Several people suspected of murder testify to the investigator, which are given in the order in which they were shot. We don’t hear the questions of the investigator, but we reconstruct them according to the content of the answers of the interrogated.

The person involved as a witness or suspect in the investigation of the murder case answers the questions of the investigator. It follows from his answers that on Saturday evening his acquaintance should have come to him to make out Chigorin’s chess sketch, which they agreed on Tuesday by telephone. However, on Saturday afternoon his friend called and said that he could not come in the evening. The testimony says that he did not notice any signs of excitement on the telephone in his interlocutor’s voice, and explains some strange pronunciation only as a result of a concussion. The conversation proceeded calmly, his friend apologized, and they agreed to meet on Wednesday, having phoned beforehand. The conversation took about eight hours, after which he tried to make out the sketch alone and made the move, which his friend advised him, but this move embarrassed him with his absurdity, strangeness and somehow inconsistency with Chigorin’s playing style, a move that negated the very meaning of the study. The investigator calls a name and asks if it tells anything to the interrogated. It turns out that he was in touch with this woman, but they broke up five years ago. He knew that she agreed with his friend and partner in chess, but he assumed that he did not know about their previous relationship, since the woman herself would hardly have begun to tell him about it, and he prudently cleaned his picture before he arrived. He found out about the murder that night. This woman called and reported. “That's who had a worried voice!”

The next one is testified by a woman who reports that over the past year she saw the murdered person rarely, no more than twice a month, and each time he warned her in advance with a call about his arrival so that there were no overlaps: she works in the theater, and all sorts of surprises are possible there. The murdered woman knew that she had a man, a relationship with whom is serious, but, despite this, sometimes met with him. He, according to her, was strange and different from others, during meetings with him the whole world, everything around her seemed to cease to exist, “on the surface of things - both moving and motionless - suddenly something like a film appeared or rather, dust, which gave them some senseless similarity. ” That was what attracted her to him and forced her not to break completely, even in the name of the captain, with whom she intended to associate her fate. She does not remember when and where she met the murdered, it seems that this happened on the beach in Livadia, but she remembers very well his words that began their acquaintance. He said: “I understand how disgusting you are ...” She doesn’t know anything about his family, he didn’t introduce her to his friends either, and she doesn’t know who killed him, but this is clearly not his chess partner, this a weak-willed man, a rag who "went crazy with the queen's gambits." She never could understand their friendship. And the captain was in the theater that evening, they were returning together and found a body lying in its front door. At first, because of the darkness, they imagined that he was drunk, but then she recognized him by his white cloak, which at that moment was covered in mud. Apparently, he crawled for a long time. Then they brought him into her apartment and called the police.

Following the woman, the captain testifies. But he is afraid to disappoint the investigator, since he does not know anything about the murdered, although he, for obvious reasons, "hated this subject." They didn’t know each other, he just knew that his girlfriend had someone, but who exactly didn’t know, and she didn’t say “not to hide something”, but she just didn’t want to upset the captain, although there was especially nothing to upset, because for almost a year, “there was nothing between them,” which she herself admitted to him. The captain believed her, but he felt no better. He simply could not believe it, and if the investigator is surprised that with this attitude to people he has four stars on uniform, then let him not forget that these are small stars, and many of those with whom he started already have two big ones . Consequently, he is a loser and could hardly be a killer by character.

The captain has been a widower for four years, he has a son, and in the evening on the day of the murder he was in the theater, after the performance he accompanied his acquaintance home, and in her entrance they found a corpse. He immediately recognized him, as he once saw them together in a store, and sometimes met him on the beach. Once he even spoke to him, but he answered so disparagingly that the captain felt a surge of hatred and even felt that he could kill him, but then, fortunately, he still did not know who he was talking to, since he was not even familiar with a woman. They did not meet again, and then the captain met this woman at an evening in the House of Officers. The captain admits that he was even glad of such a turn of events, otherwise all this could go on forever, and every time after meeting this man his girlfriend was as if not in herself. Now, he hopes things will get better, as they are likely to leave. He “has a call to the Academy”, to Kiev, where she will be taken to any theater. He even believes that they can still have a baby. Yes, he has a personal weapon, since the war there has remained a trophy “parabellum”. Yes, he knows that the wound was a gunshot.

Says the captain's son. “That evening, Dad rolled off to the theater, and I stayed at home with my grandmother.” They watched TV, it was Saturday, and there was no need to do any lessons. The program was about Sorge, but he overlooked it. Out the window, he saw that the deli opposite was still open, so there weren’t ten, and he wanted ice cream. leaving, he put his father’s gun in his jacket pocket, as he knew where his father was hiding the key to the box. He just took it and did not think about anything. He doesn’t remember how he found himself in a park above the port, it was quiet, the moon was shining, “well, it was really beautiful beautiful.” He did not know what time it was, but it was not yet twelve, since the Pushkin, which leaves on Saturday at twelve, had not yet departed, and the lighted colored windows in the dance salon at its stern looked like an emerald. He met that man at the exit of the park and asked him for a cigarette, but the man did not give, calling him a scoundrel. “I don’t know what happened to me! Yeah, like someone hit me. It’s like something flooded my eyes, and I don’t remember how I turned around and shot him. ” The man continued to stand in the same place and smoke, but because the boy decided that he did not get. He screamed and rushed to run. He does not want his father to be told about this because he is afraid. He returned the gun and put it back in its place. Grandma already fell asleep without even turning off the TV. “Do not say baht! Not that will kill! After all, I didn’t hit! I missed! True? True? True?!"

In the cabin of the ship "Colchis" the investigator is talking with someone. They say that there were three suspects, which in itself is already eloquent, since the situation suggests that each of them was capable of committing a murder. But this deprives the consequence of all meaning, “because as a result” you only know who it is, “but not at all that others could not ...”. And indeed it turns out that "the killer is the one who has no reason to kill ..." But "this is an apology of the absurd! The apotheosis of meaninglessness! Rave!"

The ship departed from the pier. Crimea “melted in midnight darkness. Rather, he returned to those outlines about which the geographical map affirms us. ”