The Gentle Axe

The Anonymous Note

The envelope, addressed simply to “Porfiry Petrovich,” arrived on the investigator’s desk with the morning’s first round of mail. Its contents drew Porfiry from his rooms.

“Alexander Grigorevich, did you see who left this for me?”

Seated on his high stool behind the front desk, the chief clerk barely glanced in Porfiry’s direction. He was distracted by the thin, agitated woman before him, who was keeping up a stream of tearful and incoherent complaints. Her raving drew to the clerk’s face an expression of deep disgust. And yet it seemed he could not tear his eyes away from her. The woman’s face was pinched and pale, with bursts of crimson on her cheeks and a deeper red, the color of raw anguish, around her eyes. Fine features had hardened into sharpness, with dark lines etched into a pattern of ravage. Her worn and dirty clothes had once been fashionable and even expensive, many seasons ago. The smell from her was strong and unpleasant. It was hard to estimate her age.

“Alexander Grigorevich,” insisted Porfiry, “someone left a note for me.”

“What of it?” said Alexander Grigorevich Zamyotov at last, meeting Porfiry’s inquiring gaze with something close to a sneer.

More than anything, Porfiry felt a weary disappointment. He had no time for impertinence, and not because he was one to insist on the honor due his rank. “Alexander Grigorevich, you are a man and I am a man, and to that extent we are equals. I will treat you with respect; all I ask is that you do the same.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I won’t lie to you. I won’t look down on you. I won’t play games with you.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, but I don’t understand what bearing all this has.”

“This note,” said Porfiry, laying the envelope down on the counter. His voice was calm, but he was not smiling. “I ask you again. Did you see who delivered it?”

Zamyotov took a moment to study the envelope. He picked it up and turned it over and then placed it back on the counter. “No,” he said, barely suppressing the pleasure he took from this little charade.

Porfiry snatched up the letter and bowed to the disconsolate woman, whose lamentations had not let up throughout his exchange with Zamyotov.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” the head clerk gurgled gleefully. “This woman wishes to see you.”

Porfiry hesitated before answering the clerk directly, without looking at the tearful woman. “I can’t. Not now. An urgent matter has arisen. I must talk to Nikodim Fomich. You must tell her to come back tomorrow.”

Porfiry braced himself, expecting the pitch and intensity of her plaints to increase at this announcement. But there was an alarming constancy to her behavior. It was as if she hadn’t heard his decision, or didn’t understand it. Porfiry realized it would be hard to get rid of her.

“Alexander Grigorevich, take a statement from her…” Perhaps there was some desire to punish the head clerk in this demand. Porfiry did not discount the possibility.

“A statement? I?”

“Yes, a statement. I will give it my full attention when I have seen Nikodim Fomich. If she wishes to wait, that’s up to her, but I advise her to come back tomorrow.”

“Porfiry Petrovich, with the greatest respect,” began the clerk in a tone that contradicted his words, “what kind of a statement do you expect me to take from”-he gestured toward the woman, her face contorted by suffering-“that?”

“You will do your best. I am confident that it will be more than good enough.”

" It’s not much to go on.” Chief Superintendent Nikodim Fomich Maximov dropped the note onto his desk. He leaned back in his chair, both hands behind his head, and looked up at the high ceiling of his office, enjoying the scale of the apartment his position entitled him to. He had learned the habit of ignoring the odd flaws in its grandeur, the peeling paint here and there, the stains of damp beneath the window, and the cracks in the plaster. For a moment his lips pursed ironically, as if an amusing thought had just occurred to him. He was a handsome man and well liked. Both of these attributes were important to him: he had an awareness of his own ability to soothe, merely by his presence. Porfiry wondered if this awareness did not sometimes affect his friend’s judgment. Nikodim Fomich sometimes gave the impression of valuing an easy life above all else. “I mean to say, how do we know it’s not a hoax?”

“Of course, I agree, it’s probably a hoax.” Under the new rules, Porfiry had the authority to command the police to pursue any matter he deemed worthy of investigation. But it was a sensitive area. It was only two years ago that control of individual cases had been taken from the police and given over to the newly created office of investigating magistrate. And Porfiry preferred to work with the cooperation of his colleagues in the police bureau, rather than with their resentful subordination. Besides, he knew that the best way to change the chief ’s mind was to agree with him. “I felt I had a responsibility to show it to you, that is all.” Porfiry reached to take the note back.

“But if it’s not a hoax?” asked Nikodim Fomich quickly. He leaned forward and grabbed the note before Porfiry could retrieve it. “If there really has been a case of ‘Murder in Petrovsky Park’?” The senior police officer read the note with a heavily ironical intonation. He turned the sheet over several times. But those four words were all that was written on its entire surface. Constant rotation did not cause any more to appear. “If it were signed, it would be more credible.”

“And there would be someone held responsible if it turned out to be a hoax,” suggested Porfiry.

“Well, of course, a hoaxer would never sign it.”

“So it must be a hoax,” insisted Porfiry brightly, as if the matter were settled.

“Not necessarily,” demurred Nikodim Fomich, who suddenly found himself in the position of arguing with his own original point of view. “It could have been written by someone involved in the crime in some way.”

Porfiry gave Nikodim Fomich a sudden look of astonishment, as if this idea had never occurred to him. The chief superintendent frowned. Porfiry’s play-acting annoyed him. He knew the investigator well enough not to be taken in. “We’ll have the local boys look into it,” he decided. “If they turn up anything, we’ll go to the prokuror with it.”

“Yes, yes, I agree. There is no need to trouble Yaroslav Nikolaevich until we have something definite to go on. However, if I might make a suggestion?”

Nikodim Fomich nodded for Porfiry to go on.

“Offer one of your men to assist. An officer to oversee the search.”

“Isn’t that a little proprietorial?”

“The note was delivered here, to this bureau.”

“Did you have anyone in mind?” the chief superintendent asked.

“Lieutenant Salytov, perhaps.”

“Salytov? Old Gunpowder?” Nikodim Fomich laughed with easy good humor. “At least it will get him out of the bureau for a few hours.”

Again Porfiry’s expression signified surprise at an idea that couldn’t have been further from his mind.

“Don’t overdo it, Porfiry Petrovich,” said the chief superintendent, delivering the warning with a complicit wink.

"She’s still here,” called out Zamyotov accusingly, as Porfiry crossed the receiving hall. He indicated the tearful woman with a tilt of his head. “She has asked specifically for the investigating magistrate,” Zamyotov confided to his fingernails, with a smirk.

“Have you taken a statement from her, as I requested?” asked Porfiry. His gaze was detached as he studied the woman. He noted that the quality and level of her keening was unchanged. He was not one of those men who are afraid to confront the tears of women, or who shy from the pain of life. But her distress embarrassed him because he felt there was something almost artificial about it. He suspected it of being a ploy, a ploy she had committed herself to and now couldn’t get out of. He felt if he could say to her, in a friendly, confiding tone, “You don’t have to keep that up, you know,” she would instantly become reasonable. He bowed his head slightly in an attempt to engage her flitting glance with a smile. But when her eyes did meet his, for only the briefest moment, he experienced a physical sense of depression, as if something heavy and poisonous had entered his soul. He realized that her distress was not artificial after all. But it was alien to her, an infection that had taken her over. It was this terrible illness that was weeping so mechanically, perhaps even the illness that was insisting on seeing the investigating magistrate.

“Do you want me to read it to you?” said Zamyotov, referring to the statement he was now holding.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I’m perfectly willing to.”

“I appreciate your willingness. However, I will read it myself.”

Porfiry took the statement:

I am guilty. We are all guilty. But I am the most guilty of all. We are all guilty of every crime. There is no crime we are not capable of. There is no crime that we have not dreamed of committing. Only she was innocent. Only she was without sin. The sin was not hers. It was mine. I am guilty. I, Yekaterina Romanovna Lebedyeva, am guilty of her sin. I am guilty of it all. I am guilty of everything…

The statement continued in this vein for several more lines.

“I see,” said Porfiry, when he had finished reading it. “Madam, will you come with me?” And with that he led her into his chambers.

SO THEN, what shall we do with you?” began Porfiry, his tone kindly and indulgent. “Shall we lock you up, Yekaterina Romanovna?”

The woman nodded briskly. Tears streamed from her eyes, transparent trails from her snuffling nose. There was no doubting her sincerity. Porfiry opened a drawer in his desk and took out a clean handkerchief; he kept a supply on hand for such occasions. He held it out to her. She repaid him with a look that suggested he was the one who was raving. Eventually she took it, though she could not be encouraged to wipe her face. Ignoring Porfiry’s mime to that effect, she held the handkerchief tightly balled in her palm.

“But on what charge, Yekaterina Romanovna? We must have a charge to enter in the great recording book.”

The woman let out a half-articulate moan, just recognizable as “Guilty!”

“Yes, but of what? You understand my predicament?” Porfiry held his arms open across the desk as if petitioning her for help. “I have an idea,” he said suddenly. “I shall suggest some crimes to you, and all you have to do is nod when I get to yours. We shall make a game of it. Can you do that, Yekaterina Romanovna?”

Porfiry smiled uncertainly at her answering nod. He could not be sure she understood him.

“Let’s start at the top, I think,” said Porfiry brightly. “Oh, and please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not myself accusing you of anything, you understand. I am merely trying to help you make your statement a little more-how shall we say-precise? This is very strange, I will admit. Not the usual procedure at all but…there is nothing else for it, I think. So this crime, the crime of which you are guilty, is it, madam, perhaps”-and his eyes twinkled with pleasure as if he really were playing a parlor game-“murder?”

Yekaterina Romanovna let out a gasp of confirmation: “Yessss!” For the first time there was a change in the manifestation of her behavior. “Yes, yes, that’s it, murder.” She sobbed, her head quivering as if on a spring.

“Murder, I see. Very good. Or rather, it is not very good. But it is good in the sense that we are getting somewhere. And at least I am saved from the labor of having to go through a whole catalog of crimes and misdemeanors. Murder, you say. May I ask you-this is the form these inquiries take, you understand-may I ask you, whom did you murder?”

Again there was a development in her behavior. Her head stopped shaking, and she held his gaze steadily. “My daughter.”

Porfiry sat up. The excitement he felt was no longer that of a game. “This is a very serious charge to make against yourself, madam. You do understand that, don’t you? How did you kill her?”

The woman shook her head in violent denial. Her teeth were clenched, as if something inside her was determined to prevent her from saying more. Through those clenched teeth she hissed: “I refused to believe her.” The effort of making this admission evidently exhausted her. She fell back into her chair.

“I meant rather, by what means, with what weapon shall we say, did you kill her? That is usually the way with murder. It is essentially a violent crime. There is usually some sort of attack. I would include poison as a weapon here. Perhaps you poisoned her?”

From her sunken position in the seat, she let out a high-pitched, cracking groan. “I accused her.”

“Of what did you accuse her?”

The woman stirred and sat up a little. “I refused to believe in her innocence. But I knew. I knew!”

“You’re doing very well, Yekaterina Romanovna. But I need to understand more. If you could take me through what actually happened, the circumstances of your daughter’s death.”

“Oh, she is not dead!” cried Yekaterina Romanovna pleadingly. Her eyes beseeched him.

“Then I do not see how you can have murdered her if she is not dead,” answered Porfiry. He said the words slowly, trying to fathom the truth behind the woman’s contradictory statements.

“I murdered her.” She said this flatly, giving it an irrefutable force.

“Please help me. I need to understand.” A new idea came to Porfiry. “What is your daughter’s name?”

“We have no daughter.” She spoke imperiously, as if announcing a sentence. Her face was set in a grim mask.

“You once had a daughter but no longer. Something you have done has brought about this circumstance.”

“He cast her out.”

“He?”

“Lebedyev.”

“Your husband?”

She closed her eyes and nodded once.

“And you?” pressed Porfiry.

Yekaterina Romanovna opened her eyes and stared straight through Porfiry. Her face became agitated. It was as if she were watching a scene of intense and painful interest to her. “I said nothing,” she said at last, in a whisper. She closed her eyes again.

“And it is because you said nothing, because you didn’t intervene-it is because of this you are plagued by feelings of guilt.”

“She was blameless.”

“Do you know what has become of your daughter?”

Yekaterina Romanovna shook her head, still with her eyes closed.

“Would you like me to help you find out?”

She opened her eyes, this time looking directly at Porfiry. Anguish twisted her face into ugliness. A look of hatred, Porfiry felt, though who the object of her hatred was, he could not say. “I have no daughter!” she shrieked.

“Madam, I think it is a priest and not a policeman that you need.”

There was suddenly a knock at the door. Zamyotov peered in.

“I beg your pardon, Porfiry Petrovich,” began the chief clerk. Porfiry nodded for him to continue. “A gentleman”-Zamyotov broke off, giving the word ironic emphasis-“who professes to be this lady’s husband wishes to be admitted.” He concluded the message with his customary smirk.

“Please show him in,” said Porfiry, glancing at Yekaterina Romanovna, who had just resumed her plaintive wailing. It suddenly occurred to him that her tears, and the noises that accompanied them, were a source of comfort to her, perhaps her only one.

Zamyotov bowed and backed out. The man who strode into the room now possessed the labored dignity that is common to a certain category of drunks. He drew himself upright and even beyond upright, leaning slightly backward. His movements were stilted, made with great effort and deliberation. An aroma of vodka preceded him. His florid face and the slight tremble that was perceptible in his features suggested that he was a habitual drunk. Stiff wisps of gray hair stood up from his balding head, which he held proudly erect. His eyelids fluttered gracefully, and he smiled in a show of politesse, revealing a gap where his upper incisors should have been. Porfiry was aware of the strain all this affected honor placed on the man.

The newcomer was wearing an old black frock coat with gaping seams and missing buttons. He bowed vaguely in Porfiry’s direction, though his moist eyes were evasive.

“Your honor, allow me the privilege of introducing myself. I am Titular Councilor Ivan Filimonovich Lebedyev. Your honor,” he repeated, “allow me the honor-ah!” He broke off disconsolately. He bowed momentarily and clenched his face into a pained rictus. He recovered with a flashing smile, marred only by the lack of teeth. “Too many honors! Your honor, what can I do?”

“You may sit down if you wish, sir.”

“No sir, I do not wish.” This was said with quick, haughty defiance, as if he were rebutting a slur against his character.

“How may I help you, Ivan Filimonovich?” asked Porfiry gently.

“You will allow me to address my wife?”

“Of course.”

“Yekaterina Romanovna, come home with me.”

Without ceasing her lament, Yekaterina Romanovna rose obediently from her seat and crossed to her husband. He signaled his approval with a delayed nod and turned to Porfiry seeking release.

“There is just one thing, sir,” said Porfiry, with an air of reluctance. “Something your wife said. About your daughter.”

“My wife is ill, sir. You may have noticed. She is not”-he paused and bowed and grimaced, as he had done before-“herself.” He smiled again.

“But your daughter is quite well, I trust?”

“We have no daughter, your honor.” Lebedyev bowed with an air of finality, then began leading his wife out.

Porfiry rose and followed them. In the receiving hall, he caught Zamyotov’s eager eye as he passed him.

“It seems she has put on a similar performance in every police bureau in Petersburg,” the chief clerk informed him.

“And the story of the daughter?” asked Porfiry.

“It has been looked into. There is nothing in it. I talked to Rogozhin, who transferred here from the Central District. He knows all about it. It is all a fantasy of the woman’s disordered brain.”

Porfiry watched the couple cross the hall toward the exit. Lebedyev had his arm around his wife’s shoulder. It struck Porfiry that the gesture was not so much to protect her as to close her off from further interest and inquiry.

Lieutenant Salytov stood at the eastern end of Petrovsky Island, his back to the Tuchkov Bridge. It felt like the lowest point of the city; he had a sense of Petersburg rising up behind him as if it would bear down and crush him. A feeling of oppression was never far away from Salytov. Ptitsyn, the young polizyeisky who had been allocated to him, stood about twenty sazheni to his right, within sight, awaiting the signal. Salytov looked toward the frozen, snow-covered park and was overcome by a sudden blank hopelessness. His characteristic defense against such intolerable emotions was rage, and he gave in to it now.

They had sent him on a fool’s errand. They! There was no “they” about it. He well knew who was behind this. Porfiry Petrovich. And what a position he had been put in when he had announced himself and his mission at the Shestaya Street police station in the Petersburgsky District. With what contempt they had greeted him! No wonder. Wouldn’t he have reacted in a similar way if an officer from another district had turned up in his bureau, making similar demands, based on as little evidence?

The corporal on duty had raised his bushy gray eyebrows in an expression of mock alarm. Salytov recognized him as one of those officers of long-standing low rank, in whom a lack of ambition had instilled the habit of sarcasm and the vice of sloth. The man was not, however, devoid of envy, which he directed against all those who had the power to control his actions and curtail his ease. Superior officers, in other words, particularly those who came from other bureaus making demands. He vented his envy by being as obstructive as possible, without risking open insubordination. “A report of murder, you say?” He had narrowed his eyes, as if struggling to understand. Feigning stupidity was evidently one of his favorite techniques. “What kind of a report?”

“A tip-off,” Salytov had spat. He had realized what he was up against, yet still could not prevent himself from rising to the bait.

“From a reliable source, I take it?”

Salytov could have struck the fellow for that. How dare he question him, Salytov, and in that tone! Of course, what galled Salytov was the knowledge that the source was far from reliable. He regarded the corporal with hatred. “The top brass are taking it seriously. They want me to take some of your men and conduct a thorough search.” It was a great strain on Salytov’s patience to have to explain all this.

“We can’t spare men to go gallivanting off in the park.”

“You must have some men available.”

“But if we are to commit resources, we must know on what basis. You must share your information with us. Besides, I will have to talk to my chief. And there is the usual paperwork.”

It was ridiculous, the whole thing was ridiculous. To be put in such a position! To be made to wait! And after all that waiting to be given Ptitsyn, a mere boy!

Salytov scowled at the youth, who looked back with an expression of good-natured expectancy that was too much to bear.

“What are you waiting for, you fool?” shouted Salytov. Ptitsyn placidly waved one gloved hand, and both men began walking.

SIR, LOOK! Lieutenant Salytov, sir!”

“Yes, I see it.”

The two of them broke into a high-stepping run through the deep snow, converging toward the body that was hanging from the giant bow of the bent tree.

“Is this what we are looking for, sir?” gasped Ptitsyn, breathless and rosy-cheeked, as excited as a schoolboy.

Salytov did not answer. The note he had been shown had spoken of murder, not suicide.

“Is he dead, sir?”

“Of course he’s dead, idiot.” There was ice in the man’s beard, snow on his cap and shoulders.

“Shall we get him down?”

“No! Leave him there, do you hear? Don’t touch him! Don’t touch a thing.”

“Who is he, sir?”

Again Salytov ignored the question.

“I’ve never seen a dead one before, sir.” Ptitsyn looked wonderingly up into the staring eyes.

Noticing a bulge in the corpse’s greatcoat, Salytov stepped up and teased it open. “So. It seems there is murder here after all,” he commented on seeing the bloody axe tucked in the man’s belt.

“Sir,” said Ptitsyn, a frown of confusion giving his voice a querulous note. “How did he do it?”

“What are you talking about, boy?”

“I mean, how did he hang himself? You see the rope is tied around the trunk of the tree, sir. I can see how he could have thrown the rope around the tree, tied a loop, and pulled it tight. But how did he string himself up?”

There was something in what the boy said. Salytov looked up into the tree, at the point where the rope was tethered to the trunk, just below a small vertical nick in the bark. He then examined the flimsy birch branches. His eye was caught by a slip of grayish paper snagged on a twig. He beckoned Ptitsyn over.

“What is it, sir?”

“I want you to lift me onto your shoulders.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Get down and lift me on your shoulders.”

Ptitsyn looked momentarily bewildered, then lowered himself to a crouch so that Salytov could straddle his shoulders.

“Up!”

Ptitsyn rose shakily, crying out under the strain. As Salytov reached up to grab the slip of paper, Ptitsyn’s center of gravity was thrown. It seemed for a moment as though they would fall. But by a heroic readjustment of his stance, Ptitsyn was able to right himself. Making no allowances, Salytov cursed and kicked the man beneath him with his heels as if he were spurring a horse. “Get closer to the tree, damn you!”

Ptitsyn bellowed his response and lurched a step higher up the incline. Salytov was able to grasp his prize.

“Down!”

Ptitsyn sank groaning to his knees, losing his cap and receiving in return a face full of snow as Salytov dismounted over his head. “What have you found, sir?” he asked, when he had retrieved his cap and staggered back to his feet.

Salytov examined the paper with an expression of angry triumph. “Ha! This will show him!”

“Is it a clue, sir?”

Salytov folded his wallet over the slip of paper and scanned the ground eagerly. He noticed a mound of snow of suspiciously regular shape some way from the tree.

“There,” Salytov pointed.

“Could he have jumped from that, sir? Is that what you’re thinking?” asked Ptitsyn.

“What?” snapped Salytov.

“I only mean, sir-”

“I don’t give a damn what you mean, you imbecile. I commanded you to investigate that mound in the snow. Are you refusing to obey my order?”

“No, sir. Of course not, sir,” said Ptitsyn, stung by Salytov’s severity. But he was determined to prove himself worthy of the stern officer’s approval. He did not waste time wondering how the word there could be interpreted as a formal command. He lunged in the direction Salytov was still pointing.

Ptitsyn crouched by the mound, which seemed to have a precisely rectangular outline beneath the soft, rounded surface of the snow. He scooped away a few handfuls of the freshest fall from one side, revealing patches of brown in a sheer, smooth surface. “I think it’s some kind of suitcase,” he said, as he continued to excavate. “It appears to be open. There’s-” Ptitsyn broke off. His gloved fingers groped into the snow and lifted what turned out to be an envelope, lilac in color. So delighted was he with this haul as he handed it to the lieutenant that he failed to notice what it had uncovered. But as Ptitsyn looked keenly into the lieutenant’s face, he noticed that it had suddenly become unusually pale, as if the heat of his temper had been siphoned from him. There was no ferocity there. Following Salytov’s eye line toward the spot he was staring at, Ptitsyn gasped to see the features of a man in the snow. “Did you ever see anything like this, sir?” he whispered, his eyes wide open in shocked wonder.

When Salytov answered, his voice was soft and awed. “Go back to Shestaya Street. Take a drozhki. Tell them what we have found.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will stay here to secure the scene. You will return with more men. We will need a wagon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go then!” Salytov clapped his hands once to send the young policeman running. He watched Ptitsyn’s swaying back recede as he took out his wallet once more and placed the lilac envelope inside.