The Elephant Never Forgets

Book 627: Murder Room

by Ethel Lina White

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Anna, a young Englishwoman, is drawn to visit Russia partly out of interest, to see for herself the 'proletarian experiment', and partly by Otto, a glamorous but faithless newspaper editor. With nothing left now to keep her in Russia, she prepares to leave and return to England. But she has not reckoned with the environment of that closed nation, which has already begun to work on her nerves. She wonders if she will ever get out, and when delay follows delay, it seems as if she is losing her grip, hysteria threatening. Anna is trapped, dazed by the terrifying atmosphere of suspicion and maddening delaying tactics of the Soviet Union ...

Release date: March 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

AS Anna looked through the double windows of her bedroom at the hotel, she became suddenly conscious of the passage of time. Although the port was not yet sealed, winter had
gripped the small northern town almost overnight. The sky was purple-dark with snow-clouds, and the old stunted trees opposite were blown forward by the wind until they rapped the wall with knobby
knuckles.

“Time I went back to England,” she told herself. “There’s nothing to stop for now.”

Time. It was curious how this element was to dominate the situation. Anna often had the impression of being imprisoned within a maze, five minutes before closing-time. Its windings were
neither numerous nor complicated; but, if she lost her head and took a wrong turning in her haste, she might reach the outlet—only to find the door locked.

The weather that morning corresponded with her own bitter mood. She was feeling bleakly disillusioned as the aftermath of an unpleasant scene with Otto yesterday, when she had broken with him
finally, on the score of his disloyalty.

While she had no real ground for complaint because his so-called secretary—Olga—occupied a position in his scheme which she herself had declined to fill—she was appalled by the
wholesale scale of his operations in the love-market, and also by his admission that she had helped to finance his romance.

In fact, the only redeeming feature of a bad business was her ability to swear in Russian.

Notwithstanding her fluency, the final score was his, because she could not assail the logic of his defence.

“You know that here we believe in collectivisation,” he reminded her. “Since you are a monopolist, what are you doing in Russia?”

The reason was that she was a victim of glamour. Ever since she had met Otto at a debating society in the east end of London, she had been ensnared by his personality. He had not only the golden
beard of a Viking and dark-blue eyes which were chill as polar seas, but he was essentially a spell-binder.

Whenever he talked, shoals of bright words bubbled up responsively in her own brain. He became her star and she followed, or rather, accompanied him to Russia, where she helped to finance his
new venture—a non-political paper, confined to art, literature and science.

As long as the dream lasted, her surroundings were misted with illusion. It is doubtful whether she ever saw the dim grey northern town as it was in reality. To her, there was glamour in the
tall cramped houses and the stone steps leading down to the olive water of the port; glamour in the green-grape twilight; glamour in the blaze of starlight.

Above all, there was glamour in the communal life in Otto’s newspaper-office, where violent young men and women gathered around the stove, to talk of everything—from the stratosphere
above to the drains which were under the earth.

And now the dream was ended—slain by Olga and the first frost.

As she looked around her, Anna was aware, for the first time, of the dingy purple-pink wallpaper—the colour of pickled cabbage—and the shabby painted furniture of her bedroom.

“Mother would think this pretty grim,” she thought.

She was gazing pensively at the fluff under her bed, when the door opened and the middle-aged chambermaid entered, carrying a mop and pail.

She had an impoverished white skin which was dry as rice-paper, and a coronet of black hair.

Crossing to the window, she stood beside Anna and pointed to certain dark blotches on the opposite wall.

“You see those marks,” she said. “They put the Guards there and shot them down.”

Anna suppressed a shudder as she made a consciously enlightened comment.

“A bad means to a good end, comrade. But it was inevitable to progress.”

“Inevitable,” agreed the chambermaid. “If the worms are allowed to nibble the cabbage, loyal citizens would have no bortsch. . . . In the prisons they serve grey-eyes soup. And
when the tide is high, the water trickles through the gratings of the cells.”

In spite of her academic agreement that the penalties of disloyalty should be stringent, Anna changed the subject.

“Shall we play chess to-night?” she asked. “It will be my last chance to try to beat you. I’m going back to England to-morrow.”

“Why?” asked the chambermaid.

“Why not? After all, I’m English.”

“You? Anna Stephanovitch? Then why do you speak Russian so well?”

As the woman stared at her with sceptical eyes, Anna began to explain.

“Because, when I was a baby, my mother married a Russian. He was a naturalised British subject, and I’ve always been called by his name. He took the place of my own father who was
killed in the War, before I was born. After he died, my mother married again. She’s good at it. And now she’s living in the Argentine. . . . But I loved my stepfather and when I came to
Russia, it was like coming home.”

The chambermaid nodded approval, for she appreciated the double obituary notice in the autobiography.

“So you have lost two fathers. And now you have lost your lover,” she remarked. “It is said that Otto is spending money on the woman Olga, who works in the newspaper office. He
has bought her a fine new fur coat.”

Anna’s anger flared up again as she listened, for she guessed that, indirectly, she was the real donor of the coat.

“Otto is not my lover,” she said hotly. “And I don’t need presents.”

“Then you are rich like all the English? At home, do you have white bread, and sugar instead of a toffee apple dip?”

“Yes,” replied Anna bitterly. “At my home, there was always too much of everything, while people were starving.”

Her eyes were sombre as she gazed down at the line of wind-tormented trees. In spite of his flash of spirit in response to her every mood, her stepfather had been a gross-looking, bearded man,
who was too fond of creature comforts.

“My stepfather was very stout,” she told the chambermaid. “But inside, he was thin. His mind was like a pure flame. He ate too much and he died, at dinner, from a stroke. He
choked and was dead in one minute.”

“His food burst him,” declared the chambermaid.

She was enchanted with the anecdote, but Anna’s face was tragic as she thought of the Hampstead mansion—that over-stuffed nest of domestic luxury—and the extravagant meals.

At the time she was too young to understand that her mother’s lavish housekeeping was supplementary to her fundamental determination—to keep a good husband happy to the day of his
death.

Filled with a sense of angry frustration at the social inequality, the girl divided society into a chronically overfed middle-class and an eternally hungry proletariat—while she used the
adjective “bourgeois” to cover every insult the most fertile imagination could invent.

Her own protest took the form of rebellion, when she ran away from school and got a job in a draper’s shop.

She soon came back, but her mutiny persisted. After her stepfather’s death, her pent-up energy found relief in a series of social experiments.

“Anna’s broken out again,” her mother would confide to the expensive scented ladies who accompanied her to the cinema—which met every intellectual need. “I’m
told she’s selling flowers in High Holborn. So anti-social to the other poor flower-girls, with so much competition in everything. . . . But it amuses her, and she’s not brought home
any ‘little things’ yet.”

Selling flowers in the street. . . . Sleeping under an archway. . . . The shop. . . . A pickle factory. . . . As the pictures flitted across Anna’s mind, the chambermaid caught her
arm.

“Look who’s here,” she said.

With a strange thrill of excitement, Anna gazed down at a woman who was striding across the road. In a brutal and debased manner she was beautiful, with blonde colouring and vivid blue eyes. Her
bobbed flaxen hair was cut in a straight fringe across her forehead and her loose lips were scarlet. She wore breeches, a sheepskin coat, and men’s boots, which made her feet appear
enormous.

Anna was struck by the fact that the few pedestrians shrank away from her, as though they wished to escape her notice.

“That is Hirsch,” said the chambermaid. “She is the People’s Prosecutor.”

“I’ve not seen her before,” said Anna. “I wonder what she has come for.”

“Business.” The chambermaid lowered her voice as she added, “Business which is transacted in cellars.”

“You mean—executions?”

“Surely. She has shot hundreds down in the cellars. It is a patriotic duty and the pay is handsome. But they say that so much killing has turned her crazy.”

Anna could not understand her sudden spurt of terror.

“I’m a British subject,” she reminded herself. “My passport is in order. I have money. And I’m going back to England to-morrow.”

At that moment, she was so close to the outlet of the maze, that one step would take her through the door.

THE town looked different when Anna left the hotel, in order to buy her ticket for a soft place in the train. The change was actual and not the effect
of lost illusions. During the night, the wind had stripped the trees and the streets were carpeted with layers of leaves.

They covered every surface so thickly that they blotted out inequalities and outlines. Unable to see where the pavement ended, Anna side-stepped off the kerb, caught her heel in a crack, and
slipped to her knees in the gutter.

This time, she swore in English.

“Thank goodness, I’ll soon be walking on a decent pavement again,” she told herself as she scrambled to her feet.

She did not know it, but the moment was epic. . . . When she ran away from school, to earn her living in a shop, her stepfather had refused to interfere.

“No,” he said to his wife’s hysterical pleading. “I will not send detectives after her as if she were criminal. The little one has intelligence and will come to no harm.
Let her stand on her own feet for a while. Presently she will return.”

But Anna had never come back. . . . It is true that a subdued schoolgirl of the same name and appearance was soon in residence again at the Hampstead mansion; but she—herself—was
still wandering in the rebel territory of her mind.

It was not until she paid tribute to the good offices of the L.C.C. that she took her first step back to the home which was no longer there.

Just then, London seemed so near that she could almost see the buses inside Victoria Station yard and the scarlet electric signs quivering through a dun transparency. These lights stood for
safety even if they conjured up no thrill.

Her feelings were mixed as she scuffled through the fallen leaves. Common sense made her realise the futility of regret, which was partly due to season.

She could not recall the summer, when the salt mist veiled the old buildings of the port to the dim beauty of faded tapestry, and the trees in the avenue told stories in husky whispers.
Impossible, too, to recapture the fraternity spirit of those endless, unlicensed talks around the stove in Otto’s office, when the only convention was always to use the unexpurgated word.

Of all these wild men and girls, there were only three persons with whom she came into more than casual contact. These were Otto, Olga and Conrad Stern.

Now, only Conrad remained.

“I must say ‘Good-bye’ to him,” she thought regretfully. “Pity. Sheer waste of an interesting man.”

Yet although he was one of those who counted, she did not want to stay in this strange town, which was all that remained of the dark enchanted city of her dream. The tall thin houses seemed to
have shrunk as though they were frost-bitten to their foundations, while their fronts were grey as clinkered ash. Involuntarily she thought of their cellars, as the People’s Prosecutor, in
her blonde brutality, tramped across her mind.

This was a town where people disappeared. To-day you spoke to a man and arranged to meet him on the morrow. If he did not keep his appointment, you asked no questions. And you might not see him
again.

In her eagerness to identify herself with the Konsomol, or communal youth of the country, Anna shared their enthusiasm for an experiment so stupendous, that it stunned—even while it
stirred—her imagination. Yet while she agreed that its enemies must be destroyed, she shrank from a method of espionage where the individual was at the mercy of his fellow.

As a rule, she hurried by the prison, where the tidal river, which swept one side, was now in flood. It rushed past the wall in a swift brown wave which appeared almost level with the lowest
line of windows.

Drawn by a morbid fascination, she lingered for a minute. The wind had piled up an enormous drift of leaves against an iron door. It imparted an air of desuetude, as though people had gone
inside, but had never pushed the portal outwards again.

She walked on quickly before she could think too vividly of the fate of any prisoners inside. Cells weeping with river water. The grey eyes of fish floating in soup. A last appointment to meet a
lady—a blonde with a taste for cellars.

When she reached the square, on her way to the post office—it had an air of desertion. There were no market-stalls to dwarf its size to-day. The giant equestrian statue in the middle
seemed magnified to a symbol of civic authority. As she passed beneath the pedestal, his rearing horse appeared on the point of crashing down upon her skull.

Her intention was, as usual, first to collect any mail, and then to go to the café. That morning, the woman official did not disappoint her, for she handed her a letter from a
pigeon-hole.

She recognised the handwriting on the envelope, and stuffed it into her bag, unopened. Her community spirit did not extend to former school friends—and Gloria James could wait.

When she was inside the double doors of the café, she stood looking for Conrad Stern. The room was overheated by an enormous stove, but, apart from its atmosphere, it was a pleasant
refuge from the grey outside world. A brass samovar bubbled cheerfully and each indiarubber plant wore its jacket of coloured, plaited paper. Above all rose the thrum of talk, like the whir of a
myriad spinning-tops.

Conrad Stern was seated at a small table—by a window. Closely-shorn, clean-shaven and monocled, his appearance was in strong contrast with most of the shaggy company, although he would
have been a striking personality in other circumstances. There was distinction in his tall thin figure and the moulding of his face which always made Anna curious to unveil the mystery of his
origin.

When she drew nearer, he rose to meet her.

“I rather hoped you might come here,” he said.

“I wanted to meet you too,” Anna told him. “I’m going back to England.”

“Then—” he hesitated before he added, “then you know about Otto?”

“Yes. I’ve heard also that Olga has a new fur.”

Humiliated by the knowledge that their quarrel was already in circulation, Anna tried to speak lightly.

“I’m not quite blind,” she said. “Of course, just at first I thought he was rather splendid. But lately I’ve realised how cheap he really is. In fact, we had a
row.”

She remembered the essential adjective and added hastily, “we had a bloody row.”

Conrad Stern smiled slightly as he crossed to the buffet to get tea for her. When he returned with the cup of weak, scalding fluid, he asked an abrupt question.

“How are you off for money?”

“I’ve enough for my journey,” she told him.

“Good.” His voice held relief. “Passport in order?”

“Yes. The original visa expired, but Otto got it renewed, the other day. Whenever they wanted to see my papers at the hotel, he wangled things for me. A man can always slip his mistress
through when he can’t take his wife.”

Anna laughed as she spoke, for she had been rather flattered by the general assumption of a freedom of which she had never availed herself. It made her feel definitely Russian. Aware, however,
of Conrad’s silence, she denied the rumour, for the first time.

“Of course, I was never that,” she said.

The frost of his face relaxed as he smote the table with his palm.

“Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked. “As long as you were Otto’s friend, you were not in my landscape. We’ve wasted too much time. We might have
been—comrades.”

Although his smile revealed the lines in his thin face, she was thrilled by its fascination. Some of the vanished glamour of the summer seemed to quiver again in the smoky air. Her mother would
have seen the shape of “little things” to come in the unwashed company, but she was conscious only of warm intimacy and understanding.

“And now you know?” she asked.

“Now it is too late. You are going back to England and I am leaving this town at once. I have the prospect of a job elsewhere. I only waited to see you, in case you wanted any help about
your journey.”

“Why?”

“Because we are compatriots. You come from Hampstead and I was born and bred in Hammersmith. It is true that I have wandered far from the Broadway. But Hammersmith may have my
bones.”

Anna did not believe him, although she made another effort to break his reserve.

“What exactly are you?”

“When all other alibis fail, one can always call oneself a journalist,” he told her, with the flicker of a smile.

She gave up the attempt to pump him.

“How did you guess I would go back to England?” she asked.

“It seemed indicated.” He glanced at his wrist-watch and added, “Time I left. And time you went to the station. . .