by R. N. Morris
‘It’s all right, Axenty Ivanovich,’ insisted Yefimov. ‘Go with the gentlemen.’ He spoke slowly, with precise enunciation. His eyes stared steadily into Rostanev’s in a way that was perhaps meant to be reassuring.
Rostanev nodded and obeyed.
As they walked Rostanev out of the office, Salytov’s shoulder again clipped a tower of papers, this one even more precariously assembled than the first. As before, all heads turned. The room held its breath; there was a sense of inevitable disaster this time. It was a strangely gradual catastrophe when it came, one which they felt ought to be preventable, but of course was not. The momentum of the collapse built and flowed along the twisting rows of paper, as the originally disturbed column took with it those around it, and they in turn transmitted instability to their neighbours. The sound of the whole event, which left only a few half-towers standing in the room, was like a wave crashing over rocks. All around, sheets flew up and floated in the hot, dusty air, before drifting erratically and ostentatiously to the floor.
It was impossible for Porfiry to resist looking at the faces of men who had just witnessed an unimaginable upheaval of their world and not to feel, seeing the extent and depth of their open-mouthed horror, a sense almost of privilege. Even so, he had no wish to linger. They swept Rostanev from the silenced room.
8
Interview with a madman
‘Empty your pockets!’
The first item Rostanev took out was a small ebony-handled penknife. The police lieutenant snatched it from him and examined it closely, opening and closing each of the blades in turn. While he was doing so, Rostanev cast his unconcerned gaze around the Haymarket District Police Bureau. His face opened up with wonder, as if he were watching the events of a dream unfold. Both hands were at his beard again.
‘Nasty,’ said Salytov, laying the knife on the clerk Zamyotov’s counter. ‘You could do someone a deal of harm with that. Note it down, Alexander Grigorevich. One knife.’
Zamyotov sighed and raised his eyebrows as he was compelled to record the knife’s existence.
‘It’s for the quills,’ explained Rostanev, with a slight smirk that was no doubt involuntary. Its effect on Salytov was unfortunate.
‘Quills?’ Salytov leant down to bark the question in Rostanev’s face.
Perhaps unwisely, Rostanev failed to flinch. ‘For sharpening them.’
Salytov straightened slowly, keeping his narrowed eyes fixed on Rostanev, on whom the menacing glare was wasted: he now enthusiastically produced a bundle of quills from inside his coat. He beamed triumphantly, as if he believed this would be enough to win the officer’s approval. Sensing Salytov’s obduracy, he placed the quills — about six in number — on the counter next to the knife, then plunged a hand into the other side of his coat. A dozen or so more quills were added to those already on the counter. After further searches in unexpected places, the total number of quills reached twenty-five, laboriously and ironically counted off by Zamyotov. So far Porfiry had been content to stand back and watch as Salytov processed the suspect but now he felt moved to intervene. ‘You will be given a receipt for everything. This is normal procedure. There is no need to be alarmed.’
‘I am not alarmed,’ said Rostanev with disarming simplicity, whiskers rotating under his grinding thumbs.
Porfiry smiled. ‘Good. Now, when you have finished giving Alexander Grigorevich your details, perhaps you would be so good as to join me in my chambers for a little chat.’
Porfiry drew Salytov to one side. ‘I want a search done of his lodgings.’
Salytov nodded without looking at the magistrate.
‘I also want Dr Meyer and Vakhramev brought in. And the old woman, Mikheyeva.’
Salytov could not now prevent himself from meeting Porfiry’s eye. He held the gaze for a moment, before his head twisted away, as though repelled.
‘There is a terrible smell in here,’ said Rostanev as he took the seat opposite Porfiry.
It was several moments before Porfiry was able to speak. He flashed his astonishment at Virginsky, who could not suppress a wry grin. ‘Yes. Quite,’ said Porfiry at last. ‘If you remember, I sent a letter saying as much to your department. And received the reply, signed by you, that I have already shown you. No action was deemed necessary.’
The small smirk that seemed to be Rostanev’s stock reaction to difficulty twisted his lips again. ‘That was the correct response. There was nothing that could be done. That is to say, no action was deemed possible. We are not required to do the impossible. The impossible is by definition unnecessary. One must take no action when no action can be taken.’
Porfiry’s eyes widened as he tried to unravel Rostanev’s argument.‘My friend, you might have surprised yourselves.’
Rostanev’s stifled brass chuckle sounded again. ‘It is not the policy of the department, of any department, to surprise itself. The ministry could not function if departments engaged in surprising themselves.’
‘But, the ministry does not function,’ Porfiry spluttered.
‘It is just that you do not understand what its function is.’
Porfiry realised that he had been blinking to excess because he saw the action mirrored in Rostanev’s face. He made a conscious effort to stop.
‘There are a lot of flies in here,’ observed Rostanev.
Porfiry glanced around distractedly. ‘Yes, that problem is not unconnected with the original problem.’
‘They seem rather lethargic.’
‘They are intoxicated,’ said Porfiry.
‘How did they get into that state?’ There was a note of disapproval in Rostanev’s question.
‘I fed them honey laced with kvas,’ said Porfiry. It was galling to be on the receiving end of the look that came from Rostanev. ‘However, we are not here to talk about flies.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ said Rostanev, with a wink.
‘No,’ said Porfiry, momentarily bewildered. ‘Let us talk about Raisa Meyer instead.’
‘Who is Raisa Meyer?’
‘Are you serious? Do you really not remember? Earlier, I showed you another letter, this one. It concerns a woman called Raisa Meyer. You sent it to her husband.’
‘Did I?’
‘That’s what you said.’
‘I send so many, you see.’
‘How did you come to know Raisa Meyer?’
‘I don’t know her. I’ve never met her. Who is she?’
‘She is dead.’ Porfiry watched Rostanev closely. The information seemed not to permeate his consciousness at all. ‘You must have known her. How could you write such things about her if you did-n’t know her? Why would you?’
‘The voices.’
‘Did the voices tell you to kill her?’
‘No,’ said Rostanev flatly.
‘Then why did you kill her?’
‘I didn’t kill her.’ He made the statement calmly, without any of the defensive force that Porfiry would have expected; as one disputing a minor point of detail, in fact.
‘In this letter, you said that you had slept with Raisa Meyer when she was a prostitute.’
Rostanev stared open-mouthed at Porfiry. He then turned his incredulous glare on Virginsky and cried: ‘Prostitute! Prostitute!’
‘Please,’ said Porfiry. ‘Try to concentrate. Raisa Meyer was indeed once a prostitute. How could you have known that if you had never met her?’
‘The voices?’ A note of uncertainty had crept into Rostanev’s tone.
‘The voices will not help you. You cannot blame it all on the voices. Is it not true that you once visited a brothel with a former schoolfriend called Golyadkin? There were two other men in your party, one of whom was Vakhramev, to whom you sent another anonymous letter concerning his daughter and a man called Setochkin. It was in the course of that visit that you first made the acquaintance of Raisa Meyer.’
Rostanev became agitated. ‘No! It is most emphatically not true. I admit to sending the letters, but I have never vi
sited one of those places. I am an official in the Department of Public Health. Am I likely to expose myself to the risk of contracting a filthy disease? Would I defile myself with women?’
‘A man may act under any number of compulsions,’ said Porfiry. ‘He may even be driven to do things that are not in his own or others’ interests. That is what it means to be human.’
‘Then I would rather be a fly,’ said Rostanev hotly.
‘Do you think that flies are any less subject to compulsion?’
Rostanev’s head bobbed and oscillated as he followed a drunken fly’s plummeting trajectory.
‘Who is Nikolai Nobody?’ demanded Porfiry.
Rostanev turned his gaze slowly on the magistrate. ‘No one?’ It seemed like a guess.
‘Are you Nikolai Nobody?’
‘Am I?’ Rostanev looked about the room conspiratorially. ‘My lips are sealed,’ he added, at last.
‘Have you ever bought chocolates from Ballet’s the confectioner’s? ’
‘On Nevsky Prospekt? I know it well.’
‘That’s right.’
‘No.’ Rostanev shook his head forlornly, as though he were sorry to disappoint. ‘I cannot afford to shop there.’
‘And yet the name Rostanev shows up in one of their order books.’
Rostanev chuckled. ‘That is a striking coincidence.’
‘The address of this Rostanev is given as care of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Chernyshov Square.’
‘Even more striking!’
‘And outside Ballet’s you contrived to bump into Dr Meyer,’ pressed Porfiry, ‘switching the box of chocolates he purchased for one contaminated with poison.’
‘Who has said this? Who accuses me of this?’
‘Did you also send an anonymous letter to Gorshkov the factory worker?’
‘I don’t know. Did I? I suppose I must have. I have sent a lot of letters. I confess to sending the letters. That I know I did. But I never bumped into anyone. I am not the sort who bumps into people. I would always far rather step to one side. I am a stepper-to-the-side. Not a bumper-into.’
‘What?’
‘The world is divided into three types of men. Steppers-to-the-side, unbudgeables and bumpers-into. I am a stepper-to-the-side.’
‘I see. I confess I have never viewed the world in that light before.’
‘I can see that you are an unbudgeable.’
‘What about Ferfichkin? The tailor who sewed a fur collar on a coat for you. Into which category would you place him?’
‘Unbudgeable.’
‘So you do admit that you know Ferfichkin?’ pressed Porfiry.
‘As you say, he sewed a collar on to a coat.’
‘Yes. A fur collar. It is strange that you could afford a fur collar and yet you say you cannot afford to shop at Ballet’s.’
‘To pay for the collar I was forced to secure an advance on my salary. The necessity of paying that back led to a degree of embarrassment that precluded the, uh, aforementioned, herewith, withal, uh, etcetera etcetera, your obedient servant, Rostanev, A. I.’
‘You purchased the collar but could not afford to pay for it to be sewn on to your coat. You owed Ferfichkin money, did you not?’
‘And he owed me a coat.’
‘I see. Ferfichkin is dead. He was murdered. Stabbed through the heart by a man he bumped into.’
‘No? He was a bumper-into, after all?’
‘We can connect you with all three murders. Indeed, I would say that there are enough prima facie connections to make a case.’
‘Then it must be true,’ said Rostanev. ‘I must have done it.’ He scratched his lank-haired head in some perplexity. ‘Goodness knows what I was thinking.’
The following morning, the Thursday of the third week after Raisa and Grigory’s deaths, Porfiry was turning the pages of the latest issue of the Periodical. He was smoking, with a languid and almost nostalgic sensuousness. From time to time he emitted a heavy sigh, as if overcome by ennui. Whether he was more absorbed in the act of smoking, or that of reading, was hard to say. At any rate, his countenance discouraged interruption.
Virginsky sat at his station by the window and sorted through the case files, trying to bring some order to the clutter he had accumulated. Occasionally, he would be drawn by one of Porfiry’s sighs to look up wonderingly, only to find the magistrate sealed off from all enquiry. However, after one particularly prolonged sigh, he met Porfiry’s eye at last.
‘He is either an innocent lunatic or a very clever dissembler,’ said Porfiry. Prompted by Virginsky’s quizzical frown, he added, ‘I believe we will soon be able to tell for certain which.’
Porfiry lit another cigarette and went back to scanning the journal. After a few moments, he broke off with a jerk of his head and looked down at a number of flies lurching across his desk. Without taking his eyes off them, as though he wished to misdirect them, he rolled up his copy of the Periodical. Then he began to beat the desk furiously with it. He did not seem to be aiming at specific flies, but rather striking at random, with the intention of getting in as many blows as possible over the widest area, in the shortest possible time.
Virginsky watched open-mouthed.
When the frenzied swatting was over, the desk was strewn with insect corpses, as well as a few twitching, mutilated, but still living, specimens. Porfiry turned a smile of triumph towards Virginsky. Not meeting with the validation he had hoped for, Porfiry turned up the underside of the rolled journal to discover a few squashed flies stuck there. He frowned and then dropped the journal into the waste-paper bin by his chair.
Virginsky shuddered out his incredulity. ‘But aren’t the connections overwhelming? He admits to writing the letters. He went to Chermak High School. His name is in the Ballet’s order book.’
‘And he is conveniently mad, of course. Do not forget that.’
Virginsky frowned thoughtfully. ‘What do you intend to do now?’
Porfiry didn’t answer. He looked down at the dead flies on his desk.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Yes,’ called Porfiry.
Lieutenant Salytov came in, bearing a disintegrating cardboard box. He carried it hurriedly over to Porfiry’s desk where he let it drop. ‘We found these in Rostanev’s room. Letters. Hundreds of them.’
Porfiry picked several out at random. ‘They are very much in the style of the letter he sent to Dr Meyer. The handwriting matches exactly.’ Sorting through the letters in his hand, he brandished one eagerly. ‘Ah! The letter to Gorshkov. It seems that, in typical civil service style, he made a copy of each letter before he sent it. I am confident that we will find copies of the letters sent to Meyer and Vakhramev in this box.’ Porfiry read the letter out loud. ‘“To my dear friend Mr Gorshkov, how I feel for you. To lose a child is painful enough. But to have your pain mocked by a miserable skinflint who is not fit to touch the hem of your dead baby’s blanket. I am referring to the ogre Ferfichkin, who slanders you around the city as a madman and a debtor. I myself heard him say that he would dig your dear Anastasya out of the earth and boil her bones to make a poultice just to teach you a lesson. That is the kind of man Ferfichkin is. And to think he lives, and grows fat on pies and sweetmeats, while your poor baby lies rotting in a flimsy cardboard coffin. Yours in sympathy, a well-wisher.”’ Porfiry blinked thoughtfully. ‘You will notice he signs himself “A well-wisher” every time. There is another, more significant pattern to them, however.’ He looked at Virginsky enquiringly.
‘He is, in every case, providing the recipient with a motive for murder.’
Porfiry nodded grimly.
‘Goading them to it,’ added Salytov darkly.
‘Perhaps,’ said Porfiry.
‘The letters certainly are designed to touch a raw nerve,’ said Virginsky.
‘He pushes them and pushes them. But they actually commit the murders,’ continued Salytov. ‘The men you let go,’ he added pointedly.
‘And how is t
he investigation into the possibility of a revolutionary cell at Ballet’s the confectioner’s progressing, Ilya Petrovich?’ asked Porfiry in retaliation. ‘I understand Nikodim Fomich was to assign some men to it. Have any significant leads come to light that I ought to be informed of?’
‘Nothing significant, so far,’ answered Salytov resentfully. ‘Perhaps the boy and his associates are not involved in these murders, as I first thought. However, I remain convinced that they are criminal and possibly dangerous individuals. Time may yet prove me right.’
‘Nikodim Fomich will not be able to extend that operation indefinitely.’
‘The same may be said of your investigation,’ countered Salytov.
Porfiry took refuge in lighting a cigarette.
‘Isn’t it true though, Porfiry Petrovich,’ put in Virginsky brightly, ‘that you have never really explained how the letter Vakhramev took to Setochkin’s was removed from Setochkin’s study? Only Vakhramev was in there with him. He would seem to be the most likely suspect.’
‘I detect a conspiracy against me,’ said Porfiry, his face screwed up into a smile that seemed almost to pain him.
Virginsky and Salytov were evidently startled to find themselves on the same side. Virginsky was the first to try to put some distance between them. ‘Even if what we seem to be saying is true, the writer of these letters is still the murderer, is he not? The recipients, Dr Meyer, Vakhramev, Gorshkov, are merely his weapons.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Salytov, who appeared to be just as eager to differentiate his views from those of the younger man. ‘If Meyer contaminated the chocolates, he committed murder — cold-blooded, premeditated murder — which he has sought to cover up with this story of a mysterious other who bumped into him outside the confectioner’s.’
‘And Rostanev says he is not a bumper-into,’ said Porfiry, with amusement. ‘Did you discover anything else of interest about him, Ilya Petrovich?’
Salytov consulted a small notebook. ‘I talked to some of his neighbours about his habits, which were described as regular. It is generally agreed that he keeps himself to himself. He rarely goes out, except to go to work, and has never been known to have visitors. ’
