Exceptionally, there appeared someone whose presence there, at least at first sight, simply could not be explained; nor could it be ignored.
The woman clearly fell into that category. Porfiry saw her immediately as he came out of his chambers. She was dressed in male working clothes, several sizes too big for her: the sleeves of the corduroy jacket flapped uselessly over her hands and she continually tripped over the trailing trouser legs. Her hair had been roughly cropped and her face was smeared with soot. There would have been something stagey, almost comical, about her crude attempt to pass herself off as a man, had it not been for the desolate detachment of her eyes and the wild, harsh keening that vibrated in her throat. It would not have been true to say those eyes took in nothing of their surroundings. But it seemed as though she saw the world as something to which she could not be reconciled.
‘Who is she?’ Porfiry asked of Zamyotov.
The clerk at his desk half-turned towards her disdainfully. ‘God knows. Some specimen of riff-raff. The tide of human misery washes up all sorts in here. Ask Pavel Pavlovich. He takes an interest in such cases.’
Virginsky was indeed watching the woman with keen interest, at the head of a small huddle of officials — policemen, magistrates and clerks — who seemed drawn to her distress but unsure of how to react to it. Without doubt it was a disturbance and therefore needed to be curtailed. Compassion for the woman, too, may have stirred in the breasts of some of those watching and that perhaps should have been enough to prompt one of them to intervene. And yet there was something compelling about the spectacle that made them reluctant to end it. At the same time, there was a raw power to the emotion on display that commanded respect. The feeling seemed to be that it had to be allowed to play itself out.
The first of them to approach her was Virginsky. He did so not in a movement of restraint, but of consolation. His face seemed to implore her, for mercy’s sake, to spare herself. An arm was extended, ready to reach protectively around her shoulder. But the woman backed away from him, her eyes glaring with terror and distrust. Her gaze darted frantically about, seeking a bolt hole. But instead she caught sight of something that only added to her agitation. Her eyes now had the wild panic of a trapped animal. Her keening rose to a sharp shriek of negation. She thrust out an arm in front of her, the drooping cuff of the jacket hardly mitigating the undeniable accusation in the gesture. Porfiry followed the line of her arm. She was pointing out Verkhotsev and his fellow gendarmes, conspicuous in their sky-blue uniforms.
Verkhotsev’s face was grim. He seemed shaken by the woman’s attention. His companions, however, affected what seemed to Porfiry to be a cynical hilarity. The gendarmes had not been part of the group watching the woman, but had been making their way across the hall, having left Porfiry’s chambers moments before. Something had made them glance towards the woman just as she found them and pointed them out. And they, for some reason, were held frozen by the trajectory of her accusation.
While the woman was distracted by the gendarmes, Virginsky was able to make his move. He closed in on her, stepping to the side and coming back in from behind. His arm was on her shoulder now and his head was close to hers, his mouth whispering comfort into her ear.
She broke off from her wailing; her arm fell lifelessly. She twisted to face Virginsky, at the same time working herself free from his hold. Her lips began to move steadily, releasing a low torrent of speech. Porfiry could not make it out from where he stood but he could sense the force and mettle of her words, each one a gleaming hard bullet of bitterness. The volume of her speech, in part lament, in part complaint, rose until she was declaiming to the whole hall.
‘They killed him. They waited for him and took him away and killed him. My Grisha, my dear sweet Grisha. What did he ever do to them that they should kill him? What did he ever do to anyone? He submitted a petition! That’s what! That was his crime! He submitted a petition on behalf of his fellow workers, requesting, politely — respectful, too, so respectful you would not believe it … yes, requesting that the factory fulfil its legal obligations. The Tsar himself required the factory to put in place the improvements. But they failed to do it. So my Grisha submitted a petition. And this, he was told, was a crime. This, they said, was political agitation. They took him away. He was sent to the mines in the Olonets region. To Petrozavodsk. Torn away from his family, his four little ones. I was left alone to bring them up. They took a father from his children because he submitted a petition! That was ten years ago. Last month, our youngest died. I managed to get word to Grisha. He ran away from the mines. He should not have done it but his child was dead! He came back to Petersburg. He waited and waited before coming to see me. But they were watching for him all the time. They did not relent. And all because he submitted a petition! At last he could wait no longer, though I urged him through friends to stay away. Not because I didn’t want to see him. It was what I longed for more than anything. It was for his sake I told him not to come. But he needed to see me. He needed to hold his children again after all these years. He would not be kept away. He could not come so far without seeing us. But they were waiting for him. And they took him from me again. And they killed him. And now they say he is a murderer. That he killed those children. But why would he kill children? He loved children. He was a child himself when he entered the factory. Thirteen years old. He had never hurt anyone in his life. He was a gentle soul. The gentlest. They called him a criminal, a political, but the only crime he committed before he ran away from the mines was to submit a petition. He was only asking them to fulfil their obligations. And for that, they killed him!’
Her arms swept out towards where the gendarmes had been but they were gone now. Her voice had reached an unsustainable pitch. The only place she could take it was once again into the keen of pure suffering.
Porfiry approached the woman. Virginsky, who was again trying to encompass her grief with his arms, turned to him with an accusatory glare. ‘And this is the justice we serve!’ he hissed between clenched teeth.
Porfiry widened his eyes in warning. ‘Take her into my chambers. See if you can get anything like a statement from her. I’ll see you here later.’ And with a tight-lipped smile, Porfiry bowed his tense farewell.
35 The Tsar commands
‘Are you content?
The Tsar’s expression in answer was clouded and pensive. ‘Content?’ He gave a half-laugh, not quite bitter, but certainly regretful. ‘That is not a question I am often asked, Porfiry Petrovich. It is assumed that I must be content. I am the tsar, after all. How can I not be? But …’ He looked down at the rows of photographs on his desk. ‘Families, Porfiry Petrovich. They are a great source of discontent. And I am pater familias to a whole empire.’
‘With respect, Your Majesty, I simply meant to ask, are you content to accept this Murin as the murderer of the children?’
‘This is the view of the Third Section?’
‘It is more than their view. It is their … invention.’
The Tsar held Porfiry with a piercing look of challenge, under the force of which Porfiry launched a volley of defensive blinking.
‘What is the alternative?’ asked the Tsar at last. ‘What other suspects do you have?’