by Boris Akunin
“Dear, good, honest people (for all of this is within you!), what realm is this into which you are withdrawing? What has made the dark silence of the grave so dear to you? Look, the spring sun is bright in the sky, the trees have spread their leaves, but you are weary before your life has even begun.”
Xavier Grushin sniffed with feeling and cast a strict sideways glance at his young assistant in case he might have noticed, then continued speaking in a distinctly cooler voice.
“Well, and so on and so forth. But the times really don’t have anything at all to do with it. There’s nothing new to all of this. We’ve had a saying for these types in the land of Rus since ancient times: “Just don’t know when they’re well off.” A fortune of millions? Now who might that be? And see what scoundrels our precinct chiefs are—they put all sorts of rubbish in their reports, but they haven’t bothered to include this. So much for their summary of municipal incidents! But then I suppose it’s an open-and-shut case: he shot himself in front of witnesses…All the same, it’s a curious business. The Alexander Gardens. That’ll be the City Precinct, second station. I’ll tell you what, young Mr. Fandorin, as a personal favor to me, get yourself smartly across there to Mokhovaya Street. Tell them it’s for purposes of observation and what have you. Find out who this N. was. And most important of all, my dear young fellow, be sure to make a copy of that farewell note. I’ll show it to my Yevdokia Andreevna this evening—she has a fondness for such sentimental stuff. And don’t you keep me waiting either—get yourself back here as quick as you can.”
Xavier Grushin’s final words were already addressed to the back of the young collegiate registrar, who was in such great haste to forsake his dreary oilcloth-covered desk that he nearly forgot his peaked cap.
AT THE STATION the young functionary from the Criminal Investigation Division was shown through to the superintendent. However, on seeing what an insignificant and lowly individual had been dispatched on this errand, the superintendent decided not to waste any time on explanations and summoned his assistant.
“Be so kind as to follow Ivan Prokofievich here,” the superintendent said to the boy in a kindly voice (he might be only a small fry, but he was still from the Division). “He’ll show you everything and tell you all about it. And he was the one who went to the dead man’s apartment yesterday. My humble regards to Superintendent Grushin.”
They seated Erast Fandorin at a high desk and brought him the slim case file. He read the heading:
CASE of the suicide of hereditary honorary citizen Pyotr Alexandrov KOKORIN, 23 years, a student of the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of Moscow. Commenced on the 13th day of the month of May in the year 1876. Concluded on the_____day of the month of____in the year 18___’ and unfastened the knotted tapes with fingers trembling in anticipation.
“Alexander Artamonovich Kokorin’s son,” explained Ivan Prokofievich, a scrawny, lanky veteran with a crumpled face that looked as if a cow had been chewing on it. “Immensely rich man he was. Factory owner. Passed away three years ago now—left the lot to his son. Now why couldn’t he just enjoy being a student and make the most of life? Just what is it these people want? I can’t make it out at all.”
Erast Fandorin simply nodded, not quite knowing what reply to make to that, and became absorbed in reading the statements of the witnesses. The number of reports was rather large, about a dozen in all, the most detailed of them drawn up from the testimony of the daughter of a full privy counselor, Elizaveta von Evert-Kolokoltseva, aged seventeen, and her governess, the spinster Emma Pfühl, aged forty-eight, with whom the suicide had been in conversation immediately prior to the shooting. However, Erast Fandorin failed to extract from the reports any information beyond that which is already known to the reader, for all the witnesses repeated more or less the same thing, differing only in their degree of perspicacity. Some affirmed that the young man’s appearance had instantly filled them with alarm and foreboding (“The moment I looked into his crazy eyes, I went cold all over,” stated Titular Counselor’s wife Khokhryakova, who went on, however, to testify that she had seen the young man only from the back). Other witnesses spoke, on the contrary, of lightning from out of a clear blue sky.
The final item lying in the file was a crumpled note written on light blue monogrammed paper. Erast Fandorin fastened his eyes greedily on the irregular lines (due, no doubt, to emotional distress).
Gentlemen living after me!
Since you are reading this little letter of mine, I have already departed from you and gone on to learn the secret of death, which remains concealed from your eyes behind seven seals. I am free, while you must carry on living in torment and fear. However, I wager that in the place where I now am and from where, as the Prince of Denmark expressed it, no traveler has yet returned, there is absolutely nothing at all. If anyone should not be in agreement, I respectfully suggest that he investigate for himself. In any case, I care nothing at all for any of you, and I am writing this note so that you should not take it into your heads that I laid hands on myself out of some sentimental nonsense or other. Your world nauseates me, and that, truly, is quite reason enough. That I am not an absolute swine may be seen from the leather blotter.
Pyotr Kokorin
The first thought to strike Erast Fandorin was that the letter did not appear to have been written in a state of emotional distress.
“What does this mean about the blotter?” he asked.
Ivan Prokofievich shrugged. “He didn’t have any blotter on him. But what could you expect, the state he was in? Maybe he was meaning to do something or other, but he forgot. It seems clear enough he was a pretty unstable sort of gentleman. Did you read how he twirled the cylinder on that revolver? And, by the way, only one of the chambers had a bullet in it. It’s my opinion, for instance, that he didn’t really mean to shoot himself at all—just wanted to give his nerves a bit of a thrill, put a keener edge on his feeling for life, so to speak, so afterward his food would have more savor and his sprees would seem sweeter.”
“Only one bullet out of six? That really was bad luck,” said Erast Fandorin, aggrieved for the dead man. But the idea of the leather blotter was still nagging at him.
“Where does he live? That is, where did he…”
“An eight-room apartment in a new building on Ostozhenka Street, and very posh too.” Ivan Prokofievich was keen to share his impressions. “Inherited his own house in the Zamoskvorechie district from his father, an entire estate, outbuildings and all, but he didn’t want to live there, moved as far away from the merchantry as he could.”
“Well then, was no leather blotter found there?”
The superintendent’s assistant was astonished at the idea. “Why, do you think we should have searched the place? I tell you, I’d be afraid to let the agents loose around the rooms of an apartment like that—they might get tempted off the straight and narrow. What’s the point, anyway? Egor Nikiforich, the investigator from the district public prosecutor’s office, gave the dead man’s valet a quarter of an hour to pack up his things and had the local officer keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t filch any of his master’s belongings, and then he ordered me to seal the door. Until the heirs come forward.”
“And who are the heirs?” Erast Fandorin asked inquisitively.
“Now, there’s the catch. The valet says Kokorin has no brothers or sisters. There are some kind of second cousins, but he wouldn’t let them inside the door. So who’s going to end up with all that loot?” Ivan Prokofievich sighed enviously. “Frightening just to think of it…Ah, but it’s no concern of ours. The lawyer or the executors will turn up tomorrow or the next day. Not even a day’s gone by yet—we’ve still got the body lying in the icehouse. But Egor Nikiforich could close the case tomorrow, then things will start moving all right.”
“But even so it is odd,” Fandorin observed, wrinkling his brow. “If someone makes special mention of some blotter or other in the last letter he ever writes, there must be som
ething to it. And that bit about ‘an absolute swine’ is none too clear either. What if there is something important in that blotter? It’s up to you, of course, but I would definitely search the apartment for it. It seems to me that blotter is the very reason the note was written. There’s some mystery here, mark my words.”
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
CHAPTER TWO
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 suicid
e 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.
