On the morning of 25 August 1870, a gardener presented himself before the police inspector to report that his master, the St. Petersburg merchant Nikolai Solodovnikov, had passed away in the night. The elderly man lived in seclusion at a country villa near the Forestry Academy. When the estate was inventoried, officials found twenty-eight silver roubles, three bills of exchange, and various promissory notes: a sum slightly exceeding seventy thousand roubles, yet virtually nothing available for immediate expenditure. Yet Solodovnikov had inherited a fortune estimated in the millions from his late brother. Where had the remainder gone?
The first name to suggest itself to the magistrates was that of Yakov Suslenikov, a former domestic servant who had risen to the post of steward. He had spent the night under the master's roof. The valet Kolossov related that, at approximately six o’clock in the morning, he had entered the bedchamber and found his master dead. He immediately informed Suslenikov, who was asleep on the upper floor. The latter dressed in haste and went into the room. From the antechamber, Kolossov watched him open the drawers of a commode, draw out a book, thrust it beneath his coat, and depart. Suslenikov soon returned, took up a wooden casket, inspected the papers within, and carried off the keys to the strongbox, a box of loose change, and a gold snuffbox. He then enjoined the servants to speak of the death to no one and on no account to inform the police.
The steward subsequently set out for the city. He did not return until one in the afternoon, accompanied by the banker Lyubavin. Dr. Hesse, who had been Solodovnikov’s physician for six years, stated that he had learned of the demise from Suslenikov at half past nine, as though the latter had received word of it while in town. When Hesse arrived at the estate, he encountered the steward carrying something concealed under his coat. The discordance between these accounts placed the first hours of the morning at the heart of the proceedings: who had raised the alarm, who had tampered with the papers, and why had the merchant's death been kept secret?
Suslenikov contended that the deceased had charged him with settling an old grievance. He claimed to have received ten thousand roubles to secure the withdrawal of a complaint lodged by the cook. In truth, that complaint had already been dismissed by the justice of the peace for want of evidence; it had sought a mere hundred roubles in damages. Hesse recalled that Solodovnikov had once denounced his steward as a thief, vowing to dismiss him as destitute as the day he had arrived. These words were not proof of larceny, yet they sat uneasily alongside the portrait Suslenikov painted of a generous and trusting friendship.
A search of the premises yielded more tangible evidence. In Suslenikov’s quarters, the investigators discovered forty thousand roubles in securities issued after his master’s death, statements of account detailing thirty-five thousand roubles, seven thousand roubles in realised stock, and nine hundred and fifty roubles in cash. These documents pointed to substantial transactions, every one of which demanded an explanation. Suslenikov declared that in December and January he had sold or exchanged a ring valued at sixteen hundred roubles and loose diamonds worth two thousand three hundred roubles and fifty kopecks. Witnesses identified the ring as having belonged to the deceased. Furthermore, a jeweller testified that Suslenikov had brought him an icon of Saint Nicholas, valued at twelve thousand roubles, from which the steward had removed upwards of four hundred diamonds to replace them with paste.
Regarding the provenance of these gems, Suslenikov’s story altered repeatedly. At first, he maintained that his master had entrusted the ring to him. Later, he claimed to have bought it from the servant Kolossov for fifty roubles before reselling it. As for the diamonds, he initially invoked the name of the conductor Lyadov, then spoke of instructions left by Solodovnikov, and finally attributed the order to the heir, Vassili, who had allegedly wished the jewels replaced so that the icon might be presented to a monastery. He insisted that the proceeds had gone toward the maintenance of the properties. The jeweller Lindholm confirmed the alterations made to the icon; no account of the sale was ever produced.
At the trial in December 1871, prosecution and defence clashed over far more than jewels. They presented two irreconcilable portraits of the deceased under the same name. In the eyes of the prosecutor, Solodovnikov had lived beyond his means after coming into a multi-million-rouble inheritance, only to withdraw from society and turn so parsimonious that he counted every kopeck. His private journals revealed this evolution from a patron and companion of artists into a distrustful recluse. The Crown drew upon this transformation to argue that he would never have handed fifteen thousand roubles to his steward without an acknowledgment of receipt, nor overlooked an advance of ten thousand roubles, which was a vast sum.
Solodovnikov’s life had not been without its wounds. According to testimony and the prosecutor’s address, his brother had coerced him into the Skoptsy sect during his adolescence. Having inherited his brother’s wealth, he parted ways with the sect, frequented the theatres, supported artists, and eventually sought refuge at the Valaam Monastery. A demand for a donation of one million roubles, pressed by Father Superior Damaskin, reawakened his suspicions: he came to believe that the monks cared nothing for his soul or his person, but sought only his fortune. Returning to St. Petersburg, he severed ties with the cloister and lived virtually alone. The court narrative treated this isolation as an atmospheric background, refusing to turn the dead man's solitude into evidence against any one party.
Suslenikov, for his part, depicted an intimate and enduring bond. He asserted that he had known his master since 1845, had been recalled to his side after sixteen years of separation, and had served as his sole confidant. By his account, Solodovnikov had given him ten thousand roubles to dispose of the cook’s claim, followed by fifteen thousand on the eve of his death as a reward for faithful service. He added that the merchant had personally instructed him to pry the real diamonds from the icon. The prosecution countered this defence with the depositions of Hesse, Kolossov, and the banker Lyubavin, as well as the prisoner’s own contradictions.
Lyubavin, who had visited the villa on the day of the death, proved evasive under cross-examination. He maintained that Solodovnikov was no longer wealthy, having suffered commercial losses and dispersed sums in gifts. Hesse, however, challenged an incidental detail of his narrative: Lyubavin claimed to have gone upstairs to smoke a cigarette because he thought it unseemly to smoke beside the corpse; yet he had already smoked inside the death chamber. Kolossov stood by his statement that the steward had forbidden him to notify the police. These confrontations could not, in themselves, trace the fate of every single rouble, but they demolished the steward’s depiction of an untroubled, voluntary transfer of wealth.
The public prosecutor was careful to dissociate the charge from any rumour of murder. Common gossip had accused Suslenikov of hastening his master’s end, but the record notes that no sound evidence supported so grave an imputation. The trial remained strictly one of felonious misappropriation. The jury returned a verdict of guilty; the court sentenced Suslenikov to the forfeiture of his civil rights and banishment to the Government of Tomsk, in Western Siberia. The missing fortune was never reconstituted rouble by rouble. What endured in the court records were the identified heirlooms, the unexplained sums, the irreconcilable testimonies, and that command of silence issued before the arrival of the police.