R. Morris: The Gentle Axe

“Alexander Grigorevich,” insisted Porfiry, “someone left a note for me.”

“What of it?” said Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov at last, meeting Porfiry’s inquiring gaze with something close to a sneer.

More than anything, Porfiry felt a weary disappointment. He had no time for impertinence, and not because he was one to insist on the honor due his rank. “Alexander Grigorevich, you are a man and I am a man, and to that extent we are equals. I will treat you with respect; all I ask is that you do the same.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I won’t lie to you. I won’t look down on you. I won’t play games with you.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, but I don’t understand what bearing all this has.”

“This note,” said Porfiry, laying the envelope down on the counter. His voice was calm, but he was not smiling. “I ask you again. Did you see who delivered it?”

Zamyotov took a moment to study the envelope. He picked it up and turned it over and then placed it back on the counter. “No,” he said, barely suppressing the pleasure he took from this little charade.

Porfiry snatched up the letter and bowed to the disconsolate woman, whose lamentations had not let up throughout his exchange with Zamyotov.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” the head clerk gurgled gleefully. “This woman wishes to see you. ”

Porfiry hesitated before answering the clerk directly, without looking at the tearful woman. “I can’t. Not now. An urgent matter has arisen. I must talk to Nikodim Fomich. You must tell her to come back tomorrow.”

Porfiry braced himself, expecting the pitch and intensity of her plaints to increase at this announcement. But there was an alarming constancy to her behavior. It was as if she hadn’t heard his decision, or didn’t understand it. Porfiry realized it would be hard to get rid of her.

“Alexander Grigorevich, take a statement from her…” Perhaps there was some desire to punish the head clerk in this demand. Porfiry did not discount the possibility.

“A statement? I?”

“Yes, a statement. I will give it my full attention when I have seen Nikodim Fomich. If she wishes to wait, that’s up to her, but I advise her to come back tomorrow.”

“Porfiry Petrovich, with the greatest respect,” began the clerk in a tone that contradicted his words, “what kind of a statement do you expect me to take from”-he gestured toward the woman, her face contorted by suffering- “that?”

“You will do your best. I am confident that it will be more than good enough.”

" It’s not much to go on.” Chief Superintendent Nikodim Fomich Maximov dropped the note onto his desk. He leaned back in his chair, both hands behind his head, and looked up at the high ceiling of his office, enjoying the scale of the apartment his position entitled him to. He had learned the habit of ignoring the odd flaws in its grandeur, the peeling paint here and there, the stains of damp beneath the window, and the cracks in the plaster. For a moment his lips pursed ironically, as if an amusing thought had just occurred to him. He was a handsome man and well liked. Both of these attributes were important to him: he had an awareness of his own ability to soothe, merely by his presence. Porfiry wondered if this awareness did not sometimes affect his friend’s judgment. Nikodim Fomich sometimes gave the impression of valuing an easy life above all else. “I mean to say, how do we know it’s not a hoax?”

“Of course, I agree, it’s probably a hoax.” Under the new rules, Porfiry had the authority to command the police to pursue any matter he deemed worthy of investigation. But it was a sensitive area. It was only two years ago that control of individual cases had been taken from the police and given over to the newly created office of investigating magistrate. And Porfiry preferred to work with the cooperation of his colleagues in the police bureau, rather than with their resentful subordination. Besides, he knew that the best way to change the chief ’s mind was to agree with him. “I felt I had a responsibility to show it to you, that is all.” Porfiry reached to take the note back.

“But if it’s not a hoax?” asked Nikodim Fomich quickly. He leaned forward and grabbed the note before Porfiry could retrieve it. “If there really has been a case of ‘Murder in Petrovsky Park’?” The senior police officer read the note with a heavily ironical intonation. He turned the sheet over several times. But those four words were all that was written on its entire surface. Constant rotation did not cause any more to appear. “If it were signed, it would be more credible.”

“And there would be someone held responsible if it turned out to be a hoax,” suggested Porfiry.

“Well, of course, a hoaxer would never sign it.”

“So it must be a hoax,” insisted Porfiry brightly, as if the matter were settled.

“Not necessarily,” demurred Nikodim Fomich, who suddenly found himself in the position of arguing with his own original point of view. “It could have been written by someone involved in the crime in some way.”

Porfiry gave Nikodim Fomich a sudden look of astonishment, as if this idea had never occurred to him. The chief superintendent frowned. Porfiry’s play-acting annoyed him. He knew the investigator well enough not to be taken in. “We’ll have the local boys look into it,” he decided. “If they turn up anything, we’ll go to the prokuror with it.”

“Yes, yes, I agree. There is no need to trouble Yaroslav Nikolaevich until we have something definite to go on. However, if I might make a suggestion?”

Nikodim Fomich nodded for Porfiry to go on.

“Offer one of your men to assist. An officer to oversee the search.”

“Isn’t that a little proprietorial?”

“The note was delivered here, to this bureau.”

“Did you have anyone in mind?” the chief superintendent asked.

“Lieutenant Salytov, perhaps.”

“Salytov? Old Gunpowder?” Nikodim Fomich laughed with easy good humor. “At least it will get him out of the bureau for a few hours.”

Again Porfiry’s expression signified surprise at an idea that couldn’t have been further from his mind.

“Don’t overdo it, Porfiry Petrovich,” said the chief superintendent, delivering the warning with a complicit wink.

"She’s still here,” called out Zamyotov accusingly, as Porfiry crossed the receiving hall. He indicated the tearful woman with a tilt of his head. “She has asked specifically for the investigating magistrate,” Zamyotov confided to his fingernails, with a smirk.

“Have you taken a statement from her, as I requested?” asked Porfiry. His gaze was detached as he studied the woman. He noted that the quality and level of her keening was unchanged. He was not one of those men who are afraid to confront the tears of women, or who shy from the pain of life. But her distress embarrassed him because he felt there was something almost artificial about it. He suspected it of being a ploy, a ploy she had committed herself to and now couldn’t get out of. He felt if he could say to her, in a friendly, confiding tone, “You don’t have to keep that up, you know,” she would instantly become reasonable. He bowed his head slightly in an attempt to engage her flitting glance with a smile. But when her eyes did meet his, for only the briefest moment, he experienced a physical sense of depression, as if something heavy and poisonous had entered his soul. He realized that her distress was not artificial after all. But it was alien to her, an infection that had taken her over. It was this terrible illness that was weeping so mechanically, perhaps even the illness that was insisting on seeing the investigating magistrate.