‘Yes, that’s true. I-I-I don’t deny it,’ Meyer stammered in confusion.
‘There is no point in denying that which is self-evidently true, my friend.’
Meyer suddenly became excited. ‘But here’s the thing! I remembernow what happened.’ He was almost shouting.
‘Very well. Tell me what happened. But please, try to calm down.’
‘There was a man.’
‘A man?’
‘At the shop. The confectioner’s.’
‘Someone who works there?’
‘No. Another customer. Although, now that I come to think of it, it was outside the shop. I was coming out. I’d just bought the chocolates. He was going in and . . . he walked into me. Quite deliberately! Don’t you see? I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the thing is, you see, I dropped the chocolates. No! I didn’t drop them! He knocked them out of my hand! It was quite deliberate. I see that now. At the time, well, you cannot believe such things. You do not trust the evidence of your own eyes. “Why would anyone do such a thing?” you think. No, it can’t have been so. He can’t have knocked the chocolates out of my hand. I simply refuse to believe that a stranger would do this. And yet . . . he did it! Afterwards he was so apologetic, and made such a fuss of retrieving the chocolates for me. What if, what if - this is what I’m thinking - what if he swapped them for another box of chocolates? A poisoned box!’
‘Did anyone else see this encounter?’
‘Oh yes! There were many people on the pavement. It was on the Nevsky Prospekt. Another fellow even tried to pick up the chocolate box but he - the man, you understand - he screamed at him hysterically to leave them be. I thought that most odd, but at the same time, thought nothing of it.’ Meyer frowned. ‘He was very particular - jealous you might almost say - about picking up the box himself.’
‘Can you give us the names of any of these witnesses?’
‘No! Of course not! They were just people on the street. Passers-by. How could I be expected to know their names?’
‘And this man? Was he known to you?’
‘That’s what’s strange about this whole affair! I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘He was a man. I don’t know, just some kind of man. I didn’t look very closely at him. I found him rather annoying. I do not like to look closely at people who annoy me. I wanted him gone from my sight. I had no idea, at the time.’
‘Why would he do this, do you think, this stranger?’
‘I don’t know! That is to say, I only have one theory.’
‘And what is your theory?’
‘Bezmygin.’
Porfiry broke off his pacing once more. He stood with his back to Meyer.’Who is Bezmygin?’ Porfiry angled his head as he awaited Meyer’s answer.
‘A musician.’
‘And what does Bezmygin the musician have to do with all this?’
‘Why it’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Porfiry turned and transmitted a blank look to Meyer.
‘He put the man up to it.’
‘You will have to help me here. I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why would he do that?’
‘He was in love with Raisa. They played duets together. He even came to visit her sometimes when I was not there. I caught them together once. They denied any impropriety, of course. They were rehearsing for a concert. Ha! But why would he be at the house of a married woman when her husband was absent if not for immoral purposes? I made her break with him completely. In point of fact, she was happy enough to do so. She did not love him. It was all on his side. My wife . . . well, my wife is easily influenced. She is weak. He is a flashy gewgaw of a man. She was a woman. It was only natural that there would be some degree of infatuation. But love? No. Never. But this man, this Bezmygin, he is a vain, arrogant man. You have no idea. He didn’t take it well. I believe he has done all this to get even with her, with me. To destroy us. Do you not see?’
‘We will naturally want to talk to this Bezmygin,’ said Porfiry, beginning to pace once more. ‘Do you know where we might find him?’
‘He plays in the private orchestra of Count Akhmatov. I believe he is at the count’s dacha near Petergof. He is little more than a serf. A performing lackey!’
‘But why would he wish to kill your son?’
‘He hated Grigory. To him, Grigory was always in the way. He could never be alone with my wife, you see.’
Porfiry stopped pacing to light a cigarette while he considered what Meyer had said. The doctor looked from Porfiry to Virginsky with desperate expectancy, trying to gauge on which of these two magistrates to focus his appeal. Virginsky’s expression held more promise of sympathy, but he too watched Porfiry in some expectation. Everything, clearly, hung on what the older magistrate decided. For the moment, however, Porfiry seemed interested only in absorbing and enjoying the smoke from his cigarette. His face gave nothing away. At last he nodded, decisively, and said, ‘We will look into it.’ Finally, he took the seat next to Virginsky. ‘At the dacha we found a number of sheets of paper covered in close, neat handwriting, apparently passages copied from the newspapers. All of them seem to be sensationalised accounts of murders or suicides. Rather singular, I think you will agree. Extraordinary, one might almost say. Dr Meyer, do you have any idea who made these copies?’
‘Grigory. It was something he did.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, it seems rather a strange hobby for a boy to have.’
‘It was not a hobby. It was a compulsion. Grigory . . . was not ... he faced particular difficulties.’
‘How would you characterise these difficulties, speaking as a doctor?’
‘As a doctor?’ Meyer seemed surprised by this acknowledgement of his profession. ‘As a doctor, I would characterise them as imbecilic.’
‘And as a father?’
Meyer said nothing. Anguish writhed on his face.
‘He must have been a disappointment to you,’ pressed Porfiry softly, grinding his cigarette out into the tin ashtray on the table.
Meyer flashed the briefest, and rawest, of looks at him. ‘He was my son.’
‘And yet . . . not the son you had hoped for.’ Porfiry put this as a statement. ‘No one would blame you for feeling this way.’
‘I tried to help him, to break these habits. If only we could have ruptured the pattern of compulsion, we might have made progress.’
‘But it was hopeless? He did not respond to your treatment.’
‘Raisa Ivanovna would not support me in it. Her mollycoddling undermined my efforts.’
‘There must have been times’ - Porfiry’s voice cracked on the edge of a whisper - ‘when you thought it would have been better for Grigory if he had never been born.’
Meyer took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief. He lifted his head as he replaced them, but did not look at Porfiry. ‘Better for Grigory? Grigory’s condition caused him no suffering. If anything, it was we who suffered more because of it.’
‘And you, most of all, I imagine.’
‘That does not mean I wished him dead.’
‘It must have been hard though, for a man such as you, with a brilliant academic record, a PhD, an intellectual, to have such a son.’
‘For all that, sometimes I envied him.’
Porfiry kinked an eyebrow sceptically.
‘Grigory was an innocent,’ continued Meyer. ‘Sometimes I wondered what it must be like to live in such a state of . . . innocence, a state of grace.’
Porfiry smiled. ‘I understand. I understand completely. And yet you must have feared for him too? There would come a day when you and Raisa would no longer be able to look after him.’
‘I had thought of that, even if Raisa wouldn’t. There are provisions one can make. Institutions. As a doctor, one knows a little more about these things than a layman.’
‘You visited asylums?’
‘I went to Ulyanka. The house at the eleventh verst.’
Virginsky shot a significant, excited glance at Porfiry, who battedit away with three quick blinks.
‘When was this?’ asked Porfiry, neutrally.
‘Is it important?’ It seemed Meyer had picked up something from Virginsky’s glance.
‘It may be.’
Meyer frowned and shook his head, trying to remember. ‘I don’t know. It was in the summer. It must have been last summer.’
‘And what were your impressions?’
‘It is run in accordance with the latest scientific thinking.’ Meyer’s tone was strangely dead.
‘And what did Raisa think?’
‘She didn’t go with me. She wouldn’t countenance it. I couldn’t talk to her about the future.’ Meyer’s imploring gaze sought out Virginsky. ‘I did not wish my son dead,’ he insisted.
‘The maid, Polina,’ said Porfiry, his tone harsher now, ‘she couldn’t raise you. She said she knocked on your door and called out for you, but you didn’t answer.’
‘I was working. I told you that at the dacha.’
‘Ah, yes. Your work. It must be very absorbing work.’
‘It is.’
‘What were you doing, exactly, in your study, when the maid roused you?’
Meyer’s expression of shock at this question was almost comical. ‘I was looking at a map,’ he said at last, his voice surprised, and then defeated. He had been so taken off his guard that he had not thought to lie.
‘This was part of your work?’
‘I . . . do . . . need to look at maps for my work, yes.’ The answer stumbled out, Meyer’s brow creased in a frown. He was a bad liar; he was evidently struggling to comprehend his own inconsistencies.
‘Had you taken morphine?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘It is an outrageous question.’
‘Which you haven’t answered yet.’
‘I am tired now.’
‘We will search your study anyhow.’
‘And what if you do? And what if you find morphine there? It means nothing. I am a doctor.’
‘You are a sanitation inspector. I imagine you are not often called upon to dispense morphine.’
‘I am self-medicating. I suffer from neuralgic pain.’
‘And you had medicated yourself that afternoon?’
Meyer nodded minutely.
‘It is unfortunate,’ said Porfiry. ‘Perhaps if you hadn’t, your wife and child might still be alive.’
‘Bezmygin!’ shouted Meyer. ‘Bezmygin is to blame, not me!’ His fingers curled as he clutched the edge of the table, pushing his knuckles into the tabletop. It seemed for a moment that he would hurl the table at them.
Porfiry signalled mutely to Ptitsyn.
‘So, Pavel Pavlovich. What do you make of all that?’ Meyer’s rancid aura lingered, even though he had been taken back to his cell. Porfiry, on his feet once more, lit a cigarette, as if to dispel it.
‘A connection?’ Virginsky made the suggestion tentatively.
‘A connection?’ Porfiry threw it back with sceptical emphasis.
‘With the boy Lieutenant Salytov brought in. Tolya, the apprentice from the confectioner’s.’
‘Whom we had to release because there were insufficient grounds for holding him. His passport turned out to be perfectly in order. And it is not a crime to have a suicide for a mother. Besides, a search of the workshop - and the boy’s lodging - turned up nothing.’
‘The pamphlets?’