He did as he was directed – indeed, what else could he do?
It was now possible at least to understand what he was reading, and perhaps it would have been better if his voice had remained inaudible. For the poems he had chosen were altogether too romantic, too painfully sensitive, for the modern taste. Suddenly people remembered why no one read Karmazinov any longer. It was not that the poems were badly done – Karmazinov had always been acknowledged to be a fine writer – it was just that they seemed superfluous. He was felt to be a man who had had his day and now they were impatient for him to clear the stage.
Strangely, Karmazinov seemed to share this sentiment, and was as relieved as anyone when he came to the end of his reading.
The applause, apart from Maria’s strenuous clapping, was perfunctory and brief. Karmazinov fought his way through the complicated drapes, which conspired to prolong his humiliation.
And so the evening progressed. The musical interludes were on the whole more enthusiastically received than the readings. One young writer bucked the trend, winning favour by reading a series of crude lampoons of well-known literary figures including, in an outrageous exhibition of bad form, Karmazinov. However, the audience still appeared cowed by Maria’s earlier rebuke. Occasional warning glances from her were enough to keep a lid on any further unpleasantness. There was no doubt, though, that the prevailing mood of impatience only increased as the entertainments wore on.
At last the curtains parted on a scene from Prince Bykov’s play, and the audience readied itself for the imminent reappearance of Yelena Filippovna. Indeed there was some disappointment that she wasn’t present from the outset.
The narrow stage appeared crowded by the disposition of props and actors upon it. A young man in a Bukhara dressing gown lay sprawled across a chaise longue. Another young man, more formally dressed, was seated at a writing desk, pen in hand. A third man, evidently a servant of some kind, stood to one side. In a gesture of great irony, this part was taken by the epicene Prince Bykov himself. A more unlikely manservant it was impossible to imagine. He performed his part with relish, even though all he had to do was take a letter from the young man at the desk and quit the stage.
The two actors left on stage delivered their stagnant lines without conviction. It took some time to understand that they were discussing the disappearance of a young lady with whom the young man on the chaise longue was in love. The audience became more enlivened and engaged at this, sensing that this would be the part taken by Yelena Filippovna. But still the interminable exchange of platitudes ground on.
Then suddenly the dramatic genius of Prince Bykov seemed to show itself at last. A piercing off-stage scream cut short the stodgy dialogue. The actors’ performances were transformed. They became, in a word, authentic. The two men were hanging on what would happen next as much as any member of the audience. And when Aglaia Filippovna burst out from the wings, one arm extended back as she pointed at an unseen something, they gave the most truthful portrayals of shock ever seen on a St Petersburg stage.
The
coup de théâtre
came when Aglaia cried out: ‘She’s dead. My sister’s dead. He’s killed her!’ Her eyes spun upwards, filling with white. A kind of wave went through her as she fell. Her arms and head rose, as if resisting. But the ultramarine dress that had sat so uneasily on her pulled her down, as though it were made from some impossibly heavy material.
The two actors stood frozen to the spot. No one knew what to do next or how to interpret what had happened.
Maria could not get out of her mind the image of Aglaia’s eyes at the moment before her collapse. There was something so raw, so intimate, something almost obscene in that exposure, that she knew it could not be an act.
‘Help her! Somebody help her!’ She was on her feet again. Her words released the two actors from their suspended state. They rushed to Aglaia Filippovna. Unable to rouse her, one called for a doctor while the other communicated urgently with stagehands. The curtains came together and the painted screen descended.
The audience broke into uproar.
White camellias, a red thread, and seven rings
Porfiry Petrovich looked down at the body of the young woman. She was frozen in an angular pose. Her arms retained the tension with which they had been lashing out at the last moment, acutely bent at the elbows and wrists, fingers splayed to grasp life as it leeched from her. Her head was sharply skewed to one side, as if in the throes of angry denial. She lay half on her side, her body cork-screwed. It seemed she had died writhing to lift herself out of the swamp of blood that encircled her.
As always in these circumstances, Porfiry’s gaze was drawn to the wound. Of course, his interest was professional, but it occurred to him that his choice of profession might have been influenced by a need to confront such sights. Or perhaps it was a profoundly human compulsion, little more than the vulgar urge to gawp at the scene of an overturned carriage. He had merely elevated morbid curiosity into a calling. The morose cast of his musings could be excused by the fact that he had been wrenched from uneasy dreams of his father by the frantic hammering of police officers sent to rouse him. Usually when he dreamt of his parents, the mood of the dream was joyful. These were dreams of reunion that he did not want to end. The simpler familial relationships of childhood were restored and there was only love between them. Whatever complications there had been in life were blissfully forgotten. But this night’s
dreams were shot through with an obscure sense of guilt that he couldn’t shake off, but was reluctant to probe.
Undoubtedly, Zakhar’s death had something to do with it.
It was almost as if he took solace in the wound.
It was a deep, neat incision across the full breadth of her throat. The pumping force of life had burst through it, pushing the severed flesh apart. The front of her dress was sodden, the black silk heavily darkened in a sweeping arc that extended below her midriff. Her blood drenched the Turkish rug on which she lay, obscuring the rich reds with its muddy cast. Porfiry saw the wound as a second mouth, its inert lips slightly parted as if it were trying to tell him something. But it spoke only blood.
The body was in a small, windowless room in the basement of Naryskin Palace, close enough to the tiny theatre to serve as a dressing room. Three narrow, elaborately moulded doors on one wall gave onto a wardrobe, which Porfiry had already discovered to be hung with dusty clothes. As far as he could tell from a cursory examination, they were male clothes. The room was furnished with a dressing table, which was cluttered with the accoutrements of stage make-up. Next to it was a small table bearing a wash basin and jug. The water appeared fresh and unused. There were a number of burning candles on both surfaces, adding to the light provided by a hissing gas lamp mounted on one wall. There were two mirrors: one over the dressing table, and another, full length and gilt framed, mounted on the wall opposite the wardrobe. An embroidered screen closed off one corner of the room, with a small sofa placed in front of it. All this was enough to give the room a cramped air.
A bouquet of white camellias, still in the florist’s wrapping, lay on the sofa. The card read: ‘I will always love you, M.’
His gaze still fixed on the wound, Porfiry breathed in deeply. The air was perfumed, though the flowers of course gave off no scent. But Porfiry could discern the smell of the butcher’s slab, the dark odour unstoppered by violence.
The door opened but he did not look round. He knew by the other’s patience that it was Virginsky.
‘It is a long time since those were fashionable,’ said Porfiry, at last looking up from the dead girl. In answer to Virginsky’s quizzically gathered brows, he gestured vaguely at the flowers. ‘Who is M, I wonder?’
‘An officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, by the name of Mizinchikov, was seen to have an argument with the dead woman – Yelena Filippovna Polenova. She slapped his face. Several witnesses saw him running away from this room shortly after the dead woman’s sister, Aglaia Filippovna Polenova, raised the alarm. All the witnesses testified independently to the fact that Mizinchikov’s uniform was spattered with blood.’
‘Spattered?’
‘Yes.’
‘That is the word they all used? Independently?’
‘Not necessarily. I am providing you with a digest. You may read the witness statements in full, of course.’
‘And what does … this officer Mizinchikov have to say for himself?’
‘Captain Mizinchikov is not available to be interviewed.’
At this unsurprising information, Porfiry raised his eyebrows showily and blinked his consternation. ‘I understood that the owner of the house – Prince Naryskin, is it not? – had
the doors of the palace secured to prevent anyone from leaving before the police arrived.’
‘It seems that Captain Mizinchikov had already effected his escape.’
Porfiry sighed. ‘That is very tiresome of him and will not help his cause when finally we catch up with him. I trust we have put out a description of him. Exceptionally tall, dark-haired, bearded, not particularly good-looking …’
‘How did you know?’ Virginsky’s tone was suspicious rather than amazed.
‘You did say he was an officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you not observed the practice amongst Russian Guards regiments of selecting recruits according to certain physical attributes? The Semyenovsky Regiment, for example, is known for fair hair and good looks. Whilst the men and officers of the Preobrazhensky tend to be exceptionally tall and dark-haired individuals with beards. I believe they are generally held to be the least handsome of the regiments, by those who notice such things.’
‘I see. I had never noticed. I am not much interested in military affairs.’
‘You should be, Pavel Pavlovich. There are sixty thousand soldiers garrisoned in St Petersburg, making every tenth inhabitant a soldier. If one takes an interest in St Petersburg – as our work demands we must – one must therefore take an interest in military affairs. A passing knowledge of the city’s regiments will aid you considerably in your duties. I presume you have dispatched some men to Kirochnaya, 35. That is his address, is it not?’
‘So I have been informed.’ There was a flinch of annoyance from Virginsky.
‘Naturally. It is the address of the Officers’ House of the Preobrazhensky. Of course, he won’t be there. Even so, I imagine we will at least find some of his fellow officers, who may or may not be able to shed light on his whereabouts.’
Porfiry was peering into the large mirror with his head angled back, evidently to allow himself the best possible view of the interior of his nostrils. ‘I wonder who else the prince has allowed to absent themselves.’ Porfiry was now tentatively fingering a row of transparent whiskers growing out of the top of one ear. ‘When a man reaches a certain age he finds himself faced with an abundance of hair in places he had not expected it.’ He angled his head down to examine the pale stubble that covered his bulbous skull, and pursed his lips in satisfaction. ‘And a dearth of hair in those places he might reasonably hope for it.’
‘I did not take you for a man too much concerned with his own appearance, Porfiry Petrovich,’ remarked Virginsky with a sly smile.
‘Oh, it is not on my own account, you understand,’ threw out Porfiry casually, bending forward to scrutinise something on the surface of the mirror.
‘Not on your own account? Do you mean to say—?’
‘I wonder what
that
is,’ murmured Porfiry absently, before turning his back on his own reflection. Virginsky took his superior’s place before the mirror and frowned as he scanned its surface, looking for whatever had caught Porfiry’s eye.
‘What do you think he meant by it?’ said Porfiry, opening one of the wardrobe doors. The sight of the discarded clothes, still exactly as before, reminded him that he had already
looked inside. He sniffed the air in the wardrobe suspiciously, then closed the door and prowled the room like a caged animal.
‘Who? By what?’ Virginsky reluctantly gave up his examination of the mirror to keep a watchful eye on Porfiry.
‘M. By giving her camellias. White camellias.’
‘Some ladies like white, others prefer red.’
‘There is a special significance to the red ones, I believe.’
‘Yes, but that is a signal for the ladies to give to their admirers.’
Virginsky’s remark drew Porfiry up sharply. He looked down at the card. ‘Brilliant, Pavel Pavlovich. Quite brilliant.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Could not the card equally be read as being addressed to M, as from him? Could it not be her protestation of undying love to him?’
‘Possibly.’
‘As well as an advertisement of her sexual availability. Ironic, is it not? She announced herself free from menstrual blood, only to be drenched in fatal blood.’ Porfiry caught a knot of uncertainty tightening Virginsky’s brows. ‘You’re not convinced? But it was your idea.’
‘I cannot honestly take credit for it.’
‘The original
dame aux camelias
was a prostitute, was she not?’
‘A courtesan.’
‘A high-class prostitute. But a prostitute nonetheless. Perhaps that was the significance of the flowers, if they were as we originally thought, a gift from M to her: you are a whore but I will always love you.’
‘You think the flowers are important?’
‘I think the flowers are here. In the same room as a dead girl. What was she? Some kind of actress?’
‘No, not really. This was an amateur affair.’ Virginsky paused a moment before going on with uncharacteristic diffidence: ‘Porfiry Petrovich … Maria Petrovna is here.’
‘Maria Petrovna? The charming young lady whom I met yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a remarkable coincidence.’
‘I do not like to hear you say that, Porfiry Petrovich. I know you do not believe in coincidence.’
Porfiry said nothing.
‘However, it is not so strange,’ Virginsky went on. ‘This evening was organised as a benefit gala for her school.’