Then there was a ring at the door. I hurriedly straightened my bow, dried my eyes and went to open it.
There was a surprise in store for me.
Standing on the doorstep was the same gentleman I had seen when I took the forget-me-nots to Avaddon.
The appearance of Prince Genji
On that day when the tearful Petya-Cherubino had shown up at the small flat under the roof and frightened its occupant with the news of Avaddon’s death, and then with the Chosen One’s final poem, Columbine had sat in the armchair for a long time, reading the mysterious lines over and over again.
She had cried a little bit, of course. She felt sorry for Avaddon, even if he was a Chosen One. But then she had stopped crying, because what point was there in crying if someone had been granted what he was yearning for? His wedding with his Eternal Betrothed had been celebrated. In such cases one should not sob and weep, but feel glad.
And Columbine had set out to the newly-wed’s flat to congratulate him. She had put on her very smartest dress (white and airy, with two silver streaks of light sewn along the bodice), bought a bouquet of delicate forget-me-nots and gone to Basmannaya Street. She had taken Lucifer with her, only not on her neck, like a necklace (black would not have been appropriate on a day like this) but in her handbag – so that he would not be bored at home alone.
She found the Giant company’s building – a new, five-storey stone structure – with no difficulty. She had been planning simply to leave the flowers at the door of the flat, but the door was not sealed, in fact it was even half-open. She could hear muffled voices inside. If other people can go inside, then why can’t I, the bearer of congratulations, she reasoned, and walked in.
It was a small flat, no larger than her own in Kitaigorod, but quite remarkably neat and tidy and far from squalid, as she would have expected it to be from the late Avaddon’s shabby clothes.
Columbine stopped in the hallway, trying to guess where the room in which the Bridegroom had met his Bride would be.
The kitchen seemed to be on the left. She heard a man speaking in it, with a slight stammer.
‘And what d-door is this? The rear entrance?’
‘Precisely so, Your Excellency,’ replied another voice, husky and obsequious. ‘Only the gentleman student never used it. The back door is for servants, and he managed for himself. Because he was dog-poor, if you’ll pardon the expression.’
She heard a bump and a clang of metal.
‘So he d-didn’t use it, you say? Then why are the hinges oiled? And very thoroughly too?’
‘I couldn’t say. I suppose someone must have oiled them.’
The man with a stammer sighed and said: ‘A reasonable s-supposition.’ There was a pause in the conversation.
He must be a police investigator, Columbine guessed and started back towards the door to avoid trouble – he might start pestering her with questions: who was she, why was she here, what did the forget-me-nots mean? But before she could withdraw, three men walked out of the short corridor into the hall.
The first, ambling along and occasionally glancing round, was a bearded yard keeper in an apron, with his metal badge on his chest. Following him at a leisurely pace and tapping his cane on the floor, came a tall lean gentleman in a beautifully tailored frock-coat, snow-white shirt with immaculate cuffs and even a top hat – a perfect Count of Monte Cristo – and the yard keeper had called him ‘Excellency’, hadn’t he? The similarity to the former prisoner of the Château d’If was reinforced by the pale well-groomed face (which, she had to admit, was most impressive) and romantic black moustache. And the dandy was about the same age as the Parisian millionaire – she could see grey temples under the top hat.
Bringing up the rear was a squat, solidly built Oriental in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat pulled so far forward that it almost covered his eyes. But they weren’t really eyes – he stared out at Columbine from under the black felt through two narrow slits.
The yard keeper waved his arms at the young lady as if he were shooing away a cat.
‘You can’t come in here, get out! Go away!’
But Monte Cristo looked keenly at the smartly dressed girl and said laconically: ‘Never mind, it’s all right. Here, take this as well.’
He handed the yard keeper a banknote, and the bearded man doubled over in delight and called his benefactor ‘Your Highness’ instead of ‘Your Excellency’, from which she concluded that the handsome man with the stammer was not a count and most definitely not a policeman. Who had ever heard of policemen flinging rouble notes at yard keepers? Another curious outsider, Columbine decided. He must have read about the ‘Lovers of Death’ in the newspapers, and now he’d come to gape at the lodgings of the latest suicide.
The handsome gentleman doffed his top hat (in the process revealing that only his temples were grey, and the rest of his coiffure was still quite black), but he didn’t introduce himself, he merely asked: ‘Are you an acquaintance of Mr Sipyaga’s?’
Columbine refused to favour the Count of Monte Cristo with a glance, let alone a reply. The feeling of excitement and exultation had returned, she was not in the mood for idle conversation.
Then the persistent dark-haired gentleman lowered his voice and asked: ‘You must b-be from the “Lovers of Death”, I suppose?’
‘What makes you think so?’ she asked with a start, glancing at him in fright.
‘Why, it’s quite clear.’ He leaned on his cane and started bending down the fingers of one hand in a close-fitting grey glove. ‘You walked in without ringing or kn-knocking. So you must have come to see someone you know. That is one. You see strangers here, but you don’t ask after the occupant of the flat. So you already know that he is dead. That is two. But that didn’t stop you coming here in an extravagant dress with a f-frivolous bouquet. That is three. Who could regard a suicide as cause for congratulation? Only the “Lovers of Death”. That is four.’
The Oriental joined in the conversation. He spoke Russian rather briskly, but with an appalling accent.
‘Not onry ruvers,’ he protested energetically. ‘When Prince Asano’s nobur samurai receive permission commit hara-kiri, everyone congraturate them too.’
‘Masa, we can d-discuss the story of the forty-seven faithful vassals some other time,’ said Monte Cristo, interrupting the short Oriental. ‘At the moment, as you can see, I am talking to a lady.’
‘You may be talking to the lady,’ Columbine snapped. ‘But the lady is not talking to you.’
‘His Highness’ shrugged, discouraged, and she turned into the doorway that led to the right, beyond which there were two small rooms. The first one contained nothing but a cheap writing desk and the one beyond it was the bedroom. Her eye was caught by the divan bed, one of the new-fangled kind, with a central section that folded out, but it was very shabby and crooked. The top section didn’t fit properly against the bottom and the divan seemed to be grinning with a dark mouth.
Columbine remembered a line from Avaddon’s final poem, and muttered: ‘The bed clatters its teeth.’
‘What’s that?’ She heard Monte Cristo say behind her. ‘Poetry?’
Without turning round, she recited the entire quatrain in a whisper.