Boris Akunin - She Lover of Death

I recalled the Stammerer’s mysterious manipulations at the small house beside the Yauza. So that was what the self-appointed investigator had been doing that night!

Genji took a large sheet of paper, folded in four, out of his pocket and spread it out on the table. The inscription looked like this:

‘What’s that?’ I asked, examining the incomprehensible symbols.

He took the sheet of paper, turned it round and held it in front of the table lamp. Now I could read the letters, illuminated from behind:

Stirb 2

‘When she entered her room, Ophelia saw a word written in glowing letters of fire that seemed to be floating in the air. It told her quite unambiguously to die. The Prince of Death had expressed his will quite clearly, and the poor girl did not dare oppose it. Ever since she was a child she had believed implicitly in the secret signs of destiny. Meantime . . .’ – Genji crumpled up the sheet of paper and tossed it on the desk in front of the Doge – ‘. . . you were certainly still outside, observing events. The most revolting thing about the entire story is not the murder, but the fact that when you had already condemned the girl to death, you decided to enjoy her almost childish body beforehand. You knew perfectly well that she secretly adored you, even worshipped you. You told her to stay when the other aspirants left and I presume that you demonstrated the exceptional ardour of your love – in any case, when Ophelia came home she looked absolutely happy. The nearness of death inflames your lust, does it not? You had thought everything through carefully. After sating your passion, you gallantly drove your victim home, said good night to her at the gate and then quickly wrote your fateful instruction on the bedroom window. You waited to make sure that the trick had worked, quickly wiped the window clean and then went back home. But there was one thing you failed to take into account, Sergei Irinarkhovich. The pane of glass is evidence, incontrovertible evidence.’

‘Incontrovertible evidence?’ Blagovolsky repeated with a shrug. ‘But how can you prove that I was the one who scribbled that word on the glass?’

I also thought that Genji seemed overconfident. Yes, I remembered that Prospero had told Ophelia to stay that evening and, knowing his habits, could easily imagine what had happened after that. However, that was not sufficient for a formal charge in law.

‘You are an engineer,’ Genji said to the Doge, ‘and you probably follow the progress of science. Has the discovery announced by the London police in June this year really escaped your notice?’

Blagovolsky and I both looked at the speaker in puzzlement.

‘I am referring to the Galton-Henry dactyloscopic method which makes it possible for the first time to identify a criminal from the prints left by his fingers. The finest minds in criminal investigation have been struggling for years with the problem of creating a system for classifying the papillary patterns on the tips of the fingers. The clearest prints of all are left on glass. You may have wiped off the phosphorescent letters with your handkerchief, but you did not wipe away all the prints of your fingers. I have photographs of the criminal’s dactylograms here with me. Would you compare them with your own?’

So saying, Genji took a small metal box out of the immense pocket of his leather jacket and opened it to reveal a small cushion impregnated with dark paint or ink, like those that are used for official stamps.

‘I would not,’ Prospero replied rapidly, jerking his hands away and putting them under the table. ‘You are quite right, scientific progress is constantly surprising us, and the surprises are not always pleasant ones.’

The comment was as a good as a confession!

‘When it came to the Lioness of Ecstasy, you dispensed with complicated tricks,’ said Genji, going on to the next victim. ‘This woman whose spirit was broken by grief really did long for death and she unhesitatingly accepted the appearance of three black roses on her bed as a Sign. This, as we know, was not a difficult trick to arrange.’

‘But last time you said the flowers were delivered by Caliban.’ I reminded him.

‘Yes, and that was the circumstance that led me astray. Since you have mentioned Caliban, Horatio, let us consider the real part played by this singular individual in our story. The bookkeeper confused the case very badly, he threw me off the track and diverted all suspicion from the main criminal. My mistake almost cost gullible Columbine her life.

‘You, Prospero, had good reason for favouring this madman, who had been driven insane by extreme suffering and a tormented conscience. He really was your obedient Caliban, the servant of the all-powerful wizard – a servant who was blindly and irrationally devoted to you. You praised his abominable verse, you showed him all sorts of favours and – most importantly of all – he dreamed that you would intercede for him and win the goodwill of Death, so that his “term of imprisonment” would be reduced. At first he dutifully carried out your instructions, obviously without much idea of their real significance. I assume that the concealed pipes in Avaddon’s flat were installed by Caliban – you would hardly have been able to manage such a difficult job, requiring a high level of manual skill and uncommon physical strength, and you would not have risked giving such an unusual commission to a stranger. Give three black roses to Lorelei’s domestic companion? Why not? You obviously told Papushin that you wanted to play a joke on the Lioness, whose extravagant mannerisms Caliban had always found so irritating.

‘How could I ever have believed that this burly halfwit was the evil genius of the “Lovers of Death”? How could he ever have invented the tricks with the letters of fire and the wailing beast? How right the Chinese sage was when he said “The obvious is rarely true” . . .’ Genji shook his head angrily. ‘But your faithful genie did not stay in his bottle, he escaped and started acting on his own initiative. The searing pain of his desperate desire for death became ever more excruciating. When he took his revenge on Gdlevsky, the bookkeeper ruined your entire artful plan, which was so near to realisation. Why did you need to destroy that proud, talented boy? Merely in order to flatter your own vanity? First the Russian Sappho, then the Russian Rimbaud – and both of them would take their own lives in obedience to your will. You would deprive modern Russian poetry of two of its most brilliant names, while remaining in the shadows, and you had every chance of getting away scot-free. How pitiful, compared to you, were those trivial destroyers of genius, Dantes and Martynov!

‘Or did it all happen far more simply and intuitively? A romantic youth, enthralled with his mystical theory of rhyme, happened by chance to open a book at the word “breath”, which rhymes with “death” and haughtily informed you about this miraculous Sign. The next Friday you had already made thorough preparations by leaving a book on the table, knowing that Gdlevsky would immediately grab it to tell his own fortune. I remembered the book and I took the first possible opportunity to examine it carefully.’ Genji turned towards me. ‘Horatio, if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind going to the drawing room and bringing back the collected plays of Shakespeare from the third shelf ?’

I immediately did as he asked and found the book without any difficulty. When I took it down off the shelf, I gasped: it was the same volume that Cyrano had examined on the last evening of his life!

As I walked back I turned the book this way and that, but I failed to observe anything suspicious about it. Nature, alas, did not endow me with exceptional powers of observation, as Genji confirmed when he took the volume from my hands.