Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

The play was performed in English.

The doctor’s wife had executed her lumbering approach to the diplomat with all the elephantine grace of a typical British seduction (both dramatis personae were standing at the rail, in profile towards the aforesaid deckchair). Mrs Truffo began, as was proper, with the weather:

‘The sun is so very bright in these southern latitudes!’ she bleated with passionate feeling.

‘Oh yes,’ replied Fandorin. ‘In Russia at this time of the year the snow has still not melted, and here the temperature is already thirty-five degrees Celsius, and that is in the shade. In the sunlight it is even hotter.’

Now that the preliminaries had been successfully concluded, Mrs Goatface felt that she could legitimately broach a more intimate subject.

‘i simply don’t know what to do!’ she began in a modest tone appropriate to her theme. ‘I have such white skin! This intolerable sun will spoil my complexion or even, God forbid, give me freckles.’

‘The problem off-freckles is one that worries me as well,’ the Russian replied in all seriousness. ‘But I was prudent and brought along a lotion made with extract of Turkish camomile.

Look, my suntan is even and there are no freckles at all.’

The cunning serpent temptingly presented his cute little face to the respectable married woman.

Mrs Truffo’s voice trembled in treacherous betrayal.

Indeed, not a single freckle … And your eyebrows and eyelashes are barely bleached. You have a wonderful epithelium, Mr Fandorin, quite wonderful!’

Now he’ll kiss her, Renate predicted, seeing that the distance separating the diplomat’s epithelium from the flushed features °i the doctor’s wife was a mere five centimetres.

But her prediction was mistaken.

Fandorin stepped back and said:

‘Epithelium? Are you familiar with the science of physiology?’

‘A little,’ Mrs Truffo replied modestly. ‘Even before I was married I had some involvement with medicine.’

‘Indeed? How interesting! You really must t-tell me about it!’

Unfortunately Renate had not been able to follow the performance all the way to its conclusion - a woman she knew had sat down beside her and she had been obliged to abandon her surveillance.

However, this clumsy assault by the doctor’s foolish wife had piqued Renate’s own vanity. Why should she not try her own charms on this tasty-looking Russian bear cub? Purely out of sporting interest, naturally, and in order to maintain the skills without which no self-respecting woman could get by. Renate had no interest in the thrill of romance. In fact, in her present condition the only feeling that men aroused in her was nausea.

In order to while away the time (Renate’s phrase was ‘to speed up the voyage’) she worked out a simple plan. Small scale naval manoeuvres, code name Bear Hunt. In fact, of course, men were actually more like the family of canines.

Everybody knew that they were primitive creatures who could be divided into three main types: jackals, sheepdogs and gay dogs. There was a different approach for each type.

The jackal fed on carrion - that is, he preferred easy prey.

Men of that kind went for availability.

And so the very next time they were alone together, Renate complained to Fandorin about M. Kleber, the tedious banker whose head was full of nothing but figures, the bore who had no time for his young wife. Any halfwit would have realized that here was a woman literally pining away from the tedium of her empty life, ready to swallow any hook, even without bait.

It didn’t work, and she had to waste a lot of time parrying inquisitive questions about the bank where her husband worked.

Very well, so next Renate had set her trap for a sheepdog.

This category of men loved weak, helpless women. All they really wanted was to be allowed to rescue and protect you. A fine subspecies, very useful to have around. The main thing here was not to overdo the physical weakness - men were afraid of sick women.

Renate had swooned a couple of times from the heat, slumping gracefully against the ironclad shoulder of her knight and protector. Once she had been unable to open the door of her cabin because the key had got stuck. On the evening of the ball she had asked Fandorin to protect her from a tipsy (and entirely harmless) major of dragoons.

The Russian had lent her his shoulder, opened the door and sent the dragoon packing, but the louse had not betrayed the slightest sign of amorous interest.

Could he really be a gay dog, Renate wondered. You certainly wouldn’t think so to look at him. This third type of man was the least complicated, entirely devoid of imagination. Only a coarsely sensual stimulus, such as a chance glimpse of an ankle, had any effect on them. On the other hand, many great men and even cultural luminaries had belonged to precisely this category, so it was certainly worth a try.

With gay dogs the approach was elementary. Renate asked the diplomat to come and see her at precisely midday, so that she could show him her watercolours (which were non-existent).

At one minute to 12 the huntress was already standing in front of her mirror, dressed only in her bodice and pantaloons.

When there was a knock at the door she called out: Come in, come in. I’ve been waiting for you!’

Fandorin stepped inside and froze in the doorway. Without turning round, Renate wiggled her bottom at him and displayed her naked back to its best advantage. The wise beauties of the eighteenth century had discovered that it was not a dress open down to the navel that produced the strongest effect on men, °ut an open neck and a bare back. Obviously the sight of a detenceless spine roused the predatory instinct in the human male.

The diplomat seemed to have been affected. He stood there looking, without turning away. Pleased with the effect, Renate said capriciously:

‘What are you doing over there, Jenny? Come here and help me on with my dress. I’m expecting a very important guest any minute.’

How would any normal man have behaved in this situation?

The more audacious kind would have come up behind her without saying a word and kissed the soft curls on the back of her neck.

The average, fair-to-middling kind would have handed her the dress and giggled bashfully.

At that point Renate would have decided the hunt had been successfully completed. She would have pretended to be embarrassed, thrown the insolent lout out and lost all further interest in him. But Fandorin’s response was unusual.

‘It’s not Jenny,’ he said in a repulsively calm voice. ‘It is I, Erast Fandorin. I shall wait outside while you g-get dressed.’

He was either one of a rare, seduction-proof variety or a secret pervert. If it was the latter, the Englishwomen were simply wasting their time and effort. But Renate’s keen eye had not detected any of the characteristic signs of perversion. Apart, that was, from a strange predilection for secluded conversation with Watchdog.

But this was all trivial nonsense. She had more serious reasons for being upset.

At the very moment when Renate finally decided to plunge her fork into the cold sautee, the doors crashed open and the bespectacled professor burst into the dining room. He always looked a little crazy - either his jacket was buttoned crookedly or his shoelaces were undone - but today he looked a real fright: his beard was dishevelled, his tie had slipped over to one side, his eyes were bulging out of his head and there was one of his braces dangling from under the flap of his jacket. Obviously something quite extraordinary must have happened. Renate instantly forgot her own troubles and stared “curiously at the learned scarecrow.

Sweetchild spread his arms like a ballet dancer and shouted: ‘Eureka, gentlemen! The mystery of the Emerald Rajah is solved!’