‘No, not many. We don’t have much use for the really young ones, unlike the textile factories. They lack the strength to operate the heavy machinery our industry requires. However, it is useful to have a number of agile shrimps about the place. They can get inside the machines for cleaning and oiling and such like.’ Smith looked down at the bundle of interrupted childhood. ‘I dare say I have seen his face about the place,’ was all he was prepared to concede.
‘Do you concern yourself at all with their education?’ It was Virginsky from whom this question came, his voice bitter and accusatory.
Smith turned his head sharply from the dead boy and took in the junior magistrate with a coolly assessing glance. ‘They receive all the education they require on the job. What’s the point of teaching them the extent of the empire when all the empire they will see is the inside of the workshop?’
Virginsky seemed stunned into silence by the answer. A flood of colour rushed into his cheeks. Porfiry resumed the questioning, adopting a light conversational tone. ‘I have heard of some factory owners building schoolhouses for their child labourers. That has not been a course of action that the Baird plant considered?’
‘You are right.’
‘May I ask why not?’
‘I am not aware that we are obliged to.’
‘Some owners go beyond their obligations,’ suggested Porfiry, with a strained smile. He sought to keep his composure by a flurry of blinking.
‘I am not the owner. I am answerable to the board. I could not build a schoolhouse even if I wanted to — if the board did not agree to it.’
‘Has such a proposal ever come before the board?’
‘No, it has not. We limit ourselves to the discussion of strictly business matters.’
‘You do not consider the education of your workforce to be a business matter? Might it not have a beneficial effect on productivity, for example?’
‘Quite the contrary. It would only foster discontent and agitation. We have enough trouble with agitators as it is.’ Smith turned sharply to address a fresh cluster of workers who were gathering to view the body. Their faces were pinched with fear. ‘Nothing to see here. Back to work.’ Smith swept his hand upwards to shoo them. Their fear sharpened into hostility but they backed off, albeit slowly, as if making a point of going in their own good time. ‘The more that lot are taught their letters,’ confided Smith to Porfiry, ‘the more of them can read those infernal pamphlets. Destroy everything! That is the latest clarion call, I believe. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?’
‘And yet,’ answered Porfiry thoughtfully, as if he were speaking the words as they occurred to him, without fully grasping where they would lead him. ‘And yet … a society founded on the wilfully maintained ignorance of its largest constituent class, the class on which it depends for its material well-being — such a society, surely, is doomed to failure?’
‘I do not concern myself with society. I concern myself with output,’ answered Smith emphatically, and with a certain grim pleasure. ‘And, frankly, I am surprised to hear you, a magistrate, an upholder of the Tsar’s law, mouth such imbecilities. Why, you are talking like a nihilist! Like a student!’
‘I am surprised to hear it myself,’ admitted Porfiry, with a questioning look towards Virginsky. ‘But there is something about the sight of these dead children that stirs these sentiments to the surface of my consciousness. All the victims have been child factory workers like him. Indeed, is it not true, Pavel Pavlovich, that all were employed by foreign-owned — or substantially foreign-backed — factories?’
‘That is true,’ confirmed Virginsky.
Porfiry turned a mildly reproving gaze on to the factory director. It was met with an indignant glare. ‘Is that what lies behind this? An attempt to blacken foreign capital? Someone would seek to turn the Russian public against honest men like me?’
‘It is another connection. All such connections are inevitably suggestive to the investigator. I fear it will be suggestive to the public too. It is almost as if the mighty industrial machine that powers the empire demanded their deaths. Poor Innokenty was sacrificed to feed the demon.’
‘Fanciful nonsense,’ barked Smith. ‘Worse than the other bilge you spouted.’
‘Why, then, were they killed, Mr Smith? Can you tell me that?’
‘Agitators. It’s all the work of agitators, I’ll wager. Now then, if you have no further questions for me, I will leave you to your … investigations. I have a factory to run.’ With a terse nod, he turned on his heels and stomped away.
‘A charming example of the modern capitalist,’ observed Porfiry.
‘I believe we will make a radical of you yet, Porfiry Petrovich.’
Porfiry sighed as he took out his enamelled cigarette case. ‘More and more, Pavel Pavlovich, I find myself longing for the quiet life. That’s all.’
‘Oblomov.’
‘Perhaps you are right.’ Porfiry lit a cigarette. He watched his exhaled smoke rise slothfully, wisps of pale grey merging with the heavier grey of the sky. All around him, the factory chimneys churned out plumes of black smoke from the furnaces of the plant. He had the sense of the world burning itself up in a frenzy of production and consumption. He turned the cigarette in his fingers and studied it, as if the solution to the crimes he was investigating was contained within its burning paper. ‘Miller brand,’ he observed. ‘Didn’t one of the children work at the Miller tobacco factory?’
‘Yes. Svetlana,’ confirmed Virginsky.
‘Perhaps I should change to a Russian brand. I used to smoke Russian cigarettes but the manufacturer went out of business. We Russians are not natural entrepreneurs, I fear. We lack the necessary energy, perhaps.’
‘We are a nation of Oblomovs, sleeping our way to ruin.’ Virginsky’s tone was condemnatory. ‘Do you now believe there is a political aspect to these murders, too?’
‘It would help us to know where the other children were found, in relation to their workplace. Damn Salytov and his venal fellows. I hope to God there is nothing more than illicit profiteering to their involvement in these cases.’
‘How do we proceed?’
‘I fear we must make enquiries at the Rozhdestvenskaya Free School.’
‘You believe Innokenty was a pupil there?’
Porfiry threw down his cigarette, although it was barely halfway smoked, and ground it into the frozen earth with his heel. He turned and walked away without answering Virginsky’s question.
31 The Kammerjunker
‘I have a fearful presentiment.’ Maria Petrovna’s voice was bleak, her face drained of colour. She closed the classroom door as a wave of volubility crashed over the handful of children arrayed on the benches. ‘Your appearance is always associated in my mind with the most dreadful of sights. I pray for once that you have come with good news, or simply out of friendship.’
Porfiry winced and Virginsky bowed his head, but neither found the words to disabuse her. She was determined anyhow to forestall them in the delivery of their message. Her eyes glistened and a sudden fire rushed to her cheeks, a bitter recollection all at once chasing out any friendly sentiments. ‘I read what they said about Yelena in the newspapers.’ Her voice was grim and recriminatory now. ‘Do you really believe that? Are you honestly accusing her of murdering those children? You did not know her as I did! Is it not enough that she has been cut down by an assassin? Now you must destroy her memory with these vile accusations! How convenient for you, to blame those crimes on a dead woman, who can no longer defend herself and has no champion to protect her memory. Now you can declare your case closed without the necessity of having to prove it. How convenient — and contemptible!’ Maria Petrovna trembled with the force of her anger. And then, suddenly, it seemed to leave her. Her head sagged, as a violent sob convulsed her frame. ‘I’m sorry,’ she relented. ‘I know you must have your reasons. The news came as a great shock to me. That she could have committed such terrible crimes. She must have hated me very much. I can think of no other reason why she would have attacked my children.’