Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

And when I told him so to his face, he didn’t try to deny it. He took out his pistol and started waving it about and threatening me. He said that if I didn’t keep my mouth shut I’d go the same way as Renier …’ Renate began sniffling again and then miracle of miracles - the baronet offered her his handkerchief.

What mysterious transformation was this? He had always shunned Renate like the plague!

‘… Well, then he put the pistol on the table and started shaking me by the shoulders. I was so afraid, so afraid! I don’t know how I managed to push him away and grab the gun from the table. It was terrible! I ran away from him and he started chasing me round the table. I turned and pressed the trigger. I kept pressing it until he fell … And then Mr Fandorin came in.’

Renate began sobbing at the top of her voice. Milford-Stokes patted her shoulder tentatively, as if he were touching a rattlesnake.

Clarissa started when the silence was suddenly broken by the sound of loud clapping.

‘Bravo!’ said Fandorin with a mocking smile, still clapping his hands. ‘Bravo, Mme Kleber. You are a great actress.’

‘How dare you!’ exclaimed Sir Reginald, choking with indignation, but Erast cut him short with a wave of his hand.

‘Sit down and listen. I shall tell you what really happened.’

Fandorin was absolutely calm and seemed quite certain that he was right. ‘Mme Kleber is not only a superb actress, she is quite exceptionally talented in every respect. She possesses true brilliance and breadth of imagination. Unfortunately, her greatest talent lies in the criminal sphere. You are an accomplice to a whole series of murders, madam. Or rather, not an accomplice, but the instigator, the leading lady. It was Renier who was your accomplice.’

‘Look,’ Renate appealed plaintively to Sir Reginald. ‘Now this one’s gone crazy too. And he was such a quiet boy.’

‘The most amazing thing about you is the superhuman speed with which you react to a situation,’ Erast continued as though she hadn’t even spoken. ‘You never defend yourself - you always strike first, Mile Sanfon. You don’t mind if I call you by your real name, do you?’

‘Sanfon! Marie Sanfon? Her?’ Dr Truffo exclaimed.

Clarissa realized she was sitting there with her mouth open.

Milford-Stokes jerked his hand away from Renate’s shoulder.

Renate herself looked at Fandorin pityingly.

‘Yes, you see before you the legendary, brilliant, ruthless international adventuress Marie Sanfon. Her style is breathtakingly daring and inventive. She leaves no clues or witnesses. And last, but not least, she cares nothing for human life. The testimony of Charles Renier, which we shall come to later, is a mixture of truth and lies. I do not know, my lady, when you met him and under what circumstances, but two things are beyond all doubt. Firstly, Renier genuinely loved you and he tried to divert suspicion from you until his very last moment.

And secondly, it was you who persuaded the son of the Emerald Rajah to go in search of his inheritance - otherwise why would he have waited for so many years? You made Lord Littleby’s acquaintance, acquired all the information you required and worked out a p-plan. Obviously at first you had counted on obtaining the shawl by cunning and flattery - after all, his Lordship had no idea of the significance of that scrap of cloth. But you soon became convinced that it would never work: Littleby was absolutely crazy about his collection and he would never have agreed to part with any of the exhibits. It was not possible to obtain the shawl by stealth either - there were armed guards constantly on duty beside the display case. So you decided to keep the risk to a minimum and leave no traces behind, the way you always prefer to do things. Tell me, did you know that Lord Littleby had not gone away, that he was at home on that fateful evening? I am sure you did. You needed to bind Renier to you with blood. It was not he who killed the servants - you did.’

‘Impossible!’ said Dr Truffo, throwing his hand in the air. ‘Without medical training and practice, no woman could give nine injections in three minutes! It’s quite out of the question.’

‘Firstly, she could have prepared nine loaded syringes in advance. And secondly …’ Erast took an apple from a dish and cut a piece off it with an elegant flourish. ‘M. Renier may have had no experience in using a syringe, but Marie Sanfon does have such experience. Do not forget that she was raised in a convent of the Grey Sisters of St Vincent, an order founded to provide medical assistance to the poor, and their novices are trained from an early age to work in hospitals, leper colonies and hospices. All these nuns are highly qualified nurses and, as I recall, young Marie was one of the best.’

‘But of course. I forgot. You’re right,’ the doctor said, lowering his head penitently. ‘Please continue. I shall not interrupt you again.’

‘Well then, Paris, the rue de Grenelle, the evening of the fifteenth of March. T-two people arrive at the mansion of Lord Littleby: a young doctor with a dark complexion and a nurse with the hood of her grey nun’s habit pulled down over her eyes. The doctor presents a piece of p-paper with a seal from the mayor’s office and asks for everyone in the house to be gathered together. He probably says it is getting late and they still have a lot of work to do. The inoculations are given by the nun deftly, quickly, painlessly. Afterwards the pathologist will not discover any sign of bruising at the sites of the injections. Marie Sanfon has not forgotten what she learned in her charitable youth. What happened after that is clear, so I shall omit the details: the servants fall asleep, the criminals climb the stairs to the second floor, Renier has a brief tussle with the master of the house. The murderers fail to notice that his gold Leviathan badge has been left behind in Lord Littleby’s hand. Which meant that afterwards, my lady, you had to give him your own emblem - it would be easier for you to avoid suspicion than the captain’s first mate. And I expect that you had more confidence in yourself than in him.’

Up to this point Clarissa had been gazing spellbound at Erast, but now she glanced briefly at Renate. She was listening carefully with an expression of offended amazement on her face. If she was Marie Sanfon, she had not thrown her hand in yet.

‘I began to suspect both of you from the day that poor African supposedly fell on top of you,’ Fandorin confided to Renate. He bit off a piece of the apple with his even white teeth. ‘That was Renier’s fault, of course - he panicked and got carried away. You would have invented something more cunning. Let me try to reconstruct the sequence of events and you can correct me if I get any of the details wrong. All right?’

Renate shook her head mournfully and propped her plump cheek on her hand.

‘Renier saw you to your cabin - you certainly had things to discuss, since your accomplice states in his confession that the shawl had mysteriously disappeared only a short while before.

You went into your cabin, saw the huge negro rummaging through your things and for a moment you must have been frightened - if you are acquainted at all with the feeling of fear.

But a second later your heart leapt when you saw the precious shawl on the negro’s neck. That explained everything: when the runaway slave was searching Renier’s cabin, the colourful piece of material had caught his eye and he decided to wear it round his massive neck. When you cried out Renier came running in, saw the shawl and, unable to control himself, he pulled out his dirk … You had to invent the story about the mythical attack, lie down on the floor and hoist the negro’s hot, heavy body onto yourself. I expect that was not very pleasant, was it!’