Part 18

After making a plan of the place and questioning the coachmen, we had taken with us as to the position in which they had found Olga we returned to the house with long faces. An onlooker might have noticed a certain laziness and apathy in our movements while we were examining the scene of the crime. . . . Perhaps our movements were paralysed to a certain extent by the conviction that the criminal was already in our hands, and therefore it was unnecessary to enter on any Lecoq-like analysis.

On his return from the forest Polugradov again passed a long time in washing and dressing, and he again called for hot water. Having finished his toilet he expressed a wish to examine Urbenin once more. Poor Pëtr Egorych had nothing new to tell us at this examination; as before he denied his guilt, and thought nothing of our evidence.

“I am astonished that I can be suspected,” he said, shrugging his shoulders: “Strange!”

“My good fellow, don't play the _naïf_,” Polugradov said to him. “Nobody is suspected without cause, and if somebody is suspected there is good cause for it!”

“Whatever the causes may be, however strong the evidence may be, one must reason in a humane manner! Don't you understand, I can't murder? I can't . . . Consequently what is your evidence worth?”

“Well!” and the Assistant Prosecutor waved his hand: “what a trouble these educated criminals are; one can make a muzhik understand, but try to talk to one of these! ‘I can't’ . . . ‘in a humane manner’ . . . there they go strumming on psychology!”

“I am no criminal,” Urbenin said quite offended, “I beg you to be more careful in your expressions. . . .”

“Hold your tongue, my good fellow! We have no time to apologize nor to listen to your dissatisfaction. . . . If you don't wish to confess, you need not confess, but allow us to consider you a liar. . . .”

“As you like,” Urbenin grumbled. “You can do with me what you like now. . . . You have the power. . . .”

Urbenin made a gesture of indifference, and continued to look out of the window.

“Besides, it's all the same to me: my life is lost.”

“Listen to me, Pëtr Egorych,” I said, “yesterday and the day before you were so overcome by grief, that you were scarcely able to keep on your legs, and you were hardly able to give more than laconic answers; to-day, on the contrary, you have such a blooming, of course, only comparatively blooming, and gay appearance, and even strike out into idle talk. Usually sorrowful people have no wish to talk, while you not only launch out into long conversations, but even make all sorts of trivial complaints. In what way can such a sudden change be explained?”

“And how do you explain it?” Urbenin asked, screwing up his eyes at me in a derisive manner.

“I explain it in this way: that you have forgotten your part. It is difficult to act for any length of time; one either forgets one's part, or it bores one. . . .”

“Consequently, that was all an invention,” said Urbenin, smiling; “and it does honour to your perspicacity. . . . Yes, you are right; a great change has taken place in me. . . .”

“Can you explain it to us?”

“Certainly, I see no cause for hiding it. Yesterday I was so entirely broken and oppressed by my grief, that I thought of taking my life . . . of going mad . . . but this night I thought better of it . . . the thought entered my mind that death had saved Olia from a life of depravity, that it had torn her out of the dirty hands of that good-for-nothing who has ruined me; I am not jealous of death; it is better for Olga to belong to death, than to the Count. This thought cheered and strengthened me: now there is no longer the same weight on my soul.”

“Cleverly invented,” Polugradov murmured under his breath, as he sat swinging his leg, “he is never at a loss for an answer!”

“I feel that I am speaking the truth, and I can't understand that you cultivated men cannot see the difference between truth and dissimulation! However, prejudice is too strong a feeling; under its influence it is difficult not to err; I can understand your position, I can imagine what will be, when trusting in your evidence, I am brought up for trial. . . . I can imagine how, taking into consideration my brutal physiognomy, my drunkenness . . . My physiognomy is not brutal, but prejudice will have its own. . . .”

“Very well, very well, enough,” Polugradov said, bending over his papers, “Go! . . .”

After Urbenin had left, we proceeded to examine the Count. His Excellency was pleased to come to the examination in his dressing-gown, with a vinegar bandage on his head; having been introduced to Polugradov he sank into an armchair, and began to give his evidence:

“I shall tell you everything from the very beginning. . . . Well, and how is your President Lionsky, getting on? Has he still not divorced his wife? I made his acquaintance in Petersburg, quite by chance. . . . Gentlemen, why don't you order something to be brought? Somehow it's jollier to talk with a glass of cognac before you. . . . I have not the slightest doubt that Urbenin committed this murder.”

And the Count told us all that the reader already knows. At the request of the prosecutor he told us all the details of his life with Olga, and described the delights of living with a beautiful woman, and was so carried away by his subject, that he smacked his lips, and winked several times. From his evidence I learned a very important detail that is unknown to the reader. I learned that Urbenin while living in the town had constantly bombarded the Count with letters; in some letters he cursed him, in others he implored him to return his wife to him, promising to forget all wrongs, and dishonour; the poor devil caught at these letters like a drowning man catches at straws.

The Assistant Prosecutor examined two or three of the coachmen and then, having had a very good dinner, he gave me a long list of instructions, and drove away. Before leaving he went into the adjoining house where Urbenin was confined, and told him that our suspicions of his guilt had become certainties. Urbenin only shrugged his shoulders, and asked permission to be present at his wife's funeral; this permission was granted him.

Polugradov did not lie to Urbenin: yes, our suspicions had become convictions, we were convinced that we knew who the criminal was, and that he was already in our hands; but this conviction did not abide with us for long! . . .

XXX

One fine morning, just as I was sealing up a parcel which I was about to send by the guard, who was to take Urbenin to the town, where he was to be imprisoned in the castle-prison, I heard a terrible noise. Looking out of the window I saw an amusing sight: some dozen strong young fellows were dragging one-eyed Kuz'ma out of the servants' kitchen.

Kuz'ma pale and dishevelled had his feet firmly planted on the ground, and being deprived of the use of his arms, butted at his adversaries with his large head.

“Your Honour, please go there!” Il'ya said to me, in great alarm, “he . . . does not want to come!”

“Who does not want to come?”

“The murderer.”

“What murderer?”

“Kuz'ma. . . . He committed the murder, your Honour . . . Pëtr Egorych is suffering unjustly. . . . By God, sir.”

I went into the yard and walked towards the servant's kitchen, where Kuz'ma, who had torn himself out of the strong arms of his opponents, was administering cuffs to right and left.

“What's the matter?” I asked, when I came up to the crowd.

And I was told something very strange and unexpected.

“Your Honour, Kuz'ma killed her!”

“They lie!” Kuz'ma shouted. “May God kill me if they don't lie!”

“But why did you, son of a devil, wash off the blood, if your conscience is clear? Stop a moment, his Honour will examine all this!”

The breaker-in, Trifon, riding past the river, saw Kuz'ma washing something carefully in the water. At first Trifon thought he was washing linen, but looking more attentively he saw it was a poddevka* and a waistcoat. He thought this strange: garments of cloth are not washed.

* A sleeveless overcoat worn by coachmen and peasants.

“What are you doing?” Trifon called to him.

Kuz'ma became confused. Looking more attentively, Trifon noticed brown spots on the poddevka.

“I guessed at once that it must be blood . . . I went into the kitchen and told our people; they watched, and saw him at night hanging out the poddevka to dry. Of course they took fright. Why should he wash it, if he is not guilty? He must have something on his soul, he is trying to hide. . . . We thought and thought, and decided to bring him to your Honour. . . . We pull him along, and he backs and spits into our eyes. Why should he back if he is not guilty?”

From further examination it appeared that just before the murder, at the time when the Count and his guests were sitting in the clearing, drinking tea, Kuz'ma had gone into the forest. He had not aided in carrying Olga, and therefore could not have got dirtied with blood at that time.

When he was brought to my room Kuz'ma was so excited that at first he could not utter a word; turning up the white of his single eye he crossed himself and mumbled oaths.

“Be calm; tell me what you know and I will let you go,” I said to him.

Kuz'ma fell at my feet, stammered and calling on God.

“May I perish if it's I. . . . May neither my father nor my mother. . . . Your Honour! May God destroy my soul. . . .”

“You went into the forest?”

“That's quite true, sir, I went. . . . I had served cognac to the guests and, forgive me, I had tippled a little; it went to my head, and I wanted to lie down; I went, lay down, and fell asleep. . . . But who killed her, or how I don't know, so help me God. . . . It's the truth I'm telling you!”

“But why did you wash off the blood?”

“I was afraid that people might imagine . . . that I might be taken as a witness. . . .”

“How did the blood come on to your poddevka?”

“I don't know, your Honour.”

“How is it possible you can't know? Isn't the poddevka yours?”

“Yes, certainly it's mine, but I don't know: I saw the blood when I woke up again.”

“So, then, I suppose you dirtied the poddevka with blood in your sleep?”

“Just so. . . .”

“Well, my man, go and think it over. . . . You're talking nonsense; think well and tell me to-morrow. . . . Go!”

The following morning, when I awoke, I was informed that Kuz'ma wanted to speak to me. I ordered him to be brought in.

“Have you bethought yourself?” I asked him.

“Just so, I've bethought myself. . . .”

“How did the blood get on your poddevka?”

“Your Honour, I remember as if in a dream: I remember something, as in a fog, but if it is true or not I can't say.”

“What do you remember?”

Kuz'ma turned up his eye, thought, and said:

“Extraordinary . . . it's like in a dream or a fog. . . . I lay upon the grass drunk and dozing. I was not quite asleep. . . . I only heard somebody was passing, trampling heavily with his feet. . . . I opened my eyes and saw, as if I was unconscious, or in a dream; a gentleman came up to me, he bends over me and wiped his hands in my skirts. . . . he wiped them in my poddevka, and then rubbed his hand on my waistcoat. . . . so.”

“What gentleman was it?”

“I don't know; I only remember it was not a muzhik, but a gentleman. . . . in gentleman's clothes; but what gentleman it was, what sort of face he had I can't remember at all.”

“What was the colour of his clothes?”

“Who can say! Perhaps it was white, perhaps black. . . . I only remember it was a gentleman, and that's all I can remember. . . . Akh, yes, I can remember! When he bent down and wiped his hands he said: ‘Drunken swine!’”

“You dreamt this?”

“I don't know . . . perhaps I dreamt it. . . . But then where did the blood come from?”

“Was the gentleman you saw like Pëtr Egorych?”

“It appears to me he wasn't . . . but perhaps it was. . . . But he would not swear and call people swine.”

“Try to remember. . . . Go, sit down and think. . . . Perhaps you may succeed in remembering.”

“I'll try.”

XXXI

This unexpected eruption of one-eyed Kuz'ma into the almost finished romance produced an entanglement that it was scarcely possible to unravel. I was quite bewildered, and did not know how I was to understand Kuz'ma. He denied positively any guilt; besides, the preliminary investigations were against his guilt. Olga had been murdered not from motives of greed, according to the doctors “it was probable” that no attempt against her honour had been made; it was only possible to admit that Kuz'ma had killed her and had not availed himself of one of these reasons because he was very drunk and had lost his reasoning powers. All this did not tally with the setting of the murder.

But if Kuz'ma was not guilty, why had he not explained the presence of blood on his poddevka, and why had he invented dreams and hallucinations? Why had he implicated this gentleman, whom he had seen and heard, but had forgotten so entirely that he could not even remember the colour of his clothes?

Polugradov hurried back post haste.

“Now you see, sir!” he said, “if you had examined the scene of the crime at once, believe me all would have been plain now, as plain as a pikestaff! If you had examined all the servants at once, we could then have known who had carried Olga Nikolaevna and who had not. And now we can't even find out at what distance from the scene of the crime this drunkard was lying!”

He cross-questioned Kuz'ma for about two hours, but could get nothing new out of him; he only said that while half asleep he had seen a gentleman, that the gentleman had wiped his hands on the skirts of his poddevka and had sworn at him as a “drunken swine,” but he could not say who this gentleman was, nor what his face and clothes were like.

“How much cognac did you drink?”

“I finished half a bottle.”

“Perhaps it was not cognac?”

“No, sir, it was real fine champagne.”

“So you even know the names of wines!” the Assistant Prosecutor said, laughing.

“How should I not know them? I've served these masters for more than thirty years, thank God! I've had time to learn. . . .”

For some reason the Assistant Prosecutor required that Kuz'ma should be confronted with Urbenin. . . . Kuz'ma looked for a long time at Urbenin, shook his head and said:

“No, I can't remember . . . perhaps it was Pëtr Egorych, perhaps it was not. . . . Who can say?”

Polugradov shrugged his shoulders and drove away, leaving me to choose which was the right one of the two murderers.

The investigations were protracted. . . . Urbenin and Kuz'ma were imprisoned in the guard-house of the village in which I lived. Poor Pëtr Egorych lost courage very much; he grew thin and grey and fell into a religious mood; two or three times he sent to beg me to let him see the laws about punishments; it was evident he was interested in the extent of the punishment that awaited him.

“What will become of my children?” he asked me at one of the examinations. “If I were alone your mistake would not grieve me very much; but I must live . . . live for the children! They will perish without me. Besides, I . . . I am not able to part from them! What are you doing with me?”

When the guards said “thou” to him, and when he had to go a couple of times, from my village to the town and back on foot under escort, in the sight of all the people who knew him, he became despondent and nervous.

“These are not jurists,” he cried so that he was heard in the whole of the guard-house. “They are nothing but cruel, heartless boys, without mercy either for people or truth! I know why I am confined here, I know it! By casting the blame on me they want to hide the real culprit! The Count killed her; and if it was not the Count, it was his hireling!”

When he heard that Kuz'ma had been arrested, he was at first very pleased.

“Now the hireling has been found!” he said to me. “Now he's been found!”

But soon, when he saw he was not released and when he was informed of Kuz'ma's testimony, he again became depressed.

“Now I'm lost,” he said, “definitely lost. In order to get out of prison this one-eyed devil will be sure sooner or later to name me and say it was I who wiped my hands in his skirts. But you yourself saw that my hands had not been wiped!”

Sooner or later our suspicions would have to be elucidated.

About the end of November of that year, when snow began to drift before my windows and the lake looked like an endless white desert, Kuz'ma wanted to see me; he sent the guard to me to say he had “bethought himself.” I ordered him to be brought to me.

“I am very pleased that you have at last bethought yourself,” I greeted him. “It is high time to finish with this dissembling and this leading us all by the nose like little children. Well, of what have you bethought yourself?”

Kuz'ma did not answer; he stood in the middle of my room in silence, staring at me without winking. . . . Fright shone in his eyes; his whole person showed signs of great fright; he was pale and trembling, and a cold perspiration poured down his face.

“Well, speak! What have you remembered?” I asked again.

“Something, so extraordinary, that nothing can be more wonderful,” he said. “Yesterday I remembered what sort of a tie that gentleman was wearing, and this night I was thinking and remembered his face.”

“Then who was it?”

“I'm afraid to say, your Honour; allow me not to speak: it's too strange and wonderful; I think I must have dreamt it or imagined it. . . .”

“Well, what have you imagined?”

“No, allow me not to speak. If I tell you, you'll condemn me. . . . Allow me to think, and I'll tell you to-morrow. Fearful!”

“Pshaw!” I began to get angry. “Why did you trouble me if you can't speak? Why did you come here?”

“I thought I would tell you, but now I'm afraid. No, your Honour, please let me go. . . . I'd better tell you to-morrow. . . . If I tell you, you'll get so angry that I'd sooner go to Siberia—you'll condemn me. . . .”

I got angry and ordered Kuz'ma* to be taken away. In the evening of that very day, in order not to lose time and to put an end to this tiresome “case about the murder,” I went to the guard-house and cheated Urbenin by telling him that Kuz'ma had named him as the murderer.

* A fine examining magistrate! Instead of continuing the examination and extorting the necessary evidence, he gets angry—an occupation that does not enter into the duties of an official. Besides, I put little trust in all this. . . . Even if M. Kamyshev cared so little about his duties, simple, human curiosity ought to have obliged him to continue the examination.—A. Ch.

“I expected it,” Urbenin said with a wave of his hand. “It's all one to me. . . .”

Solitary confinement had greatly affected Urbenin's health; he had grown yellow and had lost almost half his weight. I promised him to order the guards to allow him to walk about the corridors in the day and even in the night.

“There's no fear of your trying to escape,” I said.

Urbenin thanked me, and after my departure he walked about the corridor; his door was no longer kept locked.

On leaving him I knocked at the door behind which Kuz'ma was seated.

“Well, have you bethought yourself yet?” I asked.

“No, sir,” a weak voice answered. “Let the Prosecutor come; I will tell him, but I won't tell you.”

“As you like!”

The next morning all was settled.

The watchman Egor came running to me and informed me that one-eyed Kuz'ma had been found in his bed dead. I hastened to the guard-house to assure myself of the fact. The strong, big muzhik, who but the day before was full of health and in order to get free had invented all sorts of tales, was as stark and cold as a stone. . . . I will not stop to describe the horror the guards and I felt; it will be understood by the reader. Kuz'ma was precious for me both as accuser and as witness, for the warders he was a prisoner for whose death or flight they would be severely punished. . . . Our horror was only increased when at the post-mortem examination it was discovered that he had died a violent death. . . . Kuz'ma had died from suffocation. . . . Once convinced that he had been suffocated, I began to search for the culprit, and I had not to search long. . . . He was near. . . .

“You scoundrel! It was not enough for you to kill your wife,” I said, “but you must take the life of the man who convicted you! And you continue to act your dirty, roguish comedy!”

Urbenin grew deadly pale and began to shake. . . .

“You lie!” he cried, striking himself on the breast with his fist.

“I do not lie! You shed crocodile tears at our evidence and made game of it. . . . There were moments when I almost wished to believe you more than our evidence. . . . Oh, you are a good actor! . . . But now I won't believe you, even should blood flow from your eyes instead of these play-actor's false tears! Say that you killed Kuz'ma!”

“You are either drunk or are laughing at me! Sergei Petrovich, all patience and submissiveness has its limits; I can bear this no longer!”

And Urbenin, with flashing eyes, struck the table with his clenched fist.