Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

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First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1997

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259358

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780007483082

Version: 2017-09-12

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1

Dmitri Kameron, Examining Magistrate, was walking along the corridor of the Court House when a woman came out of a door ahead of him.

‘Help me, please!’ she said.

Dmitri, a sympathetic young man fresh from law school and therefore lacking the consciousness of his dignity seen in the provinces as proper to his post, paused politely.

The girl was fair and well spoken; a bit above the run of women usually seen in Kursk, never mind the Court House, and Dmitri was impressed.

Later, he came to think he had been intended to be.

‘Could you take me to the yard, please? I need some air.’

‘Of course!’

He offered her his arm. Things, thought Dmitri, were improving.

‘I felt faint,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s stifling in the Courtroom. They haven’t caught up with the fact that it’s spring yet. The heating’s still going full blast. And then, of course, there are so many people.’

‘I felt faint,’ she said again.

‘A breath of fresh air will put you right!’

But would she find it in the yard? There would be horse-shit everywhere, prisoners coming and going who, after long confinement, smelled worse than the horse-shit, the rank tobacco of the guards, and the dubious smell that came from the open drains. He had been meaning to speak about that to someone ever since he came, but the rooms used by the lawyers were at the front of the building and it was easy to forget what went on at the rear.

He stopped abruptly.

‘I wonder – might it not be better if we went out by the front door? The air would be fresher. We could go for a walk in the park.’

And sod the case he was working on! They’d called the interval hadn’t they? Well, they’d just have to wait.

‘No, no, please! The yard!’

‘Are you sure? I could – ’

‘Quite sure.’

She walked determinedly on.

In the yard it was as bad as he had feared. The carts had come for another convoy and their heavy wooden wheels had churned the usual mud of the yard to a deep bog into which the horses sank up to their fetlocks. The drivers were finding it impossible to turn the carts and everywhere men were shouting and swearing and there was a continuous spray of mud.

‘Honestly – ’ Dmitri began.

‘I’ll be all right. Really!’

He looked around for somewhere she could stand.

‘This will be all right. Truly! But could you fetch me some water, please?’

He left her standing in the doorway while he went to find the water. There was a well in the yard, but he certainly was not going to wade across to that. He tried some of the rooms nearby and did indeed find a pail of water which might have been intended for drinking. But he couldn’t find a cup and had doubts about the water anyway, so went on further. In the end he had to go all the way back to the lawyers’ chambers at the front of the building before he could find a respectable cup and some trustable water.

When he came back he found her gone. It had taken him some time and no doubt she had got bored waiting. All the same he felt a little aggrieved.

‘But you were the last person who saw her!’ said Peter Ivanovich accusingly.

‘Surely not. The ushers – ’

He remembered now, however, that the corridor had been empty. All the courts had been in session and the ushers preoccupied with their duties.

‘Someone in the yard – ’

No one in the yard. Everyone very keen to distance themselves as far as possible. They had all been busy with the carts – Dmitri Alexandrovich had seen for himself – and had had no time to notice anything. Had Anna Semeonova gone into the yard anyway? When Dmitri Alexandrovich had last seen her she had been standing in the doorway. Was it likely that a decent, well-bred girl like Anna Semeonova would go out with all that filth, with all that language – Excuse me, Your Honour? A thick veil of mud lay over everything.

Well, it was unlikely, everyone had to admit. Far more likely that she had simply retraced her footsteps and gone out the front of the building, to get a breath of air in the park, perhaps –

‘I suggested that,’ said Dmitri.

‘Well, there you are, then – ’

Only she hadn’t. Or at least the porters on the door swore blind that she hadn’t.

‘Do you think we wouldn’t notice if a girl like Anna Semeonova walked out of the door?’ they said indignantly. ‘Truly, Your Honour – ’

‘Yes, but were you there, you oafs? Off for a drink – ’

They denied this fervently; and, indeed, there was some independent evidence that they had been at their posts the whole of the morning. Had they just missed her, then?

‘Anna Semeonova? A girl like that? Not a chance, Your Honour.’

The park? Had she been seen in the park? Was there anyone …? Yes, indeed, there were several people who had been in the park the whole time. Old Olga, selling sunflower seeds on her traditional pitch, Ivan Feodorovich sweeping the paths, a young clerk from the Court offices (and what was he doing out there? A woman, no doubt!) A woman it was, and she was produced, all tearful. Yes, Your Honour, she had been there all morning, well, not all morning, she was a respectable working girl, but just that part of the morning, only a few minutes, well, yes, the whole of the second half of the morning – it was such a lovely morning, Your Honour, quite spring-like – and she hadn’t seen the young lady. Yes, she would have recognized her. She used to see her in the church. Such a lovely coat she would wear, fur trimmings on the lapels, white, black, white, black –

‘For Christ’s sake, shut that woman up!’ said Peter Ivanovich with increasing irritation. Because he was getting nowhere. Incredible as it might seem, a respectable young woman, from one of the best local families, had simply disappeared. And, what was worse, she had disappeared from the Court House itself.

‘It makes us look damned stupid,’ the senior judge said to the Chief of Police. This was late in the afternoon and the girl had still not been found. They had searched the building not once but three times and were about to begin again.

‘She must be here somewhere!’ said the Chief of Police, Novikov. ‘I mean, it stands to reason.’

‘What would you know about reason?’ said the senior judge sharply. Normally he got on quite well with Novikov. Indeed, when there was no one better available, he sometimes played cards with him. But that was probably a mistake. It encouraged slackness. Give these people an inch and they would take a mile. Get off their backs for just one second and they were bloody useless.

And if anyone was bloody useless it was this damned man Novikov. You’d think anyone would be able to find a girl in a building if they set their mind to it. If they had a mind, that was. He gave Novikov a black look. Six hours! The girl had gone missing at about eleven o’clock and it was now past five o’clock. It would soon be dark. What if they hadn’t found her by then? Her father was already here and was beginning to talk about the Governor. Well he didn’t mind that too much. He was an old friend of the Governor himself. But Pavel Semeonov was also mentioning Prince Dolgorukov and that was different. Dolgorukov had influence in the places that mattered; not least in the Ministry of Justice, where the patterns of judges’ careers were decided. Moreover, since the assassination of the previous Tsar and with the swing back to sterner measures, his power had grown sharply. He was definitely the coming man; and the judge, who had built his whole career on his talent for allying himself with coming men, was anxious to avoid a false step now. Especially over something as ridiculous as this!

Something must be done; and, since the population of Kursk seemed to be composed entirely of imbeciles and slackers, he would have to do it himself. He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock! He was due at Avdotia Vassilevna’s in half an hour, but that would have to wait. He would miss the zakuski, which was a pity, for Avdotia Vassilevna had a flair for hors d’oeuvres. But sacrifices had to be made. He was damned, though, if he would miss the lamb cutlets; not for something as piffling as this.

He rang the bell on his desk. He would begin with that nincompoop who had, apparently, actually seen the girl, the only one, at any rate, in the whole of Kursk daft enough to admit he had seen her and then, the fool, somehow mislaid her.

‘Fetch Examining Magistrate Kameron,’ he directed.

Dmitri had also had ideas about how he was going to spend the evening. This was Thursday and along with other intellectual exiles from the capital he normally foregathered at the house of Igor Stepanovich to discuss the contents of the latest national periodicals. Tonight they were going to discuss an article in the most recent number of the New Contemporary. The article was unlikely to be very contemporary by the time it reached Kursk nor the journal very new, having been passed around the members of the group until they had all read it; but, reading it, they felt they were in touch with the latest ideas that were swirling around the capital. This was important as otherwise in the provinces you soon felt quite out of things. It was especially important to Dmitri, who had absolutely no intention of burying himself in a hole like Kursk for any longer than he could help.

There was, too, an added attraction this evening. Until quite recently the group had consisted entirely of men. This was less out of principle – in the group they were all advanced thinkers and, now that emancipation of the serfs was out of the way, saw the emancipation of women as the next great step – than out of necessity. The fact was that there was a shortage of intelligent women in Kursk. This was not their fault, as Igor Stepanovich pointed out: it merely reflected the general lack of educational provision for girls. Given such provision, in a few years young women would be able to talk on equal terms with young men. Even in Kursk.

The point was well made, and conversation was moving on to the general question of what form the education of women should take when Pavel Milusovich’s sister, Sonya, interrupted. The conversation was taking place in the family’s drawing room. She said that education was nothing to do with it. She had not been to university, she pointed out, but surely no one would deny that she had twice the brains of her brother. This was all too evidently true, and the argument stalled for a moment or two. Why, demanded Sonya, should she be excluded from the meetings of the group?

‘You’re not being excluded,’ said Igor Stepanovich. ‘It’s just that you wouldn’t be happy if you came.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Sonya.

‘You’d be on your own,’ said Igor.

‘So?’ said Sonya.

Igor couldn’t immediately think of a reply. Another of the group, Gregor Yusupovich, said that it wouldn’t look good. Other people were not as liberated as they were and if she was the one woman in a group of men it would prejudice her chances of marriage. Sonya said that, on the contrary, she thought it would improve them.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘why does there just have to be one?’

‘We’re back to where we started,’ said Igor. ‘You’d be all right,’ he conceded, ‘but the truth is there aren’t any other – ’

‘How about Vera?’ said Sonya.

‘Vera Samsonova?’

‘You can’t say she’s not educated. She studied at St Petersburg. And she passed her exams first time!’ added Sonya maliciously.

‘Yes, but would she come?’ asked Igor, affecting nonchalance. ‘She’s always seemed to me – ’

‘I’ll ask her,’ said Sonya.

And had.

She would be there this evening. Dmitri had no great hopes. He had seen her from a distance. Tall. And thin. Flat as a board. Straight up, straight down. Front and back. Bright, no doubt. No one who had taken the Advanced Women’s Courses in the Faculty of Natural History could be a fool. They had been about the only route by which women could qualify to be a medical doctor. You had had to be pretty bright to get in, and very bright to stay on, because the professors had deliberately made it hard to. There had been a lot of hostility towards the course, not just from the medical profession but from the university. And from the Government. They’d taken the first chance they could to close the courses down, a casualty, like so many others, of the backlash against reform following the assassination of Tsar Alexander.

He had met some of the women once, although the course itself had been closed by the time he got there. Very determined, the women had seemed. In fact, that was the trouble. Too determined. They seemed to go through life with clenched teeth.

From what he’d heard, Vera Samsonova was a bit like that. Spiky. No soft edges. All the same, he had been mildly intrigued at the prospect of meeting her.

And now, just as he was putting on his hat and coat, this bloody fool of a judge wanted to see him!

‘There are things’, said the senior judge severely, ‘that a young lady of good family should not see. And the Court House yard is one of them!’

‘She wanted to see it!’ protested Dmitri. ‘She was going there anyway.’

‘Could you not have diverted her?’

‘I tried, but she insisted.’

‘You should have tried harder.’

‘She wanted a breath of air!’

‘But why go to the back yard for it? Why couldn’t you take her out the front? The park … the flowers …’

‘There aren’t any flowers yet. They’ve only just cleared the snow away.’

‘The air is wholesome at least,’ said the judge, irritated, ‘and you couldn’t say that was true of the yard.’

‘She wanted to go there!’

‘I find that hard to believe. Would any respectable young woman want to go there, knowing what she might see? No,’ said the judge warmly, ‘what she wanted was just a place where she could get some fresh air. You chose to take her to the back yard and therefore it is in considerable measure your fault.’

‘Fault! She asked me to show her the way and I showed her!’

‘She placed herself under your protection.’

‘Nonsense! All she did was ask – ’

‘A young woman?’ said the judge incredulously. ‘Distressed? Sees what she takes to be a respectable young man? An official of the Court, no less? Asks – quite properly – for assistance? If that is not placing herself under your protection, I’d like to know what is!’

Dmitri counted to five before replying and then, as that did not seem to be working, to ten.

‘I could quite reasonably have restricted myself to pointing out the way,’ he said at last. ‘In fact, I chose – ’

‘Ah!’ said the judge triumphantly. ‘Chose!’

‘To walk along the corridor with her. No question of legal responsibility arises.’

‘Her father,’ said the judge grimly, ‘is a friend of the Governor. He moves in high circles in St Petersburg. An intimate of Prince Dolgorukov. Through him he has access to the Tsar. And you think no question of responsibility will arise?’

Oh ho, thought Dmitri. So that’s the way the wind’s blowing!

‘I refuse to admit any personal responsibility in the matter,’ he said quickly.

‘Much good that will do you!’ said the judge cuttingly. ‘Much good,’ he added gloomily, ‘it will do any of us.’

‘Oh, come sir!’ said Dmitri. ‘Things are not as bad as all that! There is probably some quite simple explanation for the girl’s disappearance. Met a friend, perhaps, and gone off for a walk – ’

‘In the dark?’ asked the judge, looking out of the window. ‘She’d have been back by now. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘we’ve tried all that. Checked on her friends, the shops, her hairdresser – ’

‘A friend she wishes to keep secret, perhaps?’

‘A male friend, you mean?’

‘Well – ’

‘No question of that. Her parents are adamant.’

‘They would be,’ said Dmitri.

The judge looked at him.

‘You think it’s a possibility?’

‘A far likelier possibility than that it’s anything to do with the back yard.’

‘You think so?’

‘Sure of it. How could there be?’

‘Well, of course you’re right. A young lady of respectable family … how could there be? You must be right.’

‘Turned round the moment she took a look at it, I would have thought. Walked straight back along the corridor.’

‘You think so? But then – ’

‘There will be some simple explanation.’

‘I hope you’re right. I’m sure you’re right.’ The judge looked at his watch. Still time to get to Avdotia Vassilevna’s for the main course. Even the fish, perhaps. He snapped it shut.

‘I’ll leave it to you, then.’

‘Leave it?’

‘As Examining Magistrate. Do keep me informed.’

‘But I thought … You said …’

‘Yes?’

‘That I was party to the case. And therefore it would be improper for me to act as Examining Magistrate.’

‘But you denied that you were party to the case. Didn’t you? I’m merely accepting your word. For the time being.’

One way or another, thought Dmitri, the bastards always got you.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to get on with it. While the scent is hot.’

Dmitri made a last effort to retrieve his evening.

‘Aren’t we being premature, sir? I mean, is there a case? Surely it’s just a matter of continuing with the search? The police – ?’

‘Useless. That fool Novikov. No, I’d prefer you to be involved right from the start. Someone bright, with a bit of energy, someone – ’

‘Responsible?’

‘Yes. Responsible. That’s the word.’

Sitting alone in the little room the lawyers used as a workroom, Dmitri nursed his wrath. There was plenty of it to nurse; first, wrath against the judge, not just for landing Dmitri in it but also for the general things he stood for and Dmitri stood against: age, seniority, authority, power, privilege, the System; next, wrath against Kursk, which was such a hell of a place that no wonder everything went wrong in it; and, finally, against this silly girl who had got herself lost and mucked up Dmitri’s evening.

By this time on a normal day the Court House would have been empty. Lawyers, witnesses, defendants would have long departed. The caretakers would have retreated on to their ovens. Only at the back, perhaps, the last wagon would be squelching through the mud, trying to reach the firm crunch of the hard-packed snow outside.

Tonight there were lamps in all the rooms and people scurrying about everywhere. Novikov was searching the building for the fifth or perhaps sixth time. The dilemma before Dmitri was this: should he assume that Novikov was incapable of doing anything properly, and therefore make a search of the building himself? Or should he take for granted that the girl had left the building long before and was now happily chatting in some comfortable parlour with her girlfriends or, more likely, otherwise preoccupied in some comfortable bed with her boyfriend? The second was obviously the case. The trouble was that if by any unlikely chance it was the first, and the girl was lying stuffed in some corner somewhere, and was later discovered, then it would look bad. It would look bad for the Court House and, more to the point, since the judge had nailed him firmly with responsibility for the investigation, it would look bad for him, Dmitri.

Search, himself, it would have to be, and, no doubt, while doing it he could find himself a glass of tea in the caretakers’ room.

Novikov had had the idea before him. He looked up, glass in hand, as Dmitri entered.

‘I’m making a personal search,’ he said, warming his backside against the fire. ‘You’ve got to do it yourself. You can’t trust these buggers to do it properly.’

‘How far have you got?’ asked Dmitri. ‘Just here?’

Novikov looked pained.

‘The whole of the ground floor,’ he said. ‘Every nook, every cranny, every cupboard, behind every pipe, down every sewer. You need a wash-up after you’ve done that, I can tell you! Ever searched a sewer, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’

‘Suits some people more than others,’ Dmitri said coldly. He wasn’t going to be put down by the Chief of Police of a place like Kursk.

Novikov shrugged and put down his glass.

‘The top floor now! Would you care to accompany me? At least there won’t be any sewers.’

Dmitri was forced to admit, after half an hour had passed, that Novikov knew his job, or this part of it at least. It wasn’t intelligence, Dmitri decided; it was cunning. Perhaps experience, too. Experience enough to know when a thing mattered and when it did not, cunning to be able to read the mind of the brutalized peasants who provided the bulk of the criminals in Kursk. Dmitri had no such cunning, he knew. He had never met a peasant until he came to Kursk, although they formed two-thirds of the population of Russia. Dmitri was a city-dweller through and through. And that, if he could manage it, was how he meant to stay. The important thing was not to get trapped in the provinces. That was where experience came in, both the judge’s kind of experience and Novikov’s. The experience to know that this was a thing that people higher up would be interested in and take notice of, experience at covering your back. Dmitri was beginning to feel that he could have done with more experience of the latter sort.

‘A glass of tea, Dmitri Alexandrovich?’ suggested Novikov, when they had finished the floor.

Dmitri concurred silently. He had already made up his mind that he would not now search the ground floor himself. Such things, especially the sewers, were best left to the Novikovs.