The Killing of Anna Karenina

by Richard Freeborn

  ‘If you want a letter of recommendation or support, just let me know.’

  The doctor very nearly allowed himself to laugh. The prince took a visiting card out of his waistcoat and apologised for its crumpled shape by explaining it had been drenched in the river. As he handed it across he asked where his compatriot was.

  ‘I think he went out. Probably shooting.’ The cockled if still legible card was held in James Parkinson’s hand a moment, while the embossed Rostov crest and the full princely title were studied. Then it was laid down respectfully on the table. ‘I feel very honoured, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  There was a shake of the head. ‘He’s a strange case. No offence, prince, but for someone who complains of having painful legs and often walks with a stick it’s astonishing how fleet of foot he is when he has a gun in his hands. Of course, he keeps us well supplied with fresh meat – rabbits, you know – and the people round here like him for it. I can’t say where he went.’

  The prince thanked him and reminded him of the promised recommendation. He said he would go in search of Lady Helen because he would be returning to London shortly.

  ***

  As soon as he re-entered the hall he felt once again the need for urgency. He was now more than ever convinced he had to act on what he knew. On the other hand, it surprised him almost simultaneously to be beset by choices.

  Turning to go out, he could not avoid seeing the sitting room and the shelves of the bookcase. The volumes were lined up as neatly as ever in correct alphabetical order with Oswald Holmcroft’s book on Cromwell in pride of place on the second shelf. A couple of shelves lower were many under T for Tolstoy. Finally, on the bottom shelf, a small leather-bound volume of the poems of William Wordsworth was wedged quite tightly at the end. It had obviously not been taken from its place recently. He crept into the room and finding it empty drew the leather-bound volume carefully out.

  Not theft, he consoled himself as he scrutinised the volume and thrust it in his pocket, no, not theft. It was evidence. Yet the reason for having such evidence and the wish to see Lady Helen posed contrary urges. Which should come first? He remembered what she had said about the local churchyard, but he also knew that what had happened during the soiree was probably more important. Against his inclination, but in the name of truth, he felt impelled to reassure himself before going to look for her. He went out through the front door and blinked in the hot sunlight of her front garden.

  A horse and cart loaded with straw creaked and swayed along the main street, dogs barked and children played more noisily than ever. In short, the main street of this modest village of Irmingham seemed momentarily busy. He aimed to find the church. It took him barely five minutes to reach it and enter the churchyard by the wicket-gate. A brick-paved path led up to the church door. Although the path was reasonably free of weeds, the graves on either side were rank with thistles and tall grass and he could see why Lady Helen had been using a sickle to do her bonking, as she called it. She had said something about Carew Kingston’s mother being buried in the churchyard. He wondered where.

  The jumble of older graves and headstones at the front of the church among yew trees told him nothing. At the back, beside the mossy brickwork of the path, there were newer graves, newer headstones and newer inscriptions among obvious signs of clearance. This seemed a more likely place to find what he wanted. Dotted with headstones and shrubs, in part darkened by trees, the extensive churchyard resembled an overgrown garden with occasional piles of damp, yellowing grass giving off a fragrance of hay in the hot sun.

  Headstone after gravestone yielded nothing, even recently carved ones, until in the shade of a yew by a relatively open area of rising ground clearly pitted with rabbit holes a fairly recent white marble headstone shone like a beacon. The name Kingston was clearly visible in a carved inscription:-

  In Memoriam –

  Elizaveta Ivanovna Kingston, nee Crow,

  late of St Petersburg,

  deceased in her fifty-fourth year.

  It was simple and dignified. A bunch of recently cut hollyhocks stood rather garishly in front of it in a brown jar. It told very, very little, however: no dates, no relationship, not even whether she was interred there, but one feature puzzled the prince especially – nee Crow. It seemed unnecessary until the meaning suddenly came to him and he snapped his fingers.

  ‘Voron!’ he muttered. Hadn’t Oswald Holmcroft called him ‘Crow’? So that was it!

  Things fitted together. All he had to do now was confront ‘Crow’ Kingston with what he knew. For this reason he searched round in his inside jacket pocket and drew out the Oswald Holmcroft document. The signatures verified all his suspicions. The four sets of initials – B.P., O.H., C.K., I.I. – made everything seem to fit together.

  It would take too long to inform the police and would very likely be unnecessary. Giles would not alter his version of events, Dr James Parkinson would deny all knowledge, the ranks would close. He refolded the sheet of paper, thrust it back in his pocket and prepared to go back to Lady Helen’s cottage

  Two shots rang out in quick succession at that moment.

  Lead shot ricocheted off a stone. He felt a sharp pain near his right hip as if someone had aimed a fist at the spot. He flung himself flat on the grass. Birds rose in a flock from nearby trees, rabbits dashed past.

  Glancing round, he had no idea where the shots came from. All he saw was a dead rabbit a short distance away. For a full minute nothing happened. Things returned to the normality of buzzing insects.

  Long grass nearby was stirred by footsteps. From behind the yew tree a peaked cap and shabby red shirt, belted at the stout waist, came into view. A disguise of sorts or a simple protection against the heat had been provided by a handkerchief tied over the mouth and nose but, silhouetted against sunlight as he broke open the twin-barreled gun, the man was obviously Carew Kingston. He stopped dead when he saw the prince.

  ‘Ah, it’s you!’

  ‘Akh, eto vy!’ The exclamation was made in Russian and sufficiently spontaneous to be genuine. The prince climbed to his feet and began brushing himself down. He found his jacket pocket had been torn away.

  ‘You didn’t expect to find me here, Mr Kingston?’

  He was justifiably annoyed. It was not the first time he had been shot at, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and had his clothes messed up. But annoyance was tempered for the moment by relief at having simultaneously found both the Kingston headstone and the man himself.

  ‘No,’ was the casual answer. The gun was snapped shut and swung over Carew Kingston’s shoulder. ‘I had assumed you would be going back to London.’ He picked up the dead rabbit and put it in a bag tied to his waist. ‘Your book, I think.’

  The volume of William Wordsworth’s poems had slipped to the ground. The prince quickly retrieved it. The leather cover had been ripped by the force of the ricochet but no harm had come to the pages inside.

  ‘Thanks to Mr Wordsworth, I’m still alive. No thanks to you.’

  ‘Why should I intend to kill you, Prince Rostov? You are not my enemy, except in a class sense, and you are not an edible commodity like these rabbits. I assume you are here for some purpose. My dear mother’s memorial, perhaps?’

  ‘Not your mother, surely?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Nee Crow?’

  ‘I can explain.’

  ‘Not now, please. Now we’ve met I’d like to talk about this.’ The prince indicated the volume of Wordsworth.

  ‘You admire the work of William Wordsworth, do you, prince?’

  ‘And you? Do you admire his work, Mr Kingston?’

  ‘No, I have not read any of his poetry recently.’

  ‘Really! And have you heard any?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I asked if you had heard any of his poetry recently? For instance…’ The prince flipped through the pages ‘…Miss Julie Mayhew-Summers who worked the bellows
for your “Russian Rhapsody”…’

  ‘She got tired.’ There was a note of disgruntlement in the simple statement.

  ‘That was a pity, of course. But during the soiree she recited lines from Mr Wordsworth, the English poet.’

  Carew Kingston narrowed his eyes and gave the other a look of angry puzzlement. As if repudiating what had been insinuated, he drew the handkerchief rather roughly from his face to reveal his short, white-tipped beard.

  ‘You don’t remember them? Let me read them to you in my best English accent.’ The prince cleared his throat and reverted to English. ‘Here, in this churchyard, it seems very appropriate to achieve a symbiosis or, as the poet puts it:-

  “…that blessed mood

  In which the burden of the mystery…

  Is lightened – that serene and blessed mood,

  In which the affections gently lead us on –

  Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,

  And even the motion of our human blood

  Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

  In body, and become a living soul…”’

  He looked up from the sunlit page. ‘You have never heard these lines before?’

  ‘Of course, I have heard them!’ the other exclaimed peevishly, wiping his face with the handkerchief. ‘I can’t remember exactly when… I, er…’

  ‘Symbiosis?’

  ‘Excuse me? Prince, you are talking nonsense!’

  ‘You could have heard it all quite easily from the organ gallery. Except you weren’t there, were you?’

  Carew Kingston had begun walking away during the reading. The prince knew he was trying to evade his guilt by walking away. They walked side-by-side round the path to the front of the church.

  ‘Your contribution to yesterday’s soiree was not only musical, it was deadly, Mr Kingston. You know her son is dead and now she is dead, don’t you? Mind you, according to you, she never existed.’

  The other gave a sharp little chirrup of nervous laughter. ‘Of course, I know that!’ He ran his handkerchief over his short beard and wiped his neck. ‘Of course, she never existed! Prince Rostov, I shake my head over you, you know.’ The handkerchief was tucked away.

  ‘Oh, she existed! I am prepared to swear in a court of law that she lived, she breathed, she loved, she feared and she died at Stadleigh Court! You know she did.’ The prince’s mouth was dry from an awareness of the other’s menace. ‘But she died in her bed. A heart attack.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You can ask Dr Parkinson. You can ask Lord Irmingham.’

  ‘I do not need to ask anyone about someone who did not exist.’

  ‘True.’ The prince even smiled a little at the bizarre logic. ‘It’s the motive that puzzles me.’

  ‘The motive?’

  ‘The motive for killing Anna Karenina.’

  There followed a long silence as they confronted each other among the headstones. Surrounded for a short while by nothing but the soft churring sound of grasshoppers and insects, the prince tried hard to penetrate the thick lenses of the other’s spectacles. They returned his scrutiny with a bland, almost mesmerising menace and the prince was only brought to his senses by a light breeze that suddenly stirred the pages beneath his fingers. He found he was sweating so badly the paper stuck to them. Suddenly the silence was broken by shouts.

  ‘Ah,’ cried Carew Kingston in his curiously high English accent, ‘my little army!’

  Three small ragged boys dashed through the wicket-gate. They ran up the brick-paved path shouting for him to give them some of his rabbits. Carew Kingston opened the bag and extracted three of them.

  ‘Take them straight to your mothers!’ he ordered. ‘I am,’ he explained as the three urchins ran quickly back into the main street, ‘well-known for my generosity.’ He grinned again, gave the prince a haughty glance and spoke once more in Russian. ‘You are good at telling lies, Prince Rostov. But you have no proof. Not a scrap. Just guesses.’

  ‘Guesses, true. But I think you planned it. Cold-bloodedly. Over a month or more. Your limping, for example.’

  ‘Due to the organ pedals. I think I told you.’

  They made their way out through the wicket-gate.

  ‘Yes, you fooled people with that,’ the prince acknowledged. ‘By practising your composition on the organ during the past month or so, though, you were able to discover something else. As I discovered earlier today, there is a door giving access to the organ gallery – you probably used it many times after going up the main stairs – which also gives access to the floor where Lord Irmingham has his study and bedroom. It’s not difficult to get from there to the linen cupboard if you know about it…’

  Carew Kingston adjusted the gun on his shoulder. ‘Linen cupboard! What would I want with a linen cupboard?’

  ‘Lady Isobel probably told you.’

  The other’s lack of response confirmed it.

  ‘Yes, I guessed as much,’ the prince went on. ‘I am not really concerned with how you found out about that place. I am concerned that you issued threats. Very probably over several weeks. You terrified poor Anna Karenina. She was so frightened she had a special lock fitted to her bedroom door. What she didn’t know but you knew was that you could access her bathroom from that cupboard. So last evening, when all the servants and guests and the Irminghams themselves were occupied by the soiree, you knew you would be free to open the door to Anna Karenina’s bathroom and you had the luck of the devil – you surprised her in her bath! All you had to do was throttle her! Of course she tried to fight you off! Of course there was a lot of water splashed about! But you held her down – and she drowned…’

  ‘You are telling awful lies! You told me she died in her bed! I protest! You deserve to die for accusing me!’

  His raised voice attracted the attention of children who were playing under the trees. They stared at the two men speaking a strange language and a couple of childish voices asked Mr Kingston for more rabbits. He brushed them aside, peering guiltily round him.

  ‘She drowned,’ the prince repeated. ‘You then closed the door, I suggest, locked it again… In any case, my dear Crow – Voron? Am I right? – if you knew about that door, you knew who was beyond it. You knew she existed. And afterwards you simply went downstairs to the Gothic hall, arriving in time to comfort Lady Isobel.’

  ‘Voron? What do you mean?’

  For the first time Carew Kingston showed signs of losing his nerve. He quickened his pace. They went down the main street indifferent to the shouts of the children. It was only when they reached Lady Helen’s cottage that he turned to the prince and asked cryptically, in a threatening whisper: ‘Who told you about that?’ His eyes shot towards the open front door. ‘Was it…?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t Lady Helen. The name for crow is…’

  ‘Ssshh!’ Carew Kingston dumped the bag containing the rabbits in the hall. ‘Upstairs, Prince Rostov, if you please!’

  18

  The prince was led upstairs to a spacious sitting room containing a piano, bookshelves, a large photogravure reproduction of Tolstoy’s portrait by Repin and several framed photographs of groups of people uncomfortably posed on verandah steps at Tolstoy’s home, Yasnaya Polyana. He knew then that he had been invited to be more than a guest. He was to be confronted, he realised, by proof of Carew Kingston’s cleverness.

  In the instant of being invited to sit down, he received apologies for the state of the room. A higgledy-piggledy array of books, music sheets, clothes, stale food and writing materials strewn over the main table and clothes draped here and there on chairs clearly emphasised bachelorhood and a degree of personal neglect. By contrast, and as if arranged to occupy pride of place, the top of the piano contained two pictures. One showed a photo of Carew Kingston beside a cutout illustration of Tolstoy addressing a group of peasant children.

  ‘Proof of my discipleship,’ Carew Kingston announced, proudly pointing to it.

  The prince smiled courteously, mor
e aware of flies circling above it than of the picture itself. He sat down expecting the other to sit as well, but Carew Kingston preferred to remain standing

  More prominent was a photograph in a gilded frame depicting a young couple dressed for a wedding. The faded, iconic look of the youthful faces smiling obediently on a hot day somewhere out of doors had a poignant charm. It reminded the prince that, like him, Carew Kingston was an exile. Probably as much by choice in his case, but if exile, as he had remarked ironically at their first meeting, might be good for translators, it was rarely any good for one’s heart.

  ‘I must ask you to keep your suspicions to yourself, Prince Rostov.’ He spoke as if he were offering advice on personal hygiene. ‘Please don’t take offence. I have no objection to you personally. Think me a poor disciple of Count Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoyanism, if you like, but I can only say in all humility that I consider it my task to translate his work and spread his gospel, not necessarily to be like him. Much is muddled in his thinking, you see, and his doctrines have yet to be tested in the laboratory of life. But I share his love of the simple people. It is to them, like the ordinary people round here, that Tolstoy wants to appeal. Not to you, not to the privileged, not to Lord Irmingham, not even to Lady Helen, not to lords and ladies, but to ordinary people.’

  The prince determined to be as polite as possible. ‘You are a good Tolstoyan, I’m sure.’ His mouth was dry as he spoke. ‘You repudiate all his work prior to his conversion, as he has done. Very right and proper. But hardly a motive.’

  ‘Motive? Ah, motive for your suspicions! Yes, the motive is hard to find!’ Carew Kingston’s tone of voice changed. He placed his gun in a cupboard which could be seen to contain an armoury of weapons. Quite confidently, even a little triumphantly, he then sat down in an armchair which had a flower-patterned cover similar to those in Lady Helen’s sitting room. ‘You will surprise me, naturally, if you can find a scrap of proof, let alone a motive – apart, I mean, from your suspicions, your conjectures. What motive could there possibly be for killing someone who was thought to be dead already and, in any case, died in her bed – or so you say?’