lights were turned on, a necessity since the room was low and dark even in the daytime. Something was steaming in a pot on the table where they had sat the night before. Rostnikov took off his coat and moved to the table. He found an empty chair, dropped his coat, and sat.
“It smells of the country,” he said, leaning over the pot. “But that may be an illusion. Would you like a cup?”
“No. The written report of my interrogations, including one of the nun, are in the room where I slept. If you like, I will get them for you now.”
“Later,” Rostnikov said, pouring a cup of tea for himself. He passed his hand over the top of the cup and felt the warmth of the steam on his palm. “Emil, please sit. It is difficult to enjoy a cup of tea with you hovering.”
Karpo sat stiffly, a palm on each knee. His jaw, always firm, was rigid.
“You have something to tell me,” Rostnikov said, after taking a sip.
Karpo reached into his jacket pocket and removed a book with a badly worn black leather cover. The book was slightly oversize and as thick as a Tolstoy novel. Karpo placed the book on the table and returned his hands to his knees. Rostnikov dried the palm of his hand on his pants, pulled the book in front of him, and opened it. It was some kind of ledger or diary. The handwriting was firm, slanted, and almost certainly that of a woman.
“I found it less than an hour ago in the room of Sister Nina,” said Karpo. “It was hidden in a compartment in the headboard of her bed. The bed had to be moved to reach it. To make the entries she had to move a very heavy bed each night and then return it. I found it an effort. The nun was almost eighty.”
“Had the killer tried to find it?” asked Rostnikov, thumbing through the pages before him.
“I don’t believe so. The house was torn apart, religious icons were broken, the priest’s belongings were mutilated in much the same way that the body of the woman was mutilated. Whoever killed her appeared to be looking for something of the priest’s. There was, in fact, very little in her room: a small case of religious books, a simple wooden dresser, a bed, and a painting of Christ on the wall. The woman lived simply.”
“And died violently,” added Rostnikov, thinking that the dead nun’s room sounded much like Emil Karpo’s room in Moscow, which Rostnikov had entered only once, a room that looked like the cell of a monk or a Lubyanka prisoner. The major difference between the dead nun’s room and that of Emil Karpo was that Karpo had no paintings or photographs. His books, several hundred of them, looked not unlike the one before Rostnikov, but they were filled with notes on unsolved crimes going back to Karpo’s first days as an investigator in Moscow, closed cases that Karpo diligently investigated on his own time.
“Have you read this book?” asked Rostnikov.
“I have had little time, but I’ve read some of it and have examined the most recent entries. I have placed yellow tabs on two pages that I think may be of particular interest. But first, see here, right at the beginning.”
Karpo leaned over the table, opened the book, and pointed to its first entry. Rostnikov looked at the page held open before him and read where Karpo’s finger pointed: “On this day I begin my journal. Father Merhum keeps his journal with diligence and suggests that I do the same, that I share my soul with God and look back at my past, confess my sins, offer my gratitude to Him as Father Merhum does, and so I-”
“Father Merhum kept a journal,” Rostnikov said, looking up. “Is that what you believe the killer was seeking?”
“It is possible.”
Rostnikov drank more tea and poured a cup for Karpo. “Humor me, Emil Karpo,” he said. “Have a cup of tea while I read.”
Karpo took the cup and drank obediently.
Rostnikov opened the book to the yellow tab nearest the front of the diary. It was dated May 2, 1959. He read:
The son is come this day to Father Merhum and it brings him no joy. He confides in me and not his wife, and he does so without guilt. He does so knowing that I will say nothing. He does so knowing that it is for our Lord to judge if there is judgment to be made. He does so knowing that I will not judge. He has the power through God and he shall see his son through all the days of the rest of his life and that will be the burden of his guilt. He will be forever reminded that the Lord who gloried in his son looks down about his minion and sees that he shall not know this glory on earth.
Rostnikov looked up at Karpo, who had finished his tea and sat watching.
“It is from the book of Isaiah,” said Karpo.
Rostnikov tried to hide his surprise at his colleague’s knowledge.
“She gave me a Bible last night,” he said. “I found it with little difficulty. If you turn to the next yellow tab, you will find that her entry begins with another quote from Isaiah.”
Rostnikov turned many pages and found the tab on an entry marked “July 6, 1970.”
The entry for the day continued with,
The Father is of the flesh and of the Spirit. He cannot deny the sins of flesh. That, he believes, is the curse which God has placed upon him, and so he devotes himself to the sins of others against all men. The saints learned that they must fall low before they might find true redemption.
And each day Father Merhum sees him and is reminded.
That was the end of the entry. Rostnikov looked up again. Emil Karpo was motionless. His jaws did not seem quite as rigid.
“You are getting a headache?” Rostnikov asked.
“I can function quite efficiently,” responded Karpo.
“Emil Karpo, I must conclude that you do not wish to answer the question I have asked you.”
“I have a headache,” Karpo said.
Rostnikov was well aware that Karpo’s migraines were massive and painful and that Karpo would not take the pills that had been prescribed for him unless directly ordered to do so. For Karpo, to acknowledge pain was a sign of weakness. “Take a pill, Emil,” said Rostnikov.
“It is probably too late. The aura has passed. It cannot be halted.”
“Like the tea, it is an order.”
Karpo rose, reached into his pocket, extracted a small bottle, removed a large white pill, put it into his mouth, bit it several times, and swallowed without the aid of tea or water. Rostnikov was sure, for he had smelled the pill, that the taste must be quite vile. Karpo put the bottle back in his pocket and sat again.
“And what do you make of these entries?” asked Rostnikov.
“That Father Merhum had a deep dislike for his son, and that the son represented some act about which the father was guilty.”
“It would seem so,” agreed Rostnikov, considering whether to pour another cup of tea even though it had little taste. It was the recent memory of Karpo chewing the pill and the sudden empathy Rostnikov felt at that moment that decided him. “Emil, find me information on Father Merhum and his wife. Find me information on Merhum’s son. Find me photographs. Find what you can find.”
Emil Karpo nodded and rose. “There is one more entry with a yellow tab,” he said. “At the end.”
Rostnikov turned to that final entry of the previous day. It was very brief.
“And the voice of the Holy Mother has said that the son slew the father. The laws of men shout that I must speak, but these are the laws of the men who have put a hand of iron over the mouth of the Holy Church and held it in place for nearly my entire lifetime. It is not the province of such men to decide the law, but it is the province of God. I shall leave it to Him. As Father Merhum lived with his guilt, so shall his son. And if the son comes to me, I shall tell him to seek the ear of the Holy Mother, who knows compassion even for those who have fallen most low.”
Once again Rostnikov looked up.
“The son killed him. And then he killed the nun,” said Karpo.
