Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady

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First published in Great Britain in 1999 by HarperCollinsPublishers

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1999

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259488

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008257279

Version: 2017-09-04

Praise for Michael Pearce

‘This series continues to be the most delightful in current detective fiction’

GERALD KAUFMAN, Scotsman

‘Pearce … takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour’

JOHN COLEMAN, Sunday Times

‘Irresistible fun’

Time Out

‘The Mamur Zapt’s sly, irreverent humour continues to refresh the parts others seldom reach’

Observer

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Michael Pearce

About the Publisher

1

‘Try the Missing Persons Bureau,’ said Dmitri coldly.

‘Missing Persons?’ said the Father Superior. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘You said someone was missing.’

‘Not some one, some thing! The One-Legged Lady.’ He looked incredulously at Dmitri. ‘You’ve not heard of her? An icon.’

Dmitri knew, at least, what icons were. This was not surprising because nearly every house in Russia had one. It was usually situated in the opposite corner from the door so that you saw it as soon as you entered. The Church said that it was to remind you that you were forever under God’s protection. Dmitri said that since this was Russia and Church and Tsar were hand in glove, it was to remind you that someone was always keeping an eye on you. Anyway, as you went in at the door, there it was opposite you, usually a face under a tin plate, of some saint or other, looking you accusingly in the eye. It always reminded Dmitri of his difficult grandfather.

‘Not just an icon,’ said the Father Superior with emphasis: ‘the icon. The Holy Icon of the One-Legged Lady of Kursk. The most famous icon in the province.’

He looked hopefully at Dmitri. Without luck. To Dmitri, icons and monasteries – and Father Superiors, for that matter – belonged to the Dark Ages.

‘You’d better fill in a form,’ he said unenthusiastically.

The Father Superior stood for a moment looking down at him. Then he said:

‘Is there anyone more senior here? Boris Petrovich, for example?’

Boris Petrovich was the Procurator and Dmitri’s boss.

‘I’m afraid he’s dining at the Governor’s this evening.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the Father Superior. ‘I’m dining there myself.’

‘This icon of yours,’ said Dmitri, swiftly reviewing his position, ‘it’s gone missing, you say?’

‘Stolen,’ said the Father Superior. ‘From the Monastery last night.’

Dmitri pulled a pad towards him.

‘Value?’

‘It is a holy object,’ said the Father Superior.

‘No value,’ wrote Dmitri.

He had a niggling feeling, however, that something remained to be said.

‘Famous, did you say? What is it famous for?’

‘Performing miracles.’

‘Oh, yes?’

Dmitri put down his pen.

‘What sort of miracles?’ he said sceptically.

‘Well, it’s transformed the finances of the Monastery for a start.’

This, admittedly, was the kind of miracle in which Dmitri could believe.

‘How?’

‘By inducing thousands of people to come and see her. Including,’ said the Father Superior, ‘Mrs Mitkin.’

Mrs Mitkin was the Governor’s wife.

‘Perhaps I had better take a look,’ said Dmitri.

‘Didn’t I tell you,’ said the Father Superior, ‘that it performed miracles?’

The sun came up and turned the snow pink. The ice crystals began to sparkle. Far off towards the horizon there Was another, larger, more continuous sparkle which became a flash of gold.

Gradually, the Monastery came into view. The flash came from a huge gold onion sitting on top of it. All around were subsidiary onions and scaly pineapples. They rose out of a pink-and-blue striped roof, beneath which were walls so white that they seemed an extension of the snow. The gold was very newly golden and the pink and blue so fresh that it almost leaped off the roof at you. The Monastery, thought Dmitri, must have rich patrons.

There was a black smudge in front of the gates which resolved itself, as they approached, into a crowd of people. They held out their hands as the sleigh hissed past them into the Monastery yard.

‘There are a lot of them,’ said Dmitri.

‘Who?’ said the Father Superior, preoccupied.

‘Beggars.’

‘Pilgrims,’ said the Father Superior, pained.

‘Eyeing her all over!’ said the monk.

‘What?’ said Dmitri, startled.

‘You could tell he was no Christian. Didn’t do his respects. Didn’t even cross himself. Just stood there. Eyeing her all over, like I said. Disgusting!’

‘Father Kiril, –’

‘Most of them show a bit of respect. Not him! There he stands, eyeing her all over. Bold as brass! “Show a bit of respect!” I say to him. And do you know what he says? “Bugger off!” That’s what he says.’

‘Father Kiril, –’

Light began to dawn.

‘This was an icon, was it?’ said Dmitri.

‘What did you think it was?’

‘The One-Legged Lady?’

‘Eyeing her all over –’

‘He’s always like this,’ said the Father Superior despairingly.

The Chapel was dark except for a solitary lamp swinging down from overhead and the candles standing in front of the icons. The lamp turned in the draught whenever the door was opened and sent shadows chasing across the walls. Then it swung back again and they reassembled themselves. The candles fluttered and the faces beneath the metal plates seemed to alter their expressions but then the flames steadied and they resumed their normal impassivity. The air was heavy with incense.

A wooden screen, corresponding to the rood-screen in old English churches, stretched right across the Chapel, separating off the chancel. This was the iconostasis. It was covered with icons. From time to time someone would come up, bow before one or another of the icons, cross themselves, mutter a prayer and then shuffle away.

It was from the iconostasis that the Holy Icon of the One-Legged Lady of Kursk had been taken. There was a big, raw gap almost in the centre of the screen. A length of chain dangled down on either side.

‘We had it chained,’ said the Father Superior, ‘but they filed them through.’

Dmitri looked at the thick links.

‘That would have taken some time,’ he said.

‘They had all night. There are no services between midnight and five.’

‘The Chapel is left open?’

‘Yes.’ The Father Superior hesitated. ‘Father Kiril likes to pray,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Did he pray last night?’

The Father Superior sighed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He was here all the time.’

‘What?’ said Father Kiril.

‘Last night!’ shouted Dmitri. ‘The One-Legged Lady!’

He made motions desperately with his hands.

‘Disgusting!’ said the old man.

Dmitri looked despairingly at the Father Superior.

‘It’s no good,’ said the Father Superior. ‘We’ve tried everything. He can’t hear a word!’

‘Oh, yes, I can,’ said Father Kiril unexpectedly.

‘Except when he wants to,’ amended the Father Superior.

Dmitri tried again.

‘Last night –’

‘What?’ said Father Kiril.

The Father Superior preceded Dmitri through the door. As Dmitri made to follow him, a monk, emerging suddenly out of the shadows, seized him by the arm.

‘You don’t want to listen to him,’ he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of Father Kiril. ‘He’s past it!’

‘I can see he has difficulties –’

‘Difficulties!’ The monk snarled contemptuously. ‘He doesn’t have difficulties: he’s just past it. Addled. The milk in the bucket’s gone sour.’

‘Yes, well, –’

Dmitri tried to edge past. The monk gripped his arm more tightly.

‘You don’t want to listen to him!’

‘Well, no, probably not, but –’

‘But,’ said the monk, nodding significantly, ‘there are others who know more than they let on.’

‘About the Icon?’

‘Yes.’

The monk released his grip a fraction.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why was it stolen?’

‘I’ve been wondering that.’

‘Well, why?’

Dmitri shrugged.

‘Its value. I suppose.’

‘Value? What sort of value has an icon got?’

‘Spiritual, I suppose,’ said Dmitri, remembering his exchange with the Father Superior slightly guiltily.

‘Spiritual! Exactly! Well, who would want to steal a thing for its spiritual value?’

‘I can’t imagine that anyone –’

‘Think!’ insisted the monk. ‘Think!’

‘I am thinking. But –’

‘Monks.’

‘Monks? You’re not suggesting that someone here in the Monastery –?’

‘Not here.’ The monk made an impatient gesture.

‘Where, then?’

‘There are plenty of other places that would like to get their hands on the One-Legged Lady.’

‘Another monastery? But –?’

The monk cackled, released his grip and shot away.

‘You ask Father Sergei,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘He’s one of those that know more than they let on!’

Why would anyone steal an icon? It was a question that Dmitri had been asking himself and which he put to the Father Superior as they were walking across the yard.

‘Not for its intrinsic value,’ said the Father Superior, ‘its value strictly as an object, that is. It contains some silver, certainly, but it would hardly be worth anyone’s while separating it out.’

‘A collector, then?’

‘I don’t think a collector would be interested. It’s too big. Huge! Six feet by four. And then the workmanship is a little crude. For my taste, that is. It’s peasant work, really. I was saying as much to the Governor last night. Not that I would presume to set my taste against his. “There is that rumour that it’s by the Master of Omsk,” he said. “Yes, I know,” I said. “But really –”’

‘The Governor has quite a taste in these matters?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s got quite a good collection of his own. Nothing like Marputin’s, of course, but pretty good.’ He glanced sideways at Dmitri. ‘You know Marputin?’

‘No, I don’t think I do.’

‘Oh, I thought you might. He’s down here quite often. Especially at the moment. He is a friend of the Mitkins’. I think,’ said the Father Superior, ‘that he would like to be more.’

‘More?’

‘Yes. He has his eye on the Mitkin daughter. Of course, he’s much older than she is, but then, that doesn’t matter much, does it, when there are other considerations?’

‘What other considerations?’

‘Well, the Mitkins are a good family. Poor nobility. Noble – on the mother’s side, that is – but poor. Mitkin’s often said to me that getting the Governorship was the saving of him. Marputin, on the other hand, is the son of a serf. Pots of money but no birth at all. So it suits everybody. Except Ludmilla, of course.’

‘Ludmilla?’

‘She’s the daughter.’

The Father Superior was taking Dmitri to the Monastery gates.

They’re closed at night?’

‘Always.’

‘The problem as I see it,’ said Dmitri ‘was not so much taking the One-Legged Lady down – Father Kiril allowed for – as getting her out.’

The black smudge outside the gates had dissolved. A steady stream of pilgrims was crossing the yard and going into the main buildings. A smaller stream was heading for the Chapel: and there was another, countervailing stream going out through the gates.

‘That may well have been the way she went,’ said Dmitri.

‘You don’t think Father Sergei might have noticed,’ asked the Father Superior, ‘if someone had gone out carrying a six-feet by four-feet icon?’

‘Father Sergei?’ said Dmitri.

‘He’s in the gate-house,’ said the Father Superior.

‘Well, I don’t know why he should say that,’ said Father Sergei, surprised. ‘Other than his normal dislike of me.’

‘He spoke of another monastery.’

‘Is he still harping on that?’ Father Sergei shrugged. ‘Well it’s true I came here from somewhere else. But that was fifteen years ago. You would have thought that after all these years –’ He shrugged again. ‘But that is Father Afanesi for you!’

‘What monastery did you come from?’

‘The Kaminski. It’s near Tula.’ Father Sergei smiled. ‘Where the One-Legged Lady originally came from.’

‘Perhaps that’s something to do with it?’

‘Well, it’s true that they would like her back. It was a smart move of Father Grigori – he was Superior here at the time – to snap her up. But the Kaminski needed the money. She was paid for fair and square and, really, they’ve no cause for complaint. In any case, they’d hardly go to the length of stealing –’

The Father Superior had gone back to his room. Dmitri returned, cautiously – he had no wish to run into Father Kiril or Father Afanesi again – to the Chapel. He was looking again at the links when a carpenter came in and dumped a bag of tools down in front of the iconostasis.

‘So she has gone!’ he said, looking at the gap on the screen. ‘Well, I’m not surprised. I reckon she upped and walked away in shock.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because of what they were doing to her.’

‘What were they doing to her?’

‘Making money out of her. Making money left, right and centre. And I don’t reckon she liked it. I mean, it wasn’t what she was used to, was it? I mean, up in Tula it was the other way round. She was on the side of the poor, then, wasn’t she? Well, I tell you this, Barin, she’s not been on the side of the poor down here. She’s been on the side of the bleeding rich!’

‘The pilgrims don’t look very rich to me,’ said Dmitri.

‘Not the pilgrims, although some of them have got more than they let on. No, the Monastery! See, everyone who comes puts a kopeck or two into the box and if you’ve got lots and lots of people coming, in the end it adds up to lots and lots of kopecks. And it doesn’t go back to the poor, either. Do you know what it goes on? That roof. Now, I’m all for a lick of paint. I think it freshens things up; but the amount that’s gone on that roof! And you don’t have to go all the way to Tula, either, to find people who could have done with some of that.’

The bottom of the Icon had rested on a thick ledge which at one end had come away from the iconostasis.

‘Now there was no need to do that, was there?’ grumbled the carpenter. ‘They could have just lifted her down.’

He knelt down and began working.

‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘There’s no problem about that. But what it needs is a proper base. If I’ve told them that once, I’ve told them a thousand times. But will they do anything about it? No, not they!’

He sat back on his heels and looked up at Dmitri.

‘Mean as flint, they are. Do you know what Nikita Pulov was telling me the other day?’

‘Who’s Nikita Pulov?’

‘He’s the carter. Comes in twice a week. Would come in more often if they’d have him. Well, do you know what he was saying? He was saying that the other day when he was here, his horse drops a turd, and the next moment one of the fathers is out there with his shovel. ‘I want that for my garden,’ he says. ‘Your garden’s four feet deep in snow!’ says Nikita. It’ll melt, won’t it?’ says the father. I tell you they’re after the dung even before the horse shits it!’

‘Yes, well, –’ said Dmitri.

‘Do you know what I reckon has happened to the Icon?’

‘No?’

‘I reckon they’ve sold it.’

‘Sold it!’

‘Yes. To fetch a rouble or two. For the Monastery.’

‘But I thought you said it was making them a lot of money?’

‘Yes, but she’s been here a long time. There comes a time when you want something fresh. Now, what I reckon is that they’ve sold her and very soon they’ll start saying: “Oh dear, the Old Lady’s gone for good. We’ll have to start looking around for something to go in her place.” And all the time they’ll have had their eye on something else, another icon maybe, or perhaps a holy relic, and they’ll get it and put it in here, and the pilgrims will start flocking, and they’ll say, “Ah, well, reckon it was for the best, after all.” It’s a business to them, you see, and that’s the way it is with business. Now you and I, Your Honour, may think we know a thing or two about business, but, believe me, we’re like newly hatched chicks compared with them. Sharp as knives and about as much feeling. They’ll have been looking on her as a carter looks on a horse: get what you can out of her and then get rid of her. So that’s what’s happened, I reckon. They’ve gone and sold her. Either that,’ said the carpenter with grim satisfaction, ‘or she’s seen it coming and bloody well walked out on them!’

‘So what are your impressions?’ asked the Father Superior, as they were walking across the yard to the sleigh.

‘Oh, mixed,’ said Dmitri. ‘Mixed.’

‘A monastery is like that,’ said the Father Superior fondly.

One of the pilgrims, a large man in peasant shirt and peasant boots, accosted them.

‘I don’t like it, Father!’ he said.

‘Don’t like what?’

‘This business of the Icon. If you ask me, it’s not accidental.’

‘What do you mean, it’s not accidental?’

‘I reckon it’s deliberate. Taking her away just when she’s needed.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, I’ve come here all the way from Tula especially to ask her something and when I get here, she’s not here!’

‘You can ask some other icon, can’t you? We’ve got plenty.’

‘Ah, but she’s a bit different from other icons, isn’t she? She knows what it’s all about. She did something for people, didn’t she? When they were starving. Well, I come from Tula, and we couldn’t half do with her now, I can tell you, because we’re starving again!’

The Father Superior tried to push past.

‘Try some other icon. Or stay here for a day or two. We hope to have her back soon.’

‘I can’t stay here. Not for long, anyway. I’ve got a wife and children at home. My wife’s sick, otherwise she’d have come herself. “I can’t go, Ivan,” she said, “so you’ll have to. I know it’s not your way, but we’ve got to do something and I can’t think of anything else.” So I’ve come, even though it’s not my way. Besides, I thought the Old Girl might listen to me, she knows how it is for people like me. And now I’ve got here, she isn’t here!’

‘We’ll, I’m sorry about that,’ said the Father Superior. ‘We’re doing all we can. This gentleman here –’ he indicated Dmitri – ‘is from the Court House at Kursk and he’s going to look into the matter.’

‘Ah, but is he?’ said the peasant.

‘What do you mean?’ said Dmitri. ‘Am I?’

‘Beg pardon, Your Honour, but you people stick together. It might not be worth your while to look too closely.’

‘Why wouldn’t it be worth my while?’

‘Because they’re all in it together, Tsar, Church, Governor, all of them!’

‘You watch your words, my man!’ warned the Father Superior.

‘They’re not just my words, they’re what everyone is saying.’

The Father Superior turned on him.

‘Enough of that sort of talk! You go and find a Father and tell him I told you to have a few words with him!’

‘Well, I will: but that’s not going to bring me bread, is it?’

‘What you need is not bread but straightening out!’

Dmitri had an unusual feeling as the sleigh approached Kursk; he felt that he was returning to civilization. This was not how he usually felt about Kursk. Dmitri was all for the bright lights of St Petersburg; and light of any sort, in his view, had yet to reach Kursk. Nevertheless, as the sleigh drew up in front of the Court House, he felt a twinge of, well, not quite affection for the city, more the feeling that a sailor has when after long months he returns to the land. Kursk, though on the very edge, was at least on land; whereas the Monastery was very definitely at sea.

‘Oh, that icon business,’ said the Procurator dismissively when Dmitri went in to see him. ‘I wouldn’t spend too much time on that if I were you.’

Which accorded pretty well with Dmitri’s own intentions.

Boris Petrovich pushed a pile of papers towards him.

‘These have just come in,’ he said. ‘Will you take a look at them? I am going out to lunch.’

The Procurator was always going out to lunch.

‘In our position,’ he told Dmitri, ‘it is important to keep a finger on the social pulse.’

Vera Samsonova, the junior doctor at the local hospital, said she knew what that meant and that if Boris Petrovich tried putting his finger on her pulse again, she’d stick a syringe in him.

To Dmitri’s surprise, however, he himself was invited out to lunch. To his even greater surprise, the invitation came from the Governor, whom Dmitri had hitherto supposed to be entirely unaware of his existence.

‘Mr Kameron?’ said the tall dark girl standing beside him. ‘What sort of a name is that?’

‘Scottish,’ said Dmitri. ‘My great-great-grandfather came from Scotland.’

‘But how romantic!’ cried the girl.

‘Kameron?’ said the Governor’s wife. ‘Is that the Kamerons of Gorny Platok?’

‘Why, yes!’ said Dmitri, amazed that anyone had heard of the small farm where his grandfather presently resided. The estate had once been larger but successive generations of spendthrift Kamerons had sold off land until his grandfather had put his foot down and insisted that henceforth male Kamerons should work for a living.