Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

A pause for effect. A muffled hum of voices in the hall of the Palais de Justice, the rustling of the newspaper artists’ pencils on their sketchpads: ‘Commissioner Gauche Plays His Trump Card.’ Ah, but you must wait for the ace, my friends, the ace is yet to come.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, we move from circumstantial evidence to hard facts. Let M. Aono explain why he, a doctor, a member of a respected and prestigious profession, found it necessary to pose as an army officer. Why such deception?’

Adrop of sweat slithered down the waxen face of the Japanese.

Aono said nothing. He certainly hadn’t taken long to run out of steam!

‘There is only one answer: he did it to divert suspicion from himself. The murderer was a doctor!’ the commissioner summed up complacently. ‘And that brings us to our second piece of hard evidence. Gentlemen, have you ever heard of Japanese boxing?’

‘I’ve not only heard of it, I’ve seen it,’ said the captain. ‘One time in Macao I saw a Japanese navigator beat three American sailors senseless. He was a puny little tyke, you’d have thought you could blow him over, but you should have seen the way he skipped about and flung his arms and legs around. He laid three hulking whalers out flat. He hit one of them on the arm with the edge of his hand and twisted the elbow the other way. Broke the bone, can you imagine? That was some blow!’

Gauche nodded smugly.

‘I have also heard that the Japanese possess the secret of killing with their bare hands in combat. They can easily kill a man with a simple jab of the finger. We have all seen M. Aono practising his gymnastics. Fragments of a shattered gourd - a remarkably hard gourd - were discovered under the bed in his cabin. And there were several whole ones in a sack. The accused obviously used them for perfecting the precision and strength of his blow. I cannot even imagine how strong a man must be to smash a hard gourd with his bare hand, and into several pieces …’

The commissioner surveyed his assembled audience before introducing his second piece of evidence.

‘Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that the skull of the unfortunate Lord Littleby was shattered into several fragments by an exceptionally strong blow with a blunt object. Now would you please observe the calluses on the hands of the accused.’

The Japanese snatched his small, sinewy hands off the table.

‘Don’t take your eyes off him, Jackson. He is very dangerous,’

warned Gauche. ‘If he tries anything, shoot him in the leg or the shoulder. Now let me ask M. Aono what he did with his gold emblem. Well, have you nothing to say? Then let me answer the question myself: the emblem was torn from your chest by Lord Littleby at the very moment when you struck him a fatal blow to the head with the edge of your hand!’

Aono half-opened his mouth, as though he was about to say something, but he only bit his lip with his strong, slightly crooked teeth and closed his eyes. His face took on a strange, detached expression.

‘And so, the picture that emerges of the crime on the rue de Grenelle is as follows,’ said Gauche, starting his summing-up.

‘On the evening of the fifteenth of March, Gintaro Aono went to Lord Littleby’s mansion with the premeditated intention of killing everyone in the house and taking possession of the triangular shawl from the owner’s collection. At that time he already had a ticket for the Leviathan, which was due to sail for India from Southampton four days later. The defendant was obviously intending to search for the Brahmapur treasure in India. We do not know how he managed to persuade the unfortunate servants to submit to an “inoculation against cholera”. It is very probable that the accused showed them some kind of forged document from the mayor’s office. That would have been entirely convincing because, as I have been informed by telegram, medical students from the final year at the Sorbonne are quite often employed in prophylactic public health programmes.

There are quite a lot of Orientals among the students and interns at the university, so the evening caller’s yellow skin was unlikely to alarm the servants. The most monstrous aspect of the crime is the infernal callousness with which two innocent children were murdered. I have considerable personal experience of dealing with the scum of society, ladies and gentlemen.

In a fit of rage a criminal thug may toss a baby into a fire, but to kill with such cold calculation, with hands that do not even tremble … You must agree, gentlemen, that is not the French way, indeed it is not the European way.’

‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Renier, incensed, and Dr Truffo supported him wholeheartedly.

‘After that everything was very simple,’ Gauche continued.

‘Once he was sure that the poisonous injections had plunged the servants into a sleep from which they would never wake, the murderer walked calmly up the stairs to the second floor and into the hall where the collection was kept, and there he began helping himself to what he wanted. After all, he was certain that the master of the house was away. But an attack of gout had prevented Lord Littleby from travelling to Spa and he was still at home. The sound of breaking glass brought him out into the hall, where he was murdered in a most barbarous manner. It was this unplanned murder that shattered the killer’s diabolical composure. He had almost certainly planned to take several items from the collection in order not to draw attention to the celebrated shawl, but now he had to hurry. We do not know, but perhaps his Lordship called out before he died and the killer was afraid his cries had been heard in the street. For whatever reason, he took only a golden Shiva that he did not need and beat a hasty retreat, without even noticing that his Leviathan badge had been left behind in the hand of his victim. In order to throw the police off the scent, Aono left the house through the window of the conservatory … No, that was not the reason!’

Gauche slapped himself on the forehead. ‘Why did I not think of it before? He could not go back the way he had come if his victim had cried out! For all he knew, passers-by were already gathering at the door of the mansion! That was why Aono smashed the window in the conservatory, jumped down into the garden and then made his escape over the fence. But he need not have been so careful - at that late hour the rue de Grenelle was empty. If there were any cries, no one heard them …’

The impressionable Mme Kleber sobbed. Mrs Truffo listened to her husband’s translation and blew her nose with feeling.

Clear, convincing and unassailable, thought Gauche. The evidence and the investigative hypotheses reinforce each other perfectly. And old papa Gauche still hasn’t finished with you yet.

‘This is the appropriate moment to consider the death of Professor Sweetchild. As the accused has quite rightly observed, in theory the murder could have been committed by six other people apart from himself. Please, do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen!’ The commissioner raised a reassuring hand. ‘I shall now prove that you did not kill the professor and that he was in fact killed by our Japanese friend here.’

The blasted Japanese had completely turned to stone. Was he asleep? Or was he praying to his Japanese god? Pray as much as you like, my lad, that old slut Mme Guillotine will still have your head!

Suddenly the commissioner was struck by an extremely unpleasant thought. What if the English nabbed the Japanese for the murder of Sweetchild? The professor was a British subject after all. Then the criminal would be tried in an English court and he would end up on a British gallows instead of a French guillotine! Anything but that! The ‘Crime of the Century’ could not be tried abroad! The trial must be held in the Palais de Justice and nowhere else! Sweetchild may have been killed on board an English ship, but there were ten bodies in Paris and only one here. And in any case the ship wasn’t entirely British property, there were two partners in the consortium!