by Boris Akunin
The Englishwoman hung her head and began crying quietly, clearly having abandoned all hope. Naina Georgievna, who had turned bright pink with indignation, hugged her around the shoulders and began whispering something reassuring, but Miss Wrigley only repeated bitterly: “No, no, I’m a foreigner, the jury will condemn me…”
Sister Pelagia, whose heart was breaking at this pitiful spectacle, cast an imploring glance at His Grace. He nodded reassuringly, tapped his crook on the floor, and cleared his throat, and everyone immediately fell silent and turned toward him respectfully.
“Leave that woman alone,” the bishop thundered. “She is not guilty.”
“But what about the will, Your Grace?” asked the marshal, spreading his arms wide in protest. “The first principle of investigation is cui prodest.”
“Count Gavriil Alexandrovich,” said the bishop, wagging a finger at him in admonishment, “pies should be baked by the pie-man; your job is to take care of our nobility and not to concern yourself with legal inquiries, for which you do not in any case—no offense intended—even possess the prerequisite qualities.”
The marshal smiled in embarrassment, and Mitrofanii continued equally unhurriedly.
“You should not have dismissed the assurances of this young man and woman, who have known this person almost since the day they were born. And if that is not enough for you, then consider this: The first dog was killed before the will had been changed in Miss Wrigley’s favor. And just where, tell me, Gavriil Alexandrovich, does that leave your prodest, eh?”
“Hmm, that’s right,” said the disrespectful Poggio, snapping his fingers. “His Grace is very sharp.”
Now totally disconcerted, the marshal spread his arms even wider.
“But wait, then who killed the dogs? Or is that to remain a mystery and a secret?”
The silence was so tense, the gazes focused on the bishop from all sides so full of anticipation, that Mitrofanii was unable to resist the temptation.
“A mystery to men, but known to God,” he said impressively. “And through Him to His servants.”
Instantly the least movement in the drawing room ceased. The maid Tanya froze by the door, clutching the ribbons of her white apron with both hands. Bubentsov inclined his head skeptically. Miss Wrigley, about to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief, froze with her hand in midair. Even the haughty Naina Georgievna stared at the bishop as if spellbound.
Mitrofanii took Pelagia by the hand and led her into the center of the room.
“On my instructions, Sister Pelagia, my ever-vigilant eye, has spent several days here. I order you, my daughter, to tell these people what you have discovered. This affair has agitated minds and troubled hearts too profoundly for you and me to keep it our secret.”
Pelagia lowered her eyes and shifted her spectacles up and down her nose, which was a sign that she was annoyed, but it was not her place to be angry with the bishop. There was nothing for her to do but obey.
“If you bless the deed, father, I will tell them,” she said, overcoming her quite understandable nervousness. “But first let me confess and ask pardon. I should have solved the matter sooner. The innocent little creature would still be alive, and Marya Afanasievna would have been spared the terrible shock that almost sent her to the grave. I was too late; it was not until this morning that certain things became clear to me, and even then not completely clear.”
Everybody listened to the nun very attentively, with the sole exception of Vladimir Lvovich, who stood there, arms akimbo, gazing at Pelagia in amused surprise. And his minion Tikhon Ieremeevich, infected by his master’s example, took advantage of the pause to declare in a low voice, seemingly to himself: “Let your womenfolk hold their peace for they are bidden not to speak but to obey as the law says…”
“Do not pervert the Sacred Writ, it is a great sin and also punishable by law,” said Mitrofanii, refusing to let him get away with this low trick. “The holy apostle wrote ‘let them hold their peace in the churches,’ meaning that during the service the long-tongued women should keep quiet, but the Christian law does not stop the mouths of women. You have evidently confused it, my dear sir, with Mohammedanism.”
“Apologies, Your Grace, I have become feeble of memory,” Spas-yonny responded humbly, and bowed low before the bishop, almost down to the very ground.
Pelagia crossed herself, knowing that in a very short while the quiet of this hall would be shattered by the howling of Sodom and Gomorrah, but there was nothing to be done, and so she began: “Here at Drozdovka three murders have been committed. One five days ago, another two days ago, and the last one yesterday evening. They are truly murders, even though no people were killed. The first murder was planned in advance, with careful forethought. Someone wished to poison Zagulyai and Zakidai together. On the second and third occasions, things turned out differently: The murderer made no preparations at all, but acted in haste, killing with whatever came to hand. When Zakidai was killed, it was with an axe taken from the garden shed. Yesterday an ordinary stone was sufficient. How much is needed for a little puppy? I dare say he had no time even to squeal….”
The nun crossed herself again, although she was not supposed to do so for a dog. But never mind that, it could do no harm.
“One thing is clear: The murder of the dogs is not connected with the will in any way because, as His Grace has pointed out, the change in the will had no effect on the dog-killer’s evil intent. This person carried his dark plot through to the end. Either he wished in this way to do away with Marya Afanasievna, or he was pursuing some other goal unknown to us. But in the latter case the actions of the murderer are doubly repulsive, because of the indifference with which this person regarded the unfortunate woman’s suffering. The murderer could not have failed to understand that he was destroying her mental and physical well-being…. And the most mysterious thing about this businessis this…” Pelagia pushed up the spectacles that had slipped down her nose. “Why was such haste necessary with Zakidai and Zakusai? Why did the murderer have to take such risks? On both occasions there were people walking in the park. They could have seen him, exposed him. Yesterday, for instance, I very nearly came upon the criminal at the scene of the crime, I even heard steps, but, may God forgive me, I was afraid to run in pursuit, and by the time I screwed up my courage, it was already too late. The callousness and daring of the criminal indicate some exceptional passion. Either hatred, or fear, or something else. I do not know and I do not undertake to guess what our killer feels. I can only hope that he, or rather she, will tell us that herself.”
“She!” gasped Shiryaev. “You mean to say, sister, that the killer is female?”
Everybody began talking at once and Mitrofanii glanced at Pelagia with a doubtful air, seeming already to regret that he had authorized her denunciation.
“So it is the Englishwoman after all?” said the marshal, totally confused.
Naina Georgievna threw up her finely sculpted chin defiantly. “No, you were told it was not her. The hint is obvious. Apart from Miss Wrigley, there is only one other woman here—me.”
“And is Tatyana Zotovna not a woman, according to you?” asked Pyotr Georgievich, offended for the honor of his Dulcinea, but, realizing immediately that his intercession was not entirely appropriate, he added in confusion, “Oh, I’m sorry, Tanya, that was not what I meant at all….”
Recovering his wits, he bounded across to the nun like an enraged cockerel.
“What sort of hysterical nonsense is this! What makes you think that it was a woman? Have you had a revelation or something of the sort?”
Tikhon Ieremeevich, clearly still not having forgiven Pelagia for his exile to the other wing, cited an appropriate dictum: “The lips of the foolish do speak forth foolishness.”
He looked around at his master for support, but Bubentsov did not even glance at him; he was watching the nun, not in the way that he had been before, but with obvious interest. Vladimir Lvovich was behaving oddly today: He was usu
ally expansive in company and could not bear it when people listened to anyone else, but this evening he had hardly even opened his mouth once.
“There was no revelation,” Pelagia replied calmly, “and there is no need of one, when ordinary human reason will suffice. At first light I visited the spot where Zakusai was killed yesterday. The earth around it had been thoroughly trampled; someone had walked around the spot for quite a long time. Beside the hollow that was left by the stone was a deeper print of a right foot, as if someone had put their weight on it as they bent down, and another one, exactly the same, where the killer bent over to hit the puppy on the head. It is a woman’s shoe, with a high heel. Only two people in the house wear shoes with high heels—Miss Wrigley and Naina Georgievna.” Pelagia took a sheet of paper with the outline of a shoe traced on it out of her waist bag. “This is the footprint; the length of the foot is nine and a half inches. We can measure it against their feet to make quite sure.”
“My foot is not nine and a half inches long, but eleven,” Miss Wrigley declared in fright, having fallen under suspicion for the second time that evening. “Here, gentlemen, look.”
In confirmation of her words the Englishwoman lifted her foot in its lace-up boot high in the air, but nobody looked—they had all dashed to drag Naina Georgievna away from Sister Pelagia.
Enraptured, the young woman was shouting and shaking the nun by the collar.
“You sniffed and spied me out, you little black mouse. Yes, it was me, I did it! But why is nobody else’s concern!”
The spectacles fell to the floor, fabric tore, and when they finally managed to detach Naina Georgievna, there was a serious scratch oozing blood on the nun’s cheek.
That was when the howling of Sodom and Gomorrah that Pelagia had foreseen began.
Pyotr Georgievich laughed uncertainly. “No, Naina, no. Why are you talking such nonsense about yourself? Are you just trying to appear interesting again?”
But Shiryaev’s voice was louder. Stepan Trofimovich cried out in torment: “Naina, but what for? Why, it’s appalling! It’s base!”
“Appalling? Base? There are limits beyond which neither fear nor baseness exist!”
Her eyes glinted with a frenzy in which there was not a trace of guilt, repentance, or even shame—only ecstasy and a strange triumph. One might even say that something majestic was revealed in Naina Georgievna’s character at that moment.
“Bravo! I recognize that. Macbeth, act two and scene two, I think,” said Arkadii Sergeevich, pretending to clap his hands. “The same and Lady Macbeth:
My hands are of your color: but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
“The audience is ecstatic, the entire stage is strewn with bouquets. Bravo!”
“You pitiful jester and talentless dauber,” the dangerous young lady hissed. “They threw you out of art, and that little wooden box of yours won’t save you for long. Soon anyone who feels like it will be a photographer, and the only path left for you to follow will be playing living tableaux at the fairground!”
Pyotr Georgievich took hold of his sister’s hands.
“Naina, Naina, stop it! You are not yourself, I will call the doctor.”
The next moment a furious shove almost sent him tumbling head over heels and the wrath of the enraged fury was unleashed on her brother: “Petenka, my darling brother! Your Excellency! What are you frowning at? Ah, you don’t like being called ‘Excellency’! You’re our little democrat, you’re too good for titles. That’s because you’re ashamed of your family name, my fine little cockerel. Prince Telianov has a dubious ring to it. What sort of princes are these, that no one has ever heard of? If it were Obolensky or Volkonsky, you wouldn’t be so squeamish about your ‘Excellency.’ Get married, go on, marry Tanyusha. She’ll be just the right sort of princess for you. Only what are you going to do with her, eh, Petya? Read clever books? That’s not enough for a woman, it’s nowhere near enough. But you’re not capable of anything else. Thirty years old, and still a boy. She’ll run away from you to some other fine young man.”
“What on earth is going on here!” the marshal exclaimed in outrage. “Such indecent talk in the presence of the bishop, in the presence of all of us! Why, she’s having hysterics, a perfectly obvious fit of hysterics.”
Stepan Trofimovich pulled the violator of the proprieties toward the doors.
“Come on, Naina. You and I need to have a talk.”
She burst into spiteful laughter: “Oh yes, of course, we absolutely must have a talk and wash ourselves clean with our pure tears. How sick I am of all of you and your heart-to-heart talks! Boo-hoo-hoo, goo-goo-goo,” she mocked, “our duty to mankind, the fusion of souls, in a hundred years the world will be transformed into a garden. You can’t just simply put your arms around a girl and kiss her. You idiot! You couldn’t see what was there for the taking.”
Sytnikov had already opened his mouth to say something, except that after the retribution meted out to his precursors, he thought it wiser to hold his peace. But his turn still came.
“And you, Donat Abramovich, why are you looking at me so reproachfully? Do you disapprove? Or do you feel sorry for the little dogs? Is it true when they say that you killed your gross wife with poisonous mushrooms? To leave the vacancy open for a new wife? Not for me, was it? Of course, I was still running around in short skirts at the time, but then you’re such a thorough man, you plan so far ahead!”
Naina Georgievna began gasping for breath, choking on short, muffled sobs, and suddenly dashed toward the door. She stopped in the doorway and looked around the hall, her glance lingering for an instant on Bubentsov, who was standing there with a wide smile on his face, clearly savoring the scandal, and said: “I’m moving out. I shall live in the town. Think what you will of me, that does not concern me in the least. But as for all of you, including the sneaky little nun and the most gracious Mitrofanii, I curse and ana-them-at-ize you.”
And with this final bad joke, she ran out, slamming the door loudly in farewell.
“In olden times they would have said the devil had got into the girl,” Mitrofanii concluded sadly.
The insulted Sytnikov muttered: “In our merchant community they would have whipped her with birch rods and the devil would have left her in a moment.”
“Oh, how can we tell granny?” said Pyotr Georgievich, taking his head in his hands.
Bubentsov started: “Aunty must not be told! It would kill her. Later, not just now. Let her recover a little.”
The marshal was concerned by something else.
“But why this strange hatred for dogs? Probably this is really some kind of insanity. Is there such a psychological illness as cynophobia?”
“This is not insanity,” said Pelagia, inspecting her handkerchief to see if the scratch on her cheek had stopped bleeding. At least her spectacles had not been broken. “There’s a mystery here that still needs to be unraveled.”
“And is there anything to go on?” asked the bishop.
“If we look, something will turn up. The thing that bothers me—”
Shiryaev did not let the nun finish what she was saying.
“Why am I standing here rooted to the spot like this!” He shook his head as if he were driving away some hallucination. “Stop her! She will lay hands on herself! She’s delirious!”
He ran out into the corridor. Pyotr Georgievich dashed after him. Arkadii Sergeevich hesitated for a moment, shrugged, and followed them.
“All still chasing after her,” declared Sytnikov.
ALTHOUGH THE MOON was already waning, it was still pleasantly round and shone as bright as a crystal chandelier, and like little lampions the stars did their best to light up the blue ceiling of the sky so that the night was not much darker than the day.
His Grace and Pelagia walked along the main alley of the park and behind them the horses drowsily set one hoof in front of another and jangled their harness as they pulled along the carriage, which seemed almost to merge int
o the trees and the bushes.
“Ooh, that vulture,” said Mitrofanii. “Did you see the way he sent for Korsh? He won’t back down now until he gets what he’s after. That disturbed girl has made his job easier for him—that’s one heir less. Pelagia, here is what I would like you to do. Prepare Marya Afanasievna so that the news won’t distress her so badly again. It is not easy to discover something like that about your own granddaughter. And stay here for a little while longer, be near my aunt.”
“She won’t be distressed. It seems to me, father, that Marya Afanasievna is far less interested in people than in dogs. Of course, I shall sit with her and console her as best I can, but for the sake of the investigation it would be best for me to come back to town.”
“What investigation do you mean?” His Grace asked, surprised. “The investigation is concluded. And you wanted to find out why this Naina killed the dogs.”
“That’s what’s on my mind. There is something unusual here, Your Grace, something that makes my skin crawl. What you just said about the devil getting into her was very much to the point.”
“That’s just superstition,” said Mitrofanii, even more surprised. “Surely you do not believe in satanic possession? I was speaking metaphorically; it was a figure of speech. There is no devil, but there is evil, formless and ubiquitous, and that is what seduces the soul.”
Pelagia’s spectacles glinted as she looked up at the bishop.
“But the devil does exist! Who was that grinning at the sight of human vileness all evening?”
“You mean Bubentsov?”
“And who else? He is the very devil incarnate. Spiteful, venomous, and fascinating. I am sure he is the key to all this, father. Did you see the looks that Naina Georgievna was giving him? As if she was expecting him to praise her. It was for his benefit that she played out her drama with all that wailing and gnashing of teeth. The rest of us are nothing to her, a mere theatrical backdrop.”
