The Winter Queen Read Free Page A

And don’t you keep me waiting either—get yourself back here as quick as you can.”
    Xavier Grushin’s final words were already addressed to the back of the young collegiate registrar, who was in such great haste to forsake his dreary oilcloth-covered desk that he nearly forgot his peaked cap.
    AT THE STATION the young functionary from the Criminal Investigation Division was shown through to the superintendent. However, on seeing what an insignificant and lowly individual had been dispatched on this errand, the superintendent decided not to waste any time on explanations and summoned his assistant.
    “Be so kind as to follow Ivan Prokofievich here,” the superintendent said to the boy in a kindly voice (he might be only a small fry, but he was still from the Division). “He’ll show you everything and tell you all about it. And he was the one who went to the dead man’s apartment yesterday. My humble regards to Superintendent Grushin.”
    They seated Erast Fandorin at a high desk and brought him the slim case file. He read the heading:
CASE of the suicide of hereditary honorary citizen Pyotr Alexandrov KOKORIN, 23 years, a student of the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of Moscow. Commenced on the 13 th day of the month of May in the year 1876. Concluded on the_____day of the month of____in the year 18___’ and unfastened the knotted tapes with fingers trembling in anticipation.
    “Alexander Artamonovich Kokorin’s son,” explained Ivan Prokofievich, a scrawny, lanky veteran with a crumpled face that looked as if a cow had been chewing on it. “Immensely rich man he was. Factory owner. Passed away three years ago now—left the lot to his son. Now why couldn’t he just enjoy being a student and make the most of life? Just what is it these people want? I can’t make it out at all.”
    Erast Fandorin simply nodded, not quite knowing what reply to make to that, and became absorbed in reading the statements of the witnesses. The number of reports was rather large, about a dozen in all, the most detailed of them drawn up from the testimony of the daughter of a full privy counselor, Elizaveta von Evert-Kolokoltseva, aged seventeen, and her governess, the spinster Emma Pfühl, aged forty-eight, with whom the suicide had been in conversation immediately prior to the shooting. However, Erast Fandorin failed to extract from the reports any information beyond that which is already known to the reader, for all the witnesses repeated more or less the same thing, differing only in their degree of perspicacity. Some affirmed that the young man’s appearance had instantly filled them with alarm and foreboding (“The moment I looked into his crazy eyes, I went cold all over,” stated Titular Counselor’s wife Khokhryakova, who went on, however, to testify that she had seen the young man only from the back). Other witnesses spoke, on the contrary, of lightning from out of a clear blue sky.
    The final item lying in the file was a crumpled note written on light blue monogrammed paper. Erast Fandorin fastened his eyes greedily on the irregular lines (due, no doubt, to emotional distress).
Gentlemen living after me!
    Since you are reading this little letter of mine, I have already departed from you and gone on to learn the secret of death, which remains concealed from your eyes behind seven seals. I am free, while you must carry on living in torment and fear. However, I wager that in the place where I now am and from where, as the Prince of Denmark expressed it, no traveler has yet returned, there is absolutely nothing at all. If anyone should not be in agreement, I respectfully suggest that he investigate for himself. In any case, I care nothing at all for any of you, and I am writing this note so that you should not take it into your heads that I laid hands on myself out of some sentimental nonsense or other. Your world nauseates me, and that, truly, is quite reason enough. That I am not an absolute swine may be seen