I shall not give my report here – the preliminary evidence from my inspection. It’s very long – what’s more, I’ve forgotten most of it. I shall give it in brief only, just the main details. First of all I described the condition in which I found Olga and my cross-examination of her, down to the very last detail. From this examination it was obvious that Olga had been fully conscious when she answered me and had deliberately concealed the murderer’s name. She did not want the murderer to be punished and this inevitably leads one to suppose that the criminal was near and dear to her.
The inspection of the clothes that I had carried out with the district police officer (who soon turned up) provided a great deal of evidence. The jacket of her riding habit (of velvet with silk lining) was still damp. The right side, with the hole made by the dagger, was soaked in blood and in places was covered with clotted blood. The bleeding had been severe and it was a wonder that Olga hadn’t died on the spot. The left side was also bloodstained. The left sleeve was torn at the shoulder and wrist. The two top buttons had been torn off and we didn’t find them during the inspection. The black kashmir skirt of the riding habit was found in a dreadfully crumpled state – this had happened when Olga was carried from the forest to the carriage and from there to her bed. Then it had been pulled off, bundled up anyhow and shoved under the bed. It was torn at the belt. This lengthwise tear, which was about six inches long, had probably occurred when the body was being conveyed and pulled along. It could also have been made when she was alive. Olga disliked mending, didn’t know to whom to give the skirt for repair and might have concealed the tear under her coat. I think that there was no evidence here of the work of a frenzied, maniacal criminal, as the deputy prosecutor later stressed in his speech. The right section of the belt and the right pocket were soaked in blood. The handkerchief and glove that were lying in this pocket resembled two shapeless, rust-coloured lumps. The whole skirt, from belt to hem, was spattered with bloodstains of varying shapes and sizes. Most of them were the imprints of the bloodstained fingers and palms (as it later transpired at the examination) of the coachmen and footmen who had conveyed Olga. The chemise was covered in blood, chiefly on the right side, where there was a hole produced by a sharp instrument. And similarly, as with the jacket, there were tears along the left shoulder and near the wrist. The cuff was half torn off.
The items that Olga had been wearing – a gold watch, a long gold chain, a diamond brooch, earrings, rings and a purse with silver coins – were found with the clothes. Clearly the criminal had not been governed by mercenary motives.
The results of the post-mortem, carried out in my presence by Screwy and the district doctor the day after Olga’s death, culminated in an extremely lengthy report, the gist of which I give here. On external examination the following injuries were found by the doctors. On the left side of the head, at the suture of the temporal and parietal bones, was a one-and-a-half inch wound that extended to the bone. The edges of the wound were neither smooth nor straight… it had been inflicted by a blunt instrument, most probably, as we later decided, by the haft of the dagger. Extending across the rear half of the neck, level with the cervical vertebrae, was a red line in the form of a circle. On the entire length of this stripe there were found lesions to the skin and slight bruising. On the left arm, about an inch above the wrist, were four blue patches: one on the back and three on the palmar side. They had been caused by pressure, most likely from fingers. This last fact was further confirmed by the discovery of a small scratch made by a fingernail in one of the patches. Corresponding to the area where these patches were found (the reader will remember), the left sleeve of the jacket had been torn off and the left sleeve of her chemise was half torn off… Between the fourth and fifth ribs, on an imaginary vertical line drawn downwards, from the middle of the armpit, there was a gaping wound, about an inch long. Its edges were smooth, as if they had been cut, and were steeped in both thin and coagulated blood. It was a deep wound and had been made by a sharp weapon. As was evident from the preliminary data that had been gathered, it was made by a dagger whose width corresponded exactly to the size of the wound. The internal examination revealed injuries to the right lung and pleura, inflammation of the lung and haemorrhage of the pleural cavity.
As far as I can remember, the doctors came to the following approximate conclusions: a) death was caused by anaemia following significant blood loss. The blood loss was explained by the presence of a gaping wound on the right side of the chest; b) the head wound must be considered a serious injury, but the chest wound was undoubtedly fatal; this latter must be taken as the immediate cause of death; c) the head wound had been inflicted by a blunt instrument, but the chest wound by a sharp and most probably two-edged blade; d) none of the above described wounds could have been self-inflicted; e) there was no apparent attempt at rape.
In order not to shelve matters and later repeat myself, I shall immediately convey to the reader the picture I formed of the crime, created from my first impressions after the inspection, two or three cross-examinations and the reading of the postmortem report.
When Olga parted from the main company, she went for a stroll in the forest. Either day-dreaming or surrendering herself to melancholy thoughts (the reader will recall her mood that fateful evening), she strayed into the depths of the forest. There she met her murderer. When she was standing under the trees, deep in thought, a man came up to her and started talking to her. There was nothing suspicious about him, otherwise she would have cried out for help – but her cries wouldn’t have been of the heart-rending variety. After a few words with her, the murderer seized her left arm – so violently, that he tore the sleeves of her jacket and blouse and left marks in the form of those four patches. At this point it is possible that she produced the shriek heard by the company – she shrieked from pain – and evidently after she had read the murderer’s intentions from his face. Whether he wanted to stop her screaming again, or perhaps under the influence of evil feelings, he grabbed her by the front of her dress, near the collar, to which the two torn-off top buttons and the red stripe found by the doctors bear witness. Grasping at her chest and shaking her, the murderer pulled off the golden chain she had been wearing around her neck. The stripe was caused by friction and the tightening of the chain. Then the murderer struck her on the head with some blunt instrument – a stick, for example, or perhaps even the haft of the dagger that was hanging on Olga’s belt. Then, in a fit of frenzy, or finding that one wound wasn’t enough, he bared the dagger and plunged it into her right side with great force: I say with great force, since the dagger was blunt.
Such was the sombre aspect of the picture that I was able to paint on the basis of the above-mentioned data. The question – who was the murderer? – was clearly not difficult and solved itself. Firstly, the murderer was not ruled by mercenary motives but by something else. Therefore there was no need to suspect some stray tramp or ruffians who had been fishing on the lake. The victim’s shriek couldn’t have frightened off a robber: removing the brooch and watch would have been the work of a second. Secondly, Olga intentionally didn’t reveal the murderer’s name – this she would never have done had the murderer been a common thief. Evidently the murderer was dear to her and she didn’t want him to suffer severe punishment on her account. It might have been her crazy father or the husband she didn’t love but before whom she probably felt guilty; or the Count, to whom in her heart of hearts she possibly felt an obligation. On the eve of the murder, as the servants subsequently testified, her crazy father was sitting in his cottage in the forest and he spent the whole evening writing a letter to the chief of police, asking him to keep under strict control those imaginary thieves who were apparently surrounding the lunatic’s home day and night. The Count didn’t leave his guests before or at the time of the murder. It only remained to bring the whole weight of suspicion to bear on that unfortunate Urbenin – no one else. His unexpected appearance on the scene, the very look of him, etc. could only serve as substantial evidence.