Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(43)
“He’s dead!” she cried. “There’s a murderer on board!”
3
Without missing a beat, Benedikt lunged past the provodnitsa and barged into the room. He hardly considered that he wasn’t supposed to be present at the scene, nor did he care much if in a minute or so there would be someone coming around to yell at him. The provodnitsa had seen him approach. It was evident that he had newly shown up and had nothing to do with the crime. There was no problem, surely, with him taking a look.
“Oh dear.”
Marshall had followed him in, his voice sounding over Benedikt’s shoulder. The man was prone on the floor. It was rather hard to tell that he was surrounded by blood because of the dark carpet, which explained why the provodnitsa’s knees had been bloodied. She must have knelt to check on him before realizing what had happened.
The puddle, Benedikt realized upon scanning the carpet closely, was rather large too. Where was the wound? A gunshot to the chest? A blow to the head?
He crept forward a fraction. Although the dead body was facedown with its stomach pressed to the floor, the head was tilted ever so slightly toward the window at the other side of the room. As if something was preventing it from following the direction of the rest of the body.
Benedikt hovered over the dead man, trying to see onto his far side. He caught sight of an object lodged in his throat. Ah. That explained the amount of blood.
“What is that?” Marshall asked.
“It looks like a fountain pen,” Benedikt answered. He signaled for the provodnitsa, who was trembling in the passageway. “Did you find him like this?”
The provodnitsa nodded. She swallowed hard, having gotten all the screaming out of her system. “I… I wanted to check up on him.” With the back of her arm, to avoid dirtying her face with the blood on her hands, she pushed a strand of disheveled gray hair out of her eyes. “I knocked briefly a few minutes ago, but there was no answer. When I finished making my rounds in the rest of the carriage, I simply let myself in. It is customary, in case the passenger is too busy to open their door.”
“Make way! Make way!”
There was a sudden whistle in the passageway, then a uniformed man bustling into the compartment and scrunching his nose at the sight. Other curious passengers had shuffled close, and the train officer gestured quickly for everyone to vacate. He could barely be heard past all the horrified whispers; suddenly half the train’s soft-class passengers were clustered in the passageway to gawk at the body, rising onto the tips of their toes and getting close to the provodnitsa.
“Please step out and make some space!” the officer bellowed. He waved vigorously at the two attendants hovering in the passageway at the back of the crowd. “Someone get Mrs. Kuzmina a towel so she doesn’t have to stand here covered with blood.”
The attendants hurried to the front of the crowd. As Benedikt followed Marshall out of the compartment, shooed from the scene, he kept his attention on what was unfolding. While the other passengers started to shift away, grimacing at the thought of watching the body get carried out past them, he grabbed Marshall’s elbow and prompted him to hold still, listening to the rest of the conversation.
“What can we do, Mr. Vodin?” one of the attendants said nervously. “Shouldn’t… shouldn’t we leave it in place until the police can come?”
Vodin, the officer, had propped his hands on his hips. He was a large, burly man, with a thick mustache curling at his upper lip.
“Hmm,” he said. “I suppose you are correct. Leave the body in place. Clear the crowd outside and escort these onlookers away. We will halt the train at the next stop.”
“They can’t,” Marshall hissed suddenly, his words meant only for Benedikt. “A delay like that will throw us off schedule.”
“Yes, but someone just got murdered,” Benedikt replied. He grimaced. “What are they going to do, not summon the police?”
“Ben.” Marshall’s grip tightened on his elbow. “Roma was very clear. We have someone’s life depending on us.”
“But what can we do? Become the police?”
Marshall’s expression brightened. As soon as he released Benedikt’s elbow and hurried back into the room, Benedikt cursed under his breath, because he knew Marshall had probably just gotten a terrible idea.
“Officer!” he crowed. “There’s no need to summon the police. We are private investigators, and we can take on this case.”
By God. This was even worse than terrible. This was the worst idea known to mankind.
“That is convenient and all,” Vodin was saying when Benedikt pushed past the onlookers to join Marshall, “but we will still need the police—”
“The door between the soft-class carriages and the hard-class carriages was locked for departure, correct?” Marshall cut in. “Keep it locked, post a guard there to prevent any movement between the carriage classes. We are aboard a moving train, officer. As long as no one gets on and no one gets off, that means the culprit responsible for this murder remains within one of these four soft-class carriages. And you know it is absolutely not us, because we were talking to your nephew in the dining carriage.”
The passengers who were still hovering nearby had turned quiet. Some looked pale. The provodnitsa—Mrs. Kuzmina—remained too, having shifted from terrified to dazed.