The Gentle Axe Paperback (3 page)

“On the icon, then. You must swear on the holy icon.”

“But Zoya, don’t you see?”

“This is a fortune,” cried Zoya in desperation. “Six thousand rubles! Enough to buy property. We could have an apartment at the front. With rooms. And tenants of our own. We could have a carriage, with servants in livery. We could parade along the Nevsky Prospect, our heads held high. We’d never be afraid to look anyone in the eye. Think of the clothes, the furs, the jewels. What admirers you would have, Lilya! Oh Lilya, think of it! Gentlemen. Noblemen. And Vera. What a future would lie before her. She could marry a prince, no less. And you, you stupid little fool, you’ll throw it all away!”

Lilya backed away, in a simple reflex of self-protection, pulling her arm free of Zoya’s grip. She fell onto her bed and murmured, “She lied to me.” The same instant she was asleep, dreaming of the policeman’s transparent eyelashes.

T
HE ENVELOPE
, addressed simply to “Porfiry Petrovich,” arrived on the investigator’s desk with the morning’s first round of mail. Its contents drew Porfiry from his rooms.

“Alexander Grigorevich, did you see who left this for me?”

Seated on his high stool behind the front desk, the chief clerk barely glanced in Porfiry’s direction. He was distracted by the thin, agitated woman before him, who was keeping up a stream of tearful and incoherent complaints. Her raving drew to the clerk’s face an expression of deep disgust. And yet it seemed he could not tear his eyes away from her. The woman’s face was pinched and pale, with bursts of crimson on her cheeks and a deeper red, the color of raw anguish, around her eyes. Fine features had hardened into sharpness, with dark lines etched into a pattern of ravage. Her worn and dirty clothes had once been fashionable and even expensive, many seasons ago. The smell from her was strong and unpleasant. It was hard to estimate her age.

“Alexander Grigorevich,” insisted Porfiry, “someone left a note for me.”

“What of it?” said Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov at last, meeting Porfiry’s inquiring gaze with something close to a sneer.

More than anything, Porfiry felt a weary disappointment. He had no time for impertinence, and not because he was one to insist on the honor due his rank. “Alexander Grigorevich, you are a man and I am a man, and to that extent we are equals. I will treat you with respect; all I ask is that you do the same.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I won’t lie to you. I won’t look down on you. I won’t play games with you.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, but I don’t understand what bearing all this has.”

“This note,” said Porfiry, laying the envelope down on the counter. His voice was calm, but he was not smiling. “I ask you again. Did you see who delivered it?”

Zamyotov took a moment to study the envelope. He picked it up and turned it over and then placed it back on the counter. “No,” he said, barely suppressing the pleasure he took from this little charade.

Porfiry snatched up the letter and bowed to the disconsolate woman, whose lamentations had not let up throughout his exchange with Zamyotov.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” the head clerk gurgled gleefully. “This woman wishes to see
you.
”

Porfiry hesitated before answering the clerk directly, without looking at the tearful woman. “I can’t. Not now. An urgent matter has arisen. I must talk to Nikodim Fomich. You must tell her to come back tomorrow.”

Porfiry braced himself, expecting the pitch and intensity of her plaints to increase at this announcement. But there was an alarming constancy to her behavior. It was as if she hadn’t heard his decision, or didn’t understand it. Porfiry realized it would be hard to get rid of her.

“Alexander Grigorevich, take a statement from her…” Perhaps there was some desire to punish the head clerk in this demand. Porfiry did not discount the possibility.

“A statement? I?”

“Yes, a statement. I will give it my full attention when I have seen Nikodim Fomich. If she wishes to wait, that’s up to her, but I advise her to come back tomorrow.”

“Porfiry Petrovich, with the greatest respect,” began the clerk in a tone that contradicted his words, “what kind of a statement do you expect me to take from”—he gestured toward the woman, her face contorted by suffering—
“that?”

“You will do your best. I am confident that it will be more than good enough.”

I
T’S NOT MUCH
to go on.” Chief Superintendent Nikodim Fomich Maximov dropped the note onto his desk. He leaned back in his chair, both hands behind his head, and looked up at the high ceiling of his office, enjoying the scale of the apartment his position entitled him to. He had learned the habit of ignoring the odd flaws in its grandeur, the peeling paint here and there, the stains of damp beneath the window, and the cracks in the plaster. For a moment his lips pursed ironically, as if an amusing thought had just occurred to him. He was a handsome man and well liked. Both of these attributes were important to him: he had an awareness of his own ability to soothe, merely by his presence. Porfiry wondered if this awareness did not sometimes affect his friend’s judgment. Nikodim Fomich sometimes gave the impression of valuing an easy life above all else. “I mean to say, how do we know it’s not a hoax?”

“Of course, I agree, it’s probably a hoax.” Under the new rules, Porfiry had the authority to command the police to pursue any matter he deemed worthy of investigation. But it was a sensitive area. It was only two years ago that control of individual cases had been taken from the police and given over to the newly created office of investigating magistrate. And Porfiry preferred to work with the cooperation of his colleagues in the police bureau, rather than with their resentful subordination. Besides, he knew that the best way to change the chief ’s mind was to agree with him. “I felt I had a responsibility to show it to you, that is all.” Porfiry reached to take the note back.

“But if it’s not a hoax?” asked Nikodim Fomich quickly. He leaned forward and grabbed the note before Porfiry could retrieve it. “If there really has been a case of ‘Murder in Petrovsky Park’?” The senior police officer read the note with a heavily ironical intonation. He turned the sheet over several times. But those four words were all that was written on its entire surface. Constant rotation did not cause any more to appear. “If it were signed, it would be more credible.”

“And there would be someone held responsible if it turned out to be a hoax,” suggested Porfiry.

“Well, of course, a hoaxer would never sign it.”

“So it must be a hoax,” insisted Porfiry brightly, as if the matter were settled.

“Not necessarily,” demurred Nikodim Fomich, who suddenly found himself in the position of arguing with his own original point of view. “It could have been written by someone involved in the crime in some way.”

Porfiry gave Nikodim Fomich a sudden look of astonishment, as if this idea had never occurred to him. The chief superintendent frowned. Porfiry’s play-acting annoyed him. He knew the investigator well enough not to be taken in. “We’ll have the local boys look into it,” he decided. “If they turn up anything, we’ll go to the
prokuror
with it.”

“Yes, yes, I agree. There is no need to trouble Yaroslav Nikolaevich until we have something definite to go on. However, if I might make a suggestion?”

Nikodim Fomich nodded for Porfiry to go on.

“Offer one of your men to assist. An officer to oversee the search.”

“Isn’t that a little proprietorial?”

“The note was delivered here, to this bureau.”

“Did you have anyone in mind?” the chief superintendent asked.

“Lieutenant Salytov, perhaps.”

“Salytov? Old Gunpowder?” Nikodim Fomich laughed with easy good humor. “At least it will get him out of the bureau for a few hours.”

Again Porfiry’s expression signified surprise at an idea that couldn’t have been further from his mind.

“Don’t overdo it, Porfiry Petrovich,” said the chief superintendent, delivering the warning with a complicit wink.

S
HE’S STILL HERE
,
” called out Zamyotov accusingly, as Porfiry crossed the receiving hall. He indicated the tearful woman with a tilt of his head. “She has asked specifically for the investigating magistrate,” Zamyotov confided to his fingernails, with a smirk.

“Have you taken a statement from her, as I requested?” asked Porfiry. His gaze was detached as he studied the woman. He noted that the quality and level of her keening was unchanged. He was not one of those men who are afraid to confront the tears of women, or who shy from the pain of life. But her distress embarrassed him because he felt there was something almost artificial about it. He suspected it of being a ploy, a ploy she had committed herself to and now couldn’t get out of. He felt if he could say to her, in a friendly, confiding tone, “You don’t have to keep that up, you know,” she would instantly become reasonable. He bowed his head slightly in an attempt to engage her flitting glance with a smile. But when her eyes did meet his, for only the briefest moment, he experienced a physical sense of depression, as if something heavy and poisonous had entered his soul. He realized that her distress was not artificial after all. But it was alien to her, an infection that had taken her over. It was this terrible illness that was weeping so mechanically, perhaps even the illness that was insisting on seeing the investigating magistrate.

“Do you want me to read it to you?” said Zamyotov, referring to the statement he was now holding.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I’m perfectly willing to.”

“I appreciate your willingness. However, I will read it myself.”

Porfiry took the statement:

The statement continued in this vein for several more lines.

“I see,” said Porfiry, when he had finished reading it. “Madam, will you come with me?” And with that he led her into his chambers.

S
O THEN
,
what shall we do with you?” began Porfiry, his tone kindly and indulgent. “Shall we lock you up, Yekaterina Romanovna?”

The woman nodded briskly. Tears streamed from her eyes, transparent trails from her snuffling nose. There was no doubting her sincerity. Porfiry opened a drawer in his desk and took out a clean handkerchief; he kept a supply on hand for such occasions. He held it out to her. She repaid him with a look that suggested he was the one who was raving. Eventually she took it, though she could not be encouraged to wipe her face. Ignoring Porfiry’s mime to that effect, she held the handkerchief tightly balled in her palm.

“But on what charge, Yekaterina Romanovna? We must have a charge to enter in the great recording book.”

The woman let out a half-articulate moan, just recognizable as “Guilty!”

“Yes, but of what? You understand my predicament?” Porfiry held his arms open across the desk as if petitioning her for help. “I have an idea,” he said suddenly. “I shall suggest some crimes to you, and all you have to do is nod when I get to yours. We shall make a game of it. Can you do that, Yekaterina Romanovna?”

Porfiry smiled uncertainly at her answering nod. He could not be sure she understood him.

“Let’s start at the top, I think,” said Porfiry brightly. “Oh, and please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not myself accusing you of anything, you understand. I am merely trying to help you make your statement a little more—how shall we say—
precise
? This is very strange, I will admit. Not the usual procedure at all but…there is nothing else for it, I think. So this crime, the crime of which you are guilty, is it, madam, perhaps”—and his eyes twinkled with pleasure as if he really were playing a parlor game—“murder?”

Yekaterina Romanovna let out a gasp of confirmation: “Yessss!” For the first time there was a change in the manifestation of her behavior. “Yes, yes, that’s it, murder.” She sobbed, her head quivering as if on a spring.

“Murder, I see. Very good. Or rather, it is not very good. But it is good in the sense that we are getting somewhere. And at least I am saved from the labor of having to go through a whole catalog of crimes and misdemeanors. Murder, you say. May I ask you—this is the form these inquiries take, you understand—may I ask you, whom did you murder?”

Again there was a development in her behavior. Her head stopped shaking, and she held his gaze steadily. “My daughter.”

Porfiry sat up. The excitement he felt was no longer that of a game. “This is a very serious charge to make against yourself, madam. You do understand that, don’t you? How did you kill her?”

The woman shook her head in violent denial. Her teeth were clenched, as if something inside her was determined to prevent her from saying more. Through those clenched teeth she hissed: “I refused to believe her.” The effort of making this admission evidently exhausted her. She fell back into her chair.

“I meant rather, by what means, with what weapon shall we say, did you kill her? That is usually the way with murder. It is essentially a violent crime. There is usually some sort of attack. I would include poison as a weapon here. Perhaps you poisoned her?”

From her sunken position in the seat, she let out a high-pitched, cracking groan. “I accused her.”

“Of what did you accuse her?”

The woman stirred and sat up a little. “I refused to believe in her innocence. But I knew. I
knew
!”

“You’re doing very well, Yekaterina Romanovna. But I need to understand more. If you could take me through what actually happened, the circumstances of your daughter’s death.”

“Oh, she is not dead!” cried Yekaterina Romanovna pleadingly. Her eyes beseeched him.

“Then I do not see how you can have murdered her if she is not dead,” answered Porfiry. He said the words slowly, trying to fathom the truth behind the woman’s contradictory statements.

“I murdered her.” She said this flatly, giving it an irrefutable force.

“Please help me. I need to understand.” A new idea came to Porfiry. “What is your daughter’s name?”

“We have no daughter.” She spoke imperiously, as if announcing a sentence. Her face was set in a grim mask.