A Razor Wrapped in Silk

12 The story of a love affair

The following day, Porfiry Petrovich awoke to a sluggish depression. An obscure sense of guilt infected him, no doubt the emotional ripple of a dream he could not remember. He had overslept. Stabbing his arms into his dressing gown, he hurried from his bedroom into the main room of his private apartment. His depression sharpened into annoyance when he saw the table had not yet been laid for breakfast.

‘Zakhar!’ Immediately he realised his mistake. He slumped into a seat, his elbows on the table, face in his hands. Only the chiding tick of the grandfather clock disturbed the silence of the apartment.

He heard the door to the kitchen open. There was a rattle of pots.

‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Zakhar …’ It was Katya, her voice strained to its usual unnaturally high pitch, in the way of so many Russian peasant women.

‘I know.’

He heard her put the tray down heavily.

‘Will there be anything else?’

Porfiry looked up, as though surprised by the question. She was the cook whose services he shared with the other residents of the apartments provided by the department, for the most part magistrates and senior police officers and their families. She prepared food for him every day, the food which Zakhar brought to him, but it was a long time since he had laid eyes on her. She had aged. He remembered her as a strong bustling woman, agile, despite her weight. She had filled out even more and there was an arthritic stiffness to her movements now. Though her face still shone with health, there were deep lines scoring the ruddy glow.

‘Thank you, no.’

She nodded and left with a haste that saddened him. He half-raised an arm after her. The apartment was cold and gloomy; the chill of autumn had taken possession. The stove had not been lit. But it was not simply on account of the unlit stove that he regretted her departure. He wished he had been able to talk to her of Zakhar.

The drapes were still open from the day before. He had not drawn them himself and there was no one else to do it. The windows were flat planes of grey, through which a meagre light seeped. Porfiry did not have the will to look out at the raw, damp day. He felt the saturated moisture of the air in his chest, and dwelt for the moment on the rattle and wheeze of his breathing; a precise dread of the inevitably worsening weather, of the inescapable winter ahead, entered him.

What saved him from complete lethargy was the desire for a cigarette.

Three cigarettes later, there was a knock at the door of his apartment. The intrusion seemed to set off a coughing fit, which served as his greeting to Virginsky, who pointedly wafted the fuggy air and frowned his bemusement at the sight of Porfiry in his dressing gown.

‘Are you unwell, Porfiry Petrovich?’

‘Perfectly well, Pavel Pavlovich,’ said Porfiry as he at last poured himself a cup of coffee. The cold bitter liquid caught at his throat and merely renewed his hacking fit. He sat down to absorb it.

As Porfiry settled back in his chair, drawing a splayed hand across his face, he caught the indulgent amusement now in Virginsky’s eye. ‘What are you smiling at, Pavel Pavlovich?’

‘You remind me of Oblomov.’

‘How can you possibly say that! Oblomov is nothing like me!’

‘Goncharov describes him wearing a dressing gown just like yours.’

‘Nonsense. His is more oriental.’

‘Well, it’s a dressing gown. He wastes away the day in his dressing gown.’

‘This is nonsense. I am a man of action. Not a lethargic wastrel consumed by ennui and indecision.’

Virginsky contented himself with a sceptical pinching of his lips.

‘I am surprised at you, Pavel Pavlovich. You of all people should know that when I am sitting still and smoking a cigarette, I am never simply sitting still and smoking a cigarette. I am at work, active. My mind races. The very thing I am not, however, is an Oblomov.’

‘Oblomov is a very lovable character. The Russian reading public took him to their heart.’

‘I am not lovable, Pavel Pavlovich. Not by any means. If I were lovable, then … there would be someone here, a loving creature, loving me.’ There was no self-pity in Porfiry’s voice as he offered this opinion. If anything, there was a triumphant delight in his own logic.

‘But I thought there was someone. Last night, you hinted …’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I was sure … Perhaps I was mistaken.’

‘No doubt. I will see you in my chambers in ten minutes.’

‘Very well.’ Virginsky nodded and turned to go. At the door, he hesitated and added: ‘I thought you would be interested to know that Aglaia Filippovna regained consciousness.’

‘Excellent.’

‘But only briefly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She is in a coma now.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I think it would be best if you spoke to her doctor yourself. I cannot explain it.’

‘I am most eager to speak to him. An eagerness which I shall act upon … imminently, if not immediately.’ Porfiry took out another cigarette and lit it.

Virginsky had the door open now, but a further thought detained him. He seemed unsure whether to express it.

‘Is there something else, Pavel Pavlovich?’

‘It just occurred to me. Wasn’t Oblomov’s servant called Zakhar?’

Porfiry considered the burning cigarette as he rotated it between thumb and forefinger. A full inhalation and exhalation later, his gaze once again concentrated on the cigarette, he at last said: ‘Go.’ He did not look up as Virginsky left his apartment.

*

A little under half an hour later, Porfiry was seated at the desk of his chambers, his face razor-nicked and the bottle-green frock coat of his civil service uniform flecked with ash at the cuffs and dandruff at the shoulders. He smoked in silence as he again read through the witness statements taken at the Naryskin Palace.

‘Any news of Captain Mizinchikov?’ he asked at last, without any expectation in his voice.

‘According to his orderly, he did not come home,’ answered Virginsky from the brown sofa, its artificial leather cracked and threadbare. ‘Lieutenant Salytov found no sign of him at his apartment. He did, however, find this. In a drawer in Mizinchikov’s writing desk.’

Virginsky rose and crossed to Porfiry’s desk to hand him the parcel of red silk, which he had been holding back, apparently for the pleasure of giving it to him.

Porfiry took the mysterious parcel with a puzzled and vaguely recriminatory frown. He felt its weight before placing it on his desk to unwrap it. ‘I see. How interesting.’

‘You will notice the colour of the silk,’ said Virginsky.

‘Do not fear. The colour of the silk is not lost on me.’

‘It is frayed at one edge. A number of threads are loose and some almost detached.’

‘Yes. I have noticed that too.’

‘It is curious, is it not, that this razor should be wrapped in a material consistent with a thread found on the body of a woman whose throat was cut?’

‘Curious is not the word.’

‘Of course a man may possess a razor merely to shave himself. But why keep it in the drawer of a writing desk? Moreover, Captain Mizinchikov is not a clean-shaven gentleman. But perhaps he had simply put the razor away in a drawer in expectation of the day when he would take up shaving again.’

‘But this is not the murder weapon, Pavel Pavlovich,’ declared Porfiry with quiet, almost weary, emphasis.

Virginsky seemed deflated. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Let me put it another way, if it is the murder weapon, then Captain Mizinchikov is not the murderer. I believe you said just now that the captain did not return to his apartment after leaving the Naryskin Palace — is that not correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then. How could he have murdered Yelena Filippovna with this razor and then placed it in his drawer? Are we to imagine that he stole into his own apartment without being seen by his orderly? And if that is the case, then one is obliged to ask the rather bigger question, why? It is usual, in my experience, for murderers to dispose of murder weapons — preferably in places where they will never be found, or at least in places where they cannot be associated with them. It is not usual for them to take them home and put them in a drawer for the police to find.’

Virginsky let out a defeated sigh. ‘So the razor is irrelevant?’

‘Of course it is not irrelevant. It is very relevant. It is a great triumph to have found it. Was anything else discovered in this drawer?’

‘These.’ Virginsky removed from a pocket the bundle of letters, which were once again tied up with the ribbon. Again he received a recriminatory spring of the brows from Porfiry. ‘They are letters to him from Yelena Filippovna.’

‘Are they indeed?’

Porfiry took the letters from Virginsky and untied them. He flicked through them and saw from the dates that they spanned a period of about a year, although by far the majority of them had been written and sent within the last two months. Then he settled down to read them through.

What emerged was the story of a love affair, or rather a story of desire, seduction, manipulation, disillusionment and rejection. It was hard to tell whether there was love involved, on either side. On the side of the party who had no voice in the narrative, Mizinchikov, his love could only be inferred, along with the pain he must have suffered, and his brief, rare, but surely intense, moments of joy. Was there ever a moment in the story when Yelena Filippovna had loved him? Certainly she seemed to profess it on occasion, though in a careless or even conflicted way.

If I do not proclaim my love for you in every line that I write — as I know you would have me — it is not because I do not love you, but rather because I naturally baulk at such a tedious task. I am a grown woman. You must believe that I love you, as much as I am able to love any man.

To the besotted Mizinchikov, ‘you must believe’ might have read as a passionate entreaty. To Porfiry’s objective eye, it had about it a little too much of a command. Similarly, the qualification ‘as much as I am able’ could be taken two ways: it could be joyously expansive, an indication that her love for Mizinchikov was bounded only by her capacity to love, which after all might be infinite; or, far more likely, it was an admission that she was incapable of loving any man, including him.

In the earlier correspondence, she certainly held out the possibility of loving him, though her preferred tone, after the first few highly formal letters, was flirtatious. She was more comfortable promising physical intimacy than emotional equivalence. Porfiry identified the point at which their relationship was consummated. A letter dated the twenty-eighth of July spoke of the heights of ecstasy to which he had taken her. It also spoke of Mizinchikov’s ‘skilful swordplay’. She declared that she eagerly awaited being ‘sweetly stabbed’ by him again. No doubt such passages gratified his male pride. No doubt they were intended to.

Soon after, her letters began to talk of their engagement and something approaching a sense of hope entered her tone. I look forward to the day when you and I will be one in law and before God, and this time of tribulations will be at an end. At times, however, a note of resignation could be detected. We deserve one another. There is no one else for each of us. And so we must learn to be content with one another. Perhaps the fire of passion does not burn as it once did. What of it? I cannot live my life in a conflagration.

But later in the same letter, she reproached him for his want of feeling. You do not love me any more, admit it. Admit it so that we may be free of one another. Is that not what you want? And a few lines later: Forgive me. I am a foolish woman. I know you love me. I have never doubted that.

Then came the final letter, in which she suddenly and irrevocably put the matter beyond either hope or doubt. I have never loved you, she had written, along with the barely mitigating proviso: any more than I have loved any man.

Something had brought a new clarity to her understanding of her feelings. Something that Mizinchikov had done. You may also consider that you have brought this on yourself. How could I love you now?

‘What did he do?’ wondered Porfiry, as he laid the last letter down on his desk, his eyes fixed on her words. ‘What was this shameful act that sullied him and insulted her?’ After a moment’s silent reflection, he turned to Virginsky, who made no attempt to provide an answer.

Porfiry lit a cigarette. ‘I begin now to understand the razor.’

‘You do?’

‘I do.’

‘Then could you explain it to me?’

‘As I have said, this razor is not the murder weapon. No, it is the tangible symbol of a possibility, perhaps of an intention. Or perhaps, by keeping this razor next to her letters, he was in fact, in some way, preventing himself from killing her. It was a kind of talisman to him. As long as he kept the razor in the drawer, she was safe. But if he took it out, he knew he would kill her.’

‘This is proof of premeditation.’

‘Go on,’ encouraged Porfiry.

‘He put the razor next to the letters at the precise moment when he decided to kill her,’ Virginsky ventured. ‘And of course, he had another razor with which he committed the actual crime.’

‘Why did he want her dead, though? Because she had jilted him?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘If he couldn’t have her, no one could. Let alone the absurd Naryskin.’

‘Yes.’

‘A crime of passion?’ Porfiry put the question with narrowed eyes.

‘I do not believe you can call it that. A crime of passion, as I understand it, is a crime committed in a sudden rage. The result of an intense and overwhelming emotional upheaval. There must be no opportunity for reconsidering or turning back. If the letters provoked Mizinchikov to murder, he had ample time to reflect as he travelled to the Naryskin Palace. This was not done in the heat of the moment. As we have discussed, the presence of the razor in the drawer, next to her letters, indicates a certain degree of premeditation. “This is what I will use against the woman who has rejected me” — that is what it says. We must assume that he went there armed with his second razor, fully intending to use it. And that he bided his time until he had the opportunity to put his plan into action.’

‘But is it not possible,’ countered Porfiry, ‘when an individual is overtaken by such a destructive passion, that “the moment” may last for some considerable time, its heat maintained for hours, days even? If we do not call it a crime of passion, we may talk of diminished responsibility. They act without reason, without planning, without strategy. They are compelled. A force more powerful than them takes them over. And while they are in the grip of this compulsive force, they can think of nothing else. It is hardly a question of thought. They become the act itself. All their will, emotion, energy — their very soul, in short, is channelled into one moment, one fatal transgression. Certainly they do not think beyond the execution of the act. And once they have crossed over from intent to execution, once they have made the transgression, and they find themselves standing in the aftermath of their crime, they are to a large extent baffled, lost — even bereft. For not only have they been deprived of the compulsion that gave shape and purpose to their existence, but also they have lost the person they once loved more than any other. Put simply, they have no reason to live any more. Can we wonder that such criminals often go on to take their own lives, or passively surrender to their fate? They have nothing else to live for.’

‘I do not dispute your construction of his mental state,’ conceded Virginsky. ‘Although it occurs to me that we are both forgetting Prince Sergei’s testimony, that Yelena Filippovna wanted to die and indeed solicited her own death.’

‘Then how are we to explain the mirror?’ asked Porfiry, suddenly dismayed.

‘The mirror?’

‘Someone cleaned the mirror.’ Once again, Porfiry drew the shape of a large M in the air. ‘Why did he go to such trouble to cover his tracks? What did it matter to him? Indeed, how could he have mustered the required presence of mind?’

‘Yes, I see.’ Virginsky nodded thoughtfully. ‘By your account, he should have simply waited for the police — or killed himself on the spot.’

‘What if Captain Mizinchikov is in fact innocent? Then perhaps his flight can be adequately explained by panic. He was fleeing the prospect of a false accusation. An unwise and regrettable decision on his part, but that I suppose is the nature of panic. Tell me, Pavel Pavlovich, did you notice any blood on the floor beneath the mirror?’

‘No.’

‘Neither did I. However, it is reasonable to assume that the liquid soaking her dress and the rug beneath her body was blood. Logic therefore suggests that she was killed where she lay. Which means that she cannot also have been killed in front of the mirror. Assuming the smears on the mirror are blood, how did they get there?’

Porfiry lapsed into silent thought, as though unable to answer the question he himself had posed.

Virginsky seemed hesitant to break the silence. He offered his explanation tentatively: ‘The murderer placed a bloody hand on the mirror … and then, noticing the mark it left, attempted to wipe it clean — perhaps with the sleeve of his tunic? That would explain why we were not able to find a blood-soaked cloth, and why no one was seen carrying one away from the room.’

Porfiry seemed enlivened by the suggestion. He nodded in excited approval. ‘Having committed this terrible deed, he felt compelled to confront himself. Looking into his own eyes and seeing for the first time the eyes of a murderer, he is overcome by an unbearable horror. His legs buckle and he falls forward, reaching out a hand to hold himself up.’ Porfiry mimed the action he described, his eyes wide with vicarious horror. He suddenly frowned in dissatisfaction. ‘But why bother to wipe clean the relatively small amount of blood on the mirror, when there is copious blood on the rug, about which he can do nothing?’

‘Because the blood on the mirror appears to him as a sign of his guilt. It is his hand that has left the mark.’

‘And if the murderer is indeed Mizinchikov, he subconsciously signals his guilt …’ Porfiry described the letter M with one hand. ‘Whilst his conscious mind attempts to eradicate all trace of it. Yes, I find your theory very interesting, Pavel Pavlovich. It is at least psychologically coherent.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It is vital that we find Captain Mizinchikov. Vital for him, I mean. If our reconstruction of events is correct, his soul must be burdened by this terrible crime. More than burdened — tortured. His soul is in conflict with itself. We must give him the opportunity to confess. We must arrest him for his own salvation. I fear what he may be driven to, left alone with his guilt.’

‘He must know that we are looking for him,’ observed Virginsky.

‘Yes, and a man in a blood-spattered dress uniform will be conspicuous. The first thing he will try to do is change his clothes. He had an opportunity to do so at the Naryskin Palace. You noticed the clothes in the wardrobe?’

‘Yes, but he may not have realised they were there.’

‘Indeed. Perhaps, however, we should postpone further speculations until we have a clearer idea what the substance on the mirror is. Has Dr Pervoyedov been alerted?’

‘I understand that he wished to visit the scene of the crime. There is every chance that he is there now.’

‘Then let us join him,’ said Porfiry, slapping both palms decisively on his desk as he rose. ‘While we are at it, we shall pay a visit on the invalid, Aglaia Filippovna, thus killing two hares with one shot.’ He gave Virginsky a challenging look, as if to say, Does your Oblomov kill two hares with one shot?