by R. N. Morris
‘Who is she?’ Porfiry asked of Zamyotov.
The clerk at his desk half-turned towards her disdainfully. ‘God knows. Some specimen of riff-raff. The tide of human misery washes up all sorts in here. Ask Pavel Pavlovich. He takes an interest in such cases.’
Virginsky was indeed watching the woman with keen interest, at the head of a small huddle of officials – policemen, magistrates and clerks – who seemed drawn to her distress but unsure of how to react to it. Without doubt it was a disturbance and therefore needed to be curtailed. Compassion for the woman, too, may have stirred in the breasts of some of those watching and that perhaps should have been enough to prompt one of them to intervene. And yet there was something compelling about the spectacle that made them reluctant to end it. At the same time, there was a raw power to the emotion on display that commanded respect. The feeling seemed to be that it had to be allowed to play itself out.
The first of them to approach her was Virginsky. He did so not in a movement of restraint, but of consolation. His face seemed to implore her, for mercy’s sake, to spare herself. An arm was extended, ready to reach protectively around her shoulder. But the woman backed away from him, her eyes glaring with terror and distrust. Her gaze darted frantically about, seeking a bolt hole. But instead she caught sight of something that only added to her agitation. Her eyes now had the wild panic of a trapped animal. Her keening rose to a sharp shriek of negation. She thrust out an arm in front of her, the drooping cuff of the jacket hardly mitigating the undeniable accusation in the gesture. Porfiry followed the line of her arm. She was pointing out Verkhotsev and his fellow gendarmes, conspicuous in their sky-blue uniforms.
Verkhotsev’s face was grim. He seemed shaken by the woman’s attention. His companions, however, affected what seemed to Porfiry to be a cynical hilarity. The gendarmes had not been part of the group watching the woman, but had been making their way across the hall, having left Porfiry’s chambers moments before. Something had made them glance towards the woman just as she found them and pointed them out. And they, for some reason, were held frozen by the trajectory of her accusation.
While the woman was distracted by the gendarmes, Virginsky was able to make his move. He closed in on her, stepping to the side and coming back in from behind. His arm was on her shoulder now and his head was close to hers, his mouth whispering comfort into her ear.
She broke off from her wailing; her arm fell lifelessly. She twisted to face Virginsky, at the same time working herself free from his hold. Her lips began to move steadily, releasing a low torrent of speech. Porfiry could not make it out from where he stood but he could sense the force and mettle of her words, each one a gleaming hard bullet of bitterness. The volume of her speech, in part lament, in part complaint, rose until she was declaiming to the whole hall.
‘They killed him. They waited for him and took him away and killed him. My Grisha, my dear sweet Grisha. What did he ever do to them that they should kill him? What did he ever do to anyone? He submitted a petition! That’s what! That was his crime! He submitted a petition on behalf of his fellow workers, requesting, politely – respectful, too, so respectful you would not believe it … yes, requesting that the factory fulfil its legal obligations. The Tsar himself required the factory to put in place the improvements. But they failed to do it. So my Grisha submitted a petition. And this, he was told, was a crime. This, they said, was political agitation. They took him away. He was sent to the mines in the Olonets region. To Petrozavodsk. Torn away from his family, his four little ones. I was left alone to bring them up. They took a father from his children because he submitted a petition! That was ten years ago. Last month, our youngest died. I managed to get word to Grisha. He ran away from the mines. He should not have done it but his child was dead! He came back to Petersburg. He waited and waited before coming to see me. But they were watching for him all the time. They did not relent. And all because he submitted a petition! At last he could wait no longer, though I urged him through friends to stay away. Not because I didn’t want to see him. It was what I longed for more than anything. It was for his sake I told him not to come. But he needed to see me. He needed to hold his children again after all these years. He would not be kept away. He could not come so far without seeing us. But they were waiting for him. And they took him from me again. And they killed him. And now they say he is a murderer. That he killed those children. But why would he kill children? He loved children. He was a child himself when he entered the factory. Thirteen years old. He had never hurt anyone in his life. He was a gentle soul. The gentlest. They called him a criminal, a political, but the only crime he committed before he ran away from the mines was to submit a petition. He was only asking them to fulfil their obligations. And for that, they killed him!’
Her arms swept out towards where the gendarmes had been but they were gone now. Her voice had reached an unsustainable pitch. The only place she could take it was once again into the keen of pure suffering.
Porfiry approached the woman. Virginsky, who was again trying to encompass her grief with his arms, turned to him with an accusatory glare. ‘And this is the justice we serve!’ he hissed between clenched teeth.
Porfiry widened his eyes in warning. ‘Take her into my chambers. See if you can get anything like a statement from her. I’ll see you here later.’ And with a tight-lipped smile, Porfiry bowed his tense farewell.
35
The Tsar commands
‘Are you content?
The Tsar’s expression in answer was clouded and pensive. ‘Content?’ He gave a half-laugh, not quite bitter, but certainly regretful. ‘That is not a question I am often asked, Porfiry Petrovich. It is assumed that I must be content. I am the tsar, after all. How can I not be? But …’ He looked down at the rows of photographs on his desk. ‘Families, Porfiry Petrovich. They are a great source of discontent. And I am pater familias to a whole empire.’
‘With respect, Your Majesty, I simply meant to ask, are you content to accept this Murin as the murderer of the children?’
‘This is the view of the Third Section?’
‘It is more than their view. It is their … invention.’
The Tsar held Porfiry with a piercing look of challenge, under the force of which Porfiry launched a volley of defensive blinking.
‘What is the alternative?’ asked the Tsar at last. ‘What other suspects do you have?’
Porfiry bowed his head to look up at the Tsar, wincing apologetically.
‘No!’ said the Tsar emphatically. ‘Do not bring that up again.’
‘Someone sought to undermine you by these murders. The Tsarevich—’
‘But it is preposterous! That he would seek to undermine me by incriminating himself!’
‘No, the plan was always to throw the blame on an agitator. Fortunately, Murin was to hand, although in truth he was a sorry example of an agitator.’
‘What do you mean? They told me that he was responsible for organising protests.’
‘He submitted a petition.’ There was more sadness than reproach in Porfiry’s voice. ‘His widow came to the bureau dressed in his clothes. She revealed the full extent of his crimes against the state. A politely worded petition.’
The Tsar looked away, shame-faced.
‘According to this theory,’ continued Porfiry, noting the Tsar’s embarrassment with sympathy, ‘the Tsarevich was working in conjunction with the Third Section, or factions within it. We need not postulate that he carried out the murders himself. Only that he authorised them.’
‘Should I be grateful to you for this consideration? I do not need you to tell me that my son did not carry out these murders. He spent the autumn, the time during which the crimes were committed, with me in Livadia. He was not in Petersburg. And I am his alibi. As to whether he is capable of formulating such a complex and subtle plot against me, I doubt it.’
‘It may be possible that such a proposal was put to him by another, and he merely gave his assent.’
‘Your son was seen at the Naryskin Palace with Count Tolstoy. He is well known for his reactionary views. And as the minister responsible for education, he would naturally have been aware of Maria Petrovna’s school since its foundation.’
‘And this is how you proceed, is it? This is your great method? My son was seen in the company of a man, therefore he is in cahoots with him too! Count Tolstoy is my minister, loyal to me! Besides, I have it on good authority that neither my son nor Count Tolstoy in fact attended the gala at the Naryskin Palace. Those who say they were there are evidently mistaken.’
‘You have been speaking to Prince Nikolai Naryskin, I see. He is a very loyal friend to Your Majesty, I can vouch for that. So loyal I believe he would be prepared to perjure himself on your behalf. I wonder therefore why you were so rough with him yesterday.’
‘He sought to embroil me in petty commercial affairs. I will have none of it.’ Porfiry smiled in such meek expectation that the Tsar was compelled to continue: ‘He has become the director of a bank. He sought to prevail on me to withdraw my approval for a rival bank. I cannot become involved in these commercial wrangles.’
‘And so you sent him away with a flea in his ear?’
The Tsar bridled at the expression but made no comment.
Porfiry held himself immobile as the two men sat in silent contemplation. It was the Tsar who broke the silence: ‘Cigarette?’
Released from his immobility, Porfiry fidgeted out his own enamel cigarette case. ‘I wonder, Your Majesty, would you care for one of mine?’
The Tsar nodded and took one of the offered cigarettes. Porfiry busied himself with lighting the Tsar’s cigarette with fussy attentiveness.
‘You are … quite … wrong, you know,’ said the Tsar languidly, between inhalations. ‘The Tsarevich had nothing to do with authorising Murin’s murder.’ The Tsar winced away from Porfiry’s wide-eyed astonishment. ‘I did not tell them what to do … the Third Section … I merely gave them licence to sort it out.’
‘Sort what out, Your Majesty?’
‘She … she was very dear to me once.’
‘Yelena Filippovna?’
The Tsar nodded minutely.
‘You gave her the ring, not the Tsarevich!’
The second nod was even more minimal, barely noticeable.
‘I could not bear to see what they were writing about her in the newspapers. It could not be true. Not the Yelena I knew. We had to clear her name. We had to make it not true.’
‘But who killed Innokenty?’
‘I did not tell them what to do. I merely impressed on them the importance of clearing her name. I …’ The Tsar looked Porfiry in the eye for the first time since they had begun smoking.
Porfiry did not flinch from the autocrat’s gaze. ‘Obviously, if there was another murder, then it would be assumed that Yelena Filippovna was not the killer.’ The magistrate blinked once, as though in mild recrimination. ‘And so the Third Section killed Innokenty as well as Murin. Verkhotsev was behind that too?’
‘I don’t know. How can we ever know?’
‘We can enquire into it, Your Majesty. You have the authority. You can command the truth.’
‘No. The Third Section must be allowed some latitude for its operations. For the security of the state. You see that, don’t you? You’re a reasonable man. It’s because you are a reasonable man that I have been … open with you. But this must go no further than this room.’
‘You are asking me to be an accomplice after the fact to murder.’
‘No. I am not asking you. I am commanding you.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘You cannot refuse your Tsar’s command.’ The Tsar’s gaze remained rigidly impervious for several moments, before collapsing into something more imploring. ‘Do you not see, we could not allow it to be believed that a woman of Yelena Filippovna’s class and rank had murdered these factory children? It would have been like pouring oil on a burning house. The divisions in society would have split asunder. I could not, in all conscience, have permitted it. There is the greater crime, and you would have had me commit it.’
‘And was Yelena Filippovna killed by the Third Section, in order to prevent further murders?’
‘No. That is to say, I do not believe so. She was not suspected until you found those heads. And when that story got into the newspaper, it became a matter of urgency to nip it in the bud. Did you ever find out who was responsible for releasing the story? That, you could say, is what caused Innokenty’s death.’
Porfiry shook his head in angry denial. ‘We cannot proceed like this! Russia cannot progress on this basis. You cannot build a future based on lies, on even the smallest lie.’
‘The future has always been built on lies. He who asserts his lie most forcibly creates the truth.’
‘And what of Yelena Filippovna? Were you so ready to believe her guilty? Did you not stop to think that her name, her memory, might be better served by the truth?’
The Tsar, in his agitation, began to turn the Romanov ring that he himself wore on the forefinger of his left hand. The index finger and thumb of his other hand chased each other restlessly as he rotated the ring around the base of its finger. ‘There were times when I thought her capable of anything. And yet, I do not believe she killed the children. I cannot believe it.’
‘Then what have you done, Your Majesty? What have you done?’
‘It is not for you to ask me such questions.’
‘If it was not her and not Murin – as it most certainly was not – then we must face the fact that the killer is still alive and at large.’
‘You must track them down, Porfiry Petrovich. You must track them down and bring them to justice. That is my command.’ The Tsar continued to turn the ring on his finger obsessively. Porfiry’s brows came down as he watched, his distracted fascination turning to concentration.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty,’ said Porfiry, rising abruptly to his feet.
‘For what?’
‘I believe you may have just shown me the solution to these crimes.’
36
Captain Mizinchikov’s confession
Virginsky was waiting at the door to Porfiry’s chambers. His face showed a mixture of grimness and excitability.
‘What is it, Pavel Pavlovich?’
Virginsky handed Porfiry a slip of paper.
It is my duty to inform you that General Denis Nikolaevich Mizinchikov, father of the fugitive Captain Konstantin Denisevich Mizinchikov, was today found dead at the Polzunkov apartment building in Gorokhovaya St. Dr I. P. Predposylov, the medical examiner for the Kazanskaya District, noted the presence of a contusion to the skull consistent with a blow or fall. In addition, both the deceased’s wrists were broken. The cranial contusion is not held to be sufficiently severe to be fatal in and of itself, therefore the cause of death is entered as heart failure.
Lieutenant Trusotsky
Gorokhovaya Street Police Bureau
‘Do you remember what you said, Porfiry Petrovich? Here is a murder waiting to happen.’
‘Did I? But there is nothing to suggest foul play in the report. He may simply have suffered a heart attack and fallen. Or perhaps he fell first, and that induced the heart attack. That would explain his broken wrists. His hands went out to break his fall. Old people have brittle bones, easily broken.’
‘But what if a blow was struck, and it was the blow that brought on the heart attack? Would that not be murder?’
‘Whom do you suspect of striking this blow?’
‘Captain Mizinchikov, of course.’
‘There is nothing here to place him at the scene.’
‘Neighbours reported seeing a disreputable-looking tramp force his way into the deceased’s apartment.’
‘This is not in the report.’
‘I managed to extract the i
nformation from the clerk who delivered it.’
Porfiry cast a passing glance at his own clerk, Zamyotov, who was following the discussion with interest. ‘Yes, police clerks are often a source of interesting supplementary details. Some would call it gossip.’
Zamyotov responded with a suitably indignant pout.
‘There were sounds of argument,’ continued Virginsky. ‘Shouting. Doors slamming. Soon after, the tramp was seen to leave precipitously. The dead man was discovered by his neighbours, on the landing of a flight of stairs outside his apartment. By the time the alarm was raised, the tramp was nowhere to be seen.’
‘And you believe this tramp to be Captain Mizinchikov?’
‘I think it highly likely.’
‘General Mizinchikov may simply have fallen. He was elderly and infirm. Falls at his age can prove fatal.’
‘Or he was pushed.’
‘Equally possibly, he may have been pursuing his fleeing son, and in his haste he tripped and fell, being unsteady on his feet.’
‘Is that really what you think happened, Porfiry Petrovich?’
‘Sometimes people just die. Especially when they are old and sick. We need not always be looking for a murderer.’
‘But the tramp was there!’
‘If the tramp was indeed Captain Mizinchikov, then it must be admitted that his appearance at this moment is unfortunate – for Captain Mizinchikov, that is. It may be true that he in some way contributed to his father’s death, whether deliberately or inadvertently we cannot know. It makes it more pressing than ever that we talk to him. I can only hope that this latest tragedy will operate on his conscience in such a way as to persuade him to present himself to the authorities. It is, after all, one thing to flee from a dead mistress. Parricide is quite another category of transgression.’
‘And so you will simply wait for him to hand himself in?’
‘You may be surprised, Pavel Pavlovich, how often the conscience of a criminal has proven to be my ally in the fight against crime.’ Porfiry at last opened the door to his chambers. ‘Now, I have a very important call to make. Perhaps you would care to accompany me? I am going—’
