A Holmes for the Czar by Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff

Author:Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff [Goodlett, Paula & Huff, Gorg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 1632, Inc.
Published: 2020-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

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Two hours later, they interviewed Feliks as he was lying in a bed in the hospice. One arm was manacled to the side of the bed, and a bored Pavel was sitting there watching. His punishment for not keeping Vasilii out of the colonel’s way.

“Yes, I did it. You can hang me. Just don’t send me back there,” Feliks whimpered before Vasilii could ask him anything.

“Why did you do it?”

“I was jealous, just like you said.”

“Jealous of Marina?”

“Marina? Who’s Marina?”

“The girl—” Vasilii started, but Miroslava grabbed his arm.

“Let me ask,” Miroslava insisted.

Vasilii looked at her, stood up from the chair, and offered it to her.

Pavel looked at Vasilii, and grinned. The grin said, in the up-timer phrase that Vasilii had read in one of his mysteries, “You are so pussy whipped.”

Vasilii shrugged his agreement while Miroslava started asking questions.

“Where was Fiana standing when you shot her?”

“I don’t know?”

“How can you not know if you shot her?”

“I . . . I . . . She was in the alley.”

“Very good. She was in the alley. Where in the alley?”

“What do you mean? She was in the alley. I shot her. Now you can hang me.”

“Was she closer to you than the door?”

“Yes, yes, she was closer.”

As Miroslava, Vasilii, and Pavel all knew perfectly well, the door was closer to the shooter than Fiana was. Until now, Pavel had been watching this whole procedure with a mixture of resentment and boredom, with a bit of amusement thrown in. Now that boredom was gone. His eyes sharpened, and he paid careful attention.

Vasilii pulled a notepad from his breast pocket. Like better than half the workers in the Dacha of whatever rank, Vasilii had pockets sewn into his tunic. The one on the left breast contained a small wooden board that had twenty small sheets of paper clamped to it. It also contained a wooden pencil with a real graphite and clay lead. They’d been being made in Moscow for over two years when the czar escaped. They still weren’t being made in Ufa, but a lot of them were “smuggled” to Kazan and Ufa. They were what Bernie called “seventeenth-century geek chic.” Almost a badge of honor among the Dacha crowd.

Now Vasilii took out his notepad and pencil and started taking careful notes as Miroslava asked her questions.

It took awhile because Miroslava was careful of her questions. It wasn’t until well into the interview that Vasilii realized why she was being so careful. She was working very hard to see that none of her questions told Feliks what sort of answer she wanted, and that her responses to his answers didn’t tell him if he’d said what she wanted or not. That was very hard to do and Miroslava didn’t always manage it.

But she asked him who was in the alley, where everyone was standing, how he could see, inadvertently giving away that there was a lamp. Where the lamp was. “Over the door.” Something must have shown in one of their expressions, because he quickly corrected himself.

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