R. Morris - The Gentle Axe

“But it is impossible!” insisted Salytov crossly.

“No, patently it is possible.” Porfiry’s insistence was calm. “That is the first logically inevitable deduction we can make. It has happened, therefore it is possible. The actual is incontrovertibly possible.”

Salytov shook his head impatiently.

“Think about it, Ilya Petrovich.”

“You have worked it out?”

“A logical conclusion has forced itself on me.”

“How? How could you have…from this?”

“Perhaps I have an unfair advantage over you. As I said, I have met this gentleman before.”

“In the pawnbroker’s. What of it?”

“He impressed me with a dramatic recitation from Gogol’s The Government Inspector. He was once an actor, you see. His style was very natural. He seemed to become the character he was playing.”

Salytov’s face clouded in confusion. He looked from Porfiry down to the body, then back to Porfiry. “But why?”

Porfiry shrugged. He had another cigarette stub to dispose of. Tolkachenko steadfastly ignored his eye. “One thing at a time, Ilya Petrovich. One thing at a time.”

Porfiry looked out the window of the prokuror ’s chambers, down on to Gorokhovaya Street. He wanted very much to smoke.

So he was gazing out of the window as a distraction. The streetlamps were lit, chains of illumination strung across the early morning gloom. Behind him he heard the riffle of papers and the prokuror ’s deep sighs.

Porfiry turned to see Prokuror Liputin close the report he had submitted. It contained statements taken from Tolkachenko and Iakov Borodonich, together with a formal request from Porfiry for a medical examination to be conducted on the body now confirmed to be that of Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov.

Liputin’s expression was not encouraging.

“So, Porfiry Petrovich, you truly believe that this constitutes sufficient grounds for an application of habeas corpus?”

“Indeed I do, your excellency. I would not have troubled you with the matter otherwise.”

Liputin screwed up his nose dismissively. “The man died alone. In a locked room. In your report, you yourself state that there was no evidence of an attack. No blood, no wounds, no bruises. The epidermis is intact.”

“I stated there was no forensic evidence of attack. However, the yardkeeper testified that he heard a struggle.”

“No, no, no! We can’t base a case on what someone thinks he heard through a locked door. Especially when it is not consistent with what is logically possible.”

“But it is consistent with what is logically possible,” insisted Porfiry. “If we suppose that Govorov was struggling not with a human assailant but with a chemical one.”

Liputin masked his confusion with a frown of annoyance and shook his head impatiently.

“I suspect poisoning, your excellency, as in the case of-”

“You’re not going to bring up the yardkeeper, are you?” cried the prokuror in an irritable drawl. “As you know, that case is closed.”

“Leaving that aside, there is the dead man’s connection to the missing actor, Ratazyayev. An autopsy would determine-”

“But are we really justified in seeking an autopsy? Is it not more likely that Govorov simply died from natural causes?”

“It is certainly a possibility. Though it would be a strange coincidence given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” Liputin’s look of distaste suggested that he immediately regretted asking the question.

“As you will have read in the relevant statement, the yardkeeper heard two people enter the building.”

“So he says. He could simply have been mistaken. As for his tale of two voices inside the apartment, that is simply not sustainable.”

“I agree. Given that the windows were locked from the inside and given also Tolkachenko’s constant presence outside the locked door, the presence of a second person in Govorov’s apartment is without doubt logically impossible.”

“You agree?” Liputin seemed more surprised by this than by any aspect of the case before him. It was evidently something he needed to confirm: “You agree?” he asked again.

“I agree.”

The startled bristling of Liputin’s unruly eyebrows settled into a suspicious scowl. “In that case, how do you explain-?”

“The two voices in the flat?”

Prokuror Liputin nodded anxiously.

“Govorov was an actor, a skilled mimic. It is my belief that he was talking to himself. It is likely that he was drunk. If he had been poisoned, he was possibly also raving. We all rehearse or reenact arguments in our heads. Perhaps he was simply vocalizing the process.”

“Exactly! You have explained it just as I would myself. Apart from the poisoning. I would not have hypothesized poisoning. It was just a drunken actor raving, preliminary to the extreme moment.”

“But you are overlooking the mysterious individual on the stairs, whose presence was mentioned by both witnesses. Tolkachenko said that his voice sounded familiar. When pressed on this, he claimed that it was the same as the other voice he had heard in the flat, the voice that was not Govorov’s. Or, if my theory is correct, the voice that Govorov was mimicking.”

“What does that prove?” demanded Liputin antagonistically.

“It proves nothing. It suggests, perhaps, that Govorov had just been conversing with this individual and was playing the scene again, this time taking both parts. Perhaps rewriting the script so that he got the better of his interlocutor. In all likelihood, the two men had parted company at Govorov’s door. But for some reason the mysterious man did not leave the building. He went up to the next landing and waited. What was he waiting for? Possibly for the sound of Govorov’s fall.”

“Perhaps this, possibly that, in all likelihood the other-”

“Very well. I will confine myself to those things I know for certain. The words that Govorov spoke, in his own voice, through the door to Tolkachenko. ‘It’s not me who’s the murderer.’ This is not simply a protestation of innocence. It is also the beginning of an accusation. It suggests he knows who the real murderer is. Providing someone with a motive for killing him. A reasonable supposition would be the individual waiting on the stairs.”

“But you are forgetting one thing, Porfiry Petrovich. There is no real murderer because there has been no real murder. What murder? Not the dwarf, I hope? Because you know very well that the man who killed the dwarf died by his own hand.”

“But the new evidence-”

“The new evidence concerned the disappearance of Ratazyayev. Do you have evidence that Ratazyayev has been murdered? Did his body turn up? If so, I am surprised you did not inform me of such a significant development.” The prokuror couldn’t help smirking at the cleverness of his satire.

“At the very least, in the case of the sudden demise of an otherwise healthy individual in the prime of his life-”

“That hardly describes this fellow Govorov.”

“-the law requires we establish cause of death. A medical examination is required for that.”

“A medical examination is not necessary for every old soak who drinks himself into the ground. Your own report mentions the empty bottle found near the body.”

“But what if we were wrong to dismiss Dr. Pervoyedov’s findings concerning the cause of death in the case of the yardkeeper? Let us allow, for one moment, that Borya was poisoned with contaminated vodka. Do we now have another instance of the same crime? Is this a modus operandi? Will it come out, will it be something we read about in the newspapers, that in our eagerness to close that case, we allowed a murderer to kill again? It is too late to prevent Govorov’s death. But imagine the scandal there would be if we made the same mistake again.”