Death Notes (A Phineas Fox Mystery)

by Sarah Rayne

  As if something had picked up this last thought, as he got out of the car he heard music coming from inside the house. It was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 – the piece inspired by the playing of blind beggar-musicians in Kiev. It suddenly seemed very right to Phin that a meeting with Roman Volf’s descendant should be to a backdrop of flamboyant music by a Russian composer. He stood for a moment, listening, then took a deep breath and reached for the door knocker.

  It was so rare for anyone to knock on the door of the Sexton’s House, that it was several moments before the man listening to Tchaikovsky realized what the sound was.

  The instinct was, as always, to ignore the knock, to turn up the music’s volume and wait for whoever was outside to go away. But the knock came again, slightly louder. Whoever was out there would have heard the music and know someone was inside.

  It was possible, from the side window of this room, to see on to the track. If there was no car there, the knock was better ignored, because it would very likely be local children, daring one another to go up to the weird man’s house. That had happened once or twice. But if a car was there … There was a sudden absurd stab of hope that if a car should be there, it might be the small blue hatchback that Beatrice Drury drove. If so, would I open the door to her? In daylight, with no friendly, concealing darkness?

  But the car parked outside was not Beatrice Drury’s. It bore the logo of a car-hire firm, which probably meant it was a tourist who had lost his – or her – way. That was relatively safe; the door could be opened, a brief set of directions given from the shadow of the hall, then the world shut out again and Tchaikovsky resumed.

  The man standing outside had not the look of a lost traveller. He was in his early or mid-thirties, and he had unremarkable brown hair and an intelligent mouth. He also had extraordinary clear grey eyes, rimmed with black. In a second or two, the eyes would flinch and the sensitive lips would tighten with the blend of pity and repulsion that had become all too familiar over the last two years.

  But this did not happen. The stranger said, ‘Hello. I’m sorry to turn up unannounced like this.’ An English voice, a bit diffident. ‘My name’s Phineas Fox and – wait a bit, I’ve got a card … Yes, here it is. I’m hoping I’ve got the right house and that you’re Maxim Volf, because I’m researching possible links to the nineteenth-century musician Roman Volf. I think he might have been one of your ancestors.’

  The card simply said, ‘Phineas Fox, music researcher.’ There was a string of letters that probably should have meant something, but did not, and a London address. Clearly this was not something in which to become involved; the man could be sent on his way with curt politeness about never having heard of a nineteenth-century musician called Roman Volf.

  Incredibly, the curt politeness did not come. Instead, the admission, ‘Yes, I am Maxim Volf,’ came out, and once said, could not be called back. But it was possible to dilute it a bit, by saying, firmly, ‘I’m not sure about anyone called Roman Volf, though—’

  ‘I’m not sure either,’ said Phineas Fox, eagerly. ‘But I’ve been commissioned to dig up material about him, and I’ve traced a son of his to this part of Ireland.’ He spread his hands. ‘It’s most likely a wild-goose chase and a complete dead-end, but – did you ever hear that you might have a Russian musician in your family? A violinist? The 1870s and early 1880s it would be. He was famous and somewhat scandalous.’

  It was the phrase, ‘in your family’, that tipped the balance. This stranger, this Phineas Fox, was offering a family, ancestors, a history. The deep loneliness of having no one – of being connected to nothing, of knowing that being so disfigured meant there never would be any woman who would want any connection of any kind – was suddenly almost overwhelming. The family Phineas Fox was offering would be a stolen family, just as Maxim Volf’s identity had been stolen, but even so …

  The next words were out before they could be stopped. ‘I don’t think I can help you, but would you like to come in for a moment anyway?’

  The small sitting room had never had two people in it, and it seemed suddenly overcrowded. But Phineas Fox took the deep armchair near the window, and accepted the rather awkwardly made offer of tea or coffee. It felt strange to be putting out two cups and two saucers, to ask about sugar, even to remember a packet of biscuits in a cupboard. Forgotten rituals. Yet I must have done this many times in that other, lost life. And across the coffee cups the atmosphere lightened – it was easy to forget how sharing even the most modest of refreshments broke down barriers.

  It was instinctive to sit away from the light, to have a hand ready to shield the more severely scarred side, but Phineas Fox seemed hardly to notice, and he certainly did not seem to find it disconcerting. There was the impression of an eager, inquisitive mind, and of someone to whom outward trappings did not matter very much.

  ‘I’m commissioned to provide background on Roman Volf for a possible TV documentary,’ said Phineas Fox. ‘And it seems a son of his – illegitimate, apparently – came to this part of Ireland – probably shortly after World War One. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘To find the son? No, to find descendants of the son.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve also uncovered a Maxim Volf from around the same time, although I haven’t been able to link him definitely to Roman yet.’

  Maxim Volf. This stranger meant the real Maxim, of course, the man who lay in the small graveyard. It was a curious and unsettling experience to hear the name spoken aloud.

  ‘And since Volf isn’t a very common surname,’ Phineas Fox was saying, ‘I’m making a tentative connection to you. Could I ask if you have any knowledge of your grandparents or great-grandparents? Not everyone does, of course, and people move around so much these days and don’t always know their backgrounds. But I wondered if you might know if any of your family were from these parts?’

  It would be perfectly possible to deny knowledge of grandparents, to say there was no real Irish connection at all and certainly no connection to Kilcarne.

  And yet …

  And yet here was something to seize and hold on to, something on which, and around which, a spurious reality might be woven. The prospect was as beckoning as the siren song of legend. But it would be necessary to be cautious, to be aware of pitfalls. So—

  ‘I don’t know very much about my family at all.’

  ‘Do you have any old photographs, perhaps? Scrapbooks – old newspaper cuttings? Because,’ said Phineas Fox, ‘it’s astonishing how people keep those kind of things, and how they hardly ever throw them away, because – well, I suppose because there’s a sentimental streak in most of us that doesn’t want to destroy our past.’

  Again, it was a surprise to hear the words, ‘I believe there’s a couple of letters somewhere. I don’t know where they came from. Just some old papers that I never threw away, I suppose. I don’t recall any mention of your man in them, though. Roman, you said?’

  ‘Roman, yes. Could I … Mr Volf, could you—’

  ‘If we’re going to be on ancestor-digging terms you’d better make it Maxim.’

  ‘Then, Maxim, could I possibly see those letters? And if they do contain anything relevant could I make some notes? My laptop’s in the car. But I promise,’ said Phineas very earnestly, ‘that I won’t use anything you don’t want used. And I won’t mention any names you don’t want mentioning.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find them.’ But if only you knew, Phineas Fox, that I don’t know any names you could mention. I wish to God that I did.

  ‘Now? Could you do that now?’ There, again, was the eagerness.

  ‘Yes, all right. You fetch your laptop while I go up to look for them.’

  The letters had been discovered in Tromloy, on the night Maxim Volf’s name was found. They had been brought away with the smudgy Genesius letter, and the bank deposit acknowledgement, so there could be no potentially risky traces of the real Maxim. It was probably better to leave the bank and the theatre letter locked upst
airs, but there seemed no reason why Phineas Fox could not see the other letters.

  ‘They’re both translations, as you can see.’ The scarred hand pointed to the brief note written across the top of one of the letters. In slanting writing it said, ‘I’ve translated these for you – Russian to English again! But I thought you should have them. We really will have to work on your language skills!’ There was a scribbled initial that might be anything.

  ‘I don’t know who wrote that note. Presumably it was the translator.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder who that was,’ said Phineas. He spread the letters out carefully, and sat looking at them as if they were the Holy Grail, his grey eyes glowing with fervour. It was almost as if he was absorbing the contents through his eyes, letting them soak deep into his mind. The small sitting room, the entire house, seemed to slide into a different world – a world that belonged to the people who had lived in those letters. It was absurd to suddenly feel as if those shadowy figures had crept closer and were nearby, watching and listening, but the thought formed. It seemed as if Phineas felt the same thing, because he glanced towards the window behind him, as if half expecting to see someone standing there.

  Then he said, ‘Shall I read them aloud? You said you’d read them already, but—’

  ‘It was a long time ago, and I can’t remember much about them. Yes, read them aloud, then we can both hear them.’

  Phin spread the letters out carefully, and began to read.

  TWELVE

  The shorter of the two letters began, quite simply, ‘My dearest love.’

  My dearest love. I am arranging to transfer the money we discussed into a trust account which I wish to be used for renovating the Skomorokh Theatre in Odessa. I hope it can be done. I will never forget – will you ever forget, either? – how we walked through the burned-out ruins together that first time, and you described to me how the place could be restored and made to live again. At first I could only see the blackened stones and the sad desolation, but you made me see it as it could be – the bright chandeliers, the crimson and gilt, the velvet-padded boxes on each side of the stage … It seemed like a wild dream – one of your wildest – but I believe now that your dream could happen. And so quite soon I will be able to send the details of the account that is being created to make your dream a reality. And one day perhaps we shall walk together and openly along Tchaikovsky Street, and enter the glittering portals you summoned out of the ruins.

  I am forever yours, as I always was and always will be,

  Antoinette.

  Phineas laid down the letter. ‘How extraordinary,’ he said, his eyes still on the faded writing. ‘I found a photograph of Roman Volf and an unnamed lady standing outside the ruins of that theatre. It’s not too much of a leap to think that lady might have been Antoinette. The date was 1881.’

  ‘What was the Skomorokh Theatre?’ The name meant nothing, and a long-ago Russian theatre could not hold much relevance, but it was still interesting. ‘Did I pronounce that right, Mr Fox?’

  ‘Phin, for heaven’s sake. “Mr Fox” sounds like a character from Beatrix Potter, and “Phineas” is out of a nineteenth-century travelogue. You can imagine,’ said Phin, his eyes still on the letter, ‘the kind of teasing I came in for at school.’

  ‘I can. Names are so important for a child. I remember …’ Something darted across the misted surface of memory on scurrying goblin-feet, then was gone.

  ‘Yes?’ Phin looked up.

  ‘Nothing. One of those incomplete thoughts that slides away.’

  ‘I think your pronunciation was probably fine. I don’t know if I got it right, though. But however it’s pronounced, it burned down in 1878, and three years later there was talk about an anonymous donor for its rebuilding.’

  ‘And Antoinette was the anonymous donor?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And the man she’s writing to? The man she walked with through the burned-out ruins?’

  ‘Well,’ said Phin, ‘it’s a slightly larger leap, but put together with the photo I found of the Skomorokh Theatre, I think it must be Roman Volf.’

  ‘What was that theatre?’

  ‘As far as I’ve been able to establish, it had been home to some very illustrious performers. Roman Volf was one of them. It was named for the skomorokhs – maybe that should be skomorokhi. They were a form of medieval harlequin – itinerant performers who could sing and dance and play music. They wrote their own dramas and even their own music.’

  ‘Skomorokh … Would the word link to Scaramouche? The Harlequin figure?’

  ‘Yes, it would,’ said Phin, looking up, pleased. ‘You can’t imagine how nice it is to meet someone who knows what I’m talking about – and can make that link. Most people have heard of Harlequin and Columbine, but Scaramouche isn’t quite as well known.’

  ‘The old traditions of story-telling – of story-performing – are fascinating, aren’t they?’ That was another fragmented thought that might have come from anywhere.

  Phin said, ‘The skomorokh date to around the ninth century, and …’ He broke off with an apologetic gesture. ‘Sorry, I get a bit carried away when I’m interested in something.’

  ‘It is interesting. Genuinely.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m still not sure,’ said Phin, looking back at the letter, ‘if any of it gets me any closer to Roman. Although it gives me a name I didn’t have.’

  ‘Antoinette.’

  The name lay on the air like a strand of faded silk.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phin, and reached for the second of the letters. ‘Have you read this as well?’

  ‘Probably. I can’t really remember. They’ve both been stuffed in that envelope for – for longer than I know. It looks like the same handwriting in both, doesn’t it, so I’d guess it was the same translator. But read it aloud again, so I can listen.’

  ‘There’s no date on either of them, but this one seems to have been written some time after that first one,’ said Phin. He began to read.

  My love – there is talk of your boy being taken to see the … I cannot write that word. Perhaps if I do not write it or say it or even think it, it will not become a reality.

  But there is talk of him being taken to watch what they do to you. The people – also the Romanovs – believe Roman Volf’s family should know the full punishment their beloved tsar’s murderer receives. I will do all I can to prevent him seeing it, though.

  I have been able to visit him several times, and he trusts me, I think, although he is clearly frightened and bewildered. I will get him to safety somehow – as far away from St Petersburg as possible. The family are already insisting I leave, because of any repercussions that might follow your execution …

  Your execution. The two words lay on the air like silt, and the sensation of being pulled into that long-ago world strengthened. For a moment the echoes from that world were so strong it was almost possible to hear – to feel – the padding footsteps of the hangman creeping forward … Phin Fox seemed to hear the echoes as well, because he raised his head from the letters, and half looked round.

  ‘Is there someone outside? I thought I heard—’

  ‘Only the ghosts. Sorry, Phin, I didn’t mean that literally. I don’t think there’s anyone there. People don’t often come out here, and we’d have heard a car drive up the track.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Phin glanced over his shoulder at the window again, then resumed reading.

  Execution … I have written the word. I pray it will not bring the reality into being. I would pawn my soul to save you. No, it is more even than that. I would willingly give my soul to save you – I would seek out the Prince of Darkness myself and barter with him if it would mean you would live.

  The writer had begun a second page, and at the head of the second page, had written,

  As to Maxim – I think we both know that is a danger of an entirely different kind. And we both know, too, how much I am risking even by committing his name to paper. But I cannot bear t
o think he will be forgotten completely. So I write his name here, and I give you my word that, in addition to all else, I will do everything I can for Maxim.

  And again was the signature:

  I am forever yours, as I always was and always will be,

  Antoinette.

  Phin turned the letter over to make sure there was nothing on the back of the page, then said, ‘She doesn’t say Maxim Volf, not specifically.’

  ‘No.’

  Phin looked at the letter again. ‘That reference to the execution adds to the likelihood of it being Roman she was writing to.’

  ‘Was Roman Volf executed?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was convicted of being involved in the assassination of one of the tsars,’ said Phin. ‘Alexander II in 1881. There was a trial and he was hanged shortly afterwards. There was something of a backlash against his killers – partly by the people, because he had become known as Alexander the Liberator. He was responsible for all kinds of radical changes – reforming the judicial system, and very particularly ending serfdom in the country. I think the new laws weren’t quite going to herald the new golden age the people had wanted, but it was a huge step in the direction of freedom and Alexander certainly embraced the concept of what we now call glasnost.’

  ‘Openness,’ said Maxim, thoughtfully, and Phin shot him a surprised look.

  ‘Yes. So a great many people would have hated Roman for halting Alexander’s reform process. But the Romanovs probably hated him more. The assassination had terrified them – their power was under threat – and they were ruthless about hunting down everyone who had the smallest involvement in the assassination.’

  ‘Including Roman Volf.’

  ‘Yes. But,’ said Phin, ‘I’m not sure if he was guilty. I’ve found one or two discrepancies.’

  Maxim glanced at the letters again, then said, ‘Who was the boy Antoinette refers to?’

  ‘I think it’s Roman’s illegitimate son. The son I traced here. Without any dates I can’t be sure, but it seems to fit. His name was Mortimer Quince, and he became a music-hall performer – a singer. I have no idea how or why he ended up in Ireland – it sounds as if Antoinette was going to smuggle him out of Russia, though, and he’s documented as appearing on several London stages. But his name appears on a musical event in a Galway Theatre in 1921 – he was an organizer or a director, or something. The name of Maxim Volf also appears on it. The theatre was called The Genesius, and— What have I said?’