Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers Read online

  ‘Well, that’s very nice,’ said Dmitri, ‘but – ’

  ‘No, don’t you see? We can’t publish in Russia, but we can publish out of Russia. I’ll take your report with me, Dmitri, lots of copies. And then I’ll send them to the newspapers over there.’

  ‘I like that,’ said Vera Samsonova.

  ‘I’ll ask my parents tonight. I’ll tell them that all this dreadful business about Anna Semeonova has quite upset me. You can come too,’ she said to her brother. ‘Oh, and you’ll have to help me copy the report. I can’t do it all myself.’

  ‘We’ll all help,’ said Vera Samsonova.

  ‘You don’t need to copy the entire report,’ said Dmitri. ‘Extracts will do.’

  Events then moved faster than he had expected. Only a month or so later he was called to St Petersburg.

  ‘My dear boy!’ said Prince Dolgorukov. ‘So pleased to see you! Don’t I know your father?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Dmitri. ‘He’s dead.’

  Dolgorukov gave him a puzzled look.

  ‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘Kameron is such an unusual name. I’m sure I know someone …’

  ‘My grandfather, perhaps?’

  ‘A somewhat irascible old gentleman?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Of course! I remember now. Alexander Dmitrovich. We were at gymnasium together. And did he not serve …?’

  ‘On his Zemstvo.’

  ‘Wasn’t there some question about land?’

  ‘There was.’

  ‘I remember! Well, he was always independent-minded.’ He looked sternly at Dmitri. ‘But loyal to the Tsar!’

  ‘Loyal to the Tsar,’ said Dmitri, ‘but independent-minded.’

  The Prince looked at him again.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘about this report of yours. Word appears to have got out.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Extracts have appeared in newspapers abroad.’

  ‘Astonishing!’

  ‘You have no idea how that came about, I suppose?’

  ‘Someone inside the Ministry of the Interior?’

  Dolgorukov smiled.

  ‘Well, maybe we don’t need to go into it. Just at the moment. The fact is, it has come out. And so we must decide what we’re going to do about it.’

  ‘Are you asking me as a lawyer?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suggest you bring those responsible to trial.’

  The Prince shook his head.

  ‘As a lawyer you must know that the Courts have no jurisdiction over what goes on in Siberia.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘It could happen only if the Tsar decreed that it should. And I’m not sure he would be willing to do that. It would amount almost to a waiving of prerogative. I doubt if the Tsar’s advisers, let alone His Majesty himself, would wish to go so far. Even in such a heinous case as this.’

  ‘You admit that it’s heinous?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Dmitri, ‘what are you going to do?’

  The Prince hesitated.

  ‘Ordinarily, I would do nothing. Nothing is usually the most sensible thing to do, and in anything involving the Ministry of the Interior it is almost invariably the wisest policy. But …’

  ‘But?’ said Dmitri.

  ‘In this case that option may no longer be open to us. The Tsar is shortly to visit Berlin and Paris and questions are sure to be asked – they manage their press rather less well than we do. We don’t want His Majesty to be embarrassed. So, well, although ordinarily, as I say, I would do nothing, on this occasion, in these particular circumstances, the announcement of a Public Inquiry might prove very timely …’

  Anna Semeonova’s willingness to give evidence was crucial. It was also, her mother pointed out, unladylike. Anna Semeonova had been a great disappointment to her parents altogether since she had returned home. They had been confident that after her terrible adventures – terrible adventures they must have been, although they did not like to inquire too closely – she would be only too glad to return to the life she had led before that dreadful thing had happened to her in the Court House at Kursk. Far from it, they found that they had a new daughter who was, well, not exactly wild but definitely less tractable than she had been.

  ‘Give her time!’ counselled the family doctor sagely, and prescribed laudanum, which, on the advice of Vera Samsonova, Anna threw away.

  She was seeing quite a lot of Vera, calling on her at the dispensary almost every day. Her parents were not best pleased, feeling that Vera was in some obscure way partly to blame for the whole thing. Her father ventured a mild objection but was told in no uncertain terms that in future Anna meant to see exactly whom she liked. Moreover, she intended to take up an appointment as assistant in the dispensary the day the inquiry was over: the better, she said, to prepare herself for the training as a doctor which she intended shortly to undertake.

  Her parents consulted the family doctor once more and he again prescribed laudanum, for them this time. He also pointed out that under the recent educational reforms the opportunities for women to go to university had been greatly restricted, and that if Anna Semeonova wished to study medicine it would now have to be abroad.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Anna. ‘Leipzig.’

  With her hopes crashing around her, Anna’s mother turned desperately to Dmitri.

  ‘Dear Dmitri Alexandrovich,’ she cooed, ‘we had so hoped that you and Anna – ’

  ‘Definitely not!’ said Dmitri.

  Not, too, said Anna Semeonova, even more definitely.

  The fact was that Dmitri was disappointed by Anna Semeonova. He had hoped that her experiences would have cured her forever of her dogooding desires.

  ‘But what is this I hear?’ he said to Vera Samsonova. ‘She wants to become a doctor!’

  ‘She will be very well suited to it,’ said Vera Samsonova, ‘especially now that she has had some practical experience. All that was holding her back was that she felt she wasn’t as clever as other people. A feeling that, now that she has met you, my dear Dmitri, she has lost.’

  The fact was, though, too, that Dmitri was himself a little uncertain as to the direction his career should take. He had no illusions about his popularity in official circles and thought it likely that once the inquiry was over, the trajectory of his career was likely to be a flat one, at least so far as government service was concerned. But he had in any case been doing some of that reading that he had promised himself while in Tiumen and was no longer certain that a Tsar’s lawyer was what he wanted to be.

  Was it possible to be any other kind of lawyer? He went to St Petersburg and spoke to a lawyer who had represented the defendants on one of the few occasions when the Government had been misguided enough to bring a prosecution in the public courts against political dissidents. The man listened carefully.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you could practise privately, and we would be glad to have you. But are you sure it is the right thing to do? If you really want to change the legal system, the only way in which you have a chance of succeeding is by working from inside. Believe me, I know, because I have spent a lifetime trying to change it from the outside.’

  But to Dmitri, at that time, continuing in Government service seemed a fate worse than death, and he was on the point of sending in his resignation when Prince Dolgorukov, of all people, sowed a seed of doubt in his mind.

  He had summoned Dmitri to tell him that now that the inquiry had published its findings, the Government was proceeding to a public trial.

  ‘Hardly necessary, in my view,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but the Tsar was made to feel, while he was abroad, that something of the sort was required. The Prosecution’s case, will, of course, be based on your report. Actually, it works out rather well, for the Tsar will be able to say that intervention from abroad is quite unnecessary as the matter was already in hand thanks to the vigilance of his law officers. It works out rather w
ell for you, too, of course. A promising career beckons.’

  ‘Does it?’ said Dmitri sceptically.

  Dolgorukov stared at him.

  ‘Oh, yes. If you’re going to have a system at all, you might as well have intelligent people running it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about the system,’ said Dmitri.

  ‘There’s always room for improvement, no doubt,’ said Prince Dolgorukov.

  The issue was much discussed by the small circle of friends at Kursk.

  ‘What do you think, Vera?’ asked Sonya one day as they sat helping Anna Semeonova to do her embroidery. ‘What will Dmitri choose?’

  ‘Career or career?’ said Vera.

  ‘I don’t think that’s very kind of you, Vera,’ said Sonya reproachfully.

  It was the last day on which they would all be able to be together. The trial had just come to a satisfactory conclusion and the next day Anna Semeonova was going on holiday. She had at last agreed, somewhat to her parents’ surprise, stipulating only that the holiday should be in Samara. Apparently it was possible to take a milk-drinking cure there. Her parents were relieved to find her at last doing something so safely fashionable.

  Dmitri was on his way to the house to wish her a safe journey when he was accosted by a rough-looking figure. The man thrust a large packet into his hands and made off. Opening it, Dmitri found a wad of hundred-rouble notes, together with a grimy slip of paper, which said:

  ‘Your fee. The Artel.’

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  About the Author

  Michael Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, where his fascination for language began. He later trained as a Russian interpreter but moved away from languages to follow an academic career, first as a lecturer in English and the History of Ideas, and then as an administrator. Michael Pearce now lives in London and is best known as the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books.

  Also by Michael Pearce

  The Mamur Zapt Series

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  The Bride Box

  The Mark of the Pasha

  The Point in the Market

  A Cold Touch of Ice

  Death of an Effendi

  The Last Cut

  The Fig Tree Murder

  The Mingrelian Conspiracy

  The Snake-Catcher’s Daughter

  The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction

  The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt

  The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in the Nile

  The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind

  The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous

  The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

  The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

  The Dmitri Kameron Series

  Dmitri and the One-Legged Lady

  Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

  The Seymour of Special Branch Series

  A Dead Man in Malta

  A Dead Man in Naples

  A Dead Man in Barcelona

  A Dead Man in Tangier

  A Dead Man in Athens

  A Dead Man in Istanbul

  A Dead Man in Trieste

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