by R. N. Morris
‘I will not be writing any memoirs.’
‘I wish I had seen old Firecracker’s face,’ said Nikodim Fomich delightedly. ‘What a picture that must have made.’
Porfiry let out a heavy, despondent sigh.
‘Well, my friend, I’m sure you will work it all out. There’s nothing you like so much as an impenetrable mystery. I have every faith in you.’
Porfiry said nothing. Instead he startled the room by bringing his open palm down heavily on his desk. He turned his hand over slowly, peering into the widening gap. At last he lifted his hand and held it suspended in front of his face, studying the empty palm for a further minute or two. He gave Nikodim Fomich and Virginsky a challenging look but offered no explanation.
Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev sat up straight in the chair. His clothes were remarkably unruffled for a man who had spent the night in a police cell, as were his hair and beard, both freshly and deeply combed. Porfiry noticed the cleanliness of his hands, particularly his fingernails. He seemed to have slept well.
Porfiry laid a bulging file on the deal table of the interview room and sat down opposite Vakhramev. He lit a cigarette as Virginsky took the seat next to him. Porfiry smoked in silence, watching Vakhramev closely all the time. Vakhramev met his gaze with a variety of expressions, as older people often respond to inquisitive but silent children. But when this produced no effect, Vakhramev allowed himself the one face that expressed his genuine sentiment, a deep and devastating rage. His face flushed with colour. He stared at Porfiry with hatred, for what he had brought him to.
‘Have you ever visited prostitutes?’ said Porfiry at last, keeping his tone neutral. He did not look at Vakharamev as he asked the question, but at the cigarette that he was grinding into the tin ashtray.
Vakhramev’s rage shot him to his feet, the chair scraping back on the floor. ‘What kind of despicable question is that?’
‘It is a question that could gain you your liberty,’ said Porfiry. ‘Please sit down.’ He looked up at Vakhramev with a steady gaze.
Now Vakhramev’s expression was utterly bewildered. He seemed lost. There was no pretence left to him. He took his seat again, slowly. ‘I do not see what you are getting at, or why you feel the need to ask these insulting and quite filthy questions. I am a respectable man. Besides, this line of enquiry can have nothing to do with Setochkin.’
‘On the contrary, it may turn out to be highly relevant.’ Porfiry took out a handkerchief and folded it precisely into a neat square. He then used it to dab his face, particularly around his eyes. ‘Allow me to be frank with you, Ruslan Vladimirovich. The case against you is strong, at least as far as the circumstantial evidence is concerned. Your testimony simply does not add up. There are those who would say that you are trying to bamboozle us with this story of the letter.’ Porfiry put the handkerchief away. ‘That your intention is to whip up a mystery to confuse the jury. You are feeding them a doubt, by which you aim to wriggle off the hook. And yet, the fact remains that the simplest, and therefore most likely explanation, is that you shot Setochkin. That you went to his apartment with the intention of shooting him, and indeed of killing him. That you are his murderer.’
‘If you are convinced of this then why are you tormenting me with these questions of brothels?’
Porfiry placed the heel of his right hand into his corresponding eye socket and twisted it. When he took the hand away, he blinked ferociously. Vakhramev watched him uncertainly.
‘Don’t you see? It’s precisely because I am not convinced that I’m asking you this. If I were convinced I would not even be here talking to you. The letter, that mysterious, phantom letter - I believe in it. I am probably the only one who does, apart from yourself. Not only that, I believe it could provide the key to the whole mystery. Who was it from? I know, you cannot say. Can you at least enlighten us as to its content?’
‘It concerned Setochkin. And my daughter, Tatyana. More than that I will not say. A gentleman would not ask.’
‘You don’t understand, do you? You must forget all this business of what a gentleman would or would not ask. I am afraid the rules of gentlemanly conduct no longer apply. We have gone beyond all that. Now we must deal in evidence. The content of the letter constitutes evidence. We cannot see the letter, so we must rely on your account of it. Was it to protect Tatyana that you spirited it away?’
‘I did not . . . spirit it away, as you put it. I hate to think whose hands it has fallen into.’
‘Was it something like this?’ Porfiry partially raised the cover of the folder and took out the sheet of white notepaper found in the box under the chair in Dr Meyer’s study.
Vakhramev took the letter. Bewilderment changed to amazement. ‘How extraordinary! It could have been written by the same hand.’
‘Very likely it was,’ said Porfiry. ‘What about the content? Would you say it is broadly similar in tenor?’
‘Well, it was equally nasty, if that’s what you mean.’
‘As you can see, the letter I have shown you makes reference to a licensed brothel on Sadovaya Street. Madam Josephine’s. In an attempt to establish a further connection between the two letters, I am desirous to know whether you ever visited that establishment. ’
‘But sir, I am a respectable married man.’
‘Before you were married, perhaps?’
‘Well, before one was married, one did many things.’
‘Exactly.’ Porfiry smiled encouragingly.
‘Are you married, sir?’
The smile died on Porfiry’s lips. ‘No.’
‘Then how do you solve the problem of needs? I presume you are subject to them. You are a man, after all. You are human?’
‘Indeed.’
‘So?’
Porfiry sensed an anticipatory shifting from Virginsky beside him. He did not deign to turn towards it. ‘We are not here to talk about me,’ he said at last.
‘Humbug. I will not be judged by a hypocritical prig.’
‘I’m not here to judge you,’ said Porfiry. He kept his eyes closed, tensely, as he turned in Vakhramev’s direction. Finally his eyelids fluttered open and he met Vakhramev’s gaze. ‘I have visited an establishment similar to that mentioned in the letter. It is also on Sadovaya Street as it happens, beneath a milliner’s shop. The madam is a German woman, Fräulein Keller. Perhaps you know it?’
‘No sir, I do not,’ Vakhramev answered crisply.
‘Well, then. I have made my confession to you. We are men of the world. We are subject to needs. We can talk openly about these things.’
Porfiry thought that he detected disappointment in Virginsky’s restlessness now.
‘It will go no further?’ Vakhramev leant in.
‘I see no reason why it should. That is to say, I cannot promise. But I will do my best.’
‘It was all a long time ago, you understand.’
‘Of course.’
‘I have mended my ways.’
‘Yes.’
‘That man, the man who visited these places, is a stranger to me now. I do not recognise him. I pity those who still have need of such a recourse.’ Vakhramev looked at Porfiry pointedly.
‘Please, all this is understood.’
‘No, I’m not sure that you do understand, sir. I have repented, my God, how I have repented. I have atoned. It has not been something trivial, this atoning. It has not been something I put on like a cloak. It has been an upheaval, sir, a veritable upheaval of the soul. I bared my face to my God. I lay prostrate, my face in the dirt. I told my wife everything too. Everything. I kept a journal, you see, when I was a bachelor. A journal in which every sordid encounter was inscribed. I gave it to her to read - no, I insisted she read it. Before we were married, you understand. To give her one final chance . . . to walk away. So that she could know the beast, the unworthy, worthless monster that I was, and escape from me. She was repelled. Disgusted. She hated me. But she - angel! - forgave me. Can you imagine such magnanimity of soul? Can y
our understanding encompass it? You have never married. I am sorry for you. How can you know of what I speak? She forgave me! But, there was one condition. We were never to speak of it again. I promised, I swore, to destroy the diary. And I would never mention it to another living soul.’
‘Ah, I see. Pity - that you destroyed it.’
Vakhramev looked down at the table, his face quivering with emotion.
‘And you were married . . . when?’
Vakhramev lifted his gaze proudly. ‘Nastasya Petrovna and I were married on March the twenty-first, eighteen forty-eight.’
‘So we are twenty years too late to read it.’ Porfiry smiled but watched Vakhramev closely, who once again looked down. ‘My interest in the diary has nothing to do with prurience, you understand, ’ continued Porfiry. ‘It’s just that it might have contained a significant name or two. This Madam Josephine, for instance.’
‘I believe I did go there once,’ said Vakhramev quickly, still not looking at Porfiry.
Porfiry lifted the cover of the folder again and took out the photograph of Raisa Ivanovna Meyer from many years ago that Virginsky had recovered from the dacha. He passed it across the table to Vakhramev. ‘Do you remember ever seeing this woman there?’
Vakhramev studied the photograph. His lips pursed slightly as he did so. And then the hand holding the photograph began to shake. ‘It was a long time ago. I only went there once.’
‘Really?’
‘I swear.’
‘But did you see her there?’
‘I cannot be expected to remember their faces,’ said Vakhramev. His own face became sealed off from further enquiry, as he laid the photograph face down on the table.
‘Is there, do you think, a specifically Russian type of hypocrite? And if so, who would stand as our exemplum of it?’ Porfiry was again looking out of the window, down at the Yekaterininsky Canal, as he had been the morning Virginsky first presented himself at his chambers twelve days ago. He was smoking now, as then.
Virginsky did not answer. It was clear that the questions were asked rhetorically.
‘Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev?’ Porfiry’s voice seemed to come from far away. He turned to face Virginsky, as if he did want an answer after all. He had finished his cigarette.
‘But Vakhramev has confessed to visiting prostitutes. A true hypocrite would not be able to do that, I feel,’ said Virginsky.
‘Yes. He even wrote it all down in a diary for his wife to read. What a charming wedding present that must have made.’
‘I admire him for doing that.’
‘Do not admire him too much. You see, he did not destroy his bachelor diary as he promised her.’
‘How can you know that?’
Porfiry shrugged. ‘How could he have borne to do so? He would have been destroying part of himself.’
‘But what if it was a part of himself he wished to destroy?’
‘Hmm. That is certainly the impression he wished to give to his angelic wife.’
‘I am beginning to wonder, Porfiry Petrovich, whether the only qualification one needs to be an investigating magistrate is a mind as filthy as your hated Ditch out there. That and an ability to suspect everyone of the vilest acts.’
Porfiry half-turned, almost wistfully, back towards the window. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps the only reason I don’t like the Ditch is because it reminds me of myself.’
‘You certainly spend long enough staring at it. But why can’t you take Vakhramev’s word that he destroyed the diary?’
‘Because he did not give me his word. He did not say that he had destroyed it at all. He merely said that he had promised his fiancée that he would destroy it. And when I deliberately chose to assume that this meant the diary was destroyed, he became quite embarrassed, and yet did not correct the misapprehension.’
Virginsky angled his head, almost conceding the point, but allowing himself to retain some scepticism. ‘But perhaps there was no misapprehension?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Porfiry shortly. ‘When you have worked in this job as long as I have you will learn to pay especial regard to the precise form of words people choose, particularly suspects.’
‘So you do suspect him of killing Setochkin?’
‘I suspect him of something. I suspect him of lying to his wife. I suspect him of not destroying the diary. I suspect him of continuing to visit prostitutes after his marriage. Despite his deep atonement and repentance. Yes, he continued in that - how shall I describe it? - practice for at least six and possibly seven years after he had abased himself with his face in the mud.’
‘Again, how can you know that?’
‘Because he recognised the photograph of Raisa Ivanovna. From what Meyer said of Raisa Ivanovna’s history, she cannot have worked at Madam Josephine’s for long. A year, possibly two at most. Raisa Ivanovna was already pregnant with Grigory when Martin Meyer married her. Grigory was thirteen at the time of his death. Let us say, then, that Raisa Ivanovna was at Madam Josephine’s fourteen years ago - which is indeed the timescale given in the malicious letter sent to Meyer. The photograph I showed Vakhramev must have been taken soon after then. And yet Vakhramev has been married to his angel for twenty years.’
Virginsky was silent for some time, during which Porfiry lit and began smoking another cigarette. ‘Do they help, the cigarettes, really?’
Porfiry held the case out towards Virginsky, who nodded once and took one. He coughed three times as Porfiry lit it for him, then held the cigarette away from his face and studied the burning tip. ‘You said you were not here to judge him, but that is what you have done. Despite the fact that you yourself have confessed to identical peccadilloes.’
‘What peccadilloes have I confessed to?’ Porfiry narrowed his eyes.
‘To visiting brothels. You said that you have visited brothels.’
‘I said that I had visited one establishment. Fräulein Keller’s. I went there once - no, actually, twice I think it was - in the course of the investigation during which you and I first became acquainted, Pavel Pavlovich.’
Virginsky gingerly attempted another inhalation. ‘So how do you?’
Porfiry met the question with an innocent blink.
‘Deal with the issue of needs?’
Porfiry looked at Virginsky thoughtfully but did not seem inclined to provide an answer. At any rate, there was a knock at the door and Zamyotov came in, as usual without waiting to be admitted.
‘There are some females here . . .’ His emphasis was one of disapproval, outrage almost. ‘They claim to be connected with that individual Vakhramev.’
In his wake, was the sense of a commotion nearing.
5
The angel (and her daughter)
‘Ruffians! Ruffians and rogues!’
Bursting in like a cannonade of silk, the woman came to a halt before Porfiry, her eyes wrathful and seeking. ‘Where is he? Where is our Vakhramev? What have you done with him?’
She was compact, almost compressed, a little shorter than Porfiry and somewhat stouter. She moved with a top-heavy momentum. Porfiry was relieved that she had stopped short of charging him. Her mouth was pinched with determined indignation.
Following her into the room was a drifting, aloof girl of about nineteen or twenty, who looked around her from the vantage point of a long neck, seemingly without seeing, as if she did not want her vision to be demeaned by the objects it might fall upon. If she believed herself visible to those around her (for example, to Virginsky, who could not take his eyes off her), she certainly gave no indication that they were visible to her.
‘We are holding him,’ said Porfiry, ‘in a cell.’
‘Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev? In a cell?’
‘I’m afraid so, madam.’
This provoked a disdainful jerk of the head from the drifting girl. Her gaze, though, refused to come anywhere near Porfiry.
‘Who, may I ask, are you?’ ventured Porfiry to the indignant woman.
‘What business is it of yours?’
‘I am Porfiry Petrovich, investigating magistrate. I am dealing with the case in which Vakhramev is implicated.’
‘Implicated? How dare you!’
‘Are you, by any chance, his wife?’
‘I am Nastasya Petrovna Vakhrameva and I have the honour to be the wife of Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev. I command you to release him this instant.’
‘I’m afraid that will not be possible. A man has been murdered. Until we have eliminated Ruslan Vladimirovich from our investigations, it will be necessary to hold him in a secure place.’