Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

In any case, one thing was clear: Gauche would have to go along as far as Le Havre. He had been allocated the cabin reserved for honoured guests of the shipping line.

Immediately after the ship had sailed a banquet was held in the first-class grand saloon, an event of-which the commissioner had especially high hopes since the invitations bore the instruction: ‘Admission on presentation of a gold badge or first-class ticket’. Why on earth would anyone bother to carry around a ticket, when it was so much simpler to pin on your little gold leviathan?

At the banquet Gauche let his imagination run wild as he mentally frisked everyone present. He was even obliged to stick his nose into some ladies’ decolletes to check whether they had anything dangling in there on a gold chain, perhaps a whale, perhaps simply a pendant. He had to check, surely?

Everyone was drinking champagne, nibbling on various savoury delicacies from silver trays and dancing, but Gauche was hard at work, eliminating from his list those who had their badge in place. It was the men who caused him the greatest problems. Many of the swines had attached the whale to their watch chains or even stuck it in their waistcoat pockets, and the commissioner was obliged to inquire after the exact time on eleven occasions.

Surprise number three: all of the officers had their badges in place, but there were actually four passengers wearing no emblem, including two of the female sex! The blow that had cracked open Lord Littleby’s skull like a nutshell was so powerful it could surely only have been struck by a man, and a man of exceptional strength at that. On the other hand, as a highly experienced specialist in criminal matters, the commissioner was well aware that in a fit of passion or hysterical excitement even the weakest of little ladies was capable of performing genuine miracles. He had no need to look far for examples.

Why, only last year a milliner from Neuilly, a frail little chit of a thing, had taken her unfaithful lover, a well-nourished rentier twice as fat and half as tall again as herself and thrown him out of a fourth-floor window. So it would not do at all to eliminate women who happened to have no badge from the list of suspects.

Although who had ever heard of a woman, especially from good society, mastering the knack of giving injections like that?

What with one thing and another, the investigation on board the Leviathan threatened to drag on, and so the commissioner had set about dealing with things in his customary thorough fashion. Captain Josiah Cliff was the only officer of the steamship who had been made privy to the secret investigation, and he had instructions from the management of the shipping company to afford the French guardian of the law every possible assistance. Gauche exploited this privilege quite unceremoniously by demanding that all the individuals of interest to him be assigned to the same saloon.

It should be explained at this point that out of considerations of privacy and comfort (after all, the ship’s advertisement had boasted: ‘On board you will discover the atmosphere of a fine old English country estate’) those individuals travelling first class LEVIATHAN were not expected to take their meals in the vast dining hall together with the 600 bearers of democratic silver whales, but were assigned to their own comfortable ‘saloons’, each of which bore its own aristocratic title and in appearance resembled a high-society hotel, with crystal candelabra, fumed oak and mahogany, velvet-upholstered chairs, gleaming table silver, prim waiters and officious stewards. For his own purposes Commissioner Gauche had singled out the Windsor saloon. Located on the upper deck in the bow section, it had three walls of continuous windows affording a magnificent view, so that even when the day was overcast there was no need to switch on the lights. The velvet upholstery here was a fine shade of golden brown and the linen table napkins were adorned with the Windsor coat of arms.

Standing around the oval table with its legs bolted to the floor (a precaution against any likelihood of severe pitching and rolling) there were ten chairs, with their tall backs carved in designs incorporating a motley assortment of gothic knick-knacks. The commissioner liked the idea of everyone sitting around the same table and he had ordered the steward not to set out the name plates at random but with strategic intent: he had seated the four passengers without badges directly opposite himself so that he could keep a close eye on those particular pigeons. It had not proved possible to seat the captain himself at the head of the table, as Gauche had planned. Mr Josiah Cliff did not wish (as he himself had expressed it) ‘to have any part in this charade’, and had chosen to base himself in the York saloon where the new Viceroy of India was taking his meals with his wife and two generals of the Indian army. York was located in the prestigious stern, as far removed as possible from plague-stricken Windsor, where the head of the table was taken by first mate Charles Renier. The commissioner had taken an instant dislike to Renier, with that face bronzed by the sun and the wind, that honeyed way of speaking, that head of dark hair gleaming with brilliantine, that dyed moustache with its two spruce little curls.

A buffoon, not a sailor.

In the course of the twelve days that had elapsed since they sailed, the commissioner had subjected his saloon-mates to close scrutiny, absorbed the rudiments of society manners (that is, he had learned not to smoke during a meal and not to mop up his gravy with a crust of bread), more or less mastered the complex geography of this floating city and grown accustomed to the ship’s pitching, but he had still made no progress towards his goal.

The situation was now as follows:

Initially his list of suspects had been headed by Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes, an emaciated, ginger-haired gentleman with tousled sideburns. He looked about twenty-eight or thirty years old and behaved oddly, either gazing vaguely into the distance with those wide green eyes of his and not responding to questions, or suddenly becoming animated and prattling on about the island of Tahiti, coral reefs, emerald lagoons and huts with roofs made of palm leaves. Clearly some kind of mental case. Why else would a baronet, the scion of a wealthy family, go travelling to some God-forsaken Oceania at the other end of the world? What did he think he would find there? And note, too, that this blasted aristocrat had twice ignored a question about his missing badge. He stared straight through the commissioner, and when he did happen to glance at him he seemed to be scrutinizing some insignificant insect. A rotten snob. Back in Le Havre (where they had stood for four hours) Gauche had made a dash to the telegraph and sent off an inquiry about Milford-Stokes to Scotland Yard: who was he, did he have any record of violent behaviour, had he ever dabbled in the study of medicine? The reply that had arrived just before they sailed contained nothing of great interest, but it had explained away the strange mannerisms. Even so, he did not have a golden whale, which meant it was still too early for Gauche to remove the ginger gentleman from his list of potential clients.

The second suspect was M. Gintaro Aono, a ‘Japanese nobleman’ (or so it said in the register of passengers). He was a typical Oriental, short and skinny. He could be almost any age, with LEVIATHAN that thin moustache and those narrow, piercing eyes. He remained silent most of the time at table. When asked what he did, he mumbled in embarrassment: ‘An officer of the Imperial Army.’ When asked about his badge he became even more embarrassed, cast a glance of searing hatred at the commissioner, excused himself and left the room, without even finishing his soup. Decidedly suspicious! An absolute savage.