Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar

by Olga Wjotas

  I burst into the salon to find Sasha and Lidia clasped in an embrace. This was not good. The general knew that. He had collapsed in a chair in horror and was staring glassy-eyed at the couple.

  “You! Sasha, or Aleksandr Dmitrievich, or whatever your name is,” I said in my prefect voice. “Get away from her.”

  “His name’s Aleksandr Ivanovich Chrezvychainodlinnoslovsky,” slurred Lidia. “Please don’t tell him to get away from me. I’m feeling quite wobbly and I’ll fall if he lets go.”

  “No, don’t tell me to get away from her,” said Sasha, his customary charm oozing from every syllable. “The only person telling people what to do now is me.”

  With a sudden graceful move, he produced a knife, which he held against Lidia’s throat. I might disapprove of the action, but I had to admire the technique.

  “You. Shona Fergusovna, or Princess Tamsonova, or whatever your name is, sit on the chair next to the general’s.”

  Lidia had stopped giggling and her eyes widened in terror as she felt the knife edge press against her skin. She held herself very still, scarcely breathing, in an effort not to get cut. I had to save her, but I had to bide my time until there was a better opportunity. Pretending compliance, I sat on the chair next to the general.

  “You. Old woman. Get out your knitting.”

  Nanny glowered at him. “I’ve got no wool left.”

  I was impressed. This was an outright lie. But she knew Sasha had a plan and she was undermining it. That would make him nervous and more prone to making mistakes, and that would give me my opportunity.

  Sasha pressed the blade more firmly against Lidia’s neck. She gasped. “Nanny, I’m afraid.”

  Nanny delved into her apron and produced wool and knitting needles.

  “Wise decision, old woman,” sneered Sasha. “Now knit two lengths of binding and then you will tie the general and this interfering Scottish fool to their chairs.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “we’d all get along better without the racial abuse.”

  He ignored me. “Quicker than that, or your little chicken will have her gizzard slit.”

  Nanny completed her knitting in record time.

  “And tie them up properly. The instant I see one or other of them begin to free themselves, the chicken gets it.” The threatening timbre of his voice was really very sexy.

  Seconds later, Nanny was tying my wrists behind me and securing the ends of the wool rope to the arms of the chair. I had thought that despite Sasha’s warning, she would have the nous to leave the rope loose enough so that I could free myself and take action at an opportune moment. But the daft woman tied me up properly. I couldn’t even hope that Tresorka would surreptitiously nibble through the wool since he had crawled under a sofa and was lying there trembling.

  “Now, sit down beside them so that I can see all three of you,” Sasha ordered.

  Nanny flopped into a chair. “Oh, Chicken!” she wailed. “What have you been doing?”

  Lidia turned pleading eyes on Sasha. He gave her an attractively boyish grin. “Go on,” he said. “Tell them.”

  Fighting back sobs, Lidia said, “I invited Sasha here to tell me about my brother. We had tea, and he said he was my brother, Aleksandr Ivanovich Chrezvychainodlinnoslovsky, and we had some more tea, and he said it wasn’t fair that I had everything and he had nothing, and I said it wasn’t fair at all, and we had some more tea, and he had a document saying that everything I had was his, and I said then I would have nothing, and he said I would marry the general and still be very rich, so I signed it.”

  “Evil, evil man!” wailed Nanny. “You have tricked my chicken out of her fortune, you have fooled the general into thinking she is a fallen woman so that he will not marry her, and now both her reputation and her finances are ruined!”

  Sasha nodded. “Well done, old woman. Watching my beloved sister’s miserable decline is much more satisfying than killing her, don’t you think?”

  The general cleared his throat. “I am afraid there can be no doubt that your little chicken–” (he nodded politely to Nanny in acknowledgement of the pet name) “–has been indulging in licentious behaviour. When I came in, she was in a passionate embrace with the young man, and I believe both you and Shona Fergusovna–” (he nodded politely to me) “–witnessed it as well.”

  “No,” said Lidia, her voice shaky but determined. She was standing upright now, no longer leaning on Sasha, sobered up by terror. “No licentious behaviour. Only tea drinking. Then, when you arrived, Sasha ran over to me and gave me a great big cuddle.”

  “Nanny,” I said, “I think he put something in the tea.”

  Nanny gave a sigh, which sounded quite theatrical. “Yes, Shona Fergusovna,” she said. “probably something to do with the bottle of vodka sitting beside the samovar over there.”

  I had to admit there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

  “Anyway, your little plan hasn’t worked,” I said to Sasha. “Lidia has just assured us that she remains pure, so the general will still be happy to marry her. Not that I think that should have a bearing on the matter, and I think the double standards for male and female behaviour are absolutely disgraceful. But that’s by the way. And no court in the land will uphold that document once we’ve explained how you conned Lidia into signing it. So you might as well crawl back to the primordial slime from which you emerged.”

  “Ah, Shonetchka, your grasp of the matter is, as ever, flawless. My plan has indeed failed,” said Sasha, and I thought it was nice that he was able to be gracious in defeat. He turned to the others. “My intention was indeed merely to ruin my beloved sister. But now that this interfering Scottish fool has blundered in–” (he placed a distinct emphasis on “Scottish”) “–I have been obliged to change my plan. Now you must all die.”

  Nanny and the general looked at me in an accusing sort of way.

  “Wait,” I said. I may not be a trained negotiator, but working in the library has given me good people skills. It was important to keep him talking while I devised a plan to free us all. “Lidia’s lovely. Why are you being so horrible to her?”

  “She has what is mine!” he snarled. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He looked even more delicious when he snarled. “She has a palace and hundreds of serfs–”

  “Thousands,” interrupted Nanny. “Four thousand, three hundred.”

  “I thought it was four thousand, two hundred and ninety-nine,” I said. “Or were you just rounding up?”

  “No, Yevdokia has just given birth to a son, God be praised,” she said. She really was on top of serf management.

  “God wasn’t praised when I was born!” Sasha snarled gorgeously.

  “He was to begin with,” said Nanny. “Just not after the priest told us you were the Evil One.”

  The priest, I now realised, had been very perceptive.

  There were flecks of green bile at the corners of Sasha’s mouth and a red glow in his eyes. “My dear sister has a palace and estates and untold wealth while I was brought up in penury by a couple of yokels.”

  “Now, that’s not true,” I said. “I’ve been in your adoptive parents’ house and it’s very nice. They have sugar. And they’re a very nice couple. I didn’t have much of a chat with your dad, but your mum’s very nice indeed and she’s very proud of you. But I don’t think she’d be very proud of you if she could see you now, do you?”

  “That peasant is not fit to call herself my mother. They didn’t even confess to me – they kept up the pretence that they were my parents, and it was only by chance that I overheard them complaining that the payment they received for my upkeep had stopped because my natural father had died.”

  “I got that wrong,” I admitted. “I thought the countess was your mum.”

  “That gargoyle? She was nothing but my pawn. I seduced the maid to get to the countess and seduced the
countess to get to town.”

  It had sounded so improbable when the housekeeper had said it, but now I saw Sasha in quite a different light.

  “I appreciate you’ve had an emotional shock,” I said. “But we’ve all had bad things happen to us when we were growing up. When I was ten, I lost a ball in the whin bushes up Blackford Hill, and I looked for it for ages but I never found it. We just need to get over it and get on with things. What doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.”

  “And now it is time for you to be destroyed,” said Sasha briskly. “I shall take particular pleasure in seeing you dead at last, my dear Shonetchka. You have proved quite a challenge. I have tried without success to shoot you, strangle you, break your neck, stab you, drown you and incinerate you. This time I shall not fail.”

  It’s amazing how things suddenly just fall into place, a strange mixture of intuition and deductive reasoning.

  “It was you that shot at me at the duel?” I said. “You weren’t just picking up the curtain cord at the concert? You left that cabbage pickle for me to slip on? You were the big, sinister beardie bloke on the train and at the pond?”

  He gave me a roguish smile.

  “You haven’t only been forging wills,” I said. “You’ve killed before, haven’t you?”

  He laughed, a gloriously melodic laugh. “Oh yes. Many times. So many times I have begun to get a taste for it.”

  “If you were the big, sinister beardie bloke on the train, it must have been you who killed the conductor,” I said. “And drowned the maid.” My thought processes were like quicksilver now. “Those old ladies you inherited from. I bet you pushed them downstairs.”

  He nodded. “Of course. I would have killed that ghastly old princess as well if she hadn’t already written a will. And I found her staff too unpredictable to evade – one never knew whether they were doormen, footmen, coachmen, gardeners or major-domos.”

  I allowed myself a moment of princessly pride. Then I continued my indictment. “And Nanny was right. You murdered the count and the countess.”

  He frowned slightly. “I didn’t expect to have to kill the count myself. I expected the general would do it for me. He and the count were both expert marksmen but the general presented a much smaller target.”

  The general leaned forward eagerly, as much as his bonds allowed. “Yes, that surprised me too,” he said. “I aimed right at him, and I’m certain I didn’t miss.”

  I allowed myself a small secret smile. It was tempting to tell them about my trick, replacing the ammunition with aniseed balls, but I didn’t like to draw attention to my own acumen. And then I caught sight of Tresorka, who had emerged from underneath the sofa and was surreptitiously crawling along the edge of the room, circling his quarry. I had to distract Sasha.

  “That was totally out of order, rigging the card game,” I exclaimed. “You left that obviously bogus card for the count to play so that he’d be accused of cheating and there would be a duel.”

  Tresorka was closing in on Sasha.

  “You are not a gentleman, sir,” I went on. “No gentleman cheats at cards.”

  “I’m most certainly a gentleman and I have the fortune to prove it,” he said.

  Tresorka, teeth bared, prepared to attack Sasha’s ankles. I held myself in readiness. The minute Tresorka’s teeth met flesh and deflected Sasha from his murderous plan, I would shout instructions, ordering Lidia to run and Nanny to untie me. Then I would quickly get Sasha in an armlock and . . .

  With a heart-rending yelp, Tresorka flew across the room. There was a sickening thunk as he hit the wall. Sasha, with some diabolical sixth sense, had kicked backwards with vicious accuracy.

  Tresorka lay silent and motionless, one tiny leg jutting at an unnatural angle.

  “You brute!” I shouted at Sasha, straining against the knitting. “You’re pure evil!” As soon as I’d said it, I was relieved I had said it in Russian. I would have hated anybody to think I was talking Glaswegian.

  “Killing people is wrong,” I said, “but kicking dumb animals is – well, if it’s not more wrong, it’s at least equally wrong. Or if not quite equally wrong, then very nearly as wrong. In fact, why are we even discussing levels of wrongness? Wrong is wrong.”

  “Ah, killing people,” drawled Sasha. “I knew there was something I meant to do. Thank you for reminding me. First, I shall cut the throat of my beloved sister.”

  I started thinking fast. I had to complete my mission. All these people were depending on me. I struggled to free my hands but they were tied fast. There was nothing the general could do because he was also tied to his chair. Lidia was rigid with fear. I would have to give instructions to Nanny. I knew she was very good at throwing things, but first I had to think of something for her to throw. I looked around.

  While I was thinking fast, Nanny gave a sudden shout. “Chicken! Your owl!”

  Lidia grabbed her awl from her pocket and jabbed it into Sasha’s side. At that exact moment, Tresorka hurtled across the room on three legs and sank his teeth into Sasha’s ankle. Sasha shrieked, dropping the knife as he tried to tend to his injuries. Lidia and Tresorka raced to safety as Nanny hurled an oil lamp at Sasha’s head while the general threw the half-full bottle of vodka.

  Bottle and lamp met in mid-air and the oil and alcohol exploded. An instant later, all that was left of Sasha was a small charred heap and a hideous stench of sulphur and burnt fat.

  “Wow,” I said in awe. “I think you’ve just invented the Molotov cocktail.”

  “No thanks to you,” said Nanny testily. “Why are you just sitting there?”

  The shock of the preceding events must have given her short-term memory loss.

  “You tied me up,” I reminded her. “With your knitting.”

  “And I deliberately dropped a stitch so that you could wiggle your fingers about and pull it all apart,” she said. “The general’s been free for ages, just waiting for my signal.”

  “Oh,” I said, unaccountably unable to think of anything else to say.

  “Well, I need to get this mess cleared up,” said Nanny, going off to find a broom.

  Lidia came over to untie me. “What a peculiar day,” she said. “To find my deceased brother was no longer deceased and now to find him deceased again. It’s probably for the best. I think our personalities were too different to allow us to be truly at ease together. But he made very good tea.”

  Once I was free, I rushed over to Tresorka. “Good boy,” I said. “I thought you were unconscious but you were just lying doggo. How’s the leg?”

  Tresorka gave a weak wag of his tail. I investigated and found his leg was dislocated rather than broken.

  “I can put this right, but he’ll need something to bite on,” I said.

  “How about my hand?” asked the general, and I had to explain about tetanus and lockjaw. Nanny went off to the kitchen and found a ham bone, which Tresorka gnawed on while I manipulated the dislocated joint back into position. I made a splint from one of Nanny’s crochet hooks, tied on with wool to keep the joint in place while it healed.

  Meanwhile, Nanny was sweeping up Sasha’s remnants.

  “Oh, Nanny!” said Lidia, her eyes shining. “The parquet is completely ruined! It will take so much work to repair it – the whole floor will have to be replaced.”

  “I hope you are not forgetting my verandah,” said the general quietly.

  The way ahead was now clear. My mission was to help Lidia and I would complete it.

  “It’s at times like this that you realise what’s important,” I said. “We’ve done a lot today, and I think we just need to take it easy now. But I’d like to invite you all round to mine tomorrow afternoon for an engagement party.”

  I left Tresorka where he was, so that he could start recuperating, and showed Nanny how to carry out basic physiotherapy. She would bring him in her apron
the next day.

  It was only when I was halfway home that I remembered I had left the mansion ablaze. By now, it would be nothing but a pile of ashes. Like Sasha, only bigger and less pungent.

  Fourteen

  There was no point in rushing home if there was no home to rush to. Since Sasha had set the fire in my wood-panelled bedroom, all of my clothes would have been destroyed. The gown I was currently wearing was too smoke-damaged to be suitable for a party, so I went to the nearest dressmaker and ordered a new one for the next day. Fortunately, I was wearing a multiway bra, which I could rinse out, and my DMs were tough enough to withstand any disaster.

  I then paid a return visit to Kirill Kirillovich, the best lawyer in town. It all proved straightforward. He was slightly unsure on a couple of the more complex details, but I was able to direct him to the relevant legal authorities, and sign the necessary affidavits.

  “One final matter,” he said. “I would like to offer you a partnership. I shall have a scrivener write out the contract.”

  I shook my head. “That’s very flattering, but I expect to be leaving shortly.”

  As I neared the mansion, I could hear a hubbub of voices, horses neighing, and the creaking of cart wheels. Then I saw the mansion itself, which looked the same as ever, only brighter and cleaner. Dozens of carts filled with workers and their paraphernalia were trundling away.

  Old Vatrushkin was at the door. I felt a surge of affection. How could I ever have imagined he would try to hurt me? He wouldn’t hurt an amoeba.

  As I approached, I saw he was concluding some sort of business with a tanned, dark-haired man, and realised he had been supervising the repair work.

  “Your excellency!” he cried when he saw me. “Please don’t be concerned! There has been a small fire, but almost everything is as it was. I was in the orangery when I smelled smoke, and was able to summon help before the mansion was completely destroyed. Fortunately, so much of it is marble that it was able to withstand the blaze.”

  He paused and I saw his bottom lip tremble. “I was afraid that – that – I searched every room. I was . . . greatly relieved to find no human remains.”