by R. N. Morris
‘The fog is dense today,’ said Porfiry Petrovich beside him. He too was staring into a patch of incessantly renewed grey.
Virginsky gave a minimal nod of agreement, as if he resented the distraction. It was, he realised, the possibility that one might suddenly see something – and that when it came this apparition would be extraordinary – that made the fog compelling. Its monotony was laden with potential.
‘And yet, in certain matters, this vaporous blind enables us to see more clearly. Do you not agree, Pavel Pavlovich?’
At last Virginsky turned to face Porfiry. ‘You look very pleased with yourself, Porfiry Petrovich. Do you mean to suggest that you have solved the mystery, or should I say mysteries?’
Porfiry’s face sagged with hurt. ‘Your words are charged with a strange, angry sarcasm, Pavel Pavlovich, which I find mystifying. Surely, with you, I have grounds to expect more than the same old jealousy that has marred my relations with other colleagues?’
Virginsky turned sharply away, looking into the fog again.
‘Staring into the fog is a little like watching the flames of a fire,’ continued Porfiry. ‘One may project into it whatever one wishes to see. Or rather, an unacknowledged part of one’s self supplies the visions for one’s conscious mind to apprehend. That is sometimes how we see people too, is it not? The soul of another is like a swirling mist. Impenetrable. And so, rather than going to the trouble of discovering what really lies within it, we project our images on to its surface.’
‘You know I dislike such fanciful comparisons, Porfiry Petrovich. The soul of another is like whatever you want to say it is like. And besides, why must you always be dragging souls into everything? Why bring up souls at all?’
‘I am talking about you and me, Pavel Pavlovich. I fear that the unhappy antagonism which I have detected in your recent demeanour towards me is based upon some misapprehension.’
Virginsky was silent for some time. ‘What are your intentions towards Maria Petrovna?’ he blurted at last.
‘My intentions? With regard to the investigation? Do I intend to arrest her? Is that what you mean?’
‘No. I mean your … intentions. Do you intend to make a proposal?’
‘A proposal?’
‘A proposal of marriage.’
‘Good heavens! I was not aware that I had any such intention! I am astonished by your suggestion that I should. Have I given that impression? You terrify me with your intimations. She is a witness in a current investigation. It would be most improper of me to harbour … intentions.’
‘You do not find her an attractive person?’
‘Undoubtedly. But … what could she possibly see in me?’
‘That’s not the issue. You know my father’s second wife is much younger than he.’
‘I know that.’
‘He stole her from me!’
‘Perhaps she was not yours to be stolen. I only mean to say, one cannot possess people in that way.’
‘You will do the same with Maria.’
‘I was not aware that you and Maria Petrovna were on such terms.’
‘We are not.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ Meeting Virginsky’s glare of indignation, Porfiry went on: ‘I repeat, she is a witness in an investigation. It would be as improper for you, as it is for me, to allow an affectionate relationship to develop.’
‘And after the investigation is over?’
‘That would be a different matter, of course.’
‘The field would be open to both of us.’
Porfiry’s face froze in dismay. ‘If you wish to express it in that way.’
‘So you do harbour intentions!’
‘My goodness, Pavel Pavlovich! You have certainly followed your vocation in becoming an investigator. Your persistence is fatiguing. I am bound to say you display a talent for extracting confessions that I hope we may soon put to very good use.’
*
The entrance to the Naryskin Palace was lit up by a lantern whose beam dissipated into the fog, rather than cut through it. One by one, the caryatids of the façade began to appear. Here were the extraordinary apparitions Virginsky had been waiting for.
They were admitted by a footman, who appeared startled to see them. To Virginsky’s eye, the interior splendour of the palace was strangely changed. It was almost as if its lustre had been worn away in the weeks since their last visit. When he had first come to the palace, he could not fail to be impressed by its grandeur and scale. His gaze might have been disdainful, but his was a disdain provoked by an acknowledgement of the seductive allure of money. But now, it seemed to Virginsky, the glamour was gone, and so too were the negative sentiments it had inspired. He saw it only as a cold, empty vastness. Its occupants were only to be pitied.
‘Thank you, we will find our own way,’ said Porfiry to the servant. ‘There is no need to trouble your master. We have come only to look at the room in which the unfortunate young lady was murdered.’ With that, he hurried off.
‘Have you not found,’ Porfiry confided over his shoulder to Virginsky as they descended the stairs to the basement, ‘in your experience as an extractor of confessions, that the greater the secret to be revealed, the greater the resistance to revealing it?’
‘With respect, that is an obvious enough remark,’ said Virginsky breathlessly.
‘Perhaps when applied to human subjects. But what about inanimate objects?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Do you remember the drawer in my desk, Pavel Pavlovich? How reluctantly it yielded up Yelena Filippovna’s letters.’
‘There was a simple enough explanation. The letters themselves were causing an obstruction. You must not have been very careful when you placed them in the drawer, Porfiry Petrovich.’
‘Ah, but I always am. I rather think that someone else has been in that drawer and disturbed the letters.’
‘But how? The drawer is always kept locked, is it not?’
‘Yes. And the only key is kept in my coat pocket. But that is not the issue. It is not that drawer that I am thinking about.’
Virginsky frowned uncertainly but resisted the temptation to question Porfiry further. He knew from experience that when Porfiry was in this mood, one wilful mystification would only lead to another.
*
The fundamental change that had been wrought in the room was, of course, immediately obvious: the body of Yelena Filippovna had been removed, as had all traces of the violence perpetrated against her. This absence was chastening. It was a reminder of how quickly the world covered over disruptions in its fabric. Virginsky felt a strange nostalgia for the blood-soaked murder scene. This prim space, scrubbed and polished, seemed almost more of an outrage.
Virginsky sensed something else different, something other than the obvious. But it was only when Porfiry pointed it out that he was able to register it consciously: ‘The rug is in a different place.’
Virginsky stared at the floor and nodded, as though this was something that hardly needed saying. Inside, a heavy pendulum of disappointment swung down. He hated it when Porfiry saw things he did not.
‘It’s below the mirror now, there, against the wall,’ continued Porfiry. ‘It was over here before, away from the mirror, underneath Yelena Filippovna’s body. What does that suggest to you, Pavel Pavlovich?’
‘It has been moved?’
‘Well, obviously it has been moved! I was hoping for something a little more insightful, if you please! Why would whoever restored this room place the rug under the mirror?’
‘Because that is where it belongs?’
‘That’s right, well done. No need to sound so diffident. Whoever brought the rug back to the room automatically placed it under the mirror, where it belongs. Which means?’
‘It was moved when Yelena Filippovna was murdered. By her murderer!’
‘Not quite so fast! By her murderer? Possibly. We cannot say for certain. But it is certainly reasonable to assume that it was by
someone who had a hand in her murder. It was under the mirror and it was moved from the mirror. Why?’
‘Because …’ But the promising word did not result in the hoped-for explanation. Virginsky gave a defeated shrug.
Porfiry struck a match and lit the gas. He crossed to stand in front of the large mirror, gazing into it, enraptured by his own reflection. He held up a hand as if to wave to himself. ‘Remember the smear of blood on the mirror. The smear of arterial blood.’
‘She was standing in front of the mirror when she was murdered!’
‘Yes. Quite brilliant, Pavel Pavlovich. She was standing in front of the mirror, consulting her reflection, preparing for her performance, when her murderer approached from behind, reaching round with a razor to slit her throat. Her blood sprayed the mirror and drained on to the carpet. The carpet was moved and she was placed upon it, some small distance from the actual spot where she was killed. In the meantime, the mirror was wiped clean. Is all this the work of one person, Pavel Pavlovich?’
‘Possibly not.’
‘Possibly not! Of course not, you mean!’
‘But why? Why go to all this trouble? What does it matter whether she is killed in front of the mirror, or a short distance from it?’
‘It matters a great deal if you wish to create the illusion that she was killed in a particular way by a particular person, a person in fact who had nothing to do with her murder.’
‘Captain Mizinchikov.’
‘Captain Mizinchikov had bloodstains on his tunic. We know from Dr Pervoyedov’s test that the blood there did not come from the wound in Yelena Filippovna’s neck, as that would have produced arterial blood. If we are correct in our reconstruction, and Yelena was murdered from behind while standing at the mirror, the murderer would not in fact be sprayed with blood at all. All the blood would go on the mirror – although some perhaps could have been caught with a towel held in front of the wound. The same towel, or another one, might be used to wipe any obvious spray of blood from the mirror.’ Porfiry turned abruptly to the wardrobe. ‘You remember the drawer that you had difficulty opening? I want you to look in it now.’
‘But it was empty. And if there is anything in it now, it will have been put there since the murder.’
‘Nevertheless, pull the drawer out, if you please. Let us see if it is as troublesome to open as it was the last time you attempted it.’
Virginsky did as he was directed. If anything, the drawer was more resistant than before.
‘All the way out, if you please.’
After several minutes of wrenching and manipulation, the drawer shot out, throwing Virginsky off balance. ‘It’s still empty.’ He displayed the interior of the drawer to Porfiry.
‘Yes, the drawer is empty. But look inside the casing, please.’
Virginsky felt a wave of feeling move softly through him. He could not prevent himself from smiling. They were on the verge of a discovery, he felt sure.
‘There’s something there.’
The towel was neatly folded. He lifted it up carefully, as if it were something precious and fragile. What he wanted to preserve was the precise configuration of the folds.
‘Very interesting,’ commented Porfiry. ‘The towel has not been carelessly stuffed into the space, but rather, it has been meticulously folded. The evidence of a tidy mind, would you not say, Pavel Pavlovich?’
The towel appeared to have once been white, but was now partially and unevenly dyed a dirty rust colour. Virginsky allowed it to fall open, revealing the extent of the staining. With a dark sprawling star in its centre, it was like the flag of some anarchic, blood-thirsty nation unfurled.
‘I knew I could smell blood,’ said Porfiry quietly. He strode over to the embroidered screen in the corner of the room. It came up to his shoulders, and so he was able to peer over it. With an impassive glance to Virginsky he walked behind the screen and ducked down out of sight.
There were footsteps outside the room and a moment later Prince Sergei Naryskin burst in. He looked about, bewildered.
‘Where is he, the magistrate? They told me the magistrate was here.’
‘I am a magistrate,’ said Virginsky, petulantly.
Prince Sergei frowned at the bloody towel in Virginsky’s hands. ‘No, the other one. The little fat one. I say, what do you have there?’
‘Evidence,’ answered Porfiry, his head popping up from behind the screen. ‘May I help you, Prince Sergei?’
‘Why are you here?’
‘We are conducting an investigation.’
‘Have you come to arrest him?’
‘To arrest whom?’
‘My father, of course.’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘For what crime?’
‘Murder. He murdered Lena, did he not?’
‘Did he? What makes you say that?’
‘I caught him burning some letters from her. And then I heard him in conversation with Bakhmutov. My father had been Yelena’s lover. He killed her to prevent her marrying me.’
‘You caught him … in conversation … he killed her …’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your stutter has gone, Prince Sergei. The act of accusing your father has cured you.’
The younger prince blinked out his bemusement. ‘Will you not arrest him?’
‘I cannot be as confident as you that he is the murderer. I rather find that the interesting circumstances you have just revealed provide a more compelling motive for you to murder Yelena Filippovna than for your father. It is also psychologically consistent that you would wish to accuse him of a crime you had committed, as you would blame him for her death, believing that he had somehow forced you to it.’ Porfiry glanced briefly at Virginsky. ‘My experience of such triangles is that the resentment is all on the side of the son.’
‘It is not resentment. He wanted to prevent our union because it horrified him.’
‘He told you that?’
‘He didn’t have to. Surely it must horrify any man to think of his own son lying with his former mistress. It is tantamount to incest.’
‘Had you not already slept with Yelena Filippovna?’
Prince Sergei’s gaze darted away.
‘I see … how unlike Yelena Filippovna. And yet … if she had slept with your father, she might naturally hesitate to consummate her relationship with you. My dear prince, you have interrupted us at a most crucial stage of our investigations and I fear that, through no fault of your own, you have entirely distracted me from my train of thought. The information you have imparted is extremely diverting. Yes, it has diverted me from the course I was set upon.’ Porfiry seemed genuinely at a loss. He cast about the room as if to get his bearings. ‘Of course, our investigations are always disturbed by the unruly intrusion of events. However, increasingly, as I get older, I am finding it more and more difficult to recover from these disruptions. My mind, like my eyes, is not as sharp as it once was. Is that not so, Pavel Pavlovich?’
Virginsky blew out his cheeks in embarrassment. He looked down at the blood-stained towel.
‘Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me. Tell me, Prince Sergei, is Aglaia Filippovna still a guest at the palace?’
‘She is.’
‘And is she still incapacitated?’
‘Indeed. She is in a state of semi-consciousness most of the time. She drifts in and out of a comatose trance.’
‘But she has her lucid moments?’
‘I fear not. In the brief moments when she is capable of speech, she appears utterly confused. My mother has taken to sitting with her. My mother is very devout, you know. She prays for Aglaia Filippovna constantly.’
‘Your mother … ? Of course, your mother!’
‘What do you mean by that? My mother feels a great deal of sympathy for the young lady.’
‘I wonder, have you discussed your suspicions regarding your father with your mother?’
‘I did not wish to worry her.’
/>
‘And yet you had no compunction in making your allegations directly to a magistrate?’
‘My conscience will not allow me to keep silent any longer.’
‘In other words, your hatred for your father out-weighed your consideration for your mother.’
‘That is a despicable way of putting it. Was it not my civic duty?’
‘To betray your father?’
‘I believed he was Yelena’s murderer.’
‘Given what you have said today, does it not occur to you that your mother too had a motive for killing Yelena Filippovna?’
‘Surely not!’
‘Will your mother be with Aglaia Filippovna now? Perhaps we should pay a visit on the invalid and her nurse.’
‘You will say nothing of my father’s affair with Yelena. It will destroy her.’
‘One cannot know in advance what it may or may not prove necessary to say,’ said Porfiry. He stretched up to stem the gas, plunging them into gloom. ‘You will bring the towel with you, Pavel Pavlovich.’
39
A psychological experiment
The room was as gloomy as it had always been. It was lit only by the slumbering glow from the open hearth, which was reflected in fitful waves across the ceiling.
It seemed to Virginsky that Aglaia Filippovna’s hair had gained in strength and substance at the expense of every other aspect of her physicality. It sprawled around her head, no longer a halo but now wild, raging flames of intense blackness. The pallor of her skin matched the luminosity of the crisp white bed linen. Her hands lying on the folded-over sheet seemed transparent. Her face grew out of the pillow that her head rested on. Beneath the covers, her body appeared thinner and straighter than ever, merely a long wrinkle in the counterpane.
Princess Yevgenia Andreevna Naryskina maintained her bedside vigil, though she was seated now. A chair had been placed for her exactly on the spot where before she had stood. Her eyes seemed deeper-set than Virginsky remembered, their hungry energy receding physically into her head. She looked up briefly at their entrance, taking in the apprehension in her son’s face, and reflecting it back with a nervous excitement. The sight of the blood-stained towel added to her agitation, but she did not linger on it. It was always to the girl on the bed that her gaze returned, although the nature and intent of that gaze was difficult to interpret. The most obvious construction was that it was a look of solicitude, but Virginsky couldn’t shake off the impression that she sought to hold Aglaia Filippovna captive with her gaze. Despite her son’s anxieties, Virginsky doubted that there was anything that could be said to the princess that could destroy her or even surprise her. Those eyes had seen much, and foresaw the rest, it seemed to him.
