by Olga Wjotas
“Just be happy with the deal you’ve got,” I said as the lawyer returned with the documentation. I started up the metronome again and the band members revived enough to make their marks alongside the others’ signatures, with me and a scrivener as witnesses.
“You have the most incisive legal mind I have encountered,” said the lawyer. “Would you consider coming into partnership with me?”
“You’re very kind,” I said. “But I’m afraid I’ve got a train to catch.”
In a couple of hours, I had saved nine lives, ten if I included my own when I fell over the branch. I reckoned that ought to please Miss Blaine, and stand me in good stead for the speedy completion of my mission.
I headed for the station. With any luck, a newspaper proprietor had begun publishing again and I would find out what the date was. But before I could look for a vendor, I heard a scream.
I ran to the source and found the maid collapsed against the drozhky, Old Vatrushkin tentatively patting her shoulder.
“She thinks she saw someone,” he said in explanation.
“I don’t think!” she snarled at him and I gave Old Vatrushkin a warning look. “I know what I saw!” Now that her audience had doubled, she started wringing her hands theatrically. “The man! The big man! The big sinister man!”
I tentatively patted her other shoulder, and asked Old Vatrushkin if he had seen this alarming character.
“No, your excellency. If she could read, I would say she had been reading too many Gothic novels.”
I had a brief hope that this would let me pinpoint the date until I remembered that the first Russian Gothic novel was Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin’s Island of Bornholm in 1793.
“You think you’re so clever just because you can read and write!” the maid snapped at Old Vatrushkin.
“I can do a lot more than read and write,” he retorted. “I can carry out the packing duties of a lady’s maid.”
“And why weren’t you doing the packing?” I asked her.
“I was out,” she muttered. “It was awful. The big sinister man followed me all day. I had to keep moving.”
“Followed you where?” I enquired and she looked sulky.
“Just visiting some maidservant friends,” she said, and I knew she’d been swanking around in my clothes again, upsetting people. It was what she did best. “He’s been everywhere I’ve gone and now he’s here at the station. I’m sure he wants to sell me down the Bosphorus as an odalisque.”
“Don’t start that again,” I said. “You’re in absolutely no danger. Old Vatrushkin got you here safely, and I’ll be with you on the train.” I normally dismissed most of what the maid said, but just in case she was right for once, I said, “It’s a bit chilly. I’ll wear my fur coat for the journey.”
Old Vatrushkin raced to get it and helped me on with it. “I apologise for taking upon myself the delicate task of packing for your excellency,” he said in an undertone, “but the maid was in too distraught a condition to perform it adequately. May I assure your excellency that I kept my eyes closed at all times. Particularly when packing your excellency’s . . . accoutrements.”
“Excellent,” I said, feeling nostalgic for the simplicity of a serf-free life. But he was handy for carrying my luggage, and ushered us towards the nearest carriage.
“Here, your excellency. I shall install you in the first-class saloon, beside the conductor.”
“There,” I said to the maid. “Now do you believe you’ll be perfectly safe?”
She looked sceptical, but as we approached, the conductor rushed up and led us into the plush compartment with its velvet-covered sofas.
“I shall be just next door, your excellency,” he said. “If there is anything at all you need during the journey, simply send your maid to fetch me.”
She gave a snort that told me I’d be quicker getting him myself. I waved goodbye to Old Vatrushkin, shouted at him to go and get on with his painting, and had just got myself settled when the whistle went, and the wheels squeaked and clanked against the rails as we set off.
“This is nice,” I said to the maid. “You must be looking forward to seeing your old colleagues.”
“No,” she said. “I hate all of them.”
“Not all of them, surely.”
There was a pause, as she pondered. “Yes, all of them,” she concluded. “I can’t wait to see their faces when I turn up dressed in all my finery.”
“Dressed in all my finery,” I pointed out, at which she turned her back and stared grouchily out of the window at the passing countryside.
I relaxed into the comfortable sofa and listened to the soothing rumble of the wheels. But over the noise of the train, I could hear other sounds in the conductor’s room next door. Raised voices, an indistinct exclamation, a shout that ended in a hoarse gurgle and a heavy thud, as though a body had fallen to the floor.
There was clearly a need for my first-aid skills. I was moving towards the connecting door when it opened to reveal a menacing figure brandishing a bloodstained knife.
The maid screamed. “That’s him! That’s the man!”
Steel flashed through the air and there was another scream. This time it wasn’t the maid.
Nine
I surveyed the intruder, now pinned to the carriage wall by half a dozen razor-sharp knives that a moment earlier had been secreted up the sleeves of my fur coat.
With my usual precision, I had been careful not to draw blood, while ensuring that he was immobilised. Two knives secured him by the shoulders of his greatcoat, two by his sleeves, and two at his waist.
The maid had been right: he was big and sinister. But his head, hands and feet looked disproportionately small, almost as though he was wearing a ridiculous number of layers of clothing, including two coats. His cap was pulled down over his brow: the rest of his face was concealed by a beard and moustache so shaggy that they made Old Vatrushkin’s spectacular foliage look like designer stubble.
“Stop wriggling,” I advised. “I’ve got a few more of these little beauties up my sleeve – you have no idea how many – and the way this train is lurching, I can’t guarantee I’ll miss your more delicate areas.”
This was doubly untruthful. I had used up all the knives, and I had no doubts as to the accuracy of my aim. But I believe there are some rare instances, notably when dealing with villains, when one can be economical with the actualité. To add credence to my threat, I used the voice that had so chilled the audience when I played Mr Hyde in our fourth-year dramatisation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella.
The intruder stopped wriggling.
“Now,” I said, “you’re going to tell us who you are and what you’re doing here.”
The would-be assassin spat at me.
“Missed,” I said. “Your aim’s terrible, by the way. I know all about you stalking my maid but that knife went nowhere near her – it came straight at me.”
The maid was cowering behind the sofa, yowling.
“Okay,” I said in my most silkily scary voice. “Since you don’t seem to want to tell me anything, let me tell you something. You see this coat? Pure haggis fur. Haggis are very, very wee and very, very quick, but they’re not as quick as me. It took hundreds of them to make this coat and I trapped and skinned every one of them myself. In fact, I’ve developed a bit of a taste for skinning things. If you don’t talk, and talk fast, I’m going to make a start on you.”
The intruder slumped in defeat, and I congratulated myself on my fine theatrical skills. I waited for him to make a full confession, but with sudden energy, he burst out of his greatcoat, revealing another greatcoat underneath, wrenched open the compartment door and plunged out into the darkness.
I did a quick calculation. Given the velocity of the train and the angle of his trajectory, the most he would suffer would be a few bruises. He had been more cunnin
g than I thought, and my mission had extended yet again – now I had to keep the maid safe from her would-be assassin.
For once, she was too traumatised even to scream. She was staring at my coat, her eyes wide in terror.
“You didn’t believe any of that, did you?” I said. “This is fake fur. I’d never dream of hurting a wee haggis.”
My levity went unappreciated. The maid’s gaze had swivelled from my coat to the connecting door, which had swung open with the rattling of the train. The conductor was lying in a pool of blood. I went to check his pulse, but there was little point since his throat had been comprehensively cut. The maid’s would-be assassin was already a ruthless killer.
Taking paper and pencil out of my reticule, I quickly wrote a full account of the incident, including not only a clear description of the killer but also a rather good sketch, and the coordinates of where he had leaped from the train. I then enclosed a significant sum for the conductor’s dependents.
The maid had now turned miserable and grumpy, which I realised could be a coping mechanism following trauma, trying to make everything as normal as possible. But I needed the answer to a question. It could provide a clue as to who was trying to kill her.
“Tell me,” I said, “did you tell anybody we were going to the village of N–?”
She hesitated, her eyes flickering. “No,” she said.
“Unless you want to be re-emancipated, you tell me the truth, and you tell me right now,” I grated.
She folded her arms across her chest, glowering. “Didn’t tell anyone,” she retorted.
I had one more sanction. “If you don’t tell me the truth, you won’t get the other three roubles.”
She crumbled. “I might have told Sasha,” she muttered. “It was when you sent me to see if he was all right. So it’s your fault.”
I remembered: it was after Old Vatrushkin had mistakenly thought Sasha was attacking me, when he was merely trying to check my pulse. Telling her to enquire about Sasha’s health wasn’t the same as giving her carte blanche to reveal my travel plans. But I could scarcely blame her for talking to him, since he was the last person anyone could suspect of anything underhand. And yet, I could see how things might have gone wrong.
“Tell me,” I said, “was this at the countess’s?”
She looked shifty.
“Three roubles,” I reminded her.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I know how to get in the back door.”
So now all was clear. The maid had told Sasha. The countess could have overheard. Or perhaps Sasha had mentioned it to her without understanding the implications. He didn’t know how dangerous she was, how ruthless and proprietary. She was still smarting over the maid’s infatuation with the count. I was in no doubt: the countess was the only person who could possibly have hired a hit man. Or one of the two only people, since the count himself might have wanted to get rid of his unwise dalliance.
Knowing that we were travelling to N– gave the countess (or possibly the count) her (or possibly his) opportunity. Murdering the maid in town was too risky because of potential witnesses. A journey was ideal, but the hired assassin wouldn’t have known how or when we were going to N–. So he had kept the maid under surveillance and followed us on to the train.
That was an advantage. His own train journey would have been unexpected, and it would take time for him to return to town and report back to whichever one of the couple had hired him. That still left me an opportunity to complete my investigations in N– before I sent the maid away for her own safety to somewhere distant, such as Irkutsk. Or Omsk. Or Tomsk.
In the note for the authorities, I contemplated naming the countess (or possibly the count) as having hired the conductor’s murderer. But I decided not to, out of politeness. There’s nothing authorities loathe more than amateur detectives, and it implied that I didn’t trust them to reach the right conclusion on their own. In any case, I had my own mission, and it was important to fight the temptation to interfere in other matters.
When we arrived at the village of N–, I made my way up to the driver’s cab and explained that the train crew was now minus one member. I handed over the note containing the report of the murder and the financial support for the conductor’s family, and the driver assured me the matter would be dealt with as soon as he stopped somewhere that had a policeman.
The maid was still in the compartment, as useless as ever, sitting in a morose heap and glowering. I summoned a porter, who summoned a carriage, and before long we were trundling down a lime tree avenue to the countess’s country mansion.
The carriage was visible from a long way off and by the time we arrived, the staff were lined up to greet us, led by a motherly housekeeper. As I was working out what to say, the maid emerged from the carriage, to be met by a collective groan.
“Nice to see you too,” she jeered, strolling up and down the line like a sergeant-major, adjusting an apron here and a collar there. “As you can see from my clothes, I’m now one of the most important members of the household, the countess’s personal assistant, which means you all have to do as I say.”
This provoked a number of incredulous outbursts, which were quickly shushed by the more nervous members of the household.
“The countess sent me, her personal assistant, to personally accompany a real live princess who wants to visit the area,” she went on. There were gasps of surprise and anticipation.
“Princess Tamsonova!” she announced and I stepped out of the carriage, reprising my fifth-year Shakespearean role as Cleopatra. There was a lot of bowing and curtseying but I distinctly heard someone say, “Her frock’s not a patch on the maid’s,” which I suppose was only to be expected since the maid had purloined all the best ones.
She was barking out orders, getting the luggage unloaded, the coachman paid, tea and delicacies prepared, beds made up. The housekeeper, whose authority she was completely usurping, stood in disbelief until she remembered herself and brought me into the parlour. She was getting me settled with quiet efficiency when the maid bustled in.
“Get back to peeling potatoes,” she snapped at the housekeeper. “You don’t know how to look after a grand lady.”
“She’s looking after me perfectly well,” I said, and the maid turned to me with a simper that made me feel quite nauseous.
“Oh, Highness, you are too good, too accepting of inferior service! I cannot let this lowly creature pollute your parlour any longer.”
Before I could say anything, she had shooed the housekeeper out of the room and flopped down on an easy chair.
“I could do with some tea,” I said.
The maid shrugged. “I’m a lady’s maid, not a footman. Samovar’s over there.”
I had created a monster.
“Just remember, you don’t get the other three roubles until my business here is satisfactorily concluded,” I reminded her and she grudgingly poured me a glass of tea, as well as one for herself.
“I’m going to have a look round tomorrow,” I said. “But I think you should stay in your room.”
She began to protest.
“It’s for your own safety,” I wheedled. “What if that maniac has followed us and is planning another attempt on your life?” He would be making his way back to town and wouldn’t be anywhere near the village of N–, but if the maid was confined to her room, it would greatly improve the quality of life for everyone else.
I could see warring emotions re-enact the battle of Waterloo on her face. Then Wellington triumphed and she decided that it would give her extra kudos if she was known to be at risk of assassination.
She went off to disseminate the information throughout the household. “Someone tried to kill me today!” I heard her announce in the corridor.
“Just one?” said the housekeeper in an undertone, coming back into the parlour to check that I had everything I needed.<
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“Pour yourself some tea and sit down,” I said and she looked startled. This obviously didn’t happen when the count and countess were in residence. She perched on the edge of a chair, holding the glass in front of her as though she was a toddler in an egg-and-spoon race.
“Have you worked long for the count and countess?” I asked.
“I worked for the count before he was married, which was very pleasant since he was never here,” she said, and then realised this was a bit of a gaffe. “I don’t mean any disrespect, madam, what with you being a friend of theirs.”
“Not a friend,” I said firmly. “An acquaintance.”
She nodded, and settled into a more comfortable position in the chair. We understood each other.
“And then?” I prompted.
“And then came the incident of which we are forbidden to speak.”
“Yes, I know all about it,” I assured her.
“That meant the count and his new wife were obliged to live here. It has been a great relief to have them move back to town.”
We contemplated this for a while, sighing companionably.
“Something else I wanted to ask you about,” I said. “I want to find out about a young man, blond, blue-eyed, really gorgeous, the countess’s protégé.”
The housekeeper didn’t snigger, presumably because she didn’t know French. “A terrible business,” she said. “I have never known such depravity.”
I didn’t need to ask her what she meant. I’d had glimmers of suspicion, but always steered away from them. Now I knew for sure. A guileless serf, too handsome for his own good, preyed on by the dissolute lady of the manor. I must save him, and get him safely married to Lidia.
“Am I right in thinking,” I said delicately, “that all has not been well between the count and countess?”
“We are obviously forbidden to speak of it,” said the housekeeper.
