All the characters are unremarkable, yet sympathetic and attractive people. The hero saves the heroine from a crazed horse; he is strong-willed, and he shows his strong fists at every opportunity.
The sky is wide, the distances are vast, and the vistas are broad, so broad that they are impossible to understand. This, in short, is Nature.
Friends are blond. Enemies are red-headed.
A rich uncle: a liberal or conservative, according to circumstances. His death is more useful to the protagonist than his advice.
An aunt, who lives in a remote provincial town. A doctor with a concerned expression on his face, who gives people hope for the coming health crisis. He has a walking stick with a bulb, and he is bald. And where there is a doctor, there are illnesses; arthritis caused by overwork, migraines, inflammation of the brain. A man wounded in a duel, and advice to go to the spa.
A servant who worked for the old masters and is ready to sacrifice everything for them. He is a very witty fellow.
A dog that can do everything but talk, a parrot, and a nightingale. A summer cottage near Moscow and a mortgaged estate, somewhere in the South. Electricity, which is stuck into the story for no reason.
A bag of the best Italian leather, a china set from Japan, an English leather saddle, a revolver that fires perfectly, an order on the lapel, and a feast of pineapples, champagne, truffles, and oysters.
Accidental overhearing, as a source of great discoveries. A huge number of interjections, and of attempts to use technical terms whenever possible.
Small hints about important circumstances. Very often, no conclusion.
Seven mortal sins at the beginning, a crime in the middle, and a wedding at the end.
The End.
THE SWEDISH MATCH
PART ONE
On the morning of October 6, 19__, a well-dressed young man came into the office of the Second Police Precinct of the City of S. He made a statement to the effect that his master, a retired officer, Mark Ivanovich Banks, had been murdered.
The young man was very excited while he was making his deposition. His hands were trembling, and his eyes were glazed with horror.
“To whom do I have the honor of speaking?” the chief of police asked.
“I am Mr. Post, Banks’s manager. Horticulturist and mechanic.”
The chief of police and two witnesses, who arrived at the scene of the murder together with Mr. Post, discovered the following: a crowd of people was standing next to the house where Banks was killed. News of the murder had dispersed instantaneously across the neighborhood, and because it was the weekend, people from all the neighboring farms and villages had come to have a look. People in the crowd were talking noisily. There were several pale and crying faces. The door to Banks’s bedroom was found to be closed. The key was stuck in the lock from the inside.
“It is obvious that the thieves came into the room through the window,” said Post, when he examined the door.
They went into the garden to have a look at the bedroom window. The window looked gloomy and sinister. It was covered with a faded green curtain. One corner of the curtain was folded back a little, so they could look inside the bedroom.
“Did any one of you look through the window?” asked the police chief.
“No, sir,” said the gardener Efrem, a short, gray-haired man with the face of a retired drill sergeant. “How could we? It is none of our business, sir! We were all afraid.”
“Oh, Mark Ivanovich, Mark Ivanovich!” The police chief sighed as he looked at the window. “I told you that you would finish badly. I told you, my dear, but you did not listen to me. Dissipation is no good.”
“We have to thank Efrem,” said Mr. Post. “He gave us the idea. Without him, we would never have realized it. He was the first to notice that something was wrong around here. This morning, he came to me and said, ‘Why has our landlord been asleep for so long? He has not left his bedroom for this whole week.’ He told me this, and I became dumb as if someone had struck me on my head. It dawned upon me that he had not appeared since last Saturday, and today is Sunday. Seven days, I am not kidding!”
“Yes, poor man.” The police chief sighed again. “He was a clever young man, well educated and kind, with good manners. He was such good company, too! But he was a dissipated man, let him rest in peace! I had expected so much more from him. Hey, Stepan,” he said, addressing one of the witnesses. “Go to my office right now, and send little Andrew to the police precinct. Tell him to file a report! Tell them all that Mark Ivanovich has been murdered. And then go to the prosecutor’s office, tell the man, Why is it taking him so long? He should be here already! And then, as soon as possible, you can go to the detective Nikolai Ermolaevich, and tell him to come here. Wait, I’ll write him a note.”
The police chief put guards around the house, wrote a brief note to the detective, and went to the manager of the estate to have a cup of tea. For the next ten minutes he sat on a stool, carefully biting a lump of sugar and sipping the boiling hot tea.
“Yes,” he said to Post. “There you are. Rich and famous, a really well-off young man. ‘A man loved by the gods,’ as the poet Pushkin used to say. And what happened to him? Nothing! All he did was drinking and womanizing … and, as a result, he is dead.”
“Two hours later, the detective arrived. Nikolai Ermolaevich Rusty (this is the detective’s name) was a tall, strongly built man of about sixty years; he had worked in his profession for nearly a quarter of a century. He was well-known in the local county as an honest, clever and energetic man who loved his work. He arrived at the scene of the crime with his constant companion and assistant, the junior officer Dukovsky, a tall young man of about twenty-six years old.
“Is it true, gentlemen?” started Mr. Rusty, as he entered the Post’s room and hastily shook hands with all of them. “How is it possible? They killed Mark Ivanovich? No, I can’t believe this! It’s im-pos-si-ble!”
“Well, that’s about it.” The police chief sighed.
“Oh my God! I saw him a week ago. Last Friday, I saw him at the local country market. I have to admit, I had a shot of vodka with him!”
“So there you are.” The police chief heaved another deep sigh.
They sighed a few more times, said the few words which people usually say in such cases. Each had a cup of tea, and then they stepped out of the manager’s house.
“Make way!” the police sergeant cried into the crowd. When they entered the landlord’s house, the detective started his investigation from the bedroom door. It was made of pine, painted yellow, and it was not damaged. There were no signs or outstanding marks which could assist the investigation. They decided to break in.
“Gentlemen, please stay outside. Those of you who are not officers, please do not enter!” said the detective, when, after a long period of knocking and cracking the door was opened by dint of axe and chisel. “Please do not enter—this is in the interests of the investigation. Sergeant, don’t let anyone in!”
Rusty, his assistant, and the police chief opened the door and finally entered the bedroom, walking in an undecided manner, one step at a time. There they saw the following. A huge wooden bed with a thick feather mattress stood in front of the only window. A wrinkled blanket lay on the wrinkled mattress. The pillow, in a nice cotton pillowcase, also very wrinkled, lay on the floor. A nickel coin and a silver pocket watch lay on the bedside table. There was a box of sulfur matches next to them. There was no other furniture—only the bed, the table, and one chair. The sergeant looked under the bed and saw about twenty empty liquor bottles, an old straw hat, and a quart of vodka there. There was a boot covered with dust under the table. The detective cast a glance at the room, frowned, and then blushed.