R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

‘What are we looking for, Your Honour?’

‘A letter. It will be in the doctor’s study.’ Virginsky masked his uncertainty with a harsh, decisive tone. Ptitsyn smiled appeasement and led the way into the study, his step quick and untroubled, now that he had a direction to follow.

Ptitsyn made straight for a walnut escritoire and opened it. ‘There are letters here.’ He began to sift through the papers. ‘All sorts of correspondence.’

Virginsky joined him and looked down. He was aware of a frisson of transgression, a sense of himself as a voyeur that was both pleasurable and shaming. And yet, as he reminded himself, he had a right, a duty even, to pry. He tried to will his face into a mask of professional dispassion, as if by so doing he would suppress his inappropriate excitement.

He picked up a sheet at random and read a printed letter in which certain details had been handwritten:

Dear Dr Meyer,

We regret to inform you that your article ‘Notes on the Non-Sexual Transmission of Syphilis in Peasant Communes’ has not been selected for publication in The Russian Journal of Public Health. We thank you for your consideration in submitting to The Russian Journal of Public Health and return your submission herewith.

The note was unsigned, though a handwritten addendum below — Insufficient rigour. Findings not supported. Political. - was initialled K.P.N.

The next letter was in German. It extended over several pages and was signed Deine dich liebende Mutter .

Virginsky glanced up at Ptitsyn, who was watching him intently, his face open and inquisitive. ‘It’s from his mother,’ explained Virginsky.

‘And is that the letter we’re looking for?’

‘No. The letter we are looking for is anonymous. And malicious. It refers to Raisa Ivanovna, the doctor’s wife, in rather nasty terms.’ Virginsky now had in his hands a number of bills, some correspondence from Dr Meyer’s colleagues and superiors, as well as a letter from the St Petersburg College of Physicians concerning membership details. Also in the escritoire were a number of maps of St Petersburg.

‘Perhaps we should take them all in so that the investigating magistrate can decide,’ said Ptitsyn.

‘We do not need Porfiry Petrovich to tell us that none of these is the letter we are looking for.’ Virginsky avoided Ptitsyn’s eye. ‘However, naturally, it is too early at this stage to say what may or may not turn out to be relevant as the case develops. So, of course, everything here will have to be taken away and analysed at length by myself and. . uh. . Porfiry Petrovich.’ Virginsky added the name distractedly. He had spread out one of the city maps and was studying it closely. Someone, presumably Dr Meyer, had added to the map a number of markings: clusters of red dots and ruled black lines, connecting buildings with each other and with the city’s many waterways.

Ptitsyn seemed to lose interest in the escritoire and its contents. He moved away, nosing the air as if he were a bloodhound. Virginsky watched him out of the corner of his eye, distracted by his purposefulness, competitively anxious. He pulled out the drawer of the escritoire and saw the faces of Meyer and his wife staring back at him in dusky monochrome and miniature. There were a number of studio photographs of each of them and even, at the back of the drawer, an albumen print of the baby that had once been Grigory, so faded that the ghostly infant was almost invisible.

‘Apparently, the good doctor was engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with your Polina,’ Virginsky felt himself compelled to say, as he picked up a photograph of Raisa Ivanovna. It must have been taken some years ago: the dark dress she was wearing showed off a slim figure. Her face was undeniably handsome, and still youthful, though a complicated unease shadowed her eyes. But perhaps it was just the discomfort of maintaining her pose for the portrait.

Virginsky watched Ptitsyn to see how he was taking the revelation.

‘It happens,’ was all the young policeman offered. He had dropped to one knee and was running his fingers along the edge of a floorboard.

‘What is it?’ asked Virginsky, anxious and resentful.

‘The board was sticking up on one side. I thought it might be loose. Sometimes, you have to think like them, you know? They don’t always hide things in the obvious places.’ He followed the jutting board to a skirted chair, which he tilted back. ‘Ah now, there’s something here.’ Ptitsyn pulled out an open cardboard box that had been placed beneath the seat, concealed by the chair’s cover. He let the chair drop back down on to its four legs. ‘Is this what he did them in with, do you think?’ asked Ptitsyn, lifting from the box a small bottle made of dense brown glass.

‘I wouldn’t touch that,’ said Virginsky. ‘It may be highly poisonous. ’ Ptitsyn put the bottle back hurriedly. Virginsky took the box off him. He looked inside. As well as the bottle, there was a single sheet of white notepaper and a dead woodlouse. He took out the sheet and read what was written on it. When he had finished, he said to Ptitsyn: ‘But that was just luck. You thought the board was loose. It wasn’t. The board had nothing to do with it. There was no reason why the board should have led you to it.’

‘I found it then, did I?’ said Ptitsyn, unable to keep the grin from his face.

‘Well?’ asked Virginsky impatiently.

Porfiry’s mouth twitched into something that could have been a smile. ‘The regularity of the script is striking,’ he said at last. ‘It is as if it were written by someone who couldn’t help but take pride in his writing, whatever the content.’

‘It reminds me of the passages copied by Grigory,’ commented Virginsky. And this, it seemed, was the source of the impatience in his voice: a desire to have this observation stated.

Porfiry pursed his lips sceptically. He brushed aside a small fly that had settled on the paper, as if it were interested in analysing the letter too. The fly buzzed away and joined two or three others that were frantically circling the ceiling of Porfiry’s chambers. ‘This is a more mature hand, I would say. For me, it brings to mind more the work of an official copyist. It is a slightly relaxed version of the copperplate calligraphy that we are used to seeing on department communiqués. What is striking to me is that the person who wrote this has made no effort to conceal his — or indeed her — skill. There are many people who can write badly, but fewer who could produce a script of this quality. And while it is possible for a good copyist to conceal their ability, a bad one cannot pretend to a greater level of competence than they possess. Is it arrogance or negligence that has prevented our letter-writer from taking pains to disguise his skill, I wonder?’ Porfiry folded the letter along its crease. He rose sharply and regarded Virginsky across his desk with a look of keen excitement. ‘I think it’s time we had another chat with Dr Meyer.’

Meyer was brought to the same interview room at the Shestaya Street Police Bureau in which Porfiry and Virginsky had seen him two days ago. His physical and mental deterioration was marked. Sweat plastered his hair to his scalp and showed in patches of dampness through his jacket. His face was as pale as a ghost’s, apart from the dark sunken rings around his eyes. There was hardly anything to him, and if it hadn’t been for the two politseisky holding on to him, it seemed that he would have floated away. They planted him firmly in the seat, releasing him reluctantly, almost fearfully.

When he saw the magistrates across the table, a flicker of energy came to his eyes. He licked his teeth to ask: ‘Well? Have you arrested him?’