XXVII

About seven o'clock in the morning the village elder and his

assistants, whom I had sent for, arrived from the village. It was

impossible to drive to the scene of the crime: the rain that had begun

in the night was still pouring down in buckets. Little puddles had

become lakes. The grey sky looked gloomy, and there was no promise of

sunlight. The soaked trees appeared dejected with their drooping

branches, and sprinkled a whole shower of large drops at every gust of

wind. It was impossible to go there. Besides, it might have been

useless. The trace of the crime, such as bloodstains, human

footprints, etc., had probably been washed away during the night. But

the formalities demanded that the scene of the crime should be

examined, and I deferred this visit until the arrival of the police,

and in the meantime I made out a draft of the official report of the

case, and occupied myself with the examination of witnesses. First of

all I examined the gipsies. The poor singers had passed the whole

night sitting up in the ballrooms expecting to have horses given them

to convey them to the station. But horses were not provided; the

servants, when asked, only sent them to the devil, warning them at the

same time that his Excellency had forbidden anybody to be admitted to

him. They were also not given the samovar they asked for in the

morning. The more than singular and indefinite position in which they

found themselves in a strange house in which a corpse was lying, the

uncertainty as to when they could get away, and the damp melancholy

weather had driven the gipsies, both men and women, into such a state

of distress that in one night they had become thin and pale. They

wandered about from room to room, evidently much alarmed and expecting

some serious issue. By my examination I only increased their anxiety.

First because my lengthy examination delayed their departure from the

accursed house indefinitely, and secondly it alarmed them. The simple

people, imagining that they were seriously suspected of the murder,

began to assure me with tears in their eyes, that they were not guilty

and knew nothing about the matter. Tina, seeing me as an official

personage, quite forgot our former connexion, and while speaking to me

trembled and almost fainted with fright like a whipped little girl In

reply to my request not to be excited, and my assurance that I saw in

them nothing but witnesses, the assistants of justice, they informed

me in one voice that they had never been witnesses, that they knew

nothing, and that they trusted that in future God would deliver them

from all close acquaintance with judicial people.

I asked them by what road they had driven from the station, had they

not passed through that part of the forest where the murder had been

committed, had any member of their party quitted it for even a short

time, and had they not heard Olga's heartrending shriek.* This

examination led to nothing. The gipsies, alarmed by it, only sent two

members of the chorus to the village to hire vehicles. The poor people

wanted terribly to get away. For their misfortune there was already

much talk in the village about the murder in the forest, and these

swarthy messengers were looked at with suspicion; they were arrested

and brought to me. It was only towards evening that the harassed

chorus was able to get free from this nightmare and breathe freely, as

having hired five peasants' carts at three times the proper fare, they

drove away from the Count's house. Afterwards they were paid for their

visit, but nobody paid them for the moral suffering that they had

endured in the Count's apartments. . . .

* If all this was necessary for M. Kamyshev, would it not have been

easier to question the coachmen who had driven the gipsies.—A. Ch.

Having examined them, I made a search in the Scops Owl's room.* In

her trunks I found quantities of all sorts of old woman's rubbish, but

although I looked through all the old caps and darned stockings, I

found neither money nor valuables that the old woman had stolen from

the Count or his guests. . . . Nor did I find the things that had been

stolen from Tina some time before. . . . Evidently the old witch had

another hiding-place only known to herself.

* Why? We can admit that all this was done by the examining

magistrate in a drunken or sleepy condition, but why write about

it. Would it not have been better to hide from the reader these

gross mistakes?—A. Ch.

I will not give here the preliminary report I drafted about the

information I had obtained or the searches I had made. . . . It was

long; besides, I have forgotten most of it. I will only give a general

idea of it. First of all I described the condition in which I found

Olga, and I gave an account of every detail of my examination of her.

By this examination it was evident that Olga was quite conscious when

she answered me and purposely concealed the name of the murderer. She

did not _want_ that the murderer should suffer the penalty, and this

inevitably led to the supposition that the criminal was near and dear

to her.

The examination of her clothes, which I made together with the

commissary of the rural police who arrived very soon, produced very

much. . . . The jacket of her riding habit, made of velvet with a silk

lining, was still moist. The right side in which there was the hole

made by the dagger was saturated with blood and in places bore marks

of clotted blood. . . . The loss of blood had been very great, and it

was astonishing that Olga had not died on the spot. The left side was

also blood-stained. The left sleeve was torn at the shoulder and at

the wrist. . . . The two upper buttons were torn off, and at our

examination we did not find them. The skirt of the riding habit, made

of black cashmere, was found to be terribly crumpled; it had been

crumpled when they had carried Olga out of the wood to the vehicle and

from the vehicle to her bed. Then it had been pulled off, rolled into

a disorderly heap, and flung under the bed. It was torn at the

waistband. This tear was about ten inches long and in the length, and

had probably been made while she was being carried or when it was

pulled off; it might also have been made during her lifetime. Olga,

who did not like mending, and not knowing to whom to give the habit to

be mended, might have hidden away the tear under her bodice. I don't

think any signs could be seen in this of the savage rage of the

criminal, on which the assistant public prosecutor laid such special

emphasis in his speech at the trial. The right side of the belt and

the right-hand pocket were saturated with blood. The

pocket-handkerchief and the gloves, that were in this pocket, were

like two formless lumps of a rusty colour. The whole of the

riding-habit, to the very end of the skirt, was bespattered with spots

of blood of various forms and sizes. . . . Most of them, as it was

afterwards explained, were the impressions of the blood-stained

fingers and palms belonging to the coachmen and lackeys who had

carried Olga. . . . The chemise was bloody, especially on the right

side on which there was a hole produced by the cut of an instrument.

There, as also on the left shoulder of the bodice, and near the wrists

there were rents, and the wristband was almost torn off.

The things that Olga had worn, such as her gold watch, a long gold

chain, a diamond brooch, ear-rings, rings and a purse containing

silver coins, were found with the clothes. It was clear the crime had

not been committed with the intent of robbery.

The results of the post-mortem examination, made by “Screw” and the

district doctor in my presence on the day after Olga's death, were set

down in a very long report, of which I give here only a general

outline. The doctors found that the external injuries were as follows:

on the left side of the head, at the juncture of the temporal and the

parietal bones, there was a wound of about one and a-half inches in

length that went as far as the bone. The edges of the wound were not

smooth nor rectilinear. . . . It had been inflicted by a blunt

instrument, probably as we subsequently decided by the haft of the

dagger. On the neck at the level of the lower cervical vertebræ a red

line was visible that had the form of a semicircle and extended across

the back half of the neck. On the whole length of this line there were

injuries to the skin and slight bruises. On the left arm, an inch and

a half above the wrist, four blue spots were found. One was on the

back of the hand and the three others on the lower side. They were

caused by pressure, probably of fingers. . . . This was confirmed by

the little scratch made by a nail that was visible on one spot. The

reader will remember that the place where these spots were found

corresponds with the place where the left sleeve and the left cuff of

the bodice of the riding-habit were torn. . . . Between the fourth and

fifth ribs on an imaginary vertical line drawn from the centre of the

armpit there was a large gaping wound of an inch in length. The edges

were smooth, as if cut and steeped with liquid and clotted

blood. . . . The wound was deep. . . . It was made by a sharp

instrument, and as it appeared from the preliminary information, by

the dagger which exactly corresponded in width with the size of the

wound.

The interior examination gave as result a wound in the right lung and

the pleura, inflammation of the lung and hemorrhage in the cavity of

the pleura.

As far as I can remember, the doctors arrived approximately at the

following conclusion: (_a_) death was caused by anæmia consequent on a

great loss of blood; the loss of blood was explained by the presence

of a gaping wound on the right side of the breast. (_b_) the wound on

the head must be considered a serious injury, and the wound in the

breast as undoubtedly mortal; the latter must be reckoned as the

immediate cause of death. (_c_) The wound on the head was given with a

blunt instrument; the wound in the breast by a sharp and probably a

double-edged one. (_d_) the deceased could not have inflicted all the

above-mentioned injuries upon herself with her own hand; and (_e_)

there probably had been no offence against feminine honour.

In order not to put it off till Doomsday and then repeat myself, I

will give the reader at once the picture of the murder I sketched

while under the impression of the first inspections, two or three

examinations, and the perusal of the report of the post-mortem

examination.

Olga, having left the rest of the party, walked about the wood. Lost

in a reverie or plunged in her own sad thoughts—the reader will

remember her mood on that ill-fated evening—she wandered deep into the

forest. There she was met by the murderer. When she was standing under

a tree, occupied with her own thoughts, the man came up and spoke to

her. . . . This man did not awaken suspicions in her, otherwise she

would have called for help, but that cry would not have been

heart-rending. While talking to her the murderer seized hold of her

left arm with such strength that he tore the sleeve of her bodice and

her chemise and left a mark in the form of four spots. It was at that

moment probably that she shrieked, and this was the shriek heard by

the party. . . . She shrieked from pain and evidently because she read

in the face and movements of the murderer what his intentions were.

Either wishing that she should not shriek again, or perhaps acting

under the influence of wrathful feelings, he seized the breast of her

dress near the collar, which is proved by the two upper buttons that

were torn off and the red line the doctors found on her body. The

murderer in clutching at her breast and shaking her, had tightened the

gold watch-chain she wore round her neck. . . . The friction and the

pressure of the chain produced the red line. Then the murderer dealt

her a blow on the head with some blunt weapon, for example, a stick or

even the scabbard of the dagger that hung from Olga's girdle. Then

flying into a passion, or finding that one wound was insufficient, he

drew the dagger and plunged it into her right side with force—I say

with force, because the dagger was blunt.

This was the gloomy aspect of the picture that I had the right to draw

on the strength of the above-mentioned data. The question who was the

murderer was evidently not difficult to determine and seemed to

resolve itself. First the murderer was not guided by covetous motives

but something else. . . . Therefore it was impossible to suspect some

wandering vagabond or ragamuffin, who might be fishing in the lake.

The shriek of his victim could not have disarmed a robber: to take off

the brooch and the watch was the work of a second.

Secondly, Olga had purposely not told me the name of the murderer,

which she would not have done if the murderer had been a common

robber. Evidently the murderer was dear to her, and she did not wish

that he should suffer severe punishment on her account. . . . Such

people could only have been her mad father; her husband, whom she did

not love, but before whom she felt herself guilty; or the Count, to

whom perhaps in her soul she felt under obligations. . . . Her mad

father was sitting at home in his little house in the forest on the

evening of the murder, as his servant affirmed afterwards, composing a

letter to the chief of the district police, requesting him to overcome

the imaginary robbers who surrounded his house day and night. . . .

The Count had never left his guests before and at the moment the

murder was committed. Therefore, the whole weight of suspicion fell on

unfortunate Urbenin. His unexpected appearance, his mien, and all the

rest could only serve as good evidence.

Thirdly, during the last months Olga's life had been one continuous

romance. And this romance was of the sort that usually ends with crime

and capital punishment. An old, doting husband, unfaithfulness,

jealousy, blows, flight to the lover-Count, two months after the

marriage. . . . If the beautiful heroine of such a romance is killed,

do not look for robbers or rascals, but search for the heroes of the

romance. On this third count the most suitable hero-murderer was again

Urbenin.