Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel

by Boris Akunin

  The face looking at Pelagia was narrow and triangular, with the pointed ends of a mustache protruding to the sides. It seemed to the nun that there was something strange about the stranger’s glance, as if somehow he was looking straight at her, but not quite.

  Embarrassed at having intruded on the smoker’s solitude, she mumbled, “I beg your pardon …” She even bowed clumsily, which was quite unnecessary. Especially since the response it drew from the man with the mustache was not courteous. Quite the contrary, in fact—he suddenly played a very strange trick, grinning fiercely so that she could see his gums, raising a hand to his left eye, and—oh, horror!—taking it out of its socket!

  Pelagia cried out and staggered back when she saw the small gleaming sphere with the little iridescent circle and the black spot of the pupil—and only then did she realize that the eye was glass.

  The prankster gave a dry chuckle, pleased with the effect he had produced. In a rasping, mocking voice he said: “What a fine dame, and her a nun too! It’s a sin, Holy Mother, to turn your nose up at a wretched cripple.”

  What an unpleasant man, the sister thought, turning away and beating a hasty retreat. If he didn’t want anyone to interrupt his solitude he could have made it clear in some more delicate way. She walked along the edge of the deck, fighting a battle against the devil of resentment. She subdued her horned foe quickly, with no great effort—a skill she had acquired in her years as a nun.

  Ahead of her, at about the spot where Mitrofanii’s cabin ought to be, something white fluttered in the air.

  When she walked closer, she saw it was curtains flapping—not in the bishop’s cabin, but the next one, in which the notorious prophet was traveling. He must have opened the window and forgotten about it, and then gone out or fallen asleep.

  She really wanted to take a look at the charlatan’s quarters. If she simply walked by and glanced sideways just a tiny bit, surely that was all right? To be on the safe side, she looked around and made sure there was nobody anywhere nearby, then started walking more slowly, so that there would be time to take a more thorough peek.

  Manuila’s lamp was lit—that was very opportune. Pelagia proceeded decorously as far as the small window, directed her peripheral vision to the right, and almost tripped over her own feet.

  The prophet was in, and he seemed to be asleep, only not on the divan, but on the floor, with his arms extended in the form of a cross. Was that one of the practices these Foundlings had? Or did Manuila have a special dispensation?

  The nun took another little step toward the window and stood up on tiptoe.

  That was very strange, now—there were two white eggs lying on the sleepers face, in the hollows of his eyes. Pelagia pressed the bridge of her spectacles back against her nose and then screwed her eyes up to get a better look at this oddity.

  A second later her vision adjusted to the dim light in the cabin and she saw that the objects weren’t eggs at all, but something so terrible that Pelagia’s mouth simply dropped open of its own accord, with the intention of uttering a brief exclamation appropriate for a nun—“Oh, Lord!”—but giving vent instead to a shameful, womanish screech.

  The correct way to photograph corpses

  “THE RIGHT HAND in close-up,” Investigator Dolinin ordered the police photographer, at the same time beckoning to Pelagia with one finger. “Look, Sister, how do you like our modern-day prophets? The soul was already out of his body, but he still clung to the money.”

  Pelagia walked over to him and crossed herself. Manuila’s death could not possibly have been more hideous. Someone had stove in the back of the pitiful prophet’s head with a blow of such force that it had jolted his eyeballs out of their sockets. They were what the nun had seen in the semidarkness and taken for chickens eggs. There were particles of brain and crumbs of bone on the pillow and on the carpet. And another thing that made it a torment for her to look at the body was the fact that the dead man’s nightshirt had ridden up, revealing a pale, hairy stomach and private parts; but the nun tried not to let her gaze wander that far. Clutched tight in Manuila’s clenched fingers was a fragment of a hundred-ruble note.

  There was a blinding flash of magnesium, but the investigator was still not satisfied. “No, no, my dear fellow. You have to spread the magnesium on both sides of the camera, or you’ll get shadows. And not in a heap, not in a heap—in a line. It will burn longer that way. I suppose you don’t have a tripod for taking vertical shots? Oh, the wonderful Russian provinces!”

  The forensic doctor twisted the lifeless head, holding it by the hair. “What a blow!” he said, poking his finger into a neat hole the size of a silver ruble. “Such strength, such crisp impact! Like the hole made by a bullet. Penetration almost as far as the third ventricle, and the outline is a regular oval, with smooth edges. I’ve never seen a wound like it, not even in a textbook.”

  “Yes, it’s certainly unusual,” Dolinin agreed, bending down. “A hammer, perhaps? Only the force is immense, almost satanic. To make the eyeballs jump out of their sockets—I tell you, that takes …”

  The cabin was filled with the dank smell of drying blood. Pelagia felt slightly sick. The worst thing of all was the way the disgusting smell mingled with the aroma of the eau de cologne that the Sturgeons captain was wearing. He was obliged to be present at the inspection of the scene by virtue of his position, but he stood modestly at one side and didn’t get under the specialists’ feet.

  The sister closed her eyes, struggling with her nausea. Nothing in the world is more terrible or more oppressive than the mystery of death stripped of its dignity and rendered shameful. And there was that well-thumbed banknote, too.

  “The male organ bears signs of circumcision, relatively recent,” the doctor announced as he continued his examination. “The scar is still crimson. Perhaps seven or eight months, unlikely to be more.”

  Pelagia waited for the doctor and the photographer to finish their work and move away from the body, then asked the investigator’s permission to say a prayer. She went down on her knees and first of all covered the dead man’s nakedness. Then she pulled the vain, worldly scrap of paper out of the lifeless hand. She had expected the rigid fingers would be reluctant to part with their property, but the scrap came out remarkably easily.

  As she handed the clue to the investigator, Pelagia said: “Strange. Did he sleep like that, clutching money in his hands? Or after his head was already broken in, did he try to tear it out of the villain’s hands?”

  Dolinin said nothing for a moment, gazing with interest at the bespectacled holy sister. Then he sniffed and scratched the bridge of his nose above the arch of his pince-nez. “Indeed. My thanks for being so observant. According to the testimony of Manuila’s traveling companions, the money—or, as they put it, the ‘treasury’—was in a casket under the pillow. The casket, naturally enough, is missing. Hmm. Grab hold of your killer’s hands, with your head smashed in right through ‘to the third ventricle.’ Miraculous. Let’s enter that in the ‘puzzles’ section.”

  And he made an entry in a little leather-bound book. Pelagia liked that: the man was not being hasty with his conclusions.

  She liked Dolinin in general, because he worked sensibly, thoroughly—you could see straightaway that the man knew his job as a detective and loved it.

  You might even say that Manuila had been lucky with his investigator.

  A master at work

  EVERYTHING HAD GONE quite differently at first.

  At the sound of the nun’s screams, people had come running up and started gasping in horror. The Foundlings made even more noise. When they learned that their leader had been killed, they started howling and wailing: “Oh Lord! Disaster! Az och’n veil Help! Eloim!” But the words repeated most often of all were “The treasury! The treasury!”

  The captain appeared, and instead of restoring order, he turned the proceedings into total chaos—perhaps because he was frightened, or perhaps owing to a certain degree of insobriety.

>   The commander of the steamer was transformed into a Zeus, scattering lightning bolts around him. In front of the ill-fated cabin and beneath its window, he installed watches of sailors armed with items of firefighting equipment. He ordered first-class and second-class passengers to stay in their cabins and not stick their noses out; he herded all the deck passengers onto the poop deck and put them under the guard of two swarthy stokers with shovels in their hands. He himself donned his white dress uniform tunic, hung a huge revolver at his side, and poured a whole bottle of eau de cologne over himself to eliminate the smell of drink.

  In defiance of the schedule, the Sturgeon sailed past the mooring at Ust-Sviyazhsk without stopping and dropped anchor at the district town, standing at some distance from the dock. The first mate was dispatched in a lifeboat to contact the authorities.

  An hour later the passengers in the cabins on the starboard side saw the boat come gliding back out of the evening mist swirling above the river. It was crammed with people, mostly in uniforms, but there were also some civilians.

  The person who arrived to conduct the investigation was no mere police officer, not even a superintendent. That is, of course, the new arrivals did include a superintendent and other ranks, including even the commander of the district police force, but none of those was the most important individual. That person was a lean gentleman in civilian garb. His keen, intelligent eyes glinted coldly through his pince-nez, his narrow hand occasionally stroking his wedge-shaped beard. A university badge glinted on the lapel of his frock coat.

  The civilian turned out to be a hugely important official, a member of the Council of the Ministry of the Interior. His name was Sergei Sergeevich Dolinin. It was later ascertained from local police officials that His Excellency had been traveling around the province of Kazan on an important tour of inspection. When he heard that a murder had taken place onboard a steamship of the Nord Line, he had expressed a desire to head the investigation in person.

  Sergei Sergeevich himself, in a conversation with His Reverence Mitrofanii (whom he had felt it his duty to visit immediately upon discovering such an important individual on the passenger list), accounted for his zeal by the exceptional importance of the victim’s identity:

  “Our Mr. Manuila here had a history of serious scandal. I can assure you, Bishop, that this will cause a sensation throughout the whole of Russia. Of course, if…” At this point Dolinin paused and appeared to leave something unsaid. What he meant by “if” remained unclear.

  Pelagia, who was with Mitrofanii at the time, had the impression that when the investigator mentioned a sensation throughout the whole of Russia, his eyes glinted. But what of it? For a man in state service, ambition was a pardonable sin, and possibly not even a sin at all, for it encouraged zeal.

  It seemed very probable that Sergei Sergeevich’s visit to the prelate was not paid out of courtesy, but for a completely different reason, one of a practical nature. In any case, no sooner had Dolinin concluded his outpourings of respect than he turned to Pelagia and said briskly: “You must be the nun who discovered the body? Excellent. With His Reverence’s permission”—a brief bow in Mitrofanii’s direction—“I must ask you, Sister, to accompany me to the scene of the crime.”

  And that was how Pelagia came to be one of the small number of people in that nauseating cabin that reeked of blood and eau de Cologne.

  If not for that smell, if not for the presence of the mutilated body, observing Sergei Sergeevichs professional work would have been an undiluted pleasure. He started by rapidly jotting down a plan of the cabin in his notebook, questioning the holy sister all the time as he did so: “Was the corner of the rug turned up? Are you certain? Was the window raised to exactly this level? Are you certain? Was the bedspread lying on the floor?”

  He was pleased with the positive clarity of the answers he received and even praised her: “You’re an exceptional witness. An excellent visual memory.”

  Glancing at the investigator’s sketch, which looked rather unusual, Pelagia asked in turn: “What is that?”

  “That’s called a field sketch,” Dolinin replied, tracing rapid lines with his pencil. “A diagram of the scene of the crime. This here is the scale, in meters. The letters indicate the points of the compass, that’s essential. Since this is a ship, the place of north is taken by the bow—B—and instead of east I have starboard—S—the right side of the ship.”

  “You know,” said Pelagia, “the chair wasn’t standing like that. When I glanced into the cabin, it was over there.” She showed how the chair had been standing. “And the papers on the table were lying in a neat pile, but now they’re scattered all around.”

  Sergei Sergeevich turned his head to the right and the left and stabbed one finger at the captain. “Have you been taking liberties, my dear fellow?”

  The captain gulped and hunched his shoulders guiltily.

  The investigator looked through the sheets of paper scattered across the table and picked up one that was covered with crooked capital letters. He read it:

  “Baruch ata Adonoai Elochein melech cha-olam …” He put it down. “It’s some kind of Jewish prayer.”

  Pelagia, her spirits somewhat restored following the concealment of the dead man’s nakedness, carried on looking around. She herself was surprised at how much she remembered from those brief moments before she had started screeching. “And this pipe wasn’t here, either,” she said, pointing to a meerschaum tobacco pipe lying on the rug. Dolinin had already placed a little card with the number 8 beside the pipe, and for some reason had covered the item of material evidence with an inverted glass jar.

  “Are you absolutely certain about that?” he asked, disconcerted.

  “Yes, I would have noticed.”

  “How annoying. You’ve canceled out my most important clue. And like an idiot, I’d already covered it to prevent any microscopic particles from being blown off.” Sergei Sergeevich called the captain over and asked him about the pipe.

  The captain confirmed Pelagia’s assertion. “Yes sir. That’s the boat swain Savenka’s pipe—he’s the one who came in with me and shone the light in the corners. He must have dropped it.”

  “Well done, little nun,” Dolinin exclaimed in admiration. “I’m lucky that you’re here. I tell you what, my dear, why don’t you stay for a while? You never know, you might notice something else, or remember something.”

  And after that, as he thought out loud (which was a habit the investigator had), he addressed his remarks only to Pelagia, paying no attention to the others present, even to the district police commander. Obviously Sergei Sergeevich found it more interesting, or shall we say exotic, to address his rhetorical questions to the quick-witted nun.

  “Well, then, Sister, shall we examine the clothes now?” he said, picking through the victim’s wardrobe: nankeen trousers, a waistcoat, a white linen mantle with a blue stripe. “Right, then. There’s no label on the trousers. Trashy trousers, bought at a flea market. And he was traveling first class, with the ‘treasury’ The little skinflint… What do we have on the shirt? Is there a laundry mark? What do you think on that score, Sister?… You think right, our prophet didn’t employ the services of a laundry … We’ll put the boots aside for the moment, the seams have to be slit open.”

  Having finished with the clothing, Dolinin looked around and nodded to himself. “Well, then, that seems to be all for the cabin. Let’s examine the periphery. And, of course, the two of us will start, my sweetheart, with the means of entry.”

  He fiddled at the door, unscrewing and removing the lock with his own hands, then studying it through a magnifying glass.

  “Lit-tle scrat-ches,” Sergei Sergeevich purred. “Fresh. A picklock? Or a new key? Let’s find out.”

  Then he moved on to the window and found something there that interested him. He climbed up and knelt on the little table, then leaned across.

  Reaching one hand back behind him, he snapped his fingers impatiently.

  �
�A light here, a light!”

  Two men dashed over to him at the same time—the captain and police commander. The first held out a kerosene lamp, the second an electric torch.

  Dolinin chose progress. Shining the electric torch on the slot in the frame, he said slowly, “Someone used a hack on this. That’s clear, then. Now, Sister, there you have the answer to our puzzle. Take a look.” Pelagia looked, but she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  “Surely you see it?” Sergei Sergeevich asked in surprise. “The screws have been backed out. And there are traces of oil. A razin has been at work here, it’s their trademark.” And he explained to Pelagia who the razins were. Although she lived by the River, she had never heard anything about these people before.

  “The picture is growing clearer,” the investigator declared with a satisfied air. “There’s nothing like doing the job right! Manuila woke up when the thief had already pulled the casket out from under him. There was a fight. The razins don’t usually go in for murder, but this one must have lost his head over the big money. Or he got frightened. And so he hit him.”

  There was a tap-tap on the door. A head in a peaked cap was thrust into the room. “Your Excellency, look, they found it on the deck. By the edge.”

  Sergei Sergeevich took the canvas sack with the broken string from the policeman and rummaged inside it. He took out a pair of spectacles with gold frames, a porcelain pipe, a tailor’s rule, and a rubber ball. The investigator’s brow furrowed into deep folds of incomprehension, but almost immediately smoothed out again.

  “Why, it’s a swag bag!” the master detective exclaimed. “The sack the razins use for putting their loot in. Here, this is the confirmation of my hypothesis!”

  “Then why did the thief abandon it?” asked Pelagia.

  Dolinin shrugged.

  “Why would a razin want this trash if he’d got his hands on some serious loot? He tore it off his shoulder so that it wouldn’t get in his way, and discarded it. And he wasn’t really himself after the murder. He wasn’t used to it.”