R. Morris - A Vengeful Longing

The elder Virginsky’s lips twitched apprehensively. ‘There is no need to talk like this. Your inheritance is secure, you must know that.’

‘Then let us talk no more of it,’ said Virginsky, with some attempt at magnanimity. ‘Well, I have some news for you,’ he resumed briskly, but immediately regretted his tone and dampened it. ‘It concerns your friend, the gentleman you were visiting the day I met you. Colonel Setochkin.’

‘You know Setochkin?’

‘No. I don’t know him. Not personally, at least.’ One side of Virginsky’s mouth contracted. ‘I am afraid to have to tell you that Colonel Setochkin is dead.’ Virginsky looked down immediately.

‘No!’ cried his father. Out of the corner of his eye, Virginsky noticed his father’s arm float uselessly.

‘I am sorry,’ said Virginsky. He had the sense that he had unleashed something he could not control. To that extent, his apology was sincere. He thought of Porfiry Petrovich, of the power he seemed to draw from such disclosures: it repelled him, and he judged himself loathsome for having coveted it. ‘I had no idea you were such good friends. I have never heard you talk of him.’

‘It is just the shock of it, that’s all,’ said his father. ‘My dear, if you are to deliver such messages in future, it would be as well to adopt a more appropriate demeanour. So, Setochkin is dead. It was his heart, I suppose. But he was still a relatively young man, and he seemed quite healthy the last time we saw him.’

‘He was shot,’ said Virginsky. ‘Murdered. It is one of the cases I am working on with Porfiry Petrovich.’

‘How extraordinary.’ Virginsky senior found a chair and sank into it. His expression clouded, then he looked at his son wonderingly. ‘But this unfortunate event, it is not the reason for your visit, surely?’

‘You are my father, I am your son. Is it not natural that I should visit you? I recollect that you invited me.’ Virginsky looked away, abashed. ‘I merely mentioned Setochkin’s death because I believe you were coming from visiting him that day when I met you. It is just one of those connections that the mind makes.’

‘I see.’ His father’s tone was guarded. ‘Then it is not the case that you suspect me of somehow being involved in Setochkin’s death?’

Virginsky waited perhaps too long before replying. ‘No.’ After a further pause, he added, rather self-consciously, ‘It is merely that it is a striking coincidence. As an investigator, one learns to distrust coincidence.’

‘As an investigator?’ His father seemed to grow in his chair as he loomed forward threateningly. ‘What about as a son?’

Virginsky looked at Natalya Ivanovna. Her beauty was indisputable; his need to confirm it was a compulsion that he felt destroying him. ‘What was your business with Setochkin?’ Virginsky’s voice was cold. He did not look at his father as he asked the question.

‘Has he sent you here to interrogate me, this Porfiry Petrovich of yours?’

‘Porfiry Petrovich does not know I am here. He does not even know of your connection with Setochkin. I have kept that from him. There are other things I have kept from him too. This visit is not part of the official investigation. As you see, I am not in my uniform. I am here as your son. I ask you these questions as your son. Please answer me candidly as my father.’

‘Then I am suspected. By you, at least.’

‘I am trying to keep you out of it. For that reason I must learn as much as possible about your association with this man. If you knew the full details of the case, you would understand why.’

‘Then enlighten me.’

‘I cannot.’

‘I have always been too lenient with you. I listened too much to your mother. And this is how I am repaid.’

‘I would ask you not to speak of my mother in that way. Not here.’ Virginsky’s glance towards Natalya Ivanovna was sullen and pointed.

A related anger held father and son to silence. Natalya Ivanovna’s mediating smile was sweetly pained. ‘This breaks my heart,’ she said, ‘to see the two men I love most dearly at war.’

Virginsky heard his father say: ‘You are right, my dear. Let us talk of other things.’

But it seemed there were no other things left for them to talk of. Virginsky stared, absurdly, at an insignificant point on the floor, as if the fixity of his gaze was holding the room together. In a way it was: he knew that if he looked away from that point, there would be nothing left for him but to leave. Without releasing his gaze, he addressed the floor, his voice charged with aggressive reasonableness: ‘What my father must realise is that my filial loyalty alone will not be enough to protect him from the enquiries that must inevitably ensue once it is discovered that he is an associate of the dead man, and that he visited him the day before his death. He insists that I, as his son, consider him above all suspicion. Very well. I do and I will. However, there are others, more powerful than I, who will be moved by no such familial obligation. I know myself, from bitter experience, what it is to be suspected by them. It is because I wish to preserve him from a similar experience that I have asked a question on my own account. To be under suspicion is indeed unpleasant. To be incarcerated is far worse. I fear that my father, due to his age and habits, would be ill equipped to survive the latter. My belief was that he would prefer the enquiries of a dutiful son to those of an indifferent authority. I am sorry if I was mistaken in this. Good day.’ Virginsky bowed to the point on the floor and began to turn.

‘Sta-ay,’ called Virginsky senior. He managed to charge the elongated word with both contrition and mockery. Virginsky heard his father’s groan as he rose from his chair. ‘Where has it come from, this constraint between us?’

Virginsky’s brows rose and dipped sharply. He allowed the question to remain rhetorical.

‘You speak of your duty,’ continued his father. ‘You speak of your loyalty. But what of your love?’

Virginsky at last looked up from the floor and it was towards Natalya Ivanovna that his gaze directed itself. Her face was horror-struck as she recoiled from him.

‘Father, I cannot answer such a question, other than by my actions. I am able to be of service to you in this current matter. But you must trust me and demonstrate in return that which you demand from me. If you love me, answer my question: what was your business with Setochkin?’ Now Virginsky sought his father’s eyes, only to find them flitting away from him.

‘He had undertaken to act as agent on my behalf in a certain transaction.’

‘What transaction?’

‘A sale.’

‘A sale of what?’

‘A sale of land.’

‘What land?’

‘There’s a small birch coppice that’s getting difficult to manage. The returns are ever-diminishing. Now seemed the right time to sell. And Setochkin said that he knew a potential buyer. So. Why would I kill him? He was acting on my behalf. You could say I needed him.’

Virginsky did not answer.

‘Now may we talk of other things?’ asked his father.

‘Who is this buyer for the birch coppice that Setochkin had found?’

‘Are we back to Setochkin then?’

‘Was a price agreed?’ Virginsky fired out the question, though he had not yet received an answer to his previous one.

‘We were in negotiations.’

‘I understand, of course, that you are in need of funds to support your new life with Natalya Ivanovna.’

‘You have not yet come into your inheritance, Pavel Pavlovich. Therefore I am still in charge of the management of the estate. I am not required to explain my decisions to you, nor to seek your approval for them.’