by June Thomson
‘“It is a matter of honour, Mr Holmes,” he explained in excellent English. “Anna Poltava was part of my household and a most loyal servant. I feel I must make every effort to find her murderer and bring him to justice. That is why my son and I decided to call on your services. The official police, under Inspector Gudgeon, appear to have reached an impasse in their inquiries and admit themselves baffled.”
‘“Have they no evidence?” I asked.
‘“Very little, it seems. They have one witness, a man called Moffat, a porter, who was passing the house on his way to Spitalfields market at about half-past three in the morning, the time when it is believed that the murder was committed. He saw a dark, bearded man, wearing a long black coat and with a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, lurking at the entrance to an alley-way which leads to the yard behind the house. The description appeared to fit one of the tenants, a certain Vladimir Vasilchenko, who is also dark and bearded, but when Moffat was called in to identify him, he failed to do so. The man he had seen, he insisted, was shorter and of much slighter build. Inspector Gudgeon has therefore dismissed Vladimir Vasilchenko from the case. Indeed, I understand that the Inspector is firmly of the opinion that the murder was the work of an outsider, not one of the tenants.”
‘“On what grounds?”
‘“On the evidence at the scene of the crime. Anna Poltava was found smothered in her bed on Monday morning, two days ago. Her room was on the ground floor at the rear of the house, its window overlooking the yard. From various marks and gashes on the outside of the frame, made apparently with a knife, it seemed the window was forced open by an intruder who, the official police assume, crept into the room while Anna Poltava was asleep and placed her own pillow over her face before making his escape by the same route, taking with him her purse containing, among other coins, two half-sovereigns which were intended for housekeeping expenses and the payment of the rent. Moreover, the door to her room was still found to be locked. It had to be broken open the following morning by some of the tenants when her absence was noticed.”
‘From his manner and his troubled countenance, I deduced that Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch was not convinced by this official explanation and when I put this suggestion to him, he immediately replied, “No, Mr Holmes, I am not! I grant it is plausible and would seem to cover the evidence and yet I cannot believe that it is the true explanation for Anna Poltava’s murder.”
‘“You have your own theory?” I inquired.
‘“Theory, yes, but I have no facts to support it apart from my own instinct in the matter.”
‘“Then pray expound it,” said I. “If robbery was not the motive, what do you suppose was?”
‘As you know, Watson, although I generally prefer facts to mere conjecture, I am not entirely averse to a little judicious imagination being brought to bear on a problem. It is one of my chief criticisms of Lestrade and his colleagues at the Yard that, although they may be thorough in a plodding, pedestrian fashion, they lack that spark of imaginative intuition which, if properly employed, can cast light into the darkest corners of a case.* Moreover, Count Plekhanovitch had knowledge of the persons concerned in the inquiry which I myself did not, at the time, possess. I was therefore curious to hear his ideas on the matter.
‘“I am convinced,” said he, “that the death of Anna Poltava was politically motivated.”
‘This seemed highly unlikely to me. Why should anyone wish to murder an elderly Russian servant-woman? When I expressed my doubts, Count Nicholai continued,
‘“You must understand, Mr Holmes, that not all the Russian exiles who seek refuge in this country are private or even innocent individuals, such as Jewish immigrants escaping from the pogroms carried out against them by the Tzarist authorities or Liberals like myself who wish to live and raise their families in a more tolerant society. Among them are Revolutionaries, Nihilists and Anarchists, desperate and dangerous men – and women, too – who seek to bring about the violent overthrow of the Imperial Russian Government through acts of terror, murder and assassination, such as was carried out in St Petersburg in 1881 against Tzar Alexander II,* or by Vera Zasulich† a year earlier in her attempt against the life of General Trepov. Mine is a tragic country, Mr Holmes, with a past that is dyed deep in blood and a future which will, I fear, be no less savage and bloody. You do not know how fortunate you are to be English and born into a democracy.
‘“However, while I myself wish to see a democratic government established in my mother Russia, I am strongly opposed to all forms of violence. Therefore, when I come to select tenants for the Stanley Street house from among the many exiles who clamour for a place there, I am most careful in my choice. It is not an easy task. Although Sergei and I scrutinise their documents closely, it is quite possible that some of these may be false and that, despite our efforts, a criminal escaping from justice may have slipped through our net. Indeed I have reason to believe that an attempted assassin has taken refuge on the premises, disguised as an ordinary lodger. Or so rumours among the émigré population have informed me.”
‘“Man or woman?” I asked, my interest naturally quickened by this information.
‘The Count spread out his hands in a hopeless gesture.
‘“I cannot tell you, Mr Holmes. It could be either. This person, whoever it is, made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the Chief of Police in Odessa a few months ago as he was on his way to dine at a restaurant. It was dark and the street was crowded. Someone fired a revolver at his carriage, missing him but fatally wounding the coachman. Witnesses to the incident could give no clearer description than that the assassin was well built and was wearing a black cloak. He, or she, then disappeared into the crowd and is believed to have escaped to this country. Whether or not that person is residing in the Stanley Street house is a matter of conjecture. But I thought you should be warned of the danger.
‘“In addition to this, it is possible that a member of the Tzarist secret police, the Okchrana, may have penetrated the establishment, acting either as a government spy or as an agent provocateur, placed there, perhaps, because an assassin is indeed in the household. Who can tell? The Russian émigré community lives on rumour and speculation.”
‘“The waters do indeed seem exceedingly murky,” I remarked.
‘“Exactly, Mr Holmes! That is my point. Surely there is no need to muddy them further by introducing an extra suspect in the way of an intruder or the additional motive of robbery. Anna Poltava was a shrewd old woman who knew the tenants well. If there is an assassin among them or an agent provocateur, acting on behalf of the Okchrana, she, of all people, would have been aware of it. I believe she was murdered in order to silence her. In other words, it was a political killing. The purse was stolen merely to make it appear as a robbery. But I cannot convince Inspector Gudgeon. It is most foolish of him for, believe me, Mr Holmes, sooner or later your official police will have to face up to the very special problems presented by some of those among my fellow exiles.*
‘“That is why I have asked you to investigate on my behalf although how you will set about the inquiry poses a problem. The tenants at Stanley Street are suspicious of foreigners, as they regard you native-born English. They have moreover, because of their experiences in Russia, an in-bred fear of anyone in authority, and very few of them speak English. Consequently, they have been unwilling to co-operate with the police. I can only trust that you will succeed where Inspector Gudgeon has failed. Have you any suggestions, Mr Holmes, as to how you might undertake this inquiry?”
‘I had indeed, Watson. Ever since Sergei Plekhanovitch had called at my rooms in Montague Street, I had been turning over in my mind this very question. Had the case involved a houseful of English lodgers or even French,* there would not have been any difficulty. But Russian!
‘However, as you know, I can no more resist a challenge than a woman can a compliment. Indeed, I dare say a challenge may be looked on as a form of flattery. I am also of the firm opinion
that any problem of a practical nature must, by its very predisposition, be open to a practical solution. If my ignorance of the Russian language was a handicap, why should I not turn it into an advantage?
‘I therefore put the following suggestion to the Count.
‘“Could I not be introduced into the Stanley Street household as a new tenant but one who is unfortunately a deaf-mute?” I said. “That would not only circumvent the language difficulty but I should also be resident in the house and therefore on hand to observe the lodgers’ behaviour. And even if I do not understand them, I should at least be able to follow a little of their conversation by their gestures and expressions.”
‘The expression on the Count’s own face was indicative of his response to this proposal. For a few seconds, it was one of total incredulity which, as the idea took root in his mind, changed by degrees to astonished relief.
‘“A deaf-mute!” he exclaimed. “I do believe that you have the answer, Mr Holmes! Do you not agree, Sergei? We shall put the idea before Dmitri Sokolov at once.” Going over to the fireplace, he pulled on the bell-rope, explaining to me as he did so, “Dmitri used to be my steward on my Russian estates. Here he acts as my general factotum. He speak good English and has been assisting the police at the Stanley Street house by translating the tenants’ statements. Ah, Dmitri! This is Mr Holmes, the consulting detective, who is to investigate Anna Poltava’s murder. He has just put a most excellent suggestion to me.”
‘Dmitri Sokolov was a small man with a face that might have been stitched together from scraps of brown leather and the watchful eyes of some creature from the wild. He also had, as I was to discover later, the soul of a comedian. For many Russians, both laughter and tears are close to the surface and they are as easily moved to one as to the other.
‘He listened in silence as the Count explained my proposal. Then he said, “He will need papers, your Excellency.”
‘“And clothes,” I put in quickly. “I myself have nothing suitable.”
‘“Can that be arranged?” the Count asked with some anxiety.
‘Dmitri gave a shrug as if the matter were perfectly simple.
‘“Of course. In twenty-four hours, I shall see that everything necessary is supplied.”
‘He was as good as his word and the following day arrived at my Montague Street lodgings with those papers you hold in your hand, Watson, identifying me as Misha Osinsky. He had also thought to bring with him some of Misha’s most treasured possessions, including the photograph of the old peasant woman, my supposed mother, and the small family ikon which the wretched young man refused to be parted from. There were clothes, too, in a shabby carpet-bag and the admirable Dmitri had also prepared a life-history for me which he recounted as I tried on my disguise.
‘I was from a remote village in the Urals, chosen because none of the émigrés were from that region, and was not only a deaf-mute but, like many poor Russian peasants, also illiterate. This was to prevent anyone trying to communicate with me in writing. My mother, Luba Osinsky, was a widow but, before her marriage, had worked as a servant to the local landowner who took a paternal interest in the family. Because I, Misha, was being unwittingly used by the Nihilists as a courier, the landowner, a kindly man who, like Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch, had liberal sympathies and feared that my activities might become known to the authorities, had paid for passages to England for both my mother and myself. Unfortunately – and here Dmitri’s face took on a most tragic expression, as if he himself believed the story to be true – my mother had died on the journey of fever. I had arrived in London, alone, starving and frightened, and had been taken by some Russian exiles to the Kensington house of the Count who, moved by my plight, had agreed to accept me as one of his tenants.
‘While Dmitri was speaking, I had gone on with dressing myself in my disguise and, almost involuntarily as I listened to this sorry tale, I found myself assuming Misha’s character, drooping my shoulders and dangling my arms so that, by the time he had finished and we gazed at my reflection in the glass, neither of us knew whether to laugh or cry at the pathetic figure I presented.
‘As later events were to prove, this element of tragi-comedy ran like a leitmotiv, as Herr Wagner has called it, throughout the whole case. Another theme was the matter of disguises. I think I may say without any exaggeration, my dear fellow, that I have never before or since undertaken an investigation in which there were so many false identities or assumed appearances.
‘My encounter that day with Dmitri soon descended into farce. It had been decided, in order to give credence to my place in the Stanley Street lodgings, that I should perform certain household duties. I see you smile, Watson, at the mere idea. I confess that the situation has its amusing side for I am the least domesticated of men. However, the tasks were simple and were quite within the scope of my limited capabilities. Dmitri threw himself enthusiastically into the task of instructing me in this new role, mouthing the Russian words for “broom”’ or “firewood”, which of course as a deaf-mute I was not supposed to hear, with such ridiculous contortions of his leathery countenance and accompanied by so many elaborate pantomimic gestures that I was hard put to it not to burst out laughing and so ruin my “Misha” expression of a not over-intelligent peasant with a pathetic desire to please.
‘The excellent Dmitri had also supplied me with a list of the lodgers and a short résumé of their past histories so that I could acquaint myself with their names and backgrounds before I met them. There were fourteen of them and I shall not bore you with reciting them all. Suffice it to say at this juncture that the one I was most interested in was Vladimir Vasilchenko who had at first been suspected by the police and then dismissed by them from the case when the market-porter, Moffat, had failed to identify him.
‘When I asked Dmitri for his own opinion of the man, he merely gave one of his eloquent shrugs and replied, “The witness might have been mistaken.”
‘Whether he meant to imply that Moffat had been wrong in failing to identify Vasilchenko or mistaken in his original description of the man, it was impossible to tell.
‘According to Vasilchenko’s papers, he was nothing more dangerous than a student of literature from Moscow University who had never been in trouble with the Tzarist authorities.
‘The next morning, wearing Misha Osinsky’s clothes and carrying his meagre possessions in the carpet-bag, I was taken by Dmitri Sokolov by cab to the house in Stanley Street and introduced to the tenants.’
II
‘Are you familiar with Stanley Street, Watson, and the district in which it is situated? I thought not. It is not a part of London which offers many attractions to the casual visitor.
‘Stanley Street itself is a long turning of shabby shops and houses between the Mile End Road and the Whitechapel area to the north and Commercial Road to the south, and runs through a part of the East End notorious for its numerous cheap lodging-houses, low “dives” and public houses as well as the many prostitutes who ply their squalid trade and whose services may be bought, I understand, for a few pence.
‘Count Nicholai had said we English are a fortunate nation. Perhaps he is right. But, my dear Watson, it was hard to believe when I looked about me on that journey and saw on all sides the utter wretchedness and degradation of those streets. If there is a hell on earth, then surely it is to be found there in the barefoot children and the starving beggars, in men and women crammed ten or more to a room, in the homeless crouching in doorways and in the bands of urchins roaming the streets, like packs of dogs, stealing in order to eat and finding their beds at night under a costermonger’s cart or a pile of rags.
‘And yet there was a terrible animation about the place. It was like a dead creature from whose rotting corpse the maggots have come swarming and heaving into life from every putrid crevice. Day and night they thronged the pavements and the gutters, the air ringing with their cries and shouts, their screams and curses. Aye, and their laughter, too, for in that charnel-heap o
f humanity it was possible to hear the sound of laughter and singing.
‘As I said to you at the beginning, it was a case which combined the elements of tragedy and comedy and I witnessed the same condition all about me. Here were drunken women brawling outside a public-house while, a few yards away, a little group of children were dancing and clapping their hands to an organ-grinder’s tune.
‘The house in Stanley Street teemed with the same life but at least it was clean if shabby. It was a tall, gaunt building of several storeys, each containing its complement of lodgers who had the privilege, rare in that part of London, of their own rooms, simply furnished, it was true, with little more than a bed and a cupboard in which to keep what few possessions they owned.
‘The focus of the household was the basement kitchen. It was here that meals were served, where the samovar was kept constantly simmering and where the tenants tended to congregate in the evening about the fire. It was also here that I was first introduced to them by Dmitri.
‘It would be tedious in the extreme to describe each in turn. Suffice it to say that four of them for various reasons roused my particular curiosity. One of them was, of course, Vladimir Vasilchenko, a tall, bearded man with a shock of black unruly hair and a most ruffianly appearance. Had one wished to describe a character who was the epitome of a Russian Revolutionary, one could have done no better than model him on Vladimir.
‘There was one other man whom I came to suspect as a possible candidate for the murderer. This was Peter Tomazov, a shoemaker who, with his sick wife, occupied one of the attic rooms. There was an air of desperation about him and, not long after I joined the household, I had reason to believe he was stealing food from the kitchen. Had Anna Poltava, I wondered, also discovered this and had he murdered her before she could denounce him as a thief? He was, moreover, of slight build and, with the addition of a false beard, might have answered the description given by the witness Moffat.