“Scoundrels,” he mumbled, pressing his fists together.
“And where is Mark Ivanovich?” asked Dukovsky quietly.
“I told you not to interfere!” Rusty responded rudely. “You’d better study the floor. This looks like another case in my practice. Evgraf Koozmich,” he addressed the sergeant in a lower voice, “I had a similar case, it was about twenty years ago, you should remember. The murder of merchant Portraitov. The same thing: the scoundrels killed him and dragged the dead body through the window.”
Rusty went to the window, pulled the curtain aside, and carefully lifted the windowpane. It opened.
“It opens. This means it was not locked. Hmm. There are some scratches and traces on the windowsill. Do you see them? Here, a trace from somebody’s knee. Someone came from the outside. We should make a detailed examination of the window.”
“I don’t see anything special on the floor though,” Dukovsky said. “No spots, or scratches. I found only one bruised Swedish match. Here it is! As far as I remember, Mark Ivanovich did not smoke and as a rule, he used safety sulfur matches, not the Swedish ones. This match could be material evidence.”
“Oh, shut up please!” the detective shook his head. “You and your matches! I can’t put up with these clever fellows. Instead of looking for matches, you’d be better off to examine the bed.”
After the examination of the bed, Dukovsky reported:
“I found no blood, or any other suspicious spots. No torn linen either. I saw the signs of somebody’s teeth on the pillow. Besides this, on the bed, I found the remains of a strange liquid, which smells and tastes like beer. The arrangement of the objects on the bed suggests to me that some struggle was going on there.”
“I know without you that there was a struggle! Nobody is asking you about a struggle! Instead of looking for a struggle, you’d better …”
“One boot is here, the other one is missing.”
“Yes, and what?”
“This means that he was strangled when he was taking off his boots. He did not have enough time to take off his second boot, but they …”
“What are you talking about? How do you know that they strangled him?”
“Because there are traces of teeth on the pillow. The pillow itself is very scrambled and thrown two steps away from the bed.”
“You talk too much, you’re like a chatterbox! Go to the garden. You should have a good look at the garden instead of staying here, and I can examine the room better than you.”
When the investigators came into the garden, they searched the grass. The grass under the window was flattened. A patch of thistles under the window was smashed. Dukovsky found several broken branches and a piece of cotton cloth on them. On one of the upturned heads of the flowers, he found a dark-blue woolen thread.
“What color were the clothes he was last seen wearing?” Dukovsky asked Post.
“Yellow.”
“Excellent. This means that they wore blue.”
Several of these thistle blossoms were cut, and carefully wrapped in paper. At that moment, two more people arrived at the scene: the court officer Svistakovsky and the doctor Tutuev. The court officer greeted them, and at the same time started to satisfy his curiosity. The doctor, a gaunt and slim man with fallen eyes, a long nose, and a sharp chin, sat on the stump of the nearby tree, greeting none and asking nothing. He sighed and said,
“And the Austrians are excited again! I don’t understand, what do they want? Well, Austria, again Austria! This is the sphere of your political influence. I hold you responsible for this tension, for this state of affairs …”
The examination of the window brought no results. But the examination of the garden and the bush next to the window gave many useful clues to the detectives. For example, Dukovsky managed to trace a long dark line on the grass. It consisted of a series of spots, and stretched for several steps in the garden. The line ended at the lilac bush with a big brown spot. It was where they found a boot, which matched the one in the bedroom.
“This is old blood,” said Dukovsky, examining the spots.
The doctor, when he heard the word “blood,” stood up lazily, and cast a fast sliding glance at the spots.
“Yes, this is blood.”
“This means that he was not strangled, if it’s blood,” said Rusty, looking mockingly at Dukovsky.
“They strangled him in the bedroom, and here they became afraid that he might come back to life. Therefore, they hit him here with a sharp object. The blood spot under the bush indicates that he was there for a rather long time, while they were looking for means to remove his body from the garden.”
“And what about the boot?”
“It supports my version that he was killed when he was taking off his boots before going to bed. He took off one boot, but the other one, I mean the one in the garden, had only been partially removed. Then it fell off his foot while they dragged the body across the garden.”
“You are smart, I can see that,” Rusty smiled. “You are very clever! And when are you going to stop talking? Instead of talking so much, you should take a sample of the blood-stained grass for analysis.”
After they made a sketch of the garden, the detective went to the estate manager to write a report and to have breakfast. There, they continued their conversation.
“The watch and the money—everything is intact,” Rusty began. “He was apparently not killed for money.”
“And he was killed by an intelligent man too,” inserted Dukovsky.
“How did you come to this conclusion?”
“I have a Swedish match as proof of this. Local farmers don’t use these matches. They are used by the local landlords, and even then, not by everyone. And there was not just one killer, but at least three of them. Two people held him, and the third strangled him. Mr. Banks was a strong man, and the killers should have known this.”
“How could he use his force, if, for example, he was asleep?”
“The killers got him when he was taking off his boots. This means that he was not asleep.”
“Don’t imagine things! Eat your breakfast!”
“It is my understanding,” said the gardener Efrem, when he put the big teapot on the table, “that this dirty deed was done by Nicholas, and none else.”
“It is quite possible,” said Post. “And who is Nicholas?”
“He is the landlord’s butler, your honor,” said Efrem. “Who else but he could do this? He looks like a real robber, your honor! He is so drunk and dissipated that all are disgusted! He always supplied the landlord with vodka, and put him to bed. Who else? And one day, he even boasted in the pub that he could kill his landlord, your honor. This all happened because of the woman named Annie. Her husband is away all the time, making money, and she was the butler’s girlfriend for a while. The landlord noticed her, he liked her, and he paid attention to her. So, Nicholas was very mad about all this. Now he is completely drunk, lying on the kitchen floor. He was crying, lying about how sorry he was that the landlord was dead.”
“And really, this woman Annie can drive everyone mad,” Post said. “She is just a farmer’s wife, a country woman, but once you’ve seen her, you will at once—Even Mark Ivanovich used to call her ‘babe.’ There is something magnetic about her, something …”
“I saw her, I know,” said the detective, blowing his nose into a red handkerchief.
Dukovsky blushed and looked down. The police chief nervously tapped at the saucer with his finger. The police officer coughed and started shuffling papers in his case. It seemed that only the doctor was impervious to the news about Annie.
The detective ordered them to bring in Nicholas. He was a tall young man; his nose was covered with smallpox scars, his chest was thin and fallen; he was dressed in an old coat given to him by the landlord. He came into Post’s room, bowed very low, and stood silently in front of the detective. His face looked sleepy, and his eyes were red from crying. He was so drunk that he could hardly keep his balance.