“Satisfied?” he asked, with a half turn to the official witnesses. They communicated in dumb show that they were. “Really? Are you trying to catch me out, gentlemen? That’s very mischievous of you. Very mischievous indeed.”
Dr. Pervoyedov nodded to the diener. The assistant picked up a glass tumbler and crossed to one of the high windows of the pathology lab. A slab of winter pressed against it, its vast blankness even swallowing the black iron bars on the outside. The diener swung open an inner pane, and the air became suddenly sharp and hostile, a splinter of the great destructive force that was ravaging the city. He worked the tumbler between the bars, scooping up the icy snow that had settled on the ledge. His movements, as he closed the window, had a nervous haste to them. He put Porfiry in mind of a jailer sealing the cell of a dangerous prisoner.
Dr. Pervoyedov attached a small receiving vessel to the end of the retort’s long spout. He now bedded this into the tumbler of snow. He shook his head and chuckled to himself. “They tried to catch me out. Imagine! They thought I would forget to collect the distillate.” When he was satisfied with the arrangement, he went back to the table where the empty stomach lay in a pool of slops.
With a deft and decisive manipulation, he turned the stomach through, revealing the furrowed musculature of its interior.
“The stomach lining shows no sign of being subject to any corrosive action.” Dr. Pervoyedov sounded almost disappointed.
“Does that rule out prussic acid?” asked Porfiry anxiously.
Dr. Pervoyedov glanced at the official witnesses, as if to say, Why don’t you ask them? But he contained his resentment. “No, no. Not at all. Oh no. Although it does rule out almost any other poison you might care to mention. In some ways, it makes prussic acid more likely. If poison has been used at all, that is. We must wait for the real test, however.”
“And how long will that be?”
Tiny globules of condensation were beginning to show inside the receiving vessel.
“Not long now. Not long at all, Porfiry Petrovich.”
WHAT DID HE DO, this man, in life?” asked Dr. Pervoyedov, as he removed the receiving vessel from the retort. Barely more than a meniscus of clear liquor had collected. Dr. Pervoyedov rotated the vessel as if he were appreciating a fine cognac.
“He was an actor once, I believe,” said Porfiry.
The doctor raised his eyebrows. He poured the liquid into a test tube, which he placed in a wooden rack. He turned briskly to the diener. “I will need sulfate of iron, solution of potassa, and muriatic acid.”
The diener nodded and crossed to a cabinet. He brought the bottles over one by one. Using both hands to tilt and steady the first of them, Pervoyedov tipped out a small quantity of glassy pale green granules onto a circle of filtration paper. He held the paper over the test tube and tapped until one of the grains fell in. He waited for it to dissolve, then added a few drops of the solution of potassa. He stirred the contents with a glass rod, his gaze challenging the official witnesses. “Let us see if, in death, he has any talent for ventriloquism.”
He unscrewed the cap of the last bottle and inserted the nozzle of a long pipette. Holding this over the test tube, he released a rapid drizzle of droplets.
All at once, the contents of the test tube turned inky blue.
“Well, there you have it,” said Dr. Pervoyedov. “Govorov speaks. Or rather, his stomach does.”
The Lilac Stationery
Porfiry Petrovich extinguished the cigarette and threw it behind him as the door to 17 Bolshaya Morskaya Street was opened. Stepping inside, he felt a sudden unpleasant taste rampage through his mouth, metallic and cloyingly sweet. It was so strong, he felt for a moment he would be sick.
“What’s that? Something in the air?” he asked Katya.
She looked at him neutrally. “We have been fumigating the mattresses. Marfa Denisovna has complained of being bitten.”
“Fumigating? What do you use?”
“Did you really come here to talk about fumigating methods?”
“No. I came to talk to Anna Alexandrovna.”
“Very well, I shall tell her you’re here.”
Porfiry Petrovich admired the smooth curve of Anna Alexandrovna’s back as he followed her into the pale blue drawing room. There is something that surprises and saddens in every part of her, he thought.
“May I offer you some tea?” As she turned to him, he saw that this quality was most concentrated in her eyes.
Porfiry refused with a smile and a minute shake of his head. “I don’t wish to detain you any more than is necessary,” he said. “There are, however, one or two questions I must ask, in the light of some new evidence.”
“New evidence?” Anna Alexandrovna’s hand shook as she set down the redundant glass.
“Do you know a man called Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov?”
Relief expanded Anna Alexandrovna’s beauty, chasing out the frown. She shook her head vehemently. She is relieved because she is able to answer honestly, thought Porfiry.
“He was an associate of Stepan Sergeyevich’s,” explained Porfiry. “He is dead now. Murdered. Poisoned, I believe, by the administration of the same substance that killed Borya.”
“But I thought Borya hanged himself? That’s what we read in the gazettes.”
“That is what someone wished us to believe. Until recently I thought that person was Govorov. Now I must look for someone else.”
“And you have come here to look?” Anna Alexandrovna’s alarm contained a note of remonstration.
“I have some further questions, that’s all. I wish to understand, clearly, fully, the argument between Borya and Goryanchikov.”
Porfiry noted Anna Alexandrovna’s flinch under the force of his uncompromising gaze.
“You’ve asked me about this before. Why are you asking me again? I told you everything I knew then.”
“Did you?”
“Yes!” Her neck flushed patchily with the heat of her insistence. Her instinct for defiance showed in her eyes. But she couldn’t hold the look.
“What was Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov to you?” asked Porfiry abruptly.
“A lodger,” she protested with outrage, then insisted: “He lodged in my house.”
“And Borya?”
“My yardkeeper.”
“Is that all?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That the argument was about you.”
“You are wrong.” Her response was calmer than he might have expected.
Porfiry Petrovich bowed but kept his fluttering gaze fixed on her.
“Stepan Sergeyevich…” began Anna Alexandrovna but lost heart. Her voice cracked.
“The place where their bodies were found, in Petrovsky Park-”
Anna Alexandrovna shook her head, tight-lipped, forbidding.
Porfiry continued, “Last time we spoke, when I mentioned Petrovsky Park…”
“What of it?”
“I noticed…it was as if I had…”
“What?”
“I suppose the expression is ‘touched a nerve.’”
“Is that so?”
“What happened there, in Petrovsky Park?”
“Is it really necessary to go into this?”
“I’m afraid so. Please, there’s no need to be afraid of the truth. I realize…”
“What do you realize, Porfiry Petrovich?”
“These matters may be painful to you.”
She answered him first with a narrowing of her eyes. “We went there once. In the summer. There was a performance in the open-air theater. We picnicked in the park beforehand.”