by Boris Akunin
The door had opened with a jerk and the Japanese appeared in the doorway - entirely naked except for a loincloth! His swarthy body was gleaming with sweat, his eyes were swollen with blood.
When he saw Clarissa standing there, he hissed through his teeth:
'Chikusho!'
The question that she had prepared in advance ('Mr Aono, do you by any chance happen to have with you some of those marvellous Japanese prints I've heard so much about?') flew right out of her head, and Clarissa froze in stupefaction. Now he would drag her into the cabin and throw himself on her! And afterwards he would chop her into pieces and throw her into the sea. Nothing could be simpler. And that would be the end of Miss Clarissa Stamp, the well-brought-up English lady, who might not have been very happy but had still expected so much from her life.
Clarissa mumbled that she had got the wrong door. Aono stared at her without speaking. He gave off a sour smell.
Probably she ought to have a word with the commissioner after all.
Before afternoon tea she ambushed the detective outside the doors of the Windsor saloon and began sharing her ideas with him, but the way the boorish lout listened was very odd: he kept darting sharp, mocking glances at her, as though he were listening to a confession of some dark misdeed that she had committed.
At one point he muttered into his moustache:
'Ah, how eager you all are to tell tales on each other.'
When she had finished, he suddenly asked out of the blue:
'And how are mama and papa keeping?'
'Whose, Mr Aono's?' Clarissa asked in amazement.
'No, mademoiselle, yours.'
'I was orphaned as a child,' she replied, glancing at the policeman in alarm. Good God, this was no ship, it was a floating lunatic asylum.
'That's what I needed to establish,' said Gauche with a nod of satisfaction, then the boor began humming a song that Clarissa didn't know and walked into the saloon ahead of her, which was incredibly rude.
That conversation had left a bad taste in her mouth. For all their much-vaunted gallantry, the French were not gentlemen. Of course, they could dazzle you and turn your head, make some dramatic gesture like sending a hundred red roses to your hotel room (Clarissa winced as she thought of that), but they were not to be trusted. Although the English gentleman might appear somewhat insipid by comparison, he knew the meaning of the words 'duty' and 'decency'. But if a Frenchman wormed his way into your trust, he was certain to betray it.
These generalizations, however, had no direct relevance to Commissioner Gauche. And moreover, the reason for his bizarre behaviour was revealed at the dinner table, and in a most alarming manner.
Over dessert the detective, who had so far preserved a most untypical silence that had set everyone's nerves on edge, suddenly stared hard at Clarissa and said:
'Yes, by the way, Mile Stamp' (although she had not said anything), 'you were asking me recently about Marie Sanfon.
You know, the little lady who was supposedly seen with Lord Littleby shortly before he died.'
Clarissa started in surprise and everyone else fell silent and began staring curiously at the commissioner, recognizing that special tone of voice in which he began his leisurely 'little stories'.
'I promised to tell you something about this individual later. And now the time has come,' Gauche continued, with his eyes still fixed on Clarissa, and the longer he looked the less she liked it. 'It will be a rather long story, but you won't be bored, because it concerns a quite extraordinary woman. And in any case, we are in no hurry. Here we all are sitting comfortably, eating our cheese and drinking our orangeade. But if anyone does have business to attend to, do leave by all means. Papa Gauche won't be offended.'
No one moved.
'Then shall I tell you about Marie Sanfon?' the commissioner asked with feigned bonhomie.
'Oh yes! You must!' they all cried.
Only Clarissa said nothing, aware that this topic had been broached for a reason and it was intended exclusively for her ears. Gauche did not even attempt to disguise the fact.
He smacked his lips in anticipation and took out his pipe without bothering to ask permission from the ladies.
'Then let me start at the beginning. Once upon a time, in the Belgian town of Bruges there lived a little girl by the name of Marie. The little girl's parents were honest, respectable citizens, who went to church, and they doted on their little golden-haired darling. When Marie was five years old, her parents presented her with a little brother, the future heir to the Sanfon and Sanfon brewery, and the happy family began living even more happily, until suddenly disaster struck. The infant boy, who was barely a month old, fell out of a window and was killed. The parents were not at home at the time, they had left the children alone with their nanny. But the nanny had gone out for half an hour to see her sweetheart, a fireman, and during her brief absence a stranger in a black cloak and black hat burst into the house. Little Marie managed to hide under the bed, but the man in black grabbed her little brother out of his cradle and threw him out of the window. Then he simply vanished without trace.'
'Why are you telling us such terrible things?' Mme Kleber exclaimed, clutching at her belly.
'Why, I have hardly even begun,' said Gauche, gesturing with his pipe. 'The best - or the worst - is yet to come. After her miraculous escape, little Marie told mama and papa about the "black man". They turned the entire district upside down searching for him, and in the heat of the moment they even arrested the local rabbi, since he naturally always wore black. But there was one strange detail that kept nagging at M. Sanfon: why had the criminal moved a stool over to the window?'
'Oh, God!' Clarissa gasped, clutching at her heart. 'Surely not!'
'You are quite remarkably perceptive, Mile Stamp,' the commissioner said with a laugh. 'Yes, it was little Marie who had thrown her own baby brother out of the window.'
'How terrible!' Mrs Truffo felt it necessary to interject. 'But why?'
'The girl did not like the way everyone was paying so much attention to the baby, while they had forgotten all about her. She thought that if she got rid of her brother, then she would be mama and papa's favourite again,' Gauche explained calmly. 'But that was the first and the last time Marie Sanfon ever left a clue and was found out. The sweet child had not yet learned to cover her tracks.'
'And what did they do with the infant criminal?' asked Lieutenant Renier, clearly shaken by what he had heard. 'They couldn't try her for murder, surely?'
'No, they didn't try her.' The commissioner smiled craftily at Clarissa. 'The shock, however, was too much for her mother, who lost her mind and was committed to an asylum. M. Sanfon could no longer bear the sight of the little daughter who was the cause of his family's calamitous misfortune, so he placed her with a convent of the Grey Sisters of St Vincent, and the girl was brought up there. She was best at everything, in her studies and in her charity work. But most of all, they say, she liked to read books. The novice nun was just seventeen years old when a disgraceful scandal occurred at the convent.' Gauche glanced into his file and nodded. 'I have the date here. The seventeenth of July 1866. The Archbishop of Brussels himself was staying with the Grey Sisters when the venerable prelate's ring, with a massive amethyst, disappeared from his bedroom. It had supposedly belonged to St Louis himself. The previous evening the monseigneur had summoned the two best pupils, our Marie and a girl from Aries, to his chambers for a talk. Suspicion naturally fell on the two girls. The mother superior organized a search and the ring's velvet case was discovered under the mattress of the girl from Aries. The thief lapsed into a stupor and would not answer any questions, so she was escorted to the punishment cell. When the police arrived an hour later, they were unable to question the criminal - she had strangled herself with the belt of her habit.'
Tve guessed it, the whole thing was staged by that abominable Marie Sanfon!' Milford-Stokes exclaimed. A nasty story, very nasty!'
'Nobody knows for certain, but the rin
g was never found,' the commissioner said with a shrug. 'Two days later Marie came to the mother superior in tears and said everyone was giving her strange looks and begged to be released from the convent. The mother superior's feelings for her former favourite had also cooled somewhat, and she made no effort to dissuade her.'
'They should have searched the little pigeon at the gates,' said Dr Truffo with a regretful sigh. 'You can be sure they would have found the amethyst somewhere under her skirt.'
When he translated what he had said to his wife, she jabbed him with her elbow, evidently regarding his remark as somehow indecent.
'Either they didn't search her or they searched her and found nothing, I don't know which. In any case, after she left the convent, Marie chose to go to Antwerp, which, as you are aware, is regarded as the world capital of precious stones. The former nun suddenly grew rich and ever since she has lived in the grand style. Sometimes, just occasionally, she has been left without a sou to her name, but not for long. With her sharp mind and brilliant skill as an actress, combined with a total lack of moral scruple' - at this point the commissioner raised his voice and then paused - 'she has always been able to obtain the means required for a life of luxury. The police of Belgium, France, England, the United States, Brazil, Italy and a dozen other countries have detained Marie Sanfon on numerous occasions, on suspicion of all sorts of offences, but no charges have ever been brought against her. Always it turns out that either no crime has actually been committed or there is simply not enough evidence. If you like, I could tell you about a couple of episodes from her distinguished record. Are you not feeling bored yet, Mlle Stamp?'
Clarissa did not reply, she felt it was beneath her dignity. But in her heart she felt alarmed.
'Eighteen seventy,' Gauche declared, after another glance into his file. 'The small but prosperous town of Fettburg in German-speaking Switzerland. The chocolate and ham industries. Eight and a half thousand pigs to four thousand inhabitants. A land of rich, fat idiots - I beg your pardon, Mme Kleber, I did not mean to insult your homeland,' said the policeman, suddenly realizing what he had said.
'Never mind,' said Mme Kleber with a careless shrug. 'I come from French-speaking Switzerland. And anyway, the area around Fettburg really is full of simpletons. I believe I have heard this story, it is very funny. But never mind, carry on.'
'Some might think it funny,' Gauche sighed reproachfully, and suddenly he winked at Clarissa, which was going too far altogether. 'One day the honest burghers of the town were thrown into a state of indescribable excitement when a certain peasant by the name of Mobius, who was known in Fettburg as an idler and a numskull, boasted that he had sold his land, a narrow strip of stony desert, to a certain grand lady who styled herself the Comtesse de Sanfon. This damn fool of a countess had shelled out three thousand francs for thirty acres of barren land on which not even thistles could grow. But there were people smarter than Mobius on the town council, and they thought his story sounded suspicious. What would a countess want with thirty acres of sand and rock? There was something fishy going on. So they dispatched the very smartest of the town's citizens to Zurich to find out what was what, and he discovered that the Comtesse de Sanfon was well known there as woman who knew how to enjoy life on a grand scale. Even more interestingly, she often appeared in public in the company of Mr Goldsilber, the director of the state railway company. The director and the countess were rumoured to be romantically involved. Then, of course, the good burgers guessed what was going on. The little town of Fettburg had been dreaming for a long time of having its own railway line, which would make it cheaper to export its chocolate and ham. The wasteland acquired by the countess just happened to run from the nearest railway station to the forest where the communal land began. Suddenly everything was clear to the city fathers: having learned from her lover about plans to build a railway line, the countess had bought the key plot of land, intending to turn a handsome profit. An outrageously bold plan began to take shape in the good burghers' heads. They dispatched a deputation to the countess, which attempted to persuade her Excellency to sell the land to the noble town of Fettburg. The beautiful lady was obstinate at first, claiming that she knew nothing about any branch railway line, but when the burghomaster hinted subtly that the affair smacked of a conspiracy between her Excellency and his Excellency the Director of State Railways, and that was a matter which fell within the competence of the courts, the woman's nerve finally gave way and she agreed. The wasteland was divided into thirty lots of one acre each and auctioned off to the citizens of the town. The Fettburgers almost came to blows over it and the price for some lots rose as high as fifteen thousand francs. Altogether the countess received . . .' The commissioner ran his finger along a line of print. 'A little less than two hundred and eighty thousand francs.'
Mme Kleber laughed out loud and gestured to Gauche as if to say: I'm saying nothing, go on, go on.
'Weeks went by, then months, and still the construction work had not started. The citizens of the town sent an inquiry to the government and received a reply that no branch line to Fettburg was planned for the next fifteen years . . . They went to the police and explained what had happened and said that it was daylight robbery. The police listened to the victims' story with sympathy, but there was nothing they could do to help: Mile Sanfon had said that she knew nothing about any railway line and she had not wanted to sell the land. The sales were properly registered, it was all perfectly legal. As for calling herself a countess, that was not a very nice thing to do, but unfortunately it was not a criminal offence.'
'Very clever!' laughed Renier. 'It really was all perfectly legal.'
'But that's nothing,' said the commissioner, leafing further through his papers. 'I have another story here that is absolutely fantastic. The action is set in the Wild West of America, in 1873. Miss Cleopatra Frankenstein, the world-famous necromancer and Grand Dragoness of the Maltese Lodge, whose name in her passport is Marie Sanfon, arrives in the goldfields of California. She informs the prospectors that she has been guided to this savage spot by the voice of Zarathustra, who has ordered his faithful handmaiden to carry out a great experiment in the town of Golden Nugget. Apparently, at that precise longitude and latitude the cosmic energy was focused in such a way that on a starry night, with the help of a few cabbalistic formulas, it was possible to resurrect someone who had already crossed the great divide between the kingdom of the living and the kingdom of the dead. And Cleopatra intended to perform this miracle that very night, in public and entirely without charge, because she was no circus conjurer but the medium of the supreme spheres.
And what do you think?' Gauche asked, pausing for effect. 'Before the eyes of five hundred bearded onlookers, the Dragoness worked her magic over the burial mound of Red Coyote, the legendary Indian chief who had died a hundred years earlier, and suddenly the earth began to stir - it gaped asunder, you might say - and an Indian brave in a feather headdress emerged from the mound, complete with a tomahawk and painted face. The onlookers trembled and Cleopatra, in the grip of her mystical trance, screeched: "I feel the power of the cosmos in me! Where is the town cemetery? I will bring everyone in it back to life." It says in this article,' the policeman explained, 'that the cemetery in Golden Nugget was vast, because in the goldfields someone was dispatched to the next world every day of the week. Apparently, the headstones outnumbered the town's living inhabitants. When the prospectors imagined what would happen if all those troublemakers, drunks and gallows birds suddenly rose from their graves, panic set in. The situation was saved by the Justice of the Peace, who stepped forward and asked politely whether the Dragoness would agree to halt her great experiment if the town's inhabitants gave her a saddlebag full of gold dust as a modest donation towards the requirements of occult science.'
'Well, did she agree?' chuckled the lieutenant. 'Yes, for two bagfuls.'
'And what became of the Indian chief?' asked Fandorin with a smile. He had a quite wonderful smile, except that it was to
o boyish, thought Clarissa. As they said in Suffolk: a grand pie, but not for your mouth.
'Cleopatra Frankenstein took the Indian chief with her,' Gauche replied with a serious expression. 'For purposes of scientific research. They say he got his throat cut during a drunken brawl in a Denver bordello.'
'This Marie Sanfon really is a very interesting character,' mused Fandorin. 'Tell us more about her. It's a long way from all these clever frauds to cold-blooded mass murder.'
'Oh, please, that's more than enough,' protested Mrs Truffo, turning to her husband. 'My darling, it must be awfully tiresome for you to translate all this nonsense.'
'You are not obliged to stay, madam,' said Commissioner Gauche, offended by the word 'nonsense'.
Mrs Truffo batted her eyelids indignantly, but she had no intention of leaving.
'M. le cosaque is right,' Gauche acknowledged. 'Let me try to dig out a more vicious example.'
Mme Kleber laughed and cast a glance at Fandorin and, nervous as she was, even Clarissa was unable to restrain a smile - the diplomat was so very unlike a wild son of the steppe.
'Here we are, listen to this story about the black baby. It's a recent case, from the year before last, and we have a detailed report of the outcome.' The detective glanced through several sheets of paper clipped together, evidently to refresh his memory of the event. He chuckled. 'This is something of a masterpiece. I have all sorts of things in my little file, ladies and gentlemen.' He stroked the black calico binding lovingly with the stumpy fingers of his plebeian hand. 'Papa Gauche made thorough preparations for his journey, he didn't forget a single piece of paper that might come in useful. The embarrassing events I am about to relate to you never reached the newspapers, and what I have here is the police report. All right. In a certain German principality (I won't say which, because this is a delicate matter), a family of great note was expecting an addition to its number. It was a long and difficult birth. The receiving physician was a certain highly respected Dr Vogel. Eventually the bedroom was filled with the sound of an infant's squalling. The grand duchess lost consciousness for several minutes because she had suffered so much, and then she opened her eyes and said to the doctor: "Ah, Herr Professor, show me my little child." With an expression of extreme embarrassment, Dr Vogel handed her Highness the charming baby that was bawling so loudly. Its skin was a light coffee colour. When the grand duchess fainted again, the doctor glanced out of the door and beckoned with his finger to the grand duke, which, of course, was a gross violation of court etiquette.'
