Death Notes (A Phineas Fox Mystery)

by Sarah Rayne

  Or could it?

  The Garda turned up promptly at Tromloy and they were helpful and reassuring. They said to Beatrice didn’t you often get vagrants who were after a night’s comfortable kipping place, and hadn’t Tromloy been empty for so long it would likely be a magnet for all the tramps in Galway County. Bea found this terrifying, until they reminded her that there was a general arrangement with them to just drive out here every few weeks to make sure nobody had broken in. They had done that faithfully, they said, but possibly somebody had just slipped through that net.

  ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ said Bea, gratefully.

  Back inside the house with the cheerful presence of the Garda, she felt better. Remembering she had plugged in the kettle about a hundred years ago, she offered them a cup of tea. That would be altogether grand they said, and went off to check the house. That was when Bea discovered the kettle was stone cold. Had it boiled and cooled? She pressed the switch again, then tried the light switch, which did not work. When she opened the fridge it was gloomily dark, and the cooker, switched to High, remained obstinately cold, emitting no light, only a faint smell of old grease.

  Beatrice explained the problem to the Garda, trying to pretend that the prospect of spending the night in an unlit house with one intruder already to its name did not worry her in the least.

  The Garda said you couldn’t trust an electricity person from here to the end of the road, and they would phone them on Mrs Drury’s behalf first thing tomorrow, pointing out the need for immediate power in the house. In the meantime they would rig up some light so people would know the house was inhabited – they’d a hazard warning cone in the boot of one of the cars, that would be the very thing, and it would shine like a good deed in a naughty world.

  Windows and doors were next checked by torchlight, and pronounced secure, with the exception of a loose catch found on a downstairs window. That would be how the man had got in, but they would send someone tomorrow out to deal with that as well. Meantime they would arrange four saucepans and the frying pan across the sill, so that anyone trying to climb in would send them cascading to the floor in a fine old clatter, which would serve as a warning. Beatrice thought that only in Ireland would someone create a security system using saucepans. She thanked the Garda, promised she would phone them if there were any more disturbances, and watched them drive off. Then she went back to the kitchen to see what kind of meal could be put together without electricity.

  Dining by candlelight in Tromloy with Niall had been romantic and light-hearted. Doing so alone was dreary and vaguely eerie. Bea set several candles in saucers, then opened a tin of tuna for a sandwich and poured a glass of milk to go with it. At intervals she got up to try the light switches in case the Garda had managed to reach the power company this evening, and somebody had taken pity on her. No one had, of course, so Bea rinsed the plate and knife in cold water, then rather defiantly opened a bottle of wine and took it into the sitting room.

  Now that it was dark, the house was starting to feel chilly and unfriendly. Bea glared at the two impotent electric heaters, then knelt down to stack peat turfs in the hearth. At first she thought she had forgotten the trick of making a peat fire, but she persevered, because if she could manage it, it would be warm and comforting, and the glow would chase away the nightmares and the ghosts. Ghosts … If ghosts were likely to walk anywhere, they would surely do so in a darkened cottage at the end of a remote lane. Or had she encountered a ghost here already? Bea pushed the thought away. The man who had been in Abigail’s room had been real enough. The broken window catch had been real, as well.

  It was just on nine o’clock. It would have been companionable to have a workable television or radio, but at least Bea had brought several books with her. She reached for one now – a pleasantly light Agatha Christie. There were worse ways of passing an evening than with a glass of wine – maybe two or three glasses of wine – and a book. Tomorrow the electricity would be on and everything would be normal.

  The glow from the candles fell invitingly across the big wing chair by the hearth, and the peat fire was burning up so well it was almost too hot. Bea set down her book, and carrying one of the candles, went up to Abi’s room to fetch the old fire screen. It was another of Tromloy’s fixtures – it had been in the house ever since Beatrice could remember, and Abi had liked having it in her bedroom. Bea had always meant to trace the screen’s origins, but had never got round to it. Perhaps that could be a project while she was here.

  She propped the screen across the fire to dilute some of the heat, and returned to Dame Agatha’s gentle complexity of suspects. But the screen drew her eye. It was about two feet in height and roughly three feet wide – a hinged structure, with the fold at the centre. Whoever had made it had used a miscellany of photographs and newspaper cuttings, and even what looked like one or two old theatre posters or programmes, all carefully positioned, and glazed. The varnish was yellow with age and in places it had cracked, but most of the scraps were still visible. Abi had liked to lie in bed and look across at the screen. She had made up stories about the photographs and the old newspaper articles.

  Most of the females in the photographs had slumberous eyes and faint, enigmatic smiles. It could be immensely sexy, of course, that particular look, even though it probably just meant the subjects had been concentrating on remaining absolutely still for the old-style flash cameras, rather than from any come-to-bed inclination. The men had sleek oiled hair and gentlemanly clothes. They would stand up if a lady came into the room, and hold doors open. Bea had never known who any of the photographed people were, although they all had beautiful complexions and good cheekbones. The man who had been here earlier had had those cheekbones, as well. Or had that simply been the scar tissue distorting his features?

  How damaging would it be to chip away the varnish from the screen or steam the photos off to see if anything was written on the back? Probably it would end in ruining the whole thing and destroying any value it might have. Bea would never want to sell it, because it was part of Tromloy and Tromloy’s good memories, but that did not mean it would be acceptable to bash it about and spoil it. And, like Abigail, Bea found it intriguing to wonder about the people and the stories behind the photos and the newspaper scraps. What, for instance, had governed the choice of cuttings about somebody’s celebration birthday supper, or the inclusion of a half-page of a ragged-edged music score, or a programme from some long-ago musical event in Galway? There were several almost-indecipherable names of people who had apparently performed at that. Bea could make out two or three of the names, but she did not recognize any of them.

  Except for one on the very edge of the fragment.

  Maxim Volf.

  She got up from the chair, and tilted the candle to see the fragment better, but there was nothing more to see. Just that name.

  There was, of course, a perfectly simple explanation, although it took her some time to work it out. But in the end she had it. The man who had apparently tried to rescue Abigail that day had not wanted to reveal his real identity or his presence in Kilcarne, so he had borrowed a name seen by chance in an old graveyard. A name that happened to belong to a man who had had some involvement in a long-ago concert in Galway.

  Bea was very glad indeed to have thought of this satisfactory solution. As for the man’s motives that day, they could be any one of half a dozen. He could have been a glamorous spy or an enterprising burglar on his way to overseeing an international jewel robbery. At the other end of the scale he could be an illegal immigrant or someone engaged in a clandestine love affair.

  Could tonight’s intruder really have been the same man? It was stretching coincidence, and it was also possible that Bea was getting carried away with the concept of Maxim Volf still being in the area – even that she was dreaming up links where links did not exist. The odds were that Maxim Volf had gone back to his home, wherever that was, and tried to put the tragedy from his mind.

  But there had see
med to be links, for all that. The intruder had appeared to know Tromloy – he had talked about finding it gentle and friendly. So how many times had he been in here? Also, Tromloy was not a house you came upon by chance – you had to look for it. Had the man looked for it? Bea forced herself to examine this possibility in more detail. If it really had been Maxim, was it conceivable that, having failed to save Abigail, he had deliberately searched for her home, and had taken to coming here? But why? As a pilgrimage? As some sort of healing ritual? As a penance, even? The Irish were much given to pilgrimages and penances, although the man had not sounded Irish.

  … sustained injuries in the attempt … Face and hands badly burned … He was still being treated at University Hospital, Galway at the time of the inquest …

  The biggest coincidence of all – the fact that Bea could not stop remembering – was that even in that split-second glimpse, the scars on the intruder’s face and hand had looked like the result of burns.

  Morna and Nuala Cullen agreed it was unfortunate that they had talked about Tromloy over supper. They had been so careful, always, never to mention the place in front of Jessica.

  But it was difficult to find things to talk about at supper-time, with Tormod banning so many subjects. They could not discuss current events, or television programmes containing anything questionable – although, as Morna said, that seemed to rule out practically all the programmes currently on TV. If they did ever stray into dubious conversational waters, Tormod always became agitated; sometimes he silenced them by reading a passage from his Bible aloud. He was particularly partial to the Old Testament, which often seemed to Morna and Nuala a touch dubious on its own account, what with all the begetting that had gone on and the behaviour of jezebels and harlots, not to mention the cavortings in towns which the Lord saw fit to engulf in flames by way of punishment.

  Talking about Mrs Drury’s return this evening ought not to have been dangerous – they had simply been sharing a piece of local news. Even so, it had been a severe error of judgement to mention it while Nuala was serving the braised brisket, which Tormod liked but nobody else did, and Morna was spooning out cauliflower cheese which none of them liked at all, but which had to be eaten occasionally on account of Mr O’Brien from the pub in the village giving them cauliflowers from his garden.

  The minute Tromloy was mentioned, Morna and Nuala had both seen the sudden bewilderment in Jessica’s eyes, the poor child. Tormod had seen it as well, and anger had shown in his face, so they had started straightaway to talk about trivialities, because it was important not to provoke one of Tormod’s attacks of rage in case it led to a second stroke.

  After the aunts talked about Tromloy, Jessica found the mind-pictures started to come more frequently, and far more vividly. They only ever lasted for a few seconds, but they left a clear print on her vision, like when you looked straight into the sun by mistake and got a dazzling blob of yellow in front of your eyes for ages afterwards.

  The hard, insistent hands were there, of course. Sometimes Jessica dreamed about them and woke up shivering and feeling sick.

  But now the mind-pictures were filling in all kinds of details. There was a firelit room, with a deep hearth. There was a rocking chair in the room as well, and once somebody had curled up in that rocking chair, and felt safe and happy.

  If Jessica managed to keep this image in her mind before it dissolved, she could see an old photograph on the wall – a man in old-fashioned clothes, standing on the stage of an old theatre. It was astonishing how clear the details of that photograph were.

  And then something else started to trickle into the pictures. The sound of someone whispering – someone standing very close. Was it the owner of the hands who was whispering? It was a horrid voice, and in a low voice, it said, ‘You must never tell about any of this. Never.’

  And then came the really terrible part. The voice said, ‘Because if you were to tell, people would think you were making up stories … They might say you were mad, Jessica … They might even shut you away …’

  FIVE

  Mortimer Quince’s diary

  Feofil Markov has come to London!

  My bookseller friend had the news this week through one of his numerous exiled acquaintances. A vast number of these exiles seem to be sprinkled across the city (and, I am sure across many cities), but I suppose if a country endures a Revolution, a great many of its people will become displaced. Even after almost three years, the enormity of the Russian Rebellion of 1917 is still reverberating, and one of those reverberations seems to be Feofil Markov’s arrival here.

  My friend came hotfoot to tell me in company with a bottle of vodka. It would have been churlish not to accept a glass or two and to sit in my rooms with him, drinking it. He says Feofil reached London earlier this year, and added, enigmatically, that it’s perhaps better not to question why it was necessary for Feofil to leave Russia in the first place.

  ‘But we should remember how the Romanovs were spectacularly and violently toppled,’ he said, refilling our glasses.

  ‘But Feofil couldn’t have been involved in the Revolution, surely? He was in St Petersburg in the 1880s – he can’t be a very young man these days.’

  To this, my friend said Feofil had walked perilous paths in his time, and it would not matter if he was twenty-five or eighty-five or even a hundred and five; he was still likely to be at the heart of any rebellion that was around, and in fact he would probably shout revolutionary slogans on his way to the scaffold, and argue with the executioner when he got there.

  For all I care, Feofil can have helped overthrow all the royal houses of Europe one by one, and preached sedition and anarchy in every city of the world. All I am interested in is his memories of my father.

  I did not say that to my bookseller friend, of course. I am letting it be thought that I am interested in meeting Feofil purely because I am curious about his memories of Russian theatre and Russian music in the eighties. I shall have to be honest with Feofil, though, because the whole point of meeting him is to talk about Roman, so I shall have to trust him with the truth of who I am.

  How likely is it that he will refer to Maxim? I cannot think of any reason why he should, but Maxim’s existence was certainly known in St Petersburg in 1881. I believe there was some speculation – journalists were always avid snappers-up of unconsidered trifles of that kind. But if Feofil does talk about Maxim, I shall feign ignorance.

  I am not in the least nervous about meeting him. Not the very least bit.

  Today I received a booking for two six-minute appearances at an East End theatre. The theatre is small and attached to a slightly sleazy public house, but I shall not let that trouble me, since they will pay me in honest coinage. This means I can assume an air of careless affluence and offer drinks and even supper when I meet Feofil Markov. Also, I will be able to pay my reckoning at the lodgings for another week at least.

  I have decided to give the East End audiences ‘Little Grey Home in the West’, and ‘On the Road to Mandalay’. For the second spot, I will sing ‘Roses of Picardy’. Even though it’s over a year since Armistice, war songs are still in vogue, so the audience can join in the chorus and there will be a splendid atmosphere of bonhomie.

  The dream came again last night – probably because I am anticipating the meeting with Feofil, and it’s scraping the memories from my deepest mind.

  This time the dream went much further than ever before. For the first time I could see that I, and the people surrounding me, were standing in what my grown-up self recognizes as a courtyard. That small child-self had not known the word courtyard though, and in the dream I was only aware of being on hard stone flags with high walls on three sides all around us. The sky was the colour of lead, as if the stones of the building had seeped into it, and that hard, cold sky seemed to press down on the courtyard like a monstrous slab of granite.

  There were rows of windows set into the stone walls – they were narrow and high up, but most of them had bars, a
nd there was the impression of cramped darkness behind each one. Pallid faces peered down from some of those windows.

  At each end of the courtyard were wide stone archways, and beyond one of them was an outline I knew – that of a rearing golden spire towering into the sky. I know now that it’s an old and famous landmark, and even in the dream it was unmistakable. It was the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, glittering with unearthly beauty and light against the sky. I recognized the angel-tipped spire of the bell tower – the tower that has, at its base, the imperial tombs with the remains of so many of Russia’s tsars. But beyond all of that I recognized it for the cathedral that stands inside the grim Peter and Paul Fortress itself.

  I suppose I had always known that the nightmare was set in St Petersburg. But last night I understood that it took place actually inside the prison where my father was executed.

  The crowds pressed in on all sides, shouting and making threatening gestures, and it was as if a giant beating heart lay at the core of that courtyard, and as if everyone could hear it and was waiting for it to falter, to slow down, then finally stop.

  The people were pushing forward, avid to get as close as they could to what was going to happen, and I was pulled along with them. Then a door set deep into the old stone walls was unlocked and the shouts mounted to a roar. There were jeers, cries of Roman’s name, the people calling it out as if it were an insult.

  ‘Hanging’s too good for him,’ shouted one man close to me, and several people cried out their agreement.

  ‘Oh, my friends, they’re doing more than just hanging him,’ said another voice, and there was such gloating in that voice that I wanted to fly at the man and beat him with my fists.

  It was at that point that I woke up, coming up into my familiar shabby bedroom in the North London lodging house. I was shaking as violently as if I had palsy, and I was hot and cold both at the same time. The anger of the crowd was still echoing inside my head.