The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield Page A

requests by telegram to all the provinces, asking if there have been any similar murders. I doubt they will produce any result—if such a maniac had shown his hand earlier, I should have known about it. The second circle with the initials AB is Amalia Bezhetskaya. She is undoubtedly suspect. You and Akhtyrtsev could easily have been followed from her home to the Crimea. And then she has fled. However, the motive for the killing is not clear.”
    “If she has fled, it means she’s involved,” Erast Fandorin said heatedly. “And that means the white-eyed man is no solitary killer.”
    “That’s not a fact, not a fact by any means. We know that Bezhetskaya is an impostress and she was using a false passport. She is probably an adventuress. She was probably living at the expense of rich patrons. But as for murder, especially by the hand of such an adroit gentleman…Judging from your report, this was no dilettante but an entirely professional killer. A blow like that to the liver is exquisitely precise work. I’ve been to the morgue, you know, and examined Akhtyrtsev. If not for the corset, you’d be lying there beside him, and the police would believe it was a robbery or a drunken brawl. But let’s get back to Bezhetskaya. She could have learned about the incident from one of her menials—the Crimea is only a few minutes’ walk away from her house. There was a lot of commotion—police, idle onlookers woken from their sleep. One of the servants or the yardkeeper, say, recognized the dead man as one of Bezhetskaya’s guests and told her. She, being quite reasonably afraid of a police inquiry and inevitable exposure, immediately goes into hiding. She has more than enough time to do so—your good Mr. Grushin only turned up with a warrant in the afternoon of the following day. I know, I know. You were concussed—you didn’t recover consciousness immediately. It took time for you to dictate the report, for the boss to scratch his head…Anyway, I have placed Bezhetskaya on the wanted persons list. She’s probably no longer in Moscow. I think she’s not even in Russia—that wouldn’t be too hard, after ten whole days. We’re drawing up a list of those who used to visit her house, but for the most part they are highly respectable individuals and tact is required. Only one of them rouses any serious suspicion in me.”
    Ivan Franzevich jabbed the pointer at the third circle, which contained the initials CZ .
    “Count Zurov, Hippolyte Alexandrovich by name. Evidently Bezhetskaya’s lover. A man entirely devoid of moral principles, a gambler, a rabid duelist, and general madcap. A Tolstoy-the-American type. There is some circumstantial evidence. He left in a state of extreme annoyance after a quarrel with the dead man—that’s one. He could have waited and shadowed you and sent the killer—that’s two. The yardkeeper testified that Zurov came home just before dawn—that’s three. And there’s a motive, too, although it’s a weak one: jealousy or morbid vindictiveness. Possibly there was something else. The main point of doubt is that Zurov is not the kind of man who would use someone else to kill for him. However, information from our agents indicates that he is constantly surrounded by all sorts of shady characters, so this scenario actually appears quite promising. And this is the one that you, Fandorin, will follow up. Zurov is being investigated by a whole group of agents, but you will operate alone—you do that well. We’ll discuss the details of the assignment later, but now let’s move on to the final circle. This is the one that I am following up.”
    Erast Fandorin wrinkled up his brow as he struggled to imagine what the initials NO might represent.
    “Nihilist organization,” his chief explained. “There are certain signs of a conspiracy here, only not a Jewish one, something more serious than that. That’s really the reason I was sent in. That is, of course Prince Korchakov asked me as