Free She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin

Pierrot, an absolutely genuine Pierrot, and that was his real name, after all, Pyotr, Petya.
    ‘What are you doing here at the crack of dawn?’ she asked severely.
    ‘But it’s midday already,’ he babbled and sniffed. His nose was wet and red. Had he caught a cold? Or had he been crying?
    It proved to be the latter. The disgraced Harlequin’s face contorted, his lower lip worked up and down, tears gushed from his eyes and he started blubbing in grand style. He spoke haltingly, incomprehensibly, and not about what Columbine had been expecting.
    ‘I went round this morning, to his flat . . . He rents one, on Basmannaya Street, in the Giant company building . . . Like yours, on the top . . . So we could go to lectures together. And I was worried after yesterday. I caught up with him and walked him home.’
    ‘Who?’ she asked. ‘Speak more clearly.’
    ‘Nikisha. You know, Nikifor, Avaddon.’ Petya sobbed. ‘He wasn’t himself at all, he kept repeating: “It’s been decided, it’s over, now I just have to wait for the Sign.” I said to him: “Maybe there won’t be any Sign, eh, Nikisha?” “No”, he said, “There will, I know there will. Goodbye, Petushok. We won’t see each other again. Never mind” he said, “it’s what I wanted” . . .’
    At this point the story was interrupted by another fit of sobbing, but Columbine had already guessed what was wrong.
    ‘What, there was a Sign?’ she gasped. ‘A Sign of Death? The choice was confirmed? And now Avaddon will die?’
    ‘He already has!’ Petya sobbed. ‘When I got there, the door was wide open. The yard keeper, the owner of the house, the police. He hanged himself!’
    Columbine bit her lip and pressed one hand to her breast, her heart was pounding so hard. She listened to the rest without interrupting.
    ‘And Prospero was there too. He said he hadn’t been able to get to sleep during the night, and just before dawn he quite clearly heard Avaddon calling him, so he got up, got dressed and went. He saw that the door was half-open. He went in, and there was Nikifor, that is, Avaddon, in the noose. He was already cold . . . Of course, the police don’t know anything about the club. They decided that Prospero and I were simply acquaintances of the deceased.’ Petya squeezed his eyes shut, obviously recalling the terrible scene. ‘Nikisha was lying on the floor, with a blue furrow round his neck and his eyes bulging out, and his tongue was huge and swollen, too big to fit in his mouth. And there was an appalling smell!’
    Petya started shaking and his teeth chattered
    ‘So there must have been a Sign . . .’ Columbine whispered and raised her hand to cross herself (not out of piety, of course, but from childish habit), and only caught herself just in time. She had to pretend to tuck away a lock of hair.
    ‘Who can tell now?’ Petya asked with a fearful shudder. ‘The poem doesn’t say anything about a Sign.’
    ‘What poem?’
    ‘The death poem. It’s a custom of ours. Before you marry Death, you have to write a poem, it’s essential. Prospero calls it the “epithalamium” and also the “moment of truth”. He gave the constable fifty kopecks, and he allowed him to make a copy. I copied it out for myself too . . .’
    ‘Give it to me!’ Columbine demanded.
    She grabbed the crumpled, tear-stained piece of paper out of Petya’s hands. At the top, in big letters, she read ‘A Riddle’. That was obviously the title.
    But she simply couldn’t read the epithalamium with Petya there. He burst into sobs again and started telling the whole story for a second time.
    So Columbine took hold of him by the shoulders, pushed him towards the door and said just one word: ‘Leave’.
    She said it in exactly the same way as Prospero had to her the night before, after everything was over. Only she pointed with her finger for greater emphasis.
    Petya looked at her imploringly, wavered on the spot for a while, sighed several times and walked