Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

'Oh, come now,' Erast Petrovich said in surprise. 'All that's required is to check everyone who arrived in Russia from England and settled in Moscow during the period that interests us. Not even everybody, in fact - only those who are connected or have at some time been connected with medicine. And th-that's all. You'll be surprised when you see how narrow the range of the search is.'

Why indeed, how simple! Moscow was not St Petersburg; how many medical men could have arrived in the old capital from England in November?'

'So let's start checking the new arrivals registered at all the police stations!' said Anisii, leaping to his feet, ready to get straight down to work. 'Only twenty-four inquiries to make! That's where we'll find our friend: in the registers!'

Angelina had missed the beginning of Erast Petrovich's speech, but she had listened to the rest very carefully and she asked a very reasonable question: 'What if this murderer of yours didn't register with the police?'

'It's not very likely' the Chief replied. 'He's a very thorough individual who has lived in one place for a long time and travels freely across Europe. Why would he take the unnecessary risk of infringing the provisions of the law? After all, he is not a political terrorist, or a fugitive convict, but a maniac. All of a maniac's aggression goes into his "idea"; he has no strength left over for any other activities. Usually they are quiet, unobtrusive people and you would never think that they c-carry all the torments of hell around inside their heads ... Please sit down, Tulipov. There's no need to go running off anywhere. What do you think I have been doing all morning, while you were disturbing the dead?' He picked up several sheets of paper, covered in formal clerk's handwriting, off the desk. 'I telephoned the district superintendents and asked them to obtain for me the registration details of everyone who arrived in Moscow directly from England or via any intermediary point. To be on the safe side, I asked for November as well as December - just a precaution: what if Rose Millet was killed by our Ripper after all, and your November discovery, on the contrary, turns out to be the work of some indigenous cut-throat? It is hard to reach any firm conclusions on the pathology of a body that has been lying in the ground for five months, even if the ground was frozen. But those two bodies from December - that's a serious matter.'

'That makes sense,' Anisii agreed. 'The November corpse really wasn't exactly ... Zakharov didn't even want to rummage inside it; he said it was profanation. In November the earth hadn't really frozen yet, so the body had rotted a bit. Oh, I beg your pardon, Angelina Samsonovna!' Tulipov exclaimed, alarmed in case his excessive naturalism had upset her. But apparently his alarm was needless: Angelina had no intention of fainting, and the expression in her grey eyes remained as serious and intent as ever.

'There, you see. But even over two months only thirty-nine people arrived here from England, including, by the way, myself and Angelina Samsonovna. But, with your permission, I won't include the t-two of us in our list.' Erast Petrovich smiled. 'Of the remainder, twenty-three did not stay in Moscow for long and therefore are of no interest to us. That leaves fourteen, of whom only three have any connection with medicine.'

Aha!' Anisii exclaimed avidly.

'Naturally, the first to attract my attention was the doctor of medicine George Seville Lindsey. The Department of Gendarmes keeps him under secret surveillance, as it does all foreigners, so making inquiries could not have been any easier. Alas, Mr Lindsey does not fit the bill. It turned out that before coming to Moscow he spent only one and a half months in his homeland. Before that he was working in India, far from the East End of London. He was offered a position in the Catherine the Great Hospital, and that is why he came here. That leaves two, both Russian. A man and a woman.'

A woman couldn't have done anything like this,' Angelina said firmly. 'There are all sorts of monsters amongst us women too, but hacking stomachs open with a knife - that takes strength. And we women don't like the sight of blood.'

'We are dealing here with a special kind of being, unlike ordinary people,' Fandorin objected. 'This is not a man and it is not a woman, but something like a third sex or, to put it simply, a monster. We can by no means exclude women. Some of them are physically strong too. Not to mention that at a certain level of skill in the use of a scalpel, no special strength is required. For instance' - he glanced at one of his sheets of paper - 'the midwife Elizaveta Nesvitskaya, a spinster twenty-eight years of age, arrived from England via St Petersburg on the nineteenth of November. An unusual individual. At the age of seventeen she spent two years in prison on political charges and was then exiled by administrative order to a colony in the Arkhangelsk province. She fled the country and graduated from the medical faculty of Edinburgh University. Applied to be allowed to return to her motherland. She returned. Her request for her medical diploma to be accepted as valid is under consideration by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in the meantime Nesvitskaya has set herself up as a midwife at the recently opened Morozov Gynaecological Hospital. She is under secret surveillance by the police. According to detectives' reports, although her right to work as a doctor has not yet been confirmed, Nesvitskaya is receiving patients from among the poor and impecunious. The hospital administration turns a blind eye and secretly even encourages her - no one wishes to waste their time on dealing with the poor. That is the information that we p-possess on Nesvitskaya.'

'During the time the Ripper committed his crimes, she was in London - that is one,' Tulipov began summarising. When the crimes were committed in Moscow, she was here - that is two. She possesses medical skills - that is three. From what we know, her personality seems to be unusual and not particularly feminine in its make-up - that is four. Nesvitskaya can certainly not be discounted.'

'Precisely. And in addition to that, let us not forget that in the London murders and in the murder of the spinster Andreichkina there are no indications of the sexual molestation which is usual when the maniac is a man.'

'And who's the other one?' asked Angelina.

'Ivan Stenich. Thirty years old. A former student of the medical faculty of the Moscow Imperial University. Excluded seven years ago "for immoral conduct". God only knows what was meant by that, but it looks as though it might fit our bill all right. He has held several jobs, been treated for psychological illness, travelled around Europe. Arrived in Russia from England on the eleventh of December. Since the New Year he has been working as a male nurse in the Assuage My Sorrows hospital for the insane.'

Tulipov slapped his hand on the table: 'Damned suspicious!'

And so, we have t-two suspects. If neither of them is involved, then we shall follow the line suggested by Angelina Sam-sonovna - that when Jack the Ripper arrived in Moscow he managed to avoid the eyes of the police. And only if we are convinced that this too must be excluded will we then abandon the main hypothesis and start to search for a home-grown Ivan the Ripper who has never been to the East End in his life. Agreed?'

'Yes, but it is the same Jack anyway' Anisii declared with conviction. 'Everything fits.'

'Who do you prefer to deal with, Tulipov - the male nurse or the midwife?' the Chief asked. 'I offer you the right to choose as the martyr of the exhumation.'

'Since this Stenich works in a mental hospital, I have an excellent excuse for making his acquaintance: Sonya,' said Anisii, expressing this apparently perfectly reasonable idea with more vehemence than cold logic required. A man - and one with a history of mental illness at that - appeared a more promising candidate for the Ripper than a runaway revolutionary.