At that moment the door swung open to reveal another young man. He was holding a large, brown earthenware pot by its handles. The grey-brown hue of his suit matched the colour of the pot.
“William,” Roderick gasped. “Thank God, you’ve come back.”
“Who’s this then?” William demanded, nodding at me.
I proceeded to explain my presence as best I could. “Who are you?” I asked in turn.
It was the sick man who answered. “Doctor Watson, this is William Arbuthnot. We read for the law together when I was still at King’s College.” Another trill of laughter. “Save your breath. No need to ask. He’s read Dostoevsky’s novel too. We shared the same tutor, in fact, and discussed the book quite often.”
“What does he want here?” asked William. “And what book is it that I am supposed to have read?”
Cheek’s eyes burned with excitement. “Someone’s murdered Gottfried the pawnbroker. With an axe. This crazy fellow believes that anyone who has read Crime and Punishment is a suspect.” He turned to me. “Did I get that right? William is a suspect as well, is he not? I should judge that you wish to question him too.” Again he broke into that weird laughter.
In the novel, Raskolnikov has a friend called Razumihin, who after many twists and turns ends up marrying Raskolnikov’s sister. Though I had no reason to believe William Arbuthnot to be the fiancé of whom Miss Cheek had spoken, he clearly filled the role of friend for her brother. And since at the very least, this William had also read the novel, I put the question to him as well, “May I ask, Mr Arbuthnot, where you were Monday night?”
The man answered me with a change of subject. “Let me guess,” he replied, “you’re one of those Christians who believe everyone suffers Original Sin.”
I failed to see the logic. Besides, religion has never been a major influence in my life, and I was rather taken aback at so personal a query.
“Original Sin is a vague concept,” pontificated Arbuthnot, sounding every bit like the erudite student he still was. “As a result, one school of thought believes there are sinners among us who feel they must commit a truly immoral act to give tangible reality to their guilt. Is that what you are suggesting, sir - that someone murdered the pawnbroker in order to provide himself a real crime about which to feel guilty? Is that your hypothesis?”
Suddenly, Cheek sat up and shook both his fists in the air. “Well argued, William!” he shouted.
Though an upstanding member in the Church of England, I readily acknowledge that juggling the concepts of sin and guilt is well beyond my depth. As for interpreting the theological implications of Crime and Punishment-well, allow me to say that I was perfectly content with Raskolnikov’s repentance at the novel’s conclusion. His confession sufficed. I saw no need for additional questions about why he had committed the murders.
William’s intellectual response, however, suggested those new psychological interpretations that serve to undermine any sense of contrition, religious or otherwise. Indeed, I wondered if William Arbuthnot might be offering a look into his own state of mind. Whatever his thinking, I recognised that at the very least he had dodged my question concerning his whereabouts on the night of Gottfried’s murder.
Whilst I pondered the meaning of all this chatter, William was placing on the chair next to the bed the pot he had been holding all the while. “Calm down, mate,” he said to Cheek. “I’ve brought you the perfect medicine - chicken soup.” Retrieving a large wooden spoon that had been lying on the table, he reported, “It’s from the shop downstairs. Mrs Lindermann gave it to me when I said you were ill. ‘Eat,’ she told me to tell you. ‘Then go to sleep. You’ll be fine in the morning.’”
Roderick Cheek ignored the spoon and, taking hold of the two handles, drank directly from the pot. Some of the steaming broth trickled down his bristled chin and onto the blanket.
More concerned with the soup than with their visitor, Cheek and Arbuthnot succeeded in convincing me that it was time to leave. Though Miss Cheek’s brother had indeed been located, I seemed to have uncovered a more pressing issue. Both young men were readers of Crime and Punishment, and either one - or both - might have appropriated the deadly plan that Dostoevsky had established in the book’s opening section. Having travelled to the East End with a single suspect in mind for the Brick Lane murders, I found myself returning to Baker Street with the number doubled.
* * *
Not long after I had returned to our sitting room, Inspector Lestrade arrived with a short, grizzled man in tow. Maintaining a firm hand on the man’s shoulder, Lestrade marched him in as he might treat a criminal. The stranger, dressed in baggy work clothes and flat tweed cap, sported a dramatic, grey moustache that extended outward and ended in sharp, waxed points. Lestrade had previously spoken of his contacts within London’s Russian community; and here, as I was about to discover, stood a living representative.
“Says his name is Dmitry,” Lestrade told me as he let go of the man, “but he calls himself the Assistant, he does. Lives in the East End. Claims that before coming to England, he’d been an Assistant Superintendent with the St Petersburg police. As I recall, it’s the same city where those murders in that book took place.”
St Petersburg. It haunts this investigation.
“I brought him here so you could have a look, Doctor. Never can tell what valuable memories he might be storing away.”
In spite of the man’s drab coat and trousers, he held his shoulders back and, though not very tall, evoked the erect, formal posture of a military officer. I seemed to remember an assistant
