by R. N. Morris
Virginsky gave a sharp cry.
‘That’s unlucky,’ observed Porfiry. ‘Your cueing hand.’
The drunk fell over, unbalanced by the momentum of his attack.
‘I suggest we make a swift exit, Porfiry Petrovich. That fellow has many friends here and the mood appears to be waxing ugly.’
‘But the wager, Pavel Pavlovich! We will be forced to abandon the wager!’
‘I cannot believe you provoked a beating in order to get out of paying me ten roubles.’
‘His language was insufferable.’
‘I hadn’t noticed. I was concentrating on the game.’
‘So was I, my friend,’ said Porfiry with a wink, as he allowed himself to be dragged from the billiard room.
*
The swirl and dash of Domenika’s were still with Porfiry as he lay on his bed. Sweat pooled at his neck. His skin there chafed but it was a discomfort he was prepared to tolerate.
The throb of the gypsy music pulsed and echoed in his ears. The oil lamp by his bedside swayed and shimmered in time with the beat.
After their flight from the billiard room, they had stumbled into a drinking den in one of those alleys off the Haymarket. He remembered that Virginsky had been eager to get him home, but he had insisted on a nightcap. It was not the kind of place that Porfiry was in the habit of entering, a dark cellar with a sticky floor and tables, frequented by low-ranking clerks and tradesmen. Its novelty inspired a strange giddiness in him, which Virginsky was at pains to quell. There was no champagne to be had and Porfiry remembered making a scene with the proprietor over this inconvenience. He winced at the recollection. Had he really demanded that the fellow scour the streets of St Petersburg, urged him to spare no expense, and forbade him from returning without the Widow? In the event, vodka had been brought, the landlord probably calculating, quite reasonably as it turned out, that a drunk would happily drink whatever was put in front of him.
Porfiry closed his eyes and lay very still, as if his own immobility could influence the objects around him. He swallowed back a liquid reflux. It felt as though the sturgeon had come back to life and was swimming around in his stomach.
He was not entirely sure how he had arrived back at the apartment, that part of the evening being somewhat of a blank. But the empirical evidence was conclusive – here he was in his bed, after all! – and perhaps it was fruitless to enquire beyond that.
Porfiry thought instead of Princess Yevgenia Andreevna Naryskina. He felt now that he understood her strange inertia. It was a form of sympathetic magic; she sought to control through utter passivity. He thought also of Aglaia Filippovna, equally immobile. Was she held by her coma, or did she use it to exercise a hold over others? It was certainly true that it had effectively stalled his investigation.
He opened his eyes. The room was still spinning. He came to the conclusion that lying motionless achieved nothing. But now it seemed he was incapable of doing anything else.
He was about to lean over to extinguish the light, or at least to attempt that manoeuvre, when he became aware of the sounds of movement in the apartment. Footsteps. Slava. He even thought that he could hear a stifled whisper.
Now he remembered coming in. He had stopped outside Slava’s room, swaying as he strained to listen. There had been silence then, though he had the sense that it was a false silence, a suspension of frenzied activity prompted by his arrival. He had an image of Slava holding his breath, waiting for his employer to move on before resuming whatever he had been doing.
The unnatural silence had struck him as ominous. He had never known Slava to hold himself so still. It came close to unnerving him.
Now, beyond any doubt, he heard footsteps outside his door. He was not afraid. He was ready for whatever might happen. Better than that, he was drunk. He twisted his torso to dim the lamp. He wanted to give the impression that he was asleep when the intruder entered.
He closed his eyes. A wave of serenity relaxed his whole being. Within a few seconds – in less time than that, in the space between seconds – pretending to be asleep had passed over into actual sleep.
His eyes shot open in panic. A shadowy form stood over him. A limb of the shadow broke out and swept down towards his throat. A glint of steel flashed in the dimmed lamp light. Porfiry’s hands seemed to be made of lead. He was powerless to lift them. The flashing metal met no resistance until it struck his neck. A scream of fury and hatred and surprise and then it was all over.
41
Slava unmasked
The scream told him everything. It also sobered him up completely.
It was a woman’s scream.
Porfiry propelled himself upwards at the shadow. He met little resistance. She – for it was without doubt a woman – was slight of build and entirely lacking in strength. Her weapon had fallen uselessly from her hand as soon as she had landed the blow. His hands gripped skin and bone, slippery with warm liquid. A spasm of animal tension passed from her into him and then he felt her body collapse and he found that he was having to hold her up. He pulled her to him, letting his body take her weight as he wrapped one arm around her shoulder as if in an embrace.
The door burst open and Slava came in holding aloft a candle. The woman’s face was hidden against the chest of the man she had just attacked, but her hair was revealed to be an intensely black and unruly mass. Porfiry felt her frail body shake in convulsive sobs.
‘Good heavens, Porfiry Petrovich, you have a woman in your room!’ Slava made the observation with a salacious leer.
‘There is no need to feign surprise. You must have let her in.’
‘Well, yes. She assured me she was a friend of yours. You were not here. She said she would wait. She …’ Slava hesitated, momentarily embarrassed.
‘She made it worth your while,’ suggested Porfiry bluntly.
‘I took pity on her.’
‘You hid her in your room.’
‘That’s true,’ conceded Slava. ‘She wanted to surprise you. So she said. I am not a prude. We are all human beings. Subject to human needs and urges. I take the scientific, rather than the moral, approach. I am a man of the new generation.’
‘Shut up.’
‘But I had to intervene when I heard the scream. The scream did not reflect well on you, Porfiry Petrovich.’
‘She tried to kill me!’
‘So it was your scream?’
‘No!’ cried Porfiry in exasperation. ‘It was her scream. I dare say she did not expect me to be wearing this.’ Porfiry felt at the stiff leather collar around his neck with one hand, holding his assailant close to him with the other.
‘It is an unusual item of nocturnal apparel. You wear it for what reason?’
‘For protection, of course! It was given to me by an officer of the Third Section, to protect me from an attack by you.’ Porfiry gave the final words an indignant emphasis.
‘By me? But why would I wish to attack you?’
‘I believed you to be a revolutionary assassin.’
‘But Porfiry Petrovich, that’s not true!’
‘Then what are you, Slava?’
‘What am I? I am your manservant.’
‘There is something else.’
‘Is that blood? Are you hurt? Should I rouse a doctor?’
‘It is not my blood. It is hers. I do not believe it is serious. She appears to have nicked her hand on the blade of the razor when it struck the collar and flew out of her grip.’
‘She has a razor? Sensational! A magistrate attacked in his bed by a razor-wielding beauty. It is even more sensational than I had hoped.’
‘So that’s it. You’re not a revolutionary. You’re not a Third Section agent. You’re a damned journalist!’
‘Now now. Less of the damned. That’s not very nice, in front of a lady.’
‘She attempted to murder me. And that is not the worst of her crimes. She had better get used to the word.’
‘Who is she?’
Porfiry looked do
wn at the crown of black hair. He leaned forward so that her inert head fell away from his chest and her face was revealed. ‘Aglaia Filippovna.’
Her eyes were closed, as if she were still in the bed in the Naryskin Palace, sunk in her comatose refuge.
‘You are still my servant, I believe,’ said Porfiry to Slava. ‘You will go into the bureau and rouse the duty sergeant on the night desk. Tell him that I have apprehended the murderer of Yelena Filippovna and the three children, Dmitri Krasotkin, Artur Smurov and Svetlana Chisova.’
‘She?’
‘Yes. It’s true, is it not, Aglaia Filippovna? You killed the children and then you killed your sister. What’s more, you tried to make it look like your sister was the murderer of the children by wearing her ring when you strangled the children.’
Aglaia’s eyes opened. ‘Yelena? Is Yelena here?’
‘Yelena is dead, Aglaia Filippovna – as you well know. This is all play-acting. There has been so much play-acting in this case. I am worn out with it all.’
Her eyes held his for a moment. He looked into them to see if he could find any explanation for the crimes he was sure she had committed. But there was only colour, a colour as bright and alluring as a gemstone, and as remorseless.
42
The double-headed eagle
‘How extraordinary, Porfiry Petrovich!’ declared Nikodim Fomich. He stared at the magistrate in amazement, as if he could hardly believe his eyes. ‘There’s not a scratch on you! Blessed saints preserve you! There you are, sitting at your desk as if nothing had happened! How you had the foresight to wear that leather collar around your neck, I shall never know.’
Porfiry affected a look of weary disdain. ‘It is metal encased in leather. I must express my gratitude to Major Verkhotsev, who had the greater foresight to equip me with it. I knew that I had delivered a shock to Aglaia Filippovna’s system. For her to hear news of another child murdered in the same manner as she had committed her crimes was simply beyond her comprehension. She had successfully gained mastery over almost every aspect of her physiology, but she could not control her emotions when Princess Naryskina read out the article from the St Petersburg Gazette.’
‘Which you say was written by your manservant Slava?’
‘It would seem so. He was at least the source of the information. At any rate, Aglaia Filippovna’s surprise betrayed her. Only the murderer of the first three children would be shocked to hear that a fourth had been killed. She opened her eyes involuntarily and was met by the sight of the towel that had been used to mop up her sister’s blood. At the same time, she felt my fingers toying at the base of her thumb, at the very place where the ring would have been when she carried out her crimes. I was letting her know that I suspected her.’
‘Without question, it is that that provoked her attack. You brought it on yourself.’
‘It was essential to put some pressure on her, to force her into revealing herself.’
‘But when did you first suspect her?’ The question came from Virginsky, who was at the window, his back to the room. The day was overcast with a heavy quilt of cloud. Virginsky’s voice came heavy with resentment.
‘Once, when we were called to the palace because Aglaia Filippovna had come round briefly, I noticed that she toyed compulsively with her thumb, as if twisting something endlessly round and round. The gesture made no sense to me at the time as we had not yet discovered the children’s remains, with the tell-tale bruises. Indeed, I forgot all about it, until the day that I was summoned to see the Tsar. I noticed that he had the nervous habit of twisting a ring on one of his fingers. Somehow in my mind, the pieces fell into place. I realised that that was what Aglaia Filippovna had been doing, although the ring itself was lacking.’
‘Remarkable,’ declared Nikodim Fomich, who was striding the room delightedly. ‘But then to suspect her of murdering her sister! Could there be a more unnatural crime, or one more difficult to conceive of?’
‘For any normal person, perhaps. But here is a girl who had already murdered her mother.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘Or so I believe. Her father committed suicide, without question. But the circumstances of her mother’s death are less clear. It is conjecture – I accept – but nonetheless it is reasonable to believe that Aglaia Filippovna had a hand in it, especially considering her later career. Mention of her parents’ deaths certainly aroused my suspicions with regard to the violent demise of her sister. To lose a father, a mother and a sister … one has to wonder. One often finds that a suicide in the family initiates a preoccupation with death. It is as if a door is opened. Death becomes familiar. It also gains a certain viability as a solution to one’s problems. Most often, it sets an example that can be followed. In this case, I believe, her father’s suicide triggered a murderous propensity. The tragic event occurred during her adolescence, a period of intense emotional upheaval at the best of times. We can imagine that she loved her father dearly, perhaps jealously. No doubt she blamed her mother for his death, and conceived a way to exact revenge.’
‘Has she confessed to this?’ asked Nikodim Fomich hopefully.
‘No. She has fallen back on her favourite evasive strategy. She is feigning unconsciousness again. Playing dead, we might almost say. Nevertheless, even if we do not go so far as to accuse Aglaia Filippovna of matricide – a charge we will never be able to prove – even so, it is not unreasonable to assume that the double loss of her parents at such an age had a devastating effect on her young psyche. Her sister, too, was thrown into turmoil, as evidenced by her wayward and promiscuous life. We may put it this way: one sought to heal herself through excessive love, the other through excessive hate.’
‘But why?’ demanded Virginsky, crossing to Porfiry’s desk. ‘Why did she kill her sister? Why did she kill the children? Why did she do any of it?’
‘I confess I do not yet have answers to all the questions that this case raises. The most impenetrable question of all is why. I suspect it has something to do with the one individual at the centre of all this.’
‘Maria Petrovna.’
‘Yes. She is the link between the sisters and the dead children. I suggest we call on her at our soonest convenience,’ said Porfiry, rising.
‘Before you go,’ cut in Nikodim Fomich, ‘I have a question which perhaps you can answer. It’s to do with Captain Mizinchikov. How did he get blood on him? Have you worked that out?’
Porfiry directed a display of impatient blinking towards Nikodim Fomich and sighed. ‘That is the only question you have? You have no questions regarding the illicit trade in cadavers conducted by the men under your command? A trade I am told you condone and indeed have engaged in, and which, I might say, considerably hampered our investigation.’
‘Who has told you this?’
‘Lieutenant Salytov. A man you admire for his skill in extracting confessions.’
‘And the primary transgressor in this affair. Did it not occur to you that he may have sought to implicate me in order to deter you from pursuing the matter?’
‘Do you swear to me that you have never profited from the sale of an unidentified and unclaimed body?’
‘There will be an enquiry, Porfiry Petrovich. I am confident that I will be found blameless.’
‘That is not the same thing.’ Porfiry’s voice was leaden with disillusionment. He would not meet Nikodim Fomich’s defiantly cheerful countenance.
‘But what of the blood stains?’ There was a desperate jollity to Nikodim Fomich’s tone. He was trying to win Porfiry over by appealing to his cleverness.
‘Pavel Pavlovich, do you remember the first time we visited Aglaia Filippovna, when Dr Müller lifted her nightdress and showed us the wounds on her leg?’
‘Yes.’
‘I believe she harvested her own blood, and somehow engineered to disseminate it on to Captain Mizinchikov, in order to incriminate him and direct attention away from herself. Nothing in a murder case screams so loudly and distractingly a
s blood.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘When Captain Mizinchikov entered the dressing room, she held out a hand, pointing at him, almost touching him.’ Porfiry mimed the gesture, reaching his hand towards Nikodim Fomich. ‘What if she had had something concealed in the closed palm of her hand?’
‘Something? What exactly?’
‘It came to me when Princess Naryskina tipped out the contents of her handbag. Although in truth, I think I had an inkling of it from the very beginning of the investigation, from that night at the Naryskin Palace. I went into the theatre and saw a woman spray herself with scent from an atomiser.’
‘An atomiser?’
‘The bulb of an atomiser, adapted to release a coarser jet than usual. It could easily be concealed in the hand.’
‘What happened to it? Why did we not find it?’ said Virginsky.
‘A good question. I have come to the opinion that the emblem of the double-headed eagle has a great significance to this case, though not in the way we formerly imagined. It does not incriminate a member of the Romanov family, as you once suggested, Pavel Pavlovich. Its significance is rather more subtle and almost serendipitous. The use of this particular ring was after all forced on Aglaia Filippovna. Allowing for that, I believe it operates unconsciously to reveal the presence of an accomplice. Do you remember the anonymous note sent with a fine red thread, claiming a political aspect to Yelena Filippovna’s murder? Aglaia Filippovna did not send that. It was her intention to blame Captain Mizinchikov for her sister’s murder, not to credit a political tendency.’ Noticing a questioning frown across Virginsky’s brow, Porfiry went on: ‘Perhaps to punish him for some slight or insult, we cannot know.’
Virginsky’s frown dissipated into an expression of wonder. ‘For loving Yelena! She was jealous of her sister, always jealous of her!’
‘A very interesting supposition, my friend.’ Porfiry smiled for Virginsky, in pointed contrast to the coldness of his expression towards Nikodim Fomich. ‘However, be that as it may, the point is that I discern two contrary wills at work here, that is to say, two heads pointing in opposing directions. For Aglaia Filippovna, the drive to murder always originated in the personal. Her crimes were the violent eruptions of an intense emotional life. In many ways, she was the victim of her own wild and ravening ego. She wrought destruction on everything that opposed her. No wonder that she sought escape in oblivion. We must allow that she is not entirely a monster. Perhaps horror at her ultimate crime, the murder of her own sister, overwhelmed her. On the other hand, I detect in that note a more utilitarian mind at work. A mind capable of recognising the destructive capabilities of a damaged child and exploiting them for its own wider purposes.’ Porfiry’s head jerked sideways as if physically struck by a realisation. The colour drained from his face and his eyes bulged with alarm. ‘Come, Pavel Pavlovich. I fear it is a matter of urgency that we talk to Maria Petrovna.’
