Boris Akunin - The Winter Queen

"Ze zhentleman who shot himzelf?" she asked. " Naja * BORIS AKUNIN Translated by Andrew Bromfield THE WINTER QUEEN Brown eyes, razer tall, no mustache or beard, zideburns none eizer, a fery young face, but not a fery good von. Now ze clothes — "

"We'll come to the clothes later," Erast Fandorin interrupted her. "You say it was not a good face? Why? Because of his pimples?"

" Pickeln, " Lizanka translated, blushing.

" Ahja , ze pimples." The governess repeated the slightly unfamiliar word with relish. "No, zat zhentleman did not haf pimples. He had good, healthy skin. But his face vas not fery good."

"Why?"

"It vas nasty. He looked as zough he did not vish to kill himzelf, but zomeone altogether different. Oh, it vas a nightmare!" exclaimed Emma Pfühl, becoming excited at her recollection of events. "Spring, zuch zunny veather, all ze ladies and gentlemen out valking in ze vonderful garden covered vith flowers!"

At these words Erast Fandorin cast a sidelong glance at Lizanka, but she had evidently long ago become quite accustomed to her companion's distinctive mode of speech and she was gazing at him as trustingly and radiantly as ever.

"And did he have a pince-nez? Perhaps not on his nose but protruding from a pocket? On a silk ribbon?" Fandorin threw out questions one after another. "And did it not perhaps seem to you that he slouched? And another thing. I know he was wearing a frock coat, but was there not anything about him to suggest he was a student — uniform trousers, perhaps? Did you notice anything?"

"Alvays haf I noticed eferyzing," the German woman replied with dignity. "Ze trousers vere check pantaloons of expensive vool. Zere vas no pince-nez at all. No slouching eizer. Zat zhentleman had good posture." She began thinking and suddenly asked him, "Slouching, pince-nez, and a shtudent? Vy did you say zat?"

"Why do you ask?" Erast Fandorin said cautiously.

"It is strange. Zere vas von zhentleman zere. A shtudent with a slouch vearing a pince-nez."

"What? Where?" gasped Fandorin.

"I zaw zuch a gentleman . . . jenseits * BORIS AKUNIN Translated by Andrew Bromfield THE WINTER QUEEN … on ze ozer side of ze railings, in ze street. He vas standing zere and looking at us. I even sought zis shtudent vas going to help us get rid of zat dreadful man. And he vas slouching very badly. I saw zat afterward, after ze ozer zhentleman had already killed himzelf. Ze shtudent turned and valked avay qvickly qvickly. And I saw zat he had a bad slouch. Zat happens ven children are not taught to sit correctly in childhood. Sitting correctly is very important. My vards alvays sit correctly. Look at ze Fräulein Baroness. See how she holds her back? It is very beautiful!"

At that Elizaveta Evert-Kolokoltseva blushed, and so prettily that for a moment Fandorin lost the thread of the conversation, although Fräulein Pfühl's statement was undoubtedly of the utmost importance.

SHORTLY AFTER TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING the following day, Erast Fandorin, endowed not only with his chief's blessing but also with three rubles for exceptional expenses, arrived at the yellow university building on Mokhovaya Street. His mission was simple enough in principle but would require a certain degree of luck: to locate a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat pimply student with a slouch and a pince-nez on a silk ribbon. It was entirely possible that this suspicious individual did not study at the premises on Mokhovaya Street at all but in the Higher Technical College or the Forestry Academy or some other institute of learning, but Xavier Grushin (regarding his young assistant with a mixture of astonishment and joy) had concurred wholeheartedly in Fandorin's surmise that in all probability the "sloucher," like the deceased Kokorin, pursued his studies at the university, and there was a very good chance that he did so in the self-same Faculty of Law.

Dressed in his civilian clothes, Fandorin dashed headlong up the cast-iron steps of the front porch, rushed past the bearded attendant in green livery, and took up a convenient position in the semicircular window embrasure — a vantage point that afforded an excellent view of the vestibule, with its cloakroom, and the courtyard, and even the entrances to both wings of the building. For the first time since his father had died and the young man's life had been diverted from the clear road straight ahead, Erast Fandorin beheld the venerable yellow walls of the university without an aching in his heart for what might have been. Who could say which mode of existence was the more fascinating and more useful for society: the book learning of a student or the grueling life of a detective pursuing an investigation into an important and dangerous case? (Well, perhaps not dangerous, exactly, but certainly crucially important and highly mysterious.)

Approximately one out of every four students who hove into this attentive observer's field of view was wearing a pince-nez, and in many cases it hung precisely on a silk ribbon. Approximately one student out of every five was sporting a certain quantity of pimples about his face. Nor was there any shortage of students with a slouch. However, all three of these features seemed stubbornly disinclined to combine together in the person of a single individual.

When it was already after one o'clock, Erast Fandorin extracted a salami sandwich from his pocket and fortified himself without leaving his post. By this time he had succeeded in establishing thoroughly amicable relations with the bearded doorkeeper, who told Fandorin to call him Mitrich and had already imparted to the young man several extremely valuable pieces of advice concerning entry to the "nuversity." Fandorin, who had represented himself to the garrulous old man as a young provincial cherishing fond dreams of buttons adorned with the university crest, was already wondering whether or not he ought to change his story and interrogate Mitrich directly about the pimpled sloucher, when the doorman suddenly became animated, grabbing the peaked cap off his head and pulling open the door — this was Mitrich's regular procedure whenever one of the professors or rich students passed by, for which he would every now and again receive a kopeck or perhaps even a five-kopeck piece. Glancing around, Erast Fandorin noticed a student approaching the exit, clad in a sumptuous velvet cloak newly retrieved from the cloakroom, with clasps in the form of lion's feet. Gleaming on the bridge of the fop's nose was a pince-nez, and adorning his forehead was a scattering of pink pimples. Fandorin strained hard in order to diagnose the condition of this student's posture, but the confounded cape of the cloak and its raised collar thwarted his efforts.

"Good evening, Nikolai Stepanovich. Would you like me to call you a cab?" the doorkeeper said with a bow.

"Tell me, Mitrich, has it stopped raining yet?" the pimply student inquired in a high-pitched voice. "Then I'll take a stroll. I'm tired of sitting." And he dropped a coin into the outstretched palm from between the finger and thumb of his white-gloved hand.

"Who's that?" Fandorin asked in a whisper, straining his eyes to follow the dandy's receding back. "Doesn't he have a bit of a slouch?"

"Nikolai Stepanich Akhtyrtsev. Rich as they come, royal blood," Mitrich declared reverentially. "Doles out at least fifteen kopecks every time."

Fandorin suddenly felt feverish. Akhtyrtsev! Surely he was the one who had been named as executor in Kokorin's will!

Mitrich bowed respectfully to yet another teacher, the long-haired lecturer in physics, and on turning back discovered to his surprise that the respectable young provincial gentleman had vanished into thin air.