That was my last conversation with Urbenin. I never had occasion to talk to him again – apart from replying to two or three questions he put to me, as if I were a witness being questioned in the dock.
XXVIII
I have called my novel the story of a crime and now, when ‘The Case of Olga Urbenin’s Murder’ has become complicated by yet another murder – hard to comprehend and mysterious in many respects – the reader is entitled to expect the novel to enter its most interesting and lively phase. The discovery of the criminal and his motives offers a wide field for a display of mental agility and acumen. Here an evil will and cunning wage war with forensic knowledge and skill – a war that is fascinating in every aspect.
I waged war – and the reader is entitled to expect me to describe the way victory became mine: he will surely expect all manner of investigatory subtleties, such as those that lend sparkle to the thrillers of Gaboriau and our own Shklyarevsky,54 and I’m ready to justify the reader’s expectations. However, one of the main characters leaves the battlefield without waiting for the end of the conflict – he’s not allowed to enjoy victory. All that he has done so far comes to naught and he joins the ranks of the spectators. This particular character in the drama is ‘Yours Truly’. The day after the above conversation with Urbenin I received an invitation – an order, rather – to resign. The tittle-tattle and idle gossip of our local scandalmongers had done their work. The murder in the prison, statements taken from the servants without my knowledge by the deputy prosecutor, and – if the reader still remembers – the blow I had dealt that peasant on the head with an oar during a nocturnal orgy of the past – all this made a substantial contribution to my dismissal. That peasant really set the ball rolling: there was a massive shake-up. After about two days I was ordered to hand over the murder case to the investigator of serious crimes.
Thanks to rumours and newspaper reports, the entire Directorate of Public Prosecutions was stirred into action. Every other day the prosecutor himself rode over to the Count’s estate and took part in the questioning. Our doctors’ official reports were sent to the Medical Board – even higher up. There was even talk of exhuming the bodies and holding fresh post-mortems, which, incidentally, would have led nowhere.
Twice Urbenin was dragged off to the county town to have his mental faculties examined and on both occasions he was found to be normal. I began to figure as witness.* The new investigators became so carried away that even my Polikarp was called upon to testify.
A year after my retirement, when I was living in Moscow, I received a summons to attend the Urbenin trial. I was glad of the opportunity to see once more those places to which I was drawn by habit – and off I went. The Count, who was living in St Petersburg at the time, did not attend and sent in a doctor’s certificate instead.
The case was tried in our county town, at the local assizes. The public prosecutor was Polugradov, that same individual who cleaned his teeth four times a day with red powder. Acting for the defence was a certain Smirnyaev, a tall, thin, fair-haired man with a sentimental expression and long, straight hair. The jury consisted entirely of shopkeepers and peasants, only four of whom were literate, and the rest, when they were given Urbenin’s letters to his wife to read, broke into a sweat and became confused. The foreman of the jury was the shopkeeper Ivan Demyanych, the same person from whom my late parrot got its name.
When I entered the courtroom I didn’t recognize Urbenin: he had gone completely grey and had aged about twenty years. I had expected to read on his face indifference to his fate, and apathy, but I was wrong: Urbenin took a passionate interest in the proceedings. He challenged three of the jurors, embarked on lengthy explanations and questioned witnesses. He categorically denied his guilt and spent ages questioning every witness who did not testify in his favour.
The witness Pshekhotsky testified that I had been living with the late Olga.
‘That’s a lie!’ Urbenin shouted. ‘He’s a liar! I don’t trust my own wife, but I do trust him!’
When I was giving evidence the counsel for the defence questioned me as to my relationship with Olga and acquainted me with evidence given by Pshekhotsky, who had once applauded me. To have told the truth would have amounted to testifying in favour of the accused. The more depraved a wife, the more lenient juries tend to be towards an Othello-husband – that I understood very well. On the other hand, my telling the truth would have deeply wounded Urbenin – on hearing it he would have suffered incurable pain. I thought it best to tell a lie.
‘No!’ I said.
Describing Olga’s murder in the most lurid colours, the public prosecutor paid particular attention in his speech to the murderer’s brutality, his wickedness. ‘An old roué sees a pretty, young girl. Aware of the whole horror of her situation in her insane father’s house, he tempts her with food, lodgings and brightly decorated rooms. She agrees: an elderly husband of means is easier to bear than a mad father and poverty. But she was young – and youth, gentlemen of the jury, has its own inalienable rights. A girl who has been weaned on novels, brought up in the midst of Nature, is bound to fall in love sooner or later…’ The upshot of all this was:
‘He, having given her nothing but his age and brightly coloured dresses and seeing his booty slipping away from him, became as frenzied as an animal that has had a red-hot iron applied to its snout. He loved like an animal, therefore he must have hated like one’, and so on.
When he accused Urbenin of Kuzma’s murder, Polugradov singled out ‘those villainous tricks, so cleverly devised and calculated, that accompanied the murder of a sleeping man who had been imprudent enough the day before to testify against him. I assume that there is no doubt in your minds that Kuzma wanted to tell the prosecutor something that directly concerned him.’
Smirnyaev, counsel for the defence, did not deny Urbenin’s guilt: he only asked that the fact that Urbenin had acted under the influence of temporary insanity should be taken into account and that therefore they should be lenient. Describing how painful feelings of jealousy can be, he alluded to Shakespeare’s Othello as evidence for his deposition. He examined this ‘universal type’ from all aspects, quoting from various critics, and he got himself in such a muddle that the presiding judge was obliged to stop him by remarking that ‘a knowledge of foreign literature was not obligatory for jurors’.
Taking advantage of this last statement, Urbenin called on God to witness that he was guilty in neither word nor deed.
‘Personally, it’s all the same where I end up – in this district where everything reminds me of my undeserved disgrace and my wife, or in a penal colony. But I’m deeply concerned about my children’s fate.’
Turning to the public he burst into tears and begged for his children to be taken into care:
‘Take them! Of course, the Count won’t miss the opportunity of flaunting his magnanimity. But I’ve already warned the children and they won’t accept one crumb from him.’
When he noticed me among the public he glanced at me imploringly. ‘Please protect my children from the Count’s good deeds,’ he said.