After further questioning it transpired that just before the murder, when the Count was sitting at the forest edge drinking tea with his guests, Kuzma went off into the forest. He hadn’t helped carry Olga, therefore he couldn’t have got any blood on himself.
When he was brought into my room Kuzma was at first so agitated that he couldn’t say a word. Rolling the white of his single eye, he crossed himself and muttered an oath under his breath.
‘Now calm down,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you know and I’ll let you go.’
Kuzma fell at my feet, stuttered and started swearing.
‘May I rot in hell if ’twere me. May neither me father nor me mother… Yer ’onner… May God destroy my soul if…’
‘Did you walk off into the forest?’
‘That I did, sir. I walks away from them – I’d bin serving the guests brandy and – begging yer pardon – I took a little swig meself. Went straight to me ’ead it did and all I wanted was to lie down. So I goes and lies down and I falls fast asleep. But as to who did the murder – I ain’t got a clue, that I ain’t. I’m telling you the truth!’
‘But why did you wash the blood off?’
‘I were scared they might think things… that they might take me as a witness…’
‘But how did there come to be blood on your jacket?’
‘Can’t rightly say, yer ’onner.’
‘But why can’t you say? Surely it was your coat?’
‘Oh yes, it were mine all right, but I just can’t say – I saw the blood there after I was already woken up.’
‘That means you must have soiled your coat in your sleep.’
‘That’s right!’
‘Well, off with you my friend. Go and think it over. What you’re telling me is complete nonsense. Think about it and come and tell me tomorrow. Now go!’
Next day when I woke up I was informed that Kuzma wanted a word with me. I gave instructions for him to be brought in.
‘Well, have you had a good think about it?’
‘Yes – that I’ave!’
‘So, how did the blood get on your coat?’
‘Yer ’onner, I remembers it as if ’twere a dream. I remembers things as if they was all in a fog, can’t say for sure whether they’re true or not.’
‘And what do you remember?’
Kuzma raised his one eye, reflected and replied:
‘It were amazing, just like in a dream or in a fog. There I be lying there drunk on the grass and dozing – neither really dozing nor dreaming, like. All I hears is someone passing by and stamping ’eavily with ’is feet. I opens me eyes and I sees – just like I were unconscious or dreaming – some gent coming up to me. ’E bends down and wipes ’is ’ands on the flaps of me jacket. Wiped them on me coat, ’e did, then ’e dabbed me waistcoat. That’s what ’appened.’
‘Who was that gentleman?’
‘That I can’t rightly say. All I remembers is that ’e weren’t no peasant, but a gent… in gent’s clothes. But who ’e was, what ’is face was like – that I can’t remember, for the life of me.’
‘What colour was his suit?’
‘How should I know? Might ’ave bin white, or might ’ave bin black… all I remembers is that ’e were a gent – and I don’t remember nothing more. Oh yes, I remembers now! When he bent down ’e wiped ’is ’ands and said “drunken swine!” ’
‘Did you dream it?’
‘Can’t say… perhaps I did. But where did that blood come from?’
‘That gentleman you saw… was he like Pyotr Yegorych?’
‘I don’t think ’twere ’e… but perhaps it were. Only ’e shouldn’t ’ave called me a swine.’
‘Now try and remember… go on, sit down there and try to remember. Perhaps it will all come back to you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
XXVII
This unexpected irruption of one-eyed Kuzma into an almost completed novel created an impenetrable muddle. I was at a loss and just didn’t know what to make of Kuzma: he denied his guilt categorically and the preliminary investigation argued against any such guilt. Olga had not been murdered for mercenary motives and any attempt at rape had ‘probably not occurred’ – according to the doctors. Could one really assume that Kuzma had committed the murder and had not taken advantage of a single one of these objectives, simply because he was terribly drunk and incapable? Or was he afraid that none of this tallied with the circumstances of the murder?
But if Kuzma wasn’t guilty, then why had he been unable to explain the blood on his jacket and invented those dreams and hallucinations? Why had he dragged in that gentleman whom he had seen and heard, but whom he remembered so vaguely that he had even forgotten the colour of his clothes?
Polugradov breezed in again.
‘So there you are, my deah sir!’ he said. ‘If you had taken the trouble to inspect the scene of the crime right away – then, believe me, everything would be as clear as daylight now! Had you questioned all the servants immediately we would have known who carried Olga’s body and who did not. But now we cannot even determine at what distance from the scene of the crime this drunkard was lying.’
For two hours he struggled with Kuzma, but he could get nothing new out of him. All Kuzma said was that he was half-asleep when he saw the gentleman, that the gentleman had wiped his hands on the flaps of his jacket and called him ‘drunken swine’. But who this gentleman was, what his face and clothes were like he couldn’t say.
‘And how much brandy did you drink?’
‘Polished off arf a bottle.’
‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t really brandy?’
‘Oh yes it was sir, real fine shompagner…’
‘Ah, so you even know the names of spirits!’ laughed the deputy prosecutor.
‘And why shouldn’t I? Thank God, I’ve waited on gents for thirty year now… I’ve ’ad time to learn.’
For some reason the deputy prosecutor suddenly felt that Kuzma needed to be confronted with Urbenin. Kuzma took a long look at Urbenin, shook his head and said:
‘No, I don’t remember. Perhaps it were Pyotr Yegorych and perhaps it weren’t. God knows!’
Polugradov waved his arm helplessly and drove off, leaving me to find the real murderer out of these two.
The investigation dragged on and on. Urbenin and Kuzma were incarcerated in cells in the same village where I lived. Poor Pyotr Yegorych completely lost heart, grew thin and grey, and fell into a religious frame of mind. Twice he sent me a request to let him see the penal code. Evidently he was interested in the severity of the punishment in store for him.
‘What will become of my children?’ he asked me at one of the examinations. ‘If I were all on my own your mistake wouldn’t cause me any distress, but I have to live… live for my children! They’ll perish without me… and I’m in no state to part with them! What are you doing to me!?’
When the guard started talking down to him and when they made him walk a couple of times from the village to town and back, under armed guard, in full view of people he knew, he was plunged into despair and became highly irritable.
‘They’re not lawyers!’ he shouted, loud enough for everyone in the prison to hear. ‘They’re cruel, heartless oafs who spare neither people nor the truth. I know why I’m locked up here, I know! By pinning the blame on me they want to cover up for the real culprit! The Count committed the murder. And if it wasn’t him it was one of his hirelings.’
When he found out about Kuzma’s arrest he was absolutely delighted at first.
‘Now you’ve found the hireling!’ he told me. ‘Now you’ve got him!’
But before long, when he saw that he wasn’t going to be released and when he was told of Kuzma’s statement, he once again became depressed.
‘Now I’m finished… well and truly finished,’ he said. ‘To get out of prison that one-eyed devil Kuzma will sooner or later name me and say that I… wiped my hands on his jacket. But you saw for yourself that my hands hadn’t been wiped.’