A Child of Christian Blood: Murder and Conspiracy in Tsarist Russia: The Beilis Blood Libel (11 page)

The complaints of the Black Hundreds initially appear bewildering. Had not Liadov fawned over Kiev’s young right-wing leader? Did he
not put a distinguished new detective on the case? Had he not signaled the Justice Ministry’s approval of “the ritual version”? The continued indignation of the right wing exposes a paradox: even as top officials placated the local vigilantes, no one had informed the Far Right’s national leaders of this. The
Russian Banner
protested that St. Petersburg had not sent a single decent detective and that the case remained “under an impenetrable cover of secrecy.” The disconnect might be the result of routine bureaucratic ineptitude (a safe assumption for a regime where often even the right hand did not know what the right hand was doing). Or it might have been the product of some never-revealed intrigue (two of the most popular words in tsarist officials’ memoirs are “intrigue” and “camarilla”). But the authorities in Kiev and St. Petersburg had good reasons to keep the Far Right ignorant of the
investigation.

At this point in the inquiry, the officials privately advocating for the blood accusation likely hesitated. Having sought to “find a Jew,” they had to acknowledge that no suitable Jew—one against whom witnesses could be produced—had been found. So, for now, they kept secret from the public the judgment of the distinguished psychiatrist Ivan Sikorsky that Andrei’s murder was an instance of the “revenge of the sons of Jacob.” In the absence of a flesh-and-blood suspect, such a revelation could only highlight the failure of the authorities to find the actual perpetrators, inflame the populace, and increase the possibility of a pogrom, which, as officials often stated, would be “most undesirable.” It would be some weeks before they could ready a case against a suitable Jew. Meanwhile, Krasovsky was taking the investigation in a very different direction.

Krasovsky “
was not distinguished by especially firm moral qualities,” the local prosecutor, Nikolai Brandorf, later recalled with disapproval, “and was capable, when needed, of conducting a double game.” But a double game, or even a triple or quadruple game, it could be argued, was exactly what an investigator was required to play in this case. To maintain his freedom of action, Krasovsky had to indulge the Black Hundreds. He frequently met with Golubev and his chief investigator—a sometime police informer, moneylender, and former bordello proprietor named Rozmitalsky—and pronounced himself favorably disposed to the possibility that the crime was a ritual murder. Making his
charade somewhat easier was the absence of any other persuasive theory of the case: at this point, he could honestly say,
anything
might be true.

Ironically, while Krasovsky had been unsettled by Liadov’s conspiratorial machinations, the St. Petersburg official had done him a great service by creating a breathing space in which he could try to solve the case. Liadov’s obeisance to Golubev and his crew, and the other actions he had taken, did not yet constitute a full-blown anti-Semitic conspiracy. The conciliatory gestures having been made to Kiev’s Far Right, Krasovsky and the other investigators were allowed to pursue leads as they pleased.

Immediately after arriving in Kiev, Krasovsky made a
detailed survey of the physical evidence. He was appalled by the destruction of the crime scene by the police and public, which had left only the paltriest scraps of evidence to work with. A trace amount of semen was detected on a blood-soaked piece of pillowcase found in Andrei’s jacket pocket, pointing to a possible sexual motive for the crime. On the belt buckle, there were two clearly visible fingerprints—above and below the first letter of the word “School”—but, frustratingly, dusting with two types of powder failed to “develop” them. In the absence of a murder weapon, the four dozen wounds on the body pointed to no particular suspect. Imprinted in a muddy blotch on Andrei’s jacket was the figure a small Christmas tree, which turned out to be the distinctive mark of the rare Columbus brand of galoshes; the footprint, however, could not be matched to a suspect. The clay encrusted on Andrei’s clothes matched that in the cave and yielded no clues about the location of the murder, although Krasovsky did tease out one significant hypothesis. Based on meteorological reports that showed the only days when the temperature in Kiev was above freezing were March 16 and March 19, he believed the body had been dragged into the cave on one of those days, when wet clay and leaves could have stuck to the boy’s clothes and then dried. (This contradicted the conclusion of the autopsy report that the body had been taken to the cave while still in rigor mortis, within about twelve to twenty-four hours after death.) Krasovsky surveyed the Zaitsev brick factory in late May and, like Fenenko, came away convinced that the crime could not have taken place there. He briefly talked to Mendel Beilis and asked to look at his shoes. He found no Columbus galoshes, only a worn-out pair of the more common Conductor brand.

In the absence of physical evidence or eyewitnesses, to solve the case
Krasovsky would have to induce people to say things they did not want to say. A way would have to be found to sway souls, until unspeakable memories made lips begin to move and unintended words were uttered. Some might think the investigator’s methods amounted to coercion, but Krasovsky thought he was only after the truth. With the evidence at hand, he could not solve this crime. But perhaps he could find the killer by disinterring the secret history of Andrei’s family in all its bitterness, resentment, and despair.

What Krasovsky had learned about the family—and, more important, what the family said about itself—had aroused his deepest suspicions. The
arrest of the family had been a fiasco, with Andrei’s relatives defended in the
Duma itself, as the Far Right raged against the police for victimizing them. But that did not deter Krasovsky from focusing on them with renewed vigor. If the Black Hundreds had believed Krasovsky would be better than that contemptible tool of the Jews, Detective Mishchuk, they would soon be disappointed. Russia’s Sherlock Holmes was coming to believe that Andrei had indeed been killed, as his aunt Natalia suspected, by “
one of his own.”

Andrei’s stepfather, Luka Prikhodko, seemed to have a solid alibi. His boss, whose name was
Kolbasov, swore that Luka had spent ten straight days and nights at the bookbinding workshop where he worked, sleeping and taking his meals there. But there was an emotional entanglement between them that surely gave pause to the psychologically minded Krasovsky. The two men were drinking companions and it was rumored that Luka was
having an affair with Kolbasov’s wife. It was hard to say whether this fraught relationship made Kolbasov more or less believable as an alibi witness, but clearly his motives could be complex.

There were still too many reasons to believe that Luka, and perhaps his wife, Alexandra, who was Andrei’s mother, and her brother, Fyodor Nezhinsky, were involved in the crime. And a primal motive was now coming into clearer focus: money. It had been reported to the investigators that at the cave, after Andrei’s body was found, witnesses had heard his uncle Fyodor declare that Andrei had been killed by his stepfather, and possibly other family members, “because of the
promissory note.” Questioned by the police, Fyodor confirmed that he had indeed accused his brother-in-law, Luka, and that he believed that money was the motive.

At this point, another mysterious character—talked about, obsessed
about, but never seen—finally enters the story in a ghostly manner. Andrei’s absent father, Feodosy
Chirkov, whom his mother never married, lived with her for two years. While she was pregnant with their second child, a daughter who died shortly after birth, he left Kiev to fulfill his military service in the tsar’s army. Around that time, his family’s modest estate was sold and he received a share of the proceeds. By the time of Andrei’s murder no one knew for sure if he was dead or alive, though rumor had it he had perished during the
Russo-Japanese War.

Chirkov liked to play cards and was said by an acquaintance to “associate with a
not especially reputable crowd.” People who knew him had little doubt he would swiftly spend his inheritance. But after Chirkov’s exit, the legend grew that he had bequeathed a “promissory note.”
Alexandra would often boast—particularly to her mother if the older woman reproached her for having an illegitimate
son—that money existed in Andrei’s name, perhaps a thousand rubles. Andrei, who longed for his father (he was said to ask passing soldiers if they knew of him), filled the emotional void by making his mother’s story his own. He told one of his Jewish friends that his father had left him six hundred rubles and he
lived on the interest. Until the day he died, he wanted to believe his father was providing for him.

The “promissory note” was a private myth, a weapon in a family battle, and a young boy’s consolation. But after the murder, when tears might have washed old resentments away, it emerged like a malicious
domovoi
to haunt the family. Inexorably, the presumed motive called into being the requisite trappings of guilt. Witnesses appeared. Incriminating evidence was duly found.

Investigators learned Luka and
Alexandra had behaved quite suspiciously at the office of a local newspaper where they had gone to place a notice about Andrei’s disappearance. “[They] were completely composed, calm,” a newspaper employee told investigators. “Something here wasn’t right: the mother was too indifferent.” The couple had “smiled strangely.” A laundress claimed that Alexandra and her brother Fyodor had talked to her about Andrei’s disappearance “with a smile.” The overheated Kiev rumor mill produced a story that a man and woman resembling Luka and Alexandra had been seen hailing a cab, while carrying a big, heavy bag. In another version, the couple claimed the wrapped body was a sick boy they were taking to the hospital.

On June 3,
the police arrested Fyodor. He, too, had an alibi, a coworker who swore they were together at Natalia’s workshop. But at this point, of all the family members, he was in the greatest legal jeopardy. The day before the body was discovered, on March 19, he had been seen in Lukianovka covered in clay—exactly what would be expected if he had wriggled in and out of a cave. A boy testified that Fyodor had had him brush off his clothes. Fyodor claimed he’d soiled his clothes while sleeping in the street, presumably after going on a bender. The boy did confirm Fyodor was somewhat drunk, which was hardly exculpatory. Other witnesses also claimed Fyodor had acted suspiciously.

Once in custody, Fyodor, not surprisingly, again pointed the finger at his brother-in-law, Andrei’s stepfather, Luka. More unexpectedly, he made a striking claim. He told Krasovsky he had found an important witness who had escaped the authorities’ notice: a man who had seen someone resembling Luka near the caves on the morning of Andrei’s murder. What was truly surprising was that Fyodor was telling the truth. Investigators confirmed the story.

Fyodor had tracked down the witness, a stove repairman, some weeks earlier. The man had told only a few people about the person he had seen while on his way to the Zaitsev factory to do a job at seven a.m. on March 12. But the story quickly spread in the Lukianovka anthill, making its way to Andrei’s aunt Natalia, who told her brother about it. The man was known only by his nickname “Lapochka” (roughly translated, “Sweetie”), but Fyodor soon showed up at his door. His real name was
Vasily
Yashchenko; now he confirmed to the police that he’d seen someone near the Zaitsev factory on March 12 who struck him as suspicious.

Fyodor, having found a witness who he believed implicated his brother-in-law, decided to keep this information to himself, for purely self-interested reasons. According to a police report, “
He ended his investigation and decided to say nothing about his conjectures, reasoning that you couldn’t bring a dead boy back to life and the arrest of [Luka] would negatively affect the material situation of the family which he, Fyodor, would then have to support.” But now that Fyodor found himself on the verge of being charged with murder, the witness he had discovered was his ticket to freedom. An excited Krasovsky restyled Fyodor from a suspect into a “colleague,” as helpful citizens or
informers were called, who would now aid in bringing his brother-in-law to justice.

However much Chaplinsky, the chief prosecutor, wanted to charge a Jew or Jews with the crime, he could not now ignore the suspicions of the famed detective he himself had helped put in charge of the case. In early June he reluctantly reported to the justice minister that
“
Nezhinsky’s story could turn out to be truthful.” Another development may also have made him hesitate. On June 6, Father
Alexander Glagolev, a Kiev professor and leading Christian authority on the Jewish religion and rituals whose opinion Chaplinsky had solicited a month earlier, delivered his formal statement.
Father Glagolev acknowledged “evidence of the hatred of Jews for non-Jews in the Talmud” but thoroughly dismissed the blood accusation. Echoing the judgment of the council convened by
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the very first such case in
Fulda, he noted the age-old Jewish “prohibition … against the use of blood in any food” detailed in the Talmud. He emphasized that that proscription was “to my knowledge nowhere lifted, limited, or mitigated” in any known text and declared the very idea of a blood ritual “counter to the principles of Judaism, ancient and modern.” He further implied that the ultra-pious Hasids were, if anything, less likely than other Jews to commit such an act of sacrilege.

Father Glagolev’s lengthy contemplation of the case was no mere dry scholarly exercise. The killing had affected him deeply, and he concluded his statement with an unusual cri de coeur: “The horrible, blood-curdling murder of the innocent boy … stands before my mind as an insoluble mystery, one which perhaps can only be uncovered by the All-Seeing Eye!”

Sometime in late May or June, Evgeny Frantsevich Mishchuk, nominally Kiev’s chief detective but now officially relieved of the case (the “secret” of Krasovsky’s appointment had not remained so for long),
sat himself down on an earthen bank near the
Berner Estate in Andrei’s old neighborhood of Lukianovka and lit a cigarette. He was out of uniform. He had dressed as nondescriptly as he could. In one pocket he had some caramels. For hours he had been roaming Kiev’s impoverished, disreputable outskirts, sensing at every turn criminal dens and underworld hideouts where all sorts of fugitives, even wanted killers,
took refuge. When he saw some children playing here, scampering up, down, and around the ruts, ravines, and caves near where Andrei’s body was found, he hoped he had found the break in the case he was looking for.