Death's Executioner

by Charlotte E. English

  Candles were burning in his dining-parlour as he approached, suitably dressed for dinner — he’d dashed upstairs to attend to that part right away, though if asked, he could not have said why. Nan might be amused by costumes, but she did not care for the elaborate rules of etiquette that governed dress among the gentry. She’d be more likely to laugh at his turn-out than to be impressed by it (not that he was trying to impress her; a man might dress for dinner in his own house without needing a special motive, surely?)

  With such thoughts tumbling through his mind, Konrad stepped smartly through the door — only to find the room decked out elegantly for dinner, with no one in residence. His staff had gone to some trouble in dressing the table, and laying out dishes. Someone — his housekeeper, most likely — had even contrived to rig up something resembling a fresh flower bouquet in the centre of the table; impossible at this time of year, but the thing looked convincing enough.

  No Nanda.

  He performed a quick tour of the ground floor, all those rooms in which Nanda was occasionally to be found: their favourite parlour, the other parlour, the morning room, the library. Even his study. Not a trace of her did he find, and when he enquired of his butler, Gorev, whether Miss Falenia had been admitted to the house at all that afternoon he received an immediate negative.

  ‘No communications from her have been received either?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

  Konrad paused, uncertain what to do. Doubtless she had been detained by some manner of business; she did, after all, have plenty of her own duties and obligations to tend to. Or, she had simply changed her mind. He had left the question of his own attendance at dinner somewhat doubtful. Small wonder if she did not fancy sitting in that large, echoing dining-room all by herself.

  Still, she would normally have sent a note or some such to that effect.

  Since the faint stirrings of anxiety would not go away under the influence of such steadying logic, Konrad abandoned all prospect of dinner. A whirlwind dash up to his dressing-room reversed the careful dressing of twenty minutes before; attired once again in street-appropriate clothes, and wrapped in his layers of black coat and hat and boots against the chill of the night, he left the house with little more than: ‘My compliments upon the dining-room, Gorev. Pity that it has not been put to use.’

  ‘No matter, sir. It will keep,’ said his staunch butler, and Konrad was away.

  No lights burned in the windows of Nanda’s house when he arrived there, perhaps a half-hour later. She lived above her shop, in the midst of a moderately prosperous tradesman’s quarter; a safe enough area, Konrad would have said, with a doughty crew of watchmen keeping the peace at night, and a reasonable complement of streetlamps to deter thieves. He did not know why he was so disturbed by Nanda’s failure to appear, for he had no good reason. Some instinct, though, refused to give him any peace.

  He did not have to break in, nor to test the enfeebled powers of his Malykant’s fingers upon the lock. Either would have been a violation of Nanda’s privacy which he would have been loath to commit. Happily, she had at last presented him with a key.

  ‘Only to be used in emergency, Konrad, or by arrangement,’ she’d said sternly, as she pressed the cool slip of metal into his palm. ‘I don’t want to come home to find you hobnobbing with Weveroth and eating my larder bare.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of either,’ he’d said, tucking the key away safely in an inside pocket of his coat. The same pocket that had too often housed harvested ribbones from the slain people he’d avenged, but this realisation came a little too late.

  ‘You absolutely would,’ she’d said, and that had been true, but still this was the first time he had set that bright, new key into the lock on the rear door, and let himself in.

  Nothing stirred within, not even the faintest current of warmth. No fires had been lit in the house all day, if he was any judge, and still he saw not a scrap of light anywhere.

  ‘Nanda?’ he called.

  Nothing. He waited, hoping for the scurry of small feet and the indignant appearance of Weveroth, ready to scold him for his intrusion. But there was no sign of the little monkey, either.

  Konrad passed through the darkened workroom and paused at the foot of the narrow staircase leading up into Nanda’s living space. He stood, listening, for some time, and then called again, with the same results.

  Nanda had been home early that morning. What could possibly have happened since?

  He wanted to go up, but hesitated, perhaps absurdly, at the foot of the stairs, unwilling to barge his way up there. What if Nanda was home after all, peacefully asleep, and in her nightgown? Thinking herself alone, and safe, and abruptly awakening to find someone unexpected in the room? He’d scare her senseless. And then she would beat him to a pulp.

  Serpents, he called. A search, please. Is Nanda here? Anybody else?

  Eetapi and Ootapi, it seemed, were well ahead of him, for both answered at once with a decided negative upon both points.

  Konrad set his foot to the bottom-most step, and ventured up.

  He found a gas lamp upon a small side-table in the cramped upstairs landing, and lit it. Its flaring glow sent long shadows streaking up the walls, which shuddered and leapt as he picked it up and carried it through the nearest door. He found a sitting-room, empty; very Nanda, though, with a matched set of sofa and chairs upholstered in a tasteful blue, a fireplace which had obviously seen much use, a collection of well-loved books upon a humble carved-pine shelf, and an enormous rug covering almost the entire floor, hand-worked in shades of lavender.

  He turned his back on the room with some reluctance, for it was a welcoming, peaceful space, seeming somehow to proffer safety.

  He found Nanda’s bedchamber next, and there he could not have said the same. Not at all. The door creaked softly as he opened it, and something — some sense, some instinct — had him recoiling, hovering upon the threshold with a strange reluctance to enter.

  The smell might have had something to do with it. For the first time since learning of Nanda’s supposed illness, he felt it to be the stark, horrible truth, for the acrid scent of sickness assailed his nostrils. Someone had lain here in a sweat, hour after hour. What had Nan suffered? Spirits above, but the woman was the queen of dissembling. To see and speak to her, he would have sworn that she seemed almost her usual self. But here was the evidence to the contrary, her bed with its rumpled and sweat-stained bedclothes telling a very different story.

  Konrad felt a swift stab of fear for her, followed by remorse. He’d waltzed into her most private of spaces and wrested secrets from it, secrets she had clearly wanted to keep from him. Had he the right? Was this an emergency?

  He hoped, prayed, that it was not; that Nanda had been called away unexpectedly, that she was even now comfortably asleep in someone else’s house, or working the night through somewhere. That she’d be back in the morning, smiling as usual, with airy explanations and apologies to make for missing dinner.

  But Konrad could not rest until she did. Nor could he return to the luxury of his own, empty house and simply wait for news. So he returned to her serene sitting-room, arrayed himself upon her blue couch, and finding it deliciously soft, there he remained.

  He woke abruptly, some hours later. He had not meant to sleep, but slumber had eventually claimed him, in spite of his disquiet. The lamp had burned out, but a wan dawn light crept in through the window, casting the room in a pallid, dismal grey.

  The events of the previous night came back to him in a rush, dispersing drowsiness; he sat up, heart pounding. She had not come back.

  ‘Konrad? Konrad! Honestly.’

  Nanda’s voice. He looked round. She stood in the doorway, neat as a pin, looking in no wise like a woman who’d spent all night out somewhere unspecified. Or like the woman who had tossed and turned in that crumpled bed, suffering unnamed trials.

  The relief was so intense, for a minute he could not breathe.

  ‘You’re
all right,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Of course I am. Is this because I missed dinner? I am sorry. If I’d known you would panic like this I would have sent word.’

  Konrad flushed, feeling himself rebuked. Not that he minded, quite. If Nanda was well, he’d take any number of scoldings for his uninvited appearance in her house. ‘I was just… concerned,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to sleep here, though. That couch accosted me, and refused to let me go.’

  ‘It is rather delicious, isn’t it?’ she said, with a satisfied smile. ‘One of my favourite things in this house. Shall you need breakfast?’

  ‘Please.’ He followed her downstairs, aware that she had not offered any explanation for her absence. Aware that he had not questioned her about the state either of her bedroom, or of her failing health. So many secrets between them still, however close they became. He did not know how to ask those questions, which words to use, how to approach her in such a way as to win a confidence. He knew he ought not to push for one; that was not how friendships worked. But did friends conceal things from each other like this?

  He did not know. How could he? He was badly out of practice, when it came to friends.

  He satisfied himself with saying, as Nanda pushed a cup of steaming coffee at him and a slab of bread, ‘Are you sure you are well, Nan?’

  That won him her long, cool look, the one that said she knew exactly what he was really saying, and had not yet decided whether to humour him.

  ‘No,’ she said, rather to his surprise. ‘Did you look around?’

  ‘A bit. I only went into two rooms…’ He devoted himself to his coffee and his food, so he did not have to admit to avoiding her eye.

  A sigh came, soft and low, and she sagged into a seat at her kitchen-table. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘I ought to have told you about it by now.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he said, hastily swallowing a chunk of bread.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It’s… complicated. And I haven’t wanted to… admit to…’

  Konrad waited, but she had run out of words. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ he repeated, though the words he longed to say were more the opposite. Please tell me. Please put me out of this suspense.

  ‘I can’t,’ Nanda said, and his heart sank. ‘Right now,’ she added, and he looked up.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘When this case is finished,’ she said slowly. ‘When your time is your own again for a little while, and you are not distracted, we will talk. But not here, and not at Bakar House. Meet me in the Bones. At your chicken-legged hut, if you like. There are things I ought to… show you.’

  This was not at all what Konrad had expected to hear, and he struggled to make sense of it. Why…? What could she possibly…? But however befuddling the words, they boded well; whatever she proposed to tell him, it would be, must be, better than her long, long silence.

  ‘Anytime you care to name,’ he said, and promised himself to work doubly hard on the case of Verinka Tarasovna; the sooner he won justice for the murdered woman, the sooner he could devote himself to the task of helping Nanda.

  Were he truthful, that was all he cared about these days.

  Nan smiled at him, touched his hand once in a gesture he interpreted as gratitude, and then briskly changed the subject. ‘So, then, what progress on the case?’

  ‘Some few interesting things,’ he said, setting aside his empty coffee cup. ‘Particularly regarding this pipe…’

  Chapter Six

  When Tsevar Tarasovich Manin described himself to the inspector, rather curtly, as “in business”, he had allowed the police to picture some modest endeavour; an impression aided by the relative simplicity of his mode of dress, and lack of ostentatious adornment.

  This proved to have been inaccurate.

  Konrad arrived at the police headquarters soon after dawn, but despite the early hour Inspector Nuritov was already on his way out. Konrad had not got much beyond the first stairwell up before he encountered Alexander on his way down.

  ‘Ah, Savast. Just in time. We’ve had some information about our man Tsevar.’

  ‘Oh?’ Konrad turned about and headed down again, his cane swinging jauntily. Somehow, his time with Nanda had buoyed his spirits. Whether it was still the simple effects of relief, or the prospect of no longer being kept in the dark, he felt more cheerful than he had in some time.

  He tried to remember that he was in the middle of a tricky murder case; that he would soon have to kill somebody; that Nanda’s news could not possibly be pleasant or easy to hear; and incidentally that he stood in danger of permanent death on the not-too-distant horizon; but nothing dimmed his inexplicable sunshine. Perhaps it was the way Nanda had smiled at him. That image would keep returning to his mind; the faint crease at the corner of her mouth that always appeared, almost but not quite a dimple. The warmth and laughter in her eyes—

  ‘Savast?’

  Konrad received the impression that Alexander had repeated his name more than once. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was—’

  ‘Daydreaming? You had a dreamy look.’

  ‘That can’t possibly have been the case.’

  The inspector grinned. Konrad had by this time trailed him all the way out into the street, and they were on the point of stepping into a police cab. Not even the bite of the wind eating through his clothes had been able to rouse him from reverie.

  Master, Eetapi admonished. You must pay attention.

  He must, indeed. He took his seat opposite Alexander in chastened silence, and applied himself to the topic at hand.

  ‘Tsevar,’ Alexander said patiently. ‘In business, yes. You did not happen to catch the nature of his business, I suppose?’

  ‘I’m… afraid not.’

  ‘He trades in antiques.’

  Konrad sat up. ‘Oh.’

  ‘And in artworks of more recent date.’

  ‘You mean he passes them off as antiques?’

  ‘Not as far as I’ve been able to find out. He does seem to be keeping the two lines separate. He is very successful, though. He imports from all over the world and supplies several shops in the city. Also sells directly to collectors. He must be wealthy.’

  ‘That explains the Larch Luncheon Club, then. Verinka could never have been paying for that.’

  ‘Most likely. Which suggests that he was the instigator of those weekly luncheon dates, and probably it was his choice of venue, too.’

  ‘It’s of a piece with what we know. He does seem to have been more interested in pursuing a close acquaintance with his sister than she was.’

  ‘Yes, though if she believed him to be both inclined to kill her and capable of it, I can’t think how or why she kept accepting those invitations.’

  ‘She probably did not believe that, while she was still alive. It was me who put the idea into her head, that someone wanted to harm her — after she was dead. Still, they must have quarrelled at least, if her thoughts flew straight to him.’

  ‘Which centres around Kristov, and I have men looking into his interests this morning. For now, though, we are on our way to Tsevar’s offices.’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Konrad. ‘Do we still have that pipe?’

  Alexander removed it from a pocket, and handed it across to Konrad.

  The thing still looked passable. The diamond was no longer embedded beneath the filigree; Konrad had turned that over to the Order already, together with a report for Diana. They would deal with the problem of Verinka’s partial captivity. Konrad also held out some hopes that someone in the Order might know more about the thing. If he was right in thinking there might be more such objects, word of it might have reached Diana’s ears.

  In the meantime, Verinka’s murder was his priority, and the question of how the pipe came to be in her possession at all was of paramount importance. And everything presently pointed either to Tsevar or Kristov — but especially to Tsevar.

  ‘W
hen we get there,’ said Konrad, ‘Let me go in first. Give me maybe quarter of an hour before we go for Tsevar.’

  ‘Are we sneaking and stealthing?’

  ‘We aren’t. I am.’

  Alexander grinned. ‘All right. Quarter of an hour.’

  Finding Tsevar’s private office was no difficult task, once they arrived at the site of his various holdings. He had a few buildings clustered together, one or two of them sizeable; Alexander was right in thinking his business was very substantial. Konrad headed for the most salubrious of the bunch, a construct of moderate size but of recent build, judging from the gleaming white paint, clear windows and pristine arches. A brief enquiry of the first person he encountered within — a clerk of some kind, dress and demeanour nondescript, but with an air of efficiency and haste — soon procured him the directions to Tsevar’s own office. Up those wide, carpeted stairs, and the door straight ahead.

  ‘Oh, but, sir, he is not yet arrived,’ said the brisk young man.

  ‘I will wait,’ Konrad assured him.

  ‘Do you need me to show you the way?’

  ‘I believe I can find it.’

  The clerk bowed, and permitted Konrad to make his way unattended.

  Which Konrad did with due haste, for his quarter of an hour was rapidly expiring. The serpents crept ahead, and carolled that the coast was clear. Konrad slipped inside.

  The office bore all the luxury and splendour that Tsevar’s personal appearance belied. The desk alone was a monument to ego: enormous, it took up fully half of the width of the room. Its polished, darkwood surface bore an array of small statues, ornate candlesticks and jewelled boxes bearing mute testimony to Tsevar’s taste and eye for quality. Konrad would have gladly hosted most of them in his own house.

  He whipped the pipe out of his pocket, placed it carefully on the desk half-hidden behind some one or two other things, and quickly withdrew.

  The man himself arrived less than half an hour later. By that time, Konrad was installed in the front hall with Alexander, biding his time. The inspector had engaged the clerk in conversation; the young man kept shooting concerned glances Konrad’s way, as though he felt he might have personally failed to please him in some way. Konrad supposed he did give off the impression of a promising private collector, ready to spend a great deal of money in Tsevar’s warehouses.