Death Notes (A Phineas Fox Mystery)

by Sarah Rayne

  The theatre was not locked – the directors have employed a caretaker, a slightly raffish but apparently reliable man – and he would doubtless be wandering around somewhere. I paused in the main doorway, which is at the head of a short flight of stone steps, then went inside. Even after so many years of performing, I still feel a frisson when I enter a theatre – any theatre. I am a man of theatre, after all, no matter how fifth-rate some of those theatres have been. (Not all. I still cherish the Shepherd’s Bush Empire appearance.)

  The curious, hybrid atmosphere of The Genesius fell softly around me the minute I was inside. Most actors will tell you – with various degrees of dramatic emphasis – that all theatres have ghosts, starting with Drury Lane’s famous ‘Man in Grey’ and its capering Regency comedian Joe Grimaldi, all the way down to the humbler levels of spectral chars eternally trying to scrub out fake blood after Macbeth’s death, or phantom stagehands who obligingly pass you a stage brace, then vanish in a puff of thespian-tinged vapour.

  But The Genesius isn’t haunted. It’s still evolving as a theatre, and it hasn’t had time to acquire any ghosts. Memories do cling to its stones, but mostly they’re the memories of its former incarnation – soft echoes of prayer, of confessions whispered behind screens, of penances dutifully chanted, and of supplications tremblingly offered. Of marriages and funerals and christenings.

  I make no apology for succumbing to such an outburst; this, after all, is my private record, and none of it will find its way into my memoirs. (Although possibly that last part about memories and ghosts could be incorporated somewhere. Just in case, I have underlined both paragraphs.)

  I walked quietly down the central aisle, and sat down in one of the red velvet seats halfway along. There was some kind of rehearsal or practice going on somewhere – I could hear music from behind the stage. I listened, trying to identify it, but I was unable to pinpoint its place in the programme. In any case, it was fragmented, a series of cascading scales, then several bars played over and over again.

  It was difficult not to yield to despair at the sight of the gleaming concert grand that had already been carried on to the stage, and that was awaiting tuning to concert pitch. A fall of curtain to one side cast a shadow along the side of the piano – a shadow that almost made it look as if someone was standing in the wings. I watched the shadow for a while, because it was exactly how and where a performer would stand, waiting for the cue to make an entrance. The music had ceased, and the old building settled into its own brand of silence. There are different qualities and different depths of silence, and this was a very deep silence.

  Then the silence broke apart. From the shadows that wreathed the stage, a voice said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Where on earth have you been?’

  I gasped, and started up.

  ‘And why,’ said Feofil, appearing from the wings as casually as if he had walked into the sitting room at Tromloy, ‘are you sitting in the dark down there, as if you’re waiting for a ghost to appear?’

  ‘I’m gathering courage to face the printers,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’ He came lightly down the stairs at the side of the stage, and sat in the chair next to me.

  ‘Ah, those printers. You have not yet been to see them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I hoped to see you before you did. I have something to suggest.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Feofil said, ‘You have put your name to the event and it will be on all the programmes and posters. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. Well, you know I have. You saw the designs. “Arranged and directed by” that’s what they’ll say.’

  Feofil turned to face me. In the dim light his expression was unreadable. ‘For me,’ he said, ‘and for no other reason, will you let your real name be printed?’

  Something seemed to shiver and half form on the air – something I thought I had suppressed, something I thought had died quietly and obediently after I left St Petersburg and changed my name. I stared straight ahead, not daring to look at Feofil. Then, as if from a long distance away, as if his voice was coming down a long dark tunnel, Feofil said, ‘Will you do that for me, Maxim?’

  Light years seemed to pass, and several worlds might have been born and died before I was able to answer. At last, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper, I said, ‘You knew.’

  ‘My dear boy, I was there – in St Petersburg. Of course I knew. I have always known.’

  I said, ‘Fair enough.’ I frowned, and this time got my emotions into a semblance of order. ‘I can’t see the point of what you’re asking,’ I said. It came out more sharply than I had intended, so I said, ‘Even if there is a point, I won’t do it. I can’t. I can’t let anyone know who I am. Maxim – Roman Volf’s son – that person, that child, had to vanish all those years ago.’

  ‘Maxim …’ His voice lingered on the name, ‘Maxim, listen to me,’ said Feofil, and there was a gentleness in his tone I had never heard before. ‘It’s been a very long time. So many years. Here, now, in this place, in this newly created theatre, you can be your real self again. After such a long time you would be safe.’

  ‘I’ll never be safe. Maxim Volf had to vanish. Antoinette told me that. He could never be in the world again. I could never be Maxim again, not ever. I had to forget him. I did forget him.’

  But the words held no conviction, because of course I had never forgotten that child I had been. He had been with me all the time, a shadow self, a dark alter ego. And when Feofil called me by that name – the first time anyone had used it for almost forty years – it was as if time was dissolving all around me, and as if I could see all the way through the mists to that fragment of my life I had striven to forget. To the time when I was Maxim.

  It had been Antoinette – always Antoinette, of course – who had tried to explain it to me, in terms a four-year-old could understand.

  ‘Russia is in turmoil after the tsar’s murder,’ she had said; there had been tears in her voice and in her eyes. ‘Your father was convicted of being one of the killers, and as his son you are at a great risk.’ She did not use the word danger – dear generous, intuitive, Antoinette. She tried not to frighten me. It did not make any difference, though. I had already seen and felt the anger and the bitterness against my father – it had been like a choking, blinding cloud in the courtyard that day. Even at such a young age I understood that such bitter fury might be turned on to Roman Volf’s son.

  And so, as Antoinette’s carriage bounded and bounced across open countryside, leaving Russia behind, the plan had been created.

  ‘You have to become a different person,’ said Antoinette. ‘A different name, a different country. Maxim Volf is to vanish.’

  ‘For ever,’ I said, half to myself.

  ‘Maxim, I am so sorry. You should not have to endure any of this.’

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I help you because …’ This time the tears spilled over. ‘I do it for your father,’ she said. ‘For Roman. But also I do it for you. We are going to England, you and I.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘Yes. There is a man here whom I wish to leave behind – a man I married and should not have done. People make mistakes, you see. I have made so many,’ said Antoinette, smiling down at me. ‘But when we are in England, everything will be all right. I cannot look after you myself – I dare not – but I will make sure you are safe. And you must remember – always remember – that Maxim must be forgotten. You must never let Maxim come back. Promise me that. Promise it for Roman’s sake.’

  I had promised, and I had pretended Maxim was a separate person, that the forgotten child who had been smuggled away from a gruesome execution and taken on that frantic pelting journey across Russia to England no longer existed. I had understood he could not exist, because he was in danger from the people who had hounded his father. Maxim Volf must never appear in the world again. As Antoinette had said, Maxim must ne
ver come back.

  ‘I could never let Maxim come back,’ I said to Feofil. ‘I promised Antoinette.’

  ‘Antoinette kept you safe,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. There was a family in North London – I lived with them for a long time, but I don’t think I ever knew exactly who they were. They were kind. Generous. I tried to be part of that family, but we had little in common. I grew up—’

  ‘Homesick?’

  ‘Yes. Incomplete, even. As if I knew I was in the wrong place. So, when I was seventeen, I left,’ I said.

  ‘Your father’s influence finally drew you to the theatre.’

  ‘Yes.’ I hesitated, then said, ‘All the time I kept my promise to Antoinette. I kept Maxim out.’

  ‘I think at times you found it hard to do that.’

  ‘He was always there, you see,’ I said. ‘A secret self. I’m sorry, that sounds like a twopenny romance novel, doesn’t it? But it’s what it felt like. A dark alter ego, stalking me all through my life. I fought him, but he followed me.’

  ‘A doppelgänger,’ said Feofil, half to himself. ‘Literally translated as a “double-goer”. In some cultures, regarded even as an evil twin.’

  An evil twin. Had Maxim been that? The feeling of loss swept over me again, and Feofil, who is nothing if not intuitive, went on talking.

  ‘The concept of the doppelgänger is also sometimes known as a spirit double,’ he said, as if we were discussing an academic point. ‘I have read of it. The phenomenon is almost certainly due to hallucination, but it’s something that crops up with remarkable regularity in legend and literature. The English poet Shelley related how once he saw his own other-self, did you know that? He described it – I think it was in Prometheus Unbound. A character meets his own image walking in a garden.’

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘if one actually meets that counterpart self, that death-persona, one is said to be certainly doomed. I read about it as well. I do know,’ I said, earnestly, ‘that it’s just a legend. But I still don’t think I dare let Maxim come back.’

  ‘Because you fear you will be recognized as the son of the man hated by so many Russian people? By the Romanovs themselves? Or because you believe the legend?’

  ‘Either. Both.’

  ‘But you can let him back,’ said Feofil, his strange eyes never leaving my face. ‘The Romanovs are dead – their reign ended in 1917. Please, Maxim, do this. Let your name be seen as part of this new theatre venture.’ I did not speak, and he said, ‘If for no other reason, do it for the man who died in that St Petersburg courtyard.’

  The man who died … We stared at one another.

  ‘All right,’ I said at last. And then, with a sudden surge of spirit, ‘But if the legend is true, and I do meet some dreadful fate—’

  ‘Then,’ said Feofil, straight-faced, ‘it will be entirely my fault. But you won’t meet with any dreadful fate. The only dreadful fate you’ll meet is if you don’t find a replacement for the Irish soloist.’

  I looked at him for a long moment. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What are we going to do about that?’

  Something deep and strange – something I did not dare put a name to – flickered between us. Old memories and new ghosts whispered their way nearer.

  Then Feofil said, quietly, ‘I think we both know already what we are going to do.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Mortimer Quince’s diary

  Even though it is long after midnight, I am seated at my desk in the little upstairs room of Tromloy, trying to write down all that happened this evening. I cannot go to my bed until I have set it all down, not because I fear I shall ever forget any of it – I shall not – but because I want to trap the emotions and the memories for ever. Tonight has been a night when secrets were broken open, when legends lived, when ghosts walked, and when past and present merged.

  The Genesius Theatre glittered and coruscated tonight. Even before the concert started I was full of pride to be part of – to have helped bring about – such an evening. The newly fitted lights, polished to diamond-brilliance, shone on beautiful old stones, once despoiled, now restored. The lights glinted on the gilt-tipped paintwork and on the four theatre boxes, two on each side of the stage. The cameras and their sound machines were all in place. From my unobtrusive seat I looked at those cameras and thought: they will capture everything that happens tonight.

  The audience were clearly in a mood to be pleased, delighted to be part of this event, for wasn’t it the finest thing to see the terrible old ruin of a church brought to life, and didn’t this augur well for a splendid new era.

  The performances were polished and seamless, and everything was exactly as I and the directors had planned and hoped. If there were any backstage problems or hitches or delays, they did not show. The choirs and the lovely orchestral suite were applauded, the comedy turns were greeted with huge delighted cheers, and everyone joined in the choruses of the rousing folk music.

  At the interval the audience thronged happily into the supper bar. I went, as well, listening to the praise, hearing people saying what a marvellous evening, wasn’t it all splendid. And the main event was still to come. The soloist had still to perform.

  The soloist.

  As people resumed their seats, the small orchestra filed back into their places on the stage. The conductor made his appearance to a polite spatter of applause, and bowed to the house. He waited for the murmurs and the throat-clearings to die down, then he turned and made a gesture to the wings – a gesture that was halfway between a beckoning and a welcome. My heart began to thump and race erratically, and the silence stretched out and out. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, feeling the tension mounting.

  And then, in the flicker of an eyelid, he was there. Standing on the stage with all the arrogance for which he had once been famous, the violin held loosely, almost negligently in his hands. His disconcerting eyes swept the rows of the audience, as if assessing their worthiness to be present and, incredibly, I had the feeling that anyone found wanting would be requested to leave.

  I did not move, but he looked around the audience, and found me, of course. His head inclined in a small bow of acknowledgement towards me, and I lifted one hand to sketch a half-salute. I thought: I must take hold of this moment and keep it safe, and I must never let it go. Because never in the whole of my life, not if I live to be a hundred, will I ever experience any emotion that will match this.

  The silence lengthened. He was making them wait. Of course he was. Then, when he was satisfied that the attention had been wound up as near to snapping point as possible, he turned to the conductor, raised the gleaming violin to his chin, and positioned the bow. The conductor lifted his baton, and it began. Music flooded that beautiful theatre – Paganini’s infamous ‘Duetto Amoroso’. Disturbingly sensual, but evocative and exquisite. Afterwards would come Guiseppe Tartini’s intense and intricate ‘Violin Sonata in G minor’ – famously known as the Devil’s Trill.

  Before an enthralled and half-mesmerized audience, in a renovated former church on Ireland’s west coast, Roman Volf played the music he had last played in the Mikhailovsky Theatre at St Petersburg, almost forty years earlier.

  It was approaching midnight when at last I, and the man I was still addressing as Feofil, reached Tromloy.

  He slumped in a deep armchair in the main sitting room. His face was pale and there was a transparent look to his skin, as if it had been stretched across the bones. But his eyes burned with fervour, as if all the lamps of the world were glowing in his mind. I understood. Even from my own humble theatrical level, I understood that playing in public after so long had ignited the deep and intense flame of genius that had burned all those years ago in Russia.

  And now, at last, we faced each other with the acknowledgement – the admission – of who he really was. I had not dared speak of it during the days that had followed our conversation in The Genesius. He had not spoken of it, either, and I had been afraid to risk shattering the still-fragile understan
ding that was forming between us. I had known, as well, that once we began to talk, there would be too many questions I would ask, and that he might not have the answers to all of them – even that he might not want to give those answers. I had no idea whether I would dare to ask him about the tsar’s murder – whether he really had been implicated in it – or about Antoinette and who she was, or about who my mother might have been.

  And so I had let him leave Kilcarne each morning, and return late each afternoon, and I had known – of course I had known! – that he was painstakingly rehearsing those two iconic pieces of music with The Genesius’s orchestra, that he was doing so as Feofil Markov, because even after so long he dared not let his real identity be known. But knowing, too, that all the time he was forcing his extraordinary talent into life again.

  I cannot say, even in these private pages, how long it was since I had realized the truth. Perhaps at some unacknowledged level I had known it from that first meeting.

  We sat together in the firelit room, and neither of us spoke until, at last, he said, ‘Is there brandy in that decanter? Thank you.’ I heard that even though those lights still burned, his voice was thready, exhausted.

  I poured the brandy and one for myself, and sat down opposite him. My first question might have been anything. What I said, of course, was, ‘Why didn’t you tell me who you were at the start?’

  ‘I needed to get to know you,’ he said. ‘I needed to be sure you would not reject me. Also,’ said the man whose musical gift had mesmerized thousands, ‘I like to make the dramatic gesture. Tonight I did so.’ He drank the brandy gratefully, and a little colour came back into his face.

  ‘Why didn’t you come to England until now? Why didn’t you get in touch with me before this?’

  He took a few moments to answer, as if he was choosing the words, or as if this was something he needed to get right.

  ‘For a very long time I couldn’t risk being recognized,’ he said, at last. ‘For my sake but also for yours. The Romanovs never forgot what was done to Alexander – they never stopped hunting his killers. If they had realized I had escaped the gallows … As for travelling – the passport system at that time was complex. Even when Feofil Markov’s identity was established, I couldn’t draw official attention to myself. Feofil didn’t exist, you see. There was no record of him anywhere. It wasn’t until after 1917, when the Romanovs were all dead, and the system for travelling was made easier, that it was finally safe to come to England to find you. The tragedies and the injuries the Revolution inflicted were over. History had been made, and I believed I was safe – and that you were safe, too. But the cost had been a high one.’