Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar, page 22
CHAPTER
13
It was the most wonderful dream. I was in the arms of one of Scotland’s best known and accomplished actors who was covering my face in tender yet passionate kisses.
“No,” I protested weakly, “I’m on a mission. We mustn’t—”
Fortunately, he ignored me. But I gradually became aware of an unpleasant odour. The actor’s talent and attractiveness couldn’t mask intense halitosis. I tried to extricate myself but the kissing continued.
“Mission!” I protested. “Stop!”
My eyelids fluttered open and I found myself staring at the animated floormop, who was enthusiastically licking my face. When he saw me wake up, he stopped and panted, open-mouthed, releasing another miasma of bacteria.
I tried to shift to dislodge the malodorous creature. But I discovered that my arms and legs were firmly pinioned. There was no point in struggling; I would only exhaust myself. But what had happened to me? My mouth was dry and I felt nauseous. I was lying in the anteroom. That’s where I had been, reading a letter. There had been something in it…yes, the maid hadn’t drowned herself, a big, sinister beardie bloke had dictated the purported suicide note to the schoolmaster.
I had glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye… something odd, something I couldn’t quite remember. I rolled over to look round the room but could see nothing that jogged my memory.
Tresorka jumped on top of me, wanting to play. And then I noticed another smell. Two other smells. Singed fur and smoke. The animated floormop appeared to be scorched round the edges.
“Tresorka, what happened to you?” I whispered. “Are you all right?” The floormop panted fetidly some more, his other end quivering to indicate tail-wagging. After the Countess’s demise, nobody would take responsibility for the poor creature, and he had sought me out as his best source of help. Except I wasn’t currently in a position to be that helpful.
The smell of smoke was becoming more intense. I rolled round to see that at the bottom of the marble staircase, flames were beginning to emerge from my wood-panelled bedroom and were illuminating the hallway.
“You ran through the fire to get to me?” I asked. “What a good dog!”
Tresorka was quivering so much that he was in danger of causing a draught, which would spread the blaze faster. But who had set the fire and tied me up? The prime suspects would have been the count and countess, but they were both deceased. And I had been alone in the house with Sasha after sending Old Vatrushkin off to the orangery.
It was then that the truth hit me. They say your blood runs cold, and despite the increasing heat as the fire crept up the staircase towards us, I shivered. I had been betrayed, betrayed even more badly than the school had been by Muriel Spark. Old Vatrushkin, whom I had thought so devoted, whom I had thought was my friend, was nothing but a callous, calculating killer. And the reason was obvious. If I died, there was no will, and Old Vatrushkin would win the ultimate honour for a serf, being owned by the tsar.
I had told him where the duel was taking place: he was the one who had shot at me. He had been in hiding then, but he had been hiding in plain sight when I fell downstairs. He tried to convince me that Sasha was strangling me, but it had been him all the time. The hands round my throat had been his, and he had attacked Sasha for trying to protect me.
Then there was the maid. She had never been the assassination target—I was. Old Vatrushkin had got on the train with us, wearing that ludicrous fake beard to conceal his own hirsuteness. Then, after mistakenly drowning the maid, he attempted to drown me. That was why he didn’t know what had been happening in town—he hadn’t been in town. And that was why I had gone into defensive mode when I saw him at the station. At a subliminal level, I knew Old Vatrushkin was a very bad man.
Now, with diabolical cunning, he had left me trussed up like a wild boar to be roasted alive. My bonds would be burned as well as me, and in an era before proper forensic investigation, people would just assume the fire was caused by a faulty domestic appliance such as a samovar or, worse, that I’d been smoking in bed.
If Tresorka hadn’t managed to rouse me from my chloroformed daze, it might have been too late. In fact, it might still be too late. I would be incinerated if I stayed here at the top of the stairs. My only hope was to reach the salon and try to close the double doors behind me. The salon. Sasha had been in the salon. What had Old Vatrushkin done to him?
I couldn’t waste more time trying to loosen my bonds. With a vigorous eel-like motion, I juddered my way along the floor of the anteroom into the salon, Tresorka frolicking around me and over me. I got through the doors and slammed them with an effortful kick.
“Sasha!” I called. There was no reply. I rolled this way and that, scanning every part of the room, but there was no sign of him. I forced myself not to imagine what terrible fate might have befallen him. He was brave, he was strong, he was resourceful. He would have escaped Old Vatrushkin’s murderous attack and was probably even now alerting whatever rudimentary emergency services there were.
But as the fire continued to take hold, I couldn’t wait. The windows. I had to break the windows. And first I had to free myself. I could easily smash the glass with my DMs, but the individual panes were too small for me to get through. I needed my hands to open an entire sash. And then I was faced with the conundrum of how to get from the first-floor window ledge to the ground without going splat. There was another imperative as well, arguably more important than saving my own life—saving Tresorka.
Smoke was beginning to creep into the room. I knew it was important to keep as close to the floor as possible to avoid smoke inhalation, so it was quite useful not to be able to get to my feet. I struggled as forcefully as I could against the ropes binding me, but there was no give whatsoever. Tresorka, who was obviously much smarter than the average lapdog, got behind me and started trying to nibble through them, but it was immediately apparent that his minuscule teeth would have no effect.
I was lying there beginning to feel quite sorry for myself when my gaze fell on the golden samovar. The golden samovar adorned with an eagle with a razor-sharp beak. I congratulated myself on my foresight in forbidding Old Vatrushkin to file it down.
I zig-zagged over to it and managed to haul myself into a kneeling position, my arms still tightly tied behind me. My knowledge of first aid had made me very aware that severing an artery was a serious matter, so I raised my wrists up extremely carefully to the eagle’s beak and started rubbing the rope against it. The smoke was thickening, my lungs protesting, but I forced myself to go slowly. Haste could result in the loss of one or more fingers. And if I escaped with my life, I still wanted to be able to play the piano.
I shot a brief, regretful look at the pianoforte, which was about to be immolated. I thought back to how I had played it that first evening in my new home, and, scarcely realising what I was doing, I began to hum the school song. The majestic, inspiring tune gave me the perfect rhythm to rub the ropes against the cuspidate beak. And at the third repetition of Marcia Blaine’s name, the bonds round my wrists gave way, and I was able to unfasten the ropes round my ankles. I ripped up the nearest cushion cover, soaking it in water from the samovar and holding it over my nose to help my breathing. Tresorka, who was as close to the ground as possible without being an actual rug, was doing much better.
I staggered to the window, wrestled with the catch, opened it and looked out. The classical dimensions of the house meant it was a very long way to the ground.
Someone was looking back up at me. “Your house is on fire,” said Nanny.
“Yes, thank you, Nanny, I’m aware,” I said. “There’s a dog here that needs rescuing. Could you hold out your apron, and I’ll throw him down.”
Nanny clutched the corners of her apron as tightly as possible. I kissed Tresorka on the nose, told him everything was going to be all right, and then flung him out of the window with the élan of my winning ace during the school tennis championships. Tresorka landed in the apron, bounced slightly, landed back in the apron again, licked Nanny’s hand, and then scrambled out onto the ground, looking up expectantly at me.
I could scarcely try the same tactic myself or I would squash Nanny as comprehensively as the countess had squashed the visitors from the provinces.
And then inspiration struck. “Nanny,” I said, “have you got your knitting?”
Nanny flourished her needles, from which hung a very small amount of work. “I’m knitting another fichu,” she announced.
“Could you knit it a bit longer?”
Nanny considered this. “If it’s a bit longer, it won’t be a fichu.”
“Then could you knit a long sock?”
She shook her head. “I can’t do socks. It’s the heels, I don’t have the right needles.”
Flames were beginning to appear under the doors from the anteroom.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “Could you just do some long knitting?”
“I’ve only got green wool.”
“Green is fine,” I said. “And could you do it fairly fast? I need to climb down it before I burn to death.”
“You want to climb down it? Bless you, my knitting will never take your weight. It’s not as though you’re slim like my little chicken. I’ll have to find something else.”
She disappeared round the side of the house, Tresorka trotting after her, as smoke swirled round me and the blistered door began to creak and curve inwards. I had two choices: I could stay, and perish in the blaze, or jump, and be smashed to pieces. As I stood there, contemplating my imminent demise, it struck me that this was the price of failure. Time had all but run out for the completion of my mission, and I had achieved nothing.
I bowed my head. “I’m sorry, Miss Blaine,” I murmured. “I’ve let you down. I’ve let the school down. Worst of all, I’ve let myself down.”
The double doors fell inwards with a crash and flames soared in, darting up the curtains, engulfing the cushioned armchairs, overwhelming the pianoforte. The words continued to echo in my head: “Let myself down let myself down let myself down...”
In a futile attempt to escape my fate, I tore off a length of smouldering curtain and fastened it to the samovar, which I wedged beside the window. I grabbed the charred material, stepped on to the window ledge, and let myself down.
This is never going to work, I thought. I was right. The curtain shredded between my fingers and I plummeted to earth. Earth that was softer and more yielding than I had anticipated. The Founder had given me another chance.
“There,” said Nanny. “That was more sensible than ruining my knitting. You can apologise to your coachman for ruining his horse’s hay.”
“Nanny,” I said, “you’re a lifesaver.” For once, I didn’t mean it metaphorically. “I know things have been a bit difficult between us recently, but I want to say—”
“No, don’t say anything!” she interrupted. “I cannot talk to you about—about the things I cannot talk to you about.”
The power of Miss Blaine must still have been lingering. A series of images crowded into my mind, images I hadn’t quite been able to remember. When Nanny had turned so peculiar, summoning me to her room and then refusing to talk to me, I had felt there was something different about her room, but I couldn’t work out what. I knew now. Her icon of the crinose Saint Volosiya was missing.
I had thought I saw Sasha in the driveway long after he was supposed to have left. And he had been carrying something, something the size and shape of an icon.
And then I remembered something else. What I had glimpsed just before I was chloroformed. A reflection in the burnished gold samovar of Sasha’s head spinning round and round.
There was one final image. Me shoving Old Vatrushkin out of the door and locking it firmly behind him. He couldn’t have got back in, even if he had a spare key, because I’d left mine in the lock. The only person who could have attacked me was Sasha.
Perhaps the fall from the first floor had left me light-headed, but I suddenly felt I had to sit down. It seemed I had been wrong. I had been wrong about Old Vatrushkin being bad, and I had been wrong about Sasha being good. I felt queasy, nonplussed, perplexed. Was this how other people felt when they were wrong? It was a new experience for me, and I didn’t like it.
But how I felt was irrelevant. I wasn’t here to feel, but to act. Miss Blaine had entrusted me with a mission, and I was virtually out of time.
I turned to Nanny. “Sasha’s kidnapped Saint Volosiya, hasn’t he?”
The old woman’s face went rigid with terror. “Don’t!” she whispered. “You don’t know what he’s capable of!”
I looked up at the flames licking the windows. “Actually, I think I do,” I said. “And he’s forbidden you to say anything.”
Nanny’s mouth clamped shut.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll ask you questions and all you have to do is nod or shake your head.”
A ray of hope came into her eyes and she gave a tentative nod. “You know something you can’t tell anybody?”
She nodded more vigorously.
“And he threatened to hurt Saint Volosiya if you talked?”
She raised her hand and made a stabbing motion.
“He had a knife?”
A nod.
“Do you know where he took her?”
A shake of the head.
“Did you ever hold her?”
A nod.
“In your lap?”
Another nod.
I signalled to the animated floormop, who bounded over to me. “Tresorka, we’re going to help the nice lady who saved you.” I gathered Tresorka up in Nanny’s capacious apron again. “That’s right. Have a good sniff. Get the scent that isn’t you and isn’t Nanny and isn’t knitting. Now seek.”
Tresorka, released back to the ground, scampered off and we followed.
“What were you doing here anyway?” I asked.
“I was out for a walk when I noticed the smoke and flames,” said Nanny.
“Out for a walk without Lidia? Is she disrupting everything with her woodwork again?”
“She gave me the afternoon off,” said Nanny. “I’ve never had an afternoon off.”
“You’ve never had an afternoon off?” I repeated, outraged by this exploitation of a worker in the caring industry, but she mistook my reaction.
“Yes, it is odd, isn’t it?” she said. “She gave all the staff the afternoon off.”
A bell went off in my head, very like the school bell that rang at 3.30 pm every day, except alarming rather than liberating.
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” I said with a reassurance I didn’t feel. “You’ll get home and find she’s put up a lovely set of bookshelves, or maybe she’s building a conservatory.”
Tresorka was scampering faster now, wheezing with excitement. He came to a halt outside a three-storey building guarded by a uniformed doorman.
“These are the luxury apartments where the general stays,” said Nanny. “The countess must have installed…the person you mentioned…here.”
“Well done, Tresorka,” I said, scratching him behind his little ears.
“We can’t go in,” said Nanny. “We will have to tell the doorman who we are and who we’re going to see. If the doorman tells—the person—” She broke down in tears. “I can’t risk her coming to harm.”
“We can still check. Sasha might not be in,” I said.
“And in that case, the doorman will not let us in.”
She looked utterly woebegone. We needed a plan. I pondered.
“Got it,” I said. “Wrap Tresorka in your apron and carry him as though he’s on a tray.”
We approached the doorman, who gave us a supercilious stare.
“Now then, my good man,” I said. “I am the Princess Tamsonova.” I hated myself for pulling rank when I believed so passionately in equality, but it was in pursuit of a greater good. “I am here representing the imperial repository for the relief of comparatively indigent gentlemen.”
I indicated Nanny, who was tottering behind me with every indication of carrying a laden tray under her apron. “Caviar to the general,” I announced.
The doorman bowed low. “Princess. The general is in apartment three.”
I was about to tell him that it was just an expression from the playwright William Shakespeare when I realised we had achieved our aim and got access to the building.
“The general!” said Nanny excitedly as we went into the vestibule. “We should take him with us! He would be useful to have around if it comes to a fight.”
I felt two women were more than adequate if it came to a fight, particularly if one of them was me. But Nanny insisted on knocking at the door.
A cleaning serf passed us. “He’s gone out,” he said.
“We’re actually looking for Sasha,” I said.
“Flat five. But he’s gone out as well.”
We waited until the cleaning serf was out of sight. “We need to break in,” I said. “But I don’t have a hairpin.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “Nasty scratchy things. But I could give you a knitting needle.”
It was perfect. A quick jiggle and a sudden twist and the door opened. Nanny let Tresorka out of her apron and he shot down the hallway to scrabble at a door. This too was locked, but the knitting needle performed its magic again. There were sheaves of paper everywhere, piles of bank notes, stashes of jewels. I stood looking round in astonishment, but Nanny was scuttling after Tresorka, who was scraping at a bureau and whining. Another lock, another flourish of the knitting needle, and it was open.
Nanny gave a cry. “My beloved! Are you all right?” She examined the icon from every angle, ascertained that it was unscathed, and planted a reverential kiss on Saint Volosiya’s homely face.
“Right, Nanny,” I said. “She’s out of danger. You’re free to talk.”
“When Lidia was five,” she said, “her saintly mother was to be blessed with another child. I say ‘was to be blessed’ but it was not a blessing—” She paused, reluctant to continue.
