‘Yes. It would seem so.’
‘And that smell?’
‘They crapped themselves — begging your pardon, Your Excellency.’
Porfiry bent down and sniffed the one chocolate remaining in the Ballet’s box. ‘There will have to be a medical examination, of course. But it seems obvious that we are dealing with a case of poisoning here. Whether accidental or deliberate, that is the question we must determine.’
‘You have made your mind up already, Porfiry Petrovich?’ asked Virginsky with a frown.
‘Well, something must have killed them. Some substance has disrupted these organisms to a fatal degree. If it is a case of accidental food poisoning, then it is surely the most virulent and severe incidence that I have ever encountered.’
‘You do not think it is accidental then?’
‘As I said, there will have to be a medical examination.’ Porfiry dropped to the floor and prostrated himself alongside the corpses. Raisa Meyer’s cheek lay on her son’s shoulder. Porfiry looked into her face. It was a singular intimacy, that between the living and the dead, unreciprocated and presumptuous. This woman in life, only hours ago in fact, would not have suffered such proximity, such a probing gaze, from a strange man. Her eyes looked nowhere, and however much he tried he could not make them meet his. The pupils, he noticed, were dilated in the same way as her son’s. He could think — inappropriately, and with a tingle of shame — of only one other situation in which a man attends so closely to, and expects so much from, a woman he doesn’t know. She was wearing make-up, he noticed. The kohl around her eyes was streaked from tears. Her mouth was stretched out of shape by the pull of embrace; the orange mess around it made her resemble an infant after feeding. She would not want to have been seen like this, not for the most fleeting of instants, let alone laid out and displayed. He was touched by the pathetic sprawl of her arms, her fists clenched uselessly, her elbows angled with despair and rage. Her whole body was contorted by a fierce but ineffectual determination.
Porfiry stood up. ‘She was a beauty. Once. I imagine.’
‘Really?’ Virginsky’s surprise seemed almost insulting.
‘Death is always ugly. But I see strength in her. And love. These are qualities I associate with beauty. And remember, a face, a living face, is made up of a succession of fleeting expressions.’ Porfiry made a series of faces to illustrate his point, moving through rapid transitions from respectful solemnity to a buffoonish leer. His face then snapped into an expression of deadpan neutrality. ‘Even the most beautiful of women is capable of looking ugly, at least for an instant, when taken off her guard. And nothing is more prone to take us off our guard than sudden death.’ Porfiry turned his head towards the door leading to the interior of the dacha. ‘We will talk to the maid now.’
‘She’s inside,’ said Ptitsyn. ‘Do you want me to bring her out?’ He was looking down at the havoc on the floor.
Porfiry seemed to consider his question. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘There’s no need for that. Just yet.’
Porfiry paused on the threshold to take in the interior of the dacha. He was aware of the two people seated at opposite ends of the room, the man in an armchair, the young woman on a divan, but he did not turn to either of them until he had finished a slow, systematic scan that seemed to search into every corner. It was a familiar enough setting, a dacha in the chalet style: birch-plank walls, covered with folk art, rag rugs on the floor, old and mismatched furniture, draped throws to conceal the ruptured upholstery. There was an upright piano against one wall, lid lifted, an album of Russian folk songs open on the music rest. The whole was suffused with a soft golden light, which completed the contrived bucolic effect. The heavy tick of a cherry grandfather clock measured out time into stilted units.
He turned his attention decisively to the pale, bespectacled man in the armchair — an archetypal intellectual, slightly built and high browed. ‘Dr Meyer?’
The man looked as though he had just been, or was just about to be, sick. His eyes swam without focus.
‘You have my condolences,’ continued Porfiry.
At last Dr Meyer’s gaze latched on to Porfiry, as if he had only just connected the sounds he had heard with this entity before him. Almost immediately he looked away, it seemed in disappointment: had he expected something more than condolences?
‘This must be a difficult time for you.’
Now Meyer’s expression became suspicious. ‘Who are you?’ His voice was high and harsh.
‘My name is Porfiry Petrovich. I am the investigating magistrate. This is Pavel Pavlovich. He is assisting me.’
‘Why do you offer me your condolences?’
‘Because you have today lost your wife and son.’
‘What is it to you? What do you care?’
‘I am capable of human sympathy.’
‘I know why you are here. I know what you really think. I do not believe in your condolences.’
‘I have a job to do, Dr Meyer. You must understand that.’
Meyer did not reply. He seemed to have lost interest in Porfiry. His eyes flitted about the room as if it was unfamiliar to him.
Porfiry looked at the girl now. He was taken aback to see her scowling ferociously at Meyer. Glancing at Virginsky to have his surprise confirmed, he saw that the younger man’s gaze was locked on her face in bashful appreciation.
Of course! thought Porfiry, she is pretty!
Perhaps she was even beautiful; if so, it was a fiery and forceful beauty. Evidently, she was Virginsky’s type.
She had a proud face; the pride was there in the dark glower she was directing towards the doctor. A long straight nose, deeply recessed cheeks, full lips, quick to pout — how haughty they could be, these peasant girls. Porfiry smiled, thinking of Virginsky’s democratic principles. Was it these that drew him to her, or their opposite: the vestigial sense of aristocratic privilege?
‘You must be Polina?’
Somehow she damped the fire in her eyes. Her expression became shy, self-effacing. Ah! So she can act, this one! She bowed her head and barely managed to meet Porfiry’s eye. He noticed, however, that she flashed a glance at Virginsky. Was that a little smile that played on her lips?
‘It must have been very distressing for you, to find your mistress and the young master like that?’
She nodded tensely, then looked quickly — was it warningly — at Dr Meyer.
‘Perhaps you would care to step outside with me, on to the veranda. There are some questions I would like to ask you concerning what happened when you found them.’
Again Polina looked towards Meyer, though this time it seemed she wanted reassurance from him. But he was lost to her.
‘Outside? Where they are?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so. It will help if you can show me how things were.’
She rose warily, smoothed her apron with flattened palms and nodded once more. Porfiry let her lead the way out, noticing another flash of interest pass between her and Virginsky.
Porfiry gestured away the men on the veranda with a single back-sweep of his hand. They shuffled and clumped to the periphery.
‘So, Polina, could you tell me what happened here today?’
The girl’s eye-line dipped down, to the bodies, then swooped away quickly, repelled. She chose to settle her gaze on the comparatively neutral surface of the table. But something troubled her there. The vomit, perhaps, thought Porfiry. Or those sheets of paper, with that strange, tight handwriting on them.
‘I brought the samovar out for Raisa Ivanovna.’
‘I see. What time was this?’
‘Two o’clock. I had not long taken away the lunch things. And Dr Meyer had just come home.’
‘Was Dr Meyer out here on the veranda?’
‘No. He was in his study.’
‘So, Raisa Ivanovna took her tea at two o’clock.’
‘I always bring it out to her at two.’
‘Yes. Good. I see. And what did they eat today? For breakfast, let’s say?’