A Vengeful Longing: A Novel (St. Petersburg Mysteries)

by R. N. Morris

  Porfiry’s hands snapped together in a single loud clap. ‘Got one!’ he cried. He met Virginsky’s and Nikodim Fomich’s bemusement with a smile of serene satisfaction. ‘A fly. The kvas worked. They are drowsy now.’ His smile solidified as he looked down at his clasped hands.

  7

  Inside the ministry

  Three men were squeezed into the back of the drozhki speeding along the northern embankment of the Fontanka. The play of light over the water’s surface drew Porfiry’s gaze; his eye was baffled by the luminous networks that formed and folded in the instants of their passing. The tide flowed away behind them, provoking a feeling of uncertainty in the magistrate, the sense almost that he was making a mistake, such was the strength of the river’s beckoning. He turned away from it. His companions, Virginsky to his left, Salytov to his right, were lost in their own thoughts. Both men stared straight ahead, past the standing, shouting, whip-happy driver, to the next bridge, the Chernyshov, which marked their destination.

  As they traversed the riverside facade of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Porfiry was put in mind of a prison cell. The white columns that masked the upper two storeys looked like a grille of bars, through which the recessed windows peeped. The building as a whole imposed itself on its stretch of the embankment with a squat and brutish authority. Its juxtaposition to the fugitive Fontanka emphasised its own solid immovability. Unlike the river, the building wasn’t going anywhere.

  Again there were arches, Porfiry noticed, feeling the same twinge of annoyance as when he had looked upon the arches of the house at the eleventh verst. A common enough architectural motif, especially on the neoclassical buildings in which St Petersburg abounded - it was surely a mark of desperation to place any significance on its recurrence?

  Perhaps those voices of doubt that Nikodim Fomich had reported to him were right. Could it be that he was losing his way in this case - or rather, these cases? Was it not perversity that made him view the murders as related? Each of the connections taken alone was far from conclusive, an assumption that could easily turn out to be an error; which meant that the trail he had been following was nothing more than a series of false steps.

  The light-coloured plaster and brickwork of the ministry building gave it a harsh, impenetrable lustre that reflected his doubts back at him. For relief his gaze settled on Virginsky’s face. Porfiry wondered if all along he had not allowed himself, despite his better judgement, to be swayed by the young man’s persuasive fervour. Dismissing the thought, he looked quickly at Lieutenant Salytov, who, seeming to sense his attention, stiffened in his seat, lifting his head, although self-consciously refusing to face him. Porfiry knew - and had dismissed - Salytov’s view of the Meyer case, that the chocolates had been poisoned by a revolutionary cell centred around Ballet’s the confectioner’s. He knew that the policeman had been led to his theory by prejudice. But really, was it not Porfiry’s own prejudice that had led him to suspect an anonymous official of being capable of the worst of crimes, simply because of his own frustrations over an open drain?

  The drozhki took the corner into Chernyshov Square recklessly, causing the driver to topple back on to his seat, and abuse his horse all the more. And then it came to an abrupt halt, whipping the passengers backwards and forwards like shaken dolls.

  Virginsky and Salytov sprang out of the drozhki simultaneously, leaving Porfiry rooted to the centre of the seat.

  The square was congested with carriages, ready to bear the orders of the central administration to the furthest reaches of the empire. Waves of men in civil service uniforms flowed in and out of the entrance. Some hurried into waiting carriages that then became snarled in the throng of unmoving vehicles.

  Porfiry sensed the impatience of the other two as they looked up at him from either side. The driver too turned round to cast him a quizzical glance. Porfiry, however, felt no inclination to move.

  ‘This has always struck me as the most premeditated part of our premeditated city,’ he said, looking across the square and along the Teatralnaya, the straight and strangely symmetrical street that led to the Alexandrine Theatre. ‘The vision of one man imposed on a whole zone. The architect as autocrat, although it is true to say that the architect’s vision can only ever be realised with the help of the true autocrat’s will, to say nothing of the latter’s power and money.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Porfiry Petrovich?’

  Porfiry seemed to wink at Salytov’s brusque demand. ‘I rather think that a murderer is like an architect of destruction, don’t you? The crimes he shapes are analogous with the structures an architect imposes on the landscape. A critic of murder - that is to say a detective - becomes adept at recognising and interpreting the stylistic devices and motifs in play.’ Porfiry turned his head slowly to glance down at the policeman. ‘The architect, working in partnership with the true autocrat, creates and constructs a new reality consistent with his fantasy, in his case a harmonious and ordered fantasy, which we deign to call his vision. In the case of a murderer, he is the sole autocrat of his own universe. It occurs to me that the fantasy that guides him may be equally as harmonious and ordered as the architect’s, or at least so it appears to him. Indeed, perhaps it is his desire to impose order that compels him to murder. ’ Now Porfiry turned his head, with the same slow movement, to face Virginsky. ‘If that is the case then it may well be that our murderer is indeed a minor civil servant, a petty functionary whose actual power falls far short of his ambition and his egoism. A man who has felt himself thwarted and frustrated - slighted, insulted, overlooked - throughout his life. Equally, that same description would apply to one who overtly sets himself up against the state, one who would seek to overthrow the state and replace it with something else of his own design. A revolutionary, for every murder is an act of revolution against God and nature-’ Porfiry broke off.

  ‘And so?’ prompted Virginsky.

  ‘And so,’ said Porfiry, his voice weary as he hauled himself out of the drozhki, ‘we must proceed with caution.’

  At that moment a closed black wagon marked Politsiya drew up beside them. Porfiry raised a questioning eyebrow at Salytov who nodded grimly.

  ‘Very well,’ said Porfiry, mirroring Salytov’s nod. ‘The wagon is here. Let us talk to Rostanev.’

  Echoes of murmured conversations filled the high, marbled lobby. Both urgent and muted, they rose from the shuffling men who crossed the polished floor, to drift like dust into the niches of the walls, before settling on the blank-eyed, stone-deaf busts. The air was stifling, clogged with spinning particles. A desiccated heat drew the breath from Porfiry. Even so, he felt the longing for a cigarette. A large double-headed eagle, emblem of the imperial house, was moulded on to the wall that faced them, picked out in gold leaf. The strange beast looked with inevitably divided attention, left and right, into the corridors that led off from the hall. The new civil flag, that is to say the flag that had been adopted a decade earlier, but which Porfiry still could not bring himself to regard as Russian, hung limply from a staff above the heraldic form, its bands of black, gold and white crumpled into each other. Porfiry saw Salytov’s snarl at the sight of it: ‘Germans!’

  The word reverberated clearly above the hubbub, like a hard ball of sound tossed carelessly against the walls. Heads turned in outrage.

  ‘Be careful, Ilya Petrovich,’ said Porfiry, smiling mischievously. ‘Such an outburst might be construed as treasonable.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Salytov glared. ‘I am a loyal subject of the Tsar.’

  ‘Even when he listens to German counsel, and foists on us an alien flag?’ goaded Virginsky.

  ‘It was the Germans who made him do it.’

  ‘But he took up their suggestion readily enough, did he not? That was one reform he was not slow to implement in full - to put the Romanov family colours on the Russian nation’s flag. It shows quite clearly how he regards the country. As his personal fiefdom.’

  ‘I thought you liberals liked this Tsar,’
said Salytov. ‘He can hardly be described as lacking in reformist zeal.’

  ‘That is enough,’ interrupted Porfiry, regretting the attention that the hissed debate was drawing.

  ‘What makes you think I am a liberal?’ Virginsky had to get in.

  ‘Enough!’ Porfiry’s cry provoked a bubbling of shocked reaction around them. ‘May I remind you gentlemen that we are here on official business? Furthermore, this is hardly the place to engage in such discussions.’

  Porfiry frowned distractedly as he looked about. Two staircases led up from the lobby. Numerous unmarked doors were visible in the corridors that fed into the hall. ‘Which way do you suppose it is to the Department of Public Health? In a building this size one would expect there to be signposts.’

  ‘Now it is you who are criticising the way our Tsar has ordered things.’

  Ignoring Virginsky’s observation, Porfiry accosted one of the clerks hurrying head-down towards the door, a youngish man with a splenetic face. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The clerk did not seem to have heard him. Just as the man was about to collide with him, Porfiry stepped sharply to one side. ‘Sir!’ he shouted. The clerk stopped in his steps and drew himself up. He glanced sharply towards Porfiry, his face crimped in displeasure.

  ‘Do you mind? I have a very important commission to dispatch.’

  ‘If you could only tell us where to find the Department of Public Health.’

  The man’s eyes bulged. ‘There is a saying in the ministry that if you don’t know where an office is you really have no business going there.’ He brushed past Porfiry and was gone.

  ‘Really!’ said Porfiry, gazing in astonishment at the fellow’s wake. ‘These people.’

  Now another one of the bottle-green-uniformed men was coming towards him from the other direction. A stooped, grey-whiskered relic, whose coat was nonetheless immaculately brushed, his buttons gleaming. He had the order of St Vladimir hanging from a ribbon around his neck. The old man looked straight through Porfiry, and though he moved with slow, small steps, it seemed that he too was bent on collision.

  ‘Sir!’ cried Porfiry. ‘If you please!’

  The other man tottered to a halt as if he had been hurtling towards Porfiry at breakneck speed. His eyebrows bristled menacingly, with sinister abundance. He glared at Porfiry as if he believed him to be a dangerous lunatic.

  ‘What is it?’ His voice was edged with a panicked impatience.

  ‘Could you direct us to the Department of Public Health?’

  ‘The Department of Public Health?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll take you there.’ The old man began his tortuously slow step again, a gait in which neither foot ever once completely extended beyond the other. They waited for him to get ahead of them before following, at a funereal pace.

  ‘It really is not necessary,’ said Porfiry. ‘If you could simply give us the directions . . .’

  ‘It’s no trouble.’ The old man began to wheeze heavily.

  ‘We are in rather a hurry.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘This way is quicker.’

  Porfiry sighed. The old man had led them to the first flight of stairs; he paused for a moment at the bottom before ascending to the first step. Not before he had both feet planted on it did he attempt to scale the second.

  He led them down a corridor, lined on both sides with mountains of files. These seemed to have grown out like crystal formations from the rooms along the corridor. Moving at their guide’s pace, Porfiry had ample opportunity to peer into some of these rooms, at least before the occupants, noticing his attention, closed a door in his face. The rooms were all of different sizes, some as dark and cramped as a cupboard, others extending beyond the reach of his gaze into shadowed edges. Sometimes he glimpsed rows of men sitting on high stools at ledger desks. In other rooms he saw no one clearly, but had the sense of a presence in there: perhaps he saw a vague shape move or heard the fall of a footstep, the riffle of paper or something scuttling out of sight; the door would inevitably be closed by an unseen hand.

  The old man led them at last to a pair of closed double doors. He pointed with a crooked finger at the words ‘Department of Public Health’ etched on a small brass plaque, then continued on his way without a word, almost without pausing. Porfiry widened his eyes as he put a hand on the door handle.

  The doors opened on to a large room, which even so felt cramped and stuffy. Piles of papers laid out in rows acted as screens, dividing it into smaller cells. In these, men - either individually or in groups of two, three or four - sat stooped over desks. Porfiry, Virginsky and Salytov were presented with a sea of rounded backs, which seemed to be bent under the oppressive menace of the room’s disproportionately low ceiling. There was a soft sound, a susurration mixed with an amplified scratching, the accumulated mouthings and pen pushings of this army of copyists and clerks. A hundred quills swished the air at once in a hypnotic dance that quivered with promised meaning. One man was moving between the desks. He looked across the room towards them as they came in and after a moment’s frowning hesitation approached them with an armful of files.

  Porfiry had the vaguest sense that he recognised the man. One sees a thousand such faces in St Petersburg, he thought.

  The man placed his burden of files on top of an already teetering paper tower and came up to them. ‘Yes?’

  ‘How do they do it?’ asked Porfiry, looking past the man at the seated clerks behind him. ‘How do they remain seated all day - every day? I know that I for one could not.’ Porfiry looked the other up and down significantly. ‘I imagine it is an occupational hazard here too? Haemorrhoids, I mean.’

  ‘I . . . that is to say . . .’

  ‘You need say no more. I understand. You have my sympathy. And now, to the matter in hand. We are looking for one Rostanev, Axenty Ivanovich. The writer of this letter.’ Porfiry handed the civil servant the letter about the Ditch.

  ‘But this is highly irregular.’ He scowled at the paper and shook his head. ‘I shall have to have a word with Rostanev about this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.’ His tone was curt, however, and devoid of any real gratitude.

  ‘You misunderstand,’ said Porfiry. ‘I am Porfiry Petrovich, an investigating magistrate. This gentleman’ - Porfiry indicated Salytov - ‘is a police lieutenant. We are here to interview Rostanev on police business.’

  The man touched the back of one hand to his forehead, a gesture that provoked an elusive sense of déjà vu, and a keen impatience, in Porfiry. ‘Is it really necessary?’ The man’s tone was whining. ‘I agree that he should not have written the letter. He has no authority to sign letters from the Department of Public Health. He is a mere scribe. However, I dare say that the details of the letter are correct. It is one I would have signed myself had it been put in front of me. Surely it will suffice if he is subjected to internal disciplinary procedures? Knowing Rostanev as I do, I feel that an official reprimand will certainly have the desired effect of discouraging him from ever committing such a foolish act again.’

  ‘It is not to do with the letter - not this letter at any rate. We wish to talk to Rostanev in connection with a murder investigation. I wonder, however, could you tell me to whom I have the honour of speaking?’

  ‘I am . . . Yefimov.’ The man’s startled diffidence, followed by the defiance with which he finally offered his name, betrayed an inner tension. The superficial hostility that was his shield against the world seemed to change into something more particular, directed at Porfiry alone. ‘Collegiate Registrar Yefimov.’

  ‘You are Rostanev’s superior?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer was given emphatically.

  ‘Your face seems familiar to me. And indeed your name.’ Porfiry smiled with vague and hopeful affability. Seeming to remember himself, he handed Yefimov the anonymous letter sent to Dr Meyer. ‘We have reasons to believe that he is the author of this letter also.’

  ‘Yes, quite possibly. I would not be surprised.’ H
e handed the letter back. An unexpected sympathy showed in his expression.

  ‘You have to understand that Axenty Ivanovich . . . how to put this? He is not quite right in the head, poor fellow. I myself once received a letter not dissimilar to this. The handwriting was the same. I knew it was from Rostanev. I did nothing about it, because, well, really - one cannot hold a man like Rostanev accountable. It seems strange to say this, but Rostanev himself is not malicious. He means no harm. He acts out of a compulsion. It is a disease. He deserves our pity, I would think.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I quite agree. And ordinarily I would be happy to leave it to you, as his superior, to exercise your discretion in disciplining him. However, I regret to say that the recipient of this letter was accused of murdering his wife because of its contents. And another man who received a similar letter was suspected of murdering his daughter’s seducer.’