The Killing of Anna Karenina

by Richard Freeborn

  He followed Giles out of the bedroom, saw him disappear down the corridor and then had no idea which way to go. A few steps to his left was another short corridor. He went down it and found myself facing a door that looked like the door into the tower. Neither key fitted the lock and he wondered for a moment whether Anna Karenina had kept them round her neck for some other purpose. Then, to his astonishment, the door sprang open of its own accord, leaving him confronted by the bare boards of the organ gallery. An alternative way of reaching the organ, he realised, rather than the enclosed staircase from the Gothic hall. Sounds of people moving about and talking to each other rose clearly from below. The trestle tables were being dismantled.

  He shut the door at once and walked quickly away. The carpet underfoot meant that he passed several doors without making a sound. The house was beginning to wake up. He knew he had little time to discover what he could before rumours began to spread. Luckily, after a turn in the corridor, he recognised the door to Giles’s study, a stained-glass window, and stale cooking smells. Adjoining the corridor was the door to the tower.

  He tried the larger of the keys and found himself exactly where the doctor had first led him. Flights of curved stairs led upwards and downwards, but he felt fairly sure he was on the landing where he would find Anna Karenina’s bedroom and bathroom.

  Morning sunlight had still not penetrated to the landing in any strength, nor were there any sounds from the kitchen or from upstairs. He tiptoed towards the bedroom. The door was ajar, which surprised him. It also surprised him that the bed looked as if it had not been slept in. Had Boris or someone remade it or had his mistress been killed or killed herself before going to bed? She had been in a kimono, after all. Putting aside such thoughts, he found himself immersed in the clammy, unaired smell of perfume and sleep familiar from his first visit, the same mirrors repeating his presence in their silvered depths as he passed through the bedroom towards the bathroom.

  It shocked him to find the bath still half-full of water. Somewhat sinisterly, looking depleted and unreal, Anna Karenina’s long black garments were hanging on the bathroom door and other garments were draped over a wooden chair, underneath which, side by side, were two elaborately embroidered Chinese slippers. A considerable spillage of water had occurred just next to the bath, but near the wide-open window now filling the room with light, there were only a few drops. A large bath towel, still folded and apparently dry, was hanging on a rail fixed to the wood paneling. A gutted candle stood in a holder on a small table.

  He instantly tried to interpret what he saw. Had she got out of the bath dripping wet, put on her kimono and then flung herself to her death through the open window? It could explain the mess by the bath but not the absence of wet by the window. The wood paneling beside the bath had splashes on it. There were also drips on the floor near the door and even the sign of a shoe print. It was much larger than any print from one of the Chinese slippers, but one print from the sole of a shoe could mean anything. It could have been Boris’s footprint, for instance. He supposed she had heard about Seriozha and perhaps run a bath to console herself. But why had she put on a kimono before rushing to the window? It would have been raining hard and a kimono would have been no protection. Yet there she was she now lying curled on the grass below the window in a self-protective, foetal position. She had the past reputation of being someone who had tried to commit suicide, so suicide would be understandable. But what if the marks round her neck actually meant what James Parkinson had said – something about being held down?

  Instinct told him that, despite its brightly lit sparkle, the bathroom had an atmosphere of fear. This had been her ‘secret place’, a bathroom specially made for her, the solace of her reclusive life. It had been violated, as her privacy and her life had been violated. Surely, though, she hadn’t been threatened! Here, in this private place! She couldn’t have heard threats…

  The speculation ended when there was a movement behind him. Swinging round, he saw Boris approaching. He quickly re-entered the bedroom and shut the bathroom door.

  ‘Ah, your excellency, pardon me, pardon me. I thought the mistress…’

  ‘You thought what about the mistress, Boris?’

  ‘I could see she was not in her bed, your excellency.’

  ‘Her bed looks as if it hadn’t been slept in.’

  ‘She sleeps very quietly, so it is often…’ The look on the old retainer’s wrinkled face as he spoke was of such distilled innocence, purity and lack of guile that the prince felt he dare not break any sad news to him. ‘So I supposed she would be having a bath. I thought you might be the young Master Gerald, your excellency. He is often, well… often here. In the mornings.’

  Boris blinked impassively after imparting this piece of information, his arms at his sides as if pinned there by the very weight of the ancient black cloth of the frockcoat. Suddenly, to the prince’s amazement, the old man’s eyes filled with tears and two large teardrops rolled slowly down his cheeks.

  ‘The young master, your excellency, Sergei Alexeevich, did you know?’

  The prince nodded solemnly.

  ‘I felt it was my duty to…’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To tell the mistress, your excellency. I could not bring myself to tell her last night. Particularly as she was… well, I hardly need explain.’

  Hardly need explain!

  Two things were now reasonably clear. The first was that, unless she had heard the news from somebody else, Anna Karenina very probably did not know about her son’s death before she died. The second was that Gerald Kempson had obviously been here the previous night.

  ‘Boris, my friend, you saw the young master called Gerald, did you?’

  An air of considerable self-importance was assumed. He gave the appearance of being asked for money or forced to donate blood in some unknown cause.

  ‘Your excellency, I am not at liberty…’

  ‘Forget the etiquette, forget the protocol, Boris, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Your excellency…’

  ‘Was Gerald Kempson up here last night?’

  The old man was shaking slightly. In a slow, dignified gesture he wiped away the two teardrops.

  ‘Yes, excellency, I saw him.’

  ‘Thank you. Where did you see him?’

  ‘I was in the little kitchen. I saw him cross the landing…’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘…and go into the mistress’s bedroom… come in here.’ He gazed at the prince reproachfully as if all references to such behavior were improper. ‘The mistress, your excellency, always locked the door to her bedroom. She and… and Master Gerald, they were the only ones to have keys to her bedroom. She had come in here, to her bedroom, as soon as the music started last night.’

  ‘The organ music? During the soiree? That was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Yes, sir, the last time. As I say, sir, I only saw Master Gerald go into the mistress’s bedroom… come in here, where we are now. When the soiree was over. Then I went upstairs to join my wife in a vigil beside the poor young master… Where is the mistress now, your excellency? Is she?’ He nodded towards the bathroom. ‘Her door, you see, was not locked.’

  The prince did not have the heart to pretend any more. He stepped aside and let the old man peer through the bathroom door. By now his wife was calling him from the landing.

  Boris shook his head in bewilderment. He followed the prince out of the bedroom, muttering, ‘Where? Where?’ only for his wife’s commands to become more insistent. They found her and Hannah Kempson on the landing, the latter leaning on a banister rail looking down at the curved well of the staircase towards deep shadow at the foot of the tower. She faced round to the prince.

  ‘Someone did it, you know!’

  The statement was dramatic and completely unexpected.

  ‘Your husband Gerald…’ he began saying, uncertain as to whether he should make the remark a question or an accusation.

  S
he was shaking her head even as he spoke. Boris’s wife had begun a loud, grieving wail that was quickly smothered by the gruff, elderly, quavering voice of Boris himself. Though the prince thought they must have an inkling of what had happened, he was absorbed by Hannah Kempson who looked him straight in the eyes, seized him by the lapels of his jacket and whispered intently in Russian: ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’

  There was no denying it.

  ‘We loved her, you know!’ Her whispering was urgent and hysterical. ‘Boris loved her!’

  ‘But where is she?’ Boris interrupted.

  Hannah took no notice. ‘No one could love her as I did! I loved her like a mother! I loved her because she saved my life! So I saved hers! I brought her here! I made sure she was happy here! Whatever she wanted, she should have! And when her son came, oh, she was so happy, so happy!’

  ‘Your husband Gerald…’

  The words were repeated in an effort to discover what she meant but she was too hysterical to hear them.

  ‘First her son, now her! Oh, my God! And if you think poor Gerald had anything, anything to do… No! No! He would never, never!’

  She broke into sobs and covered her face with her hands.

  At that instant there were sounds of movement at the bottom of the curved stairs and Giles Irmingham and Dr James Parkinson came slowly upwards carrying the kimono-draped body. Bare legs and feet protruded from under Giles’s armpits. The prince could not help noticing that something had happened to the pictures lining the curved wall above the dado, but all his attention was concentrated at that moment on the body being carried slowly upwards. In a matter of a few seconds, without a word spoken, Anna Karenina had been returned to the bedroom where she had not spent the night but where she was more likely to have met her death. Instantly Hannah Kempson shrieked and dashed into the bedroom behind Giles and the doctor.

  Left alone, the prince felt weak at the knees. He felt not only shock but also a wave of nausea and fought hard to suppress it. Leaning on the banister to steady himself, he continued staring down at the curved staircase, aware now that the door to the garden was still open. It was the door at the foot of the tower through which Giles had brought him before taking him to his study and first telling him about Anna Karenina. Why, he kept on wondering, why had the pictures on the curved walls all been knocked sideways? Why were they like that? The body being carried up did not cause that.

  He was about to take a closer look when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Giles, speaking in a breathy whisper: ‘Dmitry, my dear chap, I must have a word.’

  15

  Atalanta in pursuit of the Arcadian Lion was a vivid, energetic canvas by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. Filled though it was from corner to corner with up-rearing, bright-ochre horses, snarling white hounds, muscular tree trunks and equally muscular naked men, pinkly glowing as from recent hot baths, no part of it was more exotically or erotically attractive than Atalanta herself who, bare-bosomed, appeared about to unleash with gusto a gold-tipped arrow towards a large lion. Several other maidenly persons were also revealing their pink round bosoms and the lion, to its credit, seemed to be baring its teeth more in petulant disapproval of such outrageous nudity than with any predatory malice.

  ‘Here,’ said Giles, ‘we can talk in here.’ He closed the door of the Rubens Room behind them. ‘It is, my dear Dmitry, essential not to involve the police!’ The words were literally hissed. ‘Essential! You found her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did anyone see you or did you see anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  He assured him that there had been no one about and the only other person involved had been Dr James Parkinson.

  ‘So there’s a good chance we can keep it all quiet. I must ask you not to breathe a word about it to anyone. Will you do that?’

  He sank into one of the high-backed upright chairs round a small baize-covered table in the centre of the room. He was still wearing his dressing gown and had chosen this paneled room as the safest place for their talk. He looked pale and his hands were shaking. It had obviously been an arduous and taxing experience to carry the corpse from the foot of the tower to the bedroom by way of the curved staircase. Seeing him in such a state, the prince was only too ready to respect his wishes.

  ‘You are asking a lot…’

  ‘I know I am. My dear Dmitry, I am asking as one gentleman to another, as an English gentleman, you understand.’

  ‘As one gentleman to another, as an English gentleman…’ The idea made the prince suddenly restless. He did not join the other in sitting down. He paced slowly about the room.

  ‘I have had to make a hurried decision. Literally on the spur of the moment.’ Giles’s voice was as shaky as his hands. ‘I think we must insist… must insist she died in her bed.’

  ‘The marks on her throat, the discoloration… You overlook them?’

  ‘Young James, Dr Parkinson, he’ll, you know, he’ll not emphasise them, he’ll… he’ll agree, I think. It is the only way. I’m sure of it.’ The unsteady hands fluttered in support of his words. ‘I mean, she was a bag of nerves. The fact of her son dying – the body’s still up there, that’s another thing to deal with, and young James isn’t too proud of himself over that – it caused such a shock she, er, had a heart attack. Something like that. But not suicide, no. If it were suicide, there’d have to be the authorities involved, an inquest, God knows what. And in any case…’

  ‘It would invalidate her right as beneficiary of her husband’s will?’

  ‘Something of the sort.’ Giles was now a picture of gloom. ‘So it all depends, you see, on you, my dear Dmitry.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘On you saying you didn’t see her.’

  The prince felt deeply irritated by this remark. Staring angrily for a moment or so at the Rubens, he empathised with the imperilled lion. On the one hand, he would be forced to compromise, supposedly as someone English and gentlemanly. On the other, he would be dishonoring the name of the lady he had been brought here to identify. There was also the tacit implication, which he greatly resented, that, being Russian, he might be less than fastidious about the truth.

  ‘Of course,’ said Giles, ‘I would have to ask how you came to be in the tower. Could it be you had used the keys which were round her neck?’

  This had not been anticipated. He had not imagined that Giles Irmingham could be quite so unscrupulous. The question posed a threat. The prince countered it by assuming the profoundly injured air of one who was proud to be considered more English than the English.

  ‘You’d hold that against me, would you? Not English really and hardly gentlemanly!’

  ‘Needs must, my dear Dmitry, if necessary.’

  ‘The doctor told you, I suppose?’

  ‘Young James did, yes. He was mistaken over the lockjaw. His patient died. If he hadn’t, well, who knows, we might not be in this predicament.’

  ‘I see.’

  Giles held out his hand. ‘Let me have them back and no more will be said.’

  After a moment’s debate with himself the prince took the keys out of his pocket, the cord still attached to them, and dropped them with a slight metallic clink on the baize tabletop.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘have you seen the bathroom?’

  Giles shook his head as he stretched out and took the keys, but the prince went on: ‘It tells another story. What it doesn’t explain is why we should have found her lying out there in a black kimono at the foot of the tower. If she died in her bed, how do we explain that? If she jumped after having had a bath, why was she in a black kimono? Why was there no sign of water on the floor by the window? Why? I have to ask these questions! Or did somebody “hold her down” as James Parkinson thinks? Judging by the marks on her neck, the discoloration of the skin… There are lots of unanswered questions. How do we explain such things?’

  Giles looked away. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘just don
’t! No questions, please. She died in her bed, that’s all. It’s unpleasant enough as it is without making things worse.’

  The prince noted the way the blue eyes, still blinking rapidly, refused to meet his. Of course the need for self-delusion, the comforting lie, was essential. Equally pressing was the need for truth. The prince guessed that one name and one name only rose to the surface of both their minds at that moment. He leaned forward, placing both hands on the baize-covered table, and said in a quiet voice: ‘I know it must be your duty as a father to protect your son. But I will have to ask him what he knows.’

  Giles seemed to bat the thought away with a flicker of his eyelids. He paused, looked up at the picture, seemed almost indifferent to what had been said and a faint smile stole over his face.

  ‘All my life, ever since I was a small boy, I have been fascinated by the Arcadian Lion.’ he said tiredly. ‘He is morally in the right, you know. My belief is that Atalanta won’t shoot that arrow. Or if she does she’ll miss. How could anyone kill such an obviously moral creature as that lion? I suspect he has the soul of a high church prelate before his time.’

  ‘Or a Tolstoyan,’ said the prince.

  ‘Or a good Tolstoyan.’ Giles’s smile becoming a little strained. ‘Except that, like a good Tolstoyan, I can mourn his likely death. I mourn her death and her son’s, too, of course I do. As for my son Gerald, speak to him if you like. Poor boy, he does his best, you know. Whatever he says, though, you must be sure of one thing: she died in her bed.’ He fluttered his hands again. ‘And he had nothing to do with that.’ His eyes were lowered in disgust, ‘Nothing at all! All we need to know is that a Russian lady died naturally in her bed. She died in her bed!’

  How he could be so blind to the truth, the prince did not know. Irritated by the denial and the apparent double standards, he sighed and strode out of the room.

  ***