‘I have come to a cross-roads in my life.’
They were the opening words. Perhaps of all those in the audience the prince was the only one who fully understood their meaning. The ensuing references to a change of circumstances and the need to make personal choices were later held against the speaker himself as evidence of Giles’s complicity in what happened. Later the prince was perhaps the only one to know the truth. He could never deny the speaker’s sincerity, yet he could never have anticipated the immediate reaction to the confession that followed.
‘For me personally,’ were the speaker’s concluding words delivered solemnly but shakily, his eyes blinking in the candlelight, ‘the coming of a new age must involve a literal change of heart and way of life. I intend to follow the example of Count Leo Tolstoy. I have tried for several years to spread abroad his ideas, as this and other soirees can testify. Now the time has come to follow his ideas more strictly. My friends, it is my intention to give up this way of life, to leave Stadleigh Court…’
A cry came from Lady Isobel.
‘…yes, to leave Stadleigh Court, to retreat to the commune in Irmingham on the other side of the “sylvan Wye” and to lead there a strictly Tolstoyan way of life, to follow a vegetarian regime, make my own clothes and shoes, live frugally enjoying the fruits of the earth and my dear daughter’s company, being a more decent human being. That, then, is the personal message I wish to leave with you tonight. God bless you all, God bless…’
‘Giles! Giles! You mustn’t!’
Lady Isobel screamed out these words. She had stood up. In startled amazement everyone saw how she was apparently being restrained or comforted by the bespectacled figure of Carew Kingston, who had an arm round her shoulders. He seemed to be trying to persuade her to sit down.
‘No, Giles, no!’ she screamed. ‘You said you wouldn’t! You promised me!’ She burst into loud sobs.
At that very moment Lady Helen jumped up and rushed to her father. Flinging her arms round him, she kissed him vigorously on both cheeks and remained clutching him for longer than strictly necessary. Long enough, at least, for the prince to acknowledge to himself that this was an emotional climax to her own private yearnings and evidently a victory over her stepmother.
Both Giles Irmingham and Lady Helen quickly left the Gothic hall. A hysterical Lady Isobel was also led away. There was no one left to say goodbye. In a subdued mood filled with a sense of letdown very like the prince’s, guests began urgently seeking out coats, capes and umbrellas offered by footmen. They were lined up by the open front door through which could be seen glistening carriage lamps and rain falling steeply in a dusky forecourt.
14
The rain was loud. The prince opened the bedroom window and in came the solid, leaden, echoing sound of rain falling vertically on sodden grass and foliage. The whole darkness seemed saturated by it. The noise gave him the momentary shivers. Like an invisible, disapproving audience, it hissed at him. He felt he had behaved shamefully in some way. Perhaps the outer darkness held him responsible for the failure of the soiree or reproved him for not believing Anna Karenina, not taking her seriously, not properly accepting her claim to be threatened by “enemies”. He closed the window abruptly.
The atmosphere had certainly been subdued immediately after the soiree. Even Cotton had been affected. He had served supper in the bedroom in almost total silence, only broken by some dour and uncharacteristic predictions about the likely state of the trains the next day. It had been agreed, in any case, that they would catch the train due shortly before midday if possible. On that note Cotton had left.
The prince retired to bed once he had closed the window. The bedside candle extinguished, he could only extinguish the guilty feelings associated with the persistent, if muffled, sound of the downpour by thinking about London, Portland Place and news of his wife, Princess Alisa. Stadleigh Court, though, could not be blotted out. When sleep came it was fitful, filled with annoying, easily forgotten dreams. By first light he was fully awake.
This time he opened the window to hear nothing but the sound of a modest dawn chorus. Although he would miss such a delightful country sound once he was back in London, he was reminded by a slight headache that he had slept badly and felt a sudden renewal of the frisson experienced at the end of the soiree. Why he should have been reminded of this puzzled him. To steady himself and clear his mind, he felt he needed fresh air, although the view through the open window showed scarcely more than very faint sunlight gifting the early-morning mist with a sheen of gold and in the process illuminating in the immediate foreground only the gravel walk of the terrace and the stone balustrade.
The air was indeed fresh, though. It contained what felt like an invitation to warmth in anticipation of a hot, sunny day. ‘Ideal for a stroll’ was the thought uppermost in his mind as he studied the scene briefly. So he washed in cold water, unshaven though he was, dressed himself carefully in the newly laundered linen whites, picked up his Panama hat and cautiously opened the bedroom door. The house had about it the sort of quiet that descends on places once the party is over. It can give the first person to arise a rather grand feeling of being alone in the universe. Acknowledging the grandeur of such solitariness, he placed one foot, then the next, on the wide staircase, unable to prevent each downward pressure from erupting into a series of rippling creaks, and slowly, surreptitiously, one step at a time, descended to the hallway. His worst fear was that he would attract the attention of some inquisitive servant in the hallway or be visible to someone working in the large Gothic hall. He did not meet anyone. What is more he found the front door, though locked and bolted from the inside, could easily be opened without making too much noise. In a moment he found himself outside.
The sun had already begun to break through the mist. Glistening and chill, the morning showed evidence everywhere of heavy rain. Large pools had formed on the forecourt. The roses in the rose garden had a pathetically weighted look. Heavy raindrops still fell from the trees. He strolled the way he had gone with Lady Isobel, through the wrought-iron gates into the rose garden and then along the broad gravel walk between the balustrade and the side of the house. He had only a weird, almost underwater view of the lower terraces of the garden in which long shadows stretched like fronds from the yew hedges, while visible through the mist as through a film was a brightly sunlit silhouette of distant hills on the far side of the Wye. Parts of Stadleigh Court, the roof, the battlements and towers, were beginning to glow a mild shade of gold where they were picked out by the first rays of the sunrise.
He looked up. There was his open window catching the first gleams. His eyes followed an easterly direction towards the elevation adjacent to the huge tower where another window was open. This he recognised as the window to Anna Karenina’s bathroom which she had herself opened when she showed him her ‘secret place’. He recalled particularly that this had been the first time she mentioned her “enemies”. It made him aware suddenly of the little echoes caused by his footsteps in the gravel. He instantly chose to make less noise by going along the soft damp grass at the edge of the walk. Here the pressure of his shoes only gave rise to a slight squelching.
He then caught sight of it. Lying directly ahead of him and directly below the open window, it looked at first glance like a dead bird, a large raven perhaps. Of course, it couldn’t be that. The earlier frisson returned. A rat of terror ran along the crown of his head and down his spine. He knew it couldn’t be a bird. It was much bulkier. It was human, humanly proportioned, humanly curled.
He had the very odd feeling that a trick was being played on him. Assuming it might be one of the guests behaving in a deliberately eccentric way, he expected the shape any moment to uncoil and spring up like a jack-in-a-box. He cannot say why he felt this. He paused, then took one further step. He looked. Bent over, leaning as far forward as he could, he peered.
Up to midway along the crown of the head there was no hair, only a livid red indentation like a huge birthma
rk over a depression in the frontal part of the cranium. Grey hair grew wispily at the back of the head and along the sides. The face itself was turned away from him. He could only tell that the eyes were open, as was the mouth. The body was clothed in a black silk kimono with a bamboo motif that had fallen open to reveal the shapeliness of the white bosom. Otherwise the garment clung in a sodden embrace to the body’s contours and left only the hands and the feet shining nakedly white against the grass.
***
Guilt returned. Cravenly. He did not want to touch her, be near her, be involved. His first reaction was to look sharply to left and right to see whether anyone had seen him. No one was about.
All he saw was the empty sunlit gravel walk, motionless cedars, shadows extending sharply from the balustrade. The facade of the Court was now impassive as the light fell full upon it and made windowpanes sparkle like silver.
Should he just slip away? Go? Pretend he’d not been there?
Of course he couldn’t deny it! He stepped back quickly on to the gravel. Perhaps she’s not dead, was his first thought, although he knew in his heart she was as dead as the many dead he had seen in the Turkish campaign. He did not even ask himself how, let alone why. He simply stooped, grabbed a handful of gravel and began throwing small stones one by one at the window of the doctor’s room.
It took a while for them to have an effect. Then the window creaked open and a head of tousled fair hair emerged. Dr James Parkinson blinked down at the prince with the sun in his eyes and said nothing. A certain amount of waving and pointing led him to stretch out to see what was meant, but as soon as he did so he appeared galvanised and vanished from the window. Some couple of minutes later he came running with big strides along the broad walk dressed in heavy boots and a long tartan dressing gown.
He squatted down beside the curled shape the instant he arrived. Unwilling to admit to himself what he assumed must be the truth, the prince began explaining in a very quiet voice that he had found her just as she lay and hadn’t touched anything.
The doctor nodded. Then he looked up at the open window. To all intents and purposes they both had the same thought. Had she fallen or did she throw herself? Neither seemed to make a great deal of sense because the drop from the first floor window to the ground could have caused serious injury but would not have been an inevitable cause of death. Watching the doctor bend down more closely, the prince could not help wondering if he had any reason to suspect she was so ill she would want to kill herself. For as long as a minute he watched the corpse being studied and the kimono slightly adjusted to aid inspection. The morning was silent all round except for birdsong.
The doctor said softly: ‘Her son died last night. You probably didn’t know that.’
‘Bozhe moi, ia ne snal! My God!’ The prince crossed himself. ‘It could be, you know…’
‘What?’
‘Too much for her. When she heard, as I suppose she did.’
‘It was all too much for him, for her son.’ James Parkinson paused and shrugged. ‘I did my best, you know.’
‘Of course, you did your best.’
‘The spasms had come back and he was so weakened.’
There was silence between them at that point. The prince found nothing to say. Could she have killed herself on hearing of her son’s death? It was a question that had to be asked. On the other hand, whatever the cause, they were both standing beside someone who had died and it was only right that they should respect that fact. The prince clasped his hands and closed his eyes. He prayed quietly for the soul of Anna Arkadyevna Karenina. When he had finished, he crossed himself again. He saw the young doctor still staring down at the body and murmuring something.
‘What is it?’
‘The trouble is…’ James Parkinson began. ‘The trouble is, you see, there’s some rigor mortis. She must’ve been out here for some hours… It’s just that…’ Then came another shrug of the shoulders.
‘What?’
‘I think old Boris said… Maybe I got it wrong.’
‘What?’
‘He said he wasn’t going to tell her. Only I may be wrong. I can’t always get his meaning…’
The prince acknowledged the problem with a slight grunt. ‘So it’s only if she knew, we can suppose…’
There seemed no point in pursuing it. Now was hardly the time for discussing motives. Instead, whispering very softly, James Parkinson said: ‘Look at the way she’s lying… Curled.’
There was no difficulty in following the direction of the doctor’s eyes as he surveyed the corpse under the black kimono and then looked up. There was a pause as they both looked up at the window.
‘Would a body fall and lie like that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘One thing is sure – that damage to the cranium is old. As for the marks…’
‘What marks?’
‘Look!’ he pointed.
The prince leant down and looked. He could hardly fail to notice a faintly bluish tinge to the skin round the nostrils and mouth, but on the neck, when the doctor held back the garment for him to see, were purple marks. Also round the neck were two door keys attached to a cord. He averted his eyes before turning and looking more closely. His cowardice sickened him. The trouble was that her face had the same candid charm, the open eyes the same soft, triumphant look as in the portrait outside her sitting-room, except now they stared upwards unseeing in the sun’s brightness.
‘I don’t think that’s all, you know.’
‘What?’
‘I think she may have been… she may have been held down.’
‘Held down?’
‘No.’ James Parkinson shook his head and went on shaking it for several seconds. ‘No, no, I don’t like this.’
‘You don’t like what?’
‘I don’t like what I’m seeing, sir. I think it’s a matter for the police.’
From across the river, like a pin struck through the quiet birdsong of the morning, came the faint, shrill note of a locomotive whistle. The prince took off his Panama hat and ran the back of his hand across his forehead. He realised he was sweating.
‘We must let Giles – Lord Irmingham – know first. There are matters…’
His own involvement and responsibilities suddenly stared him in the face. If there were foul play and Anna Karenina had been murdered, everyone could be suspected, all the secrecy would unravel and reputations, his included, could be damaged irreparably. He knew he was innocent, but he also knew he had enemies and they could blacken him as they had blackened her. Most of all, he knew he owed her something more than prayers. He realised he owed her the truth now she was dead more even than when she was alive, because he suspected no one in England was better qualified to find it than he was.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and find Giles. You stay here. Those keys round her neck, let me have them, will you.’
The doctor eyed him doubtfully. ‘They might be evidence.’
‘They won’t be if they’re not round her neck.’
‘Then I’ll have to say I gave them to you.’
He had apparently already come to the firm conclusion that Anna Karenina’s death was suspicious and that, as at any scene of a crime, everything should be left undisturbed. The prince had no such qualms. His agenda was different. He repeated the request for the keys and the doctor reluctantly agreed.
‘Thank you. Now, please, trust me. I will get Giles at once.’
***
The bedroom was eventually found after the prince persuaded a young maidservant to show him the way. It meant being led up the wide staircase, down the corridor past his own bedroom and then to somewhere beyond Giles Irmingham’s study. The girl was garrulous. She assured him in a whisper and with a disapproving shake of the head that ‘’is lordship don’t share with ‘er ladyship, sir, you know.’
Once the bedroom was reached, an elderly valet in a loose fitting gown tied at the waist admitted him into a kind of dressing room. Ther
e was reluctance at first to wake his lordship. The prince assured him it was really urgent and found his words rewarded by the sound of Giles’s authoritative voice asking what the noise was all about. Despite the valet’s continuing protests, the prince entered the bedroom to find Giles already sitting on the edge of a four-poster bed thrusting his feet into slippers. He naturally looked shocked.
‘What the blazes! I heard voices… Oh, Prince Dmitry, what on earth…’
The prince overlooked all niceties by telling him at once what had happened in the most confidential of whispers.
‘No! You can’t mean it!’
‘I do.’
‘She’s dead, you say, possibly murdered?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Possibly murdered.’ Giles shook his head. A moment later he summoned the valet to bring his dressing gown and said he would go outside and see for himself. But on his own, he added.
‘Thank you, my dear Dmitry. But tell no one, no one at all! I absolutely insist on that!’
Politely but firmly he ordered the prince not to accompany him, pocketed keys from a bedside table and padded off down the corridor in his slippers.
Obediently the prince stayed behind. He had obviously been expected to return to his bedroom, but the absence of Giles Irmingham and the doctor gave him the chance to make use of the keys from around Anna Karenina’s neck. He wanted to assure himself that she couldn’t have been hearing threatening voices in her ‘secret place’; and if she had been murdered in her bathroom, he had to see how it could have happened… and who, who… His thinking stopped there. It was essential to find out as soon as possible.
The Killing of Anna Karenina Page 18