Boris Akunin: Murder on the Leviathan

Record of an examination of the scene of the crime carried out on the evening of 15 March 1898 in the mansion of Lord Littleby on the rue de Crenelle (7th arrondissement of the city of Paris) [A brief extract]

… For reasons unknown all the household staff were gathered in the pantry, which is located on the ground floor of the mansion to the left of the entrance hall (room 3 on diagram 1). The precise locations of the bodies are indicated on diagram 4, in which:

No. 1 is the body of the butler, Etienne Delarue, age 48 years

No. 2 is the body of the housekeeper, Laura Bernard, age 54 years

No. 3 is the body of the master’s manservant, Marcel Prout, age 28 years

No. 4 is the body of the butler’s son, Luc Delarue, age 11 years

No. 5 is the body of the maid, Arlette Foche, age 19 years

No. 6 is the body of the housekeeper’s granddaughter, Anne Marie Bernard, age 6 years

No. 7 is the position of the security guard Jean Lesage, age 42 years, who died in the St-Lazare hospital on the morning of 16 March without regaining consciousness

No. 8 is the body of the security guard Patrick Trois-Bras, age 29 years

No. 9 is the body of the porter, Jean Carpentier, age 40 years.

The bodies shown as Nos. 1-6 are in sitting positions around the large kitchen table. Nos. 1-3 are frozen with their heads lowered onto their crossed arms, No. 4 is resting his cheek on his hands, No. 5 is reclining against the back of the chair and No. 6 is in a kneeling position beside No. 2. The faces of Nos. 1-6 are calm, without any indication whatever of fear or suffering. On the other hand, Nos. 7-9, as the diagram shows, are lying at a distance from the table and No. 7 is holding a whistle in his hand. However, none of the neighbours heard the sound of a whistle yesterday evening. The faces of No. 8 and No. 9 are set in expressions of horror, or at the very least of extreme consternation (photographs will be provided tomorrow morning).

There are no signs of a struggle. A rapid examination also failed to reveal any sign of injury to the bodies. The cause of death cannot be determined without a post-mortem. From the degree of rigor mortis the forensic medical specialist Maitre Bernhem determined that death occurred at various times between ten o’clock in the evening (No. 6) and six o’clock in the morning, while No. 7, as stated above, died later in hospital.

Anticipating the results of the medical examination, I venture to surmise that all of the victims were exposed to a potent and fast acting poison inducing a narcotic effect, and the time at which their hearts stopped beating depended either on the dose of poison received or the physical strength of each of the victims.

The front door of the mansion was closed but not locked.

However, the window of the conservatory (item 8 on diagram 1) bears clear indications of a forced entry: the glass is broken and on the narrow strip of loose cultivated soil below it there is the indistinct imprint of a man’s shoe with a sole 26 centimetres in length, a pointed toe and a steel-shod heel (photographs will be provided). The felon probably gained entry to the house via the garden only after the servants had been poisoned and sank into slumber, otherwise they would certainly have heard the sound of breaking glass. It remains unclear, however, why, after the servants had been rendered harmless, the perpetrator found it necessary to enter the house through the garden, when he could quite easily have walked through into the house from the pantry. In any event, the perpetrator made his way from the conservatory up to the second floor, where Lord Littleby’s personal apartments are located (see diagram 2). As the diagram shows, the left-hand section of the second floor consists of only two rooms: a hall, which houses a collection of Indian curios, and the master’s bedroom, which communicates directly with the hall. Lord Littleby’s body is indicated on diagram 2 as No. 10 (see also the outline drawing). His Lordship was dressed in a smoking jacket and woollen pantaloons and his right foot was heavily bandaged. An initial examination of the body indicates that death occurred as a result of an extraordinarily powerful blow to the parietal region of the skull with a heavy, oblong shaped object. The blow was inflicted from the front. The carpet is spattered with blood and brain tissue to a distance of several metres from the body. Likewise spattered with blood is a broken glass display case which, according to its nameplate, previously contained a statuette of the Indian god Shiva (the inscription on the nameplate reads: ‘Bangalore, 2nd half XVIII century, gold’).

The missing sculpture was displayed against a background of painted Indian shawls, one of which is also missing.

From the report by Dr Bemhem on the results of pathological and anatomical examination of the bodies removed from the rue de Grenelle … however, whereas the cause of Lord Littleby’s death (body No. 10) is clear and the only aspect which may be regarded as unusual is the force of the blow, which shattered the cranium into seven fragments, in the case of Nos. 1-9 the picture was less obvious, requiring not only a post-mortem but in addition chemical analyses and laboratory investigation. The task was simplified to some extent by the fact that J. Lesage (No. 7) was still alive when he was initially examined and certain typical indications (pinhole pupils, suppressed breathing, cold clammy skin, rubefaction of the lips and the ear lobes) indicated a presumptive diagnosis of morphine poisoning. Unfortunately,

during the initial examination at the scene of the crime we had proceeded on the apparently obvious assumption that the poison had been ingested orally, and therefore only the victims’ oral cavities and glottises were subjected to detailed scrutiny. Since no pathological indications were discovered, the forensic examination was unable to provide any conclusive answers. It was only during examination in the morgue that each of the nine deceased was discovered to possess a barely visible injection puncture on the inner flexion of the left elbow.

Although it lies outside my sphere of competence, I can venture with reasonable certainty the hypothesis that the injections were administered by a person with considerable experience in such procedures: 1) the injections were administered with great skill and precision, not one of the subjects bore any visible signs of haematoma; 2) since the normal interval before narcotic coma ensues is three minutes, all nine injections must have been administered within that period of time. Either there were several operatives involved (which is unlikely), or a single operative possessing truly remarkable skill - even if we are to assume that he had prepared a loaded syringe for each victim in advance.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that a person in full possession of his faculties would offer his arm for an injection if he had just witnessed someone else lose consciousness as a result of the procedure. Admittedly, my assistant Maitre Jolie believes that all of these people could have been in a state of hypnotic trance, but in all my years in this line of work I have never encountered anything of the sort. Let me also draw the commissioner’s attention to the fact that Nos. 7-9 were lying on the floor in poses clearly expressive of panic. I assume that these three were the last to receive the injection (or that they offered greater resistance to the narcotic) and that before they lost consciousness they realized that something suspicious was happening to their companions. Laboratory analysis has demonstrated that each of the victims received a dose of morphine approximately three times in excess of the lethal threshold. Judging from the condition of the body of the little girl (No. 6), who must have been the first to die, the injections were administered between nine and ten o’clock on the evening of 15 March.