Бесплатный фрагмент - A detective without murder, or A funny adventure of general Tiskin

«In family life, the main thing is patience… Love cannot last long.»

A. P. Chekhov.

Vasily Semyonovich Tiskin was a general and an exemplary father of a family. At the end of school, Vasya, by decision of the family council (which he did not resist, trusting the wisdom of his parents), entered a military school, which he successfully graduated from, and then an ordinary officer career went on in his life.

At present, he lived only with his wife, Maria Ivanovna. Their two children were already adults and lived separately from their parents. Their son Igor was a lawyer, he successfully built a career in the field of defending the interests of clients in courts. Daughter Svetlana was an artist-designer, worked in an apartment interior design company and was also quite independent. The communication of the son and daughter with their parents was quite rare, their vital interests no longer coincided with the interests of their parents. Parents completely trusted their children, their choice of career fully satisfied Vasily Semyonovich and Maria Ivanovna; the only thing that bothered them was that the son and daughter were not going to start families yet.

Relations between Vasily Semyonovich and Maria Ivanovna have already passed into the stage of calm mutual respect. They were connected only by the memory of the days of youth, communication with children, and an understanding of the need to live together, observing external decency and the appearance of a strong family. In addition to simple everyday issues, which also somehow held their family together, otherwise they lived with different interests. Vasily Semyonovich from time to time regularly performed his marital duty, considering this action to be something from the category of, as it were, work duties.

General Tiskin took his army career seriously, he was in good standing with high leadership. Despite the fact that he was already about 50 years old, he believed that by his age he had achieved good performance in work and career. The authorities celebrated him both with various awards and cash prizes. He never forgot to congratulate the high leadership on holidays, birthdays, including the birthdays of the family members of the authorities. In general, in the life and career of Vasily Semyonovich, everything seemed to be fine and it was expected to be even better. Although Vasily Semenovich himself, his life seemed rather bland.

The general’s wife, Maria Ivanovna, also seemed quite satisfied with her life. Now her main interests revolved around fashion news and shopping for something to decorate their apartment; Fortunately, she did not experience any embarrassment in the funds for these hobbies. And, of course, she devoted a lot of time to maintaining her face and body in the right, according to her concepts, condition. She had several girlfriends with whom she met either in beauty salons or in fitness centers. Sometimes the girlfriends made collective trips to art exhibitions, where they started playful and exciting conversations with young pale fashionable artists who so far remained only unrecognized geniuses. In order to prevent these pale geniuses from dying of starvation, Maria Ivanovna sometimes bought some of their paintings; but their communication was limited only to the walls of the salon. Sometimes girlfriends made trips to boutiques, choosing for themselves any new clothes. In general, the life of Maria Ivanovna, in her understanding, was rich and interesting.

For some time, Vasily Semenovich began to feel that his life had become somehow too monotonous, programmed, that is, predictable. Along the line of raising the cultural level of officers and their families, they were obliged to attend concerts or theater performances from time to time. And then one day, being with his wife at a performance in a drama theater, Vasily Semyonovich drew attention to one actress. In the course of the play, she was not in the lead role, but she had a graceful figure, a sweet face and a sonorous voice. She looked to be in her 30s. After reviewing the program of the performance, Vasily Semyonovich found that the name of the actress he liked was Adele Leonidovna Adler. Vasily Semyonovich tried to hide his interest in this actress from his wife, who was sitting next to him.

After the end of the performance, walking arm in arm with his wife and discussing the performance and the actors acting, Vasily Semyonovich said nothing good or bad about any of them, referring to the fact that he was not at all an expert on such subtleties as actors acting. Although, if you look into the past, during his school years, Vasily Semyonovich participated a little in the school productions of the drama club, which was led by their literature teacher Anna Alexandrovna. Although she did not express much praise about Vasya’s game. One way or another, the game of an actress named Adele sunk into the soul of Vasily Semyonovich. Often at work, when he was going about his usual business, her cute image surfaced in his memory; he asked himself the question: «Vasily, tell me honestly, what is happening to you? Is it love at first sight? And this is at your age.» — until he decided to find some opportunity to get acquainted with Adele Leonidovna.

Vasily Semyonovich began to browse the theater’s repertoire on the Internet (the theater had its own website on the Internet), in which Adele Leonidovna worked. I must say that in the work of General Tiskin there was one circumstance when he moved away from his family for a day. These were obligatory 24 hours duties in the Directorate. When Vasily Semyonovich got on such a duty, he warned his wife Maria Ivanovna in advance that he would be at home only the next morning. It also sometimes happened that, due to special needs, it was required to stay at work for two to three hours after the end of the working day. From time to time, Vasily Semyonovich had to travel around the country with inspection trips to the garrisons, and then he moved away from his family for several days. A few years ago, Vasily Semyonovich bought a Volkswagen car, which he used to go to work and for other needs. The authorities encouraged those officers who do not use official cars; the use of their own car was paid for by the Authority.

Vasily Semyonovich kept thinking and thinking — how and when to get acquainted with Adele Leonidovna. Vasily Semyonovich downloaded a photo of Adela Leonidovna to his smartphone from the theatre’s website. Also on the site, he learned some information about the family of Adele Leonidovna, from which he realized that she was not married.

Quite often, he secretly displayed her photo on the screen of his smartphone and admired it — his feeling and desire to see her really became stronger.

He decided to start acquaintance in some correspondence way. After work, he went to a flower shop, chose a bouquet of gladioli and paid for it. Then he asked the saleswoman how to deliver this bouquet to a certain person. The girl (her name was Lida) said that their store has a company cooperating with them — a delivery service. She immediately called, called the delivery man — in a few minutes a young man dressed in a uniform came. Vasily Semyonovich took the delivery man (his name was Nikolai) aside and in a quiet voice explained in detail to whom and when to deliver the bouquet. He said that the bouquet should be delivered to the theater, wait until the end of the performance, find Adele Leonidovna’s dressing room and hand the bouquet to her personally, but do not tell her from whom this bouquet is from. Vasily Semyonovich paid the delivery man well and wrote down his mobile phone number in order to ask him tomorrow about how the delivery went.

Indeed, tomorrow Vasily Semyonovich again went to the flower shop and called Nikolai — Nikolai spoke in detail about how delighted and surprised Adele Leonidovna was, how she tried to find out from Nikolai from whom this wonderful bouquet — but he did not tell anything — he only said that the person who sent the bouquet was a respectable and handsome middle-aged man. The story of Nikolai overflowed with a warm feeling in the soul of Vasily Semyonovich.

Although from the outside it seemed that Adele Leonidovna was quite satisfied with her life; and she herself with friends and girlfriends behaved quite cheerfully, but, somewhere in the depths of her soul, she realized that this was not so, that her life was somehow defective. Any unmarried woman always carries in her heart the dream of a friend, next to whom her life will be happy, filled with new meaning. Adele Leonidovna has not received personal bouquets from anyone for a long time. Of course, when at the end of the performance all the actors went out to bow to the audience, she sometimes got some flowers, but this was more a sign of general, rather than personal, approval of the actors’ performance. A bouquet from Vasily Semyonovich gave rise to some romantic dreams in her soul — it means that someone else might like her! When, a few days later, the deliveryman Nikolai again handed her a wonderful bouquet of flowers, Adel Leonidovna began to ask him about who was sending her such beautiful bouquets — she ordered Nikolai to tell the sender that she would like to see him and personally thank her for such flattering attention to her. Nikolai conveyed her words to Vasily Semyonovich.

Adele Leonidovna had a son, Peter, a boy of 11 years old. In the early years, when Adele Leonidovna was just starting her theatrical career, she had an affair with one of the leading actors. They lived together for about a year and a half and they had a boy, who was named Petya. After a year and a half, Adele Leonidovna’s husband was offered a place in the theater of another city with much greater material support. The husband of Adele Leonidovna, without thinking twice, gathered his simple belongings and left, without even offering her to go with him. We must still give him credit, he regularly sent money to Adele for the maintenance of his son — but he was not particularly interested in his son. The life of Adele Leonidovna was such that it was impossible for her to be a good housewife and mother, constantly paying attention to her son. Her life flowed in almost daily daytime rehearsals and evening performances, and the theater also went on tour to other cities from time to time. Therefore, all the care for her son Petechka fell on the shoulders of her mother, whose name was Esfir Abramovna. Petya called his grandmother «Baba Fira» and was more attached to her than to his mother.