R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

‘You’re an actress?’

‘Hardly, darling. How would I manage the lines?’ More deep laughter rippled the pearls of her necklace. ‘Unless it were Racine, of course,’ she added seriously. ‘Or Molière.’ Her naked shoulders shook in an inexplicable convulsion. ‘No. I’m a dancer. There’s no need to look like that. But, yes, there comes a point in a girl’s career when she must start to think about retirement.’

‘And Alyosha was your future, after retirement?’

‘He was one possible future, I suppose.’ Alphonsine seemed to regard Porfiry with a deeply thoughtful gaze. ‘Do you like the dance, darling?’

‘We are not here to talk about me,’ said Porfiry, managing somehow not to look at Virginsky.

‘I used to do many dances for Alyosha alone.’

‘Do you know a friend of Colonel Setochkin’s by the name of Tatyana Vakhrameva?’

Alphonsine clicked her tongue distastefully. ‘Did she kill him? I would not be at all surprised. She was very jealous.’

Now Porfiry allowed himself to look at Virginsky, who nodded slightly back.

‘And such a temper on the girl!’ Alphonsine was evidently encouraged by the effect of her words on the two men.

‘I see. And did you ever witness any scenes between Colonel Setochkin and Tatyana?’

‘There were always scenes. Last night, for example. After the show, Alyosha and I were dining in a private room at a restaurant.’

‘Which restaurant?’

‘The Cubat on Bolshaya Morskaya Street.’

‘And what happened?’

‘It was all too ridiculous.’ Alphonsine became fascinated by her cigarette.

‘Please.’

She blinked irritably and at last met Porfiry’s eye. ‘Somehow she found out where we were. She burst in and. . it is sufficient to say, the waiters had to be called to remove her.’

‘She became violent?’

‘Not violent. Just ridiculous.’ After a beat, she added, ‘Which is far worse.’ She hid her smile in her colluding fan.

‘Good God!’ said Virginsky, inflating his cheeks. He flinched away from the source of the stench that assailed them, the three leaking barrels standing against one wall of the courtyard. The well was filled with intoxicated flies that buzzed angrily at them, jealous and protective.

‘What a rare privilege,’ said Porfiry, ‘to have a balcony overlooking this.’ He looked up at the back of Setochkin’s apartment building, at the one wall from which a few rickety-looking wrought-iron balconies projected. Streaks of rust marked the masonry beneath them. ‘It is something in which we specialise in Petersburg, concealing decaying yards behind splendid facades.

Perhaps it stands as a metaphor for something peculiarly Russian.’ He pointed up at a fourth-floor balconied window in which one pane was open. ‘That must be his.’ There was a balcony on the window next to it, and balconies on the two windows above them, but none beneath.

‘What are we looking for?’

‘It is important to get the lie of the land, to consider every means of access to and from a murder scene.’

‘But the balcony door was locked from the inside. Surely that rules out the possibility of the murderer escaping through it?’

Porfiry did not answer immediately. ‘Oh, incontestably,’ he replied at last. He shook his head despondently when he turned back to Virginsky. ‘We have no choice but to take him in. Of all the imaginable explanations, it is the least impossible.’

‘Congratulations!’ Chief Superintendent Nikodim Fomich Maximov gave his face an ironic smile as he poked it around the door to Porfiry’s chambers.

‘For what?’ Porfiry looked up from behind his desk with an expression of genuine confusion.

‘For solving two murder cases in as many days.’

‘For one thing, it has been longer than two days. And for another, I am not convinced they are solved.’

Nikodim Fomich’s ironic smile widened into a beaming grin. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

‘What are you implying, Nikodim Fomich?’

The policeman looked over his shoulder gleefully then came into the room, closing the door behind him. His open, amiable face registered good-natured surprise when he saw Virginsky on Porfiry’s fake leather sofa. ‘Good morning to you, Pavel Pavlovich. I heard you had joined the service. A case of poacher turned gamekeeper, is it?’

‘I cannot imagine what you mean. Your jest makes it sound as if I was once a criminal. I was never charged with any crime, merely suspected. And wrongly arrested.’

‘Of course, of course. A very important distinction, I’m sure,’ said Nikodim Fomich, winking at Porfiry. ‘One can always count on you, Porfiry Petrovich, to eschew the obvious in preference for the obscure.’

‘On the contrary, as I have explained to my young colleague here, the obvious should never be overlooked. I would be perfectly happy to accept both Dr Meyer and Ruslan Vladimirovich Vakhramev as the culprits in their respective cases were it not for a rather singular coincidence. As you know, I do not believe in coincidence. That which appears to be a coincidence very often turns out to be a connection.’

‘And what is the coincidence linking these two cases?’

‘Each of the suspects was sent an anonymous letter maligning their victim.’

‘But you found no such letter in Setochkin’s study,’ Nikodim Fomich pointed out. His tone was blithe, untouched by any real perplexity. ‘Are we not forced to conclude that Vakhramev invented this detail?’

‘Why should he?’ objected Porfiry. ‘And besides, even if it is invented, it is still a coincidence — that he should choose to invent the existence of an anonymous letter.’

‘But if there was a letter, how was it removed from the room? That is the heart of the mystery, is it not?’

‘I have no theory as to that,’ Porfiry answered forlornly. ‘I expect that there will turn out to be some perfectly simple and even prosaic explanation. Of course, it could still be in the room. It is simply that your officers have not found it.’

‘If it is there, I feel sure Lieutenant Salytov will uncover it. Whatever else one may say about the Firecracker, he is a first-rate man to have on a crime scene.’

‘I grant you that. However, sometimes, the hardest objects to find are those that are hidden in the open.’

‘Did you not look for it yourself?’ Nikodim Fomich asked disingenuously.

‘I preferred to leave it to the police officers on the scene. There were enough of them, after all.’

‘Someone took it then. That is the obvious inference. But who? The manservant?’

‘It is possible,’ conceded Porfiry doubtfully. ‘If he killed Setochkin, he would naturally want to incriminate Vakhramev. The removal of the letter casts doubt on Vakhramev’s testimony. He cannot be believed about the letter, because there plainly is no letter. Therefore he cannot be believed about anything, including his denial of murder.’

‘So it was the manservant?’

‘I sincerely doubt it. He was in the kitchen with the cook when the gun was fired.’

‘Ah, but there could be a conspiracy here.’ Nikodim Fomich’s eyes narrowed with cunning.

‘I agree, they do seem rather close. However, I am not convinced. ’

‘Well, at least you found a letter at the Meyers’,’ said Nikodim Fomich brightly. ‘Or rather, young Ptitsyn found it.’

‘He was lucky,’ said Virginsky.

‘I hear he is very often lucky. It is a useful talent for a policeman — or an investigating magistrate — to cultivate. Any news on the substance that was found with it?’

‘According to Dr Pervoyedov, the bottle contained morphine. It was as I thought,’ said Porfiry.