Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

‘What if he is taking a honeymoon voyage together with his wife?’ asked Clarissa, knowing that Mr Babble was travelling alone.

‘And lingering forlornly on the deck like that, and loitering in the billiard room? And he plays quite incredibly badly - his jacket is all white at the front. Only absolutely hopeless players scrape their bellies along the edge of the table like that. That is three.’

‘Oh, all right, but what will you say about that lady over there?’

Clarissa, now completely engrossed in the game, pointed to Mrs Blackpool, who was proceeding majestically along the deck, arm in arm with her female companion.

Fandorin scanned the estimable lady in question with a disinterested glance.

‘With this one everything is written in the face. She is on her way back from England to join her husband. She has been to visit their grown-up children. Her husband is a military man. A colonel.’

Mr Blackpool was indeed a colonel in command of a garrison in some city or other in northern India. This was simply too much.

‘Explain!’ Clarissa demanded.

‘Ladies of that kind do not travel to India on their own bbusiness, only to their husbands’ place of service. She is not of the right age to have embarked on a journey like this for the first time - so she must be going back somewhere. Why could she have travelled to England? Only in order to see her children. I am assuming that her parents have already passed away. It is clear from her determined and domineering expression that she is a woman used to command. That is the look of the first lady of a garrison or a regiment. They are usually regarded as a level of command senior to the commanding officer himself. Perhaps you would like to know why she must be a colonel’s wife? Well, because if she were a general’s wife she would be travelling first class, and this lady, as you can see, has a silver badge. But let us not waste any more time on trifles.’ Fandorin leaned closer and whispered: ‘Let me tell you about that orang-utan over there. A curious specimen.’

The monkey-like gentleman who had halted beside Mr Babble was M. Boileau, the former Windsor habitue who had left the ill-fated saloon and so slipped through Commissioner Gauche’s net.

Speaking in a low voice directly into Clarissa’s ear, the diplomat told her:

‘The man you see here is a criminal and a villain. Most probably a dealer in opium. He lives in Hong Kong and is married to a Chinese woman.’

Clarissa burst into laughter.

“Well, you’re really wide of the mark this time! That is M. Boileau from Lyon, a philanthropist and the father of eleven completely French children. And he deals in tea, not opium.’

‘I rather think not,’ Fandorin replied calmly. ‘Look closely, his cuff has bent up and you can see the blue circle of a tattoo on his wrist. I have seen one like that before in a book about China. It is the mark of one of the Hong Kong triads, secret criminal societies. Any European who becomes a member of a triad must be a master criminal operating on a truly grand scale.

And of course, he has to marry a Chinese woman. A single look at the face of this “philanthropist” should make everything clear to you.’

Clarissa didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but Fandorin continued with a serious expression:

‘And that is by no means all, Miss Stamp. I can tell a lot about a person even if I am b-blindfolded - from the sounds that he makes and his smell. Why not test me for yourself?’

And so saying he untied his white satin necktie and handed it to Clarissa.

She fingered the fabric - it was dense and non-transparent and then blindfolded the diplomat with it. As though by accident she touched his cheek - it was smooth and hot.

The ideal candidate soon put in an appearance from the direction of the stern - the well-known suffragette, Lady Campbell, making her way to India in order to collect signatures for her petition for married women to be given the vote. Mannish and massive, with cropped hair, she lumbered along the deck like a carthorse. He would never guess that this was a lady and not a boatswain.

‘Right, who is this coming our way?’ Clarissa asked, choking in anticipatory laughter.

Alas, her merriment was short-lived.

Fandorin wrinkled up his brow and began tossing out staccato phrases:

‘A skirt hem rustling. A woman. A heavy stride. A strong c-character. Elderly. Plain. Smokes tobacco. Short-cropped hair.’

‘Why does she have short-cropped hair?’ Clarissa squealed, covering her eyes and listening carefully to the suffragette’s elephantine footfall. Flow, how did he do it?

‘If a woman smokes, she must have bobbed hair and be progressive in her views,’ Fandorin declared in a firm voice. ‘And this one also despises fashion and wears a kind of shapeless robe, bright green with a scarlet belt.’

Clarissa was dumbstruck. This was quite incredible! She took her hands away from her eyes in superstitious terror and saw that Fandorin had already removed the necktie and even retied it in an elegant knot. The diplomat’s blue eyes were sparkling in merriment.

All this was very pleasant, but the conversation had ended badly. When she stopped laughing, Clarissa very delicately broached the subject of the Crimean War and what a tragedy it had been for both Europe and Russia. She touched cautiously on her own memories of the time, making them somewhat more infantile than they were in reality. She was anticipating reciprocal confidences, and hoping to learn exactly how old Fandorin really was. Her worst fears were confirmed: ‘I was still not b-born then,’ he confessed, artlessly clipping Clarissa’s wings.

After that everything had gone from bad to worse. Clarissa had tried to turn the conversation to painting, but she got everything so mixed up that she couldn’t even explain properly why the Pre-Raphaelites had called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. He must have thought her an absolute idiot. Ah, but what difference did it make now?

As she was making her way back to her cabin, feeling sad, something terrifying happened.

She saw a gigantic black shadow quivering in a dark corner of the corridor. Clutching at her heart, Clarissa let out an immodest squeal and made a dash for her own door. Once she was in her cabin it was a long time before she could calm her wildly beating heart. What was that thing? Neither man nor beast.

Some concretion of evil, destructive energy. Her guilty conscience.

The phantom of her Paris nightmare.

No more, she told herself, she had put all that behind her. It was nothing. It was delirium, a delusion, no more. She had sworn that she would not torment herself with remorse. This was a new life, bright and happy - ‘And may your mansion be illumined by the lamp of bliss.’

To soothe her nerves, she put on her most expensive day dress, the one she had not even tried yet (white Chinese silk with a pale-green bow at the back of the waist) and put her emerald necklace round her neck. She admired the gleam of the stones.

Very well, so she wasn’t young. Or beautiful either. But she was far from stupid and she had money. And that was far better than being an ugly, ageing fool without a penny to her name.

Clarissa entered the saloon at precisely two o’clock, but the entire company was already assembled. Strangely enough, rather than fragmenting the Windsor contingent, the commissioner’s astounding announcement of the previous day had brought them closer together. A common secret that cannot be shared with anyone else binds people to each other more tightly than a common cause or a common interest. Clarissa noticed that her fellow diners now gathered around the table in advance of the times set for breakfast, lunch, five o’clock tea and dinner, and lingered on afterwards, something that had hardly ever happened before. Even the captain’s first mate, who was only indirectly involved in this whole affair, spent a lot of time sitting on in the Windsor saloon with the others rather than hurrying off about his official business (but then, of course, the lieutenant might possibly be acting on the captain’s orders). It was as though all the Windsorites had joined some elite club that was closed to the uninitiated. Several times Clarissa caught swift, stealthy glances cast in her direction. Glances that could mean one of two things: ‘Are you the murderer?’ or ‘Have you guessed that I am the murderer?’ Every time it happened she felt a sweet trembling sensation welling up from somewhere deep inside, a pungent cocktail of fear and excitement. The image of the rue de Grenelle rose up clearly before her eyes, the way it looked in the evening: beguilingly quiet and deserted, with the bare branches of the black chestnut trees swaying against the sky. God forbid that the commissioner should somehow find out about the Ambassador Hotel. The very thought of it terrified Clarissa, and she cast a furtive glance in the policeman’s direction.