bloc countries. Even letters … everything that came to us were scanned and filtered. We only got some of the news. That Andrea and Mihai were married. They had had children. Zaltan was sick …’ she continued.
Alina turned to Darya and said, ‘You know the rest.’
But Smaranda was not done. She’d started speaking again. Alina interpreted rapidly, her eyebrows crinkling with the effort of concentrating.
‘It was lovely to have Andrea and Mihai back in Sibiu,’ Smaranda reminisced. ‘We hadn’t expected it, but Zaltan had made it happen. It was wonderful. The grandchildren turned out to be quite nice, too. Ana-Maria was like warm sunshine: beautiful, talkative, brilliant. She used to not be like she is now. Radu was a recluse, a sickly child, had fainting spells, often stayed home. He was soft, easily shaken. His voice took time breaking, and he was bullied and teased for it in school. He adored his elder sister, but Andrea disliked his fawning over Ana-Maria, and tried to drive the two apart. One time, she found him wearing his sister’s clothes and beat him up with a cattle prod. He was ill for days after that. That poor boy suffered because of his family.
The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 65
