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“Zelach will get a description. Why would someone want your grandmother’s brass candlestick?”
    â€œAnd the old man?”
    â€œIn the hall,” Sofiya said, looking up. “I’ve seen him in the hall. Every day for years, in the hall.”
    She was looking up at Rostnikov, still dazed.
    â€œHe lives in this building, works in this building?”
    She shook her head no.
    â€œThen …?”
    â€œThe photograph,” she said, pointing to the little alcove off of the door. Rostnikov turned around and found himself facing two photographs. One was of a woman. Rostnikov concluded that she must, this kerchief-headed, sad-looking woman, be the dead wife of the recently dead man in the tub. Next to this photograph was another, of four men in peasant dress. Three of the men were very serious. All were young, and the picture was clearly old. Rostnikov moved to it and looked at the quartet with arms around each other’s shoulders. Rostnikov thought that one looked vaguely like a young version of the dead man. The look of suspicion was there, coming through a weak, pale half smile. Only one of the four in the photo, a man younger than the rest, was truly grinning.
    â€œWhich one?” Rostnikov said. Zelach was right behind him, peering at the picture.
    â€œThe man who grins,” Sofiya said. “It was him.”
    â€œYou are sure?”
    â€œI’m sure,” she said.
    â€œAnd who is he?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t know who any of them are. He never told us.”
    Without asking, Rostnikov took the picture from the wall and handed it to Zelach. He wasn’t at all sure that the woman wasn’t having a delusion or creating a tale, connecting a man in the hall who had helped kill her father with a photograph in the hall from her dead father’s past.
    â€œLev,” Rostnikov said, turning into the room. “Do you agree? Was the man in the picture the one who came here this afternoon?”
    The boy looked at his sister, whose head was down and whose hands were in his lap and said, “Yes, it is him.”
    The boy’s face turned to Rostnikov and belied his words. His face said he wasn’t at all sure.
    â€œComrade Zelach will remain here and take more complete statements from you,” Rostnikov said, improvising this way to avoid Zelach’s company back to his office. “Comrade Zelach will be most patient with you. Remember that, Zelach.”
    Zelach nodded glumly, but Rostnikov was sure that he would obey.
    Rostnikov retrieved his jacket and took one final look at the brother and sister, wondering if he could say something, do something, to help them get through the night, but there was nothing. He could say that he would find the killer, but he doubted if they really cared. He was sure that the assistant procurator and the procurator did not care. It was doubtful, in fact, if anyone with the exception of Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov really cared, and, in truth, he didn’t care very much, either.
    Still, the nibble of a question began to get at him. Why would anyone murder for a brass candlestick? Was the man in the photograph from Savitskaya’s past really the one who had come to shoot him? Why?
    He was thinking about such things, finding himself beginning to get lost in a possible puzzle, when a fat woman, hands on her hips, appeared before him on the narrow steps.
    â€œDid you arrest him?”
    â€œArrest who?”
    â€œThe Jewish boy,” she said. “He threw my son down the steps this afternoon. He is a wild one. He deserves to be arrested, punished.”
    Rostnikov managed to ease past her and looked back over his shoulder at the woman on the steps.
    â€œDon’t worry, comrade. He is being punished.”

TWO
    E MIL KARPO STOOD IN FRONT of the statue of Field Marshal Kutuzov, commander of the Russian army in the War of 1812, but he did not look at the statue or at the