Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. He stormed away. I returned to my guests, smoothed over the incident as best I could, and went on playing hostess. I heard nothing more of Zolin until the following morning, when his nasty head turned up in my drawing-room.’

  ‘And you fled the house directly.’

  ‘Of course I did. I knew our fight had been an audible one; all my guests must have known that we had argued. The man is then slain overnight, and his head appears in my house? What would you have done?’

  ‘Stood my ground and faced down every idiot who imagined I must have killed the man. But I am stubborn to a fault.’

  Lady Lysak turned that wry smile upon Nanda. ‘I have gathered as much. So,’ she said in an abrupt subject change, ‘this man in your thoughts is the same one who investigates this crime? The dark one.’

  ‘He is not that dark,’ muttered Nanda. ‘Swarthy, perhaps, but—’

  ‘I don’t refer to his colouring.’

  ‘Oh.’ Nanda consulted her own mental impression of Konrad, and conceded that he came attended by a certain… shadowiness. His Malykant side, messing with her mind. ‘It is he. And I must shortly convey this information to him, with both of our thanks, so unless there is anything else you can tell me…?’

  ‘Nothing more, I believe,’ said Lady Lysak, her face thoughtful. ‘Though: perhaps it would be of service to you to know which houses Zolin stole from.’

  Nanda stiffened. ‘Yes — how can I not have thought of it? Did any of them back onto the alley between Rusev and Tytovar Street?’

  ‘Yes, two of them,’ said Lysak.

  Nanda’s heart began to pound. If she was not much mistaken, the solution to the mystery neared. ‘Thank you. I will be glad of a list.’

  Lady Lysak thought, and produced a halting list of recollections for Nanda’s benefit. It was seven items long; seven houses robbed, seven prominent families offended, seven items of great value purloined. Nanda wondered at Zolin’s daring. He cannot have intended to maintain the charade for much longer. If Lady Lysak had found him out, others must soon have cottoned on. Had he been going for one last heist, perhaps in her ladyship’s own house?

  Lysak’s description of the head-bearer meant nothing to her either, but she committed the details to memory for Konrad’s information. Perhaps he could make sense of it.

  ‘Stay awhile longer,’ said her ladyship, as Nanda prepared to leave. ‘It is not often one meets with a fellow Reader. I would like to know you.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said Nanda, with some regret. ‘This information cannot wait.’

  ‘Then, return. You will be most welcome. And I think perhaps… you are in need of help.’

  Nanda cast a sidelong look at Niklas, whose welcome had been so far from warm.

  ‘Do not mind him. He is extra vigilant lately, on my account. Smile, Niklas.’

  Niklas did not smile, but he did uncross his arms.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nanda. ‘When I have leisure to return, I shall.’

  Chapter Eight

  Ordinarily, Konrad detested paying morning calls.

  The duty held little appeal. One made one’s reluctant way to somebody-or-other’s sumptuous house, made one’s bow, accepted one’s refreshments, offered the very smallest of polite small-talk for the allotted, say, quarter of an hour that etiquette dictated, and then took one’s leave. Only to repeat the procedure all over again at someone else’s house. Konrad knew he ought to be more dedicated a caller; the routine, drab as it was, at least served to maintain the web of connection, acquaintance and influence that some thought necessary. Some might think it especially necessary in his case, for times like these: when a nearer understanding of the doings of his social peers might have proved useful. He might already know who had been a target of Zolin’s predations, and would not be obliged to trail from house to house upon Alexander’s list, panning (so to speak) for nuggets of information.

  At least the ritual of social calls was not so tiresome, this way. He could view it as a contest of wits, a challenge: could he extract what he wanted to know, while leaving his conversationalists unaware that he possessed any special interest?

  The hour struck two o’clock, and he sat with Mrs. Sechenova, a matron of sixty years with a benign countenance and, if her attire was anything to go by, a taste for the colour crimson. Her personal parlour, too, for he sat in a crimson-upholstered chair with his feet resting on a rug of that same piercing hue, and the porcelain cup from which he drank tea (thankfully not blood-coloured) bore scarlet tracery.

  ‘My Nessia will be so sorry to have missed you,’ bubbled Mrs. Sechenova, part of a flow of ceaseless inanities which Konrad had permitted to wash over him without interruption. ‘She is paying a call upon Mrs. Tasseva, you know.’

  Konrad was not so far detached from society as to be unable to recognise Mrs. Tasseva’s name. Her family was on his visiting list, in fact, for if Zolin had been frequenting the houses of the wealthy then he must have jumped at any opportunity to visit hers. Her husband was purported to be wealthier even than Konrad was said to be, and Mrs. Tasseva never missed an opportunity to display her family’s riches. She never appeared in public without a complement of expensive jewels.

  Konrad was curious indeed to know whether she had lately lost any.

  Which gave him an idea. ‘Oh?’ he said politely, sipping tea. ‘How delightful for her. And she will be such a comfort to poor Mrs. Tasseva.’

  Mrs. Sechenova opened her twinkling little eyes at Konrad. ‘Why, but what is amiss with the poor lady?’

  ‘Had you not heard?’ said Konrad, affecting surprise. ‘But perhaps, then, I ought not speak further. She may not wish for such a disgrace to be shared abroad. I had better have said nothing at all.’

  The dratted woman’s eyes brightened, as expected. The elite courted each other’s favour assiduously, yet took great delight in each other’s downfall. After all, there was room for only so many social leaders at a time. The decline of one left space for the rise of another. ‘She will not mind your telling me,’ said Mrs. Sechenova coaxingly. ‘We are the oldest friends! And so attached to one another. She would have told me already, doubtless, were it not that I have been recently indisposed.’

  ‘I trust you are recovered,’ said Konrad.

  ‘Oh, quite!’

  ‘Well.’ Konrad set aside his tea, and leaned forward in a confidential manner. ‘It seems there has been a theft of some sort, and she has lost some of her most precious jewellery. A pity, is it not, with her excellent taste? They are saying some servant is responsible, but I have also heard…’ he paused, watching his hostess’s face. ‘I have heard it said that it might not have been a servant at all. That there is someone of rank, going from house to house, and taking—’

  ‘Jewels! Yes!’ breathed Mrs. Sechenova. ‘I would not be surprised, for dear Lady Konnikova has lost her mother’s emerald brooch, you know. She says it is only mislaid, and will soon be found, but to see how careworn she looks—’

  ‘There are too many such tales,’ Konrad agreed. ‘They cannot all have been mislaid, can they? Not so many as there have been, one after another.’

  ‘No indeed! But who can it have been, Mr. Savast? It is shocking — quite shocking! — to think that one of our number could be capable of such an affront to society!’

  Konrad felt a moment’s amusement at her manner of characterising the incident. Not a crime, but an “affront to society”. It was not breaking the law to steal jewellery; it was to insult one’s hosts, and to shatter the rules of etiquette around which this fragile little world revolved.

  Despite her mild manner of talking, he doubted not that she and her ilk would tear such a person limb from limb, had she discovered the thief’s identity. Not literally, of course — though in a sense, someone had.

  ‘You have not heard anything as to who it might have been?’ Konrad enquired.

  ‘No! And only think! I held a ball only last week — a vast su
ccess, Mr. Savast, you ought to have come! Such a crowd! I could not have been more pleased. But I might have hosted the thief then and there! It is remarkable that I did not lose anything of value myself!’

  She had, in fact, welcomed Zolin to her house at that very ball; that was why Konrad had paid her a visit. He was disappointed to hear that she had not been a target of his; that seemed to limit her usefulness.

  But he had learned a new name, one that was not on the list of Zolin’s hosts that Alexander had given him: Lady Konnikova, who had lost emerald jewellery.

  ‘It is no exhaustive list,’ the inspector had warned him. ‘I am working with incomplete information, and you know how reliable hearsay is.’

  Very well, but Alexander’s list had brought him here, and now he had a new name to add. He took his leave of Mrs. Sechenova soon afterwards, responding to her simpering invitations with only an enigmatic smile. No doubt she would be boasting of his morning-call for weeks, and flattering herself with all manner of bright reflections as to what importance or success of hers had prompted his visit.

  Konrad supposed he should not be amused by such inanity, but he could not help it. A smile, sardonic and cynical, curled his lips as he accepted his hat and coat from the footman, and strode back out into the crisp winter air.

  He did not proceed very far beyond Mrs. Sechenova’s door before Tasha found him.

  ‘Been chasing you,’ she said, a little breathless. ‘Inspector said where you’d gone.’

  ‘And? I trust you’ve discovered something.’ The sparkle in her eye seemed to suggest it, and her air of energy.

  ‘I should say so!’ she enthused. ‘Come with me.’

  She did not give Konrad any time to argue, for she took to her black-booted heels, and darted away.

  Konrad followed.

  Tasha quickly led him to the shabby side of Ekamet, farther and farther away from the clean streets and handsome houses of his own part of town. The ways grew narrower, the dwellings meaner, the pavements dirtier. Even the light seemed to fade as Konrad entered the slums, as though the sun itself had turned its face against the poor. Still, he knew these streets very well. They were not far from the dockyard.

  Tasha hardly paused. She shot straight through the tangle of winding, dingy streets, trusting to Konrad to keep up, which he did — though not, to his shame, without some difficulty. He was not quite as young as he once was, after all. When at last Tasha stopped, he was marginally out of puff; a dash across half the city (or so it felt like) was not among his favourite activities.

  An old woman sat huddled in a doorway not far away, her clothes a mess of filthy rags. She eyed Konrad from within a knotted mess of grey hair covering half her face. Her fingers moved ceaselessly, but Konrad could not see what she employed herself with. One eye was visible, fixed upon him with a mixture of avarice and suspicion.

  Gentry-folk dressed like him did not often wander around in the slums, of course. She mistrusted his purpose in doing so, while at the same time hoping vaguely for some largesse. This he dispensed, before turning his back on her and fixing Tasha with a gimlet eye. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘That’s Mother Derenva,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad you were nice to her, for she has been very helpful.’

  Konrad cast a startled glance at the ragged old woman, who grinned rather nastily at him. ‘Has she? How?’

  ‘She keeps an eye on things,’ said Tasha, saluting Mother Derenva. ‘When a light-fingered young man called Boryan Shults disappeared off the streets without warning, and didn’t come back, she took note of it. Didn’t you, Mother?’

  ‘Them as disappears never does come back,’ said Mother Derenva pessimistically.

  ‘Well, this one certainly won’t. Mother asked around, but nobody could say that he had either died, or ended up in gaol — the most likely fate. No one knew what had become of him at all, in fact, until today. Thanks to me.’ Tasha beamed.

  Konrad considered pointing out that it was he who had dispatched Tasha to make her enquiries, but thought better of it. Let her revel in the achievement. ‘I take it this Boryan and our Bogdan are the same person?’

  ‘Most likely. Bogdan Zolin is clean-shaven, which Boryan was not, and Boryan’s hair was a few shades paler. Otherwise their descriptions match.’

  ‘Hair dye and a shave; easy enough to arrange,’ said Konrad.

  ‘Quite. Well, Boryan Shults was associated with the Yudashin crime gang. It seems he had a way of holding out on his debts, and failing to cough up a cut of his profits when he was supposed to. Plus, he had a habit of stealing from his own gang members, if given half a chance. He wasn’t popular.’

  Konrad rolled his eyes. ‘His intelligence does not seem to have been profound.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have been stupid. I’ve asked around about him. They say he was wily enough, only too greedy by half, and he couldn’t seem to help stealing. He did it all the time, even if the objects he took had no value.’

  ‘All right. So it was to his benefit to disappear, and we’d best consider the possibility that one of these disgruntled gang members killed him. When did he disappear?’

  Tasha nodded at Mother Derenva. ‘More’n a year past,’ she said. ‘Much more.’

  ‘Which seems like too long,’ said Tasha. ‘But—’

  ‘It isn’t. It fits.’ Konrad, like Zolin — or Shults, if that was his name — had been born far beneath the gentry himself. In order to take up his own masquerade, he’d had to endure months of teaching. How to speak like the gentry did; how to dress, how to walk, how to conduct himself in every circumstance. Etiquette. Literature and art. The myriad things that went into the general concept of “good taste”. How to manipulate the social world at need. If Zolin had been such a success, he must have undergone much the same things.

  Which begged a question. Such training required a sponsor. Who had taught him? No amount of money could help a man if he did not have the right teachers. Someone who knew every intricacy of the convoluted world of the social elite.

  ‘Did you find out where he went in between?’ Konrad asked. ‘After he vanished off the streets, and before he first turned up as Zolin?’

  Tasha shook her head, frowning. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Greatly. One doesn’t go from street rat to gentleman overnight, however good an actor.’

  ‘I see what you mean. I have something else, though.’ Tasha jerked her head.

  ‘If you are trying to draw my attention to something, you may have to be more specific.’

  ‘The house,’ Tasha said, exasperated. ‘That one.’ She pointed.

  The house in front of which she had stopped — and opposite which Mother Derenva was stationed — was a dark, grubby property, listing unpromisingly against its neighbour. One of its windows was broken. ‘This place?’ said Konrad, puzzled. ‘What of it?’

  ‘This is where our headless gent lived.’

  ‘Back when he was a dockworker-thief?’

  ‘No. Later. After he’d become Zolin.’

  That explained why no one had seemed to know where Mr. Zolin lived. He’d never admit to such an address. ‘Why here?’ said Konrad, baffled. ‘Why go to such lengths to infiltrate a better grade of society only to go on living in the stews?’

  ‘It’s cheap,’ said Tasha bluntly.

  ‘And he was stealing a fortune.’

  ‘Maybe he was saving it for something important, and didn’t want to waste it on a mere dwelling. And it’s nice enough inside. Want to see?’

  Tasha had more to share; the look of suppressed glee on her small face was proof enough of it. Konrad let her have her moment, following her through the creaking front door and up the narrow stairs with a passable air of obliviousness.

  The place consisted of two rooms only, one facing the street and one backing onto the alley behind. The latter contained a bed, simple enough but strewn with good, brand-new blankets. A wall closet held a selection of clothing, all gentlemen’s attire: far too good f
or the type of man who usually inhabited such a house.

  The room at the front held a simple couch, a mismatched chair, a few shelves containing cheap knick-knacks, and a low, plain oak table upon which an inexpensive oil-lamp stood. Nothing about the place suggested a man of means lived there, but it was far from squalor either.

  ‘He wasn’t worried about his clothes being stolen?’ Konrad asked.

  ‘Someone’d have to know to look for them,’ said Tasha. ‘You wouldn’t think to find a cache like that in a place like this, would you?’

  ‘No,’ said Konrad slowly. ‘And perhaps that’s why he chose to stay here. Thieves target grand houses. Nobody goes looking for valuables in the slums.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Tasha’s grin broadened.

  ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ he said. ‘Besides the clothes.’

  ‘Much more. Look.’ Tasha paced the length of the room, and paused before the dingy window. The panes were so begrimed, Konrad could see little of the street outside. Which meant, he supposed, no one outside could see much of what lay within, either.

  Tasha bent, and devoted herself to some mysterious activity beneath the window. Konrad heard the creak of wood. ‘Tada,’ said Tasha proudly.

  Konrad leaned over her shoulder. She had prised up a floorboard, revealing a narrow cavity beneath. Something palely gleamed within.

  ‘Grandmama’s pearls,’ said Konrad.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. One of Zolin’s prizes, doubtless.’

  ‘There are more.’ Tasha busied herself about the place for several minutes, poking her face and her fingers into myriad nooks and hiding places. By the time she was finished, fully half a dozen treasures lay exposed to the oil-lamp’s wan light. Though none of them, Konrad noted with interest, looked to be Lady Konnikova’s emerald brooch.

  ‘Lucky his gang-mates didn’t know about this place,’ said Konrad.

  ‘He showed up wrapped to the eyeballs in a dark cloak. The mangy kind, wouldn’t attract a second glance down here. His gang would have given up on finding him by now.’