Sherlock Holmes and The Shadows of St Petersburg

by Daniel D Victor

  As he inhaled, Porfiry Petrovitch closed his eyes. Almost immediately, however, he opened them again. “I forget apology, gentlemen,” said he. “Please, forgive the disguise. Iss better if people do not know I am yet in London.”

  “Not to worry,” said Holmes. “Your rooms are sufficient?”

  “Spasiba. Thank you.”

  “Puzhalsta,” Holmes replied in the strange Russian tongue. Until now, I had not a clue that he understood a word of the inscrutable language, let alone the ability to speak it. “The accommodations are suitable for the two of you?” he added.

  “Da. Yes.”

  “Porfiry is travelling with a - a friend,” Holmes explained to me. “I secured rooms for them in Montague Street near my old flat. He wanted to tour the British Museum.”

  “I go today - in afternoon,” he said, eyes blinking. “I see Elgin Marbles and Egyptian mummies. Most satisfying.” He emphasised the pleasure with a long pull on his cigarette.

  “Excellent choices,” said I. “But, Holmes, you never informed me that your friend was coming to London.”

  Holmes sampled his port. “Though I arranged his rooms, I did not know for certain he would actually get here until I recognised him outside of Simpson’s. But here he most certainly is. And I should imagine that as the chief investigator of those pawnbroker murders in St Petersburg twenty years ago, he can enlighten us about the pawnbroker murders of our own.”

  “Da,” said the Russian with an exaggerated blink. “I met Detective Lestrade at Scotland Yard today after Museum trip. He invite me to office tomorrow to meet - what is word? - principals. Two English gentlemen and Russian informer. Most interesting. You gentlemen will be there also?”

  “Yes,” said my friend. “In fact, it was I who suggested to Lestrade that he collect the ‘principals,’ as you call them, for a round of questioning. At least two will not know who you are.”

  “Iss good,” agreed the Russian. He was holding up the cigarette as he spoke, and I could not be sure whether he was referring to Holmes’ plan or to his tobacco.

  The three of us sat for some time in silence, the Russian puffing sedately, Holmes and I sipping our drinks.

  When little remained of his cigarette, Porfiry Petrovitch crushed the stub in a nearby ashtray and rose to his feet. “Iss time to go,” he said with a wink. “Tomorrow at Scotland Yard. Ten o’clock.” Setting his top hat and side locks in place, he became once more a man of piety and exited our sitting room.

  “Tomorrow should prove most interesting, Watson,” said Holmes as he finished his drink. “I suggest you get some sleep.” He then picked up his violin and announced, “I shall prepare for the encounter by immersing myself in Russian music - Tchaikovsky seems appropriate.”

  We climbed the stairs to our respective bedrooms, Holmes with fiddle in hand. As I fell into the arms of Morpheus, I found my descent accompanied by the heart-tugging cries and the lilting dances of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto.

  Chapter Ten: Interrogations

  Inspector Lestrade had reserved an interview room for late Saturday morning. Within it, two small, wooden tables abutted each other. On one side of the tables stood four chairs to accommodate himself, Porfiry Petrovitch, Holmes, and me. The single chair opposite awaited the subject to whom we would address our questions.

  When Holmes and I arrived, Lestrade indicated where we were to sit. Minutes later, a uniformed constable escorted Porfiry Petrovitch into the room, and we all rose to greet him. Today, sans side locks, the Russian wore a traditional grey suit with matching waistcoat, and, blinking at us from across the table, leaned forward and shook our hands.

  I must also add that during these salutations we were very much aware of an unexpected visitor who, exchanging words in Russian with Porfiry Petrovitch, had accompanied the detective into the room. This stranger wore a thick white beard, which thanks to its dramatic length, made him resemble some sort of Old Testament patriarch - a Moses, an Elijah, a Jeremiah. As he moved, a small crude cross of cypress-wood, which hung from his neck, would occasionally poke through the white tangles of beard reaching far down over his chest.

  The stranger, dressed in brown trousers and coat, stood a few inches taller than the Russian detective. His short hair was darker and in greater abundance than that of Porfiry Petrovitch; yet the white beard, together with his penetrating but sad, tired eyes, made him look much older than the detective. The beard hid much of what obviously had once been strong, refined features, and one could easily surmise that in his younger years, this man had been quite handsome.

  For his part, Lestrade showed none of the disdain he often displayed towards foreigners. In fact, revealing a respect for fellow law-enforcement officers that crosses international boundaries, the Inspector personally escorted the Russian detective to his place and provided an additional chair by the door for the bearded gentleman.

  “Horosho,” nodded the latter as he settled into the seat where for much of the session he would go unnoticed.

  Minutes later, the same constable who had delivered Porfiry Petrovitch to us brought in the pale Roderick Cheek. Clad in well-worn jacket and trousers, the young man jerked his arm away each time the policeman, trying to guide him in the proper direction, touched an elbow. Finally, the vagabond plopped himself down onto the wooden chair that faced us. With all the rubbing at his nose and snuffling he displayed, it seemed clear that he had failed to rid himself of whatever illness continued to plague him.

  Lestrade opened the session by identifying the two Russians in the room as police officials. The Inspector offered no names. Then he said, “A few questions regarding the late Mr Gottfried - if you don’t mind, Mr Cheek.”

  Cheek nodded his compliance.

  “Where were you and what were you doing Monday evening, the seventh of November of this year?” Lestrade asked. “It was the night of the two murders in Brick Lane.”

  Cheek emitted a sigh of exasperation. I had asked him the same questions. “Dunno exactly,” he said slowly. “As I already told the doctor here, I was in my room, sick. Like now.” He rubbed his nose again as if to prove his point. In fact, Cheek offered nothing different from the scant information I had got from him earlier.

  Lestrade asked some inconsequential questions relating to how long Cheek had known Gottfried and how often Cheek visited the pawnbroker. Then he turned the interrogation over to Holmes. I was pleased to hear my friend echoing my own suspicions. “Mr Cheek,” Holmes said, “please tell us what you know about the murders in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.”

  Porfiry Petrovitch, eyes blinking, had been looking round the room during much of Cheek’s testimony. Now he focused his attention upon the witness.

  As I have already written, Roderick Cheek had not been informed that sitting before him was the Russian detective who had overseen the investigation documented by Dostoevsky. In fact, Cheek had no reason to suspect that such an officer actually existed. Like virtually everyone else who had read Crime and Punishment, Cheek had no reason to discount the fictional nature of the Petersburg murders. Thus, as any educated literary person is trained to do, he summarised the events of the plot in the present tense. In Roderick Cheek, one could easily discern the student manqué.

  “What do I know about the murders in Crime and Punishment?” repeated Cheek with a sniffle. “I know that Raskolnikov rehearses his crimes by paying an early visit to the pawnbroker. I know that once Raskolnikov learns that the pawnbroker’s sister will be out of the flat at seven o’clock the next evening, he decides that will be the perfect time to kill the old lady - when she is alone. I know that before her murder he overhears someone else telling of the benefits of killing her. And I know that in preparation for the crime, he wraps a piece of wood in paper and ties it up securely so it can serve as a distraction.’

  “And the killing itself?” Holmes prodded.

&
nbsp; “Well, for the weapon, he borrows an axe from the nearby lodging of the caretaker and hangs it from the small cloth loop” - Mrs Garnett called it a “noose” - “which he has fashioned inside his coat for that purpose. When he gets to the old lady’s flat, he gives her the tightly bound package; and whilst she fiddles with it, he whacks her from behind with the axe and crushes her skull. Then he does the same for her sister when she walks in on the crime. That’s what I know.” Between snuffles, he flashed a smile of triumph, the student flaunting his knowledge.

  Lestrade seemed to consult his notes absent-mindedly. “Which end of the axe did he use,” the policeman asked, his tone matter-of-fact, “the sharp end or the blunt end?”

  To give Lestrade his due, only later would I realise that this was the singular question that Holmes wanted answered, the singular question which Cheek had been summoned to address. I gained no sense of the query’s particular importance from the Inspector’s passive expression. At the same time, however, the memory of thinking things not quite right at the Brick Lane murder scene began to emerge in my brain.

  “For whose death?” Cheek asked in response to Lestrade’s query, “the pawnbroker’s or her sister’s?”

  “The pawnbroker’s will suffice.”

  In spite of another sniffle, the young man smiled again. “Oh, the blunt end,” he stated proudly. “Dostoevsky is quite clear on the matter. It contrasts with the coming attack on Lizaveta, the old lady’s sister. She arrives unexpectedly and discovers the body whilst Raskolnikov is pilfering the jewellery. After she confronts him, he smashes her head in with the blade.” Cheek concluded his report by drawing his sleeve across the bottom of his nose.

  “Anything else, Mr Holmes?” Lestrade asked.

  “I do have one final question for Mr Cheek,” said my friend. “Do you own any books by Thomas Carlyle?”

  Cheek furrowed his brow, as if considering the point of such a question. “Yeh,” he finally answered. “The one on hero-worship.”

  Holmes nodded. “No further questions, Lestrade.”

  “We’re done here then, Mr Cheek. That is, we’re done here for today.”

  Lestrade called in the uniformed constable and instructed him to escort Cheek from the building.

  “Take him out the back way,” ordered the Inspector. “We don’t want him conversing with his friend who’s out there awaiting his own turn before us.” Lestrade himself then left the room and returned with that very person.

  Settling into the chair that Cheek had just vacated, William Arbuthnot lacked the resentment that characterised his friend. Indeed, clad in dark suit and waistcoat, he appeared to understand the gravity of the situation in which the two former school chums now found themselves.

  Lestrade repeated to Arbuthnot the same questions the policeman had asked Cheek at the start - where was he and what was he doing on the night of the murders? - And he received equally unsatisfying answers.

  “In my digs. Reading. For school.” Arbuthnot also volunteered that he personally did not employ the pawn-broking services of Mr Gottfried and, in fact, knew of him only indirectly - through reports from Mr Cheek.

  Then it was Holmes’ turn to repeat his request concerning information about the murders in Crime and Punishment. Like Lestrade, he received virtually the same responses as offered by Cheek.

  In the present tense, Arbuthnot reported Raskolnikov’s plans, his execution of the crimes, his escape from the murder scene - just about everything Cheek had said save that Arbuthnot needed no prompting to describe the nature of the fatal attacks - that the first murder had been accomplished with the blunt end of the axe and that only the second had featured the sharp edge.

  At the conclusion of Arbuthnot’s questioning, Lestrade summoned the constable and had the young man escorted out in the same manner as Cheek before him. Once the door closed, Holmes exchanged looks with Porfiry Petrovitch. The Russian blinked and smiled, Holmes nodded at Lestrade, and the latter left the room to retrieve our third witness - the Russian informer I had previously met as “The Assistant.”

  Flat tweed cap in hand, he swaggered in, arms swinging, moustache tips still pointing dramatically outward. Yet he started when he recognised the Russian policeman staring up at him and stammered when he spoke his name: “P-Porfiry P-Petrovitch.”

  “Sit down!” commanded Lestrade.

  The Assistant mumbled something in Russian. Then he lowered himself into the empty chair and placed his cap on the table.

  “Ilya Petrovitch say he is surprised to see me.” These were the first words in English that the Russian detective had voiced since entering the room, and he offered them with a dry chuckle. “He is not pleased. We left each other unhappy.”

  Holmes, Lestrade, and I all looked at the detective for further explanation.

  “Poor fellow,” Porfiry Petrovitch said, “always losing his temper. Many - how do you say? - nicknames - they tell story. In English - ‘Explosive,’ ‘Hot head.’ Dostoevsky call him ‘Lieutenant Gunpowder.’ Too bad,” the detective murmured, slowly shaking his head.

  At Porfiry Petrovitch’s feigned sadness, the Assistant clenched his fists. One could tell that he was seething.

  “You know I saw notebooks of Dostoevsky,” said the Russian detective to the rest of us on his side of the table. “In them are his plans for Crime and Punishment. Not all ideas appear in the book. Fyodor Mikhailovitch use many words besides nicknames to describe Assistant Superintendent. Difficult to translate into English, but I try.” As the Russian listed the negatives, he counted them off on his fingers: “‘base,’ ‘foul,’ ‘spiteful’ - ‘scoundrel’.” Looking directly at the Assistant, he said, “But you laugh at all this, Ilya Petrovitch.”

  Strangely, however, the Assistant was not even smiling. On the contrary, his lips had formed the straightest of lines, and his entire body seemed to tremble with anger.

  “No need to tell you,” the Russian detective went on, “we police knew this behavior of Ilya Petrovitch. For years, we saw him push citizens, shout at prisoners, scream at colleagues. But when he hollered at superior officer - that was - how do you English say? - ‘straw that broke horse’s back.’ I was that officer, and I sacked him - with approval, of course, from Nikodim Fomitch, our superintendent. Fomitch too called Ilya Petrovitch ‘a keg of powder’.”

  Glaring at the Russian detective, the Assistant pointed his forefinger directly in the policeman’s face. “I take confession in your biggest case. I take confession of Raskolnikov. He talk to me-not to you. Still, I, a proper man and a proper citizen, lose job. I get no money - not even for wife and children.”

  “So you came here,” charged Lestrade, “and took the only position available to a disgraced officer - police informer.”

  At the word “informer,” Holmes leaned forward. “Tell us what you remember of Raskolnikov’s confession,” he asked the Assistant.

  Ilya Petrovitch twisted the right end of his pointed moustache. “Iss hard to remember. Iss twenty years since Raskolnikov come to me at station.”

  “Do give it a try,” Holmes persisted.

  The Assistant looked upward as he plumbed his memory. After a moment, he said, “Raskolnikov tell me he killed pawnbroker and sister with axe.”

  Almost immediately came Lestrade’s seemingly harmless questions. “How did Raskolnikov describe the blows? Which end of the axe did he use?”

  “He use blade on both.”

  Of course! Now I remembered what had seemed so strange at the scene of the murders. Cheek and Arbuthnot had correctly reported that in the novel the pawnbroker had been struck by the blunt end of the axe and that only her sister had been hit by the blade itself. “Hold on,” said I, pointing out the anomaly. “Dostoevsky said that only one victim had been struck by the blade.”

  “Heh, heh, heh,” cackled Porfiry Petrovitch. “Police try
to keep secrets. I am sure you know, Doctor - innocent people confess. Remember house-painter Nikolay in book. After he confess, he try to hang himself. Who knows why they do this? Maybe religious Russians like Nikolay have need to suffer. It must be same in England. These confessors - they cannot know true facts - they were not there - heh, heh, heh - but still they confess. Iss why we want to hold back details. I tell untruth to Fyodor Mikhailovitch and newspapers - I say axe blade used for only one killing. Is how we know who lies.”

  “Righto,” said Lestrade with an appreciation of the Russian’s professionalism. “We do the same.”

  Porfiry Petrovitch laughed again. “I say, we want to hold back details. We try. But Fyodor Mikhailovitch demand Truth. Wise man. He know I hide important facts. Complain. All the time, Dostoevsky complain. Finally, I tell him - blade used in both murders - but not to say in book.”

  “Wait a moment,” cautioned Lestrade. It was only then that the logic of the whole business finally dawned on him. “Both Cheek and Arbuthnot knew about the events only as they were described in the Roosian book. They both agreed that the sharp edge killed only the pawnbroker’s sister. In our murders, both victims were struck by the blade.”

  “Precisely,” said Holmes. “That is why I asked the two young men to describe the crime as they knew it - that is, as Dostoevsky described it based on the false information Porfiry had fed him. Recall that most of the novel appeared in monthly instalments before Raskolnikov actually confessed. Apparently, once the killer was apprehended, Dostoevsky saw no need to correct the false information about the blades that he had already announced at the request of the police.”

  I could understand the author’s thinking. Whether one or two wretches had been struck by the blade edge of the axe made no difference to his plot.

  “But the police knew the true story,” Holmes explained, “and when Ilya Petrovitch heard Raskolnikov confess to using the blade on both of the victims - not just the pawnbroker’s sister - he knew Raskolnikov was telling the truth.”