Andrichev snorted derisively. “No—when would he have the opportunity for that? The tickets under the woodpile, that was Progorny, but all the rest was my idea. The police were prepared to stop them on the road”—here his voice hesitated, and his mouth suddenly rumpled, as though he were about to cry—“just when they were thinking themselves safe and … and free.” He took another deep swallow. “But you two made that unnecessary. I had not counted on your interference, but it was the last touch to my plan. Having two such reputable, distinguished witnesses to their crime and their attempted escape—even having one of them find the money—that closed the door behind them. That closed and locked the door.”
“Yes,” Sigerson said softly. “And then, with your plan successful, your revenge accomplished, your faithless wife and her lover in prison, you attempted to kill yourself.” There was no question in his voice, and no accusation. He might have been reading a newspaper aloud.
“Oh,” Andrichev said. “That.” He said nothing more for some while, nor did Sigerson. The kitchen remained so quiet that I could hear the tiny rasping sound of a mouse chewing on the pantry door. Andrichev finally stood up, swaying cautiously, like someone trying to decide whether or not he is actually drunk. He was no longer sweating so dreadfully, but his face was as white and taut as a sail trying to contain a storm. He said, “I do not want to live without her. I can, but I do not want to. The revenge … it was not on her, but on myself. For loving her so. For loving her more than the music. That was the revenge.” Once again he held his hands out to Sigerson for invisible manacles. “Get her out of that place,” he said. “Him, too. Get them out, and put me in. Now. Now.”
Lyudmilla Plaschka and Dr. Nastase were released from prison as soon as the magistrate who sentenced them could be located. This is a remarkable story in itself … but I can see that you wouldn’t be interested. Lyudmilla Plaschka threatened to sue her husband, the court, the town, and the duchy of Greater Bornitz for a truly fascinating sum of money. Dr. Nastase must have prevailed, however, for she hired no lawyer, filed no claims, and shortly afterward disappeared with him in the general direction of New South Wales. I believe that a cousin of hers in Gradja received a postal card.
Volodya Andrichev was formally charged with any amount of undeniable transgressions and violations, none of which our two St. Radomir lawyers knew how to prosecute—or defend, either, if it came to that—so there was a good deal of general relief when he likewise vanished from all human sight, leaving neither a forwarding address nor any instructions as to what to do with his worldly goods. One of the lawyers attempted to take possession of his house, in payment for unpaid legal fees; but since no one could even guess what these might amount to, the house eventually became the property of the Greater Bornitz Municipal Orchestra. It is specifically intended to accommodate visiting artists, but so far, to be quite candid … no, you aren’t interested in that, either, are you? You only want information about Herr Sigerson.
Well, I grieve to disappoint you, but he, too, is gone. Oh, some while now—perhaps two months after Volodya Andrichev’s disappearance. As it happens, I walked with him to catch the mail coach on which he had arrived in St. Radomir. I even carried his violin case, as I recall. Never friends, colleagues by circumstance, we had little to say to one another, but little need as well. What we understood of each other, we understood; the rest would remain as much a mystery as on that very first evening, and we were content to leave it so.
We were silent during most of the wait for his train, until he said abruptly, “I would like you to know, Herr Takesti, that I will remember my time here with both affection and amusement—but also with a certain embarrassment.” When I expressed my perplexity, he went on, “Because of the Andrichev matter. Because I was deceived.”
“So was I,” I replied. “So was the entire orchestra—so was everyone with any knowledge of the business.” But Sigerson shook his head, saying, “No, concertmaster, it is different for me. It is just different.”
“And that is exactly why I recognized you in your beggar’s disguise,” I responded with some little heat. “It is always somehow different for you, and that so-called difference will always show in your eyes, and in everything you do. How could you possibly have guessed the secret of Volodya Andrichev’s revenge on his wife and her lover? What is it that you expect of yourself, Herr Oscar Sigerson? What—who—are you supposed to be in this world?”
We heard the train whistle, so distant yet that we could not see the smoke rising on the curve beyond the Ridnak farm. Sigerson put his hand lightly on my shoulder for a brief moment; it was the second, and last, time that he ever touched me. He said, “You know a little of my thought, Herr Takesti. I have always believed that when one eliminates the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, the one solution of the problem. In this case, however, it turned out the other way around. I will be considering the Andrichev matter for a long time to come.”
The train pulled in, and we bowed to each other, and Sigerson swung aboard, and that is the last I ever saw of him. The mail coach runs to and from Bucharest; beyond that, I have no idea where he was bound. I am not sure that I would tell you if I did know. You ask a few too many questions, and there is something wrong with your accent. Sigerson noticed such things.
The Mystery of Dr. Thorvald Sigerson
Linda Robertson
Cape Stevenson
Alaska Territory
September 30, 1894
Editor
Illustrated Weekly News
755 Market Street
San Francisco, California
To the Editor:
I recently received several numbers of your publication from this past summer, and was surprised and saddened to learn from them of the mysterious disappearance of the explorer Thorvald Sigerson. I was distressed, too, to read that doubts have been expressed regarding the authenticity of Professor Sigerson’s notebooks, the truth of the account of Mr. Henry Mayes, your reporter, of their journeys across the polar ice, and, indeed, the very existence of Professor Sigerson himself.
We at Cape Stevenson can vouch for the existence of Professor Sigerson. Several of us, indeed, spent considerable time with him and with Henry Mayes. I have evidence, also, that the logs and notebooks in Mr. Mayes’s possession are genuine documents from the professor’s expedition into the polar ice field, including copies I personally made of them from the professor’s originals. And the same ship that brought me the back numbers of the San Francisco Call and the Illustrated Weekly News containing the accounts of Professor Sigerson’s disappearance also brought me a letter from the professor himself. The letter is brief and says little about his circumstances, except that he was proceeding to France to continue some researches there. He had become aware, he wrote, of the accusations being made against Mr. Mayes, his companion on his Arctic journey, and asked me to help verify Mr. Mayes’s story to the extent that I was able regarding the expedition and its accomplishments. In the account that follows, I shall attempt to do so.
My name is John Osborne, and I am the proprietor of a trading station at Cape Stevenson, near Point Barrow. The story of how I came to be here is a long one, and would be of little interest to you. Suffice it to say that I was a wayward, impractical youth, and my family thought it would “straighten me up” to send me to sea. But my physical strength was not up to the rigors of a sailor’s life, and while in the Arctic, I became deathly ill and was left here in the care of a missionary couple, with every expectation that I would soon expire. That I did not, I owe to the care and kindness of the Reverend and Mrs. Strong, and to Lucy Elisaok, an orphaned Eskimo girl working for them, who helped Mrs. Strong nurse me. After a long convalescence, I recovered fully, except for some slight weakness in my lungs, and found work as clerk and bookkeeper for Mr. Gutkind, who ran the trading station, selling dry goods to the Eskimos and trappers in exchange for furs. By that time, Lucy and I had fallen in love, and as soon as I was on my
feet and working, we were married by Reverend Strong. When Mr. Gutkind decided to try his luck prospecting for gold in the Yukon Territory a year later, I took over the store. That was three years ago. During that time I have learned something of the land and the natives here and gained some proficiency in the Eskimo language and have come to think of Cape Stevenson, for all its harsh remoteness, as my home, the Strongs as my mother and father, and Lucy and the people in her village as my family and friends.
Professor Sigerson arrived at Cape Stevenson in August of last year on the steamer William Seward, which also brought supplies for the winter for the mission, my store, and the weather research station at Point Barrow. Mr. Mayes was with him, as well as a Norwegian named Eilif Bergsson, who seemed to be the professor’s assistant or servant. Their arrival had been preceded by letters of introduction for all of them to Lieutenant Edgewater at the weather station, and we were curious to meet them and learn more about their proposed expedition.
A crowd of people were at the shore when the launch came from the William Seward. Lieutenant Edgewater had sailed from Point Barrow in the weather station’s skiff when he saw the smoke from the ship on the horizon, and he was at the landing to greet his guests. Sigerson was perhaps forty, tall and spare, with an aquiline face and deep-set eyes. Mayes, of course, you know. Bergsson was the largest and tallest of the three; blond-haired and square-jawed, he radiated quiet and strength. The lieutenant shook their hands warmly. “Professor, Mr. Mayes, a pleasure to meet you. I hope you had an easy voyage.”
“As good as one could expect, surely,” Professor Sigerson answered. “We encountered some rough weather past Kotzebue and some ice in the last few days, but Captain Fellowes did an excellent job of steering the ship through it.” He spoke like an educated Englishman, with no trace of a Norwegian accent.
“Glad to hear all went well. But here, it is starting to snow; you’ve missed what passes here for summer, I’m afraid. Let us get you all indoors. We haven’t much to offer visitors, in the way of comforts, but Reverend and Mrs. Strong have a room in their house until we can get you settled in the log house we use here when visiting from the weather station.” He turned to Reverend Strong and me. “This is John Osborne, the manager of our general store, and Reverend Strong, our teacher and missionary to the natives.”
“Ah, Mr. Osborne, Reverend Strong,” Professor Sigerson said. “Along with the lieutenant, you are the men I was told to ask for here, to help me speak with the Eskimos and obtain their help in my enterprise.”
Strong answered, “We’ll be pleased to help in whatever way we can.
“As will my wife and I,” I agreed.
I was busy every waking hour for the next few days, loading furs onto the ship and supervising the unloading and storing of my merchandise and supplies, so I didn’t immediately have time to become acquainted with our visitors except for Bergsson. He went out to the ship in the umiaks, the skin boats, of the Eskimos hired to bring cargo from the ship, and unloaded many of the expedition’s trunks from them himself, lifting them almost without effort onto the sledge we used to pull them to the village. Some he carried on his shoulders all the way to the log house where the party would be staying.
When I had finished unpacking and inventorying our goods, Lucy and I invited our visitors to dinner, along with the lieutenant and the Strongs. Over seal steaks and dried-apple pie, Sigerson explained his planned expedition, as we listened and contributed such advice as we thought might be useful.
“I intend to travel as far north across the ice as I can manage,” Sigerson said, drawing a line with his finger across a map of the northern edge of the Alaska Territory and the ice field above it, “my goal being to investigate the possibility that a system of islands, like chose above Canada, lies concealed in the ice above Point Barrow. Along the way, I shall take measurements that I hope will help determine the movement of the magnetic north pole. To cover as much distance as possible, we plan to use dogsleds, and our party will be a small one: myself, Mr. Bergsson, Mr. Mayes, and an Eskimo guide.”
“The Eskimos here don’t go far onto the ice field,” I interjected. “They say there’s no game there.”
“If there are no islands and few leads of open water, that may well be true,” Lieutenant Edgewater added. “You’ll need supplies for at least three months, to be safe. When were you thinking of starting?”
“I think in February, when the light returns. That will give us time to travel fairly far north and return before the pack ice breaks up. I have brought what I hope are ample supplies for the men in the expedition. I will need sleds and dogs, though, and dried fish to feed them. And reindeer skin clothes, tents, and sleeping bags. All those I hope I can obtain here over the next several months.”
I said that Lucy and I could find good skins and local women who could sew what they needed. “I know of a couple of men who might make good guides,” I said, “but it will be difficult for a man to leave his family for that long without someone to hunt for them.”
“Let them know I will pay very well,” Sigerson replied.
Over the next few weeks we met several times for dinner and talked at length about Sigerson’s plans and the news from the world below. Sigerson had journeyed through the mountains of India and Tibet, and Reverend Strong was enthralled at his descriptions of the ancient monasteries that cling to the bare rock of the mountains two and a half miles above the sea, and the strange and austere practices of the monks who inhabited them. We debated the case of Lizzie Borden, arguing for her guilt or innocence from the facts gleaned from the old newspapers that had come to us on the William Seward. Professor Sigerson seemed to have taken an interest in the case. He made a compelling argument for her guilt, drawing upon details in which we had seen no significance and upon what he called “the science of deduction” to show how she could have managed to hide the evidence of her crime from the police. “The case was handled very badly,” he said. “Between the neighbors having the run of the house for the entire day of the murders and the well-meaning ineptness of the Fall River Police, Miss Borden could have hidden or destroyed a dozen bloodstained dresses without anyone being the wiser.”
Mrs. Strong insisted on Miss Borden’s innocence, saying finally, “Professor, despite your evidence, it’s hard for me to believe that a gently bred woman would be capable of such a savage crime.”
“I don’t doubt that the jury felt much as you do,” Sigerson replied. “It seems to be one of the strange notions of the modern civilized world that women of the middle and upper classes possess some superiority of spirit that disinclines them to harm another creature. True, many more women murder by stealth than by force, but I believe that has more to do with their inferior strength and skill than with any revulsion against killing.”
I was a little surprised at the professor’s apparent cynicism. Mrs. Strong, however, responded, in her gentle, yet firm, way. “I think you do us women a disservice, Professor. The willingness to kill is not bred into us, and most of us aren’t taught it, any more than children are. If Miss Borden did kill her parents, I suspect it must have been the result of some dreadful torment or a deranged mind.”
“But there is no evidence of that,” Lieutenant Edgewater interjected. “By all accounts, the Bordens were an upstanding, respectable family.”
The professor responded, “Ah, but such families often hide dreadful secrets behind the untroubled faces they present to the world. I have seen them, and Mr. Mayes and Reverend Strong, I imagine you must have also in your work.”
“Sadly, yes,” my friend answered, and his wife nodded in agreement.
“Oh, definitely,” Mayes added, and proceeded to tell a story about a refined and charming woman in San Francisco who had married and killed three rich husbands, then fled with her ill-gotten gains to South America when the law began closing in on her.
Autumn and cold weather were by then definitely upon us. Storms swept across the cape, whitening the brown hills with snow and freezing
the bay ever farther from the shore. The Eskimos, returning from their summer hunting and trading, repaired their winter huts of sod and whalebone and filled their caches with walrus, seal, caribou, and dried fish for the long winter ahead. A few times our little settlement was visited by whaling ships hastening south ahead of the ice. They brought business to my store and to the Eskimos who sold them fresh meat, but they also brought vice and disease. Despite the law prohibiting selling alcohol to the Eskimos, the whaling ships often trade it to them, and the men get drunk and fight and sometimes shoot one another. By our standards, too, the morals of the Eskimos are peculiarly lax, and the young women and girls flock to the ships to consort with the sailors, to the constant distress of Reverend and Mrs. Strong.
Lucy, when she was not helping Mrs. Strong in the mission school, was busy arranging for clothes and a guide for Professor Sigerson’s expedition. She spoke with a woman in the village who she said was the best at sewing parkas and another who made the best reindeer skin boots—kamiks, as the Eskimos call them. When word got around that the white men were looking for caribou skins and dog salmon, people came to the store from villages up and down the coast, their dogsleds piled with bales of furs and dried fish. The sewing women came to the store and examined the skins, choosing one here and there. One day Lucy came to me, and said, “Johnny, I think Tungweruk may be willing to be a guide for Mr. Sigerson, but you need to talk to him.”
“Of course, darling,” I said, “but why?”
“Konok and Ongualuk have told him he should ask me to be his wife, and now I’m too embarrassed to speak to anyone in the village about him.”
I wasn’t surprised. The women in the village were always ribbing Lucy, telling her she should go with a man who could hunt. “You can’t make fur clothes or do much of anything useful,” they would say to her. “If this white man leaves, you won’t get a good husband, only a lazy one who can’t get any other woman to live with him.”
Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years Page 11
