Katerina's Secret

by Mary Jane Staples

  ‘Delighted,’ said the colonel fervently.

  Katerina, walking slowly down the terrace steps, stopped as Dr Kandor called to her.

  ‘No, you should not wander around the garden,’ he said. ‘Please stay on the terrace.’

  ‘I wished just for five minutes out here,’ she said.

  ‘Keep to the terrace, won’t you?’ he said kindly.

  Katerina came back up the steps. She looked big-eyed, as if she had not slept well. The Alsatian moved around her. Dr Kandor nodded. He liked her always to have the dog close to her when she was outside. He went down the steps himself, lighting his pipe as he made his way to the little gate. Katerina, standing on the terrace, watched him as he went through the gate. He too occasionally liked to wander out there, beyond the wall, and look at any people who were on the beach. He would stand there, she knew, lost in his own thoughts, reflecting on his more active years when he had been the Surgeon-General of the Imperial Army.

  Katerina picked up the dog’s leash from a chair and clipped it to the collar. She stooped and fixed the leash to a leg of the table.

  The dog pricked up its ears after a while, bristled, barked and strained at the leash.

  Edward was preoccupied during lunch. Katerina was beginning to haunt him, a very disturbing thing to a man who felt ill-equipped to take care of a woman. His emotions were playing the very devil with his work.

  The dining room wore a leisurely air. Only six guests were present, and the voluble Mademoiselle Dupont was among the absent ones. Monsieur Valery, her bête noire, was consuming his meal fairly cheerfully, but would obviously have enjoyed it more had she been there to enchant his infatuated eyes.

  She appeared eventually, but looked wildly agitated. She swept up to Edward, who was drinking his coffee.

  ‘Edward – please come outside – quickly, quickly.’

  Rosamund and Colonel Brecht looked up as Edward followed the Frenchwoman out of the room. Celeste, in the kitchen, was spared the sight of Mademoiselle Dupont taking him into the empty lounge.

  She turned to him, wringing her hands

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Edward.

  ‘Something terrible. At the Villa d’Azur. Someone fell from the top of its cliff – dead, Edward, dead!’ She wrung her hands distractedly.

  ‘Oh, my God, no.’ The shock induced a violent constriction in his chest. He fought for breath.

  In the lobby, Madame Michel was suddenly confronted by a dark, wiry man as he burst in through the front doors. He thrust a letter into her hands. It was addressed to Edward. The man turned and left without a word, running down the steps to the road. Madame Michel took the letter into the dining room, where Rosamund informed her that Edward was elsewhere, with Mademoiselle Dupont. Madame Michel found them in the lounge, where the Frenchwoman was spilling distracted words.

  ‘For you, m’sieur,’ said Madame Michel, giving the letter to Edward. She saw his face, darkening as he fought for breath. ‘Sit down, m’sieur, sit down – what is wrong? What has happened, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Oh, it’s terrible, madame, terrible,’ gasped Mademoiselle Dupont, ‘a man has fallen to his death from the Villa d’Azur. I came to tell Monsieur Somers first, because he’s acquainted with them there.’

  More words tumbled from her lips as Edward, wheezing, opened the letter.

  Edward – please come – please help me – Dr Kandor is dead – I need you. Katerina.

  Mademoiselle Dupont, strolling on the beach, had seen it happen fifty minutes ago, she said. She had heard a cry and seen the man falling from the cliff top, twisting and bouncing down over the rocky incline, and landing dead and broken on the rocks at the foot. She had run to him and seen he was dead. There was a boy at the other end of the beach, a boy from the village, and she had sent him back there to get a doctor and a gendarme. They were there now.

  Mademoiselle Dupont collapsed into a chair. Madame Michel put her hand on Edward’s shoulder.

  ‘I’ll send Celeste to comfort the countess,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll go together,’ said Edward, ‘I can manage.’

  ‘You are sure, m’sieur?’

  ‘Yes. Give me a moment.’

  ‘If you are very sure,’ said Madame Michel gently, ‘then go by yourself. Celeste will be too emotional for a while.’

  It was not far, the villa, but Edward’s chest was tight and painful, breathing an effort, and for all his sense of urgency he had to walk slowly. He heard running footsteps behind him as he approached the villa. Celeste was flying to catch him up.

  ‘Oh, Edward,’ she gasped as she arrived beside him, ‘Mama told me – oh, of course I must come too – I shan’t be hysterical. It’s dreadful, dreadful – Madame’s good doctor, who took such care of her – what can we do?’

  ‘Comfort her?’ said Edward wheezily.

  ‘How could he have fallen like that?’ Celeste was pale with shock. ‘He was such a careful man in all he did.’

  Yes, thought Edward, Dr Kandor was the last man likely to fall carelessly off the top of a cliff.

  The body had been brought up. The doctor now lay dead on his bed, with a sheet over him. The gendarme was questioning Anna. Sandro, the other servant, the dark, wiry man, was on the terrace, eyes glittering as he stared at the view of the sea. At the rear of the villa, the Alsatian was barking. The doctor from La Roche was talking to Katerina. She, white and numb, was seated at the table. As Edward and Celeste entered through the green gate, she came to her feet.

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ she said quietly, ‘my friends are here now.’

  ‘But is there nothing I can do for you, Countess? You’re in shock—’

  ‘Yes, I am, but I’m not ill.’

  Since he knew what others had heard about her, that she had a weak heart, Dr Bruge was reluctant to leave it at that.

  ‘Allow me to prescribe—’

  ‘A little sedative of some kind, Dr Bruge, that’s all I need, thank you,’ said Katerina.

  ‘I’ll make it up here,’ he said, and went into the villa with his bag.

  Edward and Celeste came up the steps and Katerina put her hands out to them.

  ‘Thank you, thank you for coming,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh, madame,’ said Celeste, and took one hand between hers and pressed it.

  Katerina’s eyes were on Edward. In hers, tragedy was darkly reflected.

  ‘Say nothing for the moment, Katerina,’ he said. He knew she must have had to talk at length to the gendarme and the doctor. ‘Sit down with us quietly for a while, won’t you?’

  They sat down. Celeste, eyes huge and sorrowful, glanced from one to the other. In their silence they were one, Madame with her head bowed, her hand tightly clasping Edward’s.

  Anna said protestingly to the gendarme in her heavy French, ‘But I saw nothing, nothing, and have told you so. I am in the kitchen, doing lunch. I am not knowing what is happening or where the countess was. Sandro, he is in the village then.’

  ‘I’m not trying to alarm you,’ said the gendarme, making notes, ‘only trying to find out if anyone, besides the lady on the beach, saw him fall.’

  He came across to Katerina. He bowed. He was the village policeman, and a friendly man. He advised Katerina that he must telephone the prefect of police at Nice to report the tragedy. There was no telephone at the villa, and Edward supposed this was because Dr Kandor had wanted an extra touch of peace and quiet for Katerina.

  The gendarme departed. Dr Bruge came out with a glass in which he had mixed the sedative. Katerina drank it. The doctor, assuring her he could be called on if required, that he would issue the certificate, contact the coroner and the undertakers, made a sympathetic exit.

  Quietness descended.

  ‘No one saw it happen, no one,’ whispered Katerina, ‘except the woman on the beach.’

  ‘No one could have expected to see it from inside the garden or from here,’ said Edward, ‘the wall hides the area outside. Someone might have heard somethi
ng, perhaps. Sandro wasn’t in the garden? I believe he usually does garden in the mornings.’

  ‘Sandro was in the village,’ said Katerina. ‘I sent him to buy a few things. He bought all our supplies, food and so on, and isn’t a man who would ever talk.’

  Why, thought Edward, should he have to be a man who would never talk?

  ‘You and Anna were in the house?’ Edward’s chest was slowly freeing itself of constriction.

  ‘Anna was in the kitchen,’ said Katerina tonelessly, ‘I was in my room. I heard Prince barking. I had tied him up. He runs about and digs up the beds unless someone is giving him attention. It upsets Sandro. I came down to see why Prince was barking. There was no one about. I went down to the gate and heard a woman calling up to us from the beach. Her voice wasn’t loud from that distance, but it seemed clearly frantic, and going to the top of the cliff I saw her. I also saw someone lying on the rocks. I went down the steps to the beach.’

  ‘Those steep steps?’ said Edward. ‘And up again? Could anything have put more of a strain on you, or anyone else with a heart condition?’

  ‘I did not think about that,’ said Katerina, quietly grieving. ‘I went down, Edward, and there he was, his neck broken, his head broken and his hair wet with blood. Oh, poor Boris Sergeyovich, so loyal, so caring, so dead.’ She closed her eyes and compressed trembling lips. A little shudder shook her body. Celeste pressed her arm.

  ‘You must rest, Madame, you mustn’t sit and think about it. Edward will stay with you. Yes, Edward?’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ said Edward.

  Celeste rose. She was quite sure these two should be together. She stooped and kissed Katerina’s cheek.

  ‘Dearest Madame,’ she whispered, and she left, to return to the hotel.

  ‘Katerina, do you want to rest, to lie down?’ asked Edward.

  ‘No, not yet.’ She sat, looking at the sea, her grief visible and unashamed.

  Edward thought.

  ‘A pity about the dog,’ he said.

  ‘Edward, you are saying that the dog could have prevented Boris falling?’

  Edward was saying things might have worked out differently if the dog had not been tied up, and if Dr Kandor had had the animal with him. But he could not put it as plainly as that.

  ‘There have to be ifs, Katerina.’

  ‘Yes, I know. If only – if only.’ She was pale, but her sadness was touched by resolution, as if fate’s darker familiars were old antagonists of hers, as if she had fought them before and would again. Her back was straight. ‘But all the ifs are only straws that have disappeared before the wind. My doctor and guardian is very dead. Without him, I’m alone. They will now try—’ She broke off.

  ‘They? They, Katerina? Who are they, and what is it they’ll try?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘It matters very much,’ said Edward. ‘I’m not going to insist you tell me anything you don’t wish to, and this is hardly the time to make myself a nuisance. But I don’t believe Dr Kandor would be careless enough to fall off that cliff any more than I believe the driver of that car was drunk. What I do believe is that someone wanted Dr Kandor out of the way, so that you were deprived not only of your physician but your protector as well. Am I near the mark?’

  ‘I can’t answer questions, Edward.’ Katerina was very resolute. ‘Please don’t ask me to.’

  ‘Well, instead of questions I’m going to tell you one or two things. Again, you need not say anything unless you wish to. I care a great deal about you – ’

  ‘Edward?’ She turned her eyes from the sea at last, and looked at him like a woman willing him to lift the worst of her grief from her.

  ‘You’re a very cherished friend, Katerina,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to tell you you’re not Bulgarian. I think you’re Russian. I think the family you often talk about was your own family, and that your father was perhaps high up in the service of the Tsar.’

  Katerina sat rigid, hands clasped in her lap and knuckles white. Again her eyes were on the sea, and her teeth were biting her bottom lip.

  ‘No questions, no questions,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, no questions, Katerina. I’m also going to tell you, however, that you must move out of this villa. I know your servants are here, and the dog, but you’ll be safer elsewhere.’

  Katerina drew a deep breath.

  ‘Edward, I can’t go looking for a place in Nice or Cannes.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I’d want you to do,’ said Edward. ‘You must move to the Corniche. I know Madame Michel will gladly give you a room. I know, if you want to, that you can keep to it and have your meals served to you. You’d rather people did not stare at you. The veil you wore that day told me you preferred not to show your face. There’s no other woman of beauty who’d want to do that. At the Corniche, Madame Michel will let you have all the privacy you want. She won’t ask questions, either. But I’m not going to let you stay here.’

  Katerina’s eyes swam.

  ‘You’ll be there, won’t you, Edward?’

  ‘Yes, close to you and keeping an eye on you, though I shouldn’t make the most vigorous of bodyguards.’

  ‘But you’ll be there,’ she said. ‘I will come. But, oh, poor Boris Sergeyovich. I’m so sad, Edward, so sad.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, remembering with a deep twinge of regret his suspicions of the doctor’s part in Katerina’s life. ‘I feel so sure, Katerina, that someone was always close, always in a position to observe something of your routine here. Did Dr Kandor make a practice of going out to the cliff?’

  ‘He went out sometimes. Not in a routine way. Just sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes was enough to mean once too often.’

  Katerina’s eyes registered plain, unhappy understanding.

  ‘You really believe someone pushed him, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Pushed him or hit him from behind. Someone who was watching from those pine trees and came very quietly out of them. Yes, the opportunity was there. It was a very expedient way of disposing of the doctor. To have shot him would have meant a murder hunt. Now there’s only an accident to investigate, a fall from the top of the cliff, and the coroner might only have to decide whether it was misadventure or suicide. Do you realize, Katerina, that had we gone over the cliff several days ago, no alternative verdict would have been considered – it would almost certainly have been recorded as death by accident.’

  ‘I have put you in danger too, haven’t I?’ she said.

  ‘I shouldn’t want to back away,’ said Edward, ‘and don’t intend to.’

  ‘I think I’m a little fatigued,’ she said.

  It was more than that, thought Edward. It was shock and incredulity that Dr Kandor was dead, and her mantle of mourning was heavy.

  ‘Go and rest,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll wait here for me, you won’t go?’

  ‘I shan’t go, Katerina.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She pressed his hand gratefully and went into the villa.

  The servant, Sandro, was down near the green gate, with the Alsatian. He turned as Edward called to him. He came up to the terrace, his wiry frame energetic, his dark face sombre.

  ‘M’sieur?’ he said.

  ‘I shall be taking the countess to the hotel,’ said Edward. ‘She’ll stay there for a while. You understand?’

  ‘I understand, m’sieur,’ said Sandro in good French.

  ‘Are you from Bulgaria, Sandro?’

  ‘Excuse, m’sieur?’

  ‘I wondered if you came from the countess’s country,’ said Edward.

  ‘Of course, m’sieur,’ said Sandro, but his eyes were blank.

  Edward thought it necessary to say, ‘I’m a friend, Sandro.’

  ‘I know, m’sieur. Anna also knows. Thank you, m’sieur.’

  ‘You’re a gardener,’ said Edward.

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Do you know the hotel gardener?’

  ‘I have seen him
, m’sieur. I could not say I know him.’

  ‘He’s a White Russian,’ said Edward.

  ‘So I’ve heard, m’sieur.’

  ‘He’s an excellent gardener.’

  ‘Then he’s an honest man,’ said Sandro.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Edward.

  Sandro nodded and left the terrace. The Alsatian stayed with Edward. Edward sat, willing to wait as long as necessary for Katerina to reappear. He must go into Nice again and make further enquiries at Heriot’s. He could, of course, report the incident on the road to the police. But however wise that might be, he knew Katerina would be quite against it. And her secrets were her own until she decided otherwise.

  The autumn days, which had been so serene, had lost their aura of enchantment. Peace and beauty were receding before the advance of murder and malice. A very fatal accident had happened to Dr Kandor. With him out of the way, an accident equally fatal was no doubt awaiting Katerina.

  Why? Who was she? A deposed aristocrat with high connections?

  Anna came out to say the countess was quietly resting.

  ‘Good,’ said Edward.

  ‘Ah, but so terrible – the doctor – terrible,’ said Anna mournfully, her eyes red. ‘Now what will happen?’

  ‘Nothing, I hope,’ said Edward. ‘I’m going to take the countess to the hotel for a few days, to give her time to think and to make decisions.’

  Anna’s broad face looked troubled.

  ‘There is so much more to her life than a few days in an hotel,’ she said.

  ‘Is there, Anna?’

  Her eyes became as blank as Sandro’s.

  ‘She has said she will go with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward.

  ‘Perhaps – yes – perhaps for a few days.’

  ‘I think so, Anna.’

  ‘Yes – yes – thank you,’ said Anna and went back into the villa.

  Edward wondered when the police would arrive. He was sure they would come. They would not leave the matter in the hands of the local gendarme. He winced at the thought of Katerina enduring their questions and going through everything again with them.

  An inspector and a gendarme arrived from Nice an hour and a half after Katerina had gone to rest. They came by car and Sandro let them in, opening up the rarely used front gates. The inspector had a paternal look and bright, shrewd eyes. Edward introduced himself, while Sandro went to ask Anna to inform the countess.