Murder and Revolution Read online

  “This is Kaspar – a very good cook. He will make a meal for you, and then leave you for the evening. There are two bedrooms in the house, with beds freshly made for you.

  Tomorrow morning, my officer will call here at the cottage, with a carriage to take you to the station. Everything has been taken care of. So now, I will thank you both for the pleasure of your company this afternoon, and take my leave of you. I wish you a very fond farewell.”

  Bukin bows low, then steps up into the carriage, and he’s gone.

  I feel ill. My stomach groans; our evening meal was a plentiful mess of stringy meat. I’ve been sick once already: I made my excuses and sneaked to the bathroom immediately after eating. Kaspar left the cottage soon after, whistling to himself as he strode away down the lane.

  It must be around midnight. I try not to think of my meal, and turn over in bed. The light of a full moon shines through thin drapes. Then my stomach complains again. I have to get up and go to the bathroom. I step across the room to my door, hearing the floorboards creaking under my feet. I put my hand out in the dark, reaching for the handle of my bedroom door.

  It’s locked.

  I rattle the handle. Then I call out “Professor!” But there’s no reply. The professor’s room is opposite mine, on the other side of the corridor, and the wooden walls are thin. The professor must be sleeping very deeply. But something makes me put my eye to a tiny crack in the planks.

  I see a faint, yellowy light, flickering in the corridor. It shines on the walls opposite, and the door of the professor’s room. Someone is holding a small lamp aloft. I hear another faint creak of floorboards. A person is standing in the corridor. I think about the isolation of this cottage, far from other houses.

  “It must be Kaspar – he’s come back because he’s forgotten something.” But even as I say this to myself, I know it’s not true.

  Slowly, as if moving methodically, the stranger is stepping along the corridor, getting nearer to my door. I peer through the crack, and a man’s chest and arms slide into my sight. I can’t see his face, but I can tell that he is wearing what may be a Russian military uniform; a jacket of dark blue serge. Above the jacket collar, I see something shining: a thin silver chain around the man’s neck. Then I look lower, and see arms cradling a mass of white objects. They are pieces of screwed-up newspaper, and one by one they are dropping from the intruder’s hands.

  Then I smell something. Kerosene.

  I shout, and hammer at the door. But nothing happens, except that the smell gets stronger. The intruder is going quietly about his work, not caring that I’m shouting. He knows I’m locked in my room, and that there are no other houses nearby, no people to hear me.

  There’s no time for thought. I run to my window. I can see the catch clearly in the strong moonlight. I pull the catch, and swing the window to open it. It moves three inches, then hits something hard.

  I pull back the drapes widely, and now I can see. The window should open outwards – but two large planks have been nailed diagonally in an X-shape across the outer frame.

  I look over my shoulder, at the door of my room. I see a red flash at the foot of the door, and hear the roar of flames in the corridor.

  I push at the window with all my strength, but the planks holding it in are immovable. I cough; smoke is already seeping into my room. Glancing back, I see that every crack and gap in the interior wall of my room is beginning to glow like a furnace.

  Can I swing the window inwards, instead of outwards? I tug at it and, resisting, it gradually bends inwards into the room. Then my arms slip, as I’m racked by another cough.

  My eyes are blinking with the smoke. I look at the X-shape of the planks against the moonlit sky. The window is maybe three feet wide. I pull myself into the triangle of space below the cross of the planks. My nightdress catches on the windowsill, but I’m moving forward, writhing like a worm through the narrow gap. My hips grind on the wood, but I keep pulling. Moments later, I breathe fresh air, and my face hits the soil.

  I struggle to my feet and run round to what must be the professor’s window. I hear the crackle of the fire, but all is dark on this side of the house. In the gloom I see another X-shape of planks, nailed across the window.

  “Professor!” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs. Is he already dead? Then, in the twilight, I notice something. Whoever nailed up our windows isn’t very clever. Sitting on the windowsill is a claw hammer.

  The planks are deeply nailed. I strain my utmost at the hammer to lever the nail from the wood. Suddenly the nail pops out. With its lower end now free, the plank swings down. I turn my attention to the other plank. A few seconds later, that plank too swings free.

  The window catch is closed from the inside. My eyes cast around wildly, seeing nothing I can use to prize it open. The roaring of the blaze is now loud in my ears. Smoke begins to sting my nostrils.

  I’m still holding the claw hammer. I hit the edge of the window sill with the claw, and the wood splinters. I pull free a long, thin splinter from the sill. I’m lucky; it slips through the gap between the window and the frame. I slide it upwards to the window catch, lifting, trying to be slow and careful. The catch pushes up, and moments later, I pull the window open. A wall of smoke billows at me.

  I yell for help. But the surrounding forest is empty and silent. I turn and pull myself up through the smoke, over the window sill, into the professor’s room.

  I can barely see in the dense smoke, but I can make out his figure, lying still as death on his bed. It’s like an oven in this room, but there are no flames yet. I slap the professor’s face. His eyes remain closed, but he frowns, as if in a bad dream. He’s still alive – but totally unconscious.

  I must get him out of the window. Axelson is middle height, but I’m small and slight. I push him with every fiber of my being. Slowly, he slides off the bed, clattering onto the wooden floor. Even that doesn’t wake him.

  His body is like a slab of dead meat; I try to push him along the carpet. Then I find it’s easier to roll him. Bit by bit, I roll him across the floor, until he’s underneath the window. Now comes the part I haven’t yet had time to think about. Somehow, I have to lift this weight bodily four feet off the floor.

  Without warning, the door of the professor’s room falls inwards, as if hit with a battering ram. A great gout of flame bursts towards us.

  Options run through my head. And there’s only one that gives me any chance. I stand at the window and scream, as if the fires of hell are burning me.

  I see a figure in the moonlight, out there near the road at the edge of the forest. Is he moving towards the house, or away from it? Yes. I’ve caught his attention. He breaks into a run. In seconds, he’s at the window. I choke at him through the smoke.

  “A man – in here. Help me.”

  And he does. In a moment he’s over the windowsill. Flames are now all around us. We pull at the professor’s insensate figure. Together, spluttering in the smoke, we lift the body vertical. Then the stranger grips Axelson’s waist and lifts it bodily, level with the window. The head flops forward, banging on the window frame, but then it falls outside the window. The man’s voice is urgent.

  “Push the feet upwards!”

  I do. The man lifts the Axelson’s hips higher, I push the feet, and like a huge snail, the professor’s body slides slowly over the windowsill. The man bundles the legs through the window.

  “You next, Miss!”

  He lifts me. I’m like a feather in his arms; one second passes, and he throws me through the window. I’m rolling among the vegetables of the cottage garden. The air is still choking me, but I stagger to my feet. The man has jumped through the window like an athlete, and he and I grab the professor under the arms, and drag the body through a patch of pumpkins to the cottage gate.

  I look back, and all I see is fire. The garden is now burning; every plant is sprouting flames. I hear the man’s voice.

  “We must get this body across the road, away from the fire.”

  I pull at the professor’s arms, but I slip. The man simply picks me up again, and deposits me at the far side of the road. Then he runs back to the blazing fence. Thirty seconds later, I see him striding back towards me, carrying the professor’s body over his shoulder. Against the glare, the man’s silhouette is tall and strong. The red glow illuminates the outline of his leather boots, the edges of his woolen jacket. It’s a military uniform. Just like the jacket I saw a few minutes ago, inside the corridor of the cottage.

  4 The Tsarina’s list

  The man speaks quickly to me. “There’s nobody else in the house?”

  “No.”

  His eyes swivel away from me. “Hello! Can you help?”

  Who is he speaking to? My head swoons: everything seems dim around me, and I cough up a mouthful of saliva, black with soot. But I see, looking into my eyes, the face of a peasant woman, and she answers the man.

  “We heard a woman screaming. Then we saw a light, through the trees. We own that old cottage –” she points to the mass of flames “– but we have not been using it this year. Our farm is on the other side of the forest. This is my son.”

  She nudges the young man by her side, and he steps forward out of the shadows. I recognise him: it’s Kaspar. Then the woman looks at me. “You, Miss, must come and rest for the night with us. And my daughter can lend you some day clothes.”

  The uniformed man towers over the two peasants. “In the meantime, I will take this unconscious man straight to the hospital in Ivangorod. Do you have a cart at your farm that I could use?”

  “Yes. Kaspar, take the horse and cart. Put the man’s body in the back, and go along with this soldier.”

  Kaspar’s mother is a better cook than he is. It’s a hour after dawn
, and I’m finishing a hearty breakfast, but I feel sick with anxiety for the professor. Then Kaspar appears at the farmhouse door.

  “Your friend will live. He is still unconscious, but the doctors think he will come round, maybe quite soon.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “The unconsciousness – it is nothing to do with the smoke, Miss. They think he has been drugged in some way. That would also explain why he seemed to have fallen asleep in his room while fully dressed.”

  I look at him. “That meal you prepared for us, Kaspar…”

  “Oh, that! A gentleman called at our farm yesterday afternoon. He said that two distinguished foreigners would like to stay in the old cottage overnight. An odd request, but he offered us good money. Anyway, he said he would provide the food, if I could cook it. He brought us a piece of steak – very expensive, he told me. I have no experience of cooking such things, but he asked me to do my best.”

  “Who was this person?”

  “He said there was no need to know his name. My family – we are Estonians, not Russians. So when someone like that man talks to me, I don’t ask questions. If I did, then trouble would come to me and my family.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Kaspar shrugs. “Just the usual things they do to Estonian families. The man was a military person, in uniform. I thought that both of you were his friends. I’m sorry, but I assumed you were Okhrana.”

  I know that word – but I ask anyway. Kaspar responds, in a matter of fact voice.

  “Yes, Okhrana. The secret police.”

  Professor Axelson’s head is propped on a pillow, and his sleeping face peeps above a white sheet. It’s now nine o’clock in the morning, and we’re in a private hospital room next to a large ward of injured soldiers. A doctor is standing with me, holding the professor’s case notes in his hand.

  “He inhaled a little smoke, but his breathing is fine now. There are no other ill effects of the fire. As I told the young man who brought him in, he appears to be unconscious because he has been drugged. A powerful sleeping draught. I have no idea when it will wear off.”

  “Two men brought him here, Doctor. Did the other man give his name?”

  “No. Just one man, a Mr Kaspar Sepp, brought him in. By the way, we have dressed your friend in a hospital gown: do you mind taking his clothes? We have put them in this bag.”

  I sit by the bedside. I can’t help reaching under the sheets, and taking the professor’s hand. I hold it, gripping the passive fingers.

  “Professor. Can you hear me? It’s Agnes here. Please, please wake up.”

  The professor lies unmoving. I sit for a long time, thinking. It’s now been eighteen months since I was home with Ma and Pa. Winter’s a busy season for drugstore owners, and I was needed at home to help Pa dispense pills and potions to the folks of Putnam until February 1915, when I got the opportunity I wanted. I sailed to Europe and joined the Red Cross on the battlegrounds of Flanders. Apart from a couple of days as a tourist in Geneva, my trip to Stockholm was my first holiday from nursing the wounded of the Great War. Many soldiers I treated had no injuries to the body; their wounds were to the mind. Nervy, stammering and sometimes completely dumb, they were living husks of the young men they had once been.

  Despite that, I enjoy my work: I’m looking forward to getting back to it – as soon as the professor and I can get out of this odd interlude in Russia, I think. The clock on the wall ticks away. It’s now eleven o’clock, and the professor hasn’t moved.

  A shadow distracts me. The door has a glass panel, and my eyes are drawn to a large shape looming beyond it. The door opens, and it’s the figure that I recognise, not the face. It’s the man who rescued us.

  “You are Miss Frocester, I understand? And the patient is Professor Axelson? I’m Captain Yuri Sirko.”

  “Thank you –”

  The man smiles. In his woolen uniform, his tall, broad-shouldered figure reminds me of a bear. He’s maybe thirty. A thatch of brown hair crowns a strong face with high cheekbones. Dark eyes look down at the professor.

  “Still unconscious?”

  “Yes. But it’s not caused by the smoke. He’s been drugged. I think it was the meal we had. We can’t thank you enough.”

  “I was just doing my job. I’m a kind of odd-job man for Mr Bukin. Yesterday he told me he had two important guests – a Swede and an American. He asked me to accompany your journey to St Petersburg. He also gave me the errand of going to the railway station and buying three first-class train tickets for us – which I have done. Mr Bukin also gave me directions to that cottage in the woods, and he told me to call on you there this morning. Something… I don’t know what it was, really. A sense of unease. So on my way home last night, I took a detour past the cottage, just to check all was well.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I plan to do the bodyguard job that Bukin gave me. Which means – I wait here, with you.” He smiles again, and I see a twinkle of humor in his eyes. “Compared to most of my duties, Miss Frocester, this is easy work. The lap of luxury. You never know, the nurses might even bring me a cup of tea.”

  “That sounds very English.”

  “The English are not real tea drinkers, Miss Frocester! Nor are you Americans – with your Boston Tea Party. You threw it all in the harbor, didn’t you? Oh no – no-one drinks tea like us Russians do. Anyway, I’ll ask. Shall I order a cup for you, too?”

  He steps out of the door. The professor sleeps on, and a few minutes go by. To pass the time, I open the bag that the doctor gave me. The professor’s clothes are stuffed clumsily inside. I take them out and fold them neatly, then put them back in the bag. Then I go over to the window. It’s a ground-floor room, looking out onto the street; there is little to see. I go back to my chair.

  As I sit, I notice a scrap of paper on the floor. It wasn’t there before.

  I bend and pick it up. It’s a single sheet, but folded several times into a tiny packet. It feels like velvet in my fingers: the highest quality paper. I’ve felt paper like this only once before, in the gardens of Drottningholm Palace.

  I open my own handbag. Gustaf V suggested we bring the Tsarina’s letter with us to Russia, in case we encountered any unhelpful officials. I find the letter in my bag, and take it out of its envelope. Then I unfold the scrap I’ve just found, and put the two papers side by side. The type of paper, and the handwriting, is identical.

  But this new piece of paper is not a letter. It’s some kind of list. I also realise where it’s come from. When I was looking at the painting of Ivan the Fool at Tri Tsarevny, Professor Axelson was examining what I thought was a mirrored dressing-table. But it must have really been a writing-desk; he must have found this paper there. He put it in his pocket, and it fell out when I folded his clothes…

  My eyes run down the Tsarina’s list. The list is divided by underlined words, like sub-headings. Main Dacha, Servants’ Quarters, First Princess, Second Princess, Third Princess.

  Under each heading is a list of names. They are all the names that Professor Axelson wanted from Mr Bukin. The Tsarina has listed everyone staying at Tri Tsarevny, according to their room. The Tsarina and her young son Alexei Nikolaevich are in the main Dacha, as expected, plus one other name ‘Nestor’. There are about twenty names under Servants’ Quarters. Then I look at the other headings. Under Second Princess, the name of Svea Håkansson jumps out at me. Listed against the Third Princess is another name I recognise: Grigor Rasputin. But I breathe in sharply, when I read the name listed under First Princess.

  Captain Yuri Sirko.

  Finally, I read the last heading on the page. It says ‘Day Guest’. Underneath it is a curious phrase. ‘The butterfly collector’.

  “My mission is successful!” Sirko reappears with a tray. Shall I mention to him what I have just read? No; I’ll wait, and see what else he tells me about himself.

  There’s no table in the room: he puts the tray on the broad window sill. There are two chipped cups and two teapots, one large, one small. He smiles broadly at me.