Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar

by Olga Wjotas

“Obviously,” I nodded.

  “But from the very beginning, nothing has been well between the count and countess because of the incident of which we are forbidden to speak.”

  I could see that the new bride, desperate to become a socialite in town, would be pretty miffed to discover she had to stay in the back of beyond. But that was no excuse for seducing serfs.

  “If I wanted to find out more about the depravity, where should I start?” I asked.

  The housekeeper put down her tea glass and stood up.

  “I’m afraid, madam, that’s not a matter with which I can help you.”

  “You misunderstand me,” I said. “I’m not seeking any personal involvement in the depravity. I’m as shocked as you are by what’s been going on, and I want to put a stop to it.”

  She dropped back into the chair. “You’re a member of the Skoptsy, madam?”

  I searched my memory: the Skoptsy were a weird extreme sect who went around campaigning against lust. But before I could assure her I wasn’t an extremist about anything except feminism, she said, “I thought it was a myth that the female Skoptsy went to great lengths to avoid arousing passion in men, but looking at you, I see it is true. You should talk to the schoolmaster of N–, the most important man in the village. Apart from the priest, he is the only person who can read and write.”

  “He doesn’t sound a very good schoolmaster if his pupils can’t read and write,” I said.

  “Oh, save us, madam, he doesn’t have any pupils – he’s much too grand for that,” said the housekeeper.

  So I set off for the village, having warned the maid to stay indoors. She seemed happy enough, now wearing my second-best dress. The housekeeper was horrified that I was going to walk and wanted to call a carriage, but I had on my DMs and it was a sunny day. I definitely didn’t need the fur coat and just put on a light pelisse that I found in my luggage. It struck me that Old Vatrushkin packed better with his eyes closed than the maid would have done with her eyes open.

  It was a pleasant walk, along an isolated woodland path leading past a picturesque pond. When I reached the village, I made for the biggest house and knocked on the door. A flustered middle-aged woman appeared, clutching a feather duster.

  “Hello,” I said, “I’m looking for the schoolmaster.”

  “Dmitri Dmitrievich?”

  “If that’s the name of the schoolmaster, then that’s the very chap,” I said.

  “Do you want him to read something for you, or to write something for you?” she asked.

  It would be showing off to tell her about my literacy skills. “No, I just wanted a chat,” I said. “I’m from town.”

  Her eyes grew large and she dropped the feather duster. “From town! I used to live in town. Is it still as beautiful?”

  “It’s very nice,” I said. “Any chance of a word with Dmitri Dmitrievich?”

  “Of course, of course! A chat, you say? So you’re a visitor? In that case, let me show you to the drawing room. His study is for clients, not for visitors. Dmitri Dmitrievich! We have a visitor! Who wants a chat!”

  An elderly man with spectacles and a long flowing beard emerged from what was presumably his study.

  “A visitor, you say, wife? Who wants a chat?”

  “Yes, this young lady!” The wife flung her arms wide as though she were a magician presenting a very large rabbit. Had she known the word, she would undoubtedly have said “ta-da!”

  “How very remarkable,” said the schoolmaster.

  “Yes, isn’t it? I said you would chat to her in the drawing room. I’ll make tea.” She turned to me, bursting with pride. “We have sugar.”

  The drawing room was small but very well dusted. The wife flung open her arms beside an armchair in another “ta-da!” moment, and I realised this was where I should sit.

  “Very comfy,” I said. Too overcome with delight to speak, she rushed off to make the tea.

  The schoolmaster had chosen a plain wooden seat, more in keeping with his ascetic demeanour. “Now, young lady, what do you want to chat about?” he asked. “I can chat about astronomy, history, geology, moral philosophy and metaphysics–”

  “Yes, I can chat about all these things too,” I said, to reassure him that I wasn’t a time waster. “But I want to ask you about a local serf.”

  “Ah yes,” he said. “I know all of the local serfs. They come to me if there is something they need to have read or written. In other villages, they would go to the priest, but the priest here is a very inflexible man who does not believe in helping sinners.”

  How very unlike the Reverend John Thomson of Duddingston Kirk.

  “It’s one of the countess’s serfs, a young man called Sasha.”

  The schoolmaster frowned behind his glasses. “I don’t know any such young man.”

  “You must do. Sasha. Twenty years old.”

  The schoolmaster stroked his beard. “No. I do not know him.”

  “Twenty years old, unbelievably good-looking,” I prompted.

  He shook his head just as his wife reappeared with the tea and sugar. And there was simultaneously a rap at the front door. The wife took a step forward, then a step back, then another step forward. She’d have been a natural for the Gay Gordons.

  “I’ll see to it,” said the schoolmaster testily. “You stay here with the visitor.” He left to answer the door.

  The wife beamed at me. “Clients are seen in the study. Visitors take tea in the drawing room.”

  Perhaps I would have better luck with her. “I’m enquiring about one of the countess’s serfs, Sasha, twenty years old, unbelievably good-looking?”

  She screwed up her face in concentration. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t know him.”

  I thought. There must be an explanation. There always was. Sasha could read and write, and must have been taught by the schoolmaster, since the priest didn’t sound likely to have helped. It must be another of these things that people were forbidden to speak of. The countess wouldn’t want people knowing that she was having Sasha educated as part of her dastardly plan to take him into society with her. The wife was patently telling the truth – I wouldn’t put it past the countess to have insisted that the literacy lessons were completely secret, to be concealed even from the schoolmaster’s wife.

  “I know you came to chat to my husband,” she said, “but would it be all right for us to chat as well? I would so like to hear about town.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Is it still big? With boulevards? Lots of people, lots of carriages?”

  I nodded. She clasped her hands to her bosom. “Ah, that is exactly as I remember it.”

  “Where did you stay?” I asked.

  “With a grand family,” she said. “My husband was a tutor. But now he is a schoolmaster.” A schoolmaster seemed to outrank a tutor in her hierarchy, so I said I was very happy for him.

  “How did he come to change career?” I asked but she appeared to be distracted. I could very faintly hear the voices of the schoolmaster and his client, a man with a gruff bass voice, although I couldn’t make out any words.

  “That voice . . . I thought . . .” said the wife dreamily and then shook herself. “My son is in town,” she said with sudden excitement. “Perhaps you have met him? His name is Aleksandr Dmitrievich. He is twenty years old and he is the most handsome man in the world.”

  Bless, I thought, mums and their sons, they always think they’re perfect.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I haven’t met him. But as I say, it’s a big place.”

  “Perhaps you will meet him at some point. Perhaps you could give him a message from me? Tell him – tell him . . .” She burst into tears.

  She was obviously distressed by the topic of her son. The best way to distract her was by changing the subject. I went back to the question she
had never answered: “How did your husband come to change career?”

  She burst into tears again. I leaned forward and patted her on the shoulder. “There, there. Have some more tea. With sugar.”

  She cheered up at the mention of sugar, the symbol of a prosperous household. “Ah, we had sugar all the time in town when my husband was tutor to the grand family! I remember it as though it were yesterday, even though it was twenty years ago. When we came here, I said, the first thing we do with these monthly payments is buy sugar.”

  “Monthly payments?” I said.

  She dropped her gaze. “I’ve said too much.”

  Or, from my point of view, not enough.

  “So what’s your son doing in town?” I asked.

  She burst into tears again.

  “He left us!” she wept. “He overheard us talking, and he was so angry that he walked out. With that dreadful woman.”

  That’s the other thing about mums with sons. They just can’t stand the girlfriends. Nobody’s ever going to be good enough for their wee boy. The lad had heard his mum being rude about the woman he loved so he’d made his choice and left home. I couldn’t blame him.

  The schoolmaster came back into the room. “A simple note. As always. There is never anything to test my scholarship.” He noticed his weeping wife. “I told you,” he hissed, “we can keep hens.”

  “But there won’t be enough money for sugar!” she wailed.

  “Sugar’s actually quite bad for you,” I said. “Most experts now agree that it’s worse than fats, even saturated ones.”

  The schoolmaster sat down on the hard chair again. “Shall we resume our chat?”

  I had all the information I needed. Sasha had been groomed by the countess and taught in secret by the schoolmaster. But out of politeness, I stayed for another fifteen minutes and chatted about astronomy. There was a difficult moment when I mentioned the moon landings and the schoolmaster flatly refused to believe it, but you get that all the time with people who think the Apollo programme was filmed in a studio by Stanley Kubrick.

  “Well, this has been lovely,” I said. “But I must get back. I’m staying at the countess’s.”

  The wife burst into tears again and ran out of the room.

  “We do not mention that woman’s name in this house,” said the schoolmaster severely. It must be some weird village protocol not to speak of the lady of the manor, like not looking film stars in the eye on set.

  “Sorry. It’s been very nice chatting with you. Please thank your wife for the tea and sugar. If you’re going into livestock farming, you should consider pigs as well as hens, and that will bring in enough to buy as much sugar as she needs.”

  He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “A good suggestion. That will make her happy, or at least as happy as a mother can be who has lost her adopted son.”

  “I hadn’t realised he was adopted,” I said. “He’s very lucky to have been brought up by such a nice couple and given a good start in life. Well done.”

  On the way back to the countess’s, I gave myself a stern talking-to. What had I done, despite warning myself not to? I had assumed. I had assumed the schoolmaster’s son had walked out over his mother’s disapproval of his girlfriend. Did I have any evidence for that? No. Instead, he must have walked out because he had found his natural mother. That was the dreadful woman the schoolmaster’s wife had been referring to.

  I was still berating myself as I approached the countess’s mansion. The housekeeper emerged and ran towards me, her face haggard.

  “Dreadful, dreadful news, madam!” she gasped.

  “Good heavens. What?”

  “Your beautiful coat!” she gabbled. “It is ruined, completely ruined.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It got utterly soaked.”

  “That’s a pity,” I said. “I suppose that’s fake fur for you. It was probably dry clean only.”

  “It’s all the fault of that wretched maid!” said the housekeeper.

  This surprised me. I would have thought the maid’s strict views on demarcation would have prevented her from doing any laundry.

  “Still,” I said, “it was nice of her to try to clean it.”

  “She was doing nothing of the kind!” said the housekeeper. “She was wearing it when she drowned herself. We did everything we could when we dragged her out of the pond, but it was no good – the coat will never be the same.”

  Ten

  “Did you say ‘drowned herself’?” I asked cautiously.

  “Yes, but please don’t upset yourself, madam – I shall take over her duties while you remain with us.”

  “Why would she drown herself?” I went on. I was going to say, “She always seemed so cheerful”, but it would have been less than accurate.

  The housekeeper snorted. “Why indeed? That girl was a law unto herself.” She rummaged in her apron. “But perhaps this will help, madam. She left a suicide note, kindly written for her by the schoolmaster, but of course none of us can read. Perhaps you can help us?”

  I unfolded the crumpled piece of paper and found a note written in a clear, bold hand. I read it aloud: “My many sins are too much to bear. Goodbye, cruel world.”

  The housekeeper sniffed. “An appropriate note, at least.”

  “What were her many sins?” I asked, intrigued.

  “You met her, madam,” said the housekeeper. “Cheeky, lazy, greedy, sulky, snobbish, churlish.”

  One more, and she could have been a septet of dwarves.

  “And she was guilty of the sin of pride,” the housekeeper went on. “She put on your beautiful fur coat, despite my remonstrances, and said she was going to the village to show everyone how important she now was. I’ve never known a more sinful creature.”

  I pointed out that she actively seemed to revel in her behaviour. I hadn’t got the impression that her sins had weighed heavily on her, certainly not enough to drive her to suicide.

  “Perhaps she had a visitation from an angel,” the housekeeper suggested.

  “Perhaps,” I said. People round here seemed tremendously keen on angels. “So have you informed her family?”

  The housekeeper seemed surprised. “But we all know.”

  “Yes, you all know, but don’t you think you should inform her family?”

  “I’m sorry, madam, I don’t quite understand. We all know – me, her father and her sisters. Ah, of course, madam, you’re not aware of our various duties. My husband is a gardener and my other daughters work in the laundry. Nobody is far away in the fields, so the news got round us quickly.”

  It takes a lot to surprise me. This was a lot. “You’re her mum?”

  “Please don’t think badly of me, madam,” said the housekeeper. “I don’t know where she got it from.”

  I began to offer her my condolences, but she brushed them aside.

  “Thank you, madam, but that’s not necessary. None of us could stand her. When she was a baby, I left her on the steps of the convent. But after a week, the nuns brought her back. They said if I tried it again, they’d get the priest to excommunicate me.”

  “Well, at least let me help pay for the funeral,” I said.

  “Oh, madam, there will be no funeral. The priest would never allow such a thing for a suicide. No, madam, she will be deposited in an unmarked grave in unhallowed ground.”

  That didn’t sound at all fair. I decided to go back to the village and have a word with this priest of theirs.

  I walked along the woodland path until I reached the pond. It seemed quite shallow. But if the maid had been absolutely determined, I knew it was possible to drown in 30 millimetres of water. I went over to the edge to check how deep it was.

  And then something cannoned into me, and I fell in. The pond was definitely deeper than 30 millimetres. And what had cannoned int
o me was a person, a person who was forcing my head underwater and was determined to keep it there. If I had realised in advance, I would have taken a gulp of air before I went under, and then I would have been fine – I have excellent lung capacity. But I had had my mouth open in surprise, and had already ingested enough water to finish off most people. As the grip on my head and neck tightened, I knew I was drowning. My life flashed in front of me, much of it consisting of walking across the platform at prize-givings.

  But I couldn’t die. I was on a mission. I had to get back to town and ensure that Lidia married Sasha. One thought reverberated in my increasingly waterlogged brain: Save me, Miss Blaine! And the answer came ringing back: Save yourself.

  I kicked downwards and my feet touched the bottom, the DMs giving me valuable purchase. I thrust an elbow into my assailant’s solar plexus, and with a grunt, he relaxed his hold for a fraction of a second. It was long enough. I manage to twist round, clawing at his face, aiming for his eyes. Instead, my fingers closed on the tangle of a beard. I grasped and tugged.

  And then I was rolling over and over, my assailant having shoved me aside as he escaped into the woods. I was still holding the beard.

  It would have been a vital clue in an era of DNA testing, but all I could do was leave it for a bird to make a nest out of it. I felt quite shocked. Someone had just tried to murder me. But why? Nobody had any reason to take such exception to me.

  My dress was soaking and I was covered in mud. I could go back to the house to change, but I was already halfway to the village. A brisk walk would dry things out a bit – it’s an old wives’ tale that going out in damp clothes with wet hair gives you a cold, since a cold is an airborne virus. I covered up the worst of the damage with my pelisse, which had fallen off when I was propelled into the water. Had I been at home, I would certainly have reported the matter and would probably have booked a therapeutic massage, but I was on a mission with a deadline, and had no time to waste feeling sorry for myself just because someone had tried to murder me.

  When I eventually reached the church, it looked in much more need of repair than I did, which gave me an idea. The priest might be theologically hard-line but hopefully he was fiscally flexible.