The Gentle Axe Paperback

by R. N. Morris

  He clipped methodically through the ribs on either side, with the ugly concentration of a man cutting his toenails. Each time the sharp metallic snip of the blades as they pinched together through the costal cartilages increased the startled determination angling the doctor’s eyebrows.

  At last the cutting was complete, and he once again exchanged the shears for a scalpel. The diener, prompted by a particularly emphatic nod from Dr. Pervoyedov, placed the rib-cutters on the other table. He then bowed over the open chest of the body and suddenly plunged the fingers of both hands between the exposed and severed ribs, closing his grip beneath the sternum. He gave a sharp tug. Dr. Pervoyedov’s scalpel licked into the dark opening created to release the last tethers of tissue. The chest plate came away and was placed on the other table.

  “If I remember correctly, Dr. Pervoyedov, you mentioned that in the case of the yardkeeper, Borya, the covering of the lungs was inflamed. It was that, I believe, that first alerted you to the possibility of poisoning. I wonder if that is the case in this cadaver?”

  “We shall have a look, Porfiry Petrovich. Fortunately for you, I follow the Virchow method.” Dr. Pervoyedov drew his scalpel across the top of the abdomen. The skin fell away under pressure from the bloated internal organs. The doctor stepped back, giving way to his diener, who was now intent on some dark business involving string and scissors inside the body. Dr. Pervoyedov watched him with an expression of focused approval. “The Virchow method, you know, by which the organs are removed and examined separately.” To the diener he added: “Give me the lungs first, will you?”

  The diener plunged both hands into the cavity and removed them a moment later, cradling an elongated raw pinky mass.

  “The left?” asked Dr. Pervoyedov.

  The diener nodded.

  “It looks very pink. Not healthy. Not healthy at all. Yes, I would describe that as inflamed, wouldn’t you, Porfiry Petrovich?”

  “You are the expert.”

  “Ha! I am the expert! That’s nice. That’s very nice.” Dr. Pervoyedov shook his head. Then nodded for the diener, who placed the lung on the scales.

  The weighing tray plummeted with a heavy clatter, as though angry at being disturbed. The diener gradually added weights to the opposing plate until the weighing tray rose and bobbed and settled. “Thirty-nine lot, zero zolotnik, and twenty dolya,” he announced, glancing to the doctor for his reaction.

  “Within the parameters of normality,” said Dr. Pervoyedov. “Put it on the dissecting table, and I’ll take a section to look at under the microscope.”

  “Would it not be possible to test the stomach contents first?” There was a slight edge of impatience to Porfiry’s voice. “I am eager to know if there is any evidence at all of poisoning.”

  Dr. Pervoyedov seemed genuinely shocked by this suggestion. “But that’s not the Virchow method. By that method, I must complete my examination of the lungs before moving on to the next organ. What method are you suggesting I follow? It’s not the Rokatinsky.”

  “I suggest you follow the”—Porfiry Petrovich hestitated only for fraction of a second—“the Pervoyedov method. By which you prioritize the order of examinations in order to confirm or refute the suspicions of the investigating magistrate as quickly as possible.”

  “The Pervoyedov method, you say?”

  “You could write a learned article on it. For the Russian Journal of Pathology.”

  “Ah, but the thing to do is to be published in Germany. That’s the thing,” said Dr. Pervoyedov, waving a scalpel carelessly.

  “Well, then. Write it in German.”

  “The Pervoyedov method…It has a certain ring to it.” Dr. Pervoyedov grinned. “Unfortunately, the method you propose is, from a scientific point of view, utterly nonsensical. If I were to attach my name to it, it would very likely spell the end of my career as an academic pathologist.”

  “It would be looked upon very favorably by the judicial authorities.”

  “Ah, yes. I don’t doubt it. That’s the thing, you see. There you have it in a nutshell, Porfiry Petrovich. On the one hand, you have the interests of science. On the other, the interests of the office of the investigating magistrate. I had hoped they were the same. But the more I do this job, the more I learn they are not.”

  “I trust our interests are the same. Both parties want the truth.”

  “But you will insist on dictating which truth you want.”

  “That’s unfair, Dr. Pervoyedov. I am merely seeking to influence the order in which the various truths concerning this case are discovered.”

  The diener had by now weighed the second lung and was waiting for instruction.

  “You know he’s proposing to fine me, don’t you,” said Dr. Pervoyedov with sudden and sincere bitterness.

  “I’m sure Prokuror Liputin can be prevailed upon to drop the intended disciplinary proceedings against you.”

  Dr. Pervoyedov considered Porfiry briefly. He shook his head with an indulgent smile as he turned his attention back to the dead man. “Very well. Give me the stomach now,” he said to the diener.

  Crooked and bulging, the stomach was sluiced off and placed in an enamel bowl. Dr. Pervoyedov slit the finely veined sac along its tense convexity. A stinking, murky liquid spilled out, and the stomach collapsed into a wrinkled yellow skin.

  “Be thankful, gentlemen,” said Dr. Pervoyedov. “He has not eaten solids recently. But judging by the smell, he has drunk vodka.”

  “There was an empty vodka bottle found by the body,” said Porfiry. “Some vodka from it appears to have been spilled onto the carpet.”

  “It would be as well to test that too.”

  Porfiry nodded.

  Dr. Pervoyedov opened a drawer in one of the laboratory benches. “I regret that Prokuror Liputin is not here to oversee my actions,” he said. He had in his hand a tab of litmus paper. The doctor dipped the litmus paper into the liquid. An intense red stain spread over it eagerly. He showed it to the official witnesses without comment. They were at a loss as how to meet his arch, questioning expression. Their nods were hesitant and solemn. “Ah well, at least you gentlemen are here to see that I do things properly this time.”

  The doctor drew a quantity of the liquid into a syringe, which he then siphoned into a glass retort. With its long tapered spout at the side, the vessel had something of the appearance of a capsized swan. Dr. Pervoyedov showed a large brown bottle to the witnesses, his expression again pointed. The bottle was labeled SULFURIC ACID. The witnesses smiled weakly, averting their eyes and shuffling their feet like reproached schoolboys. The doctor shook his head and turned his back on them. He added a few drops of the sulfuric acid by pipette and shook the retort lightly. He then transferred it to another bench in the laboratory where there was a deep metal tray filled with sand, nesting on a burning gas ring. He closed the retort with a glass stopper and twisted it into the hot sand. He carefully turned the screw of a clamp to hold it at the neck.

  “Satisfied?” he asked, with a half turn to the official witnesses. They communicated in dumb show that they were. “Really? Are you trying to catch me out, gentlemen? That’s very mischievous of you. Very mischievous indeed.”

  Dr. Pervoyedov nodded to the diener. The assistant picked up a glass tumbler and crossed to one of the high windows of the pathology lab. A slab of winter pressed against it, its vast blankness even swallowing the black iron bars on the outside. The diener swung open an inner pane, and the air became suddenly sharp and hostile, a splinter of the great destructive force that was ravaging the city. He worked the tumbler between the bars, scooping up the icy snow that had settled on the ledge. His movements, as he closed the window, had a nervous haste to them. He put Porfiry in mind of a jailer sealing the cell of a dangerous prisoner.

  Dr. Pervoyedov attached a small receiving vessel to the end of the retort’s long spout. He now bedded this into the tumbler of snow. He shook his head and chuckled to himself. “They tried to catch me out. Imagine! They
thought I would forget to collect the distillate.” When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he went back to the table where the empty stomach lay in a pool of slops.

  With a deft and decisive manipulation, he turned the stomach through, revealing the furrowed musculature of its interior.

  “The stomach lining shows no sign of being subject to any corrosive action.” Dr. Pervoyedov sounded almost disappointed.

  “Does that rule out prussic acid?” asked Porfiry anxiously.

  Dr. Pervoyedov glanced at the official witnesses, as if to say, Why don’t you ask them? But he contained his resentment. “No, no. Not at all. Oh no. Although it does rule out almost any other poison you might care to mention. In some ways, it makes prussic acid more likely. If poison has been used at all, that is. We must wait for the real test, however.”

  “And how long will that be?”

  Tiny globules of condensation were beginning to show inside the receiving vessel.

  “Not long now. Not long at all, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  WHAT DID HE DO, this man, in life?” asked Dr. Pervoyedov, as he removed the receiving vessel from the retort. Barely more than a meniscus of clear liquor had collected. Dr. Pervoyedov rotated the vessel as if he were appreciating a fine cognac.

  “He was an actor once, I believe,” said Porfiry.

  The doctor raised his eyebrows. He poured the liquid into a test tube, which he placed in a wooden rack. He turned briskly to the diener. “I will need sulfate of iron, solution of potassa, and muriatic acid.”

  The diener nodded and crossed to a cabinet. He brought the bottles over one by one. Using both hands to tilt and steady the first of them, Pervoyedov tipped out a small quantity of glassy pale green granules onto a circle of filtration paper. He held the paper over the test tube and tapped until one of the grains fell in. He waited for it to dissolve, then added a few drops of the solution of potassa. He stirred the contents with a glass rod, his gaze challenging the official witnesses. “Let us see if, in death, he has any talent for ventriloquism.”

  He unscrewed the cap of the last bottle and inserted the nozzle of a long pipette. Holding this over the test tube, he released a rapid drizzle of droplets.

  All at once, the contents of the test tube turned inky blue.

  “Well, there you have it,” said Dr. Pervoyedov. “Govorov speaks. Or rather, his stomach does.”

  21

  The Lilac Stationery

  PORFIRY PET ROVICH extinguished the cigarette and threw it behind him as the door to 17 Bolshaya Morskaya Street was opened. Stepping inside, he felt a sudden unpleasant taste rampage through his mouth, metallic and cloyingly sweet. It was so strong, he felt for a moment he would be sick.

  “What’s that? Something in the air?” he asked Katya.

  She looked at him neutrally. “We have been fumigating the mattresses. Marfa Denisovna has complained of being bitten.”

  “Fumigating? What do you use?”

  “Did you really come here to talk about fumigating methods?”

  “No. I came to talk to Anna Alexandrovna.”

  “Very well, I shall tell her you’re here.”

  PORFIRY PETROVICH admired the smooth curve of Anna Alexandrovna’s back as he followed her into the pale blue drawing room. There is something that surprises and saddens in every part of her, he thought.

  “May I offer you some tea?” As she turned to him, he saw that this quality was most concentrated in her eyes.

  Porfiry refused with a smile and a minute shake of his head. “I don’t wish to detain you any more than is necessary,” he said. “There are, however, one or two questions I must ask, in the light of some new evidence.”

  “New evidence?” Anna Alexandrovna’s hand shook as she set down the redundant glass.

  “Do you know a man called Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov?”

  Relief expanded Anna Alexandrovna’s beauty, chasing out the frown. She shook her head vehemently. She is relieved because she is able to answer honestly, thought Porfiry.

  “He was an associate of Stepan Sergeyevich’s,” explained Porfiry. “He is dead now. Murdered. Poisoned, I believe, by the administration of the same substance that killed Borya.”

  “But I thought Borya hanged himself? That’s what we read in the gazettes.”

  “That is what someone wished us to believe. Until recently I thought that person was Govorov. Now I must look for someone else.”

  “And you have come here to look?” Anna Alexandrovna’s alarm contained a note of remonstration.

  “I have some further questions, that’s all. I wish to understand, clearly, fully, the argument between Borya and Goryanchikov.”

  Porfiry noted Anna Alexandrovna’s flinch under the force of his uncompromising gaze.

  “You’ve asked me about this before. Why are you asking me again? I told you everything I knew then.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes!” Her neck flushed patchily with the heat of her insistence. Her instinct for defiance showed in her eyes. But she couldn’t hold the look.

  “What was Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov to you?” asked Porfiry abruptly.

  “A lodger,” she protested with outrage, then insisted: “He lodged in my house.”

  “And Borya?”

  “My yardkeeper.”

  “Is that all?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That the argument was about you.”

  “You are wrong.” Her response was calmer than he might have expected.

  Porfiry Petrovich bowed but kept his fluttering gaze fixed on her.

  “Stepan Sergeyevich…” began Anna Alexandrovna but lost heart. Her voice cracked.

  “The place where their bodies were found, in Petrovsky Park—”

  Anna Alexandrovna shook her head, tight-lipped, forbidding.

  Porfiry continued, “Last time we spoke, when I mentioned Petrovsky Park…”

  “What of it?”

  “I noticed…it was as if I had…”

  “What?”

  “I suppose the expression is ‘touched a nerve.’”

  “Is that so?”

  “What happened there, in Petrovsky Park?”

  “Is it really necessary to go into this?”

  “I’m afraid so. Please, there’s no need to be afraid of the truth. I realize…”

  “What do you realize, Porfiry Petrovich?”

  “These matters may be painful to you.”

  She answered him first with a narrowing of her eyes. “We went there once. In the summer. There was a performance in the open-air theater. We picnicked in the park beforehand.”

  “When you say ‘we’?”

  “Myself and my daughter, Sofiya Sergeyevna. Marfa Denisovna was with us.” There was a slight beat before she added, “And Osip Maximovich.”

  “I see.”

  “Vadim Vasilyevich was there too.” She added this hopefully.

  “Please. Tell me what happened.”

  “Borya.” Her voice was heavy as she said the name.

  “I see.”

  “Borya was there. That is to say, I think he must have followed us. He was not of our party. Or perhaps it was a coincidence, meeting him there like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “He was drunk. That is the only explanation there can be for his behavior.”

  “What did he do?”

  “We had set up the picnic in a slight dip in the land, a hollow surrounded by birch. The others had gone for a walk. I was tired. I stayed to read my novel. Borya suddenly appeared. From nowhere. He stumbled and almost fell on top of me. He…”

  “There is no need to be afraid. It can only help you if you tell the truth.”

  Anna Alexandrovna’s expression was momentarily outraged. “He declared feelings for me. He told me he loved me.”

  “And how did you react to his declaration?”

  “He was a yardkeeper!” Her eyes widened.

  “He was a man.”
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  “Please.”

  “You rebuffed him?”

  “It was horrible! He was drunk. Am I to be the object of the yardkeeper’s drunken affections?”

  “Did anyone else see him?”

  “No. No! Thankfully.”

  “Can you be sure?”

  “I sincerely hope not.”

  “And what of Stepan Sergeyevich? Was he with you that day?”

  “No.”

  “Stepan Sergeyevich…” Porfiry repeated the name musingly. Anna Alexandrovna frowned. “Your daughter’s name is…?”

  “Sofiya.”

  “Sofiya Sergeyevna.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband, then, was Sergei?”

  “Sergei Pavlovich. What are you suggesting?”

  “Sergeyevna…Sergeyevich.”

  “This really is preposterous.”

  “The coincidence of patronyms is striking.”

  “It’s just a coincidence.”

  “Is it not true that your husband felt some obligation toward Stepan Sergeyevich? That’s why he had him come to live in the house, isn’t it?”

  “I really cannot answer for my husband.”

  Porfiry nodded decisively. “Do you think it possible that Stepan Sergeyevich taunted Borya about the feelings he felt toward you? Could that have been the cause of the argument?”

  “I…” The angle of her averted face quickened his pulse.

  “Or were they rivals, perhaps?”

  “Please!” cried Anna Alexandrovna. “In one breath you are suggesting that he was my husband’s son, in the next that he was my lover.”

  Porfiry’s bow was very close to an affirmative nod.

  Suddenly, the double doors to the drawing room parted, revealing the portly, bespectacled figure of Osip Maximovich Simonov. His face was determined, antagonistic. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.