Lyalin, an experienced detective and a man who had been around a lot in general, was inclined by nature to scorn the caprices of nature and he wasn’t bothered by the long wait. He knew that the Deputy for Special Assignments was in the Mariinskaya Hospital at that moment, where they were washing and dressing the poor wounded body of the servant of God Anisii, in recent times the Provincial Secretary Tulipov. Mr. Fandorin was saying goodbye to his well-loved assistant; he would make the sign of the cross and then dash over to Bozhedomka in no time. It was only a five-minute journey anyway, and he presumed that the Collegiate Counsellor’s horses were a cut above the old police nags.
No sooner had Lyalin had this thought than he saw a four-in-hand of handsome trotters with white plumes hurtling towards the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. The coachman looked like a general, all covered in gold braid, and the carriage was resplendent, with its gleaming wet black lacquer and the Dolgorukoi crest on the doors.
Mr. Fandorin jumped down to the ground, the soft springs swayed, and the carriage drove off to one side. It was evidently going to wait.
The newly arrived Chief was pale-faced and his eyes were burning brighter than usual, but Lyalin’s keen eyes failed to discern any other signs of the shocks and sleepless nights that Fandorin had endured. On the contrary, he actually had the impression that the Deputy for Special Assignments’ movements were considerably more sprightly and energetic than usual. Lyalin was about to offer his condolences, but then he looked a little more closely at His Honour’s compressed lips and changed his mind. Extensive police experience had taught him it was best to avoid snivelling and just get on with the job.
“No one’s been in Zakharov’s apartment without you, according to instructions received. The employees have been questioned, but none of them has seen the doctor since yesterday evening. They’re waiting over there.”
Fandorin glanced briefly in the direction of the morgue building, where several men were waiting, shifting from one foot to the other. “I thought I made it clear: don’t do anything. All right, let’s go.”
Out of sorts, Lyalin decided. Which was hardly surprisingly in such sad circumstances. The man was threatened with the ruin of his career and now there was this upsetting business with Tulipov.
The Collegiate Counsellor ran lightly up on to the porch of Zakharov’s wing and pushed at the door. It didn’t yield—it was locked.
Lyalin shook his head—Dr. Zakharov was a thorough man, very neat and tidy. Even when he was making good his escape he hadn’t forgotten to lock the door. A man like that wouldn’t leave any stupid tracks or clues.
Without turning round, Fandorin snapped his fingers and the senior detective understood him without any need for words. He took a set of lock-picks out of his pocket, chose one that was the right length for the key, twisted and turned it for a minute or so, and the door opened.
The Chief walked swiftly round all the rooms, throwing out curt instructions as he went; his usual mild stammer had disappeared somehow, as if it had never existed. “Check the clothes in the wardrobe. List them. Determine what is missing…Put all the medical instruments, especially the surgical ones, over there, on the table…There was a rug in the corridor—see that rectangular mark on the floor. Where has it gone to? Find it! What’s this, the study? Collect all the papers. Pay especially close attention to fragments and scraps.”
Lyalin looked around and didn’t see any scraps. The study appeared to be in absolutely perfect order. The agent was amazed once again by the fugitive doctor’s strong nerve. He’d tidied everything up as neatly as if he were expecting guests. What scraps would there be here?
But just then the Collegiate Counsellor bent down and picked up a small, crumpled piece of paper from under a chair. He unfolded it, read it, and handed it to Lyalin.
“Keep it.”
There were only three words on the piece of paper: “longer remain silent.”
“Start the search,” Fandorin ordered and went outside.
Five minutes later, having divided up the sectors of the search among the detectives, Lyalin looked out of the window and saw the Collegiate Counsellor and Musya creeping through the bushes. Branches had been broken off and the ground had been trampled. That must be where the late Tulipov had grappled with the criminal. Lyalin sighed, crossed himself and set about sounding out the walls of the bedroom.
The search did not produce anything of great interest. A pile of letters in English—evidently from Zakharov’s relatives: Fandorin glanced through them rapidly, but didn’t read them; he only paid attention to the dates. He jotted something down in his notebook, but didn’t say anything out loud.
Detective Sysuev distinguished himself by discovering another scrap of paper, a bit bigger than the first, in the study, but its inscription was even less intelligible: “erations of esprit de corps and sympathy for an old com.”
For some reason the Collegiate Counsellor found this bit of nonsense interesting. He also looked very closely at the Colt revolver discovered in a drawer of the writing desk. The revolver had been loaded quite recently—there were traces of fresh oil on the drum and the handle. Then why hadn’t Zakharov taken it with him, Lyalin wondered? Had he forgotten it, then? Or deliberately left it behind? But why?
Musya disgraced herself. Despite the mire, she went dashing after the scent pretty smartly, but then a massive, shaggy dog came flying out from behind the fence and started barking so fiercely that Musya squatted down on her hind legs and backed away, and after that it proved impossible to shift her from that spot. They put the watchman’s dog back on its chain, but Musya had lost all her spirit. Sniffer-dogs are nervous creatures; they have to be in the right mood.
“Which of them is which?” Fandorin asked, pointing through the window at the cemetery employees.
Lyalin began reporting: “The fat one in the cap is the supervisor. He lives outside the cemetery and has nothing to do with the work of the police morgue. Yesterday he left at half past five and he came this morning a quarter of an hour before you arrived. The tall consumptive-looking one is Zakharov’s assistant; his name’s Grumov. He’s just got here from home recently as well. The one with his head lowered is the watchman. The other three are labourers. They dig the graves, mend the fence, take out the rubbish and so on. The watchman and the labourers live here and could have heard something. But we haven’t questioned them in detail, since we were told not to.”
The Collegiate Counsellor talked with the employees himself. He called them into the building and first of all showed them the Colt: “Do you recognise it?”
The assistant Grumov and the watchman Pakhomenko testified (Lyalin wrote in his notes) that they were familiar with the weapon—they had seen it, or one just like it, in the doctor’s apartment. However, the gravedigger Kulkov testified that he had never seen any “revolvert” close up, but the previous month he had gone to watch the “doctur” shooting rooks, and he had done it very tidily: every time he fired, rooks’ feathers went flying.
The three shots fired last night by Provincial Secretary Tulipov had been heard by the watchman Pakhomenko and the labourer Khriukin. Kulkov had been in a drunken sleep and the noise had not wakened him.
Those who had heard the shots said they’d been afraid to go outside—how could you tell who might be wandering about in the middle of the night?—and they apparently had not heard any cries for help. Soon afterwards Khriukin had gone back to sleep, but Pakhomenko had stayed awake. He said that shortly after the shooting a door had slammed loudly and someone had walked rapidly towards the gates.
“What, were you listening then?” Fandorin asked the watchman.
“Of course I was,” Pakhomenko replied. “There was shooting. And I sleep badly at nights. All sorts of thoughts come into my head. I was tossing and turning until first light. Tell me, pan general, has that young lad really passed away? He was so sharp-eyed, and he was kind with simple folk.”
The Collegiate Counsellor was known always to be
polite and mild-mannered with his subordinates, but today Lyalin could barely recognise him. The Chief gave no reply to the watchman’s touching words and showed no interest at all in Pakhomenko’s nocturnal thoughts. He swung round sharply and spoke curtly over his shoulder to the witnesses: “You can go. No one is to leave the cemetery. But you, Grumov, be so good as to stay.”
Well, he was like a totally different man.
The doctor’s assistant blinked in fright as Fandorin asked him: “What was Zakharov doing yesterday evening? In detail, please.”
Grumov shrugged and spread his hands guiltily: “I couldn’t say. Yesterday Egor Willemovich was badly out of sorts; he kept cursing all the time, and after lunch he told me to go home. So I went. We didn’t even say goodbye—he locked himself in his study.”
“ ‘After lunch’—what time is that?”
“After three, sir.”
“ ‘After three, sir,’ ” the Collegiate Counsellor repeated, shaking his head for some reason, and clearly losing all interest in the consumptive morgue assistant. “You can go.”
Lyalin approached the Collegiate Counsellor and delicately cleared his throat. “I’ve jotted down a verbal portrait of Zakharov. Would you care to take a look?”
Fandorin didn’t even glance at the excellently composed description; he just waved it away. It was rather upsetting to see such a lack of respect for professional zeal.
“That’s all,” Fandorin said curtly. “There’s no need to question anyone else. You, Lyalin, go to the Assuage My Sorrows Hospital in Lefortovo and bring the male nurse Stenich to me on Tverskaya Street. And Sysuev can go to the Yakimanka Embankment and bring the factory-owner Burylin. Urgently.”
“But what about the verbal portrait of Zakharov?” Lyalin asked, his voice trembling. “I expect we’re going to put him on the wanted list, aren’t we?”
“No, we’re not,” Fandorin replied absent-mindedly, and strode off rapidly towards his wonderful carriage, leaving the experienced detective totally bemused.
—
Vedishchev was waiting in the Collegiate Counsellor’s office on Tverskaya Street. “The final day,” Dolgorukoi’s “grey cardinal” said sternly instead of saying hello. “We have to find that crazy Englishman. Find him and then report it, all right and proper. Otherwise you know what will happen.”
“And how do you come to know about Zakharov, Frol Grigorievich?” Fandorin asked, although he didn’t seem particularly surprised.
“Vedishchev knows everything that happens in Moscow.”
“We should have included you in the list of suspects, then. You put His Excellency’s cupping jars on and even let his blood, don’t you? So practising medicine is nothing new to you.” The joke, however, was made in a flat voice and it was clear that Fandorin was thinking about something quite different.
“Poor old Anisii, eh?” Vedishchev sighed. “That’s really terrible, that is. He was a bright lad, our shorty. He should have gone a long way, from all the signs.”
“I wish you would go to your own room, Frol Grigorievich,” was the Collegiate Counsellor’s reply to that. He was clearly not inclined to indulge in sentimentality today.
The valet knitted his grey eyebrows in a frown of annoyance and changed to an official tone of voice: “I have been ordered to inform Your Honour that the Minister of the Interior left for St. Petersburg this morning in a mood of great dissatisfaction and before he left he was being very threatening. I was also ordered to inquire if the inquiry will soon be closed.”
“Soon. Tell His Excellency that I need to carry out just two more interrogations, receive one telegram, and make a little excursion.”
“Erast Petrovich, in Christ’s name, will you manage it before tomorrow?” Vedishchev asked imploringly. “Or we’re all done for.”
Fandorin had no time to reply to the question, because there was a knock at the door and the duty adjutant announced: “The prisoners Stenich and Burylin have been delivered. They are being kept in separate rooms, as ordered.”
“Bring Stenich in first,” Erast Petrovich told the officer, and pointed the valet towards the door with his chin. “This is the first interrogation. That’s all, Frol Grigorievich—go, I have no more time.”
The old man nodded his bald head submissively and hobbled towards the door. In the doorway he collided with a wild-looking man—skinny and jittery with long hair—but he didn’t stare at him. He shuffled off rapidly along the corridor in his felt shoes, turned a corner and unlocked a closet with a key.
But it turned out not to be any ordinary closet: it had a concealed door in the inside corner. Behind the little door there was another small closet. Frol Grigorievich squeezed into it, sat down on a chair with a comfortable cushion on it, silently slid opened a small shutter in the wall and suddenly he was looking though glass at the whole of the secret study, and he could hear Erast Petrovich’s slightly muffled voice: “Thank you. For the time being you’ll have to stay at the police station. For your own safety.”
The valet put on a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and pressed his face up close to the secret opening, but he only saw the back of the man leaving the room. So that was an interrogation, was it?—it hadn’t even lasted three minutes. Vedishchev grunted sceptically and waited to see what would come next.
“Send in Burylin,” Fandorin ordered the adjutant.
A man with a fat Tatar face and insolent eyes came in. Without waiting to be invited, he sat down on a chair, crossed his legs and began swinging his expensive cane with a gold knob. It was obvious straight away that he was a millionaire.
“Well, are you going to take me to look at offal again?” the millionaire asked merrily. “Only you won’t catch me out like that. I have a thick skin. Who was that who went out? Vanka Stenich, wasn’t it? Ooh, he turned his face away. As if he’d not had plenty of pickings from Burylin. He rode around Europe on my money, and he lived as my house guest. I felt sorry for him, the poor unfortunate. But he abused my hospitality. Ran away from me to England. Began to despise me—I was dirty and he decided he wanted a clean life. Well, let him go; he’s a hopeless man—a genuine psychiatric case. Will you permit me to smoke a small cigar?”
All of the millionaire’s questions went unanswered. Instead, Fandorin asked his own question, which Vedishchev didn’t understand at all. “At your meeting of fellow-students there was a man with long hair, rather shabby. Who is he?”
But Burylin understood the question and answered it willingly: “Filka Rozen. He was thrown out of the medical faculty with me and Stenich, distinguished himself with honours in the line of immoral behaviour. He works as an assessor in a pawn shop. And he drinks, of course.”
“Where can I find him?”
“You won’t find him anywhere. Before you came calling, like a fool I gave him five hundred roubles—turned sloppy in my old age, thinking of the old days. Until he’s drunk it all to the last kopeck, he won’t show up. Maybe he’s living it up in some tavern in Moscow, or maybe in Peter, or maybe in Nizhny. That’s the kind of character he is.”
For some reason this news made Fandorin extremely upset. He even jumped up off his chair, pulled those round green beads on a string out of his pocket and put them back again.
The man with the fat face observed the Collegiate Counsellor’s strange behaviour with curiosity. He took out a fat cigar, lit it and scattered the ash on the carpet, the insolent rogue. But he didn’t start asking questions; he waited.
“Tell me: why were you, Stenich, and Rozen thrown out of the faculty, while Zakharov was only transferred to the anatomical pathology department?” Fandorin asked after a lengthy pause.
“It depended on who got up to how much mischief,” Burylin said with a laugh. “Sotsky, the biggest hothead amongst us, actually got sent to a punitive battalion. I felt sorry for the old dog; he had imagination, even if he was a rogue. I was under threat too, but it was all right: money got me out of it.” He winked a wild eye and puffed out cigar smoke.
“The girl students, our jolly companions, got it in the neck too—just for belonging to the female sex. They were sent to Siberia, under police surveillance. One became a morphine addict, another married a priest—I made inquiries.” The millionaire laughed. “And at that time Zakharka the Englishman wasn’t really outstanding in any way—that’s why he got off with a lesser punishment. ‘He was present and did not stop it’—that’s what the verdict said.”
Fandorin snapped his fingers as if he had just received a piece of good news that he’d been expecting for ages, but then Burylin took a piece of paper folded into four out of his pocket.
“It’s odd that you should ask about Zakharov. This morning I received a very strange note from him, just a moment before your dogs arrived to take me away. A street urchin brought it. Here, read it.”
Frol Grigorievich twisted himself right round and flattened his nose against the glass, but there was no point—he couldn’t read the letter from a distance. Only it was clear from all the signs that this was a highly important piece of paper. Erast Petrovich’s eyes were glued to it.
“I’ll give him some money, of course,” said the millionaire. “Only there wasn’t any special ‘old friendship’ between the two of us; he’s just being sentimental there. And what kind of melodrama is this: ‘Please remember me kindly, my brother’? What has he been up to, our Pluto? Did he dine on those girls that were lying on the tables in the morgue the other day?” Burylin threw his head back and laughed, delighted with his joke.
Fandorin was still examining the note. He walked across to the window, lifted the sheet of paper higher, and Vedishchev saw the scrawling, uneven lines of writing.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 54
