The Gentle Axe Paperback

by R. N. Morris

  “The Hotel Adrianopole. I am the bellboy there.”

  “Very good. And where is the Hotel Adrianopole?”

  “On the Bolshoi Prospect. Vasilevsky Island.”

  “Thank you. Now, please, Dmitri, could you tell me why you were spying on the house of the Widow Ivolgina, in Bolshaya Morskaya Street?”

  “I wasn’t spying.”

  “He was,” insisted Katya.

  “I was waiting for the dwarf.”

  Porfiry exchanged a significant glance with Katya and nodded minutely to Dmitri. “I see. The dwarf. Why were you waiting for him?”

  “I wanted to ask him how he did it.”

  “How he did what?”

  “The trick.”

  “Perhaps you had better start at the beginning. You admit that you have met Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov—the dwarf, as you call him—before?”

  Dmitri seemed unsure how to answer. He looked mistrustfully between Porfiry and Katya.

  “This lady says you came to the house, the house where Goryanchikov—the dwarf—lived, and visited him.”

  “All right, it’s true.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “A gentleman sent me.”

  “What gentleman?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “How did you know him?”

  “He was at the hotel.”

  “A guest?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did he send you there, to the house?”

  “He had a message.”

  “For the dwarf?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And so you delivered the message?”

  He nodded again.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Well, I’m trying to establish why you came back to spy on the house. The trick you mentioned. Can you tell me more about that?”

  The boy frowned uncertainly. “Well, he came to the hotel.”

  “Who did?”

  “The dwarf.”

  “I see. The message that you delivered was an invitation then? So what happened when he came to the hotel?”

  “He went into the gentleman’s room.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “He was such a little man. He was much smaller than me, and yet he was a man.”

  “Yes. But what happened after he went into the room?”

  “The gentleman quit his room. The ordinary-size gentleman, I mean.”

  “And the dwarf?”

  “He didn’t come out. The other man paid his bill and paid for another week in advance as well. A whole week in advance! He said the dwarf was taking over his room and would want it for another week. But this is the thing, you see. I went back to the room. To see if there was anything the dwarf wanted. I knocked on the door. No answer. I opened the door. Nobody there. The room was empty. There was no sign of him.”

  “He must have gone when you were with the other gentleman.”

  “I would have seen him. There’s only one way out. Down the corridor and past the reception. He hadn’t been that way, I’m telling you. I was watching all the time. I wouldn’t have missed him. Even though he was such a tiny fellow.” Dmitri became heated in his insistence.

  “He must have climbed out of the window then!” said Porfiry.

  “No!” shouted Dmitri, amazed at Porfiry’s stupidity. “There is no window. It’s the room under the stairs.”

  “I see. Very interesting.”

  “He must be some kind of goblin, don’t you think?”

  “I would incline toward a more rational explanation.”

  “A wizard then? Or some such.”

  “Tell me, did you carry the gentleman’s luggage out for him?”

  “No!” The boy cried out in remembered indignation. “He wouldn’t let me. Insisted on carrying it out himself, didn’t he? Wanted to do me out of a tip, I’m sure.”

  “I believe he may have had other reasons,” began Porfiry with a pleasant flicker of his eyelids, “for holding on to the suitcase so jealously.”

  The boy’s look of indignation turned slowly to one of horror. “He was in the case! The dwarf was in the case!”

  “The guest, the gentleman who sent you on your mission and whom the dw—the smaller gentleman, Goryanchikov, visited…you don’t happen to remember his name, do you?”

  “Did he murder him? Did he murder the dwarf? And put him in the case?”

  “It is a possibility.”

  “And what if he comes back to murder me?”

  “If you help me catch him, I shall make sure he cannot come back and murder you. I shall make sure he can never hurt anyone else again.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “It is indeed what I say. Now, please, can you remember the guest’s name?”

  “Govorov.”

  Porfiry felt somehow that he had expected this. He believed he was not surprised. And yet he felt his pulse quicken at the mention of Govorov.

  “Now you will write that thing for the tsar,” said Dmitri. “I should get a gold medal for this. I’ve risked my life.”

  Porfiry blinked himself into concentration. “The citation? I shall be glad to. But first I have just one more question for you. After you had delivered your message to Goryanchikov, you then stopped off at the yardkeeper’s shed. Is this not true?”

  Porfiry watched in amazement as the boy’s face colored and collapsed beneath an overwhelming surge of emotion. He had forgotten that this was a child he was dealing with. Thick streams of sudden tears ran from Dmitri’s eyes, clearing tracks in the dirt on his face. He howled his unhappiness: “It’s not fair. I’ve answered all your questions, then you ask me more questions. I’ve done nothing wrong. You can’t keep me here. You promised me a medal. Give me my medal.”

  Porfiry cast a glance of appeal toward Katya. But she was having none of it. She scowled suspiciously. Her hand was reaching out as if to grab Dmitri’s ear again. Porfiry stepped forward and reached out to restrain her.

  In that instant, Dmitri’s hand flashed into the pocket of Porfiry’s frock coat. Then, in the tail of the same instant, he was at the door and opening it. Porfiry suddenly felt the truth of Nikodim Fomich’s observation. He was rooted to the spot by age and by his tobacco-shortened breaths. The boy’s sudden move had not just taken him by surprise, it had left him winded, his body incapable of responding to the excited chemicals surging through it. His first impulse had been to light up rather than give chase.

  At the door, thrown open by the fleeing Dmitri, Porfiry’s cry of “Stop him!” was smothered in a coughing fit. It turned a few puzzled, a few curious, but mostly blank faces. One elderly polizyeisky, surely long past retirement age, seemed to grasp what was going on. He saw the young, filthy urchin running full tilt toward him, away from the investigating magistrate. The polizyeisky dropped eagerly to a catching posture, spreading his feet and stretching out his arms. Something kindled in his eyes: sport and the memory of a youthful energy. Bobbing with anticipation, he possessed the narrowed space between two desks, effectively blocking Dmitri’s only escape route. But the boy did not slow his pace. If anything he accelerated, hurtling straight toward the human obstacle. Then, at the last minute, as the elderly polizyeisky reeled and readied himself for impact, groping the air and masticating nervously, the boy leaped to one side, vaulting onto one of the desks. It was a startling feat—fearless and marvelously athletic. There was no break in the fluidity of his movement. The sweep of his boots sent paper fluttering, upturning an inkpot that bled a quick puddle of black over the desk. He rose from his leap with perfect balance, head high, legs kicking. In two thundering steps he was across the desk and off the other side. The clerk behind it threw up his hands in impotent outrage, but the polizyeisky blew out his cheeks, spontaneously admiring.

  In the time that it took to accomplish all this, Porfiry lit a cigarette.

  “You let him get away,” accused Katya, when Porfiry turned back into his chambers. “Aft
er all the trouble I went to to bring him in. And I don’t suppose I’ll be getting a medal from the tsar.”

  Porfiry licked a loose fleck of tobacco from his upper lip as he considered her antagonism. “I know where to find him,” he said nonchalantly. “I remain grateful to you, Katya. And as a representative of the state, I am confident the tsar is grateful too.” He bowed solemnly, blinking, as if he had been officially authorized to reward her with the rapid oscillation of his eyelids.

  17

  The Elusive Govorov

  AFOOL’S ERRAND, it was another fool’s errand.

  Lieutenant Salytov descended into the seventh tavern that day. How the smell of these places sickened him. The air, abrasive with hard spirit, licked his eyes into weeping. He was jostled on the stairs by two drunks leaving. Nothing malicious—it was simply that they could not control their shoulders. They seemed to be attracted to him magnetically.

  The rub of their filthy coats, the sense of their awkward humanity beneath, disgusted him. The unshakable absurdity of it disgusted him.

  His rage made it difficult for him to speak.

  “Oaf.” With leather-gloved hands, he pushed one of them away and was horrified by the heavy, beseeching roll of the man’s eyes and the grim, clownish slapstick of his tread. “You—” Salytov’s throat tightened around the words he could have said. “People!” It was all he was able to squeeze out. But he was satisfied by the word. He felt it placed a distance between himself and such individuals.

  The drunk’s answer was a deep and inarticulate growling.

  His companion gripped the handrail of the stairs and swayed as if he were at the prow of a listing ship. He swallowed portentously. His body lurched dangerously after Salytov as he passed. But the sober policeman moved too quickly for him. He left them on the stairs and did not look back.

  Wan candle flames glimmered on the half-dozen tables and along the bar. The uncertain light, pocketed in gloom, seemed to encourage introspection among the isolated drinkers. Not a single face turned toward him. In one corner of the room, a woman wrapped in a grubby shawl was squeezing random notes out of a ruptured concertina. The anxious expectancy that these sounds induced was incompatible with conversation. There was no laughter, no voices raised in conviviality; only groans and sighs of despondency sounded in the gaps between the instrument’s wheezes.

  Salytov pushed through his own resistance to the wooden bar, where a skinny adolescent potboy was intent on smearing glasses with a dirty rag. The youth paused now and then, prompted somehow by the irregular rhythms of the concertina. It was as if he couldn’t continue his task until the next note had sounded. He wore a soiled and belted rubashka, the embroidery of which was coming apart.

  “Who’s in charge here?” The boy responded to Salytov’s abrupt demand with a look of stupefied amazement. “The landlord, idiot!” Salytov brought a fist down on the bar. The noise it made was less impressive than he had hoped, but still it was enough to startle the boy a second time. It seemed also to silence the concertina player, at least temporarily. “Why are you staring at me like that? Why will you not speak? Are you a mute? Are you an imbecile?” Fear bloated the boy’s eyes. This only infuriated Salytov more. “Can you people not understand—?” He broke off, unable to voice what it was he wanted to be understood. His sense of contamination was incommunicable. He resorted to announcing: “I am Lieutenant Ilya Petrovich Salytov of the Haymarket District Police Bureau.” And now the boy’s mouth was gaping. “Don’t you understand Russian? Where is he?”

  “Who?” came finally, in a cracked voice that managed to span several octaves in one word.

  “The landlord, you idiot!”

  “He’s in the other room.”

  “Call him then! Don’t you people understand anything?” He could feel it on his scalp now, the contamination. It had spread over the surface of his body and was now seeping into him. Every second he was forced to spend in these places deepened it. A shudder of loathing passed through him. He scanned the floor for cockroaches and looked back at the boy as if he had found one.

  But without the boy calling, a rotund man with indolent eyes appeared behind him. His face was dirty, his hair and beard knotted. His pear-shaped body bulged beneath a greasy leather apron. “It’s all right, Kesha.” There was a note of suspicion in his bass voice. Wariness flickered in his eyes as he took Salytov in.

  “You are the proprietor of this”—Salytov looked around as if he would find the word he was looking for daubed on the walls, then settled for a sarcasm—“establishment?”

  The landlord nodded minimally.

  “Lieutenant Salytov of the Haymarket District Police. I am conducting an official investigation. You must cooperate or face the consequences.” Salytov reached into the pocket of his greatcoat, then passed across the photograph of Ratazyayev. “Do you recognize this man?”

  The landlord studied the photograph without comment. He blinked once with great emphasis, making his face a mask of imperturbability. “We get a lot of people in here,” he said finally, handing the photograph back.

  “But do you recognize him?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Not particularly!” shouted Salytov with sudden spluttering rage. “What on earth do you mean by not particularly? Either you recognize the man or you do not.”

  “In that case, I should say, all things considered, I do not.”

  “Are you trying to make a fool out of me? Is that your game? I warn you, do not try to make a fool out of me.”

  One of the landlord’s eyebrows rose and fell eloquently.

  “Do not raise your eyebrow at me! You dare to raise your eyebrow at me? Impertinent—” Salytov struck the man across the face with the back of his hand. The potboy jumped back in shock. But the landlord hardly turned his head and swung it back immediately as if eager for another blow. He faced Salytov now with lowered eyes. “That will teach you to raise your eyebrow at me.”

  The landlord nodded in meek penitence.

  “Now, I ask you once again, do you recognize this man? Look at the photograph carefully.” Salytov thrust the picture into the landlord’s face, so that he had to lean back to see it.

  “Now that I think about it, perhaps he has been in here, once or twice.” The landlord’s voice was flat and calculated. He spoke deliberately, without a trace of fear.

  “He is known to frequent the filthiest dives in the Haymarket area. Why would he not come in here?” When it seemed the witticism would not receive the appreciation it merited, Salytov continued his questioning. “When was the last time?”

  “I don’t remember, your excellency.” Despite his readiness to use the honorary title, the landlord’s tone remained dangerously neutral. Salytov eyed him suspiciously, even nervously.

  “Today? Has he been in here today?”

  “No, your excellency.”

  “Last night?”

  “No. We haven’t seen him for a while, your excellency.” A new note, of strained impatience, crept into the landlord’s voice. He flashed a decisive glance at Salytov and risked: “Or the other one.”

  “The other one? What other one?” The kindling of Salytov’s curiosity relaxed his aggression. He dropped the hand holding the photograph.

  “He often comes in with another man.”

  “Name?”

  “I don’t know, your excellency. It’s not my business to inquire into the names of my clientele.”

  “I could have you pulled in as the accomplice to a very serious crime.” But Salytov was distracted. The threat was delivered without conviction, almost out of habit. “You are guilty of aiding and abetting men wanted by the police,” he added sharply, as if remembering himself.

  “I didn’t know they were wanted by the police, your excellency.” The landlord spoke with measured guile. “If I had, I would have made sure I got their names. As it is, I don’t know the names of any of these people.” He gestured toward the stupor-frozen faces peering out of the gloom. “
They come in, they drink, they leave. I don’t interfere with them. Perhaps Kesha can help you.” The landlord nodded permissively to the potboy, whose face was suddenly stretched by panic at the prospect of having to talk to the police officer.

  A slow sneer writhed over Salytov’s features. “Very well. You. Talk.”

  Kesha’s gaze flitted anxiously between the landlord and the policeman.

  Salytov held up the photograph. “So you know these men?”

  Kesha nodded.

  “Speak!” barked Salytov.

  “Y-y-y-yes.”

  “Names? Did you ever hear them address each other by name?”

  “I think s-s-s-so.”

  “Good. So what are their names?”

  “That’s Ra-Ra-Ra-Ra….” The boy’s stammering dried up.

  “Ra-Ra-Ra? What sort of a name is Ra-Ra-Ra, you imbecile?”

  “Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev!” The name came out, eventually, in an angry rush.

  “I know it’s Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev, you idiot. I don’t need you to tell me it’s Ra-Ra-Ratazyayev. I want to know about the other one. The man he comes in here with.”

  “Govorov.” This time, the name was produced without stammering, in a sudden, involuntary regurgitation.

  “Govorov? Are you sure?”

  Kesha nodded frantically.

  “So. Govorov. What can you tell me about this Govorov?”

  Kesha’s shrug was anything but nonchalant. It was as much a wince anticipating pain as a gesture of helplessness. He was desperate to know what it was Salytov wanted to be told about this Govorov. Then he could get on with telling it. But only one thing came to mind: “He has photographs.”

  “Go on.”

  The boy’s lips rippled uncomfortably. Another spasm of a shrug shook him.

  “Tell me more about these photographs. What were they of?”

  “Stupid.”

  “What is so stupid about them?”

  “Just…stupid.”

  “You are the stupid here, boy. Tell me exactly what you saw when you looked at the photographs.”

  “Girls.”

  “Girls? What is so stupid about that? Don’t you like to look at photographs of girls?”