LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Nothing. Has someone contacted Laforet?”

      “I phoned him from the station. He was none too happy.”

      “That’s because he hates the telephone. But I have a feeling he’ll like this.” Campbell pulled out his notebook and approached the table. “I’m Detective Campbell, and,” pointing behind him with his pencil said, “that’s Constable Bickerstaff. Would you be Madame Zahra?”

      “Yes.”

      “Is that your first or last name?”

      In a tone that made her sound like she was used to random searches and interrogations, she answered, “I am Zahra Ostrovskaya.”

      Campbell’s pencil hovered over his notebook. “I’ll stick with Zahra for now. A man identified as Kaufman is lying dead on the pavement outside. Was he pushed out of that window?”

      Zahra said she did not see him go out the window. In what Campbell figured to be an Eastern European, possibly Russian accent, Zahra went on to explain how she did not see anything because she was in a trance.

      “A what? Don’t — we’ll come back to that.” He shifted his attention to the couple. “What is your name, sir?”

      “Yarmolovich. Pavel Yarmolovich. And this is my wife, Sonja. She does not speak good English.”

      Campbell nudged up his bowler with the heel of his thumb. “I’ll decide whether or not she speaks English well, sir. Are you carrying any identification?”

      Yarmolovich reached inside his coat, pulled out a yellowed paper, and handed it to Campbell. It unfolded into something resembling the Treaty of Versailles. Campbell scanned it. Thinking it official-looking enough, he refolded it and handed it back to Yarmolovich. He then manoeuvred toward a beaded curtain that he presumed sectioned off some sort of cooking area. He sliced through the hanging beads with his hand and parted it several inches. It was indeed a kitchen, about the size of a closet and about to collapse upon itself. He turned back to his host.

      “Madame Zahra, would you wait for me in here?”

      The detective widened the gap in the beaded curtain for Madame Zahra, who then slowly made her way up from the table. Campbell then sat in the chair she formerly occupied and turned his attention toward Pavel Yarmolovich.

      “Did you throw Kaufman out of that window?”

      Yarmolovich seemed shocked at the accusation. Or at least that’s what his performance suggested. He denied it, first in his native tongue and then in broken English, both served hot. Campbell then turned to the woman, but before he spoke a word to her, he held up his hand to Yarmolovich, just stopping himself from putting it over his mouth. The question was going to sound ridiculous, but he had to ask it. “Sonja, did you push Kaufman out of that window?”

      She glanced at her husband with an expression that could only be described as incredulous and replied, “No.”

      “There,” said Campbell, “now that we have gotten that out of the way, am I to conclude that Mr. Kaufman jumped out of that window?”

      “Yes,” said Yarmolovich. Without checking with her husband first, the wife nodded.

      “Please stay seated.”

      Campbell rose from the chair and slowly walked back toward the window, along the way examining the bits of furniture, wall hangings, and the carpets on the floor. There were no signs of a struggle, nothing looked disturbed. From the window, he paced the distance back to the table. If Kaufman had jumped, it would have to have been after a running start. He sat down.

      “Now, what would make Kaufman do a thing like that?”

      Yarmolovich sighed and, rubbing the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand, said, “He was talking to his wife.”

      “She was here?” said Campbell.

      “Yes, they were arguing. Kaufman was angry, and then frightened. He got up, and then fsht,” said Yarmolovich, smacking his hands together and sliding his right palm forward, “out the window. That was when Madame Zahra came from her trance.”

      “And Mrs. Kaufman, where did she go?”

      “Back to the other side.”

      “Other side of what?”

      Yarmolovich looked at Campbell like the detective was someone who had never heard of canned peaches before. “To the spirit world.”

      Campbell looked over the edge of his notebook and tipped his bowler back a little farther. “I’m sorry, but when you said Mrs. Kaufman was here, you actually meant …” With his pencil he pointed at the stars on the ceiling.

      Without looking at each other, the Yarmoloviches nodded. Campbell closed his notebook and told them to sit tight; he was going to speak with Madame Zahra. But first he approached the constable, who had finished hanging the tapestry and was now positioned between the window and the entrance to the apartment.

      “Bickerstaff.”

      “Sir?”

      “Keep an eye on things for me here,” he said, nodding back toward the Yarmoloviches. “I’m going to have a few words with Madame Zahra in the kitchen.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Campbell entered the cooking area and found Zahra using a Bunsen burner to light what he thought to be one of those Turkish cigarettes. She was tilting her head toward it while holding back her waves of jet-black hair. She straightened up when she got it going. “The Yarmoloviches, they were helpful?”

      “No, the Yarmoloviches were not helpful. Let’s forget them for a moment. You started telling me something about being in a trance.”

      “Yes.” She went on to explain how she had been conducting a séance with the couple and Kaufman, and was in a trance when the incident occurred. She claimed she saw nothing. Campbell knew the Yarmoloviches were listening; they started whispering to each other as soon as they heard their name.

      “I step outside of myself,” Zahra explained to the layman, “and become door through which spirits may pass into this world.”

      “Ghosts?”

      She smiled. “I know what you are thinking — glowing apparitions, floating in air at end of your bed at night, making voo-ooo sounds. Tales told by ignorant peasants.”

      “Yeah,” he said, “I guess that’s what I was thinking.”

      Madame Zahra closed her eyes. “One cannot see them, but one can feel their presence. Sometimes they are confused and frightened, like lost children. Other times, like this evening, they want to be heard and they will speak through me.”

      Campbell removed his cigar. “Who was speaking through you this evening?”

      She opened her eyes. “Rose Kaufman.”

      Bickerstaff knocked on the doorframe. “Sir, the wagon’s arrived.”

      “Laforet too?”

      “It looks that way.”

      “I’ll be right back,” said Campbell, “don’t move,” and he stepped out of the kitchen. “Bickerstaff, stay here and keep watch on these three; make sure they remain separated.” Campbell galloped back down the stairs to meet Laforet.

      A small crowd had gathered, unfazed by the still-blowing snow and frigid temperatures, fascinated at the sight of a dead body. The doctor, dressed in his Donegal tweed overcoat, cashmere muffler, and a lambswool wedge, was leaning over the victim.

      “All right, everyone clear out,” said Campbell. “Go back to your nice warm beds.”

      “Detective,” said the doctor.

      “Is this how you normally dress for a suicide? Did you stop at Wickham’s on the way over?”

      “I

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