Sukhovo-Kobylin affair

Louise Simon-Dimanche, who had immigrated to Russia from France in 1842, lived in a five-room apartment in Count Gudovich's house on the corner of Tverskaya Street (the building was later moved to Bryusov pereulok, 21[1]), which was rented for her by Sukhovo-Kobylin.

In the afternoon of November 9, Sukhovo-Kobylin went to a meeting of the Merchants' Assembly, where he found the Moscow chief of police Ivan Luzhin and informed him of his concern about Simon-Demanche's fate.

[4] According to the police report, the deceased was of medium height and was wearing a green checkered dress, white silk stockings and black velvet half-boots, as well as gold and diamond earrings on her ears and rings on her hands.

Equally detailed was the report of Dr. Tikhomirov, who established during his examination that there was "a transverse wound with ragged edges about three vershoks [13 cm] long, around the throat, on the front of the neck".

[6] Soon the police chief Luzhin received a document stating that Sukhovo-Kobylin's serfs, Galaktion Kozmin and Ignat Makarov, had identified the dead woman as the "foreigner Louise Ivanovna, who lived in Gudovich's house".

[7] Announcing an investigation into the murder of Simon-Dimanche, Luzhin advised the members of the commission to look into the behavior of the retired titular councillor Sukhovo-Kobylin, who in a private conversation had given correct directions for the searches for the missing woman and had "repeatedly expressed fears that she had been killed".

[8] Juri Lotman describes Sukhovo-Kobylin as a man with a "contradictory mind", in which the rigidity of the "Europeanized feudal lord" was combined with the desire to keep pace with the times; he carried out progressive economic reforms on his estates while preserving "an idealized idea of patriarchal relations".

[10] His sister, the writer Evgenia Tur, characterized him as hot-blooded and uncontrollable: he showed no mercy to his servants who made mistakes and sometimes broke plates at dinner "because of a dish he did not like".

They consisted of the 20-year-old cook Yefim Yegorov, trained in one of the best Petersburg kitchens,[27] the 18-year-old coachman Galaktion Kozmin, and two maids: the 27-year-old Agrafena Kashkina and the 50-year-old Pelageya Alekseyeva (who died in 1853 in prison before the verdict was reached).

[29] The Chief Prosecutor of the Senate, Kastor Nikiforovich Lebedev, who studied the case materials at the request of the Minister of Justice, later wrote: It is sad to see this gifted Sukhovo-Kobylin engrossed in intrigues, and these serfs given by the master to be slaves to his French mistress.