The Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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choked and covered his face with his hands. After a minute he continued:
‘I did not see the scoundrel… When I was running towards her I heard somebody’s hasty footsteps. He was probably running away.’
‘All this is an interesting story, Pëtr Egorych,’ I said. ‘But you must know that magistrates are little inclined to believe in such rare occurrences as the coincidence of the murder with your accidental walk, etc. It’s not a bad fabrication, but it explains very little.’
‘What do you mean?’ Urbenin asked, opening his eyes wide, i have fabricated nothing, sir…’
Suddenly Urbenin got very red and rose.
‘It appears that you suspect me…’he mumbled. ‘Of course, anybody can suspect, but you, Sergey Petrovich, have known me long… It’s a sin for you to brand me with such a suspicion… You know me.’
‘I know you, certainly… but my private opinion is here of no avail… The law reserves the right of private opinion to the jurymen, the examining magistrate has only to deal with evidence. There is much evidence, Pëtr Egorych.’
Urbenin cast an alarmed look at me and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Whatever the evidence may be,’ he said, ‘you must understand… Now, could I kill?… Could I! And if so, whom? I might be able to kill a quail or a woodcock, but a human being… a woman who was dearer to me than life, my salvation… the very thought of whom illuminates my gloomy nature like the sun… And suddenly you suspect me!’
Urbenin waved his hand resignedly and sat down again.
‘As it is, I long for death, and now in addition you traduce me. If some official I didn’t know had spoken thus, I’d say nothing, but you, Sergey Petrovich! May I leave now, sir?’
‘You may… I shall examine you again tomorrow, and in the meantime, Pëtr Egorych, I must put you under arrest… I hope that before tomorrow’s examination you will have had time to appreciate the importance of all the evidence there is against you, and you will not waste time uselessly, but confess. I am convinced that Olga Nikolaevna was murdered by you… I have nothing more to say to you today… You may go.’
Having said this I bent over my papers… Urbenin looked at me in perplexity, rose, and stretched out his arms in a strange way.
‘Are you joking… or serious?’ he asked.
‘This is no time for joking,’ I said. ‘You may go.’
Urbenin remained standing before me. I looked up at him. He was pale and looked with perplexity at my papers.
‘Why are your hands bloodstained, Pëtr Egorych?’ I asked.
He looked down at his hands on which there still were marks of blood, and he moved his fingers.
‘You ask why there is blood?… Hm… If this is part of the evidence, it is but poor evidence… When I lifted up Olga after the murder I could not help my hands becoming bloody. I was not wearing gloves.’
‘You just told me that when you found your wife all bloody, you called for help… How is it that nobody heard your cries?’
‘I don’t know, I was so stunned by the sight of Olia, that I was unable to cry out… Besides, I know nothing… It is useless for me to try to exculpate myself, and it’s against my principles to do so.’
‘You would hardly have shouted… Having killed your wife, you ran away, and were terribly astonished when you saw people on the clearing.’
‘I never noticed the people. I paid no heed to people.’
With this my examination for that day was concluded. After that Urbenin was confined in one of the outhouses on the Count’s estate and placed under guard.
CHAPTER XXIX
On the second or third day the Assistant Public Prosecutor, Polugradov, arrived post-haste from the town; he is a man I cannot think of without upsetting myself. Imagine a tall, lean man, of about thirty, clean shaven, smartly dressed, and with hair curled like a sheep’s; his features were thin, but so dry and unexpressive that it was not difficult to guess the emptiness and foppishness of the individual to whom they belonged; his voice was low, sugary, and mawkishly polite.
He arrived early in the morning, with two portmanteaux in a hired calash. First of all he inquired with a very concerned face, complaining affectedly of fatigue, if a room had been prepared for him in the Count’s house. On my orders a small but very cosy and light room had been assigned to him, where everything he might need, from a marble washstand right down to matches, had been arranged.
‘I - I say, my good fellow! Bring me some hot water!’ he began while settling down in his room, and fastidiously sniffing the air. ‘Some hot water, please, I say, young man!’
Before beginning work he washed, dressed, and arranged his hair for a long time; he even brushed his teeth with some sort of red powder, and occupied about three minutes in trimming his sharp, pink nails.
‘Well, sir,’ he said at last, settling down to work, and turning over the leaves of our report. ‘What’s it all about?’
I told him what was the matter not leaving out a single detail…
‘Have you been to the scene of the crime?’
‘No, not yet.’
The Assistant Public Prosecutor frowned, passed his white womanish hand over his freshly washed brow, and began walking about the room.
‘I can’t understand why you haven’t been there,’ he murmured.
‘I should suppose that was the first thing that ought to have been done. Did you forget or did you think it unnecessary?’
‘Neither the one nor the other: yesterday I waited for the police, and I intend to go today.’
‘Now nothing will be left there: it has been raining for the last few days, and you have given the criminal time to obliterate his traces. Of course you placed a guard at the spot? No? I don’t understand!’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘You’d better drink your tea, it’s getting cold,’ I said, in a tone of indifference.
‘I like it cold.’
The Assistant Public Prosecutor bent over the papers, and with a loud sniff he began to read aloud in an undertone, occasionally jotting down his remarks and corrections. Two or three times his mouth was drawn to one side in a sarcastic smile: for some reason neither my official report nor the doctors’ pleased this cunning rogue. In this sleek, well-brushed, and cleanly-washed government official, stuffed full of conceit and a high opinion of his own worth, the pedant was clearly apparent.
By midday we were on the scene of the crime. It was raining hard. Of course we found no evidence or traces; all had been washed away by the rain. By some chance I found one of the buttons that were missing on Olga’s riding habit, and the Assistant Prosecutor picked up a sort of reddish pulp, that subsequently proved to be a red wrapper from a packet of tobacco. At first we stumbled upon a bush which had two twigs broken at one side. The Assistant Prosecutor was delighted at finding these twigs. They might have been broken by the criminal and would therefore indicate the way he had gone after killing Olga. But the joy of the Prosecutor was unfounded: we soon found a number of bushes with broken twigs and nibbled leaves; it turned out that a herd of cattle had passed over the scene of the murder.
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