Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (7 page)

Manuila’s lamp was lit—that was very opportune. Pelagia proceeded decorously as far as the small window, directed her peripheral vision to the right, and almost tripped over her own feet.

The prophet was in, and he seemed to be asleep, only not on the divan, but on the floor, with his arms extended in the form of a cross. Was that one of the practices these Foundlings had? Or did Manuila have a special dispensation?

The nun took another little step toward the window and stood up on tiptoe.

That was very strange, now—there were two white eggs lying on the sleepers face, in the hollows of his eyes. Pelagia pressed the bridge of her spectacles back against her nose and then screwed her eyes up to get a better look at this oddity.

A second later her vision adjusted to the dim light in the cabin and she saw that the objects weren’t eggs at all, but something so terrible that Pelagia’s mouth simply dropped open of its own accord, with the intention of uttering a brief exclamation appropriate for a nun—“Oh, Lord!”—but giving vent instead to a shameful, womanish screech.

The correct way to photograph corpses

“THE RIGHT HAND in close-up,” Investigator Dolinin ordered the police photographer, at the same time beckoning to Pelagia with one finger. “Look, Sister, how do you like our modern-day prophets? The soul was already out of his body, but he still clung to the money.”

Pelagia walked over to him and crossed herself. Manuila’s death could not possibly have been more hideous. Someone had stove in the back of the pitiful prophet’s head with a blow of such force that it had jolted his eyeballs out of their sockets. They were what the nun had seen in the semidarkness and taken for chickens eggs. There were particles of brain and crumbs of bone on the pillow and on the carpet. And another thing that made it a torment for her to look at the body was the fact that the dead man’s nightshirt had ridden up, revealing a pale, hairy stomach and private parts; but the nun tried not to let her gaze wander that far. Clutched tight in Manuila’s clenched fingers was a fragment of a hundred-ruble note.

There was a blinding flash of magnesium, but the investigator was still not satisfied. “No, no, my dear fellow. You have to spread the magnesium on both sides of the camera, or you’ll get shadows. And not in a heap, not in a heap—in a line. It will burn longer that way. I suppose you don’t have a tripod for taking vertical shots? Oh, the wonderful Russian provinces!”

The forensic doctor twisted the lifeless head, holding it by the hair. “What a blow!” he said, poking his finger into a neat hole the size of a silver ruble. “Such strength, such crisp impact! Like the hole made by a bullet. Penetration almost as far as the third ventricle, and the outline is a regular oval, with smooth edges. I’ve never seen a wound like it, not even in a textbook.”

“Yes, it’s certainly unusual,” Dolinin agreed, bending down. “A hammer, perhaps? Only the force is immense, almost satanic. To make the eyeballs jump out of their sockets—I tell you, that takes …”

The cabin was filled with the dank smell of drying blood. Pelagia felt slightly sick. The worst thing of all was the way the disgusting smell mingled with the aroma of the eau de cologne that the
Sturgeons
captain was wearing. He was obliged to be present at the inspection of the scene by virtue of his position, but he stood modestly at one side and didn’t get under the specialists’ feet.

The sister closed her eyes, struggling with her nausea. Nothing in the world is more terrible or more oppressive than the mystery of death stripped of its dignity and rendered shameful. And there was that well-thumbed banknote, too.

“The male organ bears signs of circumcision, relatively recent,” the doctor announced as he continued his examination. “The scar is still crimson. Perhaps seven or eight months, unlikely to be more.”

Pelagia waited for the doctor and the photographer to finish their work and move away from the body, then asked the investigator’s permission to say a prayer. She went down on her knees and first of all covered the dead man’s nakedness. Then she pulled the vain, worldly scrap of paper out of the lifeless hand. She had expected the rigid fingers would be reluctant to part with their property, but the scrap came out remarkably easily.

As she handed the clue to the investigator, Pelagia said: “Strange. Did he sleep like that, clutching money in his hands? Or after his head was already broken in, did he try to tear it out of the villain’s hands?”

Dolinin said nothing for a moment, gazing with interest at the bespectacled holy sister. Then he sniffed and scratched the bridge of his nose above the arch of his pince-nez. “Indeed. My thanks for being so observant. According to the testimony of Manuila’s traveling companions, the money—or, as they put it, the ‘treasury’—was in a casket under the pillow. The casket, naturally enough, is missing. Hmm. Grab hold of your killer’s hands, with your head smashed in right through ‘to the third ventricle.’ Miraculous. Let’s enter that in the ‘puzzles’ section.”

And he made an entry in a little leather-bound book. Pelagia liked that: the man was not being hasty with his conclusions.

She liked Dolinin in general, because he worked sensibly, thoroughly—you could see straightaway that the man knew his job as a detective and loved it.

You might even say that Manuila had been lucky with his investigator.

A master at work

EVERYTHING HAD GONE quite differently at first.

At the sound of the nun’s screams, people had come running up and started gasping in horror. The Foundlings made even more noise. When they learned that their leader had been killed, they started howling and wailing: “Oh Lord! Disaster!
Az och’n veil
Help! Eloim!” But the words repeated most often of all were “The treasury! The treasury!”

The captain appeared, and instead of restoring order, he turned the proceedings into total chaos—perhaps because he was frightened, or perhaps owing to a certain degree of insobriety.

The commander of the steamer was transformed into a Zeus, scattering lightning bolts around him. In front of the ill-fated cabin and beneath its window, he installed watches of sailors armed with items of firefighting equipment. He ordered first-class and second-class passengers to stay in their cabins and not stick their noses out; he herded all the deck passengers onto the poop deck and put them under the guard of two swarthy stokers with shovels in their hands. He himself donned his white dress uniform tunic, hung a huge revolver at his side, and poured a whole bottle of eau de cologne over himself to eliminate the smell of drink.

In defiance of the schedule, the
Sturgeon
sailed past the mooring at Ust-Sviyazhsk without stopping and dropped anchor at the district town, standing at some distance from the dock. The first mate was dispatched in a lifeboat to contact the authorities.

An hour later the passengers in the cabins on the starboard side saw the boat come gliding back out of the evening mist swirling above the river. It was crammed with people, mostly in uniforms, but there were also some civilians.

The person who arrived to conduct the investigation was no mere police officer, not even a superintendent. That is, of course, the new arrivals did include a superintendent and other ranks, including even the commander of the district police force, but none of those was the most important individual. That person was a lean gentleman in civilian garb. His keen, intelligent eyes glinted coldly through his pince-nez, his narrow hand occasionally stroking his wedge-shaped beard. A university badge glinted on the lapel of his frock coat.

The civilian turned out to be a hugely important official, a member of the Council of the Ministry of the Interior. His name was Sergei Sergeevich Dolinin. It was later ascertained from local police officials that His Excellency had been traveling around the province of Kazan on an important tour of inspection. When he heard that a murder had taken place onboard a steamship of the Nord Line, he had expressed a desire to head the investigation in person.

Sergei Sergeevich himself, in a conversation with His Reverence Mitrofanii (whom he had felt it his duty to visit immediately upon discovering such an important individual on the passenger list), accounted for his zeal by the exceptional importance of the victim’s identity:

“Our Mr. Manuila here had a history of serious scandal. I can assure you, Bishop, that this will cause a sensation throughout the whole of Russia. Of course, if…” At this point Dolinin paused and appeared to leave something unsaid. What he meant by “if” remained unclear.

Pelagia, who was with Mitrofanii at the time, had the impression that when the investigator mentioned a sensation throughout the whole of Russia, his eyes glinted. But what of it? For a man in state service, ambition was a pardonable sin, and possibly not even a sin at all, for it encouraged zeal.

It seemed very probable that Sergei Sergeevich’s visit to the prelate was not paid out of courtesy, but for a completely different reason, one of a practical nature. In any case, no sooner had Dolinin concluded his outpourings of respect than he turned to Pelagia and said briskly: “You must be the nun who discovered the body? Excellent. With His Reverence’s permission”—a brief bow in Mitrofanii’s direction—“I must ask you, Sister, to accompany me to the scene of the crime.”

And that was how Pelagia came to be one of the small number of people in that nauseating cabin that reeked of blood and eau de Cologne.

If not for that smell, if not for the presence of the mutilated body, observing Sergei Sergeevichs professional work would have been an undiluted pleasure. He started by rapidly jotting down a plan of the cabin in his notebook, questioning the holy sister all the time as he did so: “Was the corner of the rug turned up? Are you certain? Was the window raised to exactly this level? Are you certain? Was the bedspread lying on the floor?”

He was pleased with the positive clarity of the answers he received and even praised her: “You’re an exceptional witness. An excellent visual memory.”

Glancing at the investigator’s sketch, which looked rather unusual, Pelagia asked in turn: “What is that?”

“That’s called a field sketch,” Dolinin replied, tracing rapid lines with his pencil. “A diagram of the scene of the crime. This here is the scale, in meters. The letters indicate the points of the compass, that’s essential. Since this is a ship, the place of north is taken by the bow—B—and instead of east I have starboard—S—the right side of the ship.”

“You know,” said Pelagia, “the chair wasn’t standing like that. When I glanced into the cabin, it was over there.” She showed how the chair had been standing. “And the papers on the table were lying in a neat pile, but now they’re scattered all around.”

Sergei Sergeevich turned his head to the right and the left and stabbed one finger at the captain. “Have you been taking liberties, my dear fellow?”

The captain gulped and hunched his shoulders guiltily.

The investigator looked through the sheets of paper scattered across the table and picked up one that was covered with crooked capital letters. He read it:

“Baruch ata Adonoai Elochein melech cha-olam …”
He put it down. “It’s some kind of Jewish prayer.”

Pelagia, her spirits somewhat restored following the concealment of the dead man’s nakedness, carried on looking around. She herself was surprised at how much she remembered from those brief moments before she had started screeching. “And this pipe wasn’t here, either,” she said, pointing to a meerschaum tobacco pipe lying on the rug. Dolinin had already placed a little card with the number 8 beside the pipe, and for some reason had covered the item of material evidence with an inverted glass jar.

“Are you absolutely certain about that?” he asked, disconcerted.

“Yes, I would have noticed.”

“How annoying. You’ve canceled out my most important clue. And like an idiot, I’d already covered it to prevent any microscopic particles from being blown off.” Sergei Sergeevich called the captain over and asked him about the pipe.

The captain confirmed Pelagia’s assertion. “Yes sir. That’s the boat swain Savenka’s pipe—he’s the one who came in with me and shone the light in the corners. He must have dropped it.”

“Well done, little nun,” Dolinin exclaimed in admiration. “I’m lucky that you’re here. I tell you what, my dear, why don’t you stay for a while? You never know, you might notice something else, or remember something.”