Page 50 of Last Violent Call
Benedikt snorted. “Did you have to draw the sad face?”
“Yes. That poor chair.”
The door to the dining carriage slid open again, bringing a new passenger. In stark contrast to Eduard, the girl who entered next only poked her head in first, cautious about interrupting. Marshall recognized her, though it took him a second to recall why.
“Vodin sent me through,” she said.
“Come and sit,” Benedikt prompted, taking his pen back and tapping it twice on Marshall’s knee to tell him to get back on task. “This will be quick. You are…” He consulted the passenger list. “Yeva?”
The girl nodded, walking forward and sliding into the seat. She was wearing a pale green dress in a collared style that felt reminiscent of Shanghai, though perhaps cities spreading their fashion to each other was no big surprise. A silver necklace dangled outside the lace, its pendant engraved with an English letterY.
“Yeva Mikhailovna, at your service.” Her voice came quietly, not because of timidity, but merely as if that were her default volume.
“No family name?” Marshall asked.
“That is not so strange in this day and age,” she answered easily.
Marshall supposed he had to agree. After all, his full name on this train ride was “Just Marshall.”
“Are there any other passengers who can account for your whereabouts at the time of the crime, Yeva Mikhailovna?” Benedikt asked, probably writing her lack of surname into his notes too.
“That depends,” Yeva answered. She smoothed a stray piece of hair away, pressing it back into her low bun. “When the provodnitsa screamed, I was alone in my own room drinking tea. But a few minutes beforehand, if that is when the crime occurred, you two saw me.”
Benedikt looked up suddenly, surprised at the statement. He likely hadn’t noticed, nor made note of the passageway encounter. Since Marshall was the one who had almost collided with her, he nodded easily, confirming the account.
“Did you know the deceased?” Marshall asked, picking up the questioning while Benedikt scribbled.
Yeva shook her head firmly.
“All right. Last question, and I suppose this is especially relevant since you were nearby. Did you see anyone suspicious at the time of the crime?”
For a moment, it seemed Yeva was about to shake her head again. Only then she paused, her brow furrowing in thoughtful contemplation.
“I was in a hurry to get back to my room, so I did not see anything,” she said slowly. “But… around fifteen minutes earlier, I was also walking by to get some food. I heard arguing, and I think it may have been from the deceased’s compartment.”
No one seemed to have seen a guilty perpetrator go into the deceased’s room, but everybody had heard the muffled argument.
“Chances are high,” Marshall said. “Thank you very much for your help, Yeva Mikhailovna.”
Yeva blinked. “You… do not want to know what the argument was about?”
Benedikt’s chair creaked as he sat up straight. “You actually caught what was said?”
“Of course,” Yeva said, appearing bewildered at any alternate possibility. “It was so loud. I didn’t catch much because I thought it inappropriate to linger, but I did hear one command very clearly. He said, ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare put that in me.’?”
In an instant, Marshall met Benedikt’s eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing. Unless Popov was deluded enough to reason with a killer before they stabbed a weapon through his throat, it was likely that this occurred before the crime, and he was speaking about a syringe instead.
“Thank you, Yeva,” Benedikt said. “Could you send the next passenger through on your way out?”
The sun was setting. Once the rapidly moving skies finished burning red and color seeped down the horizon like liquid from a wrung-out washcloth, another day would have passed upon the Trans-Siberian Express.
Marshall flipped through the encyclopedia in his lap, humming beneath his breath. They had left the overhead light off, still intent on soaking up the last of the sunset. While Marshall made a concentrated effort to browse through the thick tome he had retrieved from the dining carriage’s corner library, his legs stretched out on the bed and his posture curled to put him close to the page, Benedikt was sitting on the floor instead with his sketchpad, leaning his head back on Marshall.
“I don’t suppose drawing has given you a big revelation?” Marshall asked, cutting into the quiet.
“It has, actually,” Benedikt replied in an instant. He shaded the grassy scene on his paper, then paused before adding a tiny cow to his field. “I have realized I need to draw more cows. They are very nice.”
Marshall rolled his eyes, softly thumping Benedikt over the head.
