Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
“Mr. Vasily Ivanovich Petrov?” Piper asked, consulting his notebook.
“Da. Yes. You are police.”
“How did you know?”
“Stepan Vladimirovich told me with speaking tube. Come in, please.”
His grasp of English seemed quite adequate, his accent possibly better than Miss Zvereva’s. Alec wondered about his calling the prince by his first and second names. Did it suggest that they were on terms of close friendship, not just employer and employee, or was it just a quirk of Russian usage?
Stepping over the threshold, he was met by a blast of hot air, its source a small gas furnace in a firebrick-walled corner.
A safe matching the one in the shop’s back room stood in another corner.
Two tables, one topped with zinc, occupied much of the room, and Alec recognised a machine on a shelf at the back as a wire-drawing apparatus.
Other shelves bore moulds and a variety of tools of the goldsmith’s trade.
The rear wall had neither door nor windows.
The building might share a wall with one in the next alley.
The smith himself was a dark man of about Alec’s own age. Clean-shaven and short-haired, shorter than Piper who had barely passed the minimum height for the police, in a wig and nanny’s outfit he could at a pinch have passed for a woman.
Alec couldn’t conceive of any reason for him to take part in Devenish’s prank, but Devenish was notoriously persuasive, by fair means or foul.
While he was studying the room and the man, Piper had introduced both of them, again neatly avoiding giving Alec’s name. “We have a few questions to put to you, sir,” he continued.
“About Mr. Devenish, yes.” He checked the temperature gauge on the furnace. “I can leave furnace for short time. Is cooler upstairs. You come?”
Whatever its original use, the first floor was now a small flat. Petrov had furnished it plainly but comfortably. Sash windows overlooking a narrow alley were wide open, letting out some of the heat that rose palpably from the floor.
Petrov offered tea. After a glance at Alec, Piper accepted. If—for whatever reason—the natives chose to appear friendly, there was no harm in responding in a friendly manner.
While he fiddled with his samovar, Piper asked a couple of preliminary questions, confirming for the record his name and address and profession.
Alec went over to a shelf of books. Most were in Russian, but there were a couple in English and a two-way dictionary.
Clearly Petrov had made a serious effort to improve his English skills.
So what had Miss Zvereva meant by saying he spoke almost none?
And whatever her reason, had she intended to make some sort of sign to him to speak only Russian?
Petrov poured small amounts of already made tea, very dark brown, from a silver teapot into glasses with intricately wrought silver holders, then added hot water.
“Your work, Mr. Petrov?” Alec asked, holding his glass up to get a good look at the glass-holder’s interwoven flowering vines. The tea itself, milkless, was a beautiful clear amber, very different from muddy English tea.
“My work. Zina—Zina?da Stepanovna’s design.”
“Very attractive.”
Piper regarded his brew with suspicion. Petrov regarded him with amusement.
“You like sugar, Mr. Piper?”
“Yes, please!”
Alec accepted a slice of lemon in his.
“You have questions, sir?” Petrov asked him.
“I do. You knew Edward Devenish.”
“Only because he was friend of Stepan Vladimirovich.”
“You didn’t consider him a friend of yours?”
“He was nobleman. No, aristocrat, not nobleman. But I— I am craftsman. Prince not consider suitable friendship for me. He employer of me. Also, I not liked—disliked Mr. Devenish. He was not genuine. I know bad man from good as I know fourteen-carat gold from eighteen-carat.”
“A useful skill. You didn’t see much of him, then?”
“As little as possible. I meet sometimes by chance in house.”
“Did he admire your work?”
He shrugged. “Admired Miss Zvereva’s drawings.
She bring him to workshop where is made from drawing beautiful jewelry.
He has only contemp’. He says any ordinary goldsmith can do this.
I, who was apprentice in Fabergé workshop, thanks to Stepan Vladimirovich, I am not ordinary goldsmith! He knows nothing.”
“You must have been angry.”
He shrugged again and laughed, but there was an edge to his laughter.
“Opinion of ignorant is nothing to me. Also, I know he wants only to make Miss Zvereva think he is very clever. If he praises my work like hers, she think he praises always what he sees, so his praise of drawings of her is not so … so…”
“Meaningful?”
“Da, is good word. I tell you what I think?”
“Please do.”
“This man is what you call nuts. He has flying mice in the bell tower. You understand?”
Alec managed to hold back a smile but a muffled snort came from Piper and his mouth twitched.
Petrov looked at him and smiled. “This is funny? An Englishman tell me anyone will understand what is meaning.”
“And so anyone will, sir, but if you don’t mind me saying so, he was pulling your leg.”
“Tak! To make fun of foreigner is joke in Russia also. Please, what is correct expression?”
“Bats in the belfry, sir. Bat—that’s sort of a flying mouse; belfry is same as bell tower. So you weren’t that far out.”
“In your opinion, then, Mr. Petrov,” Alec brought them back to order, “Devenish was not wholly sane?”
“Holy sane? England has same ‘holy fools’ like in Russian? I have not seen. Mr. Devenish was not such.”
Alec groaned silently as Piper enquired and Petrov explained. Developing rapport with a suspect sometimes proved useful, he reminded himself.
Piper himself returned to relevance. “What exactly made you think he was nuts, sir?”
“I try to explain. For man to court young lady, change mind, jilt—this happens, da? But Devenish, to me seems he courts Miss Zvereva with intending from start to jilt. This not normal.”
Normal for Devenish, Alec thought. He asked, “Was she very distressed when he jilted her?”
“Not at all. She did not like him.”
“What about her father? He must have been angry.”
“Stepan Vladimirovich is old man and cripple. He is angry; he curse; he shout; but is nothing he can do.”
“Did he suggest that you should do something as he could not?”
“I am not servant to do such for him. I am grateful he obtain for me apprentice with Fabergé. I am happy for good job. But to commit crime—this, no!”
Alec was pretty certain he was speaking the truth, possibly nothing but the truth, but probably not the whole truth.
However, he decided not to press him immediately.
He wanted to hear Ernie’s impressions. Besides, they had a great many people who hadn’t yet had preliminary interviews.
The Russians looked most promising so far, but there was a long way to go.
“Do you think any friends of the Prince might have acted for him, Mr. Petrov?”
“Most are old men. Not able for what I read in papers.”
“Do you know of any other friends, acquaintances, or enemies of Devenish?”
“I have not met any such.”
“Where were you last Wednesday morning?”
“I not remember anything different about that day, so I was here, working. We do good work, Miss Zvereva and I. We are always busy.”
“Us too!” said Piper.
“Now must go to furnace. Is wasting gas.”
They left him to his gold. Crossing the courtyard, Alec said, “I wonder why Miss Z didn’t want me to speak to him except through her.”
“Dunno. He gave us damn all. A cagy customer.”
“He was holding something back?”
“If you ask me.”
“I agree. But I don’t think he killed Devenish, and I doubt he has any idea who did.”
As they entered the house, Alec saw that the prince was not in his cosy corner.
“Your visit upset Papa,” Miss Zvereva said. “The servant and I helped him to go upstairs. It is not easy without help of Vasily Ivanovich, but he insisted.”
“We won’t disturb him,” said Alec. “I’d like to see the servants, though.”
“I will call them downstairs.”
There were two English housemaids, young and giggly, and a Russian manservant with an impressive beard.
Alec wrote them all off as possible nanny impersonators immediately.
As sources of information they might be useful.
He nodded to Piper, who wrote down their names.
He needed Miss Zvereva’s assistance with the man’s, as he understood little English and spoke less.
Leaving his sergeant to continue the laborious attempt to wring information out of the Russian, as interpreted by the man’s employer, Alec asked the girls to step through to the shop for a few minutes.
At moments like this, he badly missed Tom Tring, who would have had them eating out of his hand in no time.
Ernie would never have the same light touch.
Unsure which girl was which, he took their names again. “You remember Mr. Devenish?” he asked.
“Coo, yes,” said Doris, the smaller and prettier of the two. “Ever so ’andsome ’e was, wasn’t ’e, Nance.”
“’Andsome is as ’andsome does.”
“Go on! ’E was a good tipper, too. Is it true ’e was done in, sir, like what the papers say?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s why I have to ask you a few questions. He was a friend of your master’s, was he?”
They exchanged a glance.
“That’s as may be,” said Nancy. “They didn’t ’ave much to say to each other, and what they did say was in foreign.”
“French, it was, I think. Not Russian.”
“’E was always welcome, any road.”
“Only ’cause ’e was sweet on miss.”
“And she was sweet on him?” Alec queried.
“Not ’ardly!”
“Come off it. ’Ow would you know? Maybe she was playing ’ard to get.”
“I seen the look in ’er eyes, ’aven’t I. She put up with ’im so’s not to upset ’er dad, you take my word for it, sir.”
Provisionally, he did, as it agreed with what he’d heard before. “What about Mr. Petrov? Was he a friend of Mr. Devenish?”
“I never seen ’em together.”
“They never come upstairs at the same time.”
“I think,” said Nancy darkly, “’e stayed away when ’e knew Mr. D was ’ere.”