The Shooting Party

  But most striking of all, and what captured the stunned onlookers’ attention more than anything else, were his bloodstained hands: his hands and cuffs were soaked as if they had been washed in a bath of blood.

  After standing there in a stupor for a further three minutes, Urbenin squatted on the grass as if waking from a dream and started groaning… The dogs, scenting something unusual, surrounded him and began to bark. Surveying the company with his dull eyes, Urbenin covered his face with both hands and sank into another stupor.

  ‘Olga, Olga! What have you done?’ he groaned.

  Dull sobs came from his chest and his powerful shoulders started shaking. When he removed his hands from his face the company could see the blood left by his hands on his cheeks and forehead.

  At this point the Count waved his arm and feverishly downed a glass of vodka.

  ‘After that my memory becomes confused,’ he continued. ‘As you can imagine, all these events shocked me so much that I lost all capacity for thought. I don’t remember anything after that! All I remember is that some men carried a body in a torn, bloodstained dress out of the forest. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. They put it into a carriage and drove off. I heard neither groans nor weeping. They say she’d been stabbed in the side with the little dagger she always carried with her. Do you remember it? I gave it her as a present. It was a blunt dagger, blunter than the edge of this glass. Imagine the strength it must have taken to thrust it into her! I used to be fond of Caucasian weapons, dear chap, but to hell with them now! Tomorrow I’ll give orders for them to be thrown out!’

  The Count drank another glass of vodka.

  ‘What a disgrace!’ he continued. ‘What an abomination! We brought her back to the house… you know, everyone was in despair, horrified. And suddenly – to hell with those gipsies! – we heard wild singing… They were drawn up in rows and then those devils let rip. You see, they wanted to greet her in style, but it was completely misplaced. It was rather like that Ivan the Fool who went into raptures on meeting a funeral and yelled: “Keep carrying, but don’t carry it off.” Yes, my friend, I wanted to entertain my guests, that’s why I sent for the gipsies. But it all turned out a dreadful mess. I should have invited doctors and priests instead of gipsies! And now I don’t know what to do! What shall I do? I’m not familiar with all the formalities, the correct procedure, whom to call in, whom to send for… Perhaps the police should be here, the investigating magistrate? Damned if I know, for the life of me! Thank heaven Father Jeremiah came to perform the last rites when he heard of the scandal – I’d never have thought of sending for him myself. I beg you, old boy, please take all this off my hands! God, I’m going out of my mind! My wife turning up… the murder… brrr! Where’s my wife now? Have you seen her?’

  ‘Yes I have. She’s having tea with Pshekhotsky.’

  ‘With her brother, that is… Pshekhotsky. What a bastard! When I slipped secretly out of St Petersburg he got wind of my flight and now I can’t shake him off. The mind cannot comprehend how much money he swindled me out of during all that time!’

  I had no time for lengthy conversations with the Count, so I stood up and went towards the door.

  ‘Listen,’ the Count said, stopping me. ‘That Urbenin won’t stab me, will he?’

  ‘Surely it wasn’t he who stabbed Olga?’

  ‘Of course it was. Only, I don’t know where he turned up from… what the hell brought him to the forest? And why that particular forest? Let’s assume he hid there and waited for us: then how did he know I’d want to make a halt just there and not somewhere else?’

  ‘You don’t understand a thing,’ I said. ‘By the way, I’m asking you for the very last time… If I take this case on I’d rather you didn’t give me your opinion on the matter. You must try and simply answer my questions, nothing more.’

  XXII

  After leaving the Count I went to the room where Olga was lying.* A small blue lamp was burning in the room, faintly illuminating people’s faces. It was impossible to read or write by its light. Olga was lying on her bed, her head bandaged. All I could make out was her extraordinarily pale, sharp nose and her closed eyelids. At the moment I entered, her breast was bare; they were putting an ice bag on it.* That meant Olga was still alive. Two doctors were fussing around her. When I entered, Pavel Ivanych, huffing and puffing non-stop and screwing up his eyes, was listening to her heart.

  The district doctor, who looked extremely weary and by all appearances was a sick man, sat pensively in an armchair by the bed, apparently taking her pulse. Father Jeremiah, who had just finished what he had to do, was wrapping his crucifix in his stole and preparing to leave.

  ‘Don’t grieve, Pyotr Yegorych!’ he said, sighing and looking into one corner. ‘Everything is as God wills it. You must turn to God for help.’

  Urbenin was sitting on a stool in a corner of the room. He had changed so dramatically that I barely recognized him. His recent idleness and drunkenness were as evident in his clothes as in his general appearance. These clothes were as worn out as his face. The poor devil sat motionless, rested his head on his fists and didn’t take his eyes off the bed. His face and hands were still covered with bloodstains… he had forgotten all about washing them off.

  Oh, that prophecy of my soul and my poor bird! Whenever that noble bird of mine, that I had killed, squawked that phrase about the husband who murdered his wife, Urbenin invariably made his appearance in my imagination. Why? I knew that jealous husbands often kill unfaithful wives – and at the same time, that men like Urbenin don’t go around murdering people. And I dismissed any possibility of Olga having been murdered by her husband as preposterous.

  ‘Was it him or wasn’t it?’ I asked myself as I looked at his wretched face.

  To be honest, I didn’t answer myself in the affirmative, in spite of the Count’s story and the blood I had seen on his hands and face.

  ‘If he had done it he would have washed the blood from his hands and face long ago,’ I thought, recalling the theory of an investigating magistrate I once knew: murderers cannot stomach the blood of their victims.

  If I’d been inclined to stir my grey matter I could have thought of many similar situations, but it was no good anticipating and stuffing my head with premature conclusions.

  ‘My compliments!’ the district doctor said. ‘I’m delighted that you’ve at last done us the honour of coming. Now, please tell me who’s master of this house.’

  ‘There’s no master here… here reigneth chaos,’ I replied.

  ‘A charming little phrase, but it doesn’t help me in the least,’ said the doctor with an irritable cough. ‘I’ve been asking for three hours now, simply begging for a bottle of port or champagne to be brought to me and not one person has seen fit to grant my request! They’re all as deaf as doorposts here. They’ve only just brought me some ice, although I asked for it three hours ago. What’s going on here? Someone is dying of thirst and all they can do is laugh! It’s all very well for the Count to swig liqueurs in his study, but they can’t even bring me a glass! When I wanted to send someone to the chemist in town they told me that the horses were exhausted and that no one was in a fit state to go because they were all drunk. I wanted to send for medicine and bandages from my hospital and they do me a favour – they give me some drunkard who can barely stand up. It’s about two hours since I told him to go – and what happens? They say he’s only just left! Isn’t that a disgrace? They’re nothing but drunken oafs, the whole lot of them – one way or the other they’re all idiots! I swear by God it’s the first time in my life I’ve come across such heartless people!’

  The doctor’s indignation was justified. He was not exaggerating in the least – on the contrary. A whole night wouldn’t have sufficed for him to vent his spleen on all the goings-on and scandals that had occurred on the Count’s estate. Demoralized by idleness and lawlessness, the servants were perfectly loathsome. There wasn’t one footman who couldn’t have served as the very mo
del of someone who had outstayed his time – and grown fat in the process.

  I went off to get some wine. After distributing two or three clouts on the head I managed to obtain both champagne and Valerian drops, to the doctor’s ineffable delight. An hour later* a male nurse arrived from the hospital, bringing all that was necessary.

  Pavel Ivanovich succeeded in pouring a tablespoonful of champagne into Olga’s mouth. She tried hard to swallow and groaned. Then they injected her with something that looked like Hofman drops.52

  ‘Olga Nikolayevna!’ the district doctor shouted, leaning towards her ear. ‘Olga Ni-ko-la-yevna!’

  ‘It’s too much to expect her to regain consciousness,’ sighed Pavel Ivanych. ‘A great deal of blood has been lost. Besides, the blow on the head with some blunt instrument must have caused concussion.’

  It was not for me to decide whether it was concussion or not, but Olga opened her eyes and asked for a drink. The stimulants had worked.

  ‘Now you can ask her anything you like,’ Pavel Ivanych said, nudging my elbow. ‘Go ahead.’

  I went over to the bed… Olga’s eyes were turned on me.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked.

  ‘Olga Nikolayevna!’ I began. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’

  For a few seconds Olga looked at me and then she closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she groaned. ‘Yes!’

  ‘I’m Zinovyev, the investigating magistrate,’ I went on. ‘I had the honour of knowing you and – if you remember – I was even best man at your wedding.’

  ‘Is it you?’ Olga whispered, holding her left arm out. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘She’s delirious,’ sighed Screwy.

  ‘I’m Zinovyev, the investigating magistrate,’ I repeated. ‘Do you remember? I was at the shooting party. How do you feel?’

  ‘Please restrict yourself to essential questions,’ the doctor whispered. ‘I can’t guarantee that she’ll remain conscious for much longer.’

  ‘I must ask you to stop lecturing me!’ I retorted, taking offence. ‘I don’t know what to say, Olga Nikolayevna,’ I continued, turning to her. ‘Please try and recall the events of the past day. I’ll help you. At one o’clock you mounted your horse and rode off with the shooting party. The shoot lasted about four hours. Then a halt was made at the edge of the forest… Do you remember?’

  ‘And you… you killed…’

  ‘The woodcock? After I finished off the wounded woodcock you frowned and left the main party. You went into the forest.* Now, please try to summon all your strength and stir your memory. While you were walking in the forest you were attacked by some person unknown. I’m asking you as an investigating magistrate – who was it?’

  Olga opened her eyes and looked at me.

  ‘Tell us the name of that man! There are three others here besides me.’

  Olga negatively shook her head.

  ‘You must name him,’ I continued. ‘He will be severely punished. The law will make him pay for his barbarity. He’ll be sent to Siberia†… I’m waiting.’

  Olga smiled and negatively shook her head. Further questions led to nothing. I failed to elicit one more word, one more movement from Olga. At a quarter to five she passed away.

  XXIII

  At about six o’clock in the morning the elder and the witnesses I had requested arrived from the village. To drive out to the scene of the crime was impossible: the rain that had started during the night was still bucketing down. Small puddles had turned into lakes. The leaden sky looked bleak and promised no sun. The soaked trees with their dejectedly drooping branches scattered great showers of heavy spray with every gust of wind. Riding there was out of the question – and perhaps there would have been no point in it anyway: the traces of the crime – bloodstains, human footprints, etc. – had probably been washed away by the rain during the night. But the formalities demanded that the scene of the crime be inspected and I postponed the visit until the police arrived. In the meantime I busied myself with making out a rough report and cross-examining the witnesses. I questioned the gipsies first. Those poor singers had been sitting all night long in the Count’s rooms waiting for horses to take them to the station. But they were not given any horses. The servants sent them to the Count, warning them at the same time that His Excellency had forbidden anyone to be ‘admitted’. They were not even given the samovar they had asked for that morning. Their more than odd, uncertain position in a strange house, where a dead woman was lying, their not knowing when they would be able to leave, the wet, miserable weather – all this reduced those wretched male and female gipsies to such despair that they grew pale and thin in the course of a single night. They wandered from one room to the other, as if scared out of their lives and expecting some stern judgement upon their heads. My questioning only lowered their spirits all the more. In the first place, my lengthy cross-examination delayed their departure from that damned house for ages; secondly, it frightened the lives out of them. When those simple folk concluded that they were strongly suspected of murder they tearfully started assuring me that they weren’t guilty, that they knew nothing at all about it. When Tina saw that I was there in my official capacity she completely forgot our previous relationship, trembled and grew numb with fear when she spoke to me – just like a girl who has been whipped. In reply to my request not to panic and my assurances that I saw them solely as witnesses, assistants of justice, the gipsies announced in one voice that they had never witnessed a thing, that they knew absolutely nothing and that they hoped in future God would free them from any close acquaintance with the legal fraternity.

  I asked them which way they had driven from the station, whether they had passed through the forest where the murder had been committed, whether someone had broken off from the main party – even for a short while – and whether they had heard Olga’s heart-rending shriek.* This line of questioning led nowhere. Alarmed by it, the gipsies detailed two young men from the choir and sent them off to the village to hire carts. Those poor devils dearly wanted to get away. Unfortunately for them, there was already much talk in the village about the murder in the forest and those swarthy envoys were looked upon with suspicion, apprehended and brought to me.

  Only that evening did the exhausted choir escape from the nightmare and was it able to breathe freely: having hired five peasant carts at three times the proper price they rode away from the Count’s house. Later on they were paid for their visit, but no one paid them for the moral torments they had suffered in the Count’s mansion…

  After questioning them I carried out a search in Owlet’s room.†

  In her trunks I found piles of every imaginable kind of old woman’s junk, but after sorting through all those shabby bonnets and darned stockings, I found neither money nor valuables that the old crone might have stolen from the Count and his guests. Nor did I find the items that were stolen at some time from Tina. Obviously the old witch had another hiding place, known only to herself.

  I shall not give my report here – the preliminary evidence from my inspection. It’s very long – what’s more, I’ve forgotten most of it. I shall give it in brief only, just the main details. First of all I described the condition in which I found Olga and my cross-examination of her, down to the very last detail. From this examination it was obvious that Olga had been fully conscious when she answered me and had deliberately concealed the murderer’s name. She did not want the murderer to be punished and this inevitably leads one to suppose that the criminal was near and dear to her.

  The inspection of the clothes that I had carried out with the district police officer (who soon turned up) provided a great deal of evidence. The jacket of her riding habit (of velvet with silk lining) was still damp. The right side, with the hole made by the dagger, was soaked in blood and in places was covered with clotted blood. The bleeding had been severe and it was a wonder that Olga hadn’t died on the spot. The left side was also bloodstained. The left sleeve was torn at the shoulder and wrist. The two top buttons had been torn off and
we didn’t find them during the inspection. The black kashmir skirt of the riding habit was found in a dreadfully crumpled state – this had happened when Olga was carried from the forest to the carriage and from there to her bed. Then it had been pulled off, bundled up anyhow and shoved under the bed. It was torn at the belt. This lengthwise tear, which was about six inches long, had probably occurred when the body was being conveyed and pulled along. It could also have been made when she was alive. Olga disliked mending, didn’t know to whom to give the skirt for repair and might have concealed the tear under her coat. I think that there was no evidence here of the work of a frenzied, maniacal criminal, as the deputy prosecutor later stressed in his speech. The right section of the belt and the right pocket were soaked in blood. The handkerchief and glove that were lying in this pocket resembled two shapeless, rust-coloured lumps. The whole skirt, from belt to hem, was spattered with bloodstains of varying shapes and sizes. Most of them were the imprints of the bloodstained fingers and palms (as it later transpired at the examination) of the coachmen and footmen who had conveyed Olga. The chemise was covered in blood, chiefly on the right side, where there was a hole produced by a sharp instrument. And similarly, as with the jacket, there were tears along the left shoulder and near the wrist. The cuff was half torn off.

  The items that Olga had been wearing – a gold watch, a long gold chain, a diamond brooch, earrings, rings and a purse with silver coins – were found with the clothes. Clearly the criminal had not been governed by mercenary motives.

  The results of the post-mortem, carried out in my presence by Screwy and the district doctor the day after Olga’s death, culminated in an extremely lengthy report, the gist of which I give here. On external examination the following injuries were found by the doctors. On the left side of the head, at the suture of the temporal and parietal bones, was a one-and-a-half inch wound that extended to the bone. The edges of the wound were neither smooth nor straight… it had been inflicted by a blunt instrument, most probably, as we later decided, by the haft of the dagger. Extending across the rear half of the neck, level with the cervical vertebrae, was a red line in the form of a circle. On the entire length of this stripe there were found lesions to the skin and slight bruising. On the left arm, about an inch above the wrist, were four blue patches: one on the back and three on the palmar side. They had been caused by pressure, most likely from fingers. This last fact was further confirmed by the discovery of a small scratch made by a fingernail in one of the patches. Corresponding to the area where these patches were found (the reader will remember), the left sleeve of the jacket had been torn off and the left sleeve of her chemise was half torn off… Between the fourth and fifth ribs, on an imaginary vertical line drawn downwards, from the middle of the armpit, there was a gaping wound, about an inch long. Its edges were smooth, as if they had been cut, and were steeped in both thin and coagulated blood. It was a deep wound and had been made by a sharp weapon. As was evident from the preliminary data that had been gathered, it was made by a dagger whose width corresponded exactly to the size of the wound. The internal examination revealed injuries to the right lung and pleura, inflammation of the lung and haemorrhage of the pleural cavity.