Boris Akunin - Murder on the Leviathan

No indeed, the Russian was not to be envied.

After dinner, when Fandorin took a seat to one side in order to smoke a cigar, the commissioner settled into the next armchair and began puffing away at his pipe. Gauche had previously introduced himself to his new acquaintance as a Parisian rentier who was making the journey to the East out of curiosity (that was the cover he was using). But now he turned the conversation to the matter at hand, approaching it obliquely and with due caution. Fiddling with the golden whale on his lapel (the very same one retrieved from the rue de Grenelle) he said with a casual air, as though he were simply striking up a conversation: ‘A beautiful little bauble. Don’t you agree?’

The Russian glanced sideways at his lapel but said nothing.

‘Pure gold. So stylish!’ said Gauche admiringly.

Another pregnant silence followed, but a perfectly civil one.

The man was simply waiting to see what would come next. His blue eyes were alert. The diplomat had clear skin, as smooth as a peach, with a bloom on the cheeks like a young girl’s. But he was no mama’s boy, that much was obvious straight away.

The commissioner decided to try a different tack.

‘Do you travel much?’

A non-committal shrug.

‘I believe you’re in the diplomatic line?’

Fandorin inclined his head politely in assent, extracted a long cigar from his pocket and cut off the tip with a little silver knife.

‘And have you ever been in France?’

Again an affirmative nod of the head. Monsieur le russe is no great shakes as a conversationalist, thought Gauche, but he had no intention of backing down.

‘More than anything I love Paris in the early spring, in March,’ the detective mused out loud. ‘The very best time of the year!’

He cast a keen glance at the other man, wondering what he would say.

Fandorin nodded twice, though it wasn’t clear whether he was simply acknowledging the remark or agreeing with it.

Beginning to feel irritated, Gauche knitted his brows in an antagonistic scowl.

‘So you don’t like your badge then?’

His pipe sputtered and went out.

The Russian gave a short sigh, put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, extracted a golden whale between his finger and thumb and finally condescended to open his mouth.

‘I observe, monsieur, that you are interested in my b-badge? Here it is, if you please. I do not wear it because I do not wish to resemble a caretaker with a name tag, not even a golden one. That is one. You yourself do not much resemble a rentier, M. Gauche - your eyes are too probing. And why would a Parisian rentier lug a civil service file around with him? That is two. Since you are aware of my professional orientation, you would appear to have access to the ship’s documents. I assume therefore that you are a detective. That is three. Which brings us to number four. If there is something you need to find out from me, please do not beat about the bush, ask directly.’

Just try having a nice little chat with someone like that!

Gauche had to wriggle out of it somehow. He whispered confidentially to the excessively perspicacious diplomat that he was the ship’s house detective, whose job it was to see to the passengers’ safety, but secretly and with the greatest possible delicacy in order to avoid offending the refined sensibilities of his public. It was not clear whether Fandorin believed him, but at least he did not ask any questions.

Every cloud has a silver lining. The commissioner now had, if not an intellectual ally, then at least an interlocutor, and one who possessed remarkable powers of observation as well as quite exceptional knowledge on matters of criminology.

They often sat together on the deck, glancing now and then at the gently sloping bank of the canal as they smoked (Gauche his pipe, the Russian his cigar) and discussed various intriguing subjects, such as the very latest methods for the identification and conviction of criminals.

‘The Paris police conducts its work in accordance with the very latest advances in scientific method,’ Gauche once boasted. ‘The prefecture there has a special identification unit headed by a young genius, Alphonse Bertillon. He has developed a complete system for classifying and recording criminal elements.’

‘I met with Dr Bertillon during my last visit to Paris,’ Fandorin said unexpectedly. ‘He told me about his anthropometric method. Bertillonage is a clever theory, very clever. Have you already begun to apply it in practice? What have the results been like?’

‘There haven’t been any yet,’ the commissioner said with a shrug. ‘First one has to apply bertillonage to all the recidivists, and that will take years. It’s bedlam in Alphonse’s department: they bring in the prisoners in shackles, measure them up from every angle like horses at a fair, and jot down the data on little cards. But then pretty soon it will make police work as easy as falling off a log. Let’s say you find the print of a left hand at the scene of a burglary. You measure it and go to the card index.

Aha, middle finger eighty-nine millimetres long, look in section No. 3. And there you find records of seventeen burglars with a finger of the right length. After that, the whole thing is as easy as pie: check where each of them was on the day of the robbery and nab the one who has no alibi.

‘You mean criminals are divided up into categories according to the length of the middle finger?’ the Russian asked with lively interest.

Gauche chuckled condescendingly into his moustache.

‘There is a whole system involved, my young friend. Bertillon divides all people into three groups, according to the length of the skull. Each of these three groups is divided into three subgroups, according to the width of the skull. That makes nine subgroups in all. Each subgroup is in turn divided into three sections, according to the size of the middle finger of the left hand. Twenty-seven sections. But that’s not all. There are three divisions in each section, according to the size of the right ear. So how many divisions does that make? That’s right, eighty-one.

Subsequent classification takes into account the height, the length of the arms, the height when seated, the size of the foot and the length of the elbow joint. A total of eighteen thousand six hundred and eighty-three categories! A criminal who has undergone full bertillonage and been included in our card index will never be able to escape justice again. They used to have it so easy -just give a false name when you’re arrested and you could avoid any responsibility for anything you did before.’

‘That is remarkable,’ the diplomat mused. ‘However, bertillonage does not offer much help with the solution of a particular crime if an individual has not been arrested before.’

Gauche spread his arms helplessly.

‘Well, that is a problem that science cannot solve. As long as there are criminals, people will not be able to manage without us professional sleuths.’

‘Have you ever heard of fingerprints?’ Fandorin asked, presenting to the commissioner a narrow but extremely firm hand with polished nails and a diamond ring.

Glancing enviously at the ring (a commissioner’s annual salary at the very least), Gauche laughed.

‘Is that some kind of gypsy palm reading?’

‘Not at all. It has been known since ancient times that the raised pattern of papillary lines on the tips of the fingers is unique to every individual. In China coolies seal their contracts of hire with the imprint of their thumb dipped in ink.’

‘Well now, if only every murderer were so obliging as to dip his thumb into ink and leave an imprint at the scene of the crime …’ The commissioner laughed good-naturedly.

The diplomat, however, was not in the mood for joking.