Now Osip Maximovich faced him and shook his head.
“At that point, perhaps,” continued Porfiry, “or at some point soon after, you showed him the contents of the suitcase. That is to say, the dead body of Stepan Sergeyevich Goryanchikov. You told him about the filthy advances the dwarf had made toward his beloved Anna Alexandrovna, a lustful attention that was now being transferred to Sofiya Sergeyevna. And now you revealed the terrible act you claimed Anna Alexandrovna had been driven to commit in order to prevent an even worse crime. In absolute terror, Borya swears that he will do whatever you ask of him. ‘We must make it look like suicide,’ you say. ‘Help me tie this rope around this tree. Lift me up. That’s right. Put me on your shoulders. That’s right. That’s good. I just have to tie this. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. You can put me down now. My goodness, you’re shaking, Borya. Here, have some vodka, I’ve brought some vodka.’ And when he offered your flask back to you, you naturally declined. ‘One of us must keep a clear head,’ you say. Was it something like that, Osip Maximovich?”
“What? All because I am supposed to have published a few smutty novels?”
“No. Not all because of that. I’m getting to the real reason. Would you like me to continue?”
“You can’t prove any of this.” Osip Maximovich seemed almost saddened to have to point this out to Porfiry.
“After Borya was strung up and dead, you used his axe to smash in Goryanchikov’s head. You then slipped the axe into the yardkeeper’s belt. While all this was going on, you had the real Konstantin Kirillovich Govorov incriminate Lilya. Why? In order to get her out of the way. Deportation to Siberia with her daughter. Isn’t that what you wanted? Unhappily for Lilya and Vera, unhappily for Zoya too, Govorov failed.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who is this Lilya?”
“A prostitute, now. But she had not always been. Once she was the daughter of a respectable family. But I’ll come to that. You killed Govorov because he was your creature. Not just the distribution agent for your pornographic publications. It was he who found you Ratazyayev. It was he you had entrusted to get rid of Lilya. Like all servants, he knew too much about his master. He knew enough to ruin you. Perhaps he was beginning to blackmail you. Or perhaps you had simply lost patience with him because he’d failed you. It no doubt irked you that you were forced to take matters into your own hands concerning Lilya and the child. You were forced to destroy all the evidence of your earlier crime, the rape of Lilya. You killed Lilya. And you killed her daughter, little Vera-your daughter too.”
Osip Maximovich held his index finger vertically over his lips, as if to silence Porfiry. The side of his finger touched the tip of his nose and nestled momentarily in the indentation there.
“Yes. You are her father. You may deny it, but it’s written in your features, and it was written in hers too. Her nose, in particular, it has the distinctive cleft that is evident on your own. Or rather I should say, it had. There is nothing left of her nose now.”
Osip Maximovich dropped his hand hastily. “I wish I knew what you were talking about.”
“And it’s also written in Goryanchikov’s text. You are the founder of the Athene imprint. You could be said to be the father of Athene-or Minerva, to give her Roman name. According to Goryanchikov, in a reference to Jupiter’s bastards, the father of Minerva is also the father of Fides. A name we might translate in Russian as Vera.”
“Really, this is the worst kind of argument, made from piling speculation on top of speculation. You take one away, and the whole edifice tumbles.”
“It’s interesting coincidence though, isn’t it, that the name on Lilya’s prostitution license is Semenova. Very similar to your family name of Simonov. Perhaps she considered herself in some way to be almost your wife, a kind of bastard wife with a bastardized name. It was you who had taken her virginity.”
“Or perhaps it was simply her name, and as you say, it is a coincidence.”
“I have learned not to trust coincidences.”
“Instead you put your faith in wild guesswork! Even if all this is true, which I by no means admit, you can’t prove a word of it. What is supposed to be my motive in all this?”
“To maintain your respectability, which became acute once you had conceived the plan to marry Anna Alexandrovna.”
“What a strange way to put it! A plan indeed!”
“Yes, a plan. Because you had a hidden purpose in wanting to marry Anna Alexandrovna. You’re marrying her not because you love her but because she has something you covet.”
“I don’t need her money!”
“I’m not talking about her money. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Goryanchikov found out about your relationship to Lilya from Lilya herself. He was a client of hers. He came to you and confronted you with it. Perhaps he even demanded that you make amends to Lilya. That would be typical of a freethinking liberal, full of all the modern ideas, one perhaps with an especially heightened sense of society’s injustice, given his own personal circumstances. Perhaps Goryanchikov threatened to tell Anna Alexandrovna everything. That you had raped Lilya-or would you rather I used the word seduced? At any rate you abandoned her. She was pregnant. You denied that it was anything to do with you. Her family cast her off. Were you engaged to her? Did you break off the engagement when you learned of her condition? No one could blame you. You had been promised a virgin. But look at the hussy. Of course no one listened to Lilya’s side of the story, if she had the courage to voice it. So you had to imagine Anna Alexandrovna hearing all this from Stepan Sergeyevich. It didn’t bear thinking about. It couldn’t be allowed to happen. Not to mention the fact that you are a pornographer, although I admit that rather pales into insignificance next to your other crimes. If Anna Alexandrovna knew the truth about you, if she were able to see your character in its true light, I wonder if she would be as willing to marry you? And if she called off the marriage, that would be an immense disappointment to you, wouldn’t it, Osip Maximovich?”
“What are you talking about? I mean, yes, of course I would be disappointed. But why do you say it in that obnoxious way?”
“You’re not marrying Anna Alexandrovna for herself. You’re marrying her for her daughter. That’s why Goryanchikov wrote, ‘The father of Faith will be the destroyer of Wisdom.’ Faith is a translation of Fides, which we have already identified as Vera, Lilya’s daughter, your daughter. And as for Wisdom-well, the meaning of the name Sofiya is of course ‘wisdom.’ Goryanchikov is clearly indicating that you are a threat to Sofiya. You have a taste for young girls, don’t you, Osip Maximovich? And that taste has dictated the photographs that Govorov produced for you. You even had him photograph Lilya, even after all that had happened. Though I expect that by then she had already lost her charms as far as you were concerned.”
Osip Maximovich said nothing.
“But you’re right,” said Porfiry. “I can’t prove any of this. This is just a conversation between two former seminarians. I’ve let myself get carried away. I’ve indulged in wild surmises. So I must leave you a free man. And besides, we already have a killer. A conveniently dead one, we are led to believe. So you are lucky-if indeed anything that I have said is true. Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky has written a suicide note, which, if genuine, appears to be a confession of guilt. A bottle of laudanum, similar to bottles found in his room, was found at the scene of the latest crime. He was even seen to have blood on his hands. It was clever of you to change your method, by the way, to switch to the axe for these final murders. Not the weapon of a gentleman. But the weapon of peasants-and deranged students, as you once hinted to me. The fact is, however, that anyone can buy an axe at a hardware store. The note spoke of his intention to kill himself by throwing himself under a troika. And someone more or less answering his description has been killed in that way. It seems to be a closed case. The possession of his soul by Goryanchikov also provides a motive there. Virginsky may say he doesn’t believe in the soul, but we shouldn’t forget he is a Russian.”