Sherlock Holmes and The Shadows of St Petersburg by Daniel Victor (short novels to read TXT) 📕

lucky enough to secure seating in one of the cleaner rooms. Porfiry himself used to go there with Dostoevsky.”

“And how was the famous Russian vodka?” I could not refrain from asking.

Holmes smiled. “We drank tea, old fellow. Porfiry does not drink spirits.”

“Tea in the Crystal Palace - how very English,” I mused though I could picture no resemblance between the shabby establishment described by Holmes and the original Crystal Palace, the grand structure of glass and iron built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. “One fancies the name is ironical,” I hastened to add. (Underscoring such irony, Mrs Garnett named the tavern in French, Palais de Cristal.)

In point of fact, on not a few occasions, Holmes and I might be seen in south London, witnessing summer fireworks in the Palace’s relocated home in Sydenham. With scientific displays from all parts of the Empire, the original Crystal Palace symbolised the progress of modern technology. (Strangely, as many times as Holmes and I had visited the place, I could never seem to identify the location of the clock chimes which I still maintain ring somewhere within its glass walls.)[3]

“Ironical, to be sure,” said Holmes. “Porfiry Petrovitch said that the Russian Socialists hated the English Palace because it reflected the lockstep mentality forced upon the working class. But we are getting far afield, old fellow. In terms of the old axe murders that I came to investigate, it was in that tavern that Raskolnikov captured the interest of the local authorities. Remember how he told a police clerk just how he, Raskolnikov, would have performed the murders if he was the one who had killed the pawnbroker.”

I remembered, and yet I remained sceptical. “In spite of all that you are reporting and all the various locations you have visited, Holmes, St Petersburg still seems a great distance to have travelled in order to witness the scene of a twenty-year-old crime.”

“Crimes, Watson, crimes. There were two murders, let us not forget - those of the pawnbroker called Ayona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta. But to your point, I wanted information that I suspected the Petersburg police might still have. Recall that towards the end of the investigation, Porfiry Petrovitch told Raskolnikov that the police possessed absolute proof of who had killed the pawnbroker.”

“Yes,” I remembered, “but Porfiry Petrovitch tells Raskolnikov that he will not reveal the proof since he wants the killer to confess without the coercion of inculpatory evidence.”

Holmes paused and held up a forefinger. “A moment.”

Only then did I notice his Gladstone, which was leaning against his chair.

Putting down his pipe, he withdrew from inside the bag a copy of Whishaw’s translation of Crime and Punishment. (I did not know he owned one.) “I call your attention,” said he as he thumbed through the pages, “to Porfiry Petrovitch’s climactic interview with Raskolnikov.” And coming to a stop near the end, he proceeded to read the Russian detective’s remarks to the killer: “‘I hold a proof... God has sent it to me.’” (Mrs Garnett would call it “a little fact” sent by “Providence.”) “Just as you or I might respond when confronted with such a statement, Watson, Raskolnikov rightly asked, ‘What is it?’”

In light of the fact that Dostoevsky himself never revealed this evidence, I myself entertained the very same question.

“In order to understand more about the murders,” Holmes smiled, “I asked Porfiry Petrovitch the nature of this evidence. His answer?” Here Sherlock Holmes, never one to overlook the chance to display his acting talents, evoked a Russian accent. “‘Iss information, Mr Holmes, I hold secret a little longer. As you English say, I shall keep it ‘close to the chest.’”

I chuckled in spite of myself.

“You see,” said Holmes, “from the start, Porfiry Petrovitch wanted Raskolnikov to turn himself in and acknowledge the crime on his own.” (Mrs Garnett would write, “surrender and confess.”) “Presenting him with incriminating evidence might have coerced an admission of guilt, but Porfiry was seeking a freely offered confession. Which, as we know from the novel, the villain ultimately did provide, earning him - as Porfiry had predicted - a lesser sentence - ten years in Siberia rather than a lifetime.”

“I thought it was eight,” I said with a frown. “The epilogue provides the number.”

Holmes shook his head. “Remember that Dostoevsky sought to finish the novel as quickly as he could - in point of fact, just after Raskolnikov’s confession. What Dostoevsky wrote following the confession is mere conjecture. Oh, the epilogue is based on the facts Raskolnikov gave to the police, and yet Dostoevsky imagined it all. Some of it - like the death of Raskolnikov’s mother - he got right, but the eight-year sentence? Simply an incorrect guess.”

As a writer myself, I remembered sensing stylistic differences between the epilogue and the earlier text. In the epilogue, there is much narrative but little dialogue, much description but little drama. Yet even as I could understand Dostoevsky’s need for haste in making public the story, I could not comprehend the shortness of Raskolnikov’s imprisonment.

“Eight years or ten, Holmes - either way, it is too short a time for killing two women. Here in England he would have hanged.”

“True, Watson. The court showed mercy. But remember that by turning himself in, Raskolnikov saved the state much legal work and exonerated the poor soul who had confessed to the murders untruthfully.”

“The house-painter Nikolay,” I said, “the man who found the dropped earrings and for his troubles was accused of the crime.”

“And falsely confessed. Just so. And do not forget the family and friends of Raskolnikov who spoke to the positive history of the killer - how kind he had been to others, how he had rescued people in a fire - not to mention the travails of his childhood.” Holmes closed the book.

“Two sides to the man,” I recalled, “the homo duplex to which you referred at the Gottfried murder scene.”

“Exactly, Watson. Raskolnikov had a double nature - or so Porfiry Petrovitch believed. Raskolnikov could be full