R. Morris - A Razor Wrapped in Silk

Porfiry closed his eyes and lay very still, as if his own immobility could influence the objects around him. He swallowed back a liquid reflux. It felt as though the sturgeon had come back to life and was swimming around in his stomach.

He was not entirely sure how he had arrived back at the apartment, that part of the evening being somewhat of a blank. But the empirical evidence was conclusive — here he was in his bed, after all! — and perhaps it was fruitless to enquire beyond that.

Porfiry thought instead of Princess Yevgenia Andreevna Naryskina. He felt now that he understood her strange inertia. It was a form of sympathetic magic; she sought to control through utter passivity. He thought also of Aglaia Filippovna, equally immobile. Was she held by her coma, or did she use it to exercise a hold over others? It was certainly true that it had effectively stalled his investigation.

He opened his eyes. The room was still spinning. He came to the conclusion that lying motionless achieved nothing. But now it seemed he was incapable of doing anything else.

He was about to lean over to extinguish the light, or at least to attempt that manoeuvre, when he became aware of the sounds of movement in the apartment. Footsteps. Slava. He even thought that he could hear a stifled whisper.

Now he remembered coming in. He had stopped outside Slava’s room, swaying as he strained to listen. There had been silence then, though he had the sense that it was a false silence, a suspension of frenzied activity prompted by his arrival. He had an image of Slava holding his breath, waiting for his employer to move on before resuming whatever he had been doing.

The unnatural silence had struck him as ominous. He had never known Slava to hold himself so still. It came close to unnerving him.

Now, beyond any doubt, he heard footsteps outside his door. He was not afraid. He was ready for whatever might happen. Better than that, he was drunk. He twisted his torso to dim the lamp. He wanted to give the impression that he was asleep when the intruder entered.

He closed his eyes. A wave of serenity relaxed his whole being. Within a few seconds — in less time than that, in the space between seconds — pretending to be asleep had passed over into actual sleep.

His eyes shot open in panic. A shadowy form stood over him. A limb of the shadow broke out and swept down towards his throat. A glint of steel flashed in the dimmed lamp light. Porfiry’s hands seemed to be made of lead. He was powerless to lift them. The flashing metal met no resistance until it struck his neck. A scream of fury and hatred and surprise and then it was all over.

The scream told him everything. It also sobered him up completely.

It was a woman’s scream.

Porfiry propelled himself upwards at the shadow. He met little resistance. She — for it was without doubt a woman — was slight of build and entirely lacking in strength. Her weapon had fallen uselessly from her hand as soon as she had landed the blow. His hands gripped skin and bone, slippery with warm liquid. A spasm of animal tension passed from her into him and then he felt her body collapse and he found that he was having to hold her up. He pulled her to him, letting his body take her weight as he wrapped one arm around her shoulder as if in an embrace.

The door burst open and Slava came in holding aloft a candle. The woman’s face was hidden against the chest of the man she had just attacked, but her hair was revealed to be an intensely black and unruly mass. Porfiry felt her frail body shake in convulsive sobs.

‘Good heavens, Porfiry Petrovich, you have a woman in your room!’ Slava made the observation with a salacious leer.

‘There is no need to feign surprise. You must have let her in.’

‘Well, yes. She assured me she was a friend of yours. You were not here. She said she would wait. She …’ Slava hesitated, momentarily embarrassed.

‘She made it worth your while,’ suggested Porfiry bluntly.

‘I took pity on her.’

‘You hid her in your room.’

‘That’s true,’ conceded Slava. ‘She wanted to surprise you. So she said. I am not a prude. We are all human beings. Subject to human needs and urges. I take the scientific, rather than the moral, approach. I am a man of the new generation.’

‘Shut up.’

‘But I had to intervene when I heard the scream. The scream did not reflect well on you, Porfiry Petrovich.’

‘She tried to kill me!’

‘So it was your scream?’

‘No!’ cried Porfiry in exasperation. ‘It was her scream. I dare say she did not expect me to be wearing this.’ Porfiry felt at the stiff leather collar around his neck with one hand, holding his assailant close to him with the other.

‘It is an unusual item of nocturnal apparel. You wear it for what reason?’

‘For protection, of course! It was given to me by an officer of the Third Section, to protect me from an attack by you .’ Porfiry gave the final words an indignant emphasis.

‘By me? But why would I wish to attack you?’

‘I believed you to be a revolutionary assassin.’

‘But Porfiry Petrovich, that’s not true!’

‘Then what are you, Slava?’

‘What am I? I am your manservant.’

‘There is something else.’

‘Is that blood? Are you hurt? Should I rouse a doctor?’

‘It is not my blood. It is hers. I do not believe it is serious. She appears to have nicked her hand on the blade of the razor when it struck the collar and flew out of her grip.’

‘She has a razor? Sensational! A magistrate attacked in his bed by a razor-wielding beauty. It is even more sensational than I had hoped.’

‘So that’s it. You’re not a revolutionary. You’re not a Third Section agent. You’re a damned journalist!’

‘Now now. Less of the damned. That’s not very nice, in front of a lady.’

‘She attempted to murder me. And that is not the worst of her crimes. She had better get used to the word.’

‘Who is she?’

Porfiry looked down at the crown of black hair. He leaned forward so that her inert head fell away from his chest and her face was revealed. ‘Aglaia Filippovna.’

Her eyes were closed, as if she were still in the bed in the Naryskin Palace, sunk in her comatose refuge.

‘You are still my servant, I believe,’ said Porfiry to Slava. ‘You will go into the bureau and rouse the duty sergeant on the night desk. Tell him that I have apprehended the murderer of Yelena Filippovna and the three children, Dmitri Krasotkin, Artur Smurov and Svetlana Chisova.’

‘She?’

‘Yes. It’s true, is it not, Aglaia Filippovna? You killed the children and then you killed your sister. What’s more, you tried to make it look like your sister was the murderer of the children by wearing her ring when you strangled the children.’

Aglaia’s eyes opened. ‘Yelena? Is Yelena here?’

‘Yelena is dead, Aglaia Filippovna — as you well know. This is all play-acting. There has been so much play-acting in this case. I am worn out with it all.’

Her eyes held his for a moment. He looked into them to see if he could find any explanation for the crimes he was sure she had committed. But there was only colour, a colour as bright and alluring as a gemstone, and as remorseless.

‘How extraordinary, Porfiry Petrovich!’ declared Nikodim Fomich. He stared at the magistrate in amazement, as if he could hardly believe his eyes. ‘There’s not a scratch on you! Blessed saints preserve you! There you are, sitting at your desk as if nothing had happened! How you had the foresight to wear that leather collar around your neck, I shall never know.’