Death's Detective

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

The new Lady Rostikova had been quick to furnish herself with visiting cards. A fresh one lay on his hall table when he returned the following morning. It was a prim little rectangle of card, printed with her new title and her address in gilded lettering. The address in question was Rostikov House, already given into new hands.

The lady had left a note for him along with the card, and an elegant invitation scribed in gold ink. She was returning his visit, she said, and would he do them the honour of attending their little gathering on the thirteenth?

The invitation was no surprise; he’d known it would come, as soon as he had introduced himself to them at the park. His acquaintance was worth having to a newly aristocratic couple, anxious to establish themselves in their new position.

And in keeping with that wish, the opulence of the invitation told him this event would be no “little gathering”. They were flaunting their new status, proving their suitability for the highest echelon of Ekamet society.

He knew that few people would blame them for it.

They weren’t wasting any time, either. The thirteenth was just two days away. They were gambling on their terrific rise in status to bring guests at such short notice. It was a gambit that would probably work.

Konrad wrote his reply immediately and handed it to a servant to deliver.

In one respect, this news was disconcerting. If Rostikov House had already been claimed by its new owners, they would have stripped it out. No further clues as to its former mistress’s fate were likely to be found there. But his most promising leads were people: the poison-seeking man whom Irinanda had described, and the old woman at the funeral.

It seemed indubitable that the woman was connected to Navdina in some way; closely connected, given her distress. It was quite possible that she herself still resided at Rostikov House, at least for the present, and the upcoming party would give him the perfect opportunity to look for her.

He rang the bell. Within moments, footsteps approached and Mrs Orista, his housekeeper, bustled in and bobbed a curtsey.

‘I’m expecting someone,’ he told her. ‘Make sure he is shown into the parlour as soon as he arrives. Without delay, please. And send someone in with tea, and something edible.’

‘Of course, sir.’ She smiled - the woman was always beaming - and left in the direction of the kitchen.

Nuritov arrived as the clock struck eleven. He was always punctual, thought Konrad approvingly as he rose to greet him.

‘Ten minutes only,’ the man said to Konrad as they shook hands. He perched on the edge of a chair, not even pausing to remove his coat and hat. ‘Baris has me jumping this morning.’

Baris was Artoni Baris, chief of Ekamet’s police, and Nuritov was one of his inspectors. Konrad paid him to share findings with him. Sometimes he paid in money, and sometimes he paid in information. Nuritov knew him only as a somewhat eccentric amateur sleuth.

‘Rostikov case, I’m guessing?’ Nuritov accepted a cup of tea and drank half of it down in one gulp.

Konrad lifted a brow.

‘It’s the big one at the moment,’ Nuritov explained. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. Thought it would be up your street.’

‘Do you have anything for me?’ Konrad selected a cake and began delicately pulling it to pieces.

Nuritov nodded emphatically. ‘The victim’s servants have been talking. Said Navdina went all to pieces a few weeks ago. Cancelled most of her social engagements and started spending all her time locked up in the house.’

Konrad leaned forward. ‘Does anyone know why?’

Nuritov produced a piece of paper from a pocket and thrust it at Konrad. It was a transcript of the note he had already seen.

‘We think there were more,’ Nuritov said as Konrad pretended to read the page. ‘Footman says he saw the lady throw a note into the fire once. She was upset. And the butler told us she used to tremble whenever the post was delivered.’

Konrad frowned. The destroyed notes doubtless contained the missing information, such as what precisely she had been accused of. Why had she destroyed those and kept this one?

‘This meeting,’ he said, tapping one of the notes. ‘At the South Gate. Did she go?’

Nuritov refilled his tea cup and drank that down too. ‘Apparently not. Instead she locked everything up, barricaded herself inside the house. But a maid heard voices in her room around midnight: her mistress’s and someone else’s. Another woman, she thinks. There was no sign of how she got into the house.’

A woman? Konrad would have expected it to be Irinanda’s unidentified customer, if anyone.

So now he had two people involved.

‘Did anyone see this mysterious visitor?’

‘No. Everything was quiet again at one when the maid went to bed.’

‘Nobody was surprised to find her absent in the morning?’

‘They were, but they assumed she’d gone out. The front door was unbarred on the inside.’

So nobody had wondered where she was; no one had raised the alarm, not even under such unusual circumstances as these. Poor Navdina.

‘Anything else?’ he asked Nuritov.

The inspector shook his head, hastily swallowing a mouthful of cake. ‘That’s it. May be more later.’

Konrad nodded and stood up. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’d better go. But I’ve a tip for you before you do.’ He gave the inspector Irinanda’s name and the address of her shop. He wasn’t afraid of the consequences: her poisons trade was perfectly legal.

‘Ask her about marsh spectre,’ he finished.

Nuritov’s brows rose. ‘Is she involved?’

‘Doubtful. But she has information that may be relevant.’

Nuritov grinned. ‘You should join the force. I know you don’t need the work, but we could use you.’

Konrad shook his head. ‘I prefer to work alone.’

When Konrad returned to Rostikov House for the party, he hardly recognised it. Gone were Navdina’s collections of ornaments, the gilded trinkets and the clutter. In their places stood expensive antiques and pieces of new art; and books, books of the sort to be looked at rather than read. The effect was much more tasteful, though it lacked character to Konrad’s eye. He could have walked into the home of any aristocrat in Ekamet and seen examples of the same kinds of things.

The affair was, of course, splendid. Everything about the party dripped money, from the clothes of his hosts and fellow guests to the food laid out in the dining room. Lord Rostikov and his lady sparkled with pleasure and affability as they greeted their guests, but he paid them only the briefest of courtesies before moving on. It was not the hosts he was interested in speaking to this evening.

He was looking for the shabbily-dressed servant, the one who had wept so hard at Navdina’s funeral. She wouldn’t be among the party guests; her prim black drabness and grey hair would not fit among the sparkling birds of paradise that flocked through Navdina’s hall, dining room and ballroom. But perhaps she was somewhere else in the house.

He paused a moment longer where he was, watching the revelry. He kept his disgust hidden behind his mask of stone indifference, the face that nobody knew how to read. They had no respect for the dead, these preening gentry. They swarmed over her house, dripping in silks and jewels, laughing and courting one another’s favour, their faces smiling but their eyes calculating and hard. They would have danced on Navdina’s own grave with as much abandon.

Konrad endured the fawning attention of his hosts with cool indifference. He was obliged to endure still more, as every one of the Rostikovs’ friends was brought forward to be introduced. When at last they let him alone, repelled and puzzled by his blank countenance and bland manner, he allowed himself to meld into the milling crowd and made his slow way towards the stairs.

He slipped up one flight, and then two, welcoming the gradual cessation of the brittle chatter and laughter of the party. He paused briefly on the second storey, thinking again about the weeping woman. It was likely that she had been Navdina’s servant, inherited along with the house. The new mistress would have brought all her own staff with her when she moved in; where might she have placed an unwanted extra?

Further up, he decided. The attic.

He climbed to the top storey and began opening doors. They were all empty, their owners busy serving at - or cooking for - the party that proceeded at a busy hum some way below.

At the back of the house he found a small, mean room, smaller than all the others. It was barely more than a cupboard. On the narrow, hard bed sat the woman he sought, so still that Konrad wondered if she was asleep. Then, slowly, her head turned and her eyes focused on him.

He stared at her for a moment, contemplating her features. She was younger than he had thought: her hair was grey but her face was relatively unlined and there was no frailty about her figure. Konrad guessed her to be in her fifties.

‘I saw you at the funeral,’ he said. ‘I wanted to speak to you.’

A faint flicker of interest registered in her blue eyes. ‘Who are you?’

‘A friend of Navdina Rostikova.’

He watched in silence as her face crumpled and she began to sob.

‘And that’s why I want to speak to you,’ he added. ‘Because of the way you cried at her funeral.’ A single, hard chair rested next to the bed. He took it, passing her his handkerchief as he did so.

‘It’s as though she was never here,’ said the woman at last. ‘They dance and dance in her house, drinking and carousing like they were… they’ve already forgotten her.’ She began twisting his handkerchief in her hands, binding it into a tight knot. ‘Every little piece of her life has been stripped out of this house. Thrown away, like it was rubbish. She did that, the minute she set foot in here.’

‘Who are you?’ Konrad asked.

The woman sighed deeply. ‘Etraya Marodeva. I was Navvy’s nurse. I knew her from the day she was born.’

‘You were very attached to her.’

‘She was a sweet child,’ Etraya said with a wobbly smile, ‘and she grew up to be a fine lady. Not stuck-up, like some of those others you meet.’ Her lips quivered again. ‘I should have done better for her, protected her somehow.’

‘From what?’ Konrad kept his voice low and his posture still. He wanted her to forget he was there, to keep on talking.

‘I was almost a mother to her,’ said Etraya tearfully, without answering his question. ‘It’s a mother’s job to protect her child.’

‘What of her own mother?’

‘Died,’ she said. ‘She was never well after the birth; only a few weeks after Navvy was born, she was gone.’

‘And you’ve been part of her household ever since?’

She nodded, eyes glittering. ‘She said she couldn’t part with me. I was to be nurse to her own children, whenever she married.’

‘And now?’

‘I’ve been given notice.’ Twist, twist went her hands with the handkerchief. ‘She needn’t have bothered. I’d no intention of staying.’

‘I take it by she you mean Lady Rostikova.’

Etraya pulled a face of disgust. ‘They didn’t get on,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t seem right that she’s here, taking over Navvy’s space after… well, after…’

After someone had stabbed her to the heart with a poisoned blade and left her to die alone in the middle of the Bone Forest. Well, indeed.

Konrad watched her, thinking. She had so much to say about the Rostikov family, but she’d skirted the topic of the murder. She was obviously heartbroken by Navdina’s death, but in like circumstances most people asked questions. Why her? Why us? Why did this have to happen?

Etraya hadn’t asked any of those things.

‘Ms Marodeva,’ he said slowly. ‘Do you know why Navdina was murdered?’

Etraya’s tears stopped. She looked back at him, and he detected a trace of fear in her cool blue eyes.

Fear, and something like guilt.

‘Of course not,’ she said. Now she looked at him with suspicion. ‘Who are you really? Why do you ask these questions of me?’

Her defensiveness was interesting. He made a note of it.

‘Just a friend,’ he said, standing. ‘Thank you, Ms Marodeva.’

He left the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

Several things about her manner interested him, but the most pressing question in his mind was the reason for the nurse’s tears. Was it grief that had made her weep so at the funeral? Or was it remorse?