Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers

Dmitri and the Milk-Drinkers
Michael Pearce

Witty and irreverent, this is the first in an irresistible crime series set in Tsarist Russia in the 1890s from the award-winning Michael Pearce.Tsarist Russia in the 1890s. Dmitri Kameron, a young lawyer, must deal with the disappearance of a well-connected young woman. She has been shipped off to Siberia, in one of the prison wagons outside the Court House. But is this a bureaucratic bungle or something more calculated?On a journey to the furthest outposts of Russia, Dimitri’s search becomes horribly complicated. To unearth the truth in a treacherous world of Russian officialdom he is forced to make some strange allies, not least among them the redoubtable Milk-Drinkers…

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First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1997

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259358

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780007483082

Version: 2017-09-12

Contents

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About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Michael Pearce (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

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Dmitri Kameron, Examining Magistrate, was walking along the corridor of the Court House when a woman came out of a door ahead of him.

‘Help me, please!’ she said.

Dmitri, a sympathetic young man fresh from law school and therefore lacking the consciousness of his dignity seen in the provinces as proper to his post, paused politely.

The girl was fair and well spoken; a bit above the run of women usually seen in Kursk, never mind the Court House, and Dmitri was impressed.

Later, he came to think he had been intended to be.

‘Could you take me to the yard, please? I need some air.’

‘Of course!’

He offered her his arm. Things, thought Dmitri, were improving.

‘I felt faint,’ she said.

‘Oh, it’s stifling in the Courtroom. They haven’t caught up with the fact that it’s spring yet. The heating’s still going full blast. And then, of course, there are so many people.’

‘I felt faint,’ she said again.

‘A breath of fresh air will put you right!’

But would she find it in the yard? There would be horse-shit everywhere, prisoners coming and going who, after long confinement, smelled worse than the horse-shit, the rank tobacco of the guards, and the dubious smell that came from the open drains. He had been meaning to speak about that to someone ever since he came, but the rooms used by the lawyers were at the front of the building and it was easy to forget what went on at the rear.

He stopped abruptly.