I’d thought the countess was an obnoxious, pretentious egomaniac. But now I understood that she had simply been fraught at social events, worried about the impression her wee boy was making. The next time I saw her, I would apologise for thinking badly of her. All I had to do was reconcile her to the idea of Lidia as a daughter-in-law, which should be no problem given Lidia’s fabulous wealth and the fact that she was now a favourite of the princess.

  Getting Lidia onside would be no problem. All she had to do was be in love with Sasha, and who could fail to be in love with Sasha? Nanny would be sniffy about the illegitimacy element, but with the count out of the way, Sasha could be presented as the long-lost legitimate heir.

  I had worked it all out in the nick of time and would complete my mission today with a day to spare. Miss Blaine would be proud of me.

  The train pulled up and I remembered I was going to see if newspapers were being published again, so that I could find out the date. I clambered down from the carriage with my luggage—no need to look for a porter, I can bench press 80 kilos—and was just looking round for a newspaper vendor when a bearded figure hurtled down the platform towards me.

  Instinctively, I went into a forward combat roll and felled my assailant with a hammerfist strike.

  “Welcome home, your excellency,” choked Old Vatrushkin. “Seeing your excellency is the boys.”

  I knelt down beside him. “Old Vatrushkin! I could have really hurt you.”

  Old Vatrushkin tried to gulp in some air and winced. “Let me reassure your excellency that you have indeed really hurt me.”

  I helped him to his feet and let him hang on to me until he caught his breath. I seemed to be suffering from PTSD, going into automatic defence mode at the sight of big beardie blokes.

  “Why on earth did you run at me like that?” I demanded.

  “I could not let you carry your own portmanteaux,” he said. But he had to, since every time he tried to hoist them onto his shoulders, he buckled at the knees. I regretted having hit him quite so hard. I got him on the driving seat of the drozhky and warned him that if he didn’t stop apologising, I might consider smacking him again.

  “So you were just passing?” I asked as we set off.

  “Yes,” he said, “a very happy coincidence.”

  “Anything been happening while I was away?” I said casually.

  “I don’t know, your excellency,” he replied and then realised he had fallen into my trap.

  My voice was as silky as a very silky silkworm. “But coachmen know everything. Surely something must have happened? Could it be—and please correct me if I’m wrong—that you’ve been waiting outside the station since I left? Despite the fact that you were supposed to be painting?”

  “Please don’t be angry with me, your excellency!” he begged. “My job is to be your coachman. Painting is merely my hobby.”

  “You’re never going to get anywhere with that attitude,” I said. “If you organise things so that your hobby’s your job, you need never work another day in your life. Anyway, let’s see what wages I owe you. That’s at least twelve hours at twenty kopecks an hour—let’s just call it three roubles and have done with it.”

  “No, your excellency,” he protested. “You have already given me far too many coins for what your excellency describes as working antisocial hours.”

  “No more coins, I promise,” I said, shoving the three-rouble note in his coat pocket.

  An ornate carriage approached in the other direction. “My dear Princess Tamsonova!” came a patrician voice. “I have the most extraordinary news! But perhaps you have already heard it from your coachman.”

  “No, Princess,” I said. “My coachman seems to be surprisingly short of news right now.”

  A sob broke from Old Vatrushkin’s lips.

  “I’m just heading home after a trip to the country,” I said. “Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?”

  “That would be delightful. I have so much to tell you. A cup of tea would be—what do you say in your charming language?—the very dab. Coachman! Follow that drozhky.”

  The princess’s coachman performed a reckless three-point turn, scattering pedestrians and street traders, and dislodging the footmen standing on the carriage’s footboard.

  When we arrived home, Old Vatrushkin leaped off the box so that he could meet the princess at the door as the major-domo, then sprinted past her up the marble stairs in order to be ready with tea and pastries by the time we reached the salon.

  “I suppose this is the gardener?” she asked, not having any idea that she had seen him before.

  “I work in the orangery, highness,” he said.

  “What a splendid idea! As soon as I get home, everyone working in my orangeries shall be a footman.”

  “And it’s time for you to get back to the orangery,” I said meaningfully. “And stay there. I’ll pour the tea—I know how the princess likes it.”

  The princess took a mouthful of milky tea and smacked her lips. “Delicious. And such a welcome change from champagne. I drank so much champagne last night, I feel like…” She cast around for a suitable simile.

  “A Nebuchadnezzar bottle from Veuve Clicquot?” I suggested, and she delved for paper and pencil and wrote it down.

  “Darling Princess Tamsonova! You make me laugh more than…” She looked at me challengingly. A metaphor this time.

  Had we been back home, I would immediately have said, “Someone at a laughing gas party,” since nitrous oxide was used as a recreational drug among the smart set from 1799. But that was only in Britain. If a Russian princess knew about nitrous oxide at all, it would merely be as an analgesic during surgery and not a source of amusement.

  “…a hyena being tickled by a centipede,” I concluded.

  It took her a while to write this down since I had to explain and spell both hyena and centipede. She might know her Scottish literature, but her knowledge of zoology was sadly lacking.

  “So where was all this champagne drinking?” I asked.

  “It was the most marvellous concert—the premiere of a sensational new orchestra. I had no intention of attending, but it turned out to be so popular that not a single ticket was to be had. So of course I insisted that they accommodate me. Let me see, there were four singers, a man with a violin, a man with a very big violin, and a man with a small piano attached to his chest,” she said. “Oh, Princess Tamsonova, you would have loved it. They sang the most charming Scottish songs. And the conductor—a foreigner, but such an energetic young man, constantly waving his arms about. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it very much had I not had to concentrate on the champagne.”

  It was good to know that Pavel Pavlovich had carried out his side of the bargain, and got the band their gig with the fake Beethoven. I imagined they would be off on a European tour shortly, although probably not to Teutonic areas where people might pick up on the Bavarian accent.

  “Ah, yes!” the princess went on. “I have not yet told you the extraordinary news!”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said.

  “But that is why I am here, to tell you.”

  “It’s just an expression,” I explained. “What I mean is that I’ve already guessed what you’re going to tell me. Another lady has fallen downstairs.”

  “Yes, she fell, but not downstairs,” said the princess. “These days, it is commonplace to fall downstairs. I told you this was extraordinary.”

  “You haven’t told me who it was yet.”

  “Why, the countess.”

  “Is she all right?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” said the princess equably. “She is completely dead.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  The princess took some more tea. “It was so very dramatic,” she said. “It quite put the concert in the shade. We were all obliged to have more champagne in order to recover from the shock.”

  “She was at the opera?” I said. “Just after her husband had died?”

  “But of course,” said the princess. “Black is particularly flattering to someone of her girth. And since she had inherited her husband’s entire fortune, she had treated herself to a diamond tiara, which she was most anxious to show off.”

  “So what exactly happened?” I asked. “Cardiac arrest? Apoplexy? Cholera?”

  “She toppled out of her box. Her embonpoint.” The princess gestured. “Top-heavy. She must have seen an acquaintance in the stalls and leaned over to greet them.”

  “So the countess’s bust killed both husband and wife,” I said thoughtfully.

  The princess shrieked with laugher. “Oh, Princess Tamsonova, I wish I’d said that!”

  I watched her write it down. “You will, Princess, you will.”

  “It caused quite a stir—the concert had to be delayed by a quarter of an hour. When she landed, she crushed three members of the audience to death, but thankfully they were from the provinces, so no harm was done.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. My egalitarianism was roused yet again, but the princess failed to pick up the ironic tone.

  “The delay in beginning the concert was longer than it should have been, because a German doctor sitting nearby insisted on examining the body and claimed—imagine!—that she had not broken her neck in the fall but had previously been strangled with the cord from the curtains in her box. But nobody paid any attention to him. You know how hysterical Germans are as a race, and how prone to exaggerate every little thing.”

  I scarcely heard her. I was thinking of poor Sasha, so recently reunited with his birth mother and now bereaved.

  “Princess, I’m going to be terribly rude, but there’s something I have to do. Would you mind awfully if I asked you to leave?”

  “Please, no apology is necessary,” said the princess. “I must start immediately on my round of visits to regale everyone with my epigram on the countess’s bust.” She sighed. “So the count’s fortune went to the countess and now there is nobody to pass it on to. My ghastly cousin the tsar will add another palace and more estates to his collection.”

  At least, I thought, that wasn’t going to happen.

  A letter of condolence is never easy to write, and it’s particularly difficult when you aren’t supposed to know about the relationship between the deceased and the bereaved. I would have to make it clear that nobody had told me anything they shouldn’t, and that what I knew was the result of my own detective work. It was going to require very careful wording.

  “Dear Sasha,” I wrote. “This is a very sad day for you. I spoke to your adopted parents, who didn’t deliberately betray any confidences, but I managed to work everything out. Everybody else will find out because of your sudden wealth and at last you can be seen for who you really are.”

  It could be embarrassing for him to explain his parentage so I thought I should offer to take that burden on myself. “I’m prepared to tell everyone all about you,” I wrote.

  It might not be the most elegant of letters, but I was sure he would appreciate the obviously warm and sympathetic sentiments. And de mortuis nihil nisi bonum. I picked up the pen again and wrote: “Your late mother was a lovely woman. Shona.”

  I blotted the ink, and was about to call Old Vatrushkin. Then, just in time, I realised my mistake. I couldn’t possibly ask him to deliver the letter, given his irrational belief that Sasha was a homicidal maniac. I nipped out into the street and found a loitering urchin.

  “How would you like to earn a couple of kopecks?” I asked.

  The urchin leaned back against the wall and surveyed me from under hooded lids. “Whatcha looking for? Vodka? Opium?”

  “I am looking,” I said with great deliberation, “for someone to deliver a letter.”

  “Paying off your gambling debts, is it?” he said.

  I reflected that it wasn’t his fault that he had such a jaundiced view of humanity. He hadn’t had the advantages of being brought up in Morningside and having had the finest education in the world.

  “The letter,” I said with even greater deliberation, “is a message of condolence to a young man who has just lost someone very close to him.”

  The urchin jerked upright, his eyes snapping open. “You mean Sasha? You don’t waste no time, lady, do you?”

  “You know Sasha?”

  “Everyone knows Sasha! The countess’s ‘protégé.’” He sniggered loudly and I wondered yet again what it was about a perfectly innocent French word that provoked such a peculiar reaction. Perhaps to an uneducated child, anything in a foreign language would sound intrinsically humorous.

  “Sasha’s our hero,” the urchin went on. “We all wanna be just like him when we grow up.”

  It was really heartening that a small urchin, whom I might have associated with larceny, criminality and possibly even psychopathic violence, aspired to be charming and well-mannered. And I should do what I could to facilitate that.

  “First,” I said, “we now refer to the late countess. Second, of course I haven’t wasted any time in sending a message of condolence. It’s important to console the bereaved as quickly as possible.”

  “Oh, no offence, lady. Good on you. You get in there while the other old dears are still looking for their specs, let alone their writing paper.” He shot me a quick conspiratorial grin. “All I can say is you better be loaded. These ‘protégés’ don’t come cheap.” Sniggering loudly, he snatched the letter and a five-kopeck piece from my hand, and scampered off.

  It was a pity I wasn’t going to be around for longer, to teach him to speak properly. But my mission had only one more day to run. Now I had established that Sasha was of noble birth, and wealthy in his own right, all I had to do was get him engaged to Lidia.

  I could scarcely invite him to tea today, just after the letter of condolence, but I could get them both round tomorrow and throw an engagement party.

  Old Vatrushkin was just finishing washing up, and I ordered him to get on with his painting and not to come back under any circumstances. Then I went upstairs for some pianoforte practice.

  In honour of the band, which had played Beethoven’s 25 Schottische Lieder to such great effect after the countess’s demise, I adapted the score for piano and alto. I was just getting to Old Scotia, wake thy mountain strain when my superbly acute hearing caught the sound of quiet, almost stealthy footsteps coming up the stairs. I went out of the salon into the anteroom, preparing to yell at Old Vatrushkin for not painting.

  “Sasha!” I said. “What a lovely surprise! Sorry you had to let yourself in. I’ve given Old Vatrushkin the rest of the day off, and I see he’s been sensible enough to leave the front door open.”

  Sasha’s usual attractive smile was missing, and I realised I had been far too jaunty in the way I had greeted someone who had just lost a parent. Adopting a more serious tone and expression, I said, “So you got my letter? Come and have some tea—tea’s always good for shock.” I ushered him into the salon.

  There was the sound of more footsteps on the staircase, footsteps that were all too familiar.

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said, yet again leaving the salon for the anteroom. Old Vatrushkin stood there, his lamb’s wool cap clutched in one hand and a letter clutched in the other.

  This was seriously awkward. I couldn’t possibly let him know that Sasha was in the salon. He would start going on about how my life was at risk, and create an appalling scene. I had to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

  “Forgive me, your excellency!” he burst out. “I was just strolling nearby when a courier arrived with this letter and I felt it was my duty to bring it to you.”

  “Just strolling nearby?” I mimicked sarcastically.

  “I thought…” he mumbled, handing me the letter, “I thought your excellency might need me.”

  I deliberately hardened my tone. It was the only language Old Vatrushkin understood. Apart from French and Latin.

  “Do you remember what I said to you? That you were absolutely without question to take the rest of the day off to paint? You claimed you understood, but apparently you didn’t. Is there any way I can make it clearer?”

  Old Vatrushkin kept his eyes firmly on the ground, the lamb’s wool cap turning round and round in his nervous fingers.

  “Haven’t you wondered,” I asked, “where the maid is?”

  Old Vatrushkin stopped kneading his lamb’s wool cap and stood very still. “Emancipated?” he whispered.

  “Let’s just say my patience is not inexhaustible.” I grabbed him by the elbow and propelled him down the stairs. Then I pushed him outside, saying, “Orangery,” and locked the door behind him.

  As I went back upstairs, I opened the letter and began reading. It was written in a clear, bold hand that I immediately recognised as the same as the maid’s putative suicide note. So it was written by Dmitri Dmitrievich, the schoolmaster.

  “Dear Madam,” it began, “We hope you are well. We are all well and enjoyed the funeral for my wretch of a daughter, especially the pudding. Thank you for the catafalque. We have spoken to the schoolmaster (who with his wife sends you their very good wishes but of course is only writing this and not reading it) who confirms that it was a big, sinister, bearded man who came to ask him to write a note (which of course he did not read), not my wretch of a daughter. It is a great comfort to know that she was murdered and did not take her own life because we all loathed her and could cheerfully have murdered her. We would love to have you visit again but the priest says you must remember your promise never to return.

  Anisya Federovna, Housekeeper.”

  I remember thinking what a nice letter it was. I remember thinking that it was very rude of me to leave Sasha by himself in the salon. I remember a damp pungent cloth being clamped over my nose and mouth. My second-last thought, before I lost consciousness, was that this was another useful clue: chloroform, invented 1831. And my last thought was that if I hadn’t been so star-struck over Beethoven, I would have remembered that he had died in 1827…

 

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