The Killing of Anna Karenina

by Richard Freeborn

  She gave a regal flutter of her gloved hand. Julie the Unruly waved back and then dabbed her eyes. Monty Coulsham brandished a large green handkerchief. Giles gave a hand wave and the prince doffed his Panama. All called out their goodbyes. The carriages ground their way across the forecourt and entered the driveway with the white parasol suddenly dappled by leaf-shadow and the raised handkerchief flowing out like a pennant.

  ‘A most strong-minded woman,’ Giles whispered. ‘Most strong-minded. I had to tell her about the, er, unfortunate death. I thought it only polite.’ Raising his voice, he mentioned he had had to fetch the kitchen boy. ‘She would insist, you know. I had a job persuading the poor boy. His parents didn’t object. It’ll probably mean plenty of money. Will you be staying longer? Miss Mayhew-Summers is leaving very shortly, aren’t you, my dear?’

  Julie the Unruly wiped her eyes, blew her nose and managed a small smile. ‘I shall be going with Mr Palmer, Lord Irmingham.’

  She was dressed very smartly in a pink-striped mock waistcoat and high collar and simple draped skirt with a hat hanging on a ribbon down her back. The prince was tempted to compliment her but she tucked her handkerchief into her sleeve, looked at both men with red-rimmed eyes and announced sternly that she would be going to America.

  ‘Freedom, Lord Irmingham, freedom, prince, what a joy that would be! The next century will be the American century, you know. I am just longing, longing to be off!’

  She dashed away shaking back her hair, straight-backed and haughty, with a shimmer and sway of her long skirt. The effect was to produce spontaneous admiration of the elegant sway of her derriere and a degree of sexual interest that Giles no doubt shared.

  ‘Yes, well…’ he said.

  The prince lowered his eyes and said he would probably be returning to London that afternoon.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  The repetition of the words along with the averting of rapidly blinking eyes left no doubt that Giles Irmingham did not want to discuss anything at that moment. They parted in the hallway and the prince went straight up to his bedroom.

  Cotton had left a note in his copperplate hand containing an apology for his absence. He had promised to give a fishing lesson to Master Charles Kempson, although he gave an assurance he would be ready to leave by the midday train. Rather than annoyance, the prince felt quite happy to think of the two of them down by the river engaged in such a gentle pastime. They were probably quite unaware, he supposed, of Anna Karenina’s death or all the other matters with which he had been concerned that morning. Deprived as he had been of breakfast, he felt even more deprived at that moment of sleep and admitted as much to himself by yawning, crossing himself and walking over to the bay window. There he sat down to have a rest.

  The sun fell directly on the windowsill. It drew attention to the folded sheet of paper put there to dry, the testimony of Anna Karenina’s “enemies”. No longer sodden, the paper unfolded stiffly as he picked it up. The homemade ink of the Tolstoyan community might have been washed out in the immersion, but he need not have worried. Lady Helen’s handwritten statement appeared to stand out as clearly as the names of the four signatories.

  The initials were less distinct. He could make out ‘B.P.’ ‘O.H.’ was strong. ‘C.K.’ was fainter. ‘I.I.’ was almost invisible.

  He stared.

  Could he be staring at what he thought he was staring at?

  All his tiredness vanished in a flash. He could scarcely believe his eyes.

  Was it deliberate? Had someone placed the clue there deliberately?

  Why hadn’t he thought of that before!

  He had found the clue! It had been there all the time!

  He almost felt like shouting, ‘Eureka!’

  The initials were the clue when placed in that order! It was uncanny!

  He had seen the initials before, of course he had! He had never realised what they meant in that order!

  The puzzle over its relevance suddenly brought a re-enactment of the old nightmare. The name reminded him of the Count Vronskii he had known in the war against the Turks. Suddenly the shock of the discovery brought with it a wave of tiredness that stole over him. He let his head fall back on the cushion at the chair-head. Everything had become clear and everything was far worse, everything except the old nightmare into which he now slipped.

  Again he was running and running along a rocky hillside in Bulgaria, through orchards below Plevna. Again the bullets came towards him with the flutter of butterfly wings, floating like deadly snowflakes. He zigzagged and zigzagged. Again they came slowly with a little whizzing of wings through sunlit air. Suddenly drenching pain overwhelmed him and plunged him into blackness. He was floating. He felt he was floating across the surface of a river into the path of a black-canopied boat. The figure lying in it propped up under the black canopy raised a pale white hand and slowly lifted the heavy veil concealing her face. The staring eyes of the dead Anna looked at him. He found himself transfixed by them. Then he saw the terrible, livid cavity on her forehead. She began to open her mouth to speak and suddenly it was not her lips moving, not her face he was seeing. He was seeing the face of a Turkish soldier he had killed, the stilled, yelling mouth in the boy’s beardless face and the horrified eyes raised to his, peering at him, trying to outstare him with their awful reproach.

  ‘Not you!’ he screamed. ‘Not you! I killed you!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘I killed you!’

  ‘Sir, I am Cotton!’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘I’m sorry to have woken you up! You were shouting in Russian, sir!’

  ‘Was I? Oh, I’m so sorry. Cotton, what is it?’

  ‘Breakfast, sir.’

  And it was breakfast! He had brought it up on a tray. Thank God, the prince thought, it was Cotton! And he was in England, in his bedroom in Stadleigh Court! And there was no dead Turk staring at him!

  ‘Sir, Master Charles wants to show you something very secret. He won’t even show me. After you have had breakfast, sir.’

  So he did have a modest Tolstoyan breakfast, quite similar to the one at Lady Helen’s, and was very grateful to Cotton for bringing it. Clearly there was some anxiety in the way Cotton hovered until the prince had drunk the last of the apple juice, telling him meanwhile of the morning’s fishing. In a discreetly lowered voice he then divulged his news.

  ‘I am to blame, sir. I took the liberty of telling young Master Charles I had spoken to you about his interest, sir, in, er, ladies’, er, bosoms, sir, and he was very excited, sir, because he’s sure there’s something you don’t know…’

  ‘About bosoms, Cotton?’

  ‘Well, sir, no, sir. He was very contrite and said he wanted to make a clean breast. He said he wanted to show you…’

  ‘A clean breast, Cotton!’

  ‘Ah, sir, I see what you mean!’

  ‘A clean bosom, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Exactly, sir. A clean bosom. He wants to make a clean bosom and show you his secret, sir. I said he would have to wait until you had had breakfast.’

  The boy had been waiting outside the bedroom door. As soon as the prince approached, he was seized by the hand and led impatiently down the corridor. The boy did not speak. He merely pulled the prince and the latter followed without a word. They went down the corridor in the direction of Giles’s study but branched off into a small passage. By now a slightly disgruntled feeling of being involved in a wild goose chase made the prince reluctant to be dragged to the end of the small passage and to a door opening into what looked like a linen cupboard with rows of shelves either side piled high with folded sheets and towels. It was dark and he hesitated to go farther but the boy insisted. At the far end was what appeared to be a paneled door. It had a door handle and a key in the lock. The boy signaled urgently for quiet as he drew the prince towards this door, drew out the key and quickly squatted down. Having apparently satisfied himself about something, he then asked the prince to do the
same.

  It always amused the prince how children tend to assume adults can always squirm into the same confined spaces they can or, as in this case, squat down easily to look through a keyhole. He obediently did as he was told as best he could, since this was obviously the secret he was intended to see, and saw what at first looked like a snow-covered terrain, a rim of shadowy snow in the immediate foreground with, beyond it, what looked like brown trees but clearly could not be brown trees. And then he moved his eye slightly and just at the edge of his vision, through the pear-shaped aperture, he saw something that was unmistakable. Part of a brass tap. He realised he had been looking at the curved, white-enameled rim of a bath.

  The prince was being shown a peephole into Anna Karenina’s bathroom. He turned and looked into the boy’s shadowy face and the eyes made doubly bright by the darkness. They shone with guilt.

  ‘Sir, tell her I’m sorry, sir. You’re Russian, sir. Tell her in Russian. Please, sir.’

  This frantic whispering left the prince wondering if the boy had heard something about a Russian lady. He gave a little smile.

  ‘Peeping Toms,’ he scolded softly. ‘That’s what they’re called, aren’t they? Peeping Toms always get found out in the end. Let me have the key.’

  He had naturally not supposed that something as simple as the turning of a key in a lock would do it. Nor that the turning of a doorknob would solve the mystery. But he tried the key, turned it and turned the doorknob.

  At first nothing happened. A second pull and suddenly the door swung open.

  It had been tight-fitting, apparently part of the paneling, with the keyhole concealed below the rim of the bath, but there, as if it were an Aladdin’s cave, was Anna Karenina’s bathroom, the pipework, the gleaming enamel, the wood paneling, the brown bath-towel still on its rail, the open window. The bath had been fixed across the doorway.

  What a casual arrangement! the prince thought. He gave a spontaneous cry of amazement at the sight. Any of her “enemies” could have gained access to her when she was at her most vulnerable, just as Master Charles could have squinted at her curiously as she bathed.

  So she had not been deluded! She had heard threats! Worse still, she could easily have been ‘held down’! Speechless, both the prince and the boy stared at her ‘secret place’ in dawning awareness of what it meant,

  ‘What on earth is going on in here?’

  It was Lady Isobel’s voice. She was behind them, standing in the corridor and peering in at what was no longer a dark linen cupboard but a length of sunlit passageway opening into a bathroom. The look on her face showed that more than one guilty secret had been uncovered. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you, Lady Isobel? If you told anyone, you might be an accomplice. I think you know what I mean.’

  She stood uncomfortably blinking her eyes. It was as if the brightness of the erstwhile linen cupboard laid bare her complicity.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean! I… I… You, Charles, you wretched boy, go home at once!’

  The boy needed no prompting. He made a dash for it. Pushing past her, he raced down the corridor as fast as he could.

  The prince was preparing to confront her, because he realised she must have known of the makeshift arrangement for the bathroom, when he was distracted by the sudden appearance of Boris. He was standing on the other side of the bath. His wrinkled face and bloodshot eyes expressed such shock he instantly crossed himself.

  ‘Did you know about this, Boris, my friend?’ the prince asked.

  ‘Your excellency, did I know?’ He looked round him in bewilderment.

  ‘Did you know this door could be opened?’

  Boris flapped his arms in a sort of clockwork response. ‘This was our mistress’s personal… completely personal…’

  ‘I thought not. So you never saw this door open?’

  The denial was emphatic. At that moment Boris caught sight of Lady Isobel and looked even more startled.

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’ she asked in her most authoritative English tone. ‘I do wish you would speak in a language I can understand. In my own house, what’s more! Who is this decrepit old man?’

  It was astonishing she had not seen Boris before. The prince replied tartly that he was an elderly Russian servant who would never have harmed his mistress.

  ‘She was murdered in this bath, Lady Isobel. Someone who knew about this door, about the access through the linen cupboard, that person probably murdered her. Who would that be, do you imagine?’

  She protested at once at being asked such a thing. Her expression was one of dignified denial, though she reddened slightly at the implication of the question. ‘You don’t mean, prince, that I am responsible? You’re surely not accusing me?’

  ‘Not directly. I know where you were last night.’

  ‘I was at the soiree.’

  ‘Exactly. But someone else wasn’t. Excuse me, I must strike while the iron is hot.’

  He pushed past her as the boy had done and shortly afterwards his footsteps could be heard going rapidly down the main stairs.

  ‘While the iron is hot!’

  He told himself how despicable he was as he raced across the hall and out of the front door. To use a phrase like that – one of the first English sayings he had learned at the start of his attempt to be more English than the English – was abominable, he knew, but time was not on his side and the iron, whatever form it might take, was hot, there could be no doubt about that! He had to see Lady Helen at all costs!

  17

  In the hot mid-morning sun, which made him regret he had not picked up his Panama hat, he raced down the steps and went quickly from terrace to terrace of the Stadleigh Court garden. He knew it was now or never. It was a Russian matter. If he were to find the truth, it would be on the other side of the river. Irmingham held the clue. He had to see Lady Helen first of all because he was sure she must have known or at least suspected the motive.

  As soon as the river came into view and he saw the reflections of overhanging willows and alders reaching like fingers into its apparently still depths, the truth seemed to be literally there, touchable, and he had only to cross the creaking footbridge to find it. In this confident mood he hurried along the riverbank and turned into the lane leading directly to the little settlement of rundown houses and rutted main street of the village known as Irmingham. Children were playing under the trees. Otherwise there was no sign of life. To his surprise, the front door of Lady Helen’s cottage was wide open. He dashed up the garden path and peered in.

  The hallway was cool and quiet, filled with the lived-in air of cooking smells and floor polish. On the right was Dr James Parkinson’s consulting-room. The prince caught sight of him sitting with his back to the door, hunched over a table. A collarless white shirt open at the neck revealed a crimson line where the stiff collar had chafed it. The sight of the chafed skin and the bent back came as a sudden revelation of his sheer youth and inexperience. He seemed to be studying a newspaper clipping and was so deeply preoccupied he did not even look round when the prince entered after knocking softly.

  ‘Willya nae gie a man a wee bit o’peace! Canya nae see I’m busy!’

  Still he did not look up. He was so busy reading he did not pay any attention. Then his visitor introduced himself. The long back quickly straightened up and the freckled face acknowledged recognition.

  ‘Prince!’

  ‘Can I make a guess?’

  ‘Guess what, sir?’

  ‘Just a guess you’ll be applying for… for somewhere else.’

  ‘After what happened this morning I can’t stay here.’

  The prince took the precaution of closing the door behind him as he spoke. The gaudy wall chart of the human anatomy presided over the room like an avenging angel, so it seemed only right he should do his best to bolster the doctor’s spirits.

  ‘You only did as you were told.’

  ‘I did it because Lord Irmingham insisted. And that’s the truth. Whether o
r not it’s for the best, I don’t know. So she died in her bed!’ James Parkinson shrugged. ‘The sooner I’m away from here the better. I’m sorry for saying you had taken the keys – I had to, you know. If there were something not right…’

  The prince offered an assurance that everything was all right. He said he merely wanted to ask a couple of questions.

  ‘Look, I deny everything! I know nothing!’

  ‘I’m not saying you do.’ The defensive, resentful tone came as no surprise. The doctor was to be respected for that. ‘Please tell me – the marks you and I saw on her neck, in your opinion, were they made by pressure, by someone holding her down?’

  There was no direct answer save an apparently obdurate folding of the arms and tight closure of the eyes. The prince took this to mean that Dr James Parkinson wished to do no more than signify his agreement or disagreement by nodding or shaking his head.

  ‘I believe she was drowned? Am I right?’

  A slowly acknowledged affirmative nod.

  ‘Could the marks on the neck have been made by the pressure of fingers?’

  Another affirmative nod.

  ‘Did you have a key to her bedroom?’

  A rapid movement of denial.

  ‘Did you ever go into the linen cupboard?’

  ‘What?’

  The doctor opened his eyes and looked at the prince in amazement.

  ‘No, I thought you hadn’t. Thank you, doctor. You have told me all I wanted to know.’

  ‘I have told you absolutely nothing!’

  Which, of course, was undeniable and made his questioner smile. All amazement, even curiosity, vanished from his face as it settled into tired contemplation of the prince’s faintly amused smile. ‘What linen cupboard?’

  The question was put to rest by an inquiry as to where Lady Helen was.

  ‘I think she’s in the back garden, probably in the conservatory or summerhouse. Look,’ added Dr James Parkinson in clipped, angry tones, ‘I know only one thing. The lady died in her bed. Her son was a victim of lockjaw plus pneumonia plus… plus my incompetence, my lack of experience. And I’m looking for another post.’