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TWENTY-SIX

Asher reached St Petersburg at 7:55 in theof Wednesday, May tenth – the twenty-sixth of April by Russian reckoning – and took a cab straight from the station to Krestovsky Island

He’d cabled Lydia froainst hope that, after a week of hearing nothing froation of her own

Ysidro ht have stopped her – or helped herIf Ysidro had gone on to Petersburg

He didn’t know that, either

Prince Razumovsky’s izba was shut Not even servants htly shuttered s

Da up from his desk when Asher appeared in the study’s French doors ‘Good God, man, where have you been? Madame Lydia--’

‘Where is she?’

‘They have been searching Petersburg for her for four days!’

The izba had been cleared up, the broken glass of the s removed and the s themselves replaced ‘Zudanievsky said they found a little blood on the wall of the pantry cupboard in the basement,’ reported the Prince, as Asher turned over the twoparlor table: a broom handle and a kitchen poker to which silver knives and forks had been roughly lashed with string ‘There was a ray wool, rather small, from a tailor in Jermyn Street--’

Ysidro’s

Asher’s heart seemed to pound more heavily as he looked around the diarlic and wild rose stems on the table as well He wondered what Zudanievsky had made of them The bespectacled officer had impressed him as a quintessential city bureaucrat, but one never kneith Russians In any case, there wasn’t a Russian in Petersburg who didn’t have relatives still on the land Despite the raritty factory-smoke of the industrial sluht from the wheat fields and birch woods They would knohat all this o He ht here from Berlin

Strain and exhaustion had left him numb, perfectly cal vampires attackedProbably as soon as Count Golenischev left town

Why? Hoould they have knoho Lydia was, or where she was?

Or was it Ysidro they were after?

He said, ‘No bodies’ He felt he was viewing all of this as if froreat distance As if it were so for, and he hi?’

‘Burning?’ The Prince’s heavy eyebrows knotted, but he’d been in the business of secrets for a long time and did not ask further ‘No Rina – Madairl cairl dressed like a lacemaker or a milliner Madame Asher sent the servants away at once, back up to the house Jov says they all of them woke up the next day where they’d dropped off to sleep, all at once, still in their clothing, like the castle of Sleeping Beauty The men in the stables as well I think so into the tea in the servants’ hall’

Asher went to the corner of the table, touched the three little heaps of silver there: the chains Lydia had worn around her wrists, and on the other side of the table – as if it had been taken off later, or by souarded her throat Beside thes of silver and glass

Lydia

Someone – not a vampire – must have taken the protective chains off her That would mean Texel or Theiss

He are of the Prince’s cornflower gaze on hi – as Zudanievsky had read – in Asher’s silence a knowledge of precisely as going on What is it that you can tell from these weapons, these chains, these herbs, my friend, that we do not know?

‘I’ll send for Zudanievsky He should be at his office--’

‘Not yet,’ said Asher He took a deep breath; it cleared hiselse I need to see first’

‘What?’ The Prince grabbed him by the shoulder, almost shouted the word at hi, I can have half the Okhrana out--’

‘And it only takes one second for sorip, gathered up the chains and the spectacles and slipped them into his pocket The butler on the shallow front steps of von Br&uuraSt Petersburg

The German would have only a few hours’ start on him

‘I should be back this afternoon,’ he said at last, as they stepped out onto the veranda, locked the door again behind theet in touch with Zudanievsky, tell hi withoutRazurin, and corrected himself: ‘Without your express orders’

‘As it little behooves an officer of the Okhrana to be taking orders fro that you need? You look like you’ve spent a night in the train station--’

‘On the train’ They walked up the path to the ain, and he rubbed his face, unshaven and still itching froum of the now-discarded Berliner beard ‘And I’d probably better not be Mr Plue You’d better explain that to Zudanievsky I’--’

‘I doubt he’ll care When did you last eat?’

‘Nineteen oh-seven, it feels like I’ll need a pistol – an auto to eat, whatever you’ve got in the kitchen’

He stepped through the Frenchagain and stopped beside the study desk, looking down at the newspaper lying on the corner of that handsome plain of inlay and ebony

There was a badly-printed photograph of Dr Benedict Theiss, above the headline: SLUM CLINIC DOCTOR BRUTALLY MURDERED

‘Just give me the pistol,’ he said ‘I’ll return as soon as I can’

The town house of Petronilla Ehrenberg, on the Sadovaia Oulitza, reood deal of Lady Irene Eaton’s, which lay only a few streets away, and even ’s house in Neuehrenfeld Expensive, stylish, it was situated on the end of a short row of identical expensive and stylish town houses; there was no es, or ere in Petersburg for long enough at a time to want to be troubled with the upkeep of anirave;-terre, for Moscow industrialists with business connections in the capital, or the mistresses of ates opened into an alley behind The lock on Nuly expensive, for where it was, but Asher had little trouble cli over A narrow yard, like Lady Eaton’s: kept up just enough not to look unkempt Upstairs and down the rooms were showier, with the expensive and rather heavy-handed taste – and many of the same prints on the walls – he had seen in the K&ouned simply to establish the fact that the occupant lived in a house like other people, and slept in a bed

A crypt had been walled off the shallow basele to shift Like , its walls were clae The coffin – mounted on trestles – was ehtly down froain and started back up the alley, a man stepped out from around the corner and held out his hand to him ‘Please, mein Herr, ten thousand pardons--’