The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Otto Penzler

  Everyone suddenly began speaking at once. “But it wasn’t Anyuta that disappeared, it was Polinka!” Sergey Ilyich recalled.

  “Well, obviously that was just Polinka drawing a mole on her cheek,” the more imaginative Lidia Nikolaevna explained impatiently. “That’s why everyone thought she was Anyuta!”

  Retired court doctor Stupitsyn did not agree. “Impossible! People close to them are able to distinguish twins quite well. The way they act, the nuances of the voice, the expressions of their eyes, after all!”

  “And anyway, why was such a switch necessary?” General Liprandi interrupted the court doctor. “Why would Polinka have to pretend that she was Anyuta?”

  Erast Petrovich waited until the flood of questions and objections ebbed, and then answered them one by one, “Had Anyuta disappeared, Your Excellency, then suspicion would inevitably have fallen on Polinka, that she had taken her revenge upon her sister, and so the search for traces of the murder would have been more painstaking. That’s one thing. Had the besotted girl vanished at the same time as the Frenchman, this would have brought to the forefront the theory that this was a flight, not a crime. That’s two. And then, of course, in the guise of Anyuta, at some time in the future she might marry Renar without giving herself away. Apparently that is precisely what happened in faraway Rio de Janeiro. I am certain that Polinka traveled so far from her native land in order to join the object of her affections in peace.” The collegiate assessor turned to the court doctor. “Your argument that intimates are able to distinguish twins is entirely reasonable. Note, however, that the Karakins’ family doctor, whom it would have been impossible to deceive, had died not long before. And besides, the supposed Anyuta changed most decidedly after that fateful night, precisely as if she had become someone else. In view of the particular circumstances, everyone took that as natural. In fact, this transformation occurred with Polinka, but is it to be wondered at that she lost her former animation and gaiety?”

  “And the death of the old prince?” Sergey Ilyich asked. “Wasn’t that awfully convenient for the criminal?”

  “A most suspicious death,” agreed Fandorin. “It is entirely possible that poison may have been involved. There was no autopsy, of course—his sudden demise was attributed to paternal grief and a disposition to apoplexy, but at the same time it is entirely possible that after a night such as that, a trifle like poisoning one’s own father would not much bother Polinka. By the way, it would not be too late to conduct an exhumation even now. Poison is preserved a long while in the bone tissue.”

  “I’ll bet that the prince was poisoned,” Lidia Nikolaevna said quickly, turning to Arkhip Giatsintovich, who pretended that he had not heard.

  “An inventive theory. And clever, too,” Mustafin said at length. “However, one must have an exceedingly active imagination to picture Princess Karakina carving up the body of her own sister with a bread knife while dressed in the garb of Eve.”

  Everyone again began speaking at once, defending both points of view with equal ardor, although the ladies inclined to Fandorin’s version of events, while the gentlemen rejected it as improbable. The cause of the argument took no part in the discussion himself, although he listened to the points of both sides with interest.

  “Oh, but why are you remaining silent?!” Lidia Nikolaevna called to him, as she pointed at Mustafin. “Clearly, he is arguing against something perfectly obvious simply in order not to give up his stake. Tell him, say something else, that will force him into silence!”

  “I am waiting for your Matvey to return,” Erast Petrovich replied tersely.

  “But where did you send him?”

  “To the Governor-General’s staff headquarters. The telegraph office there is open around the clock.”

  “But that’s on Tverskoy Boulevard, five minutes’ walk from here, and he’s been gone more than an hour!” someone wondered.

  “Matvey was ordered to wait for the reply,” the officer of special missions explained, then again fell silent while Arkhip Giatsintovich held everyone’s attention with an expansive explanation of the ways in which Fandorin’s theory was completely impossible from the viewpoint of female psychology.

  Just at the most effective moment, as Mustafin was holding forth most convincingly about the innate properties of the feminine nature, which is ashamed of nudity and cannot endure the sight of blood, the door quietly opened and the long-awaited Matvey entered. Treading silently, he approached the collegiate assessor and, with a bow, proffered a sheet of paper.

  Erast Petrovich turned, read the note, then nodded. The hostess, who had been watching the young man’s face attentively, could not endure to wait any longer, and so moved her chair closer to her guest. “Well, what’s there?” she whispered.

  “I was right,” Fandorin answered, also in a whisper.

  That instant Odintsova interrupted the lecture. “Enough nonsense, Arkhip Giatsintovich! What do you know of the feminine nature, you who have never even been married! Erast Petrovich has incontrovertible proof!” She took the telegram from the collegiate assessor’s hand and passed it around the circle.

  Flabbergasted, the guests read the telegram, which consisted of three words:

  “Yes. Yes. No.”

  “And that’s it? What is this? Where is it from?” Such were the general questions.

  “The telegram was sent from the Russian mission in Br-Brazil,” Fandorin explained. “You see the diplomatic stamp there? It is deep night here in Moscow, but in Rio de Janeiro right now the mission is in attendance. I was counting on that when I ordered Matvey to wait for a reply. As for the telegram, I recognize the laconic style of Karl Ivanovich Veber. This is how my message read. Matvey, give me the paper, will you? The one I gave you.” Erast Petrovich took the paper from the lackey and read aloud, “‘Karl, old boy, inform me the following soonest: Is Russian subject born Princess Anyuta Karakina now resident in Brazil married? If yes, is her husband lame? And does the princess have a mole on her right cheek? I need all this for a bet. Fandorin.’ From the answer to the message it is clear that the pr-princess is married to a lame man, and has no mole on her cheek. Why would she need the mole now? In far-off Brazil there is no need to run to such clever tricks. As you see, ladies and gentlemen, Polinka is alive and well, married to her Renar. The terrible tale has an idyllic ending. By the by, the lack of a mole shows once again that Renar was a witting participant in the murder and knows perfectly well that he is married precisely to Polinka, and not to Anyuta.”

  “So, I shall give orders to fetch the Caravaggio,” Odintsova said to Arkhip Giatsintovich with a victorious smile.

  * “Collegiate Assessor” was a civil title—one of fourteen that Peter the Great established when he reformed Russia’s bureaucracy—indicating a high rank, the threshold at which someone attained life nobility. The equivalent rank in the army was major.

  * Skobelev: general whose militant pan-Slavic views and predictions of inevitable conflict with Germany got him in trouble with the government in St. Petersburg and resulted in his recall to the capital, where, in 1882, he died of heart failure.

  FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

  MURDER

  from CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE GARNETT

  One of the greatest crime novels of all time, Crime and Punishment was written by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881) and published in twelve monthly installments (January-December, 1866) in the magazine Russky Vestnik (The Russian Messenger) before its first book publication in a single volume in 1867. It was first published in English translation in London by Vizetelly (1886) and in New York by Crowell (1886).

  As a towering literary achievement, its plot is well known. A poor student, Rodion Raskolnikov, breaks into the apartment of an obnoxious old money-lender planning to rob and kill her. When her half-sister chances upon the scene, he murders her, too. He believes he has the right to commit the crimes, as it solves his financial difficulty while ridding the world of a loat
hsome creature and, besides, as a superior being, he need feel no guilt as he pursues more noble purposes. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche developed his idea of the superman after reading Crime and Punishment. Although he has no solid evidence, the police detective Porfiry Petrovich becomes convinced that Raskolnikov committed the murder and, relying on the killer’s conscience, finally persuades him to confess.

  This excerpt of the murder scene from Crime and Punishment is from the Constance Garnett translation, first published in 1914.

  The door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then Raskolnikov lost his head and nearly made a great mistake.

  Fearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone, and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he took hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old woman from attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the door back, but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged her out with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway not allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She stepped back in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared with open eyes at him.

  “Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began, trying to speak easily, but his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. “I have come … I have brought something … but we’d better come in … to the light.…”

  And leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed.

  “Good heavens! What is it? Who is it? What do you want?”

  “Why, Alyona Ivanovna, you know me … Raskolnikov … here, I brought you the pledge I promised the other day.…” And he held out the pledge.

  The old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared in the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously, and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a sneer in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened that if she were to look like that and not say a word for another half-minute, he thought he would have run away from her.

  “Why do you look at me as though you did not know me?” he said suddenly, also with malice. “Take it if you like, if not I’ll go elsewhere. I am in a hurry.”

  He had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said of itself. The old woman recovered herself, and her visitor’s resolute tone evidently restored her confidence.

  “But why, my good sir, all of a minute … What is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge.

  “The silver cigarette-case; I spoke of it last time, you know.”

  She held out her hand.

  “But how pale you are, to be sure … and your hands are trembling too? Have you been bathing, or what?”

  “Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You can’t help getting pale … if you’ve nothing to eat,” he added, with difficulty articulating the words.

  His strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like the truth; the old woman took the pledge.

  “What is it?” she asked once more, scanning Raskolnikov intently and weighing the pledge in her hand.

  “A thing … cigarette-case … Silver … Look at it.”

  “It does not seem somehow like silver … How he has wrapped it up!”

  Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall … A sudden giddiness came over him.

  “But what has he tied it up like this for?” the old woman cried with vexation and moved towards him.

  He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down his strength returned to him.

  The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held “the pledge.” Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and in the same spot. The blood gushed forth as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively.

  He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming blood)—the same right-hand pocket from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood … He pulled out the keys at once, they were all, as before, in one bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into the bedroom with them. It was a very small room with a whole shrine of holy images. Against the other wall stood a big bed, very clean and covered with a silk patchwork wadded quilt. Against a third wall was a chest of drawers. Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit the keys into the chest, so soon as he heard their jingling, a convulsive shudder passed over him. He suddenly felt tempted again to give it all up and go away. But that was only for an instant; it was too late to go back. He positively smiled at himself, when suddenly another terrifying idea occurred to his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might be still alive and might recover her senses. Leaving the keys in the chest, he ran back to the body, snatched up the axe, and lifted it once more over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending down and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was broken and even battered in on one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand and indeed it was evident without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect pool of blood. All at once he noticed a string on her neck; he tugged at it, but the string was strong and did not snap and, besides, it was soaked with blood. He tried to pull it out from the front of the dress, but something held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience he raised the axe again to cut the string from above on the body, but did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hand and the axe in the blood, after two minutes’ hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken—it was a purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and one of copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a small greasy chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was stuffed very full. Raskolnikov thrust it in his pocket without looking at it, flung the crosses on the old woman’s body, and rushed back into the bedroom, this time taking the axe with him.

  He was in terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying them again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the locks. It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not the right one and would not fit, still he tried to put it in. Suddenly he remembered and realized that the big key with the deep notches, which was hanging there with the small keys, could not possibly belong to the chest of drawers (on his last visit this had struck him) but to some strong-box, and that everything perhaps was hidden in that box. He left the chest of drawer
s, and at once felt under the bedstead, knowing that old women usually keep boxes under their beds. And so it was; there was a good-sized box under the bed, at least a yard in length, with an arched lid covered with red leather and studded with steel nails. The notched key fitted at once and unlocked it. At the top, under a white sheet, was a coat of red brocade lined with hareskin; under it was a silk dress, then a shawl, and it seemed as though there was nothing below but clothes. The first thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained hands on the red brocade. “It’s red, and on red blood will be less noticeable,” the thought passed through his mind; then he suddenly came to himself. “Good God, am I going out of my senses?” he thought with terror.

  But no sooner did he touch the clothes than a gold watch slipped from under the fur coat. He made haste to turn them all over. There turned out to be various articles made of gold among the clothes—probably all pledges, unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed—bracelets, chains, earrings, pins, and such things. Some were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, carefully and exactly folded and tied round with tape. Without any delay, he began filling up the pockets of his trousers and overcoat without examining or undoing the parcels and cases; but he had not time to take many …

  He suddenly heard steps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped short and was still as death. But all was quiet, so it must have been his fancy. All at once he heard distinctly a faint cry, as though someone had uttered a low broken moan. Then again dead silence for a minute or two. He sat squatting on his heels by the box and waited, holding his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized the axe, and ran out of the bedroom.

  In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta with a big bundle in her arms. She was gazing in stupefaction at her murdered sister, white as a sheet, and seeming not to have the strength to cry out. Seeing him run out of the bedroom, she began faintly quivering all over, like a leaf, a shudder ran down her face; she lifted her hand, opened her mouth, but still did not scream. She began slowly backing away from him into the corner, staring intently, persistently at him, but still uttered no sound, as though she could not get breath to scream. He rushed at her with the axe; her mouth twitched piteously, as one sees babies’ mouths, when they begin to be frightened, stare intently at what frightens them, and are on the point of screaming. And this hapless Lizaveta was so simple and had been so thoroughly crushed and scared that she did not even raise a hand to guard her face, though that was the most necessary and natural action at the moment, for the axe was raised over her face. She only put up her empty left hand, but not to her face slowly holding it out before her as though motioning him away. The axe fell with the sharp edge just on the skull and split at one blow all the top of her head. She fell heavily at once, Raskolnikov completely lost his head snatching up her bundle, dropped it again, and ran into the entry.