Murder on the Leviathan

by Boris Akunin

  As he spoke, an empty space formed around Aono. The Russian was the only one left sitting beside the prisoner, and the inspector was standing just behind him with his revolver at the ready.

  'I hope nobody here has any doubt that the death of Professor Sweetchild is directly connected with the crime on the rue de Grenelle. As our investigation has demonstrated, the goal of that murder most foul was to steal, not the golden Shiva, but the silk shawl . . .' Gauche scowled sternly, as if to say: Yes, indeed, the investigation has established the facts, so you can stop making that wry face, monsieur diplomat. '. . . which is the key to the hidden treasure of the rajah of Brahmapur, Bagdassar. We do not yet know how the accused came to learn the secret of the shawl, and we are all aware that the Orient holds many impenetrable mysteries for our European minds. However, the deceased professor, a genuine connoisseur of oriental culture, had succeeded in solving this mystery. He was on the point of sharing his discovery with us when the fire alarm was sounded. Fate itself had sent the criminal a golden opportunity to stop Sweetchild's mouth for ever. Afterwards all would be silence again, just like at the rue de Grenelle. But the killer failed to take into account one very important circumstance: this time Commissioner Gauche was on hand, and he is not one to be trifled with. It was a risky move, but it might have worked. The criminal knew that the scholar would dash straight to his cabin to save his papers, that is, his manuscripts. It was there, concealed by the bend in the corridor, that the murderer committed his foul deed. And there we have the first piece of circumstantial evidence . . .' the commissioner raised a finger to emphasize his point '. . . M. Aono ran out of the salon and therefore he could have committed this murder.'

  'Not only I,' said the Japanese. 'Six other people ran out of the salon: M. Renier, M. and Mme Truffo, M. Fandorin, M. Milford-Stokes and Mile Stamp.'

  'Correct,' Gauche agreed. 'But I merely wished to demonstrate to the jury, by which I mean the present company, the connection between these two crimes, and also that you could have committed yesterday's murder. Now let us return to the "Crime of the Century". M. Aono was in Paris at the time, a fact of which there can be no doubt, and which is confirmed by a telegram that I recently received.'

  'One and a half million other people were also in Paris,' the Japanese interjected.

  'Perhaps, but nonetheless we now have our second piece of circumstantial evidence,' said Gauche.

  'Too circumstantial by far,' put in the Russian.

  'I won't dispute that.' Gauche tipped some tobacco into his pipe before he made his next move. 'However, the fatal injections were administered to Lord Littleby's servants by a medic of some sort, and there are certainly not one and a half million medics in Paris, are there?'

  No one contested that, but Captain Cliff asked:

  'True, what of it?'

  'Ah, monsieur capitaine,' said Gauche, his eyes flashing brightly, 'the point is that our friend Aono here is not a military man, as he introduced himself to all of us, but a qualified surgeon, a recent graduate from the medical faculty at the Sorbonne! I learned that from the same telegram.'

  A pause for effect. A muffled hum of voices in the hall of the Palais de Justice, the rustling of the newspaper artists' pencils on their sketchpads: 'Commissioner Gauche Plays His Trump Card.' Ah, but you must wait for the ace, my friends, the ace is yet to come.

  'And now, ladies and gentlemen, we move from circumstantial evidence to hard facts. Let M. Aono explain why he, a doctor, a member of a respected and prestigious profession, found it necessary to pose as an army officer. Why such deception?'

  A drop of sweat slithered down the waxen face of the Japanese. Aono said nothing. He certainly hadn't taken long to run out of steam!

  'There is only one answer: he did it to divert suspicion from himself. The murderer was a doctor!' the commissioner summed up complacently. 'And that brings us to our second piece of hard evidence. Gentlemen, have you ever heard of Japanese boxing?'

  'I've not only heard of it, I've seen it,' said the captain. 'One time in Macao I saw a Japanese navigator beat three American sailors senseless. He was a puny little tyke, you'd have thought you could blow him over, but you should have seen the way he skipped about and flung his arms and legs around. He laid three hulking whalers out flat. He hit one of them on the arm with the edge of his hand and twisted the elbow the other way. Broke the bone, can you imagine? That was some blow!' Gauche nodded smugly.

  'I have also heard that the Japanese possess the secret of killing with their bare hands in combat. They can easily kill a man with a simple jab of the finger. We have all seen M. Aono practising his gymnastics. Fragments of a shattered gourd - a remarkably hard gourd - were discovered under the bed in his cabin. And there were several whole ones in a sack. The accused obviously used them for perfecting the precision and strength of his blow. I cannot even imagine how strong a man must be to smash a hard gourd with his bare hand, and into several pieces . . .'

  The commissioner surveyed his assembled audience before introducing his second piece of evidence.

  'Let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that the skull of the unfortunate Lord Littleby was shattered into several fragments by an exceptionally strong blow with a blunt object. Now would you please observe the calluses on the hands of the accused.'

  The Japanese snatched his small, sinewy hands off the table.

  'Don't take your eyes off him, Jackson. He is very dangerous,' warned Gauche. 'If he tries anything, shoot him in the leg or the shoulder. Now let me ask M. Aono what he did with his gold emblem. Well, have you nothing to say? Then let me answer the question myself: the emblem was torn from your chest by Lord Littleby at the very moment when you struck him a fatal blow to the head with the edge of your hand!'

  Aono half-opened his mouth, as though he was about to say something, but he only bit his hp with his strong, slightly crooked teeth and closed his eyes. His face took on a strange, detached expression.

  'And so, the picture that emerges of the crime on the rue de Grenelle is as follows,' said Gauche, starting his summing-up. 'On the evening of the fifteenth of March, Gintaro Aono went to Lord Littleby's mansion with the premeditated intention of killing everyone in the house and taking possession of the triangular shawl from the owner's collection. At that time he already had a ticket for the Leviathan, which was due to sail for India from Southampton four days later. The defendant was obviously intending to search for the Brahmapur treasure in India. We do not know how he managed to persuade the unfortunate servants to submit to an "inoculation against cholera". It is very probable that the accused showed them some kind of forged document from the mayor's office. That would have been entirely convincing because, as I have been informed by telegram, medical students from the final year at the Sorbonne are quite often employed in prophylactic public health programmes. There are quite a lot of Orientals among the students and interns at the university, so the evening caller's yellow skin was unlikely to alarm the servants. The most monstrous aspect of the crime is the infernal callousness with which two innocent children were murdered. I have considerable personal experience of dealing with the scum of society, ladies and gentlemen. In a fit of rage a criminal thug may toss a baby into a fire, but to kill with such cold calculation, with hands that do not even tremble . . . You must agree, gentlemen, that is not the French way, indeed it is not the European way.'

  'That's right!' exclaimed Renier, incensed, and Dr Truffo supported him wholeheartedly.

  'After that everything was very simple,' Gauche continued. 'Once he was sure that the poisonous injections had plunged the servants into a sleep from which they would never wake, the murderer walked calmly up the stairs to the second floor and into the hall where the collection was kept, and there he began helping himself to what he wanted. After all, he was certain that the master of the house was away. But an attack of gout had prevented Lord Littleby from travelling to Spa and he was still at home. The sound of breaking glass brought him out into the hall, where he
was murdered in a most barbarous manner. It was this unplanned murder that shattered the killer's diabolical composure. He had almost certainly planned to take several items from the collection in order not to draw attention to the celebrated shawl, but now he had to hurry. We do not know, but perhaps his Lordship called out before he died and the killer was afraid his cries had been heard in the street. For whatever reason, he took only a golden Shiva that he did not need and beat a hasty retreat, without even noticing that his Leviathan badge had been left behind in the hand of his victim. In order to throw the police off the scent, Aono left the house through the window of the conservatory . . . No, that was not the reason!' Gauche slapped himself on the forehead. 'Why did I not think of it before? He could not go back the way he had come if his victim had cried out! For all he knew, passers-by were already gathering at the door of the mansion! That was why Aono smashed the window in the conservatory, jumped down into the garden and then made his escape over the fence. But he need not have been so careful - at that late hour the rue de Grenelle was empty. If there were any cries, no one heard them . . .'

  The impressionable Mme Kleber sobbed. Mrs Truffo listened to her husband's translation and blew her nose with feeling.

  Clear, convincing and unassailable, thought Gauche. The evidence and the investigative hypotheses reinforce each other perfectly. And old papa Gauche still hasn't finished with you yet.

  'This is the appropriate moment to consider the death of Professor Sweetchild. As the accused has quite rightly observed, in theory the murder could have been committed by six other people apart from himself. Please, do not be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen!' The commissioner raised a reassuring hand. 'I shall now prove that you did not kill the professor and that he was in fact killed by our Japanese friend here.'

  The blasted Japanese had completely turned to stone. Was he asleep? Or was he praying to his Japanese god? Pray as much as you like, my lad, that old slut Mme Guillotine will still have your head!

  Suddenly the commissioner was struck by an extremely unpleasant thought. What if the English nabbed the Japanese for the murder of Sweetchild? The professor was a British subject after all. Then the criminal would be tried in an English court and he would end up on a British gallows instead of a French guillotine! Anything but that! The 'Crime of the Century' could not be tried abroad! The trial must be held in the Palais de Justice and nowhere else! Sweetchild may have been killed on board an English ship, but there were ten bodies in Paris and only one here. And in any case the ship wasn't entirely British property, there were two partners in the consortium!

  Gauche was so upset that he lost track of his argument. Not on your life, he thought to himself, you will not have my client. I'll put an end to this farce and then go straight to the French consul. I'll take the murderer to France myself. And immediately he could see it: the crowded quayside, the police cordons, the journalists . . .

  But first the case had to be brought to a conclusion.

  'Now Inspector Jackson will tell us what was found when the defendant's cabin was searched.'

  Gauche gestured to Jackson to say his piece.

  Jackson launched into a monotonous rigmarole in English, but the commissioner soon put a stop to that:

  'This investigation is being conducted by the French police,' he said sternly, 'and the official language of this inquiry is also French. Apart from which, monsieur, not everyone here understands your language. And most importantly of all, I am not sure that the accused knows English. And you must admit that he has a right to know the results of your search.'

  The protest was made as a matter of principle, in order to put the English in their place from the very beginning. They had to realize that they were the junior partners in this business.

  Renier volunteered to act as interpreter. He stood beside the inspector and translated phrase by phrase, enlivening the Englishman's flat, truncated sentences with his own dramatic intonation and expressive gestures.

  'Acting on instructions received, a search was carried out. In cabin number twenty-four. The passenger's name is Gintaro Aono. We acted in accordance with the Regulations for the Conduct of a Search in a Confined Space. A rectangular room with a floor area of two hundred square feet. Was divided into twenty squares horizontally and forty-four squares vertically.' The lieutenant asked what that meant and then explained to the others. 'Apparently the walls also have to be divided into squares - they tap on them in order to identify secret hiding places. Although I can't see how there could be any secret hiding places in a steamship cabin . . . The search was conducted in strict sequence: first vertically, then horizontally. No hiding places were discovered in the walls ..." At this point Renier gave an exaggerated shrug, as if to say: who would ever have thought it? 'During the examination of the horizontal plane. The following items relevant to the case were discovered. Item one: notes in a hieroglyphic script. They will be translated and studied. Item two: a long dagger of oriental appearance with an extremely sharp blade. Item three: a sack containing eleven Egyptian gourds. And finally, item four: a bag for carrying surgical instruments. The compartment for holding a large scalpel is empty.'

  The audience gasped. The Japanese opened his eyes and glanced briefly at the commissioner, but still did not speak.

  He's going to crack any moment, thought Gauche, but he was wrong. Without getting up off his chair, the Oriental swung round to face the inspector standing behind him and struck the hand holding the revolver a sharp blow from below. While the gun was still describing a picturesque arc through the air, the athletic Japanese had already reached the door, but when he jerked it open the two policemen standing outside jammed the barrels of their Colts into his chest. A split second later the inspector's weapon completed its trajectory, crashed onto the centre of the table and detonated with a deafening roar. There was a jangling sound and the air was filled with smoke. Someone screamed.

  Gauche quickly summed up the situation: the prisoner was backing towards the table; Mrs Truffo was in a dead faint; there seemed to be no other casualties; there was a hole in Big Ben just below the dial and its hands weren't moving. The clock was jangling. The ladies were screaming. But in general the situation was under control.

  The Japanese was returned to his seat and shackled with handcuffs; the doctor's wife was revived and everyone went back to their places. The commissioner smiled and began talking again, demonstrating his superior presence of mind.

  'Gentlemen of the jury, you have just witnessed a scene that amounts to a confession of guilt, even though it was played out in a somewhat unusual manner.'

  He'd made that slip about the jury again, but he didn't bother to correct himself. After all, this was his dress rehearsal.

  'As the final piece of evidence, it could not possibly have been more conclusive,' Gauche summed up smugly. 'And you, Jackson, may consider yourself reprimanded. I told you that he was dangerous.'

  The inspector was as scarlet as a boiled crayfish. That would teach him.

  All in all, everything had turned out quite excellently.

  The Japanese sat there with three guns pointing at him, pressing his shackled hands to his chest. He had closed his eyes again.

  'That is all, Inspector. You can take him away. He can be kept in your lock-up for the time being. When all the formalities have been completed, I shall take him to France. Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen, old papa Gauche is disembarking, I wish you all a pleasant journey.'

  'I am afraid, Commissioner, that you will have to travel with us a little further,' the Russian said in that monotonous voice of his.

  For a moment Gauche thought he had misheard. 'Eh?'

  'Mr Aono is not guilty of anything, so the investigation will have to be continued.'

  The expression on Gauche's face must have looked extremely stupid - wildly staring eyes and bright scarlet cheeks . . .

  Before the outburst of fury came, the Russian continued with quite astonishing self-assurance:

  'Captain, on b-bo
ard ship you are the supreme authority. The commissioner has just acted out a mock trial in which he took the part of prosecutor and played it with great conviction. However, in a civilized court, after the prosecution has made its case the defence is offered the floor. With your permission, I should like to take on that assignment.'

  'Why waste any more time?' the captain asked in surprise. 'It all seems cut and dried to me. The commissioner of police explained everything very clearly.'

  'Putting a passenger ashore is a serious m-matter, and the responsibility is ultimately the captain's. Think what damage will be done to the reputation of your shipping line if it turns out that you have made a mistake. And I assure you,' said Fandorin, raising his voice slightly, 'that the commissioner is mistaken.'

  'Nonsense!' exclaimed Gauche. 'But I have no objections. It might even be interesting. Carry on, monsieur, I'm sure I shall enjoy it.'

  After all, a dress rehearsal had to be taken seriously. This boy was no fool, he might possibly expose some gaps in the prosecution's logic that needed patching up. Then if the prosecutor made a mess of things during the trial, Commissioner Gauche would be able to give him a hand.

  Fandorin crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands around his knee.

  'You gave a brilliant and convincing speech. At first sight your arguments appear conclusive. Your logic seems almost beyond reproach, although, of course, the so-called "circumstantial evidence" is worthless. Yes, Mr Aono was in Paris on the fifteenth of March. Yes, Mr Aono was not in the saloon when the p-professor was killed. In themselves these two facts mean nothing, so let us not even take them into consideration.'