She looked disbelieving. ‘James said she died in her bed. You don’t mean he…’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not in her bed. He held her down in her bath. He drowned her. I am sure of this now. And I think…’ he saw she was about to interrupt ‘…I think, Lady Helen, you suspected – suspected he was capable of it. Which is why, when you copied out Oswald Holmcroft’s document, you put the initials and the names in that order so they would spell the name Vronskii in Russian, wouldn’t they?’
She stretched across to him and clasped his hand. It was only a momentary lack of self-control. Equally quickly she withdrew her hand and stood up.
‘Yes, I suspected.’ She stared out into the garden and whispered: ‘There has always been something frightening about him. But he was so helpful. I mean we couldn’t have started our little commune… In any case, how do you know? And then there’s poor Gerald, he… he was in love with her, I know that. Hannah virtually… Oh, what are you saying?’ Her hands now fluttered in alarm. ‘Why? For heaven’s sake, why?’
The prince climbed to his feet as he explained.
‘The motive for it was his promise to the woman he loved as his mother on her deathbed. But until I arrived he had not been sure. The lady in the tower might have been an imposter. I think he laid his plans some while back, but my arrival was the catalyst. So I am to blame, you see, because I identified her. And you are to blame for making the initials read like his real name. Without you and me, he would be perfectly safe.’
The words almost stuck in his throat as he spoke them. She said nothing. She merely crossed her bare arms and shivered.
‘I have one question,’ he said, glancing down at the initials in the sand. ‘How many copies did you make? It was only two, wasn’t it?’
‘Just two. For Oswald and for father. Why?’
He did not mention he had left the Oswald Holmcroft copy in Carew Kingston’s sitting room. He merely said: ‘I have a feeling he’ll know by now. You know he’s in love with you, don’t you? He loves you like a daughter.’
She appeared not to hear. She frowned and instantly started to leave.
‘If you go back now he’ll… Lady Helen, he’ll think you’ve betrayed him. I know the kind of person he is. Listen a moment,’ he insisted. ‘A lonely man, an exile, of mixed blood, keeping a promise all his life to avenge the disgrace suffered by his brother – his half-brother, yes, but still his brother – because Anna Karenina lived on. It may not make sense to us, but to him – I can understand what it must have meant to him. And now he finds that you, someone he loved as a daughter, as a pupil, you have betrayed him by revealing his real name and exposing his motive for doing what he did. He can hate you now, can’t he? Because he hates us, lords and ladies. Princes especially. He told me so just now.’
‘Tolstoy preaches love, prince. And forgiveness.’ She gave him a small smile, stooped and picked up the parasol. ‘And non-opposition to evil by force. Isn’t that true?’ It was then that she gasped.
They both saw the figure approaching across the lawn, lit so brilliantly by the hot sun he might have been coming towards them on a stage, the panes of the greenhouse behind him bright as flares. He made no sound. The thick round lenses of the spectacles had the menace of anger and determination. Carew Kingston, devoid of his peaked cap, his mouth fixed in a thin line above the beard, was coming towards them at a slow walking pace, one hand behind his back, intent, deliberate, his blood-red shirt belted to his stout waist like a butcher’s apron.
She took a step forward, opened her parasol and paused. The hesitation was noticed. He was close enough by then to see the initials drawn in the sand. He brought his hand round from behind his back and they could see he was holding a revolver. His eyebrows were raised as he peered down at the name BPOHCKII, studied it and shook his head several times in what might have been despair or disappointment, simultaneously releasing the revolver’s safety catch. As he lifted the gun to the horizontal, his head moved back a little. The spectacle lenses caught the sun.
‘You’re out of your mind!’ the prince shouted in Russian.
‘Please, prince, speak English. For Lady Helen’s sake. I am not shooting rabbits now, you see.’
‘Carew,’ she cried, ‘did you kill her?’
The fact that she was not intimidated appeared to annoy him.
‘If I did, it’s only what I promised.’
‘Did you?’
‘She lived on, you know, while my brother’s life…’
‘Did you kill her?’
‘My brother’s life was ruined. She disgraced our name.’
‘So you killed her?’
There was a pause. Her insistent questions seemed to deflate him.
‘Yes, I killed her.’
‘Why? Because of a name?’
‘Yes. Because of the name down there in the sand.’
‘And that’s your real name?’
‘Yes, it’s my real name. And this is his gun, his real gun. It was brought back from Bulgaria. And it still works. I can prove it.’
He fired it upwards. The parasol was lifted out of Lady Helen’s fingers and spun onto the roof of the summerhouse. There it rolled down lazily and tumbled into shadow. Birds rose in a screeching flock from the nearby trees.
She flung herself back against the prince for protection. He held her in his arms, though he tried as far as possible to place himself between her and the menace of the gun. He could sense the way the whole garden was alerted by the noise of the shot and the birds and fear broke over him in a chill gust.
Carew Kingston again shook his head, this time rather curtly. ‘I am used to killing vermin. But not you, my dear Lady Helen. What you wrote – it’s as if you pointed a finger at me. “Guilty!” you said.’
‘You are mad!’ the prince managed to shout.
It provoked a sharp response. ‘No, not mad! Betrayed! Humiliated! But I was right! She did not deserve to live! It is justice!’
The words were barked out so forcefully and with such anger the prince felt Lady Helen shiver as he held her, but at that instant she released herself, to his surprise, and quite calmly exclaimed, as if it were part of an ongoing discussion: ‘How can you talk such nonsense? Justice, indeed! Whose justice?’
It was too much for Carew Kingston. Her reasonableness seemed to put an end to his attempt at justification. The revolver was raised in a threatening gesture. Whether or not he intended to fire at her was unclear, but she anticipated him by defiantly dashing forward at the instant of firing and the quick movement distracted him. At a distance of little more than a couple of metres the bullet entered the prince’s thigh a split second before he heard the explosion.
It was like a sunburst of pain ripping through his leg. He screamed with agony and collapsed on the sand. With both hands he clutched his thigh where the bullet had entered and it took him a moment or two to do the sensible thing and turn his grip into a kind of tourniquet. At the same time he realised Lady Helen was shouting fearlessly at Carew Kingston, shooing him away. All the prince could do was succumb to the pain as he watched the blood pump out through the cloth of his trousers and feel the return of the shock and nausea he had felt after the wounding at Plevna. A sickening coldness began creeping through his body as he gritted his teeth and tried to fend off the encroaching wave of faintness. Then Lady Helen was leaning over him. Her hair touched his cheek. She had the tray cloth in her hand and pressed it against his thigh.
‘Oh, prince! Oh, my dear, my dear… Here!’ He took the cloth from her. ‘Go away!’ she screamed at Carew Kingston who stood just behind her, his shadow falling across the prince’s eyes as he looked up. For a brief moment he was certain the revolver would be used again, this time to kill him. ‘Go away!’ she cried.
Carew Kingston did retreat several steps. He paused and when he spoke his voice was hoarse and rather distant.
‘I have one more thing to do.’
It was as if he were talking to himself. They both looked
at him. Perhaps there was a simultaneous and instinctive awareness of what he intended. The prince braced himself and even tried to stand. Lady Helen, her head turned, raised one hand in restraint.
‘Don’t shoot!’ she cried.
‘You may think I am guilty but I am not! I must simply mete out my own justice! My exile is finished now! Death is finished! There is nothing left of it!’
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.
He did not hear, it seems. Slowly, with an awful dignity, he brought the revolver up to his own mouth.
‘Oh, my God, no!’ she shouted.
He pulled the trigger. His whole body was shot backwards by the force of the bullet and he fell supine on the grass. In the wake of the explosion and the slight jerk of the limbs as he died, Lady Helen made no sound. She gasped open-mouthed, one mechanical gasp after another, still leaning over the prince, unable, it seemed, to make a move. Then after thirty seconds she suddenly sprang to her feet.
‘I’ll go and get James.’
The statement was matter-of-fact and calm. She remained matter-of-fact and calm for what seemed a small eternity as she stared down at the suicide. Then she brought both hands up to her face. Seeing the blood streaming from the shattered skull, she started screaming. She went on screaming as she ran across the lawn.
The prince watched her and slowly the vision of a black-canopied boat floating across smooth water superimposed itself on the garden’s greenery, on the white framework of the greenhouse, on the silvery bedazzlement of sun-reflecting panes of glass. He closed his eyes. The vision floated right up to him. He saw Anna Karenina look up at him with the same bright, vivacious smile she had given him when she first met him in St Petersburg, when she had clutched him to her in mistake for her own son and her perfume, her femininity, her sensuality had engulfed him with a quickening, enchanting sweetness. He was flying down a steep lane towards her, butterflies brushing his face like dry snowflakes and the spokes of his bicycle’s wheels making a whirring sound through the long grass. The river came up towards him and her smile spread out before him as calmly as the sunlit water. He flew towards her and she clutched him to her.
Then he smelled what he had smelled before as a young officer, the smell, sweet and oily, of fresh blood. It came in little eddies through the hot perfumes of the garden and filled his nostrils. He heard Lady Helen’s voice shouting out, ‘James! James!’ The shouts were faint and seemed part of a dream.
They were obliterated almost instantly by the shrill, sharp, explosive sound of a locomotive whistle piercing the afternoon quiet and trailing off into echo after echo after echo.
Epilogue
Months later he contentedly watched Portland Place through the tall windows of his drawing room. The lamps were lit, shedding pools of light at intervals along areas of cobble and paving. The wet evening looked beautifully serene. Hansom cabs went by in ones or twos, awakening minor staccato echoes among the tall houses and emphasising the width of the street. If the curtains were not drawn, it was because he liked to stare out at the gleam of rainy stonework and shiny wrought iron railing that fronted his own house. Beyond this static foreground, made mysterious by darkness, was the chiaroscuro of shadows as umbrellas moved under the lamps and splashes of light came from metalwork on cabs or the oil-lit interiors of passing omnibuses. All was magnified by the rain into soft, liquid, painterly streaks in keeping with his mood.
He was content because he had no reason to be otherwise. The winter season was coming to an end. Soon he would have to make plans for the annual visit to the Tula estate, along with the likelihood that his mother-in-law might be coming to stay for several months. Her health was improved after Princess Alisa’s extended visit during the summer when, so it turned out, there had been a few weeks of considerable anxiety over her back pain. One doctor had even thought she might be confined to a wheelchair for life. Eventually all was well. In the meantime, though, the prince had ‘kicked his heels’ – a phrase he often used now in an effort to be more conspicuously English than ever – literally from one engagement to another, from one house party to another, from card game to horse race to theatre visit throughout his grass-widowhood. One thing he had not done: he had not mounted a bicycle. The hurt to his thigh had been too painful, he usually took care to explain if anyone queried his limp. He was reminded of the sharp pain of the bullet wound once again as he turned sharply away from the drawing room window.
There was a sound behind him. Momentarily all he heard was the low hiss of the gas lamps on either side of the chimneybreast, slightly louder even than the soft crackle of a coal falling in the fire. Then came soft footsteps and he knew it was Princess Alisa.
She came into the drawing room dressed for that evening’s dinner in a loose but elegantly fashionable dark-blue Liberty gown that was enlivened by a choker of pearls at the neck and a tiara worn majestically in tight control of her abundant blonde hair. Turning from the window to greet her, the prince could hardly fail to notice the glass-fronted portrait above the mantelpiece containing his wife’s face, younger perhaps by a couple of years, looking in mauve-eyed brilliance from below modest curves of eyebrow directly at him, only for his gaze to meet the very same eyes shining happily as she approached.
‘What were you looking at, dear? In any case, the curtains ought to be drawn.’
He said he had just been watching the traffic in Portland Place. In fact, what he had been thinking about earlier, before the sheer thoughtless pleasure of contemplating the traffic had proved more attractive, was how successful he had been in erasing the whole episode of Stadleigh Court from his mind, especially as he knew his wife had her own good reasons for suspecting he had not told her the whole truth.
‘Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, my dear.’ Speaking as she looked down at the fire, she pulled the bell-pull beside the chimneybreast. ‘I must just go and see that the table’s properly arranged. My Nathalie’ll be dining with us tonight.’
Nathalie was employed as her lady’s maid but because the employment had begun in Russia they tended to regard each other as bosom friends. He heard Princess Alisa speaking to someone immediately after leaving the room and practically at once a young maid came in to draw the curtains. Rather embarrassingly he found himself nervously pulling at the starched cuffs of his dress shirt, as if they were not extending the requisite length beyond the sleeves of his velvet jacket. As he did this, a mantelpiece clock tinkled out the half-hour in discreet strokes almost in time with the sound of the runners being pulled along the curtain rails. The maid curtsied to him and left.
A little fastidiously and perhaps too automatically for his own liking he felt for his watch, flipped open the lid and checked it against the clock on the mantelpiece. The gesture reminded him – again for no clear reason – of the way he had consulted his pocket watch after his bicycling accident. He was reminded at that instant of his injury and the damage done to his clothes. Now, standing in front of the fire, dressed formally for the evening meal, he could not help smiling at how the formality surrounding the London custom of always dressing for dinner contrasted with the state of things when he had first met Lady Helen. Princess Alisa would have been shocked, he thought. He replaced his watch in the pocket of his waistcoat.
The front door bell rang on the floor below. It was a distant ringing and the sound was hardly audible. Since there was no ensuing sound of voices or hurried footsteps, the prince resumed his contemplation of the painting above the mantelpiece until he heard a faint footfall. It was Cotton. He entered almost noiselessly, bowed and approached with such an ingratiating and concerned expression that the prince inhaled quite sharply as though having suffered a very unexpected, caustic insult.
‘Sir, I have taken the liberty of showing a lady into the study. She was most anxious to speak to you alone.’
‘Alone? Who on earth?’
‘Alone, sir, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, sir, I think you know her. She comes
from… If I mention a certain name, may I whisper it, sir?’
‘Are you absolutely sure you must be so discreet?’
‘I am, sir.’
Cotton leaned forward and whispered. The prince expressed his amazement by pursing his lips.
‘Well, then, I think, I’d better… Yes, thank you, Cotton.’
He nodded, swallowed hard, acknowledged Cotton’s tactfulness in treating the matter so delicately and followed him out of the drawing room, down the stairs and into his ground-floor study.
If he were to meet the person alluded to by Cotton, he knew it might be hard to suppress delight at seeing her again. Equally, it would be difficult to avoid recalling what had happened. He could hardly fail to be reminded of the bullet wound to his thigh and the doctor’s rapid treatment of it that had most certainly saved him from the disease of wounding. It was so fully healed by the time Princess Alisa returned from Russia that he attributed the scar to his bicycling accident. Yet it was precisely his wife about whom he now worried most, since she had unimaginably sensitive emotional antennae that would instantly perceive the undercurrents of feeling set racing by someone whose unusual beauty had set his own heart racing so fast.
At first glance, though, he could not be sure. She had her back to him and was facing towards the large wall mirror near his desk. Even when she turned on hearing the approaching footsteps and Cotton’s introductory words, the hood of her cloak, still wet from the rain, concealed her face so successfully he did not recognise her immediately. It was only when he invited her to sit down that he glimpsed her features. The brilliant blue of her eyes shone out at once and dazzled him. She was clutching a bag very tightly as she sat down and kept it firmly in her lap with gloved fingers when she was seated.
They spoke simultaneously, he saying, ‘I am delighted’ and she saying, ‘Prince, I apologise for not giving any notice…’ and both laughing a little awkwardly. He drew up a chair.
The Killing of Anna Karenina Page 24