by R. N. Morris
Virginsky seemed to weigh up his options before replying. He gestured towards the heads. ‘You would have sprung this on her, as you once sprung a similar shock on me.’
Porfiry stood up to face Virginsky. ‘I did not want to warn her at the school, that’s true. I saw little point. I wanted to spare her the anguish of imagining this, at least for the duration of our journey here. However, I would have told her before bringing her into this room.’
‘I see,’ said Virginsky stiffly. It was evident that such a consideration had not occurred to him.
‘It makes little difference, I suppose,’ conceded Porfiry. ‘The anguish of imagining such a prospect, which was all I sought to mitigate, is nothing compared to the horror of seeing it.’ Porfiry widened his eyes, inviting a response from Virginsky.
But Virginsky withheld his thoughts.
‘Is there no other reason for your constraint towards me?’
‘I am not aware of any.’
‘So, how do we stand now? Now that I have explained my earlier prevarication. Does my explanation satisfy?’
‘It does.’
‘And may I once again count upon your friendship, as well as your professional assistance?’
Virginsky drew breath noisily before replying: ‘Yes.’
‘A hesitation!’
‘No. That is to say … if I am honest …’
‘Why should you not be honest?’
‘That man. Slava. I confess I do not like him and I fail to understand why you have taken him into your employ. His interest in our cases strikes me as entirely inappropriate. To be frank, Porfiry Petrovich, I do not trust him.’
‘My goodness, Pavel Pavlovich! But he has the most glowing references, albeit from deceased individuals. Tell me, of what do you suspect him?’
‘I really cannot say.’ Virginsky glanced down at the disembodied heads, as if he believed them capable of eavesdropping. ‘Perhaps he is a spy.’
‘A spy?’ Porfiry’s face opened in what appeared to be genuine surprise. ‘That is an original suggestion. For whom do you suspect him of spying?’
‘You must remember your encounter with the gendarme at the Nikolaevsky Station. I told you at the time that it does not pay to cross those people. One hears of the Third Section attempting to infiltrate other arms of the state machinery, particularly the police and judiciary. There is someone in the Third Section who has every reason to take an interest in the conduct of this case in particular.’
‘You are referring to Maria Petrovna’s father, are you not?’
‘I am.’
‘But if he wishes to know details of the case, he has only to come into my chambers and ask me. There is no need for any subterfuge.’
‘You forget, Porfiry Petrovich, subterfuge is in the nature of these people. They know no other way of operating.’
‘But it is really rather subtle of you to suggest this, Pavel Pavlovich. After all, Slava gives the impression of not being at all interested in this case, but somewhat more interested in the murder of Yelena Filippovna.’
‘It is what I believe is known as misdirection. A classic trick of such people.’
‘I see.’ Porfiry blinked out a display of innocence. ‘How very cunning.’
Virginsky regarded him with narrowed eyes. ‘You knew, didn’t you? That is to say, you suspected the same thing? But why would you employ him, believing him to be an infiltrator?’
‘Let us assume you’re right. He is a spy. Now that we know he is a spy, he cannot hurt us. We are fortunate that he is a very bad spy. If I had not employed him, they would perhaps have sent along a better one. Besides, we have nothing to hide from them. Our conduct of the case will be exemplary, that is a given. It does no harm to play along. Consider it a game.’
‘I thought you employed him to keep me on my toes.’ Virginsky’s pronouncement had the cadence of a confession.
‘That is what I wanted him to think.’
Virginsky gave a reflective wince. ‘You know, Porfiry Petrovich, such misunderstandings between us would not occur if you confided in me more.’
‘I fear I do not have a confiding nature.’ Porfiry looked back at the table impatiently, as if he had been torn away from dinner with friends. ‘Now. Come. Help me. Look at these heads and tell me what strikes you.’ He made the invitation with the excited zeal of an enthusiast sharing his passion.
Virginsky approached the table. Porfiry studied his face keenly as he scanned the heads.
‘The bruising,’ said Virginsky at last.
‘Yes! Good man. The bruises around the neck. Strikingly similar, are they not, in every case?’
‘The children were all strangled.’
‘It would appear so,’ said Porfiry thoughtfully. He leaned over to peer at Mitka’s neck, pivoting backwards and forwards to find his focal point. ‘These damned eyes! Would you be so kind as to lift down one of those lanterns, Pavel Pavlovich?’
Virginsky unhooked a light from the ceiling and brought it towards the table.
‘Thank you. There is something here, I’m sure of it. Look! This mark, here just to the right of the larynx. Do you see it, or are my eyes deceiving me?’
Porfiry pointed to a small intense burst of purple almost in the centre of Mitka’s throat, a pinpoint darkening in the general discolouration at his neck. The mark was complex, though what drew the eye to it was its strange, almost perfect symmetry. It was a bifurcation of tiny hooked blobs around a central stem.
‘Yes. There is something there,’ confirmed Virginsky.
Porfiry now transferred his attention to the same area on Svetlana’s neck. ‘And it is here too, on this one.’ A quick glance at the third head confirmed his suspicion. ‘On Artur too. They all have it.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Come here, Pavel Pavlovich.’
Virginsky took a hesitant step closer to Porfiry, his face creased with confusion.
‘If I may for a moment borrow your neck.’ Porfiry raised his hands to Virginsky’s throat and applied a gentle pressure. When he took his hands away, he kept them splayed in the shape they had attained around Virginsky’s neck. ‘Point to the part of the hand which cuts off the air supply.’
Virginsky touched a finger to the tautly stretched tendon between Porfiry’s thumb and forefinger, first of the left, then the right hand.
‘Yes. That is precisely the point that would close down the wind pipe. It would naturally touch the centre of the larynx. This mark …’ Porfiry released his hands from the strangler’s grip and gestured vaguely towards the table, … would appear to be caused by some hard protrusion, just to the right of the fatal point.’ He held up his hands again to study them. ‘It is nevertheless a point at which we would expect considerable pressure to be applied, and whatever caused this mark will have facilitated the constriction of the windpipe.’ Porfiry squeezed closed his thumbs, slowly, tensely. He then clutched the base of his left thumb with the fingertips of his right hand, rotating the hands together. ‘Something here,’ he murmured thoughtfully.
‘A thumb ring.’
The two men were silent in the aftermath of Virginsky’s idea. They seemed reluctant to meet each other’s eye, as if an exchange of looks would lend substance to their private suspicions.
Then Porfiry suddenly released his thumb, as if he did not wish to be caught holding it. When at last he spoke up, his voice was startled and distracted. ‘I will have to make sketches of these marks.’ He touched his lips and nodded. ‘And later we will send a photographer. It is essential that we have an accurate reference to work to. There can be no room for mistakes. We must be certain. We must base our conclusions on precise measurements.’
‘Is it possible though?’
The two men finally dared to look one another in the face.
‘Anything is possible, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry, and as if to prove his point he held his stare without blinking until, in fact, Virginsky was compelled to look away.
25
A mysterious communiqué
After the night’s cold snap it did not surprise Porfiry to find ice on the inside as well as outside of his window in the morning. Through the refractive filter of the frozen layers he had an impression of whiteness and movement outside. He tipped himself up on to his toes and squinted through a patch of the window where the ice was thinnest. Snow fell with determined haste, as if it didn’t know how long it had.
Was it winter already? he wondered.
He wondered too what he could expect from the day and what the day would demand of him. His dreams had taken him so far out of the immediate context of his life that he felt himself bereft without them. He had dreamt of his father, he remembered that much. Then it came to him more specifically that he had dreamt of his father and his father’s younger brother, Uncle Prokofy. In fact, he now remembered, his dreams had been crowded with relatives, the living and the dead. In one, a host of them had been crammed into his apartment for some kind of party. It was clear that the celebration had been in Porfiry’s honour. Was it a birthday party? No, it had not been that. Nor his name day. Strangely, the reason for the party had not been alluded to in the dream, as if out of tact. Only as the dream approached its climax did Porfiry realise that a terrible mistake had been made, and it was all his fault. His relatives were assembled there, he realised, to celebrate his wedding party, and the peculiar delicacy that seemed to affect his guests was due to the fact that so far there was no sign of a bride. Somehow, inadvertently, he had led them to believe that he was marrying Maria Petrovna. But carelessly he had failed to broach the subject with her; hence her absence.
The scenario of his dream was extremely painful to him, both at the time he had dreamt it, and now as he recalled it. He remembered that the tension of the dream had eased suddenly as his sleeping mind had caused all his relatives to disappear, all apart from his cousin Dmitri Prokofich, who had then acted as his manservant. The recollection of the humiliating role in which he had cast his good-hearted cousin provoked a surge of embarrassment in Porfiry. He was ashamed to realise that he had not seen Dmitri Prokofich for many years, indeed not since the affair of the student Raskolnikov, whose friend Dmitri had been. He resolved to look him up at the soonest opportunity, but then remembered the reason for their estrangement. Dmitri Prokofich had married Raskolnikov’s sister.
As far as Porfiry was concerned, that was no grounds for awkwardness, but he had always sensed on Avdotya Romanovna’s part a reserve bordering on aversion. It was clear that even if she did not hold Porfiry responsible for her brother’s fate, she at least found his presence in her home painful, serving as it did to remind her of those difficult times. Not wishing to be the cause of anguish to a blameless woman, he had, over a period of time, slipped out of his cousin’s life. The fact that the affable Dmitri Prokofich had allowed the distance between them to grow confirmed Porfiry’s fears. His cousin’s spirit was so generous and forgiving that he had continued to consider Raskolnikov a friend even after he knew the horrific nature of the student’s crimes. He had continued, in short, to believe in Raskolnikov. And, it seemed, he could not forgive his relative Porfiry Petrovich for his part in bringing Raskolnikov to justice.
Such was human nature, reflected Porfiry. He could not find it in himself to blame Dmitri Prokofich, although he wondered whether his cousin’s servile status in the dream was an attempt on his part to exact revenge. He did not care to pursue this train of thought. The dream did him no credit at all, but that was often the way with dreams.
The sound of someone moving about inside his apartment brought him back to the awoken reality of his life. With a lurching presentiment of doom, he remembered the man he had employed as a servant – almost as a joke, one of his characteristic pranks. But against whom was the prank directed, if not himself? He had brought into his home a stranger, a man he could in no way trust, whose life was now entwined with his own. What if Pavel Pavlovich was right, and Slava – if that indeed was his name – was a Third Section spy?
‘Speak of the grey one and the grey one heads your way,’ said Porfiry as Slava came into the room bearing the breakfast tray.
Slava looked about uncertainly, as if he expected to see someone else in the room. ‘You were talking about me? To whom?’
‘Only to myself. Thinking about you, that is to say.’
Slava laughed nervously.
‘I was merely wondering what on earth possessed me to employ you!’ Porfiry’s face expanded with delight. He began to laugh and could not bring himself to stop laughing for some time.
Slava’s discomfiture intensified. For one moment it looked as though he might drop the tray and bolt from the room. A metallic shudder convulsed the silverware. But he regained his composure quickly. ‘Have I failed to provide satisfaction in the execution of my duties?’
‘Good heavens, what a question!’
‘It is a simple enough question, I believe.’
‘Ah, but it begs another question, does it not? And that is, to whom do you owe those duties?’
‘I don’t understand. To whom else but you?’
‘Who else indeed!’
‘Are you suggesting that I serve two masters?’
Porfiry raised his hands in a pantomime of shock that was overdone even by his own standards. And then he winked at Slava.
‘Do you wish to terminate my employment?’ asked Slava tersely.
‘Do you?’
‘There is the question of my honour.’
‘Is there really? Could you explain that to me?’
‘You have impugned my honesty … ?’ But Slava did not seem at all certain that this was in fact what Porfiry had done.
‘In that case, you must do whatever you deem necessary.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Slava’s face was furrowed in confusion.
‘Apology accepted. Let us say no more about it. I am so glad we have had the opportunity to clear this up. Now, if you would be so kind as to deposit the tray on the table, you may then go about your other duties.’ At this, Porfiry winked heavily several times.
Slava regarded him warily, as if he were an unpredictable dog given to biting for no reason. He kept as much distance as possible between himself and Porfiry as he placed the tray down. He backed out of the room, flashing uneasy glances as he went.
Porfiry smiled to himself. But the smile drained from his lips when he looked down at the breakfast tray. His familiar silver-plated coffee pot stood as if it were turning its back on him. Four curly sausages huddled together conspiratorially on their plate, their curved shoulders excluding him. The thought occurred to Porfiry that if he could not trust the man who had brought him this food, how could he trust the food?
He told himself he was being ridiculous. The Third Section wanted to keep an eye on him, they did not want him dead. But what if Slava was not an agent of the Third Section, but represented far darker and more dangerous forces?
His dream came back to him. Perhaps he had been wrong in his interpretation. He had not wished to punish or humiliate his cousin. It was more complex than that. He now saw the dream as an expression of regret. He longed to replace his intimate reliance on this stranger, who had suddenly appeared in his life like a cuckoo chick, with the simple but lost love of his family, as represented by Dmitri Prokofich.
He remembered too that Maria Petrovna had figured in the dream, but as an absence not a presence. He sensed that there was something significant in this, but did not care to grasp it.
*
Porfiry lit a cigarette and turned his attention to the pile of correspondence on the desk before him. He chose to open first an envelope which bore the official stamp of the Obukhovsky Hospital. It was written confirmation from Dr Pervoyedov of the results of the blood analysis from the mirror, ring and tunic. Porfiry put it to one side. Next he opened a bulkier package, which turned out to contain the latest edition of a journal to which he subscribed. He began to browse the pages, but in a distracted manner, loo
king up eagerly at a knock on the door.
Virginsky came in, holding up a small cardboard box, which Porfiry recognised as the sort used to hold evidence. In his other hand, he held a police folder.
‘What have you there, Pavel Pavlovich?’
Virginsky crossed to Porfiry’s desk, where he lifted the lid of the box and tipped out its contents, a silver ring. ‘I took the liberty of retrieving this. It is the ring that we found on Yelena Filippovna’s thumb.’
Porfiry made no move to pick the ring up, as if he believed that to do so would take them one step closer to the unthinkable.
‘You will remember,’ said Virginsky, picking up the ring himself and almost thrusting it in Porfiry’s face, ‘the emblem of the house of Romanov – the imperial symbol of the double-headed eagle – embossed on the face of the ring.’
‘Yes,’ said Porfiry. ‘I remember it well.’
‘It is the same size, is it not, and approximately the same shape, as the strange bruise we found repeated on each of the children’s necks?’
‘I would need to take precise measurements to be certain.’
‘I have already done so.’
Porfiry met this statement with a sceptical start.
‘The Romanov symbol on this ring is one fifth of a vershok in height, by one tenth in width. Almost precisely the measurements taken by you yourself from the necks of the dead children. Furthermore, the similarity between this motif and the mark is striking.’ Virginsky opened the folder and shook. It was almost as if the contents were reluctant to come out into the light of day. Porfiry saw that the folder contained photographs. They stuck together, hiding one behind the other, shy, awkward, out of place. Ruthlessly, Virginsky prised them out and laid them side by side on Porfiry’s desk.
Porfiry knew the subjects of these photographs well. He had spent hours studying the luridly coloured three-dimensional objects now represented in flat monochrome. And yet the images still shocked him. He might have expected the mediation of photography to soften the horror, rendering the blood and bruising of the neck stumps in various depths of grey. To some extent that was true. But this neutralising effect paradoxically also added to the power of the images. The shock was one of intense pathos, rather than pure horror. For a brief moment, he could almost believe he was looking at studio portraits; that he saw in the eyes of the three subjects the earnest innocence of children looking forward to their lives, trusting, hopeful, and slightly overawed. But eventually his own eye tracked down to the abrupt line and the inky void at the end of the truncated neck.
