Outside, the first snow of the season was struggling to distinguish itself in a murky fall of sleet. The natural light in the pathology laboratory of the Obukhovsky Hospital was meagre. To compensate, Dr Pervoyedov had placed a kerosene lamp before a parabolic reflector, to direct light down towards the stage of the microscope.
The material taken from the mirror had dissolved in cold distilled water, which did not rule out its being blood. The scrapings had been brown, consistent with oxidised blood, and the resultant solution had taken on a pale pink colour, the freshness of which again suggested blood. Residues of brown oil-based paint, for example, or dye, would not have reacted in that way. A drop of this solution was now between glass slides held by the frame of the microscope.
Squinting one eye closed, Dr Pervoyedov stooped to place the other against the brass eyepiece. His field of vision was flooded with shimmering strips of colour, contained within an infinite vault of black. There was always something miraculous in the moment when the truth of a theory was revealed in a startling, living experience. White light is made up of all the colours of the spectrum: his mind had always been capable of grasping that fact. But now his soul was bathing in it. He gazed into the vibrant strips of colour, each one both irrefutably bold and tantalisingly insubstantial. The colours existed somewhere he could never reach.
As he adjusted the lens, bringing the bands of colour in and out of focus, he was able to identify the two distinct spectra. The spectrum on the right, cast by the unfiltered light from the mirror, was clear. In the spectrum on the left, two dark bands jumped out at him immediately, one running through the green strip, the other where the green met the yellow. Dr Pervoyedov consulted Chapman’s article in the Lancet of June, 1863. There was a monochrome figure that endeavoured to represent the seven colours of the spectrum. Two thick black lines cut across the diagram, and although they did not look exactly like the soft-edged bands of negation that he had seen, they were in the same relative positions on the spectrum. This was blood. Arterial blood.
Dr Pervoyedov removed the slide from the microscope stage. He then lifted a test tube containing a thin pinkish solution from a rack. He drew off some of the liquid with a pipette and allowed a drop to fall on to a second glass slide.
This time he saw a single, broader, softer beam of darkness, again cutting across the green band, close to the yellow. He finely adjusted the screw that controlled the lens and the single dark strip separated into two distinct absorption lines with a fuzz of green between them.
The pattern corresponded to a second diagram in Chapman’s article. The solution made from the material taken from Yelena Filippovna’s ring was also blood, but venous blood, rather than arterial.
Dr Pervoyedov again looked through the spectroscope eyepiece to confirm his interpretation. He had succeeded in giving Porfiry Petrovich what he expected — exactly what he had expected, he shouldn’t wonder.
*
‘It would have been better, Pavel Pavlovich, if you had brought the man and not the tunic.’ Porfiry Petrovich stood at the window of his chambers, looking out at a bleak, sleet-filled sky. He turned to face Virginsky with a woeful expression. ‘Or better still, the man and the tunic.’
Porfiry lifted his bandaged hand. The dressing was loose and grubby, in places even stained with ink. With his free hand, Porfiry attempted to tighten it, but the cotton strip unravelled in his fumbling fingers. Porfiry shook it loose from his hand, causing a wad of gauze to fall on the floor. He picked this up and examined it. Blowing the dust off, he turned it over and placed it again on his hand. Clasping the end of the bandage with his thumb, he began winding.
Virginsky watched with a mixture of fascination and horror.
Porfiry bound the hand slowly, straining the bandage to keep it taut, and pausing after every turn to check that the dressing was holding its shape. At last he reached the end of the bandage, to which he gave one last sharp tug before folding it under one of the tightly bound edges. As soon as he let go, the dressing returned to its earlier laxity. Porfiry let out a despairing sigh. ‘What were we talking about?’
Virginsky said nothing but looked resentfully across at the tunic, which was draped over Porfiry’s desk. Even without a Guards officer in it, the article succeeded in attaining a certain swagger.
‘Ah yes, the man in the white tunic. Of course, it was not Mizinchikov,’ continued Porfiry blithely, again beginning to re-bandage his hand. ‘A fugitive from the law — and a deserter to boot — would not draw attention to himself in such a way. Singing for alms, you say?’
‘It was not Mizinchikov,’ confirmed Virginsky with a display of impatience. ‘This man was older than Mizinchikov. And from the look of him, had been living rough for quite some time. Years, I would say. It’s strange, beneath the grime, he had surprisingly regular features. In his time, I expect he was capable of cutting quite a figure. He had the face of an actor — of a leading man gone to seed.’
‘Really? How interesting. And his hair? What colour was his hair?’
‘Difficult to tell. It was very dirty.’ Virginsky was staring at Porfiry’s dressing as he said this.
‘Dark?’
‘No. It was the colour of dirty straw.’
‘So, an ageing, once good-looking man with blond hair. No, that does not sound like a young officer of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, does it?’ Porfiry let out a wheezing chuckle. ‘The likelihood is that Captain Mizinchikov exchanged clothes with this beggar soon after making his escape from the Naryskin Palace. We are looking for a beggar, Pavel Pavlovich. Or rather, a Guards officer in a beggar’s garb.’
‘There is no shortage of beggars in St Petersburg.’
At that moment, the clerk Zamyotov, in his usual manner, barged in without knocking. Virginsky was relieved to have some other object upon which to focus his gaze. ‘A communique from the Obukhovsky Hospital.’ Zamyotov held the buff-coloured envelope out towards Porfiry from the doorway, making no effort to cross the room to hand it to him. Virginsky took it from him and opened it.
‘Dr Pervoyedov writes to inform you that the substance taken from the mirror is indeed blood.’
‘I see,’ said Porfiry, striding from the window to take the letter, his preoccupation with the bandage forgotten. ‘Arterial blood, no less. Whereas the blood on the ring is venous.’
‘Is that significant?’
Porfiry mimed slashing his own throat. ‘Arterial.’ He then slapped himself on the face. ‘Venous.’
‘So the blood on the mirror is hers, most likely. And the blood on the ring is his. Just as we suspected.’
‘It would seem so. And now it occurs to me, Pavel Pavlovich, that it would be expedient to have Dr Pervoyedov apply his new contraption to analysing the stains on the front of this tunic.’
‘What else could they be but blood?’ said Virginsky. ‘They certainly look like blood.’
‘Do they? Could they not equally be soup? Or rust? Or red wine?’
‘No, not red wine,’ insisted Virginsky, with almost petulant force. ‘That is not the colour of red wine. Neither is it borscht. And although they are rust-coloured, they could not be rust. Whatever caused these stains was liquid when it hit the tunic. The most likely explanation is blood. But as you say, Dr Pervoyedov will be able to confirm it.’