The doctor’s indignation was justified. He was not exaggerating in the least – on the contrary. A whole night wouldn’t have sufficed for him to vent his spleen on all the goings-on and scandals that had occurred on the Count’s estate. Demoralized by idleness and lawlessness, the servants were perfectly loathsome. There wasn’t one footman who couldn’t have served as the very model of someone who had outstayed his time – and grown fat in the process.
I went off to get some wine. After distributing two or three clouts on the head I managed to obtain both champagne and Valerian drops, to the doctor’s ineffable delight. An hour later* a male nurse arrived from the hospital, bringing all that was necessary.
Pavel Ivanovich succeeded in pouring a tablespoonful of champagne into Olga’s mouth. She tried hard to swallow and groaned. Then they injected her with something that looked like Hofman drops.52
‘Olga Nikolayevna!’ the district doctor shouted, leaning towards her ear. ‘Olga Ni-ko-la-yevna!’
‘It’s too much to expect her to regain consciousness,’ sighed Pavel Ivanych. ‘A great deal of blood has been lost. Besides, the blow on the head with some blunt instrument must have caused concussion.’
It was not for me to decide whether it was concussion or not, but Olga opened her eyes and asked for a drink. The stimulants had worked.
‘Now you can ask her anything you like,’ Pavel Ivanych said, nudging my elbow. ‘Go ahead.’
I went over to the bed… Olga’s eyes were turned on me.
‘Where am I?’ she asked.
‘Olga Nikolayevna!’ I began. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’
For a few seconds Olga looked at me and then she closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she groaned. ‘Yes!’
‘I’m Zinovyev, the investigating magistrate,’ I went on. ‘I had the honour of knowing you and – if you remember – I was even best man at your wedding.’
‘Is it you?’ Olga whispered, holding her left arm out. ‘Sit down.’
‘She’s delirious,’ sighed Screwy.
‘I’m Zinovyev, the investigating magistrate,’ I repeated. ‘Do you remember? I was at the shooting party. How do you feel?’
‘Please restrict yourself to essential questions,’ the doctor whispered. ‘I can’t guarantee that she’ll remain conscious for much longer.’
‘I must ask you to stop lecturing me!’ I retorted, taking offence. ‘I don’t know what to say, Olga Nikolayevna,’ I continued, turning to her. ‘Please try and recall the events of the past day. I’ll help you. At one o’clock you mounted your horse and rode off with the shooting party. The shoot lasted about four hours. Then a halt was made at the edge of the forest… Do you remember?’
‘And you… you killed…’
‘The woodcock? After I finished off the wounded woodcock you frowned and left the main party. You went into the forest.* Now, please try to summon all your strength and stir your memory. While you were walking in the forest you were attacked by some person unknown. I’m asking you as an investigating magistrate – who was it?’
Olga opened her eyes and looked at me.
‘Tell us the name of that man! There are three others here besides me.’
Olga negatively shook her head.
‘You must name him,’ I continued. ‘He will be severely punished. The law will make him pay for his barbarity. He’ll be sent to Siberia†… I’m waiting.’
Olga smiled and negatively shook her head. Further questions led to nothing. I failed to elicit one more word, one more movement from Olga. At a quarter to five she passed away.
XXIII
At about six o’clock in the morning the elder and the witnesses I had requested arrived from the village. To drive out to the scene of the crime was impossible: the rain that had started during the night was still bucketing down. Small puddles had turned into lakes. The leaden sky looked bleak and promised no sun. The soaked trees with their dejectedly drooping branches scattered great showers of heavy spray with every gust of wind. Riding there was out of the question – and perhaps there would have been no point in it anyway: the traces of the crime – bloodstains, human footprints, etc. – had probably been washed away by the rain during the night. But the formalities demanded that the scene of the crime be inspected and I postponed the visit until the police arrived. In the meantime I busied myself with making out a rough report and cross-examining the witnesses. I questioned the gipsies first. Those poor singers had been sitting all night long in the Count’s rooms waiting for horses to take them to the station. But they were not given any horses. The servants sent them to the Count, warning them at the same time that His Excellency had forbidden anyone to be ‘admitted’. They were not even given the samovar they had asked for that morning. Their more than odd, uncertain position in a strange house, where a dead woman was lying, their not knowing when they would be able to leave, the wet, miserable weather – all this reduced those wretched male and female gipsies to such despair that they grew pale and thin in the course of a single night. They wandered from one room to the other, as if scared out of their lives and expecting some stern judgement upon their heads. My questioning only lowered their spirits all the more. In the first place, my lengthy cross-examination delayed their departure from that damned house for ages; secondly, it frightened the lives out of them. When those simple folk concluded that they were strongly suspected of murder they tearfully started assuring me that they weren’t guilty, that they knew nothing at all about it. When Tina saw that I was there in my official capacity she completely forgot our previous relationship, trembled and grew numb with fear when she spoke to me – just like a girl who has been whipped. In reply to my request not to panic and my assurances that I saw them solely as witnesses, assistants of justice, the gipsies announced in one voice that they had never witnessed a thing, that they knew absolutely nothing and that they hoped in future God would free them from any close acquaintance with the legal fraternity.
I asked them which way they had driven from the station, whether they had passed through the forest where the murder had been committed, whether someone had broken off from the main party – even for a short while – and whether they had heard Olga’s heart-rending shriek.* This line of questioning led nowhere. Alarmed by it, the gipsies detailed two young men from the choir and sent them off to the village to hire carts. Those poor devils dearly wanted to get away. Unfortunately for them, there was already much talk in the village about the murder in the forest and those swarthy envoys were looked upon with suspicion, apprehended and brought to me.
Only that evening did the exhausted choir escape from the nightmare and was it able to breathe freely: having hired five peasant carts at three times the proper price they rode away from the Count’s house. Later on they were paid for their visit, but no one paid them for the moral torments they had suffered in the Count’s mansion…
After questioning them I carried out a search in Owlet’s room.†
In her trunks I found piles of every imaginable kind of old woman’s junk, but after sorting through all those shabby bonnets and darned stockings, I found neither money nor valuables that the old crone might have stolen from the Count and his guests. Nor did I find the items that were stolen at some time from Tina. Obviously the old witch had another hiding place, known only to herself.