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girl, Lilya Ivanovna Semenova, protested, “I don’t want it. I don’t want his money. You keep it.” There was fear as well as disgust in her expression.
    “It doesn’t belong to us,” explained Porfiry.
    “But I don’t want it. I never wanted it.”
    “Very well, Lilya Ivanovna. We can’t force you to take it. Officer, you may release the prisoner.”
    The polizyeisky unlocked the handcuffs. Lilya Ivanovna’s face was lit up by amazement. Then she frowned at Porfiry, as though he were a puzzle she couldn’t solve, before turning to plunge herself into the loose crowd milling through the bureau. In her wake, she left a scent in the air.
    “What do you want me to do with this?” asked Alexander Grigorevich, holding the banknote distastefully between the tips of his thumb and forefinger.
    “Give it to the orphans,” said Porfiry, without looking at him.

The Investigator’s Eyelashes
     
    L ILYA SHIVERED AGAIN as she came out into a freezing fog.
    Restless splinters of ice penetrated her clothes and skin. Her feet were wet and numb with the cold. For a moment she had not the faintest idea where she was or how she came to be there. All she could remember was leaving Fräulein Keller’s basement. And everything that had happened since seemed to have happened in a dream.
    She ought to go back for her galoshes.
    She walked without any sense of where she was going. She heard the lampposts singing, shaken by a wind that went straight through her, despite her shawl. Then she heard the jangle of a passing sleigh and the muted clip of hooves. The horses were almost on her before she saw them. The driver’s green caftan passed in a blur, his words—whether for her or for his team—stifled by the damp air.
    It was the man’s eyes that had amazed her, Porfiry Petrovich’s eyes. Or more specifically his eyelashes, blond to the point of transparency. Once she had noticed them, she could not look away. He blinked a lot, and there seemed to be some point to his blinking. Expectancy, or cunning, but a peculiarly feminine cunning, somehow also benign. She’d found it hard to understand what he was saying, so fascinated was she by his lashes and the effect they had on his face. And of course, she was tired.
    She blinked herself, as though by imitating him she would come to understand him. Was it really true that he had let her go? And had he really meant to have them return the money to her?
    Perhaps it was all a trick. If so, it was just as well she had refused the money. Ah, but to go home with nothing, after a whole night! She couldn’t go home, not yet. She ought to go back to Fräulein Keller’s to get what was owed her.
    Zoya had come to see her. That was what she had been told. “Zoya is here for you,” Fräulein Keller had said. “She wants to talk to you about your little one.” But it made no sense. If Zoya had come to Fräulein Keller’s, who was looking after Vera? And when she had gone out into the cold night, there was no sign of Zoya. Just him.
    Lilya shivered and let the spasm take hold. She gave in to her weakness for only an instant, holding one blink of her eyelids longer than the others, and in that instant she was back home, cuddling her sweet-souled, beautiful daughter, kissing her cheeks, stroking her hair, whispering promises, never, never again will I leave you, this will last forever, this laughing, crying, clinging moment.
    The fog was beginning to clear. Perhaps she had held the blink for longer than she intended. But she was relieved to find herself still standing.
    Lilya pulled her shawl tight about her. She had come out into Sadovaya Street. To her right, dim shapes formed into the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary across the Haymarket, above the canvas-covered stalls. She felt comforted by the appearance of the church. A bustling crowd filled the cobbled square between. But in the same way that she was able to see more, so too was she more visible. Faces turned toward her,