All the World's a Stage

NEW AND OLD THEORIES

Erast Petrovich’s words simply burst out of their own accord – he had still not recovered after she appeared here suddenly. But, thank God, Eliza didn’t hear them.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. It d-doesn’t mean anything…’

And he thought: It’s dangerous for me to look at her from close up. The symptoms of the illness are intensified. He hid the extractor behind his back to avoid being drawn into explanations. Although he would have to justify his presence here in some way or other.

How she was looking at him. If any other woman were to look like that, he could be certain that she loved him with all her heart. But she was an actress…

The only time she had demonstrated unfeigned feeling was when she fainted at the news of her fiancé’s death. At that moment a sharp pain had transfixed Erast Petrovich’s heart. So she had not been planning to marry the millionaire out of calculation, but out of love?

This thought had tormented him afterwards for the whole day. Eventually he had committed an unworthy action. Late in the evening he had telephoned the Metropole hotel, after first enquiring from Stern which room Eliza was occupying, and then stuck in a hatpin: he read her the venomous tanka. The meaning of the pentastitch was obvious: your love is not worth a bent farthing, madam; perhaps in the next life you will prove more useful.

She had answered him in an absolutely lifeless voice. Pretended that she didn’t care a fig for anything; she had even laughed, but she had not fooled him. If even an artiste like her could not conceal her grief, then it was very great. But then why had she refused Shustrov? In truth, the soul of an actress was as dark as the twilight behind the stage.

Fandorin felt ashamed. He had promised himself he would leave Eliza in peace. And in the days that followed he had kept his distance. Only yesterday evening he had been obliged to appear where she could see him, but he had not gone close.

Yesterday it had been impossible not to come to the theatre. The interests of the investigation had required it.

Apart from anything else, Shustrov’s death had struck a very powerful blow at Fandorin’s vanity. The theory on which he had spent so much time and effort had burst like a soap bubble. Mr Whistle was dead and the Tsar was on the other side of the Atlantic. The gang of Moscow ticket touts no longer existed and could not have had anything to do with the millionaire’s death.

Erast Petrovich had little doubt that it was not suicide. Shustrov was not the kind of man to do away with himself because of a rejected proposal of marriage. But he had had to visit the scene of the tragedy and check everything in person, and then castigate himself and set in order his raging feelings and tangled thoughts.

‘Let’s go to Prechistenka,’ he said to ‘Monsieur Simon’ while the ladies were fussing over Eliza after she fainted. ‘I have to see this.’

Masa cast an eloquent glance at his master, ran into a gaze that expressed nothing, sighed and turned away.

Erast Petrovich had not mended his relations with his comrade since returning from Europe. After learning of Eliza’s impending marriage, Fandorin had returned home to Cricket Lane in a mood darker than a storm cloud. He didn’t want to talk about anything. And he had nothing to boast about. After all, he hadn’t managed to catch the Tsar. From the very beginning the operation had gone awry and it had concluded in failure, and Erast Petrovich had only himself to blame. If he had taken Masa to Sokolniki instead of the half-witted Georges, things would have turned out quite differently

‘Leave me alone,’ Fandorin had told his servant. ‘No questions.’

And, naturally, the Japanese had taken offence. Not only had his master disappeared for almost two weeks without really explaining anything, but he didn’t want to tell Masa anything either! Nothing of the kind had happened even once in thirty-three years.

‘Then I won’t tell you anything either!’ Masa had declared, obviously meaning Eliza and his relationship with her.

‘Certainly, by all means.’

In any case, Fandorin had not wished to hear anything about the rich love life of Madam Altairsky-Lointaine. Let her bill and coo with whomever she wished, and marry whomever she wished. That was her business.

All in all, Erast Petrovich’s hope of recovery had been premature. Once again he was mired in depression. Exclusively in order to distract himself and occupy his thoughts with something, the next day he had gone to the theatre and done what he had been intending to do; he looked through the delinquent entries in the Tablets.

At that point there were three of them.

From 6 September: ‘EIGHT 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE. THINK BETTER OF IT’.

Then, on the second page for October, simply this: ‘SEVEN 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PEFORMANCE’.

And the latest entry, dated 1 November: ‘FIVE 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE’.

The letters were large. The handwriting was the same. The messages were written in indelible pencil.

An obvious piece of nonsense. One of the actors was amusing himself – apparently in order to annoy the director and hear him roaring.

Erast Petrovich read through the ‘sacred book’ once again to see whether he had missed an entry about six units, but there wasn’t one. Then he got angry and set the journal aside. The joke was not only stupid, but careless. These higgledy-piggledy characters did not deserve his attention.

The next time he appeared in the theatre was on the fifth of November, a Saturday – when Eliza was due to give her answer to Shustrov. He struggled with himself, but came anyway. What would she be like on this day? Would she be embarrassed by him showing up or not? The bitter verse about a geisha’s love was lying in his pocket. Erast Petrovich had composed the tanka the previous night, tormented by insomnia. But he didn’t get a chance to give it to her. Events set off at a gallop when an old acquaintance of his, a character out of a previous life, came bursting into the auditorium.

Senya had changed greatly and Fandorin had not even recognised him immediately. He had been transformed into a lively young man of European appearance, who confused Russian words and French ones, but even so, every now and then his manners betrayed the semi-criminal youth from the Khitrovka, with whom Erast Petrovich had once lived through one of the very darkest adventures in his life as a detective.

On the way to Prechistenka, to the roaring of the Bugatti’s engine, they had spoken – or, rather, shouted – a little.

‘So how did it happen that you got involved in the cinematograph, dear sir? And why did you become Monsieur Simon?’

‘Oh, Erast Petrovich, s’il vous plaît, don’t take that formal tone, just talk to me the way you used to. I’ve been speaking to you and Mr Masa all these years. When I didn’t know que faire, I always asked you. And you would répondre: “Do it this way, Senya”. Or vice versa: “Don’t do that, don’t be a crétin”.’

He chattered away without a break. He was clearly delighted by this unexpected meeting and for a while even forgot about the sad event. That was nothing new for Senya. He had never been able to remain despondent for long

‘I became “Simon” because a Frenchman can’t pronounce “Semyon”, his tongue twists in a different fashion. And I fell in love with the cinéma, because there is nothing better in the world. The first time I saw A Trip to the Moon, I realised immediately that this was it, my chemin dans la vie – my path in life, as you say in Russian!’

‘M-merci,’ said Erast Petrovich, thanking his companion for the translation.

‘De rien. I went straight to the great Monsieur Méliès. I still couldn’t really speak their lingo then, my French would have made a cat laugh. Vous êtes génie, I told him. Je veux vivre et mourir pour cinéma! I wrote it on a piece of paper, in our letters. Learned it off by heart. But otherwise I didn’t have a word.’

‘And nothing else is needed. It says everything that matters. From an early age you had a qu-quite exceptional psychological talent.’

‘Then I left Méliès. The old man started losing his fleur, not keeping up with life. What’s the most important thing now for cinéma? Scale! Now Gaumont had got scale! Last year the two of us set up an electric theatre in Paris with three thousand, four hundred seats! But Gaumont wouldn’t make me a partner, so I left. And then things are crowded in France, everyone’s jostling for elbow space. You can only do real business here in your country, Russia. If you’re énergique.’

Keeping one hand on the steering wheel and waving the other around, he glanced at Fandorin, who had raised one eyebrow at the phrase ‘in your country’. But Senya misunderstood his surprise and started explaining.

‘Energique – that’s when you keep révolver all the time. It’s the most important quality for success. You can get by without all the other qualities, but not without the énergique, no way. You have plenty of clever types here, plenty of hard workers, there are even some honest ones. But they’re all dozy, feeble. A man thinks up something worthwhile, but he just sits there on his backside, like a bear. He turns a good deal – and he has to celebrate immediately. But you have to work quickly, quickly, sans arrêt. An énergique man, even if he’s not so very intelligent – brainy that is – will stumble and fall ten times, get up eleven times and still outrun a man who’s clever, but dozy. But here in your country, I see all the talk is about révolution, about liberté and égalité. But what Russia needs is not revolution, but a dose of turpentine, to make it run faster.’

Senya-Simon cleared his throat and took on a mournful air.

‘Andriusha Shustrov – now he was a génie. I mean, how do you say that?’

‘A genius.’

‘Yes, a genius. What incredible business we would have done here. If not for that snake-woman. Men like Andriusha, they only seem to be made of stone, but they’re really terribly passionés – intense. Heat a heart of stone up red hot and then pour icy water on it and – crack.’

‘An elegant metaphor,’ said Erast Petrovich, involuntarily rubbing the left side of his chest. ‘But don’t let me hear another word from you about the “snake-woman”. I will not allow anyone to insult Madam Lointaine. That is one. And secondly…’

He was about to add that Eliza probably had nothing to do with this case, but he paused. Now, after this new death, Fandorin was no longer certain of anything.

Simon understood the pause in his own way. Forgetting the sad circumstances again, he winked.

‘You should have said straight away. I see you’re still the same as you used to be. Involved with the femmes fatales. Only you’ve changed your surname for some reason. Andriusha kept going on to me about you: Fandorin, Fandorin, he’s going to write fabules for us, and I didn’t have a clue that it was you. By the way, it has quite a ring to it. Sounds like Phantomas. That’s someone a film should be made about! Have you read it? Real literature, none of your Emile Zola and Lev Tolstoy. Real power! We could try Mr Masa for the leading role. He’s the “real Japanese Swardilin”, isn’t he? I only realised that today. Mr Masa can climb up walls, and kick someone in the face, and all sorts of things. And it doesn’t matter that he has slant-eyes. Phantomas always wears a mask. Oh, a real génie of evildoing!’

And he started talking enthusiastically about some big wheel of the criminal world, a hero of modern novels. Erast Petrovich had known individuals of this type in real life, so he listened with a certain degree of interest, but the sports car was already flying into one of the side streets of Prechistenka. It pulled up with a squeal of brakes in front of a smart detached mansion house with policemen guarding the entrance.

The investigator was someone Fandorin didn’t know, a certain Captain Drissen, from the chancellery of the Chief of Police. The death of a millionaire was a serious case, not like some little cornet of the Guards. It had not been entrusted to a modest old hand like Subbotin.

Fandorin took a dislike to the police officer. There had always been plenty of his type in the police, sweet with their superiors and rude with their subordinates, and in recent years they had spread everywhere. Naturally, the captain had heard about Fandorin, so he spoke in sugared tones. He showed Erast Petrovich everything, explained everything and even reported his own conclusions, which he had not been asked to do.

These conclusions amounted, in brief, to the following.

The questioning of witnesses had established that the deceased had been certain that this would be the happiest day of his life. Early in the morning he had been planning to visit the Louvre hotel to see his fiancée, the well-known artiste Altairsky-Lointaine, in order to set an engagement ring on her finger.

‘By the way, where is it, Mr Simon?’ Drissen asked, interrupting his report and giving Senya a look that was not sugar-sweet, but menacing. ‘You grabbed it and ran off, and I’ll be asked about it.’

‘A mere trifle,’ the Parisian said morosely with a wave of his hand. In his dead comrade’s house he seemed to have shrunk and did nothing but sigh. ‘If need be – I’ll replace it. Pas de problème.’

The officer was delighted by the news that money wasn’t a problem for the partner. He smiled sweetly and carried on with his report.

The picture that emerged was clear. At the last moment the fiancée had changed her mind and informed the deceased about this by telephone. Shustrov had gone insane from grief and grabbed his razor. His hand was trembling, so at first he had inflicted several small cuts on himself and then he had finally overcome his weakness and severed his artery, together with the trachea, and the end had followed without delay.

Erast Petrovich listened to the facts attentively and to the conclusions casually. He squatted down beside the body for a long time, examining the mutilated neck through a magnifying glass.

Eventually he got up with a very preoccupied air and spoke to the expectant captain.

‘You know, there are policemen who for a certain f-fee let the gutter press have all sorts of piquant little details of events. So, if news that the investigation links Shustrov’s death with the name of the actress whom you have mentioned should leak out to the press, I shall consider you personally responsible.’

‘By your leave…’ Drissen flushed, but Erast Petrovich flashed his highly expressive blue eyes at the officer, and he fell silent.

‘And if such a mishap should occur, I shall employ all of my influence to ensure that you will serve the remainder of your career in Chukotka. I do not often burden the top level with requests, so they will not refuse me in such a trivial instance.’

The policeman cleared his throat.

‘However, sir, I cannot take responsibility for others. Rumours might leak out of the theatre… the case will attract huge public interest. They have already had suicides there.’

‘Rumours are one thing. An official theory is another. Do you understand me? Well, good.’

The suspicion that was so humiliating for Fandorin had been confirmed.

The Tsar and Mr Whistle probably had nothing to do with the deaths in the theatre. Because they could not have murdered the millionaire Shustrov, and he had been murdered. And to judge from the signature, by the same criminal who had murdered Emeraldov and Limbach.

The investigation would have to be started all over again from the beginning.

Usually, when there was a sequence of mysterious atrocities, the problem was that there was no reasonably plausible hypothesis. But here it was the opposite. Too many hypotheses arose. Even if one started from the basics of deduction – the two main motives that led one man to kill another: ‘cui prodest’ and ‘cherchez la femme’.

Who could have benefited from the death of the millionaire?

Well, for instance, the whole of Noah’s Ark and Mr Stern personally. Under the terms of the will, the company of actors received a substantial capital sum. That was one. The insistence with which the entrepreneur had tried to get the company to move into the cinematograph had irritated everyone and set their nerves on edge. The world of the theatre was pathological, filled with hypertrophied passions. If the character of the individual with the inclinations of a murderer had been formed in this environment (and this was almost an undoubted fact), the above reason could prove quite enough. Here one also had to take into account the psychology of the artistic criminal. This was a special personality type, for whom the ‘beauty’ of a concept could provide the impulse to commit a crime – in addition to the practical gain involved.

As for ‘cherchez la femme’, here there was no need to search for the woman. The candidate was obvious. However, if the murders had been committed because of Eliza, that threw up an entire bunch of theories.

Shustrov had proposed to a woman at whom many eyes gazed lustfully and to whom many hands reached out covetously. (It was disgusting that for a while Erast Petrovich himself had jostled in that crowd.) Madam Altairsky’s admirers could well include someone whose jealousy could lead to them committing a crime.

In this case, unlike the version with cui prodest, it was easy to add in the previous two murders. The rumours about Limbach (it was not important whether they were true) claimed that he had won Eliza’s affections. The same rumours had been spread about Emeraldov. Erast Petrovich himself had read in a revue of Poor Liza an extremely transparent hint about the ‘intense sensuality of the acting of the leading players’ not being the result of stage passion alone.

To the two basic motivations to which ordinary people were prone there should be added the exotic motivations possible only in the theatre.

In addition to amorous jealousy there was also actor’s jealousy. The leading lady in a company was always fiercely envied. Cases were known of a prima ballerina’s female comrades tipping ground glass into her shoes before a performance. Sometimes pepper was added to an opera singer’s egg-nog in order to make her lose her voice. And anything could happen in a drama theatre. But it was one thing to stick a snake in a basket of flowers and quite another to cold-bloodedly dispatch Emeraldov, slit open Limbach’s stomach and slash Shustrov’s throat to ribbons.

The sugary Captain Drissen was, of course, mistaken concerning the sequence of the cuts. Examination of the wounds had demonstrated that the fatal wound had been inflicted first. The others had been added later, after the spasms had ceased. That was clear both from the traces of blood on the floor and from the minor cuts themselves: they were neat and even, as if they had been made along a ruler. What the murderer had needed this work of art for was an open question. But the signature of all the crimes was characterised by a certain fancifulness and theatricality. Emeraldov had been poisoned with wine from Gertrude’s goblet; Limbach had been left to bleed to death in a locked dressing room; Shustrov’s throat had been lacerated with a razor after he was dead.

And concerning the matter of theatricality. In the play that Erast Petrovich had written, one character, a merchant, had his head cut off in repayment for his perfidy. Shustrov was an entrepreneur, in a certain sense also a merchant. Was there some reference to the play here? Anything was possible. It would have to be clarified if any parallels could be traced between the actions of the Moscow millionaire and the Japanese moneybags.

There was also another theory that was absolutely insane. Erast Petrovich could not get out of his mind the ‘benefit performance’ and the accursed 1s mentioned in the Tablets. He even dreamed about them at night: pointed, glowing bright scarlet and then melting away, melting away. At first there were eight of them, then seven, then two had disappeared at once and five were left. And, by the way, the slashes on the dead man’s throat had resembled scarlet 1s, one large, fat one and ten thinner ones. Eleven 1s in all and 11 was two 1s again. Raving lunacy, schizophrenia!

His head, already dulled by the humiliating torments of love, refused to perform its usual analytical work. Never before had Erast Petrovich been in such terrible intellectual form. Flowers with vipers, goblets with poison, bloody razors and fragile 1s were all jumbled up together in his brain, swirling round in absurd roundelay.

But the skills he had developed over years, his willpower and habit of self-discipline, eventually won out. The first law of investigation reads: when there are too many theories, their number has to be reduced, by first removing the most unlikely. Therefore Erast Petrovich decided first of all to get rid of the annoying 1s.

This would require identifying the joker who was making the idiotic entries in the ‘sacred book’. Taking him by the scruff of the neck (or by the elbow, if it was a lady) and demanding an explanation.

It was a rather bothersome business, but basically simple – which was another reason why Fandorin decided to start with the ‘benefit performance’.

On the evening of the tenth of November, after the performance, Erast Petrovich came to the wings to drink a glass of champagne with the company. Actors are a superstitious crowd and they take traditions seriously. So even the complete teetotallers, like Reginina or Noah Noaevich, clinked glasses with the others and took a sip of the wine. Fandorin remembered where each of them left his or her glass. When the green room was empty, he marked each one, put them all in his travelling bag and took them away with him. The buffet manager had already left, so no one would notice the disappearance until the next morning. And that night Erast Petrovich intended to come back here and put the glasses back in their places.

During the previous year, which had been devoted to studying chemistry, Fandorin had given over a lot of time to investigating blood groups, a new discovery that was of importance not only for medicine, but also for criminalistics. It promised even more interesting results in the future; however, even now the analysis of traces of blood could be of tremendous assistance to an investigator. The courts still refused to recognise this form of analysis as evidence for the prosecution, but there had already been a case in which blood analysis had helped to acquit an innocent party. A robbery and murder had been committed in a brothel. The police had discovered fresh spots of blood on the dress of one of the prostitutes who had come under suspicion, and on this basis they had decided that she was the murderer. The girl had no alibi and she had been in court before. The members of the jury were clearly inclined towards a guilty verdict. However, examination of the blood spots demonstrated that the blood belonged to a different group from that of the victim. The prostitute was released, and the hero of the day was not her barrister, but the medical expert.

Erast Petrovich had been greatly interested by this discovery and had taken it farther. In particular, he had established that the blood group could be determined from the saliva. This was the purpose for which the glasses from the theatre buffet had been temporarily purloined.

In the depths of the night in his home laboratory Fandorin took samples and performed his analysis. There were only ten glasses – he had excluded Masa and Eliza from the list of suspects. After some hesitation, he had kept Stern. Who could tell whether the director himself were not simply acting the fool – for the sake of his ‘theory of rupture’ or something else of the sort.

As followed from the science, the samples fell into four groups: three members of the company belonged to group one, two of them belonged to group two, three of them belonged to group three and two belonged to group four. Furthermore, in all cases the particles of liquid possessed additional individual characteristics. Microscopic admixtures of nicotine, lipstick and medicines that were present in the saliva made it possible to hope that identifying the hooligan might prove easier than Fandorin had been expecting.

Now he had to go back to the theatre and carry out another procedure.

It was already getting light outside. As he shaved and changed his clothes, Fandorin listened to check whether Masa was asleep. For the first time in a long time Erast Petrovich had a chance to boast of at least something to the Japanese. Of course, it was no astounding breakthrough, but at least there was something to tell.

However, Masa was snuffling away gently in his room – resentfully, or so it seemed to Fandorin. Well, that was only for the best. Today the author of the scribbles would be identified. Then he would be able to tell Masa the whole story, make peace with him and involve him in the investigation. There was a murderer on the loose, he was dangerous. This was no time for stupid nonsense.

The next stage would be to collect samples from the Tablets. All the entries about the benefit performance had been made with an indelible pencil that had to be wetted with saliva before use. Using a sample-extractor of his own design, Erast Petrovich intended to scrape away particles of the paper, together with the saliva that had soaked into them. Unfortunately he had not been able to do this the previous evening – the Tablets had been taken away to the hall by the cleaner, and Fandorin had not wished to wait until the service staff left. And in any case he would have to bring the glasses back.

He entered the theatre through the stage door, which he opened with a picklock. One of the rules established by Stern prohibited any of the service personnel from appearing in the building before the lunch break, so that they would not interrupt the sacred rites. Only the watchman was sitting in his booth, separated from the auditorium by an entire storey. So there was no reason to fear that this time Erast Petrovich would be seen by anyone.

Without encountering any complications, he first set the glasses back in their places and then entered the hall. The journal was lying where it was supposed to lie: on the director’s little desk.

Fandorin switched on the lamp, prepared his extractor and opened the book. Then he froze.

On the empty page, immediately below today’s date, there was a new entry in shimmering, blue indelible pencil: FOUR 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE. BE READY.

The fourth time! And now there were four 1s too…

Astounded, he lifted the book right up to his eyes. He told himself: Very good, fresh traces, now we’ll find out who this joker is. Although he no longer believed that this was a joke.

A door creaked beside him.

Fandorin looked round – and saw Eliza.

FANDORIN’S WORK OF DEDUCTION IS HINDERED

It was impossible to take the sample with her there. Erast Petrovich hid the extractor. There was still a lot of time to go before the rehearsal began, the actors would not start gathering for at least another hour. If Eliza left him alone for at least five minutes, that would be enough.

‘Are you not going up to your dressing room?’ he asked after an oppressive pause.

‘Yes, I have to take off my hat and coat and change my shoes. Will you see me up? Let’s go through the foyer. It’s dusty backstage.’

It would be impolite to refuse, he thought, realising perfectly well that he was deceiving himself. To be beside her, to walk through the empty, dark corridors together, just the two of them – was this not happiness?

Feeling pitiful and weak-willed, Fandorin followed Eliza without speaking. Suddenly she took his arm in hers, which was strange – in enclosed premises ladies did not usually do that.

‘Oh Lord, to walk like this…’ she whispered about some thought of her own.

‘What?’

‘Never mind, never mind…’

She let go of him.

At the door of the dressing room, she apologised and asked him to wait while she put on her tabi – Japanese socks – for the sandals.

Five minutes later she called out.

‘You can come in now.’

Eliza was sitting in front of the dressing table, but looking at Fandorin, and he saw her immediately from every angle: the back of her head, her face, both profiles. In the light of the lamp her hair shimmered, like a golden helmet.

‘Please stay with me for a while. Just stay. I’m in a really bad way…’

He lowered his eyes in order not to look into hers. He was afraid of giving himself away, afraid that he would dash over to her and start babbling pitiful nonsense about love.

Erast Petrovich gritted his teeth and made himself think about the case. The extraction of saliva from the Tablets would obviously have to wait until the evening, but even without the analysis there was plenty to think over.

So, a fourth entry had appeared in the journal. The chronology and the arithmetic were as follows: on 6 September there were eight 1s remaining until a certain benefit performance and someone was called upon to ‘think again’, on 2 October, there were seven 1s remaining, on 1 November, for some reason, there were only five; and finally, today, 11 November, there were only four 1s remaining and the unknown author admonished his reader to ‘be ready’. Fandorin sensed a system in this arithmetical leapfrog, which at first glance appeared arbitrary. And if that was so…

‘My sincere condolences on your l-loss,’ he said out loud, because Eliza was clearly waiting for him to say something. ‘It is terrible to lose a fiancé.’

‘It is terrible to lose yourself! It is terrible to be in a state of despair and fear every minute!’

Is she crying? Why has she put her hand over her mouth?

Erast Petrovich moved towards her impulsively. And stopped. Then he took another step forward. Eliza turned towards him, put her arm round his waist, pressed her face against him and burst into sobs.

It’s her nerves. It’s very clear. The embrace only signifies that she needs support and consolation. Cautiously, very cautiously, he put one hand on her shoulder. He stroked her hair with the other.

Eliza wept for a long time, and for all that time Erast Petrovich’s thoughts refused to return to the mystery of the 1s.

But when the actress raised her wet face to him and glanced at him, Fandorin longed unbearably to lean down and dry every teardrop with his lips. He stepped back and clutched at his deductions as if they were the straw that could save him.

The changing remainder of 1s signifies that originally there was a specific number of them. As a result of 1s being deducted in a manner that is in some way connected with the passage of time, this number is being reduced. The first question is: what was that number? How many 1s were there to begin with?

‘I can’t go on,’ Eliza whispered. ‘I must tell you… No, no!’

She turned away quickly, saw herself in the mirror and gasped.

‘What do I look like? There are only fifty minutes left until the rehearsal! You mustn’t see me like this! Please, wait outside. I’ll tidy myself up and come out to you.’

However, the crying didn’t stop. Standing in the corridor, Fandorin could hear her sobbing and muttering something.

Eventually Eliza came out, with her face powered and her hair freshly brushed.

‘I’m having a nervous breakdown,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘I think I’ll be magnificent in rehearsal today. As long as I don’t go into hysterics. Please allow me to lean on your arm, it will give me strength.’

Their shoulders touched; he could feel her trembling and felt frightened that he might be infected with this trembling too.

X minus Y is equal to eight. X minus Y plus one is equal to seven. X minus Y plus three is equal to five. X minus Y plus four is equal to four… In the grammar school Fandorin had not been brilliant at algebra and remembered it only vaguely, and he had not included this seemingly useless discipline in the programme of fruitful ageing. He should have done. A mathematician might possibly have solved this crazy equation. Although an equation with two unknowns didn’t have any solution, did it? Or did it? He couldn’t remember. If not for the proximity of Eliza’s hot shoulder, if not for the fragrance of her hair, his thinking wouldn’t twitch about and skip like this, from one thing to another…

They tried to enter the hall via the side door, but for some reason it turned out to be locked. They had to walk to the central door.

‘I can’t put up with this nonsense about 1s in the journal any longer!’ Noah Noaevich was shouting and waving his arms about. ‘Whoever is doing this is trying to finish me off! He’s jabbing his 1s into me like needles! Slashing me with them like razors!’

The assistant director’s warning of the previous day about fines for lateness had had its effect. Even though it was only about twenty minutes to eleven, almost the entire company had already gathered. The actors were sitting in the front row, indolently listening to the director’s howls.

‘Let’s slip in behind them,’ Eliza said to Fandorin. ‘I need to get a grip on myself… I just can’t seem to manage it somehow… I’m about to shatter into fragments at any moment. Like a broken mirror.’

Slashing him with 1s like razors? Erast Petrovich thought with a start. How many cuts were there on the millionaire’s neck?

‘No more, I can’t go on like this. So come what may!’ Eliza said in a breaking voice, but Erast Petrovich was no longer looking at her, or listening to her. The figures were clicking away in his head.

‘It’s Genghis Khan who’s killing everyone! My ex-husband. His jealousy has driven him insane! He killed two of my admirers in St Petersburg! He’s not a man, he’s a devil! He’s going to kill me!’ the actress babbled, choking on her tears.

‘Genghis Khan lived in the twelfth century,’ Fandorin said absent-mindedly. ‘Twelve isn’t right. The correct number is eleven. Eleven 1s. Right then. Eight is eleven minus three. Seven is eleven minus four. Five is eleven minus six. But why the sudden skip? Ah, damnation! Because it’s 1 November! And on 11 November, today, there are only four 1s left. But what are those four 1s?’

She looked at him in alarm.

‘Are you unwell?’

‘What?’

‘Were… weren’t you listening to me?’

Erast Petrovich tore himself away from his arithmetic with an effort.

‘Certainly I was. Of course I’m listening. Your former husband, Genghis Khan, is the one who is killing everybody… This is a psychosis. You’ve been through far too much. You need to calm down.’

The fear in her eyes intensified.

‘Oh yes, a psychosis! You don’t think it’s of any importance! I’m not well. Promise me you won’t do anything!’ She clasped her hands as if in prayer. ‘Forget all about it! I implore you!’

Vasilisa Prokofievna floated into the hall, looking red faced.

‘Ooph, I was almost late!’

She glanced at Eliza’s tear-stained face and enquired:

‘What are you rehearsing, Elizochka? Ah, I’ve guessed. King Lear, Act Five. Cordelia: For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down, Myself could else out-frown false fortune’s frown.” Are we really going to play Shakespeare, then?’

We really are like father and daughter, Fandorin thought irritably. She’s a young woman and I have grey hair. But Eliza flushed and moved away.

‘Am I the last?’ Reginina looked round. ‘No, Georges Cerberus isn’t here yet, the Lord be praised for that.’

It was true, everybody had already gathered except for the assistant director. At the very end of the front row Fandorin made out Masa’s round head. The Japanese was whispering about something with Sima Aphrodisina, but squinting at his master at the same time.

Four 1s – it’s time! Hours and minutes! But where do I put the 1s that fall out of line?

Eliza’s breath tickled his ear.

‘Do you promise to forget what I said?’

Stern appeared on the stage and looked round the hall.

‘Geisha Izumi! Stop distracting the esteemed author! Join us, if you please! We’re starting! Damn it all, where is Georges? A fine keeper of discipline. One minute to eleven, and he’s not here yet! Has anyone seen Nonarikin? Where’s Nonarikin?’

Fandorin swayed in his seat.

But of course! Nonarikin! The figure nine!

‘Where’s Nonarikin?’ he exclaimed, echoing Stern, and got to his feet.

‘Here I am, here!’

The assistant director appeared in the central aisle. Georges was looking different today: in a frock coat, with a starched shirtfront and a white chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. He swung round and locked the door for some reason. When he spotted Fandorin with Eliza, he seemed to be delighted.

‘Erast Petrovich? I wasn’t expecting you. But this is even better. Without the dramatist the picture of the world would be incomplete.’

‘Nonarikin, I need to have a word with you.’ Fandorin looked at the assistant director intently. ‘Answer my questions.’

‘I have no time for talking with you.’ The miraculously transformed assistant director smiled confidently. ‘And now the questions will all fall away of their own accord. I shall explain everything. Follow me, if you please, to the stage.’

‘Why did you lock the door?’ Eliza asked. ‘Is that some new kind of rule?’

But Georges didn’t answer, he moved between the seats towards the stage with a gliding gait. He darted lightly up the steps to the hanamichi. He took his watch out of his pocket with his left hand and displayed it to the assembled company.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, my congratulations!’ he declared triumphantly. ‘The benefit performance will commence shortly. There are only two 1s remaining!’