His Master’s Voice – Ivy Litvinov (1930)

This plain little red hardback volume has been sat on my tbr pretty much forgotten for a few years now. His Master’s Voice by Ivy Litvinov a detective novel set in Moscow. It was the Librarything monthly themed read that made me take it off the shelves. I have been pretty useless with this challenge this year, only having joined in with January and February’s challenges so far. I was initially keen to join in most months but this has been my worst reading year ever, so it’s probably not surprising I’ve failed here too. For June’s challenge we had to read a book by a VMC author but that hadn’t been published as a VMC. I knew Ivy Litvinov’s collection of stories She Knew She was Right was an original VMC green spine – it’s one I have tbr – but was pretty sure this novel was never published as a VMC, so hopefully it does qualify.

I really enjoyed my first experience of Ivy Litvinov, I happened to start reading this on a very slow reading week (I think they are all pretty slow though at the moment) so it felt like a bit of a slow burn at the start, but once I got going with it I liked it a lot. The thing that pulled me in immediately was the stunning prose with which this novel opens – Litvinov introduces us to Moscow, on a bitterly cold night in February – and the sense of place is just incredible. It was enough for me to say, yes I really want to read this.

“The town seemed not so much asleep as strangled, locked in frost. The Kremlin palace and its numerous churches and spires looked down over toothed walls on silent squares, empty bridges, and abandoned streets. On summer evenings it looks down on its own reflection in the water, regally quiescent; on this bitter night in February,1926, when the frozen river refused to mirror its crude walls and fantastic buildings, it was more like a picture in a book for children than anything that had ever answered to the requirements of human beings.”

The novel doesn’t continue in quite such descriptive terms as the business of the story takes over, but Litvinov is a gifted writer, nevertheless. On this cold night a man is murdered. The dead man a resident of one of the countless yards in Moscow – the night watchman witness to the comings and goings, before in the early hours he too goes inside to his family to sleep.  It is the night watchman’s wife who discovers the dead man, early next morning, when taking him his breakfast. Arkady Petrovich Pavlov sat at his table, with a dagger sticking out of his neck, his head dropped forward on to his gramophone.

It falls to District Procurator Nikulin to investigate the crime – called to the telephone on a Sunday morning when he had been hoping for a lie in and time with the papers. He is aided by Detective Yanovitsky. Several items are recovered from the scene, including the dagger, a couple of gilded coins of tinfoil as if off some sort of garment or costume, a programme for the Bolshoi theatre dated the day of the murder, and a note signed with a letter s.

Investigations soon take the Procurator to the Bolshoi theatre and suspicion quickly falls on one of the ballerinas Tamara Geyorgyevna Dolidzey, who had been with the dead man on the evening he died, and whose dagger was found sticking out of his neck. 

“‘Well now Tamara, I have something to say to you. This morning Pavlov was found dead with this dagger – your dagger, Tamara – in his neck. Nobody is known to have come to him but yourself and nobody was there but yourself, Tamara. Nobody played your accompaniments on a piano because there was no piano in the room. There were no other guests. You were alone with Pavlov between twelve and one, and between twelve and three Pavlov was killed – with your dagger Tamara’

The girl listened to him with distended eyes and rapidly paling cheeks. She became so ashen white that the procurator looked around for a glass of water…”

The young dancer is locked up while investigations continue – protesting her innocence, horrified at what has befallen her. The reader is sure of course that Tamara is innocent – and soon enough the Procurator begins to have some doubts himself. Everything points to Tamara and yet there is the possibility that she is innocent. The Procurator begins getting manicures from a woman who did Pavlov’s nails, in a bid to know his victim a little better but more and more all roads seem to lead to the theatre.

As investigations continue there is the suggestion that Pavlov was really someone else, someone who had belonged to a secret political society – who might have an enemy still out there looking for him. Another dancer from the Bolshoi is brought in for questioning, a young man who has been harbouring tender feelings for Tamara and may have acted out of jealousy. As the conflicting evidence and testimonies mount, a journalist Julius Caesarovich Itkin (a somewhat improbable name) begins to interest himself in the case – and he doesn’t believe in Tamara’s guilt at all.

This was a really clever mystery which really did keep me guessing – lots of little twists along the way, meant I couldn’t possibly guess the outcome. I must make time to read that collection of stories by Ivy Litvinov, clearly a sadly neglected writer.