A Proposal to Die For

The old man shook his head. ‘You should bring me things I can use, not ask me questions I cannot answer.’

Then his eyes focused on Alkmene. ‘Who is that fine lady? Another client?’

‘Ah,’ Alkmene said, ‘so you are some sort of consulting detective.’

The old man laughed, so loud the boy looked up from his play, with wide eyes. Apparently he didn’t hear this sound very often.

The old man said, ‘The police are there to restore order, or at least so they say. They are like these – cogwheels in a bigger whole. They churn because they are put into motion from the outside and they grind to pieces whatever they catch between them.’

Alkmene shivered, not just because of the bleak reality he painted, but also because of the desolate acceptance of it as a fact of life. This man here had no hope at all that things could be different, better, from what he expected.

‘Now our friend here,’ the old man continued, ‘creates his own world of cogwheels and he thinks he controls them. He digs up dirt and then he is surprised he is finding dead bodies. But when you overturn stones, you find critters creeping out from underneath them.’

‘Enough platitudes for one day,’ Dubois said gruffly and he tossed the precious brooch at the old man.

Deftly, he caught it between his weathered hands.

Alkmene winced as she imagined the sharp stab again that the pin had put in her finger. But the old man didn’t seem to feel anything. He studied the work with a gleam in his eyes. ‘Very good. Highest level of craft. Certainly not English. Eastern. Russian maybe.’

‘Russian?’ Alkmene took a step forward.

‘I have to look up the mark in a book,’ the man said and dropped himself off the stool. He limped over to the piles of books and began to run a finger down the spines, muttering to himself.

Alkmene glanced at Dubois, who mouthed, ‘He has got a system.’

Alkmene nodded, not convinced it would actually work. She scanned the room some more. Her gaze kept coming back to the child, playing with the worn-down soldiers. So intently like they were brand new. Probably because he didn’t have anything else.

She bit her lip. If Dubois had brought her here of all places, to make a point, he was succeeding better than she had thought possible. As a child she had had so many toys and been bored soon with most of them. She had always wanted a pet, but her father had deemed it caused too much trouble with the servants who would have to clean away hair or worse.

Out of spite she had immersed her best doll in the bathtub so the body was ruined, having soaked up too much water. Not to mention the time when she had cut off the beautiful brown curls to give the doll a more fashionable short do. Her nanny had wailed about what such a china doll cost, with her hand-painted face and nails and clothes of real velvet and leather shoes with little laces. This boy had probably never even owned wooden toys.

‘Aha.’ The old man had found the volume he wanted and pulled it out of the stack. It collapsed against another. He leafed through the pages, again discussing his attempt with himself. ‘No, that is not it. No, further. Or maybe… No, not that either.’

Alkmene shuffled her feet.

‘You can sit down,’ Dubois said, nodding at a couch in a corner that looked like it would collapse as soon as anybody sat on it. She wasn’t quite sure about bugs either.

Glancing down, she was glad her skirt’s hem was not touching the ground. Maybe she should clean her shoes thoroughly tonight.

What had Cook said that helped against critters? Petrol?

The old man returned the brooch to Dubois. ‘Most certainly Russian, made by one Sergejev of Saint Petersburg.’

‘You should call it Leningrad these days,’ Dubois said with a glance at Alkmene.

The old man shrugged. ‘I don’t follow those things,’ he said. ‘Saint Petersburg had good goldsmiths, that is all I know and care about.’

He shut the book and dumped it where he stood, returning to his desk with that slow painful limp. He seemed too old to have been wounded in the recent war, but perhaps it had simply been an accident, a fall, that had changed his life for ever.

Dubois put the brooch back in his pocket and nodded. ‘’Til next time.’

He directed her to the door. Outside she asked in a whisper, ‘Should you not have paid him? He helped us.’

‘I know what I am doing.’ He sounded irritated. Pushing his hands deep into his pockets, Dubois went down the stairs, his shoulders pulled up as if he was cold.

Alkmene followed him closely. ‘Now that you know it is Russian, what will you do?’

‘I will think about it. The best thing you can do when things are unclear is wait until they become clearer.’

‘Somehow that doesn’t sound like your kind of philosophy.’ Alkmene took the last steps, panting. ‘I thought that when you wanted something, you dived right in.’

He looked at her, his face half shadowed in the dim hallway. ‘I did dive right in. I found out about the row at the theatre. I also have dug up more information about the dead man’s body: when it was found, and his financial situation. Did you find anything new?’

No, she had not found out anything more, mostly because she was not sure how to go about it. She itched to know what he had dug up. But she wasn’t about to admit that to Dubois. Smiling, she said innocently, ‘I thought we could…exchange our information.’

‘So you said before. But it seems the deal is becoming more one-sided over time. Besides, sharing has to be one’s free choice, remember?’

It irked her that he threw her own words back in her face like that. She had never met someone who really tried to beat her at her own game.

It is not a game, he had said at Waldeck’s.

Was that the main brunt of his resentment against her? That to her this was still a game providing her with diversion, excitement, while to him it was a serious thing?

Perhaps even a matter of justice?

Sobered, she followed him outside. She wanted to say something meaningful and profound, but she had no idea how she could prevent it from sounding thought-up and untrue.

Dubois turned away from her. ‘I am looking forward to receiving my handkerchief back.’

She was left standing there, in the middle of this rundown street, like Dubois didn’t care whether she ever found her way home or not. But she didn’t bother to run after him like a little girl. She didn’t need him. She knew what she was doing. And she was not about to leave this place until she had done something about that little boy.

She went into one of the small shops and bought vegetables, then went into a bakery that looked neat and bought bread and cookies in a big blue box. They had passed a pawnshop at the start of the street and there she found a wooden horse and cart. The paint was chipped a little, and the horse had once had more hair for manes and tail. But at least you could see what it was without guessing trice. She bought it as well and returned to the house on the corner.

She laboured up the steps once again to the fourth floor and banged on the door.

As the voice came, she repeated what Dubois had said. ‘Three for the fisherman, two for the priest.’

The door opened again, and she stepped in.

Instead of the old man seated at the table, there was a younger man with wild hair and red-rimmed eyes, staring back at her like she was some vision. The little boy had seemed to become even smaller, huddling in his corner as if he was not there.

Alkmene quickly dropped the bread and vegetables on the shabby couch, clutching the box with cookies and the horse and cart.

‘Whatdoyouwant?’ the dishevelled man growled.

‘I am here to make payment,’ Alkmene said in a firmer voice than she felt. She went to the boy and smiled down on him. ‘This is for you. A horse and cart to play with and some cookies to eat.’

She held them out to him, but the dishevelled man moved with lightning speed. He slapped the items from her hands, so that the horse and cart tumbled to the floor.