The Gentle Axe pp-1

by R. N. Morris

  Tolkachenko’s arms began to ache from holding the paper still. He knew the footsteps were heading away from him. Even so, he was afraid of making the slightest sound. It could be a trick. Somehow the beat of his heart had fallen in rhythm with the steps. Every time there was a pause in the sounds of climbing, his heart seemed to stop beating. He imagined the two Govorovs turning around and coming back for him.

  At last, a door above closed.

  It was some time before Tolkachenko stirred. He folded the newspaper carefully and leaned forward to place it noiselessly on the floor. The throb of his pulse echoed in his head. His knees creaked as he rose from the seat. Partially digested pickled cucumbers gurgled in his stomach. He winced as if these minute interior noises were in danger of reaching the apartment above.

  Tolkachenko moved slowly, lowering his feet with tense precision. He waited, listening, after each step. Then stood, listening, at his own door before grasping the handle with a grip that tightened the whole of his arm. He pushed his shoulder into the door as he eased it open.

  Even in the dark he knew where to place his feet so that he could climb the stairs without setting off too many alarms from the floorboards. As he ascended, the low rumble of voices grew louder.

  A light showed under Govorov’s door. The voices he had heard were coming from inside. Tolkachenko couldn’t make out what was being said, but he recognized Govorov’s booming theatrical bass. There was one other man in there, he judged, whose voice was higher and lighter. They seemed to be arguing, but there was something detached, almost disjointed, about their exchange. It had not reached the point where both parties were shouting over each other.

  Without questioning what he was doing, Tolkachenko took the heavy ring of keys from his pocket and fumbled for the key to Govorov’s door. The metallic jangling prompted a break in the discussion within. But Tolkachenko moved quickly. He thrust the key into the lock and turned it. Then he slipped it off the chained ring and stepped back. He turned the key in the door so that it was at a slight angle to the keyhole. He heard footsteps hurry toward him. The door shook in the frame.

  “Wha’s this?” came Govorov’s slurred cry.

  “Murderer!” shouted Tolkachenko back.

  “What are you talking about, you old fool? You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. It’s not me who’s the murderer. Besides, you can’t lock me in.”

  Tolkachenko now heard Govorov try to insert his own key into the lock. But the keyhole was of course blocked.

  “This is an outrage!”

  “I’ll tell you what an outrage is. Murder.”

  “There he is again with his murder. Good heavens! All he ever talks about is murder. Have you ever heard such a thing?” But there was no answer from whoever was in the apartment with Govorov.

  “The police were here,” cried Tolkachenko. “That’s what I’m talking about. The police were here, looking for you. Let them come back and decide. That’s what I say.”

  “Very well, let them come. I have nothing to-” Govorov’s speech decayed abruptly into a strangled scream. There was a heavy, complicated crash, which resonated musically at the end. Now Tolkachenko heard a desperate thrashing about as if there was a struggle going on inside. Then a stifled gurgling of fluid in flesh and a panicked gasping for breath that would not come. It was a sound he could barely accept as human in origin. He wanted to run from it, to get as far away from that sound as he could. And yet the terrible novelty of it held him.

  Then it stopped.

  There was only silence now, or rather an oppressive buzzing emptiness.

  Tolkachenko rapped his knuckles hesitantly on the door. When that produced no answer, he called out: “Hey! You! Konstantin Kirillovich! What are you up to?”

  Tolkachenko heard footsteps behind him, coming down from the landing above. He turned and blinked into the gloom. At the same moment the door from the apartment across the landing opened, leaching a soft yellow light. Iakov Borisovitch, the young civil servant who lived there, peered out nervously. The footsteps on the stairs had stopped. Whoever was there seemed to be hanging back.

  “Leonid Simonovich?” Iakov Borisovitch’s face was white, his eyes wide with fear. He was a sickly, nervous young man at the best of times.

  “Iakov Borisovitch! You must go to the police station on Stolyarny Lane. Alert Lieutenant Salytov. Tell him that Tolkachenko sent you. Tell him I have captured Govorov.”

  “You have captured Konstantin Kirillovich? But why?”

  “There isn’t time to explain that now. You must go! Immediately!”

  “But Leonid Simonovich, I’m unwell. I couldn’t go to the ministry today. As you can see”-Iakov Borisovitch stepped out onto the landing-“I’m still in my dressing gown.”

  “You must get dressed. It’s the middle of the afternoon. You shouldn’t be in your dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “But I’m not well. It’s the old problem. Nerves. I’m feeling terrifically depressed.”

  “Well, you must pull yourself together and go to the police station. Otherwise…he will murder us all.”

  There was a strange sound, a kind of rasping hiss, from the darkness above them. Iakov Borisovitch leaped back into his apartment.

  “What was that?”

  “Who’s there?” Tolkachenko called up the stairs.

  There was no answer.

  “You must go,” Tolkachenko insisted to Iakov Borisovitch. “Besides, I believe you will be safer at the police station than here.”

  There was a moment while Iakov Borisovitch took this in. Then he nodded and hurried back inside.

  As soon as the door was closed, the landing was plunged back into darkness. The footsteps on the stairs began again. Instinctively, Tolkachenko stepped back and pressed himself against the wall. He was able to make out an indistinct figure as it stepped down onto the landing, but the features remained obscure. The figure seemed to turn toward him and then bow. “Good day to you” came from it, in a light, ironic, and half-familiar voice.

  Tolkachenko could say nothing in return. He felt a climactic churning in his besieged stomach. His cheeks bulged and a loud, reverberating burp escaped.

  The figure crossed the landing and continued down the stairs.

  Tolkachenko was still positioned outside Govorov’s door when he heard Iakov Borisovitch return. He felt as though the darkness had solidified around him.

  “Leonid Simonovich!” cried the young civil servant from below. “It’s I, Iakov Borisovitch. I have brought the policeman. And another gentleman.”

  “Can we not have a light here?” This voice was unknown to Tolkachenko. A moment later a match flared, and Iakov Borisovitch lit the gas in the hall. The police lieutenant and the “other gentleman” came up the stairs. Their expressions denied Tolkachenko the reassurance he might have hoped for from their presence. Iakov Borisovitch stayed downstairs, close to the front door.

  “So he is in there?” whispered Salytov.

  “Yes,” confirmed Tolkachenko, also speaking in a low voice. “I have not moved from here. He has not come out. Neither of them has come out.”

  “Neither of them?” whispered the other man, whose colorless eyelashes flickered energetically. “So there are two men in there?”

  “Yes,” said Tolkachenko. “I heard two men come up the stairs. And two voices inside.”

  “Open the door,” demanded Salytov.

  Tolkachenko hesitated, deferring to the gentleman who had come with Salytov.

  “One moment, Ilya Petrovich. Does it not occur to you that they might be armed?”

  Lieutenant Salytov opened his greatcoat and pulled an American revolver from a holster. The gun’s long barrel probed the air like a sleek snout. “I have come prepared, Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.

  “Oh!” moaned Tolkachenko.

  “We should give them the chance to surrender, I think,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “It is possible we may conclude this business without a shot bei
ng fired-or a drop of blood shed.”

  Salytov hammered on the door with the butt of his revolver. “You in there! This is the police. You are under arrest. Do you understand?”

  There was no answer.

  “I should tell you, I heard something,” hissed Tolkachenko. “Before. It sounded like a struggle. A crash. Someone falling over.” Tolkachenko fell silent. His eyes flitted desperately, as though fleeing from something that was forcing itself on his imagination. “Then nothing.”

  The frequency of Porfiry Petrovich’s blinking increased sharply. “A fight?” he wondered aloud.

  “We have given them a chance,” said Salytov grimly, before Tolkachenko could answer.

  Porfiry nodded. “First let us turn off the light out here.”

  Salytov nodded back and signaled to Iakov Borisovitch, drawing a hand across his throat and pointing to the light. Iakov Borisovitch stared back, stupefied by the brutality of the gesture. Finally he blinked his enlarged eyes and turned off the gaslight.

  “Unlock the door, then stand aside” came Salytov’s command from the darkness.

  They waited as Tolkachenko fumbled with the key. They wanted the turning of the key to take forever, and at one moment it seemed as though it would. At last Tolkachenko moved out of the way, ducking into a huddle in the far corner of the landing. Salytov stood on one side of the door frame, Porfiry on the other. The lieutenant turned the handle and pushed the door in. Light from the flat gushed out.

  Slowly, leading with the revolver held out in front of him, Salytov edged inside, followed by Porfiry. The room was cold and smelled strongly of vodka. Despite the burning gas, the atmosphere was undeniably lifeless.

  They could tell that the man lying facedown on top of a smashed guitar was not going to get up. He was a big man who might have struggled to get to his feet at the best of times. But there was something final about the compact his bulk had made with gravity now.

  Porfiry crossed to the body and crouched down to turn the head. The eyes were open but shrunken to dark slits under the frozen puffiness of his face. Salytov prowled the rest of the apartment, still with his revolver extended in front of him.

  He came back a moment later, his demeanor perceptibly more relaxed.

  “There’s no one here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have searched the whole place. There is one room adjoining this one, a small kitchen.”

  “And the windows?”

  “I have checked them all. Locked from the inside. Is that Govorov?” Salytov pointed his pistol toward the body.

  Porfiry picked up and sniffed an empty vodka bottle that had been lying on its side near the body. “We will need our friend outside to confirm that. If it is, then I have to confess that this is not the first time I have encountered the elusive Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov.”

  One of Salytov’s eyebrows rippled inquisitively.

  “I met him once before, in Lyamshin’s Pawnbroker’s. He was pawning a guitar.” Porfiry lifted the broken guitar neck attached by its strings to the crushed sounding box beneath the body. “It seems he found the funds he needed to redeem it.”

  " Yes, that’s Govorov,” confirmed Tolkachenko. His expression was startled, almost outraged, as if he had been cheated by the man lying dead on the floor.

  Porfiry nodded distractedly. “But you said there were two men in here? You said you heard two voices, did you not?”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  Porfiry pointed at the body with an unlit cigarette. “One voice was his?”

  Tolkachenko nodded.

  “And the other? Did you recognize the other?”

  “Well, here is a strange thing,” said Tolkachenko. “I didn’t recognize it. And then I did.”

  “What?” barked Salytov.

  “I mean, there was this fellow. He came down the stairs. He spoke to me.”

  “What did he say?” asked Porfiry, scrutinizing his cigarette as if he had never seen one before.

  “‘Good day to you.’ He said, ‘Good day to you.’” This seemed to strike Tolkachenko as the most scandalous aspect of the whole affair.

  “I see.”

  “Well, the thing is, the really strange thing…it was the same voice.”

  “What do you mean, it was the same voice?” Salytov’s impatience showed in the rush of color over his face.

  “I mean, it was him.”

  It looked for a moment as though Salytov would strike the yardkeeper.

  Porfiry intervened quickly. “You mean the voice of the man on the stairs was the same as the voice of the man whom you had locked inside Govorov’s flat with Govorov?”

  “Yes!” cried Tolkachenko.

  “But that’s impossible!” Salytov thrashed the air in his frustration.

  “Yes!” repeated Tolkachenko, smiling in amazement.

  Porfiry finally put the cigarette in his mouth. “So, Ilya Petrovich,” he said. He broke off to light the cigarette. “It seems we have a mystery on our hands.” Porfiry let the smoke escape with his words. “The question is”-he inhaled deeply again and waited before exhaling and continuing-“who was this other person in the flat with Govorov?” Again he paused to draw deeply on the cigarette. “And even more perplexing, how could he be both locked inside the flat and coming down the stairs?” Porfiry smoked the cigarette through, only to be taken aback by the stub. He extinguished it between his thumb and forefinger and then handed it to Tolkachenko, with an absentminded “You may take that.” Tolkachenko frowned at the stub as Porfiry lit a second cigarette. “It is a mystery, but”-Porfiry smoked with professional determination-“I feel confident we will get to the bottom of it. What do you say?”

  Salytov didn’t answer. He was lost in angry thought.

  “Logic. We must apply logic,” continued Porfiry. “Cold, dispassionate logic. Don’t allow the puzzle to disturb your temper. You cannot solve it if you’re annoyed at it.”

  “But it is impossible!” insisted Salytov crossly.

  “No, patently it is possible.” Porfiry’s insistence was calm. “That is the first logically inevitable deduction we can make. It has happened, therefore it is possible. The actual is incontrovertibly possible.”

  Salytov shook his head impatiently.

  “Think about it, Ilya Petrovich.”

  “You have worked it out?”

  “A logical conclusion has forced itself on me.”

  “How? How could you have…from this?”

  “Perhaps I have an unfair advantage over you. As I said, I have met this gentleman before.”

  “In the pawnbroker’s. What of it?”

  “He impressed me with a dramatic recitation from Gogol’s The Government Inspector. He was once an actor, you see. His style was very natural. He seemed to become the character he was playing.”

  Salytov’s face clouded in confusion. He looked from Porfiry down to the body, then back to Porfiry. “But why?”

  Porfiry shrugged. He had another cigarette stub to dispose of. Tolkachenko steadfastly ignored his eye. “One thing at a time, Ilya Petrovich. One thing at a time.”

  Govorov Speaks

  Porfiry looked out the window of the prokuror’s chambers, down on to Gorokhovaya Street. He wanted very much to smoke.

  So he was gazing out of the window as a distraction. The streetlamps were lit, chains of illumination strung across the early morning gloom. Behind him he heard the riffle of papers and the prokuror’s deep sighs.

  Porfiry turned to see Prokuror Liputin close the report he had submitted. It contained statements taken from Tolkachenko and Iakov Borodonich, together with a formal request from Porfiry for a medical examination to be conducted on the body now confirmed to be that of Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov.

  Liputin’s expression was not encouraging.

  “So, Porfiry Petrovich, you truly believe that this constitutes sufficient grounds for an application of habeas corpus?”

  “Indeed I do, your excellency. I wo
uld not have troubled you with the matter otherwise.”

  Liputin screwed up his nose dismissively. “The man died alone. In a locked room. In your report, you yourself state that there was no evidence of an attack. No blood, no wounds, no bruises. The epidermis is intact.”

  “I stated there was no forensic evidence of attack. However, the yardkeeper testified that he heard a struggle.”

  “No, no, no! We can’t base a case on what someone thinks he heard through a locked door. Especially when it is not consistent with what is logically possible.”

  “But it is consistent with what is logically possible,” insisted Porfiry. “If we suppose that Govorov was struggling not with a human assailant but with a chemical one.”

  Liputin masked his confusion with a frown of annoyance and shook his head impatiently.

  “I suspect poisoning, your excellency, as in the case of-”

  “You’re not going to bring up the yardkeeper, are you?” cried the prokuror in an irritable drawl. “As you know, that case is closed.”

  “Leaving that aside, there is the dead man’s connection to the missing actor, Ratazyayev. An autopsy would determine-”

  “But are we really justified in seeking an autopsy? Is it not more likely that Govorov simply died from natural causes?”

  “It is certainly a possibility. Though it would be a strange coincidence given the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” Liputin’s look of distaste suggested that he immediately regretted asking the question.

  “As you will have read in the relevant statement, the yardkeeper heard two people enter the building.”

  “So he says. He could simply have been mistaken. As for his tale of two voices inside the apartment, that is simply not sustainable.”

  “I agree. Given that the windows were locked from the inside and given also Tolkachenko’s constant presence outside the locked door, the presence of a second person in Govorov’s apartment is without doubt logically impossible.”

  “You agree?” Liputin seemed more surprised by this than by any aspect of the case before him. It was evidently something he needed to confirm: “You agree?” he asked again.