A Razor Wrapped in Silk by R. N. Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

a St Petersburg stage.
    The coup de théâtre came when Aglaia cried out: ‘She’s dead. My sister’s dead. He’s killed her!’ Her eyes spun upwards, filling with white. A kind of wave went through her as she fell. Her arms and head rose, as if resisting. But the ultramarine dress that had sat so uneasily on her pulled her down, as though it were made from some impossibly heavy material.
    The two actors stood frozen to the spot. No one knew what to do next or how to interpret what had happened.
    Maria could not get out of her mind the image of Aglaia’s eyes at the moment before her collapse. There was something so raw, so intimate, something almost obscene in that exposure, that she knew it could not be an act.
    ‘Help her! Somebody help her!’ She was on her feet again. Her words released the two actors from their suspended state. They rushed to Aglaia Filippovna. Unable to rouse her, one called for a doctor while the other communicated urgently with stagehands. The curtains came together and the painted screen descended.
    The audience broke into uproar.

6
    White camellias, a red thread, and seven rings
    Porfiry Petrovich looked down at the body of the young woman. She was frozen in an angular pose. Her arms retained the tension with which they had been lashing out at the last moment, acutely bent at the elbows and wrists, fingers splayed to grasp life as it leeched from her. Her head was sharply skewed to one side, as if in the throes of angry denial. She lay half on her side, her body cork-screwed. It seemed she had died writhing to lift herself out of the swamp of blood that encircled her.
    As always in these circumstances, Porfiry’s gaze was drawn to the wound. Of course, his interest was professional, but it occurred to him that his choice of profession might have been influenced by a need to confront such sights. Or perhaps it was a profoundly human compulsion, little more than the vulgar urge to gawp at the scene of an overturned carriage. He had merely elevated morbid curiosity into a calling. The morose cast of his musings could be excused by the fact that he had been wrenched from uneasy dreams of his father by the frantic hammering of police officers sent to rouse him. Usually when he dreamt of his parents, the mood of the dream was joyful. These were dreams of reunion that he did not want to end. The simpler familial relationships of childhood were restored and there was only love between them. Whatever complications there had been in life were blissfully forgotten. But this night’sdreams were shot through with an obscure sense of guilt that he couldn’t shake off, but was reluctant to probe.
    Undoubtedly, Zakhar’s death had something to do with it.
    It was almost as if he took solace in the wound.
    It was a deep, neat incision across the full breadth of her throat. The pumping force of life had burst through it, pushing the severed flesh apart. The front of her dress was sodden, the black silk heavily darkened in a sweeping arc that extended below her midriff. Her blood drenched the Turkish rug on which she lay, obscuring the rich reds with its muddy cast. Porfiry saw the wound as a second mouth, its inert lips slightly parted as if it were trying to tell him something. But it spoke only blood.
    The body was in a small, windowless room in the basement of Naryskin Palace, close enough to the tiny theatre to serve as a dressing room. Three narrow, elaborately moulded doors on one wall gave onto a wardrobe, which Porfiry had already discovered to be hung with dusty clothes. As far as he could tell from a cursory examination, they were male clothes. The room was furnished with a dressing table, which was cluttered with the accoutrements of stage make-up. Next to it was a small table bearing a wash basin and jug. The water appeared fresh and unused. There were a number of burning candles on both surfaces, adding to the light provided by a hissing gas lamp mounted on one wall. There were two mirrors: