The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries Part 6

Larisa had mentioned only her acrobatic skill. For a moment Dorj said nothing. He was thinking about her remarkable blue eyes. It was hard to imagine those blue eyes belonged to a woman who was, or had been, a contortionist, as well as . . . Dorj forced his thoughts back to more important matters.

"Is it true that the women had reason to hate Zubov?" he asked, recalling Dima's comment.

"You mean because he was constantly propositioning them? Actually, the way he was always looking at Ivana, I am surprised poor Cheslav waited until he was dead to kill the old lecher. If I had been her husband, I would have strangled him long ago!"

Dorj immediately recognized the possessive jealousy in Fabayan's voice. How often had he encountered that fierce tone while investigating a crime? Perhaps that was why he so distrusted his own emotions. So often strong emotions led to disaster.

He might have felt compelled to ask whether the young man had been having an affair with Cheslav's wife, but the aerialist grabbed one of the hanging ropes and hauled himself up into the shadows. A few seconds later, Dorj heard the creak of the swinging trapeze.

Dorj climbed into Zubov's caravan. Having spoken to the last two or three members of the small troupe, he had discovered that, predictably, they all claimed that everyone else but themselves had good reason to hate the circus owner.

It was hard to remember he had driven out here hoping that for a few hours the circus's dazzling lights, nimble performers and sideshows would free him from the dreariness of the vast grey desert and cramped grey offices of his official life. In Ulaanbaatar he had had the consolation of the State Theatre. Out here in Dalandzadgad culture was a traveling circus.

Dorj removed his wire-framed eyegla.s.ses and carefully wiped their round lenses with his handkerchief. But when he put the spectacles back on, the scene remained unchanged and just as murky.

He examined the interior of the caravan. It held no revelations. Its few cupboards contained only household necessaries, and in any event they were too small for purposes of concealment. Nor had anyone been hiding in the lavatory cubicle, waiting to escape in the general excitement. He would surely have been noticed.

The blood smears on the floor and the imprint of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand on the lavatory door mutely reproached his lack of understanding.

Dorj positioned himself beneath the closed roof vent and reached up to touch it. When he had noticed it earlier, while examining the outside of the caravan, he'd guessed it was too small to serve as an entrance. Now he was certain. His shoulders were much wider than the opening and Dima, although short, was at least as broad. Not a proper midget, as Zubov had said. In addition, the vent gave no evidence of having been opened recently. Indeed, a ropy bit of cobweb hung down from it.

The cobweb made him think about Fabayan's rigging. Didn't aerialists fly through the air, in a manner of speaking? He would have had a motive, certainly, unless Dorj were mistaken about the aerialist's relationship with Ivana. For that matter, Ivana was an acrobat. Dorj tried to imagine some way aerial or acrobatic skills might breach a locked caravan.

After a moment's thought, Dorj replaced Zubov's wooden chair to the spot he had seen it while a.s.sisting Dima to lay Hercules' body on the bed. He sat down where Zubov had sat. Why had the circus owner locked the door until the ambulance came? As a precaution, no doubt. People who were hated had reason to lock their doors.

He glanced around again. By the disordered bed an empty vodka bottle had rolled into a corner.

So, he reasoned, perhaps Zubov had felt the need for a drink, sitting in his cold caravan with the corpse of his headline act. It was not surprising. Dorj tried to imagine how it would have been, sitting there with the dead man, drinking, perhaps eventually dozing.

And suddenly the dead man is rising from the bed. Impossible. It must be the vodka, or the tail end of a nightmare. Half awake, he is confused. He jumps to his feet. The chair topples over as the dead man advances. Convulsed with panic, the ringmaster backs away, but there is no escape. The corpse staggers against the lavatory door, steadies itself with a b.l.o.o.d.y hand. Then those huge hands fasten on Zubov's throat. Trying to push the nightmare away, the ringmaster finds only a barrel chest gashed by a hideous wound.

Dorj shuddered. Trying to imagine the scene he had felt himself being drawn into it, almost like the shaman he had once seen performing for some tourists. Certainly the masked man, beating a drum and dancing about, had known as well as his spectators that he was not descending into the lower world. But as his gyrations became wilder it seemed to Dorj that the man was convincing himself that he was actually taking the impossible journey and in so doing was also persuading the spectators most of them, at least of the fact.

But what Dorj had imagined a murderous corpse was simply not possible.

And yet, the lion-tamer had been dead. The wound had been so terrible, he must have gone into shock instantly and died within minutes.

Dorj's thoughtful gaze was drawn again to the b.l.o.o.d.y handprint on the door. Nor could he forget the welt around the strangled man's neck.

Again he tried to picture the performers, and how their skills might have contributed to Zubov's death. All the exercise did was remind him of a snippet of his limited knowledge of native Mongolian culture. Along with masks, shamans-religious magicians, scoffers called them wore mirrors on their clothing. Weren't the sequins sewn into circus performers' outfits tiny mirrors? Perhaps it was just as Batu said, the soul being called back, simple magic. Was it so dreadful to believe there might be magic in the world?

Dorj finally found Larisa standing outside the cookhouse among the vehicles in the back yard.

"Do you have a few spare moments?" he asked.

The bearded lady shrugged. "We won't be leaving until tomorrow."

"You'll continue to tour?"

"What else can we do? Eventually some legal person will let us know who owns the circus. Meanwhile we have to make a living."

Dorj paused, gauging the light. It would be more than an hour before it was completely dark. "I need to ask you a few more questions. And there's something you might like to see. A local landmark."

"How mysterious. It's been a long time since I've been asked out walking by a gentleman! I'd be pleased to accept."

"Well, it isn't exactly, that is to say there are questions . . ."

"What? You aren't shy about being seen with a girl who looks like me, are you?"

As they followed faint tyre ruts up a small hill that rose almost imperceptibly several minutes' walk from the abandoned hangar, Dorj had to admit to himself that although he might indeed be shy about being seen with a bearded woman, it was nevertheless a marked, almost welcome, change from his grey official life.

"Here's something you might want to know," Larisa said, when they were well away from the back yard. "Dima is Buturlin's son. Illegitimate. I understand when Buturlin made Zubov a partner, their agreement required the circus to keep Dima on, even in the event sole ownership pa.s.sed to Zubov. The agreement apparently didn't specify that Zubov had to treat him like a human being."

Dorj nodded, wondering why Larisa was offering the information. Perhaps it was just to be helpful. People did not always need ulterior motives, he reminded himself. "Perhaps Zubov hoped to force him to leave?"

"It would be his way," agreed Larisa.

"Does Dima have any interest in the circus, now that his father's partner is gone?"

"I don't know. You don't suspect Dima, do you? Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything."

The wind was still cold, but walking made Dorj feel warmer. Perhaps it was his slight build that made him mind the chill. It was not a good trait for a Mongolian, even a city dweller as he had been, since in Ulaanbaatar in the winter it was not unknown for the temperature to reach 40 below.

He asked his companion about Ivana and Fabayan. Larisa confirmed his suspicion. "She married Cheslav in a fit of pique shortly after Zubov hired him, because she'd just had a big quarrel with Fabayan. Ivana is impetuous and emotional, always has been. She and Fabayan quickly made it up. Poor Cheslav. I often wondered how he could not have known."

They had reached the windswept brow of the hill. From this vantage point, they could see the black bulk of the hangar. Beyond it lay a litter of abandoned Russian military equipment, left there to rust into oblivion in the Gobi's vast emptiness.

Here at the top of the hill was the much older landmark Dorj had wanted to show Larisa. It was a pile of rocks standing higher than his head, a sacred obo, built stone by stone by pa.s.sing travellers over the span of hundreds of years. Up here, looking at such a thing, it was easy to believe the impossible.

"So Cheslav avenged himself on the wrong man," mused Dorj.

"You don't really believe a dead man got up and strangled someone, do you? You're thinking like Shakespeare, with all those ghosts stamping about calling for b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance!"

"You know Shakespeare?"

"Circus people know everything."

"I really can't make anything of it," Dorj admitted. He related his conversation with the dead man's wife.

Larisa pondered for a few moments. "What if she somehow gave the tranquilizer to Cheslav?" she finally suggested. "Not to kill him outright. Just to make him slow, perhaps affect his reactions. Give the lion its chance, you know? He was frightened of the lion, and I think they can sense it. Well, she was too, especially having to feed it. Though she disliked the reptiles even more."

Dorj nodded. It almost seemed a reasonable theory, given the character of the widow. A tawdry triangle and a more than melodramatic way to get rid of an unwanted husband.

Larisa continued. "But here is another idea. About that terrible wound Cheslav had perhaps it didn't kill him immediately because of the tranquilizer in him? And he came to in the caravan? He probably thought that Zubov had plotted with Ivana, and that would be enough. He would want revenge before he died." She sighed and continued, "But it is all too fantastic, even for a circus, don't you think?"

Dorj shrugged without comment. Her theories made as much, or as little, sense as anything he had been able to think of up to that point.

Sunset was a purpling bruise on the horizon. In its soft light, they stood looking at the pile of stones that formed the obo. It was not the sort of thing to which Dorj was usually drawn. But it was the only magic he could think to offer this strange woman.

"This is an ancient place of power," he explained.

"A good spot to solve your mystery, then."

Dorj listened to the wind sighing around the obo. He thought of the unknown number of ancient hands, belonging to forgotten people all now turned to dust, this single action of their lost lives, the placing of a stone, now all that was left of them.

"It is a good place to make one believe the dead might return," he said, quietly. "We should go back before it gets dark."

He picked up a pebble and added it to the obo. As Larisa bent to do the same, she stumbled and, as he had earlier, Dorj caught her arm. This time he was not so quick to let go.

"You would never guess I was an acrobat once," she said.

"And, so I am told, a contortionist. You didn't mention that."

Larisa's blue eyes widened slightly. "You don't suspect me, do you? Do you suppose I managed to wriggle into the caravan somehow?" She looked away from him. "I'm sorry, Inspector. But in fact, I have indeed misled you about something else. You didn't think this was real?"

She grabbed the edge of her beard and pulled. Dorj stared for a second at the suddenly smooth face. "Now there is a magical transformation which the Bard himself would have been proud to preserve in his work," he finally said.

To his distress he saw that the unveiled face was set in a frown.

"I have never suspected you, Larisa," he quickly a.s.sured her. "In fact, right now I need your a.s.sistance." He grabbed her hand he could hardly believe he had done so and hurried her back down the hill.

"There may be another trap around here," Larisa worried. "Be careful. Dima might have put some more out. I wish you'd tell me what you're looking for."

So far she and the inspector, searching around the back of the hangar with the aid of a fading torch, had located perhaps a dozen traps, finding only one sprung, and that holding an unfortunate rat. Dorj merely insisted they continue looking. She swung the feeble yellow light across the ground until it lit upon a metal stake. The flickering beam slid down the stake's attached chain to reveal another trap, and beside it a semi-comatose snake.

"It belongs to the circus, doesn't it?" said Dorj.

"Yes. It's Nikita. How do you know?"

"I grew up in the city, but I don't think boa constrictors are native to the Gobi. Not even ones as small as this."

"He's just a baby," Larisa pointed out. "Zubov traded our big python for it. He eats less. Ivana didn't say anything about him being missing."

"There were pictures of snakes on the animal trailer, but I didn't notice any inside. At least one aquarium was empty, though. When you wondered whether I suspected you'd managed to wriggle into the trailer caravan, it reminded me."

Sluggish from ingesting whatever it had found in the trap, the snake was quickly popped into the empty feed sack Dorj had brought with him. "We'll need this for evidence," he commented.

"You're saying the snake killed Zubov?"

Dorj hefted the sack, hoping the snake would not emerge too quickly from its post-prandial lethargy.

"I should have realized that manual strangulation would leave finger marks on Zubov's neck, not a continuous welt all around it," he explained. "If nothing else, the b.l.o.o.d.y handprint in the caravan should have reminded me.

"It got there during the struggle. What I surmise happened is that Zubov, having drunk heavily, fell asleep." Dorj continued quickly, wanting to finish without distressing the woman too much. "The snake, having escaped, got into the caravan. Snakes are attracted to warmth and the only warm thing in the cold caravan was the slumbering Zubov."

"The first and last time anything was attracted by Zubov's warmth," the woman said wryly.

"Then he was suddenly woken up by the boa tightening around his neck. He couldn't call for aid. Trying to get it off him, he crashed around, and in doing so knocked the corpse off the bed."

He paused momentarily. "That would explain the blood on the floor and the lavatory door."

Larisa shuddered. "It must be true. Boas that feel threatened instinctively tighten their coils, so I hear."

"Once Zubov was dead," Dorj continued, "he was too big to ingest. Or perhaps the snake was scared away by Batu's pounding on the door. It crawled off through one of those badly patched holes in the caravan wall, in search of other prey. It was probably hungry. In fact, I don't doubt hunger also contributed to the lion attacking Cheslav."

"You don't think it's what Ivana said not enough tranquilizer?"

They had arrived at the unlocked animal trailer. Dorj looked around for the empty aquarium. The bag he was holding shifted alarmingly.

"I'm not certain about the lion. Perhaps it was just as Ivana said, an accident with the tranquilizer. Or possibly she saw her chance."

"So both deaths were nothing more than accidents. How very strange."

"Yes. Strange indeed. Too strange. Unless . . ." Dorj frowned. He stared into the dimness. "What if Nikita didn't escape? In the confusion, after her husband was killed, Ivana could have returned to this trailer and tranquilized the boa. It isn't a large boa and easily concealed under that billowy outfit she was wearing. Under the circ.u.mstances we would never have noticed. And when she threw herself so dramatically onto the corpse-well, he was a big man and there was plenty of room inside that wound for a smallish boa. It would have awakened in a cooling corpse, in a cold caravan, and gone for Zubov."

Larisa blanched.

The sack Dorj had all but forgotten jerked suddenly open. The head of the snake whipped into view. Another convulsive twist of its body and it had knocked the sack from Dorj's hands. The freed boa slithered across the floor. But in the wrong direction. A leonine paw flashed out from between cage bars, and then Raisa was rumbling contentedly as she ate the unfortunate killer.

So accidents did come in threes, as Fabayan had said, Dorj thought.

Larisa and Dorj left the trailer and stood gazing up at the impossibly enormous moon sitting on the edge of the horizon. Its bright light, flooding down from the dark sky, painted the world silver. Ebony shadows pooled here and there. Inside the trailer the lion was devouring the only credible evidence for Dorj's unlikely story.

The strange bearded creature he had met only hours earlier, now transformed into a beautiful woman, leaned nearer to brush a magical kiss onto his cheek. Dorj felt certain he must have fallen into some Shakespearean enchantment.

"I am sorry," whispered Larisa. "But in a way I am not. We circus people stick together. And only Ivana knows what really happened. There is no proof of anything, really."

Dorj wondered what his superiors would say about the report he would be submitting in due course. His reputation would certainly suffer, and he suspected that over the next few months he would be finding rubber snakes hidden in his office desk with monotonous regularity.

But at least he could state the murderer's ident.i.ty with certainty. How the boa had got into the caravan would be difficult to ascertain, and indeed he was beginning to doubt the fantastic tale he had spun. Perhaps the snake had arrived in the caravan by its own efforts, without anyone's a.s.sistance. That part he would leave to his superior's imagination.

"Larisa," he said softly, "Did you know Shakespeare mentions a snake around someone's neck? A beautiful gold and green snake. And there's a lioness in the same scene. In fact, now I think about it, the original Hercules strangled the Nemean lion. What happened here almost makes some sort of sense."

The woman smiled. "Though it is the wrong season, do you mean it almost makes sense in a dream-like midsummer night's sort of way, Inspector Dorj?"

Wingless Pegasus.

Gillian Linscott.

Gillian Linscott (b. 1944), a former reporter and Parliamentary journalist, is the author of the Nell Bray series of suffragette mysteries that began with Sister Beneath the Sheet (1991) and includes the award-winning Absent Friends (1999). Gillian has a fascination for intricate mysteries. She began a series set in the 19th century featuring journalist Thomas Ludlow and the less than reputable horse-dealer Harry Leather, but only completed two stories. I reprinted one of them, "Poisoned with Politeness" in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits (Third New Collection). Here's the other one.

There was a terrace behind the house with swags of cream and apricot roses, steps leading down to a broad lawn with a cedar tree. The lawn sloped away to a deep ditch, separating the garden from a meadow where cattle grazed. At the boundary of lawn and meadowland was a small lake a couple of acres in extent. The island was not quite in the centre of the lake, nearer the sh.o.r.e on the meadow side, about the size of a large drawing room, with a marble statue of Venus, half-draped, rising from a tangle of rushes and meadowsweet. Nothing else to see at all except, early on that June morning, a horse. A white horse, standing up to the hocks in meadowsweet and early morning mist from the lake, looking itself like a statue, except when you got closer you'd have seen that it was shivering and its nostrils flaring, not being the sort of horse used to spending its nights in the open, even in an English summer. No ordinary horse either. If half-draped Venus had grown tired of English country life and summoned the G.o.ds' horse Pegasus to carry her back up to Olympus, this was what might have arrived in answer. Only Venus couldn't fly away after all because the instant his Olympian hooves touched the damp soil of Berkshire, Pegasus had lost his wings and became, like her, marooned in 1866 on a small island on the moderate-sized estate of a man who had made his fortune from railways.

That, at any rate, is how it might have looked to a fanciful observer with a rudimentary knowledge of cla.s.sical mythology who happened to be looking out from the terrace early that morning. In fact it was a housemaid glancing from her window in the attic who first saw it and she-knowing nothing of Pegasus or Venus-went downstairs and informed the undercook that one of the carriage horses must have got let out of its stable and there'd be the devil to pay when the head groom found out about it. From there the news went out to the stables where a hasty check of heads found that all six equine members of Sir Percy Whitton's establishment were present and correct in their boxes. A delegation of stable staff, along with some of the gardeners picked up on the way, hurried across the lawn to the edge of the lake, and realised at once that this was no ordinary horse. Where it came from and how it had arrived overnight, saddled and bridled, on Sir Percy's little island, was a cause of universal puzzlement overtaken by the necessity of getting it to more solid land. This presented problems because the small rowing boat that was usually kept on the lawn side of the lake for the amus.e.m.e.nt of Sir Percy's guests had been reduced to splinters in an accident with a garden roller the week before and its replacement had not yet arrived. After some discussion several grooms and gardeners took off their boots, waistcoats, and jackets and waded into the lake. At its deepest it came up to chest height but they went on firmly, encouraged by shouts from their friends on the bank and, possibly, the prospect of some substantial sign of grat.i.tude from whoever turned out to be the owner of the animal which was watching them apprehensively, showing every sign of wanting to bolt but, of course, with nowhere but the lake to go. I would guess that at this point, in spite of the difficulties, the rescuers were lighthearted. It was a diversion from the work of the morning and there was no reason to think that they were engaged in anything more sinister than the recovery of a fine animal. A groom was the first to step ash.o.r.e. I suspect that the ardour of the gardeners decreased as they came closer to the dancing, snorting object of their quest. He put hand on the rein, made calming noises. Then he gave a shout and the horse reared up, almost dragging the rein from his hand.