The Cleansing Flames (St Petersburg Mystery)

by R. N. Morris

  Seated next to her, though at the furthest possible distance on the same sofa, was a young woman working at an embroidery hoop. She was a pretty enough girl, thought Porfiry, though her expression was timid, almost cowed. It did not seem that she was the older woman’s daughter – more that her relationship to her was one of subservience, or indebtedness. At any rate, there was no clear family resemblance, and the companionship with which she provided the Princess did not seem to be freely given. Neither party gave any impression of deriving enjoyment from it.

  Porfiry bowed as he introduced himself and Virginsky. The Princess invited them to be seated on a sofa that was positioned at right angles to her own. Somewhat inhibited by the semicircle of attendant maids and footmen, as well as the giant vases, Porfiry cleared his throat to state his business. ‘I regret the necessity of disturbing your peace, Madame. In point of fact, we wish to speak to Prince Konstantin Arsenevich Dolgoruky. Your son, perhaps? Is he by any chance at home?’

  ‘I know of no one by that name.’

  When Porfiry had thought her capable of anything, his imagination had not encompassed this. ‘I beg your pardon? We were assured that this was the Dolgoruky family home, the same Dolgoruky family to which Prince Konstantin Arsenevich belongs. Is that not correct?’

  She repeated her unblinking chant, as if it were the response in an often-repeated liturgy: ‘I know of no one by that name.’

  The young woman next to her threw herself from the sofa as if it had suddenly come to life and bitten her. Her embroidery hoop fell to the floor. As she rushed from the room, her skirt, which was almost as voluminous as the Princess’s, brushed the stand of one of the oriental vases and set it rocking. The attendant servants watched mesmerised, as did Porfiry and Virginsky, as the vase tottered and at last toppled. The smash was devastating and magnificent.

  No one moved, though all eyes turned on the dowager princess.

  Surely now she must blink! thought Porfiry.

  But as far as he could discern, she did not.

  *

  They were shown to the door by an elderly butler by the name of Alexey Yegorovich.

  ‘You have been with the family for a long time?’ ventured Porfiry.

  ‘All my life. I was a house serf, freed in the Great Reforms.’

  ‘And do you know of anyone by the name of Prince Konstantin Arsenevich Dolgoruky?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking he is Princess Dolgorukaya’s son?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But she no longer acknowledges him?’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘And the reason for this has something to do with the young lady who ran most precipitously from the room?’

  The butler’s face masked whatever feelings he may have had on the subject. ‘Marfa Timofyevna? I cannot say.’

  ‘You are very discreet. I commend you for that.’

  ‘I cannot say because I do not know. I am not privy to the confidences of either Princess Dolgorukaya or Marfa Timofyevna.’

  ‘But servants talk.’

  ‘Is it your business to gather the tittle-tattle of parlour maids? I for one pay no heed to it. I advise you to do the same.’

  Porfiry acknowledged the rebuke with a series of blinks. ‘What about Prince Dolgoruky? Are you privy to his confidences?’

  ‘I have known the Prince since he was a babe in arms. I dandled him on my knee. My wife, God rest her soul, was his wet nurse.’

  ‘He confided in you?’

  ‘The Prince does not confide in anyone, wholly. Is he in any trouble?’

  ‘Would it surprise you if he were?’

  The old servant did not reply, but his face fell eloquently.

  Porfiry smiled. ‘I merely wish to speak to him about a gentleman who is known to be one of his associates.’

  ‘It is his associates who are to blame!’ said Alexey Yegorovich, forcefully.

  ‘Yes, of course. He has fallen in with a bad crowd. It often happens. It is this bad crowd that I am interested in. What we must do is separate Prince Dolgoruky from the bad crowd, so that his goodness can be allowed to flourish. Is that not so?’

  ‘He was not a bad little boy. Very sweet-natured and loving. He doted on my wife. As she did on him.’

  ‘Then there is certainly hope for Prince Dolgoruky now. What can you tell me about these associates?’

  ‘He did not generally receive his friends here. They are not such that you would admit into a respectable home.’

  ‘I see. And he never mentioned any names to you?’

  Alexey Yegorovich shook his head doubtfully. ‘He may have. But the names meant nothing to me.’

  ‘Do you at least know where he is now?’

  ‘He is not far from here. In fact, he has merely crossed two courtyards.’ The butler looked up and down the hallway conspiratorially. ‘I sometimes take him things. Food. Books. Whatever he asks for that will not be missed.’

  Porfiry thought for a moment. ‘I would like to show you some photographs.’

  Alexey Yegorovich shook his head blankly at the image of the man taken from the Winter Canal, and in fact looked at Porfiry as if he were mad for showing it to him. The photograph of the staff of Affair provoked a more promising reaction, at least when Porfiry pointed out Kozodavlev.

  ‘I have seen him once or twice with that man. He may have even brought him to the house. I rather think the Prince considered him to be one of his more respectable friends.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘I believe the Prince referred to him as Demyan Antonovich.’

  ‘Thank you. The man is indeed Demyan Antonovich Kozodavlev.’

  The click of a door handle turning drew their attention. The door in question creaked open a few inches, then closed again quickly. Porfiry thought that he had seen two moist, timid eyes peer out.

  ‘Marfa Timofyevna?’ he whispered to Alexey Yegorovich.

  The butler nodded.

  ‘I would very much like to speak to her. It may help the Prince.’

  The butler bowed and crossed to Marfa Timofyevna’s door, knocking gently. The door opened a crack, through which a whispered exchange was passed. At a nod from Alexey Yegorovich, Porfiry and Virginsky were admitted.

  The room was tiny, the walls crowded with reproductions of mostly sentimental genre paintings.

  Marfa Timofyevna indicated the bed for them to sit upon, but Porfiry declared that the interview need not take long. At that, the young lady swayed uncertainly on her feet.

  ‘But please,’ relented Porfiry. ‘By all means, you may sit down.’ He watched her solicitously for a few moments. ‘You are not well, Marfa Timofyevna? May we fetch you a glass of water?’

  ‘Thank you, no. That won’t be necessary. I am a little fatigued, that is all.’ She dabbed her eyes with a minuscule, lace-trimmed handkerchief.

  Porfiry and Virginsky both felt awkward standing over the girl. Nodding simultaneously, they settled down on either side of her.

  ‘I could not help noticing,’ began Porfiry gently, ‘that when we were talking to Princess Dolgorukaya, you left the room in something of a hurry.’

  ‘Yes.’ Marfa Timofyevna gave a self-mocking smile that entirely won Porfiry over. He could not say which was more touching, its bravery or its fragility.

  ‘The reason, if I am not mistaken, has something to do with her rejection of her son, Prince Dolgoruky.’

  ‘I owe everything to Princess Dolgorukaya,’ said Marfa Timofyevna, hotly.

  ‘Yes, of course. I understand. That makes it very difficult for you to say anything against her.’

  ‘Is Konstantin Arsenevich in trouble?’

  ‘No. I merely wish to speak to him about a friend of his. Did he ever introduce you to any of his friends?’

  Marfa Timofyevna shook her head quickly, almost violently. For the first time, she turned her eyes directly on Porfiry. ‘It is not what you think.’ She looked away sharply, as soon as she had confided this
.

  ‘Ah, it is interesting that you should say so, as I am not sure what I think.’ Porfiry smiled.

  Marfa Timofyevna’s tone darkened. ‘You think that Konstantin Arsenevich seduced me.’

  ‘And that is not what happened?’

  ‘I . . .’ Marfa Timofyevna bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. She could not bring herself to say any more.

  ‘Yes, I think I understand,’ said Porfiry, softly. ‘And so, perhaps, you hold yourself responsible for the Prince’s exile from his family home?’

  Marfa Timofyevna seemed shocked by the suggestion. ‘No, I . . . ! Why do you say that?’

  ‘Then, forgive me, I do not understand. Except that I understand how painful and delicate these affairs are. And that the truth of the matter is often very different to the way it is vulgarly represented. What is left out – quite often – are the feelings. How the heart is stirred. Noble, beautiful – and above all delicate – feelings. But if you take those away, what are you left with? For they are the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. Without allowing for those feelings, then you are only dealing with a travesty of the truth. A lie, in other words.’

  Marfa Timofyevna’s mouth was open in a wondering O. She studied Porfiry’s eyes carefully. ‘I knew what was said about him,’ she said at last. ‘The rumours.’

  ‘Which were?’ Porfiry asked the question a little too eagerly.

  Marfa Timofyevna shook her head impatiently. ‘Oh, that he had seduced many women. That he kept three apartments, with a separate mistress in each. That he had committed crimes.’

  ‘Crimes?’

  ‘Yes. And blasphemies.’

  ‘You knew all this,’ stated Porfiry, his tone confirmatory.

  ‘I had heard all the rumours. The very worst. I heard them all from him, you see.’

  ‘From Konstantin Arsenevich?’

  ‘Yes. He often said such things against himself, as if to frighten me. But I would not be deterred. And so, he arranged for the printing of a manifesto in which he accused himself – and condemned himself – of the vilest crimes. He brought it willingly to me.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  ‘He told me that every word in it was true. He told me to read it carefully, and if, at the end of reading it, I still loved him, then he would be mine, mine alone, for ever.’

  ‘And so?’

  Marfa Timofyevna gave a sudden startling sob that convulsed her whole body. ‘I was not good enough!’ she gasped.

  ‘You could not love him,’ said Porfiry flatly.

  Marfa Timofyevna squeezed her eyelids tight.

  ‘May I see this document?’

  ‘I don’t . . . have it . . . anymore.’ Marfa Timofyevna’s eyes were glistening. ‘I realise now that he is gone, that I do, I can, I must love him. It is his only hope. And mine.’

  ‘And what of Princess Dolgorukaya? Does she know of this document? Had she read it? Is that the true reason why she cast him out?’

  ‘I . . .’ Marfa Timofyevna’s eyes widened in recollection of the single most appalling act of her young life. ‘I took it to her.’

  ‘What has become of it now, do you know?’

  ‘She destroyed it, of course.’

  Porfiry absorbed the news with a flutter of blinking. ‘Can you remember any of the charges that the Prince laid against himself?’

  ‘You will not hear them from me. You may torture me all you want, but I will not say a word of what was printed on that paper.’

  ‘My dear young lady – please! – be assured that I have no intention of torturing you!’

  ‘They were lies anyhow. I realise that now. Lies he had made up to test me. And I failed. Oh, how I failed!’

  Porfiry laid a hand consolingly across one of hers. She looked up, startled by his touch. Her eyes implored him for some consoling word. Her face trembled with anguish and despair.

  ‘If you have a message for him, I will happily convey it,’ Porfiry offered.

  Marfa Timofyevna breathed in deeply, drawing herself up fully, only to collapse in defeat on the exhalation. She hung her head and waited for them to go.

  16

  A Russian Byron

  For a small consideration, Alexey Yegorovich escorted them across a series of courtyards, each muddier than the last. He pointed out a squalid entrance and left them to it. The door was rotten and looked as if it were about to fall off its hinges. A dark stairway led down to the basement. They were at the very rear of what was essentially the same sprawling building that housed the lavish apartments of the Dolgoruky family. It was here where one found the filthy garrets and cellars, and the dingy rooms sublet into ‘corners,’ into which multiple families and individuals were crammed.

  Prince Dolgoruky had merely moved from the front of the building to the rear, and yet he might as well have crossed an entire continent. If the apartment building was a microcosm of Russia, he had been cast into its Siberia.

  An old woman came through a door as they reached the bottom of the stairs. She regarded them suspiciously out of the gloom, holding herself stock-still. When Porfiry announced that they were looking for Prince Dolgoruky, her manner became highly animated and almost coquettish. She smiled an entirely toothless grin.

  The old coquette led them into a large room hung with washing lines. The drying clothes served as informal partitions, dividing the space into its various living areas. Small windows set high in the walls, at ground level on the outside, let in a meagre light.

  She pointed to a shabby curtain that was strung across one corner of the room. ‘You had better knock first!’ she recommended with a knowing leer.

  As they approached the curtain, they could hear the sounds of laughter coming from behind it; more specifically, the laughter of two people, one as unmistakably male as the other was female. The sounds had an intimate tinge, as if the two people making them believed themselves to be utterly alone. The curtain sealed them off in the universe of their mutual abandon.

  Porfiry cleared his throat loudly. ‘Prince Dolgoruky? Prince Konstantin Arsenevich Dolgoruky?’

  A strained silence descended on the couple on the other side of the curtain. However, after a moment or two, a fit of giggling burst from the female.

  ‘Who wishes to speak to him?’ The male voice was charged with aristocratic hauteur.

  ‘My name is Porfiry Petrovich. I am an investigating magistrate. I wish to talk to Konstantin Arsenevich about the journalist Kozodavlev.’

  ‘A magistrate, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, you’ve caught up with me at last!’ The quip provoked an appreciative giggle from Dolgoruky’s companion. There was the sound of a palm striking flesh, followed by a squeal of mingled pain and delight. The scents that came from the corner left little doubt as to what had very recently occurred there.

  Porfiry looked around the room. The interview was drawing the attention of a number of the other residents. In particular, an audience of small and ragged children had gathered. Some of them even sat on the floor at his feet, looking up expectantly for the entertainment to continue. One or two held crusts of black bread in their grimy fingers. ‘Perhaps you would care to draw back the curtain, or come out from behind it, so that we may talk to you in a more convenient manner,’ said Porfiry.

  A man somewhere in his late thirties pulled back one side of the curtain and stepped through. He was dressed in a loose shirt and tight breeches. He kept his sand-coloured hair long, swept back in waves from a brow that was higher than it once had been. The angle of his head matched the hauteur that Porfiry had earlier detected in his voice. There was an amused, self-satisfied glimmer in his eye, and a one-sided twist to his mouth. Porfiry saw no trace of the sweet-natured boy the butler Alexey Yegorovich claimed to remember.

  ‘Kozodavlev, you say? What’s the old fool been up to now?’

  ‘Are you aware that there was a fire in Mr Kozodavlev’s apartment building on Monday night, in which several people perishe
d? It is feared that Mr Kozodavlev may have been one of them.’ Until he had asked the question, Porfiry did not know that he was going to frame it in that way. Indeed, he had not known he was going to start with the fire at all. He wondered if he had been motivated solely by a desire to wipe the smile from Prince Dolgoruky’s face.

  If so, he was not fully prepared for the effect his words had. All colour drained from Dolgoruky’s complexion. The man seemed to age ten years before his eyes. ‘Kozodavlev is dead?’ His voice was a frightened whisper.

  ‘It is feared so. Obviously, in the case of death by fire, one cannot always be certain of the identity of the victims. But a man did perish in Mr Kozodavlev’s apartment, and he failed to attend a number of appointments on the following day, including one with me.’

  Prince Dolgoruky considered this information thoughtfully but said nothing. The colour slowly returned to his cheeks and he seemed to regain his composure.

  ‘You acted on his behalf as an agent for certain of his journalistic endeavours, did you not?’

  ‘So, you know about that.’

  ‘We know that he was K. We also know that you acted in a similar capacity on behalf of the author known as D. Who is D.?’

  Prince Dolgoruky shrugged, his face contemptuous.

  ‘You will not tell me?’

  ‘Perhaps I do not know.’

  Porfiry reached into his pocket and took out a bundle of papers. He found the sheet he was looking for and handed it to Prince Dolgoruky. ‘We found this in Mr Kozodavlev’s drawer at the office of Affair. Do you recognise it?’

  ‘Yes. I wrote it.’

  ‘You are the D. in this note?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What did you mean? “I don’t give a damn what you do. Do you think I have ever cared?”’

  ‘The words are clear enough, I think.’