Death Notes (A Phineas Fox Mystery)

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘You said injuries …’

  It was not quite a question, but he said, ‘There was so much fighting – rioting – I was recording it all for several newspapers, and it was impossible to avoid some of the violence.’ That gesture came again, not quite touching his eyes. ‘Much later – when I had recovered – when it was known my sight was safe – I came to realize it was increasingly unlikely that I would be recognized. There were photographs of me, of course, from concerts and performances, but photographs were not as widely circulated then as they’ve since become. As Feofil, no photos were ever taken. And even if anyone had seen a resemblance between the two and wondered, Roman was not known to have had a disfigurement.’ That brief gesture to his eyes again. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘everyone believed Roman to be dead.’ He smiled, then said suddenly, ‘Did you recognise me?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure when I did so. Or if it was even visual recognition. I had only really seen you once, remember.’

  ‘At the Mikhailovsky Theatre when you were four.’

  ‘Yes.’ Before he could say anything else, I said, ‘How did you get out of the burning cage?

  He smiled. ‘I was never in it.’

  ‘But Antoinette’s letter – the letter you gave me. You said …’ I hesitated, then said, ‘You told me Roman gave it to you in the condemned cell. Before he died.’

  ‘I was in the condemned cell for a time,’ said my father. ‘And Roman did die that day in St Petersburg. Feofil Markov took his place. Just as Maxim died for you on that day. I hoped that one day I should be able to give you that letter. That one day it would be safe to have the truth between us.’

  ‘And that wild march along the Catherine Canal? Did that happen?’

  ‘It did,’ he said. ‘But when I wrote those articles about it, I exaggerated it. It made better reading. Also, I wanted to impress a lady,’ he said.

  ‘Antoinette?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wondered—’ I stopped, then said with determination, ‘I wondered once or twice if Antoinette might be my mother.’

  ‘No, she was not.’

  ‘I didn’t really think she was,’ I said. ‘It was just an occasional, romantic daydream I sometimes had.’

  ‘Your mother was a very dear and charming lady who died when you were born. I do not forget her, though.’

  Then he put out a hand and took mine. In a voice I had never heard him use, a voice that thrummed with emotion, he said, ‘Oh, Maxim, I’m so glad I found you.’

  He smiled at me, then he leaned back and closed his eyes. The glass slipped from his hands, and shattered on the hearth.

  At first I did not realize. I thought that the exhaustion and the emotion of the evening had taken over. But then – it’s difficult to describe this – suddenly I did know. Perhaps an instinct comes into force – perhaps there’s something deep in the mind that recognizes the difference between a living body that is only asleep, and one that has fallen into the final sleep of all.

  The shattered glass lay in splinters on the floor, and my heart felt as if it, too, had smashed and was lying in splinters … That is a melodramatic, even pretentious sentence, but I shall let it stand. I don’t care how melodramatic or pretentious – or even hysterical – it looks. Because Roman Volf was dead. I had found him – or had he found me? – only to lose him so soon afterwards.

  I knew there was no point in calling for help. This time, my father had gone, irrevocably and for always. I sat in the chair, looking at him. He was perfectly tranquil, and I was deeply grateful for that. His life had been turbulent – I did not know the extent of that turbulence, and probably I never would know it – but when it came to the end, he had made his exit as swiftly and smoothly as if he had simply stepped out of the lights.

  But he had left behind a wealth of unanswered questions. This, of course, was typical of him. As I write this, with dawn creeping across the skies of Kilcarne and the candles guttered in their holders, I still have no idea what happened that day in St Petersburg. If he really was inside that fortress – inside the condemned cell – I have no idea how he got out, and became the journalist, Feofil Markov. And I still have no idea who Antoinette was.

  There are traditions attached to death, and there is certainly a tradition – somewhat Victorian in flavour – attached to the reading of a will. The grieving and greedy relatives grouped around a table, the desiccated figure of the solicitor, pince-nez in place, mumbling legal phrases in which no one has any interest because everyone wants to know how much money there is, and who inherits it.

  The reality, for me, was that I walked along to the small, pleasantly untidy, office of Kilcarne’s only solicitor, was given a cup of morning coffee, and told that there were two simple provisions of my father’s will.

  ‘There is a bequest to The Genesius Theatre,’ said the solicitors. ‘With a request, not a stipulation, that you continue to act in a management capacity.’

  ‘I hope that can be possible,’ I said.

  ‘The other bequest,’ said the solicitor, ‘is to you.’

  ‘Tromloy?’ I said, hardly daring to hope.

  ‘Yes. Mr Markov has left it to you for your lifetime – a new lease will be created. If you wish to buy the place outright, the monetary bequest he has also left you will be sufficient for you to do so. If you do not wish that, after your death the house is to be sold and the proceeds are to go to The Genesius Theatre.’

  The strange thing is that there is no sense of emptiness in Tromloy. It is, as it always has been, a place of welcome. Today I walked round the rooms, and I thought: I can live here on my own. I can continue the work at The Genesius – I think they will agree to that – and I can create my memoirs. I have all the notes I have made over the years, and I even have my box of old posters and programmes and photographs. There is a small package of papers that were Roman’s, as well. I have not looked at those yet. They might contain everything about him – the answers to all the mysteries surrounding his life – or they might contain nothing at all. Either way, I think it will be a long time before I can face knowing.

  I do not think I shall buy Tromloy. When you have had so very little for most of your life – when there have been times when you have not known whether you will be able to eat tomorrow, or whether you can afford the rent of your room for another week – well, you value money in the bank very much. So I shall leave that money in the bank, and I shall ensure that after I die the house will be sold, and, as my father wished, the proceeds will go to The Genesius.

  I shall live and work here, and one day – please God a very long way ahead – I shall die here, and I shall ensure that I am buried in the old, peaceful cemetery with the friendly trees. And I shall also ensure beforehand that my grave bears my real name – the name Roman wanted me to finally acknowledge.

  I will acknowledge it. I will be buried as Maxim Volf.

  NINETEEN

  Jessica had not been able to eat any supper when she got home from visiting Bea Drury. All through the meal she kept her eyes on her plate, not daring to look at Donal, not wanting to look into the eyes of the creature who had done that to her – that painful, ugly, intimate thing – and who had collapsed sobbing on the floor afterwards. And then had made those threats.

  Never tell, Jessica … Because all kinds of unpleasant things can happen to foolish girls who talk too much …

  What of the tramp? Donal had run after him with that vicious fury in his face. Had Donal caught him – had he pushed him into the oncoming car, or into the burst of flame? But, when Jessica tried to pin down that part of the memory, all she could see was the sheet of roaring flame and the outline of someone – the tramp? Donal himself? – silhouetted in front of it. Grania O’Brien had said it was thought the tramp had returned – that he was living at the Sexton’s House, his face scarred by burns. Was it the same man? If so, might Donal go after him again?

  Several times during supper, Donal brought Jessica into the conversation – tea
sing her gently for being such a quiet little mouse, asking was anything wrong, and wanting to know about her sketching and painting. Each time he did this Jess managed to mumble a reply.

  ‘Oona Dunleary at the shop was saying she saw you out sketching yesterday, Jess,’ said Morna. ‘She said it looked as if you were walking out to – to Mrs Drury’s house.’ Jess felt her heart skip a beat and she saw Donal look up sharply.

  ‘That’s rather a lonely part of Kilcarne,’ said Donal. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much out there to sketch.’

  Tormod, who had been eating his supper in a mumbly kind of way, said that was the part of Kilcarne where the old manor house had once stood.

  ‘Kilcarne Mainéar,’ he said. ‘A godless family it was who lived there. Worshippers of Mammon, such greed. It was fitting that the line should die and the place fall into ruin.’

  The aunts exchanged glances, because if Tormod got started about Mammon and the sinful cities of the plain, there would be no stopping him.

  But Donal intervened, asking Jess where she had been going. Jess found herself looking up at him without wanting to, almost as if a string in her mind had been pulled.

  She said, vaguely, ‘I was just exploring different bits of Kilcarne for a sketch.’ Donal continued to look at her, and Jess began to feel a bit panicky, because it was there again, that look, cold and cruel, just as it had been that long-ago day in Tromloy. He knows, she thought. He knows I went out to Tromloy yesterday, and he thinks I might have remembered what happened two years ago.

  But Donal did not say any more, and somehow Jess got through the rest of the meal and the hours that followed. There was a television programme, and a crossword Aunt Nuala was trying to complete, then it was just about late enough for Jessica to go to bed without causing comment. She put a chair across her bedroom door, but although no one disturbed her, she did not sleep very much. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Donal in the firelit room at Tromloy, and she felt his greedy clutching hands and the hard insistent thrusting of his body.

  Next morning, Donal insisted on cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast, making the aunts sit down so he could wait on them, and telling them he was famous for his scrambled eggs in the parish – he always prepared a large panful when they had one of their breakfast prayer meetings. His parishioners said no one could cook scrambled eggs like Father Donal Cullen.

  ‘And this morning,’ he said, having spooned the eggs on to everyone’s plates, ‘straight after breakfast Jessica and I are going into Galway City. Remember, Jess, we said we’d do that today? I’ve been looking forward to it.’ His eyes – the cruel hard eyes of the real Donal – flickered over her. ‘We’ll go to the cathedral, and we might have some lunch. You wouldn’t mind if we didn’t get back until later, would you?’ he said to the aunts.

  The aunts would not mind in the least. They were delighted to think of their beloved Donal taking Jessica out for the day.

  ‘We won’t look for you until late afternoon,’ said Aunt Nuala.

  Jess was appalled. She went up to her room and sat on the bed, and tried to think how she could get out of going to Galway. Even if she could slip out of the house unnoticed, she had no idea where she would go. The thought of Bea Drury and Tromloy flickered on her mind, but she hardly knew Bea, and she could not turn up on the doorstep and ask to be hidden because she thought her cousin was going to do something dreadful to her. Bea would think she was mad.

  No one will be surprised if you turn out a bit mad, Donal had said. Like mother, like daughter …

  Aunt Morna rapped cheerfully on the bedroom door and called out that Donal was ready, and not to keep him waiting. And since there did not seem to be anything else to do, Jessica put on a coat and scarf and went out to the car.

  As she got in, Donal said, ‘You’ve remembered, haven’t you?’

  ‘Remembered what?’

  ‘Don’t pretend. You were silent as the grave last night, but every time you looked at me … And then the aunts said the Dunleary female had seen you going out to Tromloy. What were you doing there?’

  He had started the car’s engine, but he did not put it into gear. Jess did not dare tell him about meeting Bea Drury, so she said, ‘Somebody mentioned the place, and I was curious.’

  ‘And you saw it, and it woke the memory,’ said Donal. ‘That house. That bloody house and all its secrets. Did you go in there? Because that woman – Beatrice Drury – is back, isn’t she?’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  ‘You such a liar, Jessica. I can see you’ve remembered. But do you also remember that you promised never to tell anyone what we did that day. Did you keep that promise?’

  The cold anger was strongly in his voice, and Jess shivered. ‘I haven’t told anyone anything,’ she said.

  ‘Haven’t you? Perhaps I’d better make sure you don’t,’ said Donal, in a dreadful gentle voice. ‘Perhaps I’d better remind you of the things that can happen to silly little girls who talk about things best left secret. Oh, Jessica, you really shouldn’t have gone to Tromloy.’

  Jess turned her head away and pretended to be looking out of the car window. ‘I told you, someone mentioned it,’ she said. ‘I was interested. That’s all.’

  ‘You recognized it, didn’t you?’ He snatched her hand and his fingers closed tightly around it, dragging at the scarred flesh. Jessica cried out with the pain. ‘Tell me the truth,’ said Donal, and his fingernails dug into the vulnerable scars even deeper. Tiny pinpoints of blood stood out.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did remember,’ said Jess on a sob. ‘I went inside Tromloy and Beatrice Drury was there and she was very nice to me, and I remembered what you did to me.’ Donal’s hand relaxed its hold, and Jess was so grateful for this, she said, ‘But I don’t know everything. I still don’t understand—’

  ‘What?’ He sounded distant, as if he was working something out.

  ‘I don’t understand what stopped me remembering it,’ said Jess, almost to herself. ‘It was two years ago. What you did – and then the car crash—’ She broke off, and turned to look at him. ‘Why did I forget those two things so – so completely?’ She stared at him, and as he did not speak, she said in a whisper, ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something I still don’t know – something I still need to remember. It’s about my hands – it’s about what happened to my hands.’

  Donal reached for her hands, gently this time, turning them over, as if examining the scars. Jessica pulled her hands away from him abruptly. ‘Did you do that to my hands?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you really know?’

  ‘No.’

  Donal put the car into gear and drove away from the house. The aunts were at the window, waving and smiling, and he put up his hand to wave back. As he turned on to the road, he said, very softly, ‘You talked to Beatrice Drury, didn’t you? You told her.’

  ‘No … Donal, I didn’t tell anyone!’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He drove through Kilcarne’s little main street, beyond O’Brien’s and Dunleary’s shop and on to the wider road beyond that led to the main Galway road. But Donal was indicating a turn right, and alarm signals started to beat against Jess’s mind all over again.

  ‘Where are we going? Donal – we don’t turn off here—’

  ‘Oh, but we do,’ said Donal. ‘We aren’t going to Galway, Jess. We never were. We’re going to Tromloy.’

  Phin had intended to set off at ten o’clock for the Sexton’s House. He was, however, slightly delayed by a new voicemail message from the rugby-playing neighbour, who appeared to have phoned him around one a.m. to the background of a rousing chorus of ‘My God, How the Money Rolls In’. Phin was deeply relieved he had remembered to switch off his phone when he went to bed.

  He listened to the sound of the neighbour shouting exasperatedly to the singers to ‘bloody shut up, I’m trying to make a phone call’, then the neighbour’s voice came back on with a robust account of how the redecora
tion to Phin’s flat was getting on.

  ‘They’re making a really good job of it, and the paint matches up so well you’d never know the difference. Well, not much, anyway. Hardly at all. And it’s as well the carpet people couldn’t supply the new carpet until Thursday, because of the painter falling off his ladder. He wasn’t hurt, but it was a bit unfortunate that he tipped over the tub of paint in the process, well, it was more than a bit unfortunate, because then he had to walk across the floor to get his phone to call for help, which meant a trail of painty footprints all along your hall. But there’s no need to worry, because I’ve told the carpet people to bring an extra section to replace it. All on the insurance, dear boy. We’ll have a couple of drinks together when you get back; in fact the chaps thought we’d better have another party since the last one got a bit spoiled by the beer disaster. But we’ll wait until you’re back for that, so we can cheer you up. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.’

  Phin did not know whether to laugh or throw the phone across the room. In the end, he sent a fairly temperate message back, saying the planned party should on no account be delayed until after his, Phin’s, return; that he was snowed under with work and would probably be too busy to attend any parties of any kind for several months, and that in any case he might be in Ireland for a while yet. They should, he said firmly, go ahead and hold the party without him. He then sent an email to the estate agents who managed the flat, asking if they might have on their books any other, similar properties, but with good solid walls, and – if at all possible – restrictive clauses in the lease regarding music, parties, home-made beer, and the loud performing of bawdy songs at unsociable hours.