The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 30

  So we come to 1986, and the sudden storm that was about to make the Tarsay hamlet the very epicentre of a malevolent earthquake that the region still hasn’t recovered from. I am referring to my death by strangulation, followed by my night-time immersion which rapidly bloated my floating body to horrifying proportions, a sight for sore eyes for the few passers-by who managed to bypass the cops and feast on the spectacle. I once even witnessed for myself, leafing through a book published shortly after the case, perusing the only photograph ever published of my battered body.

  The prosecuting judge in charge of the case soon attracted attention to himself, “put himself on display” as grandmother Valleau put it, a loud and ferocious woman who would become the family spokesperson in front of the press – a gaggle of hysterical, vulgar and even louder than her Parisian journalists. Roger Dupin, a small-minded bourgeois with an exaggerated sense of his self-importance, thought my uncle was the killer, listening as he did to all those venomous local tongues hidden behind falsely contrite features. In all the affray that followed the announcement of the imminent arrest of Germain, my father even attempted to shoot him with a rifle, which didn’t make the situation any better. Papa was also arrested and imprisoned in Saintes, and newspaper speculation continued, fed daily by so-called revelations from sources allegedly close to the Valleau family, in truth folk who were mistaking their desires for reality.

  Even though I’d survived this unjust and absurd death, I was naturally unaware of what was happening all around me. I was still only a small child, relatively innocent, but then I knew no better!

  If you’re about to tell me that my story makes no sense, just hold your fire. How could I have died – and in such a horrific manner – and kept on living no doubt in a dream from purgatory, observing life on earth and the terrible consequences of my drowning from high on above? As you well know, soon it was my mother who was accused of my murder, and who was poisoned on a cold desolate day in March, after a crazy female novelist from Paris, here to report on the case for a left-wing newspaper, had conjured up dreadful accusations against her: “Don’t go looking too far afield; it’s the mother who drowned him!” In the meantime, a second prosecuting judge had taken over from the one who almost got my uncle killed.

  It took only a few weeks for poor little Tony’s legend to be forged, blending often contradictory facts and theories – or should I say woolly unfounded speculations – haphazardly constructed by journalists and other so-called criminal experts. One of them, an Englishman called Peter Grale, had arrived on the scene very early in the day, with a view to investigating matters discreetly on his own behalf. Six months following the affair, he published a book in London called Killing to Survive, in which he cleverly developed the theory that a family plot was responsible for my death, my poor innocent soul having been sacrificed on the altar of rage and the incapacity of the members of the Valleau clan to resolve their hopelessly entangled psychological problems without resort to blood. The person I now live with translated the book, which was never published in French, for me word for word a few months ago, which is probably why I was motivated to begin this short tale; although I know that in the future I might provide further revelations on the whole affair.

  I must confess that I have long been solidly sheltered by her, and she now means the world to me. To the extent that it was only after reading the Peter Grale book that I truly came to understand the complexity of the tragedy that took place in the Tarzay hamlet in 1986. Of course, the Englishman never knew the truth, but he got very close to it, which has quietly comforted my friend and I.

  This truth that I am now about to reveal to you, as only I could truly know it, the miscellany of facts I could not be aware of having been reported to me by my friend in question, who happened to be a privileged observer of what took place in 1986.

  First of all, may I apologise to you for all this fairytale trickery about my “death” and ensuing “survival”. Of course, it wasn’t actually my body which was recovered from the waters of the Seugne, but that of a nameless child, my very own twin brother, brought up in a broom cupboard by my mother – our unworthy mother. And he was truly nameless, because the poor soul my parents referred to for three long years as “zozo” had never been baptised and almost never left the small room where he was being held. It might appear bizarre that no other family member was ever aware of the existence of my blood brother, but that was truly the case. The alleged bike accident that happened to the midwife was in all likelihood the second crime committed by my parents, united as they were by an insane desire to eliminate the only witness to our two births.

  I have come to understand that for the conflicted couple formed by Josyane and my father, “zozo” was like a curse, the end result of the love of my mother for Germain. For them, he was more than an illegitimate son, the living proof of an unforgivable sin and had to be kept hidden. Was Germain aware? Most likely he was, but then he was himself a male Valleau, no more than a kid formed by the twisted morality of the clan, led by the angry matriarch that grandmother Valleau was. The sacrifice of “zozo” was just the stepping stone to a mighty drama which my parents, marginalized and naive as they were, could never get to grips with. Nonetheless, they kept their burdensome secret, and bravely resisting all interrogations, they accepted their brief sojourns in prison as a necessary evil.

  But what became of me, you no doubt ask. Well, Josyane had thought of everything. Barely one hour before the terrible deed was committed – both my parents were closely involved: one had strangled “zozo”, the other had drowned him – I was taken to the house of madame Duchemin, which my mother had the key to. Needless to say, the notary’s widow was in on the plot. To the extent that . . . and allow me a moment to catch my breath before I break the news to you . . . I am still today living with her and have never wanted to leave.

  Alice Duchemin is only seventy-two, and she assures me she doesn’t look her age. We are in love, Alice and I, and I clearly intend to look after her, much as she so affectionately did with me for such a long time, for which I can never thank her enough. I, small Tony Valleau whom everyone thought was dead and whose supposed death created such a torrent of ink.

  I will not tell you more about our love – you have no doubt read Colette’s Le Blé en Herbe or seen the marvellous Harold and Maude, a movie I never tire of watching on video.

  A couple of days after the “tragedy”, Alice and I left her house and travelled to the flat she owns in Biarritz, and it was there, in the old-fashioned atmosphere of a city which is still synonymous with happiness for me, that I grew up, watching the fury of the incoming ocean waves, tucked in every single night by the most loving person I had ever known since my birth.

  We only returned to the large grey-stoned house and its slate roof and tall metal gables when I was twelve years old. By then, who could have recognized the thin and gracious adolescent Alice introduced as her grandson Adrien, as the long believed dead Tony Valleau? And so, my singular life continued, in a spacious room overlooking the marshes and the Seugne river, and in the well-appointed library of the widow Duchemin, whom most people in the region considered to be just an amiable eccentric. My mother no longer came to clean the Erables house, which surprised no one.

  I am now in my twentieth year, and Alice and I will soon be leaving the house in Tarzay for Bordeaux where I shall begin a more orthodox education. However, I don’t feel in any way deprived or lacking in knowledge, as Alice has always been particularly cultured, keen on literature and many other disciplines. Before she met Edouard Duchemin and wed him only to find themselves childless, she had obtained a degree in literature and another in history back in Paris. With the help of the immense wealth accumulated by her husband, she firmly intends to make a complete man of me.

  Which will definitely be a first in my family.

  Translation by Maxim Jakubowski

  Table Talk, 1882

  Boris Akunin

  After the coffee and liqueurs,
the conversation turned to mystery.

  Deliberately not looking at her new guest – a collegiate assessor and the season’s most fashionable man – Lidia Nikolaevna Odintsova, hostess of the salon, remarked, “All Moscow is saying Bismarck must have poisoned poor Skobelev. Can it really be that society is to remain ignorant of the truth behind this horrible tragedy?”

  The guest to whom Lidia Nikolaevna was treating her regulars today was Erast Petrovich Fandorin. He was maddeningly handsome, cloaked in an aura of mystery, and a bachelor besides. In order to inveigle Erast Petrovich into her salon, the hostess had had to bring off an extremely complex intrigue consisting of many parts – an undertaking at which she was an unsurpassed mistress.

  Her sally was addressed to Arkhip Giatsintovich Mustafin, an old friend of the house. A man of fine mind, Mustafin caught Lidia Nikolaevna’s intention at the first hint and, casting a sideways glance at the young collegiate assessor from beneath his ruddy and lashless eyelids, intoned, “Ah, but I’ve been told our White General may have been destroyed by a fatal passion.”

  The others at the table held their breath, as it was rumored that Erast Petrovich, who until quite recently had served in the office of Moscow’s Governor-General as an officer for special missions, had had a most direct relation to the investigation into events surrounding the death of the great commander. However, disappointment awaited the guests, for the handsome Fandorin listened politely to Arkhip Giatsintovich with an air suggesting that the words had nothing whatever to do with him.

  This brought about the one situation that an experienced hostess could not permit – an awkward silence. Lidia Nikolaevna knew immediately what to do. Lowering her eyelids, she came to Mustafin’s assistance. “This is so very like the mysterious disappearance of poor Polinka Karakina! Surely you recall that dreadful story, my friend?”

  “How could I not?” Arkhip drawled, indicating his gratitude with a quick lift of an eyebrow.

  Some of the party nodded as if also remembering, but most of the guests clearly knew nothing about Polinka Karakina. In addition, Mustafin had a reputation as a most exquisite raconteur, such that it would be no penance to hear even a familiar tale from his lips. So here Molly Sapegina, a charming young woman whose husband – such a tragedy – had been killed in Turkestan a year ago, asked with curiosity, “A mysterious disappearance? How interesting!”

  Lidia Nikolaevna made as if to accommodate herself to her chair more comfortably, so also letting Mustafin know that she was passing nourishment of the table talk into his capable hands.

  “Many of us, of course, still recall old Prince Lev Lvovich Karakin,” – so Arkhip Giatsintovich began his tale. “He was a man of the old sort, a hero of the Hungarian campaign. He had no taste for the liberal vagaries of our late Tsar, and so retired to his lands outside Moscow, where he lived like a nabob of Hindi. He was fabulously wealthy, of an estate no longer found among the aristocracy of today.

  “The prince had two daughters, Polinka and Anyuta. I beg you to note, no Frenchified Pauline or English Annie. The general held the very strictest of patriotic views. The girls were twins. Face, figure, voice, all were identical. They were not to be confused, however, for right here, on her right cheek, Anyuta had a birthmark. Lev Lvovich’s wife had died in childbirth, and the prince did not marry again. He always said that it was a lot of fuss and he had no need – after all, there was no shortage of serving girls. And indeed, he had no shortage of serving girls, even after the emancipation. For, as I said, Lev Lvovich lived the life of a true nabob.”

  “For shame, Archie! Without vulgarity, if you please,” Lidia Nikolaevna remonstrated with a stern smile, although she knew perfectly well that a good story is never hurt by “adding a little pepper,” as the English say.

  Mustafin pressed his palm to his breast in apology, then continued his tale. “Polinka and Anyuta were far from being horrors, but it would also be difficult to call them great beauties. However, as we all know, a dowry of millions is the best of cosmetics, so that in the season when they debuted, they produced something like a fever epidemic among the eligible bachelors of Moscow. But then the old prince took some sort of offense at our honored Governor-General and withdrew to his piney Sosnovka, never to leave the place again.

  “Lev Lvovich was a heavyset fellow, short-winded and red-faced, a man prone to apoplexy, as they say, so there was reason to hope that the princesses’ imprisonment would not last long. However, the years went on, Prince Karakin grew ever fatter, flying into ever more thunderous rages, and evinced no intention whatsoever of dying. The suitors waited and waited and in the end quite forgot about the poor prisoners.

  “Although it was said to be in the Moscow region, Sosnovka was in fact in the deep forests of Zaraisky district, not only nowhere near the railroad, but a good twenty versts even from the nearest well-traveled road. The wilderness, in a word. To be sure, it was a heavenly place, and excellently established. I have a little village nearby, so that I often called on the prince as a neighbor. The black grouse shooting there is exquisite, but that spring especially the birds seemed to fly right into one’s sights – I’ve never seen the like in all my days. So, in the end, I became a habitué of the house, which is why the entire tale unfolded right before my eyes.

  “The old prince had been trying for some time to construct a belvedere in his park, in the Viennese style. He had first hired a famous architect from Moscow, who had drawn up the plans and even started the construction, but then didn’t finish it – he could not endure the prince’s bullheaded whims and so had departed. To finish the work they summoned an architect of somewhat lower flight, a Frenchman named Renar. Young, and rather handsome. True, he was noticeably lame, but since Lord Byron our young ladies have never counted this as a defect.

  “What happened next you can imagine for yourselves. The two maidens had been sitting in the country for a decade now, never once getting out. They both were twenty-eight years old, with absolutely no society of any sort, save for the arrival of the odd fuddy-duddy such as myself, come to hunt. And suddenly – a handsome young man of lively mind, and from Paris at that.

  “I have to say that, for all their outward similarity, the two princesses were of totally different temperament and spiritual cast. Anyuta was like Pushkin’s Tatyana, prone to lassitude, a touch melancholic, a little pedantic, and, to be blunt, a bit tedious. As for Polinka, she was frolicsome, mischievous, ‘simple as a poet’s life, sweet as a lover’s kiss’, as the poet has it. And she was far less settled into old-maidish ways.

  “Renar lived there a bit, had a look around, and, naturally enough, set his cap at Polinka. I watched all this from the sidelines, rejoicing greatly, and of course not once suspecting the incredible way in which this pastoral idyll would end. Polinka besotted by love, the Frenchie giddy with the whiff of millions, and Anyuta smoldering with jealousy, forced to assume the role of vessel of common sense. I confess that I enjoyed watching this comedy at least as much as I did the mating dance of the black grouse. The noble father, of course, continued to be oblivious of all this, because he was arrogant and unable to imagine that a Princess Karakina might feel attracted to some lowly sort of architect.

  “It all ended in scandal, of course. One evening Anyuta chanced . . . or perhaps there was nothing of chance about it . . . Anyuta glanced into a little house in the garden, found her sister and Renar there in flagrante delicto, and immediately informed their father. Wrathful Lev Lvovich, who escaped apoplexy only by a miracle, wanted to drive the offender from his estate immediately. The Frenchman was able only with the greatest difficulty to plead to be allowed to remain at the estate until the morning, for the forests around Sosnovka were such that a solitary night traveler could well be eaten by wolves. Had I not intervened, the malefactor would have been turned out of the gates dressed in nothing but his frock coat.

  “The sobbing Polinka was sent to her bedroom under the eye of her prudent sister, the architect was sent to his room in one of the wi
ngs to pack his suitcase, the servants scattered, and the full brunt of the prince’s wrath came to be borne precisely by your humble servant. Lev Lvovich raged almost until dawn, wearing me out entirely, so that I scarcely slept that night. Nevertheless, in the morning I saw from the window how the Frenchman was hauled off to the station in a plain flat farm cart. Poor fellow, he kept looking up to the windows, but clearly there was no one waving him farewell, or so his terribly droopy look seemed to say.

  “Then marvels began to occur. The princesses did not appear for breakfast. Their bedroom door was locked, and there was no response to knocks. The prince began to boil again, showing signs of an inevitable apoplexy. He gave orders to splinter the door, and devil take the hindmost. Which was done, everyone rushed in, and . . . Good heavens! Anyuta lay in her bed, as if in deepest sleep, while there was no sign of Polinka whatsoever. She had vanished. She wasn’t in the house, she wasn’t in the park . . . it was as if she had slipped down through the very earth.

  “No matter how hard they tried to wake Anyuta, it was to no avail. The family doctor, who had lived there on the estate, had died not long before, and no new one had yet been hired. Thus they had to send to the district hospital. The government doctor came, one of those long-haired fellows. He poked her, he squeezed her, and then he said she was suffering from a most serious nervous disorder. Leave her lie, and she would awake.