A Razor Wrapped in Silk (15 page)
‘Very much so.’
‘I would also ask you to conduct your spectral test on a substance I detected on one of her rings. The large ruby ring
on her right hand, the one turned inward. I have sanguinary expectations regarding it.’
‘It would be my pleasure.’
‘Now, Pavel Pavlovich, shall we visit the invalid? Perhaps it would interest you to accompany us, Dr Pervoyedov?’
‘What is this?’
‘Aglaia Filippovna, the dead woman’s sister,’ supplied Virginsky. ‘She succumbed to a nervous attack last night, which has rendered her unconscious. She revived briefly this morning, but according to the physician attending her, she has sunk into a coma. She is here at the palace.’
‘And how do you expect to interview a patient in a coma, Porfiry Petrovich?’
‘She may come round. In the meantime, I have some questions I would like to ask her doctor. Your presence would be invaluable.’
*
Aglaia Filippovna’s hair lay in a loose black halo over the pillow. There was an eggshell fragility to her head. Her skin seemed as thin as rice paper. Apart from where it veiled her eyes with purple shadows, it was pallid to the point of transparency. Her lips were slightly parted, which gave her face an ugly, unguarded expression. Her body lay as neat and unmoving as a pencil beneath the covers, arms pressed close to her sides, legs together.
The room was in semi-darkness; the drapes were partially drawn, allowing a torpid grey light to intrude without conviction. A fire had been lit in the grate, and its reflected glow filled and enlarged the bedroom, dancing in restless shifts across the ceiling.
A woman on the wrong side of middle age stood by the bed looking down at the invalid with appalled fascination. The woman was so stationary that she appeared almost to be a waxwork. It was conceivable that she had once been beautiful, but she was a long way from her heyday now. Her face had a sunken, sour expression, as if she were sucking on a bitter pill. Her dress was very dark, and in the gloom appeared black, or to have been sewn from a fabric of shadow. She did not look up when Porfiry and the others came into the room.
‘Madam?’
Slowly she lifted her head and revolved her eyes heavily towards Porfiry.
‘Madam, I am Porfiry Petrovich, the investigating magistrate.’
She met this information with a disappointed nod. Her eyes went back to watching Aglaia Filippovna.
‘I take it you are the lady of the house, Princess Naryskina?’
A slow blink seemed intended to confirm this supposition.
‘I wonder, madam, if we might be permitted to talk to the doctor who is responsible for the young lady’s care.’
Princess Naryskina turned to the nurse who was seated by the bed and released her with a prolonged sigh. The nurse hurried from the room with almost unseemly eagerness, as if she could not wait to be free of that torpid gaze.
‘Dr Müller is at this moment in the kitchen, enjoying the cook’s hospitality.’ Princess Naryskina’s voice was deep for a woman’s. She spoke with her chin against her collarbone, so that her words seemed choked out. She did not meet anyone’s eyes as she spoke. Perhaps once, her evasive glance had passed for coquettish shyness. In a woman of her maturity, it seemed suspect.
They waited in silence, Porfiry keeping his eyes on this interesting specimen of aristocratic womanhood, watching her with a lively smile.
At last, an elderly and rotund German, who had obviously spent a lifetime enjoying the hospitality of cooks, presented himself with patient equanimity. The dramatic circumstances of his patient’s sudden decline barely disturbed the essential stolidity of his character. He spoke slowly in a heavily accented and lulling monotone. It seemed that upon waking from her first sedated sleep, Aglaia Filippovna had become agitated. Pressed for details of this agitation by Dr Pervoyedov, he described a whole range of extraordinary symptoms, including uncontrollable laughter alternating with equally uncontrollable sobbing, muscular spasms, compulsive wringing of the hands, inarticulate shouting and the voicing of obscenities, all of which he catalogued under the general heading of hysteria. He also revealed that Aglaia Filippovna had ripped off the nightshirt with which she had been provided and run naked through the corridors of the palace. She had once again found her way on to the stage of the now empty theatre only to collapse in exactly the same spot she had the night before. Relieving her bladder where she lay, she had then suffered a seizure which the good Dr Müller had diagnosed as epileptic. He had naturally administered potassium bromide in solution; however, the patient had suffered an unfortunate reaction to the drug and had fallen into a bromide coma. This at least gave the nurse the opportunity to clean her, and, with the assistance of some of the servants, to return her to her bed.
‘Does the patient have a history of epilepsy?’ asked Dr Pervoyedov.
‘Not known.’
‘Is there epilepsy within the patient’s family?’
‘Not known.’
Porfiry ventured a question: ‘When do you expect her to regain consciousness?’
‘Not known.’ It seemed to Porfiry that Dr Müller took unwarranted satisfaction in being able to give the same answer.
‘Would you permit me to examine your patient?’ asked Dr Pervoyedov.
Dr Müller assented with an economical nod of the head.
Dr Pervoyedov peeled open the first of her eyes, revealing a purer turquoise than that of her sister. He bent his head close to hers and gazed into the small startling circle of colour. The eye stayed open when he took his hand away, and failed to track the finger that he moved in front of it. He repeated the examination on the other eye, with the same result. Next he pulled down the covers and lifted a frail arm. After feeling her pulse, he laid the other arm down with delicate precision, as if it were vital that it be replaced in exactly the same position.
‘More. There is more – to see.’
The abrupt bark of the elderly German doctor was startling enough. But when he pulled down the covers in a single and surprisingly energetic sweep, the effect was positively shocking. He did not stop there. He grabbed the lace-trimmed hem of Aglaia Filippovna’s night dress in fingers that now seemed obscenely thick and coarse and yanked it up, high above her waist, exposing her slightly parted legs and pubic hair. Her skin gleamed in the half light.
She did not stir. Her unblinking eyes continued to stare straight ahead. For a moment, no one spoke.
‘I notice it when she naked. See.’ Dr Müller pointed to a
criss-cross of lines running up the side of her left leg and continuing past her hip to stop at the side of her abdomen.
‘What are they?’ came Virginsky’s hoarse whisper.
‘Scars,’ answered Dr Pervoyedov. Dr Müller nodded vigorously.
Now that it had been said, Virginsky could see that the lines were cut into her flesh and that they were red. Some of them appeared fresh, glistening crimson against the pallor of her skin. They brought to mind fine threads of silk laid across marble.
‘Who did this?’ Virginsky’s question was shot through with resignation. At that moment, he hated Porfiry Petrovich, for it was Porfiry who had forced him to confront it all, the surface scratches, the gaping wounds, the mangled flesh and bone, the erupted blood. He could almost believe that Porfiry took pleasure from it.
‘She did it to herself.’
Virginsky flinched away from Porfiry’s voice, as if there was something in it that he could not face: the realisation of his own injustice. There had been no hint of pleasure in that voice, only boundless compassion.
‘Cover her up,’ commanded Porfiry. ‘And close her eyes.’
Virginsky felt a surge of relief. His hatred for Porfiry Petrovich had passed.
Porfiry looked up at Princess Naryskina, and Virginsky followed his gaze unthinkingly.
She had not moved. However, the energy that might have gone into movement had instead intensified her unnaturally fixed stare, as it feasted on the network of wounds.
Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Naryskin watched the departure of the magistrates and their disreputably shabby doctor from the window of his study on the first floor. He saw Porfiry Petrovich glance back at the palace, his face drawn and colourless. Some instinct drove the prince to step aside from the window so as not to be seen. And yet he felt that the magistrate’s penetrating gaze had detected him. The three men stood for a moment in conference, Porfiry Petrovich all the time looking up at the prince’s window. Finally, he nodded once and they moved on into the grey drizzle.
Prince Sergei was about to turn away when a lacquered carriage drawn by two feathered greys clattered into the Fontanka Embankment. He recognised the crest on the door as that of Bakhmutov’s bank, a commercial rather than familial crest. Of course – the man had no family. The carriage pulled up. One of the footmen, impeccably liveried in dove grey, jumped down to see to the steps. He opened the door and handed down Bakhmutov himself, who wore an astrakhan-trimmed coat loosely over his shoulders, a concession to the seasonal inclemency. He too looked up at the palace, as Porfiry Petrovich had done, though Bakhmutov’s face was lit by determination, and even a glint of cunning. This time, Prince Sergei made no attempt to conceal himself, but met the moneylender’s gaze with a defiant stare. He would not be put
to shame in his own home. Why was Bakhmutov here? If it was to offer his condolences, he did not want anything to do with them. And he found it hard to believe that his father, who had his own reasons for hating Bakhmutov, would have had any cause to welcome him today.
Bakhmutov released himself from this eye contact with a sneer of contempt. He disappeared beneath the prince’s window. The jangle of the visitors’ bell presaged his intrusion into the sealed, silent interior of the palace.
Prince Sergei now turned his gaze on the bust of Kutuzov that he kept on a fluted pedestal. He saw reproach in his hero’s blank, eternally unblinking eyes.
‘What would you have me do?’
But the stone lips refused to offer either comfort or advice.
*
In the red drawing room, Prince Naryskin stood with his back to his guest, staring into the fire. Bakhmutov had shrugged his overcoat into the hands of a footman and was revealed to be wearing a black morning suit, his usual apparel for a business day. The prince was dressed for the department, in his bottle green frock coat and medals.
‘What do you mean by coming here?’
‘Am I not permitted to make a social call on friends?’
Prince Naryskin pinched his lips against the answer that was pushing to get out. He contented himself with saying, ‘What do you want?’
‘How is Seryozha?’
‘Prince Sergei Nikolaevich is naturally devastated by the death of his fiancée under such … shocking circumstances.’
‘Naturally. And yet …’ Bakhmutov put a hand to his neatly trimmed beard. ‘He knew what he was … exposing himself to. He knew the history. It was a brave man who took that on. Or a fool.’
‘You dare to call my son a fool!’
‘No no no! You misunderstand me. He was not the fool. Mizinchikov was the fool. Your son’s actions betokened great nobility of soul.’
Prince Naryskin did not see the smile that accompanied this soaring eulogy. He stared in silence at the dancing flames.
‘Tell me.’ A cold, wheedling note had entered Bakhmutov’s voice. ‘Did your son know … everything? Did he know about your … ?’
‘Of course not.’ In the transmutations of the fire, Prince Nikolai saw again the eager flare of orange that had consumed her letters. ‘And he will never know. What do you take me for?’
‘And now – if he discovered the truth now?’
‘It would destroy him.’
‘But a man … could it not be argued, has a right to know the truth, in a general, philosophical way of speaking?’
Prince Naryskin turned on Bakhmutov. ‘So! That’s what this is about! You’ve come to blackmail me.’ The fury suddenly fell from his face, to be replaced by a bitter despair. His voice cracked. ‘What could I have that you would want? I’m in your pocket as it is!’
‘Once again, you misunderstand me, Nikolai Sergeevich. I am with you in this. We are as one. Seryozha must never find out. This affair is hard enough for him to bear as it is.’ Ivan Iakovich Bakhmutov drew himself up, and puffed out his chest. He articulated his next words slowly, with an almost
sadistic clarity. ‘If he found out that his father had once been his dead fiancée’s lover, who knows what it might do to him?’
‘Be quiet!’ Prince Nikolai narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Bakhmutov. ‘What are you up to, you snake?’
‘I want – if I may be said to want anything – I want to be your friend.’
Prince Nikolai gave a grimace of pain. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is simple. I will be your friend. And you – in return – will be my friend.’ Bakhmutov’s tone suddenly hardened. ‘There will be no more of this “Snake!”, no more of this “Jew!”, no more of this contempt. You will acknowledge me as your friend. As your equal.’
‘You don’t know what you ask.’
‘I know what I give. A friend would never betray a confidence. But a man who is not your friend, a man whom you have made your enemy – who can say what such a man might do?’
Prince Nikolai looked Bakhmutov up and down, as if considering him for the first time. A smile curled on Bakhmutov’s lips, which was not mirrored on the prince’s.
Bakhmutov held out his hand. ‘Come now, friend.’
At last the prince raised his own hand, stiffly, slowly, as if he were lifting a tremendous weight. Bakhmutov seized the hand with the one he had extended, while his other arm stretched possessively around Prince Nikolai’s shoulder, pulling him to him. His smile now was one of satisfaction.
*
On the other side of the ornately moulded double doors of the red drawing room, Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Naryskin snatched his hand back from the gold handle as if it had
suddenly grown white hot. But the handle was only a little warm, no warmer than the palm of his hand. Admittedly, his palm was drenched in sweat, and that sweat, he saw, had dimmed the lustre of the metal.