Literary Ghosts
From the Case files of Wood and Petrova
By: R.C. Anderson
To Maureen Jennings, for giving us a Canadian Sherlock Holmes.
To Carlotta, whose support through this has been immeasurable.
And to John and Svetlana, without whom I wouldn’t be doing this.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed out.
-Francis Bacon.
Question: The first case that you worked on together. How tough was that?
Petrova: That first case was hard to get through at points.
Wood: Yes, but we managed to get through it somehow.
Question: Even though you hardly knew each other.
Petrova: Yes, that’s right. We didn’t know each other then. But we attracted to each other.
Question: Looking back what do you see?
Wood: Old ghosts.
-John Wood and Svetlana Petrova, tape recorded interview, March 17th, 1967.
Explanatory Note
The great mass of files, known as the Wood/Petrova files, were rediscovered fairly recently in the house of my former criminology professor. Remembering that I had an interest in True Crime and my ambition to be a writer, he asked that I put them into book form, which I agreed to.
However, he made the point that he did not want them to be True Crime books themselves. He thought that it would better suit these people if their cases were written as novels. Why, I asked, treat them as fiction? Here he got a wistful look in his eye and said that it was because they were so larger than life that to write them as fiction would be better than listing off dry facts and statistics.
Along with the files, he also gave me private letters and diaries of many of the people involved in this case and others. When I asked my former teacher, how he got his hands on these documents, he simply said ‘I have my ways.’ Pouring over the files and other documents, I later realized that he was right. To truly do justice, if you’ll forgive the phrase, to these people I had to write these files as novels.
The files themselves cover Wood and Petrova’s careers from 1917 until 1967. Our knowledge of Wood’s police career from 1904 to 1914 is limited as there was a fire in the station house where those files were kept. If there are other copies of those files, I do not know where they are. It is currently unknown how much was lost. If they are found, I shall consider writing about them. As for Petrova’s career, she seems to have started hers out of university, which she graduated from in 1917. There is no record of her solving any cases before then. If something comes up, I may write it. This case in particular occurs from June to August 1917.
A few notes about the text. First, I have updated the speech as much as I could, without throwing in any anachronistically modern words and phrases. Second, since this, by definition, is a novel, the thoughts and dialogue of the characters are fiction. Though they are informed by the aforementioned files, letters and diaries, there is no true record of their day to day conversations. Third, I will include footnotes for any unfamiliar events, persons, words or places for those who are unfamiliar with the times and places herein. Finally, the case you are about to read may be disturbing to some people. If you are disturbed by blood, guts, gore, murder and foul language, please turn back now.
R.C.A.
Underwood Productions 