‘It is a question that could gain you your liberty,’ said Porfiry. ‘Please sit down.’ He looked up at Vakhramev with a steady gaze.
Now Vakhramev’s expression was utterly bewildered. He seemed lost. There was no pretence left to him. He took his seat again, slowly. ‘I do not see what you are getting at, or why you feel the need to ask these insulting and quite filthy questions. I am a respectable man. Besides, this line of enquiry can have nothing to do with Setochkin.’
‘On the contrary, it may turn out to be highly relevant.’ Porfiry took out a handkerchief and folded it precisely into a neat square. He then used it to dab his face, particularly around his eyes. ‘Allow me to be frank with you, Ruslan Vladimirovich. The case against you is strong, at least as far as the circumstantial evidence is concerned. Your testimony simply does not add up. There are those who would say that you are trying to bamboozle us with this story of the letter.’ Porfiry put the handkerchief away. ‘That your intention is to whip up a mystery to confuse the jury. You are feeding them a doubt, by which you aim to wriggle off the hook. And yet, the fact remains that the simplest, and therefore most likely explanation, is that you shot Setochkin. That you went to his apartment with the intention of shooting him, and indeed of killing him. That you are his murderer.’
‘If you are convinced of this then why are you tormenting me with these questions of brothels?’
Porfiry placed the heel of his right hand into his corresponding eye socket and twisted it. When he took the hand away, he blinked ferociously. Vakhramev watched him uncertainly.
‘Don’t you see? It’s precisely because I am not convinced that I’m asking you this. If I were convinced I would not even be here talking to you. The letter, that mysterious, phantom letter — I believe in it. I am probably the only one who does, apart from yourself. Not only that, I believe it could provide the key to the whole mystery. Who was it from? I know, you cannot say. Can you at least enlighten us as to its content?’
‘It concerned Setochkin. And my daughter, Tatyana. More than that I will not say. A gentleman would not ask.’
‘You don’t understand, do you? You must forget all this business of what a gentleman would or would not ask. I am afraid the rules of gentlemanly conduct no longer apply. We have gone beyond all that. Now we must deal in evidence. The content of the letter constitutes evidence. We cannot see the letter, so we must rely on your account of it. Was it to protect Tatyana that you spirited it away?’
‘I did not. . spirit it away, as you put it. I hate to think whose hands it has fallen into.’
‘Was it something like this?’ Porfiry partially raised the cover of the folder and took out the sheet of white notepaper found in the box under the chair in Dr Meyer’s study.
Vakhramev took the letter. Bewilderment changed to amazement. ‘How extraordinary! It could have been written by the same hand.’
‘Very likely it was,’ said Porfiry. ‘What about the content? Would you say it is broadly similar in tenor?’
‘Well, it was equally nasty, if that’s what you mean.’
‘As you can see, the letter I have shown you makes reference to a licensed brothel on Sadovaya Street. Madam Josephine’s. In an attempt to establish a further connection between the two letters, I am desirous to know whether you ever visited that establishment. ’
‘But sir, I am a respectable married man.’
‘Before you were married, perhaps?’
‘Well, before one was married, one did many things.’
‘Exactly.’ Porfiry smiled encouragingly.
‘Are you married, sir?’
The smile died on Porfiry’s lips. ‘No.’
‘Then how do you solve the problem of needs? I presume you are subject to them. You are a man, after all. You are human?’
‘Indeed.’
‘So?’
Porfiry sensed an anticipatory shifting from Virginsky beside him. He did not deign to turn towards it. ‘We are not here to talk about me,’ he said at last.
‘Humbug. I will not be judged by a hypocritical prig.’
‘I’m not here to judge you,’ said Porfiry. He kept his eyes closed, tensely, as he turned in Vakhramev’s direction. Finally his eyelids fluttered open and he met Vakhramev’s gaze. ‘I have visited an establishment similar to that mentioned in the letter. It is also on Sadovaya Street as it happens, beneath a milliner’s shop. The madam is a German woman, Fräulein Keller. Perhaps you know it?’
‘No sir, I do not,’ Vakhramev answered crisply.
‘Well, then. I have made my confession to you. We are men of the world. We are subject to needs. We can talk openly about these things.’
Porfiry thought that he detected disappointment in Virginsky’s restlessness now.
‘It will go no further?’ Vakhramev leant in.
‘I see no reason why it should. That is to say, I cannot promise. But I will do my best.’
‘It was all a long time ago, you understand.’
‘Of course.’
‘I have mended my ways.’
‘Yes.’
‘That man, the man who visited these places, is a stranger to me now. I do not recognise him. I pity those who still have need of such a recourse.’ Vakhramev looked at Porfiry pointedly.
‘Please, all this is understood.’
‘No, I’m not sure that you do understand, sir. I have repented, my God, how I have repented. I have atoned. It has not been something trivial, this atoning. It has not been something I put on like a cloak. It has been an upheaval, sir, a veritable upheaval of the soul. I bared my face to my God. I lay prostrate, my face in the dirt. I told my wife everything too. Everything. I kept a journal, you see, when I was a bachelor. A journal in which every sordid encounter was inscribed. I gave it to her to read — no, I insisted she read it. Before we were married, you understand. To give her one final chance. . to walk away. So that she could know the beast, the unworthy, worthless monster that I was, and escape from me. She was repelled. Disgusted. She hated me. But she — angel! — forgave me. Can you imagine such magnanimity of soul? Can your understanding encompass it? You have never married. I am sorry for you. How can you know of what I speak? She forgave me! But, there was one condition. We were never to speak of it again. I promised, I swore, to destroy the diary. And I would never mention it to another living soul.’
‘Ah, I see. Pity — that you destroyed it.’
Vakhramev looked down at the table, his face quivering with emotion.
‘And you were married. . when?’
Vakhramev lifted his gaze proudly. ‘Nastasya Petrovna and I were married on March the twenty-first, eighteen forty-eight.’
‘So we are twenty years too late to read it.’ Porfiry smiled but watched Vakhramev closely, who once again looked down. ‘My interest in the diary has nothing to do with prurience, you understand, ’ continued Porfiry. ‘It’s just that it might have contained a significant name or two. This Madam Josephine, for instance.’
‘I believe I did go there once,’ said Vakhramev quickly, still not looking at Porfiry.
Porfiry lifted the cover of the folder again and took out the photograph of Raisa Ivanovna Meyer from many years ago that Virginsky had recovered from the dacha. He passed it across the table to Vakhramev. ‘Do you remember ever seeing this woman there?’
Vakhramev studied the photograph. His lips pursed slightly as he did so. And then the hand holding the photograph began to shake. ‘It was a long time ago. I only went there once.’
‘Really?’
‘I swear.’
‘But did you see her there?’
‘I cannot be expected to remember their faces,’ said Vakhramev. His own face became sealed off from further enquiry, as he laid the photograph face down on the table.
‘Is there, do you think, a specifically Russian type of hypocrite? And if so, who would stand as our exemplum of it?’ Porfiry was again looking out of the window, down at the Yekaterininsky Canal, as he had been the morning Virginsky first presented himself at his chambers twelve days ago. He was smoking now, as then.