The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 31

  “The carter who had hauled off the Frenchman returned. He was a faithful man, his whole life spent at the estate. He swore to heaven that he had carted Renar right to the station and put him on the train. The young gentle-lady had not been with him. And anyway, how could she have gotten past the gate? The park at Sosnovka was surrounded by a high stone wall, and there was a guard at the gate.

  “Anyuta did wake the following day, but there was no getting anything from her. She had lost the ability to speak. All she could do was weep, tremble, and rattle her teeth. After a week she began to speak a little, but she remembered nothing of that night. If she were pressed with questions, she would immediately begin to shudder and convulse. The doctor forbade such questions in the very strictest terms, saying that it endangered her life.

  “So Polinka had vanished. The prince lost his mind utterly. He wrote repeatedly to the governor and even to the Tsar himself. He roused the police. He had Renar followed in Moscow – but it was all for naught. The Frenchman labored away, trying to find clients, but to no avail – nobody wanted a quarrel with Karakin. So the poor fellow left for his native Paris. Even so, Lev Lvovich continued to rage. He got it into his head that the villain had killed his beloved Polinka and buried her somewhere. He had the whole park dug up, and the pond drained, killing all his priceless carp. Nothing. A month passed, and the apoplexy finally came. The prince sat down to dinner, gave out a sudden wheeze, and plop! Facedown in his soup bowl. And no wonder, really, after suffering so much.

  “After that night it wasn’t so much that Anyuta was touched in the head as that her character was markedly changed. Even before, she hadn’t been noted for any particular gaiety, but now she would scarcely even open her mouth. The slightest sound would set her atremble. I confess, sinner that I am, that I am no great lover of tragedy. I fled from Sosnovka while the prince was still alive. When I came for the funeral, saints above, the estate was changed beyond recognition. The place had become dreadful, as if some raven had folded its black wing over it. I looked about and I remember thinking, This place is going to be abandoned. And so it came to be.

  “Anyuta, the sole heir, had no desire to live there and so she went away. Not to Moscow, either, or some place in Europe, but to the very ends of the earth. The estate manager sends her money to Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. I checked on a globe to find that Rio is absolutely on the other side of the world from Sosnovka. Just think – Brazil! Not a Russian face to be seen anywhere!” Arkhip Giatsintovich ended his strange tale with a sigh.

  “Why do you say that? I have an acquaintance in Brazil, a former c-colleague of mine in the Japanese embassy, Karl Ivanovich Veber,” Erast Petrovich Fandorin murmured thoughtfully, having listened to the story with interest. The officer for special missions had a soft and pleasant manner of speaking, in no way spoiled by his slight stammer. “Veber is an envoy to the Brazilian emperor D-Don Pedro now. So it’s hardly the end of the earth.”

  “Is that so?” Arkhip Giatsintovich turned animatedly. “So perhaps this mystery might yet be solved? Ah, my dear Erast Petrovich, people say that you have a brilliant analytic mind, that you can crack mysteries of all sorts, like so many walnuts. Now here’s a problem for you that doesn’t seem to have a logical solution. On the one hand, Polinka Karakina vanished from the estate – that’s a fact. On the other hand, there’s no way she could have gotten out of the garden, and that’s also a fact.”

  “Yes, yes,” several of the ladies started at once, “Mr Fandorin, Erast Petrovich, we so terribly want to know what really happened there!”

  “I’m prepared to make a wager that Erast Petrovich will be able to resolve this paradox quite easily,” the hostess Odintsova announced with confidence.

  “A wager?” Mustafin inquired immediately. “And what are you willing to wager?”

  It must be explained that both Lidia Nikolaevna and Arkhip Giatsintovich were avid gamblers whose passion for making wagers sometimes approached lunacy. The more insightful of the guests glanced at one another, suspicious that this entire interlude, with a tale supposedly recalled solely by chance, had been staged by prior agreement, and that the young official had fallen victim to a clever intrigue.

  “I quite like that little Bouchet of yours,” Arkhip Giatsintovich said with a slight bow.

  “And I your large Caravaggio,” the hostess answered him in the same tone of voice.

  Mustafin simply rocked his head a bit, as if admiring Odintsova’s voracious appetite, but said nothing. Apparently he had no qualms about victory. Or, perhaps, the stakes had already been decided between them in advance.

  A bit startled at such swiftness, Erast Petrovich spread his hands. “But I have not visited the site of the event, and I have never seen the p-participants. As I recall, even having all the necessary information, the police were not able to do anything. So what am I to do now? And it’s probably been quite some time as well, I imagine.”

  “Six years this October,” came the answer.

  “W-well then, you see . . .”

  “Dear, wonderful Erast Petrovich,” the hostess implored, “don’t ruin me utterly. I’ve already agreed to this extortionist’s terms. He’ll simply take my Bouchet and be gone! That gentleman has not the slightest drop of chivalry in him!”

  “My ancestors were Tartar murza, warlords!” Arkhip Giatsintovich confirmed gaily. “We in the Horde keep our chat with the ladies short.”

  However, chivalry was far from an empty word for Fandorin, apparently. The young man rubbed the bridge of his nose with a finger and muttered, “Well, so that’s how it is . . . Well, Mr Mustafin, you . . . you didn’t chance to notice, did you, what kind of bag the Frenchman had? You did see him leave, you said. So probably there was some large kind of trunk?”

  Arkhip Giatsintovich made as if to applaud. “Bravo! He hid the girl in the trunk and carted her off? And Polinka gave the meddlesome sister something nasty to drink, which is why Anyuta collapsed into nervous disorder? Clever. But alas . . . There was no trunk. The Frenchman flew off as light as an eagle. I remember some small suitcases of some sort, some bundles, a couple of hatboxes. No, my good sir, your explanation simply won’t wash.”

  Fandorin thought a bit, then asked, “You are quite sure that the princess could not have won the guards to her side, or perhaps just bribed them?”

  “Absolutely. That was the first thing the police checked.”

  Strangely, at these words the collegiate assessor suddenly became very gloomy and sighed, then said, “Then your tale is much nastier than I had thought.” Then, after a long pause, he said. “Tell me, did the prince’s house have plumbing?”

  “Plumbing? In the countryside?” Molly Sapegina asked in astonishment, then giggled uncertainly, having decided that the handsome official was joking. However, Arkhip Giatsintovich screwed his gold-rimmed monocle into one eye and looked at Fandorin extremely attentively, as if he had only just properly noticed him. “How did you guess that? As it happens, there was plumbing at the estate. A year before the events that I have described, the prince had ordered the construction of a pumping station and a boiler room. Lev Lvovich, the princesses, and the guest rooms all had quite proper bathrooms. But what does that have to do with the business at hand?”

  “I think that your p-paradox is resolved.” Fandorin rocked his head. “The resolution, though, is awfully unpleasant.”

  “But how? Resolved by what? What happened?” Questions came from all sides.

  “I’ll tell you in a moment. But first, Lidia Nikolaevna, I would like to give your lackey a certain assignment.”

  With all present completely entranced, the collegiate assessor then wrote a little note of some sort, handed it to the lackey, and whispered something quietly into the man’s ear. The clock on the mantel chimed midnight, but no one had the slightest thought of leaving. All held their breath and waited, but Erast Petrovich was in no hurry to begin this demonstration of his analytic gifts. Bursting with pride at her faultless intuition, which
once again had served her well in her choice of a main guest, Lidia Nikolaevna looked at the young man with almost maternal tenderness. This officer of special missions had every chance of becoming a true star of her salon. Which would make Katie Polotskaya and Lily Yepanchina green with envy, to be sure!

  “The story you shared with us is not so much mysterious as disgusting,” the collegiate assessor finally said with a grimace. “One of the most monstrous crimes of passion about which I have ever had occasion to hear. This is no disappearance. It is a murder, of the very worst, Cain-like sort.”

  “Are you meaning to say that the gay sister was killed by the melancholy sister?” inquired Sergey Ilyich von Taube, chairman of the Excise Chamber.

  “No, I wish to say something quite the opposite – gay Polinka killed melancholy Anyuta. And that is not the most night-marish aspect.”

  “I do beg your pardon! How can that be?” Sergey Ilyich asked in astonishment, while Lidia Nikolaevna thought it necessary to note, “And what might be more nightmarish than the murder of one’s own sister?”

  Fandorin rose and began to pace about the sitting room. “I will try to reconstruct the sequence of events, as I understand them. So, we have two p-princesses, withering with boredom. Life dribbling through their fingertips – indeed, all but dribbled away. Their feminine life, I mean. Idleness. Moldering spiritual powers. Unrealized hopes. Tormenting relations with their high-handed father. And, not least, physiological frustration. They were, after all, young, healthy women. Oops, please forgive me. . . .”

  Conscious that he had said something untoward, the collegiate assessor was embarrassed for a moment, but Lidia Nikolaevna let it pass without a reprimand – he looked so appealing with that blush that suddenly had blossomed on his white cheeks.

  “I would not even dare to imagine how much there is intertwined in the soul of a young w-woman who might be in such a situation,” Fandorin said after a short silence. “And here is something particular besides – right there, always, is your living mirror image, your twin sister. No doubt it would be impossible for there not to be a most intricate mix of love and hatred between them. And suddenly a young handsome man appears. He demonstrates obvious interest in the young princesses. No doubt with ulterior motive, but which of those girls would have thought of that? Of course, an inevitable rivalry springs up between the girls, but the ch-choice is quickly made. Until that moment everything between Anyuta and Polinka was identical, but now they were in quite different worlds. One of them is happy, returned to the land of the living and, at least to all appearances, loved. While the other feels herself rejected, lonely, and thus doubly unhappy. Happy love is egoistical. For Polinka, no doubt, there was nothing other than the passions that had built up through the long years of being locked away. This was the full and real life that she had dreamed about for so many years, the life she had even stopped hoping for. And then it was all shredded in an instant – indeed, precisely at the moment when love had reached its very highest peak.”

  The ladies all listened spellbound to the empathetic speech of this picture-perfect young man of beauty, all save for Molly Sapegina, who pressed her slender fingers to her décolletage before freezing in that pose.

  “Most dreadful of all was that the agent of this tragedy was one’s very own sister. We may agree, of course, to understand her as well. To endure such happiness right alongside one’s own unhappiness would require a particular cast of the spirit which Anyuta obviously did not possess. So Polinka, who had only just been lounging in the bowers of Paradise, was cast utterly down. There is no beast in this world more dangerous than a woman deprived of her beloved!” Erast Petrovich exclaimed, a tad carried away, and then immediately grew a bit muddled, since this sentiment might offend the fairer half among those present. However, there came no protests – all were greedily waiting for the story to continue, so Fandorin went on more briskly, “So then, under the influence of despair, Polinka has a mad plan, a terrible, monstrous plan, but one that is testament to the enormous power of feeling. Although, I don’t know, the plan might have come from Renar. It was the girl who had to put the plan into action, however . . . That night, while you, Arkhip Giatsintovich, were nodding drowsily and listening to your host pour out his rage, a hellish act was taking place in the bedroom of the princesses. Polinka murdered her sister. I do not know how. Perhaps she smothered her with a pillow, perhaps she poisoned her, but in any event, it occurred without blood, for otherwise there would have remained some trace in the bedroom.”

  “The investigation considered the possibility of a murder.” Mustafin shrugged, having listened to Erast Petrovich with unconcealed scepticism. “However, there arose a rather sensible question – what happened to the body?”

  The officer of special missions answered without a moment’s hesitation, “That’s the nightmarish part. After killing her sister, Polinka dragged her into the bathroom, where she cut her into bits and washed the blood away down the drain. The Frenchman could not have been the one to dismember her – there is no way he could have left his own wing for such a long time without being noticed.”

  Waiting out a true storm of alarmed exclamations, in which “Impossible!” was the word most often heard, Fandorin said sadly, “Unfortunately, there is no other possibility. There is no other solution to the p-problem as p-posed. It is better not even to attempt to imagine what went on that night in that bathroom. Polinka would not have had the slightest knowledge of anatomy, nor could she have had any instrument more to the purpose than a pilfered kitchen knife.”

  “But there’s no way she could have put the body parts and bones down the drain, it would have plugged!” Mustafin exclaimed with a heat quite unlike him.

  “No, she could not. The dismembered flesh left the estate in the Frenchman’s various suitcases and hatboxes. Tell me, please, were the bedroom windows high off the ground?”

  Arkhip Giatsintovich squinted as he tried to recall. “Not especially. The height of a man, perhaps. And the windows looked out on the park, in the direction of the lawn.”

  “So, the remains were passed through the w-window, then. Judging by the fact that there were no traces left on the window sill, Renar passed some kind of vessel into the room, Anyuta took it into the bathroom, put the body parts in there, and handed these to her accomplice. When this evil ferrying was done all Polinka had to do was scour out the bathtub and clean the blood from herself . . .”

  Lidia Nikolaevna desperately wanted to win her bet, but in the interests of fairness she could not remain silent. “Erast Petrovich, this all fits together very well, with the exception of one circumstance. If Polinka indeed committed so monstrous an operation, she certainly would have stained her clothing, and blood is not so simple to wash away, especially if one is not a washerwoman.”

  This note of practicality did not so much puzzle Fandorin as embarrass him. Coughing slightly and looking away, he said quietly, “I im-imagine that before she began dismembering the b-body, the princess removed her clothing. All of it . . .”

  Some of the ladies gasped, while Molly Sapegina, growing pale, murmured, “Oh, mon Dieu . . .”

  Erast Petrovich, it seemed, was frightened that someone might faint, so he hastened to finish, now in a dry tone of scientific detachment. “It is entirely probable that the extended oblivion of the supposed Anyuta was no simulation, but rather was a natural psychological reaction to a terrible tr-trauma.”

  Everyone suddenly began speaking at once. “But it wasn’t Anyuta that disappeared, it was Polinka!” Sergey Ilyich recalled.

  “Well, obviously that was just Polinka drawing a mole on her cheek,” the more imaginative Lidia Nikolaevna explained impatiently. “That’s why everyone thought she was Anyuta!”

  Retired court doctor Stupitsyn did not agree. “Impossible! People close to them are able to distinguish twins quite well. The way they act, the nuances of the voice, the expressions of their eyes, after all!”

  “And anyway, why was such a switc
h necessary?” General Liprandi interrupted the court doctor. “Why would Polinka have to pretend that she was Anyuta?”

  Erast Petrovich waited until the flood of questions and objections ebbed, and then answered them one by one. “Had Anyuta disappeared, Your Excellency, then suspicion would inevitably have fallen on Polinka, that she had taken her revenge upon her sister, and so the search for traces of the murder would have been more painstaking. That’s one thing. Had the besotted girl vanished at the same time as the Frenchman, this would have brought to the forefront the theory that this was a flight, not a crime. That’s two. And then, of course, in the guise of Anyuta, at some time in the future she might marry Renar without giving herself away. Apparently that is precisely what happened in faraway Rio de Janeiro. I am certain that Polinka traveled so far from her native land in order to join the object of her affections in peace.”The collegiate assessor turned to the court doctor. “Your argument that intimates are able to distinguish twins is entirely reasonable. Note, however, that the Karakins’ family doctor, whom it would have been impossible to deceive, had died not long before. And besides, the supposed Anyuta changed most decidedly after that fateful night, precisely as if she had become someone else. In view of the particular circumstances, everyone took that as natural. In fact, this transformation occurred with Polinka, but is it to be wondered at that she lost her former animation and gaiety?”

  “And the death of the old prince?” Sergey Ilyich asked.“Wasn’t that awfully convenient for the criminal?”

  “A most suspicious death,” agreed Fandorin. “It is entirely possible that poison may have been involved. There was no autopsy, of course – his sudden demise was attributed to paternal grief and a disposition to apoplexy, but at the same time it is entirely possible that after a night such as that, a trifle like poisoning one’s own father would not much bother Polinka. By the way, it would not be too late to conduct an exhumation even now. Poison is preserved a long while in the bone tissue.”