A Razor Wrapped in Silk pp-3

by R. N. Morris

  Porfiry lifted his bandaged hand. The dressing was loose and grubby, in places even stained with ink. With his free hand, Porfiry attempted to tighten it, but the cotton strip unravelled in his fumbling fingers. Porfiry shook it loose from his hand, causing a wad of gauze to fall on the floor. He picked this up and examined it. Blowing the dust off, he turned it over and placed it again on his hand. Clasping the end of the bandage with his thumb, he began winding.

  Virginsky watched with a mixture of fascination and horror.

  Porfiry bound the hand slowly, straining the bandage to keep it taut, and pausing after every turn to check that the dressing was holding its shape. At last he reached the end of the bandage, to which he gave one last sharp tug before folding it under one of the tightly bound edges. As soon as he let go, the dressing returned to its earlier laxity. Porfiry let out a despairing sigh. ‘What were we talking about?’

  Virginsky said nothing but looked resentfully across at the tunic, which was draped over Porfiry’s desk. Even without a Guards officer in it, the article succeeded in attaining a certain swagger.

  ‘Ah yes, the man in the white tunic. Of course, it was not Mizinchikov,’ continued Porfiry blithely, again beginning to re-bandage his hand. ‘A fugitive from the law — and a deserter to boot — would not draw attention to himself in such a way. Singing for alms, you say?’

  ‘It was not Mizinchikov,’ confirmed Virginsky with a display of impatience. ‘This man was older than Mizinchikov. And from the look of him, had been living rough for quite some time. Years, I would say. It’s strange, beneath the grime, he had surprisingly regular features. In his time, I expect he was capable of cutting quite a figure. He had the face of an actor — of a leading man gone to seed.’

  ‘Really? How interesting. And his hair? What colour was his hair?’

  ‘Difficult to tell. It was very dirty.’ Virginsky was staring at Porfiry’s dressing as he said this.

  ‘Dark?’

  ‘No. It was the colour of dirty straw.’

  ‘So, an ageing, once good-looking man with blond hair. No, that does not sound like a young officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, does it?’ Porfiry let out a wheezing chuckle. ‘The likelihood is that Captain Mizinchikov exchanged clothes with this beggar soon after making his escape from the Naryskin Palace. We are looking for a beggar, Pavel Pavlovich. Or rather, a Guards officer in a beggar’s garb.’

  ‘There is no shortage of beggars in St Petersburg.’

  At that moment, the clerk Zamyotov, in his usual manner, barged in without knocking. Virginsky was relieved to have some other object upon which to focus his gaze. ‘A communique from the Obukhovsky Hospital.’ Zamyotov held the buff-coloured envelope out towards Porfiry from the doorway, making no effort to cross the room to hand it to him. Virginsky took it from him and opened it.

  ‘Dr Pervoyedov writes to inform you that the substance taken from the mirror is indeed blood.’

  ‘I see,’ said Porfiry, striding from the window to take the letter, his preoccupation with the bandage forgotten. ‘Arterial blood, no less. Whereas the blood on the ring is venous.’

  ‘Is that significant?’

  Porfiry mimed slashing his own throat. ‘Arterial.’ He then slapped himself on the face. ‘Venous.’

  ‘So the blood on the mirror is hers, most likely. And the blood on the ring is his. Just as we suspected.’

  ‘It would seem so. And now it occurs to me, Pavel Pavlovich, that it would be expedient to have Dr Pervoyedov apply his new contraption to analysing the stains on the front of this tunic.’

  ‘What else could they be but blood?’ said Virginsky. ‘They certainly look like blood.’

  ‘Do they? Could they not equally be soup? Or rust? Or red wine?’

  ‘No, not red wine,’ insisted Virginsky, with almost petulant force. ‘That is not the colour of red wine. Neither is it borscht. And although they are rust-coloured, they could not be rust. Whatever caused these stains was liquid when it hit the tunic. The most likely explanation is blood. But as you say, Dr Pervoyedov will be able to confirm it.’

  ‘Yes. And shall we take bets on whether it is arterial or venous?’

  ‘I am not a gambling man, Porfiry Petrovich,’ said Virginsky, his cold disapproval on the edge of self-righteousness.

  ‘Pity.’ Porfiry seemed to notice for the first time that Zamyotov was still lurking by the door, like a porter waiting for a tip. ‘Was there something else, Alexander Grigorevich?’

  ‘He’s here.’

  ‘Who is here?’

  ‘The new man. Your … servant. I have interviewed the applicants. My recommendation is waiting to see you.’

  ‘I see.’ Porfiry looked down at the louche, seedy sleeve around his hand. ‘Yes. Perhaps now would be as good a time as any to see him.’

  Zamyotov was gone from the room before Porfiry had finished the sentence. A moment later, a young man with pomaded hair came in. He was dressed in a respectable enough jacket and clutched a well-brushed black bowler in both hands. One of his eyebrows appeared to be permanently arched, which gave his face an ironic expression. This seemed, however, to be due purely to an unfortunate disposition of features, and could not be held against him. Porfiry made a conscious effort to overlook it. He could not, however, ignore the small nick in the man’s left earlobe, evidence of a piercing.

  ‘Good day,’ said Porfiry, taking the individual in with a nod. ‘And you are?’

  The young man was looking around Porfiry’s chambers with a quick, hungry eye. When he caught sight of the stained tunic, a jolt of excitement shook his head back perceptibly. Remembering himself, he gave Porfiry an enquiring glance. It was a look to which his asymmetrical eyebrows were especially suited. A moment’s thought produced the name: ‘Svyatoslav. You may call me Slava.’ After a further hesitation, he added, ‘Your honour.’

  ‘Slava, very good. Your full name?’

  ‘Svyatoslav Andreevich.’

  ‘Svyatoslav Andreevich — ye-es?’

  ‘Svyatoslav Andreevich Tushin.’

  ‘Thank you, Svyatoslav Andreevich. And what experience do you have as a gentleman’s gentleman?’

  Slava seemed a little taken aback by the question, as if it were the last question he had expected. ‘I have given my references to the other one,’ he said in some irritation, pointing vaguely out of the door.

  ‘I’m sure they are satisfactory. I merely wished to talk to you about it. To chat, one might say. Your previous employer was …?’

  ‘Count Drozdov.’

  ‘Count Drozdov. A titled gentleman, goodness. I am afraid that working for a lowly public servant such as myself will be something of a step-down for you.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s just as well. And why was your employment with Count Drozdov terminated?’

  ‘He hanged himself. Out of shame. You must have read about it in the Gazette?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You would have remembered if you’d read it. The account was brilliantly done.’

  ‘I see. One question occurs to me …’

  ‘What was he ashamed of?’ supplied Slava quickly, his superior eyebrow jumping even higher.

  ‘I have no wish to pry into that.’

  ‘I would have thought that would have been of interest to a man like you.’ Slava again cast an eager glance around the room. ‘Given your occupation, I mean to say.’

  ‘It is of no interest to me whatsoever. I merely wonder how Count Drozdov was able to supply a reference when …’ Porfiry allowed the sentence to trail off delicately.

  ‘He wrote it before he did himself in.’

  ‘That was indeed considerate of him. One might even say excessively considerate.’

  ‘I could see the way it was headed. The scandal affected him badly. For a man of honour like that, there was only one way out. I took the liberty of troubling his Excellency for a reference, just in case my suspicions were borne out by events, as sad
ly they were.’

  ‘And that was very perspicacious of you.’

  Slava shrugged. ‘And not a moment too soon. I got it off him the very day he put the halter round his neck.’

  Porfiry cleared his throat. ‘By whom were you employed before Count Drozdov?’

  ‘Before Count Drozdov?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Prince Shch.’

  ‘That is an unusual name.’

  ‘It was not his full name, of course.’

  ‘Would you care to confide his full name?’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ said Slava carelessly.

  ‘And what happened to Prince Shch? Not another suicide, I trust?’

  ‘He died of a wasting disease.’

  ‘How unfortunate. I hope you were able to extract a reference from him before the ultimate moment?’

  ‘The disease took several years to run its course. I was prepared.’

  ‘I confess, I am almost afraid to take you on, Slava. I fear what may become of me. Do you have any former employers who are still with us?’

  ‘Before Prince Shch, I was a waiter. At a well known restaurant near Nevsky Prospekt. It is still in business, I believe, though no one will remember me there now. It was…’

  ‘A long time ago, I know,’ said Porfiry. ‘Now then, do you have any questions of me?’

  ‘Are you any nearer finding Yelena Filippovna’s murderer?’

  ‘I meant regarding your employment. I see you are a devoted reader of the St Petersburg Gazette.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘That aspect of my life will be of no interest to you. You will work for me in a private capacity. Mostly in my apartment, though at times you will be called upon to serve me here in my chambers.’

  ‘I am to be employed, then?’

  ‘It is not yet decided. I thank you for your time. You will be informed of my decision by letter.’

  ‘He said the position was mine, if I wanted it.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘The other one.’ Slava repeated the vague hand gesture that went with this designation for Zamyotov.

  ‘We will have to see about that,’ said Porfiry dismissively.

  Slava made one last effort to win the magistrate round. ‘I have some theories of my own, you know,’ he said abruptly. At Porfiry’s flash of interest, he added enticingly: ‘Regarding Yelena Filippovna.’

  Porfiry again began to unbind the dressing on his hand. ‘How interesting. Perhaps you would share them with us.’

  ‘Porfiry Petrovich!’ The objection came from Virginsky. ‘This is hardly appropriate.’

  Slava crossed to Porfiry. He took the loose end of the bandage from him and pulled it tight. ‘In cases like this, one always has to ask, who stands to benefit?’

  ‘Cui bono? But who could possibly benefit from the death of a young girl?’ Porfiry watched the wrapping take shape around his hand with satisfaction.

  ‘It is well known that the financier Bakhmutov wanted her out of the way. He was prepared to pay his secretary Velchaninov a small fortune to take her off his hands. That fell through because of her quite reasonable scruples. Needless to say, Bakhmutov saw them as unreasonable, and highly inconvenient.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Prince Naryskin was about to marry her. Voluntarily, I believe.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Their engagement had been announced.’

  ‘Yelena Filippovna Polenova was a notoriously fickle woman. Only a few days before her engagement to Prince Naryskin she had broken off an engagement to the Guards officer Mizinchikov.’

  ‘You seem to know an extraordinary amount about the life of Yelena Filippovna.’

  ‘I take a natural interest in all these cases. That is why I could be especially useful to you.’ There was a ripping sound as Slava pulled at the end of the bandage to split it. He tied the two halves firmly around Porfiry’s hand. ‘There would be no need for any extra consideration.’

  ‘You are an intriguing individual, I will grant you that,’ said Porfiry, examining the tightly bound dressing.

  ‘You cannot seriously be intending to employ him!’

  Porfiry turned his gaze on Virginsky with some surprise.

  ‘You cannot allow your servant to become involved in official investigations.’

  Slava pursed his lips, in an admirable display of self-restraint.

  ‘And besides,’ continued Virginsky, ‘his theory is patently absurd. It is the typically convoluted theory of an amateur. It ignores the obvious. Mizinchikov’s flight. The blood on his tunic. The letters. The razor found with the letters.’

  ‘The razor? Yes,’ said Slava. ‘They mentioned that …’

  ‘In the Gazette?’ wondered Porfiry.

  ‘I have a theory about the razor,’ confided Slava.

  ‘Really!’ said Virginsky with exasperation.

  ‘Please,’ invited Porfiry.

  ‘I think the razor was put there,’ revealed Slava.

  ‘Of course. It must have been.’ Porfiry’s tone was subtly mocking.

  ‘By someone else, I mean.’ Slava’s answer showed that the satire was not lost on him.

  ‘I see. That is an interesting theory. And who, do you think, put it there?’

  ‘I have my suspicions,’ was all that Slava would say.

  Porfiry bowed, acknowledging his delicacy.

  ‘Is this the blood?’ said Slava, crossing to Porfiry’s desk to examine the tunic more closely.

  ‘Put that down,’ snapped Virginsky. ‘You have no authority to touch that.’

  Slava held on to the tunic and looked to Porfiry for direction. Porfiry nodded slightly for him to do as Virginsky had said. Only then did Slava place the tunic down.

  Virginsky clicked his tongue in disgust.

  Porfiry looked again at his neatly bound hand. There seemed to be a hint of despondency in his expression now, as if he regretted that he no longer had cause to meddle with the dressing. He looked uncertainly at Slava and then at Virginsky. The two men were hanging on his next words.

  ‘It would do us all good to have someone to keep us on our toes, I think.’

  ‘But Porfiry Petrovich …’

  Porfiry shot Virginsky a minatory glance. ‘Now, Pavel Pavlovich, you can make yourself useful to me by delivering this tunic to Dr Pervoyedov and awaiting his findings.’

  ‘Am I not supposed to be working on the case of the missing boy?’

  ‘What case is this?’ Slava’s eager enquiry was met with an even sharper look of warning.

  20 A vile traffic

  ‘Pavel Pavlovich, what an unexpected pleasure!’ Dr Pervoyedov eyed the brown paper package under Virginsky’s arm with a covetous gleam. ‘Do you have something for me there?’

  Virginsky avoided the doctor’s eye. Indeed, he avoided looking around the pathology laboratory at all, but kept his head bowed, staring fixedly at his feet like a sullen adolescent. But he could not avoid breathing in the formaldehyde-laden air. That pungent smell brought to mind the first time he had set foot in Dr Pervoyedov’s laboratory at the Obukhovsky Hospital. His feet then had been clad in the boots of a dead man, charitably supplied to him by Porfiry Petrovich.

  For an instant, Virginsky felt again the vertiginous lurch to which he had succumbed on that occasion.

  ‘He wants you to examine this for bloodstains.’ Virginsky handed the package over to Dr Pervoyedov, who pulled at the string like a child with a Christmas present. ‘We believe it to be the tunic worn by the murderer of Yelena Filippovna. He wants to know whether it is arterial or venous blood, if indeed it is blood at all.’

  ‘I imagine he does.’

  Dr Pervoyedov studied the stains on the front of the regimental tunic, at one point holding it close to his nose and inhaling. There was one roughly circular burst of rust colour in the middle of the double-breasted facing. It had a dense nucleus about the size of a ten kopek piece, which decayed into a wide areola made up of finer spots. A second stain,
a narrow, elongated trail around eight inches in extent, also haloed with spatter, descended from the first at an angle.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Dr Pervoyedov. ‘Very interesting. Has Porfiry Petrovich offered any opinion regarding these stains?’

  ‘I believe he is confident that they will prove to be blood. For some reason, he seems to be in doubt as to whether they are arterial or venous. He wished to enter into a wager over it.’

  ‘A wager!’ cried Dr Pervoyedov delightedly. ‘That is very like Porfiry Petrovich, and to me it suggests that he is in no doubt at all. If I were you, I would not take him up on it.’

  ‘I have no intention of doing so. I do not gamble. Besides, I dare say we are both of the opinion it is arterial. Such a spray of blood would only occur when an artery is severed. And we know that her throat was cut. The bet is pointless.’

  ‘You may be right. May I cut a swatch from it? It will aid precision.’

  Virginsky pinched his lips dubiously between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘First I will make a sketch to show the position of the stains. I will then be able to correlate my samples to reference points on the drawing.’

  ‘Do whatever is necessary, only do it quickly. He has told me to await your results. He little realises that I have other duties to attend to, though they are duties that he himself assigned to me.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking that a certain frostiness has entered your relations with Porfiry Petrovich?’ Dr Pervoyedov withdrew some sheets of paper and a pencil from a drawer in the bench. ‘I do not believe you have once called him by his name this morning.’

  ‘I swear that man is becoming more eccentric by the day.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Dr Pervoyedov laid out the tunic flat on the bench. ‘I find it hard to credit that there was any distance left for him to travel in the direction of eccentricity.’

  ‘His latest aberration is to hire a most unsuitable individual as his valet.’

  ‘But surely that is a private matter?’ Dr Pervoyedov squinted at the tunic as he made the first tentative lines on paper. ‘With all respect, Pavel Pavlovich, I do not see what it has to do with you.’