Murder on the Leviathan

PART ONE Port Said to Aden Commissioner Gauche

At Port Said a new passenger had boarded the Leviathan, occupying stateroom No. 18, the last first-class cabin still vacant, and Gustave Gauche’s humour had immediately improved. This newcomer looked highly promising: that self-assured and unhurried way of carrying himself, that inscrutable expression on the handsome face which at first glance appeared altogether young, until the subject removed his bowler hat, unexpectedly revealing hair greying at the temples. A curious specimen, the commissioner decided. It was clear straight away that he had character and what they call a past. All in all, definitely a potential client for papa Gauche.

The passenger walked up the gangway swinging his holdall while the porters sweated as they struggled under the weight of his ample baggage: expensive squeaky suitcases, high-class pigskin travelling bags, voluminous bundles of books and even a folding tricycle (one large wheel, two small ones and a bundle of gleaming metal tubes). Bringing up the rear came two poor devils lugging an imposing set of gymnastic weights.

Gauche’s heart, the heart of an old sleuth (as the commissioner himself was fond of testifying), had thrilled to the lure of the hunt when this newcomer proved to have no golden badge - neither on the silk lapel of his dandified summer coat, nor on his jacket, nor on his watch chain. Warmer now, very warm, thought Gauche as he vigilantly scrutinized the fop from beneath his bushy brows and puffed on his favourite clay pipe. But of course, why had he, old dunderhead that he was, assumed that the murderer would definitely board the steamship at Southampton? The crime was committed on 15 March and today was already 1 April. It would have been perfectly easy to reach Port Said while the Leviathan was rounding the western contour of Europe. And there you had it, everything fitted: clearly the right kind of character for a client, plus a first-class ticket, plus the most important thing - no golden whale.

For some time now Gauche’s dreams had been haunted by that accursed badge with the acronym for the steamship company of the Jasper-Artaud Partnership, and without exception his dreams had been uncommonly bad ones. Take the most recent case, for instance.

The commissioner was out boating with Mme Gauche in the Bois de Boulogne. The sun was shining high in the sky and the birds were twittering in the trees. Suddenly a gigantic golden face with inanely goggling eyes loomed up over the treetops, opened cavernous jaws that could have accommodated the Arc de Triomphe with ease, and began sucking in the pond. Gauche broke into a sweat and laid into the oars. Meanwhile it transpired that events were not taking place in the park at all, but in the middle of a boundless ocean. The oars buckled like straws, Mme Gauche was jabbing him painfully in the back with her umbrella, and an immense gleaming carcass blotted out the entire horizon. When it spouted a fountain that eclipsed half the sky, the commissioner woke up and began fumbling around on his bedside table with trembling fingers - where were his pipe and those matches?

Gauche had first laid eyes on the golden whale on the rue de Grenelle when he was examining Lord Littleby’s mortal remains. The Englishman lay there with his open mouth frozen in a soundless scream - his false teeth had come halfway out and his forehead was crowned by a bloody souffle. Gauche squatted down on his haunches: he thought he had spotted a glint of gold between the corpse’s fingers. Taking a closer look, he chortled in delight. Here was a stroke of uncommonly good luck, the kind that only occurred in crime novels. The helpful corpse had literally handed the investigation an important clue and not even on a plate, but on the palm of its hand. There you are, Gustave, take that. Now may you die of shame if you dare let the person who smashed my head open get away, you old blockhead!

The golden emblem (at first, of course, Gauche had not known that it was an emblem, he had thought it was a bracelet charm or a monogrammed hairpin) could only have belonged to the murderer. But naturally, just to be sure, the commissioner had shown the whale to the junior manservant (what a lucky lad he was - 15 March was his day off and that had saved his life!), but the manservant had never seen his Lordship with the trinket before.

After that the entire ponderous mechanism of the police system had whirred into action, flywheels twirling and pinions spinning, as the minister and the prefect threw their very finest forces into solving the ‘Crime of the Century’. By the evening of the following day Gauche already knew that the three letters on the golden whale were not the initials of some high liver hopelessly mired in debt, but the insignia of a newly established Franco-British shipping consortium. The whale proved to be the emblem of the miracle-ship Leviathan, newly launched from the slipway at Bristol and currently being readied for its maiden voyage to India.

The newspapers had been trumpeting the praises of the gigantic steamship for more than a month. Now it transpired that on the eve of the Leviathan’s first sailing the London Mint had produced gold and silver commemorative badges: gold for the first-class passengers and senior officers of the ship, silver for second-class passengers and subalterns. Aboard this luxurious vessel, where the achievements of modern science were combined with an unprecedented degree of comfort, no provision at all was made for third class. The company guaranteed travellers a comprehensive service, making it unnecessary to take any servants along on the voyage. ‘The shipping line’s attentive valets and tactful maids are on hand to ensure that you feel entirely at home on the Leviathan,’ promised the advertisement printed in newspapers right across Europe. Those fortunate individuals who had booked a cabin for the first cruise from Southampton to Calcutta received a gold or silver whale with their ticket, according to their class - and a ticket could be booked in any major European port from London to Constantinople.

Very well then, the emblem of the Leviathan was not as good as the initials of its owner, but this only complicated the problem slightly, the commissioner had reasoned. There was a strictly limited number of gold badges. All he had to do was to wait until 19 March (that was the day appointed for the triumphant first sailing), go to Southampton, board the steamer and look to see which of the first-class passengers had no golden whale. Or else (which was more likely), which of the passengers who had laid out the money to buy a ticket failed to turn up for boarding. He would be papa Gauche’s client. Simple as potato soup.

Gauche thoroughly disliked travelling, but this time he couldn’t resist. He badly wanted to solve the ‘Crime of the Century’ himself. Who could tell, they might just give him a division at long last. He only had three years left to retirement.

A third-class pension was one thing, but a second-class pension was a different matter altogether. The difference was 1500 francs a year, and that kind of money didn’t exactly grow on trees.

In any case, he had put himself forward. He thought he would just nip across to Southampton and then, at worst, sail as far as Le Havre (the first stop) where there would be gendarmes and reporters lined up on the quayside. A tall headline in the Revue parisienne: ‘ “Crime of the Century” solved: our police rise to the occasion.’ Or better still: ‘Old sleuth Gauche pulls it off!’

Ha! The first unpleasant surprise had been waiting for the commissioner at the shipping line office in Southampton, where he discovered that the infernally huge steamship had 100 first class cabins and ten senior officers. The tickets had all been sold.

All 132 of them. And a gold badge had been issued with each and every one. A total of 142 suspects, if you please! But then only one of them would have no badge, Gauche had reassured himself.

On the morning of 19 March the commissioner, wrapped up against the damp wind in a warm woolly muffler, had been standing close to the gangway beside the captain, Mr Josiah Cliff, and the first lieutenant, M. Charles Renier. They were greeting the passengers. The brass band played English and French marching tunes by turns, the crowd on the pier generated an excited hubbub and Gauche puffed away in a rising fury, biting down hard on his entirely blameless pipe. For alas, due to the cold weather all of the passengers were wearing raincoats, overcoats, greatcoats or capotes. Now just try figuring out who has a badge and who doesn’t! That was unpleasant surprise number two.

Everyone who was due to board the steamship in Southampton had arrived, indicating that the criminal must have shown up for the sailing despite having lost the badge. Evidently he must think that policemen were total idiots. Or was he hoping to lose himself in such an immense crowd? Or perhaps he simply had no option?

In any case, one thing was clear: Gauche would have to go along as far as Le Havre. He had been allocated the cabin reserved for honoured guests of the shipping line.

Immediately after the ship had sailed a banquet was held in the first-class grand saloon, an event of-which the commissioner had especially high hopes since the invitations bore the instruction: ‘Admission on presentation of a gold badge or first-class ticket’. Why on earth would anyone bother to carry around a ticket, when it was so much simpler to pin on your little gold leviathan?

At the banquet Gauche let his imagination run wild as he mentally frisked everyone present. He was even obliged to stick his nose into some ladies’ decolletes to check whether they had anything dangling in there on a gold chain, perhaps a whale, perhaps simply a pendant. He had to check, surely?

Everyone was drinking champagne, nibbling on various savoury delicacies from silver trays and dancing, but Gauche was hard at work, eliminating from his list those who had their badge in place. It was the men who caused him the greatest problems. Many of the swines had attached the whale to their watch chains or even stuck it in their waistcoat pockets, and the commissioner was obliged to inquire after the exact time on eleven occasions.

Surprise number three: all of the officers had their badges in place, but there were actually four passengers wearing no emblem, including two of the female sex! The blow that had cracked open Lord Littleby’s skull like a nutshell was so powerful it could surely only have been struck by a man, and a man of exceptional strength at that. On the other hand, as a highly experienced specialist in criminal matters, the commissioner was well aware that in a fit of passion or hysterical excitement even the weakest of little ladies was capable of performing genuine miracles. He had no need to look far for examples.

Why, only last year a milliner from Neuilly, a frail little chit of a thing, had taken her unfaithful lover, a well-nourished rentier twice as fat and half as tall again as herself and thrown him out of a fourth-floor window. So it would not do at all to eliminate women who happened to have no badge from the list of suspects.

Although who had ever heard of a woman, especially from good society, mastering the knack of giving injections like that?

What with one thing and another, the investigation on board the Leviathan threatened to drag on, and so the commissioner had set about dealing with things in his customary thorough fashion. Captain Josiah Cliff was the only officer of the steamship who had been made privy to the secret investigation, and he had instructions from the management of the shipping company to afford the French guardian of the law every possible assistance. Gauche exploited this privilege quite unceremoniously by demanding that all the individuals of interest to him be assigned to the same saloon.

It should be explained at this point that out of considerations of privacy and comfort (after all, the ship’s advertisement had boasted: ‘On board you will discover the atmosphere of a fine old English country estate’) those individuals travelling first class LEVIATHAN were not expected to take their meals in the vast dining hall together with the 600 bearers of democratic silver whales, but were assigned to their own comfortable ‘saloons’, each of which bore its own aristocratic title and in appearance resembled a high-society hotel, with crystal candelabra, fumed oak and mahogany, velvet-upholstered chairs, gleaming table silver, prim waiters and officious stewards. For his own purposes Commissioner Gauche had singled out the Windsor saloon. Located on the upper deck in the bow section, it had three walls of continuous windows affording a magnificent view, so that even when the day was overcast there was no need to switch on the lights. The velvet upholstery here was a fine shade of golden brown and the linen table napkins were adorned with the Windsor coat of arms.

Standing around the oval table with its legs bolted to the floor (a precaution against any likelihood of severe pitching and rolling) there were ten chairs, with their tall backs carved in designs incorporating a motley assortment of gothic knick-knacks. The commissioner liked the idea of everyone sitting around the same table and he had ordered the steward not to set out the name plates at random but with strategic intent: he had seated the four passengers without badges directly opposite himself so that he could keep a close eye on those particular pigeons. It had not proved possible to seat the captain himself at the head of the table, as Gauche had planned. Mr Josiah Cliff did not wish (as he himself had expressed it) ‘to have any part in this charade’, and had chosen to base himself in the York saloon where the new Viceroy of India was taking his meals with his wife and two generals of the Indian army. York was located in the prestigious stern, as far removed as possible from plague-stricken Windsor, where the head of the table was taken by first mate Charles Renier. The commissioner had taken an instant dislike to Renier, with that face bronzed by the sun and the wind, that honeyed way of speaking, that head of dark hair gleaming with brilliantine, that dyed moustache with its two spruce little curls.

A buffoon, not a sailor.

In the course of the twelve days that had elapsed since they sailed, the commissioner had subjected his saloon-mates to close scrutiny, absorbed the rudiments of society manners (that is, he had learned not to smoke during a meal and not to mop up his gravy with a crust of bread), more or less mastered the complex geography of this floating city and grown accustomed to the ship’s pitching, but he had still made no progress towards his goal.

The situation was now as follows:

Initially his list of suspects had been headed by Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes, an emaciated, ginger-haired gentleman with tousled sideburns. He looked about twenty-eight or thirty years old and behaved oddly, either gazing vaguely into the distance with those wide green eyes of his and not responding to questions, or suddenly becoming animated and prattling on about the island of Tahiti, coral reefs, emerald lagoons and huts with roofs made of palm leaves. Clearly some kind of mental case. Why else would a baronet, the scion of a wealthy family, go travelling to some God-forsaken Oceania at the other end of the world? What did he think he would find there? And note, too, that this blasted aristocrat had twice ignored a question about his missing badge. He stared straight through the commissioner, and when he did happen to glance at him he seemed to be scrutinizing some insignificant insect. A rotten snob. Back in Le Havre (where they had stood for four hours) Gauche had made a dash to the telegraph and sent off an inquiry about Milford-Stokes to Scotland Yard: who was he, did he have any record of violent behaviour, had he ever dabbled in the study of medicine? The reply that had arrived just before they sailed contained nothing of great interest, but it had explained away the strange mannerisms. Even so, he did not have a golden whale, which meant it was still too early for Gauche to remove the ginger gentleman from his list of potential clients.

The second suspect was M. Gintaro Aono, a ‘Japanese nobleman’ (or so it said in the register of passengers). He was a typical Oriental, short and skinny. He could be almost any age, with LEVIATHAN that thin moustache and those narrow, piercing eyes. He remained silent most of the time at table. When asked what he did, he mumbled in embarrassment: ‘An officer of the Imperial Army.’ When asked about his badge he became even more embarrassed, cast a glance of searing hatred at the commissioner, excused himself and left the room, without even finishing his soup. Decidedly suspicious! An absolute savage.

He fanned himself in the saloon with a bright-coloured paper contraption, like some pederast from one of those dens of dubious delight behind the rue de Rivoli, and he strolled about the deck in his wooden slippers and cotton robe without any trousers at all. Of course, Gustave Gauche was all in favour of liberty, equality and fraternity, but a popinjay like that really ought not to have been allowed into first class.

And then there were the women.

Mme Renate Kleber. Young, barely twenty perhaps. The wife of an employee of a Swiss bank, travelling to join her husband in Calcutta. She could hardly be described as a beauty, with that pointy nose, but she was lively and talkative. She had informed him she was pregnant the very moment they were introduced.

All her thoughts and feelings were governed by this single circumstance.

A sweet and ingenuous woman, but absolutely insupportable. In twelve days she had succeeded in boring the commissioner to death by chattering about her precious health, embroidering nightcaps and other such nonsense. Nothing but a belly on legs, although she was not very far along yet and the belly was only just beginning to show. Gauche, naturally, had chosen his moment and asked where her emblem was. The Swiss lady had blinked her bright little eyes and complained that she was always losing things. Which seemed very likely to be true. For Renate Kleber the commissioner felt a mixture of irritation and protectiveness, but he did not take her seriously as a client.

When it came to the second lady, Miss Clarissa Stamp, the worldly-wise detective felt a far keener interest. There was something about her that seemed not quite right. She appeared to be a typical Englishwoman, nothing out of the ordinary. No longer young, with dull, colourless hair and rather sedate manners, but just occasionally those watery eyes would give a flash of devilment.

He’d seen her type before. What was it the English said about still waters? There were a few other little details worthy of note. Mere trifles really, no one else would have paid any attention to that kind of thing, but nothing escaped Gauche, the sly old dog. Miss Stamp’s dresses and her wardrobe in general were expensive and brand new, everything in the latest Parisian style.

Her handbag was genuine tortoiseshell (he’d seen one like it in a shop window on the Champs-Elysees - three hundred and fifty francs), but the notebook she took out of it was old and made of cheap writing paper. On one occasion she had sat on the deck wearing a shawl (it was windy at the time), and it was exactly like one that Mine Gauche had, made of dog’s hair. Warm, but not at all the thing for an English lady. And it was curious that absolutely all of Clarissa Stamp’s new things were expensive but her old things were shoddy and of the very poorest quality. This was a clear discrepancy. One day just before five o’clock tea Gauche had asked her: ‘Why is it, my dear lady, that you never put on your golden whale? Do you not like it? It seems to me a very stylish trinket.’ And what was her response? She had blushed an even deeper colour than the ‘Japanese nobleman’ and said that she had worn it already but he simply hadn’t noticed. It was a lie.

Gauche would have noticed all right. The commissioner had a certain subtle ploy in mind, but he would have to choose exactly the right psychological moment. Then he would see how she would react, this Clarissa.

Since there were ten places at the table and he only had four passengers without their emblems, Gauche had decided to make up the numbers with other specimens who were also noteworthy in their own way, even though they had badges. It would widen his field of inquiry: the places were there in any case.

First of all he had demanded that the captain assign the ship’s chief physician, M. Truffo, to Windsor. Josiah Cliff had muttered a little but eventually he had given way. The reason for Gauche’s interest in the physician was clear enough - skilled in the art of giving injections, he was the only medic on board the Leviathan whose status entitled him to a golden whale. The doctor turned out to be a rather short, plump Italian with an olive complexion, a tall forehead and a bald patch with a few sparse strands of hair combed backwards across it. It was simply impossible to imagine this comical specimen in the role of a ruthless killer. In addition to the doctor, another place had to be allocated to his wife. Having married only two weeks previously, the physician had decided to combine duty and pleasure by making this voyage his honeymoon. The chair occupied by the new Mme Truffo was completely wasted. The dreary, unsmiling Englishwoman who had found favour with the shipboard Aesculapius appeared twice as old as her twenty years and inspired in Gauche a deadly ennui - as, indeed, did the majority of her female compatriots. He immediately dubbed her ‘the sheep’ for her white eyelashes and bleating voice. As it happened, she rarely opened her mouth, since she did not know French and for the most part conversations in the saloon were, thank God, conducted in that most noble of tongues. Mme Truffo had no badge of any kind, but that was only natural, since she was neither an officer nor a paying passenger.

The commissioner had also spotted in the register of passengers a certain specialist in Indian archaeology, Anthony F. Sweetchild by name, and decided that an Indologist might just come in handy. After all, the deceased Lord Littleby had also been something of the kind. Mr Sweetchild, a lanky beanpole with round-rimmed spectacles and a goatee, had himself struck up a conversation about India at the very first dinner. After the meal Gauche had taken the professor aside and cautiously steered the conversation round to the subject of Lord Littleby’s collection. The Indian specialist had contemptuously dismissed his late lordship as a dilettante and his collection as a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ assembled without any scholarly framework. He claimed that the only item of genuine value in it was the golden Shiva and said it was a good thing the Shiva had turned up on its own, because everybody knew the French police were good for nothing but taking bribes. This grossly unjust remark set Gauche coughing furiously, but Sweetchild merely advised him to smoke less. The scholar went on to remark condescendingly that Littleby had, admittedly, acquired a fairly decent collection of decorative fabrics and shawls, which happened to include some extremely curious items, but that really had more to do with the native applied arts and crafts of India. The sixteenth-century sandalwood chest from Lahore with carvings on a theme from the Mahabharata was not too bad either and then he had launched into a rigmarole that soon had the commissioner nodding off.

Gauche had selected his final saloon-mate by eye, as they say.

Quite literally so. The commissioner had only recently finished reading a most diverting volume translated from the Italian.

Cesare Lombroso, a professor of forensic medicine from the Italian city of Turin, had developed an entire theory of criminalistics according to which congenital criminals were not responsible for their antisocial behaviour. In accordance with Dr Darwin’s theory of evolution, mankind passed through a series of distinct stages in its development, gradually approaching perfection. But a criminal was an evolutionary reject, a random throwback to a previous stage. It was therefore a very simple matter to identify the potential robber or murderer: he resembled the monkey from which we were all descended. The

commissioner had pondered long and hard about what he had read. On the one hand, by no means every one of the motley crew of robbers and murderers with whom he had dealt in the course of thirty years of police work had resembled gorillas, some of them had been such sweet little angels that a single glance at them brought a tender tear to the eye. On the other hand, there had been plenty of anthropoid types too. And as a convinced anticlerical, old Gauche did not believe in Adam and Eve. Darwin’s theory appeared rather more sound to him. And then he had come across a certain individual among the first-class passengers, a type who might have sat for a picture entitled ‘The Typical Killer’: low forehead, prominent ridges above little eyes, flat nose and crooked chin. And so the commissioner had requested that this Etienne Boileau, a tea trader, be assigned to the Windsor saloon. He had turned out to be an absolutely charming fellow - a ready wit, father of eleven children and confirmed philanthropist.

It had looked as though papa Gauche’s voyage was unlikely to terminate even in Port Said, the next port of call after Le Havre. The investigation was dragging on. And, moreover, the keen intuition developed by the commissioner over the years was already hinting to him that he had drawn a blank and there was no serious candidate among the company he had assembled.

He was beginning to glimpse the sickening prospect of cruising the entire confounded length of the route to Port Said and Aden and Bombay and Calcutta - and then hanging himself in Calcutta on the first palm tree. He couldn’t go running back to Paris with his tail between his legs! His colleagues would make him a laughing stock, his bosses would start carping about the small matter of a first-class voyage at the treasury’s expense. They might even kick him out on an early pension …

At Port Said, since the voyage was turning out to be a long one, with an aching heart Gauche bankrupted himself by buying some more shirts, stocked up on Egyptian tobacco and, for lack of anything else to fill his time, spent two francs on a cab ride along the famous waterfront. In fact, there was nothing exceptional about it. An enormous lighthouse, a couple of piers as long as your arm. The town itself produced a strange impression, neither Asia nor Europe. Take a look at the residence of the governor-general of the Suez Canal and it seemed like Europe. The streets in the centre were crowded with European faces, there were ladies strolling about with white parasols and wealthy gentlemen in panama hats and straw boaters plodding along, paunches to the fore. But once the carriage turned into the native quarter a fetid stench filled the air and everywhere there were flies, rotting refuse and grubby little Arab urchins pestering people for small change. Why did these rich idlers bother to go travelling? It was the same everywhere: some grew fat from gorging on delicacies while others had their bellies swollen by hunger.

Exhausted by these pessimistic observations and the heat, the commissioner had returned to the ship feeling dejected. But then he had a stroke of luck - a new client, and he looked like a promising one.

The commissioner paid the captain a visit and made inquiries.

So, his name was Erast P. Fandorin and he was a Russian subject.

For some reason this Russian subject had not given his age.

A diplomat by profession, he had arrived from Constantinople, was travelling to Calcutta and going on from there to Japan to take up his post. From Constantinople? Aha! He must have been involved in the peace negotiations that had concluded the recent Russo-Turkish War. Gauche punctiliously copied all the details onto a sheet of paper and stowed it away in the special calico bound file where he kept all the materials on the case. He was never parted from his file. He leafed through it and reread the reports and newspaper clippings, and in pensive moments he drew little fishes and houses in the margins of the papers. It was the secret dream of his heart breaking through to the surface.

The dream of how he would become a divisional commissioner, earn a decent pension, buy a nice little house somewhere in Normandy and live out his days there with Mme Gauche. The retired Paris flic would go fishing and press his own cider. What was wrong with that? Ah, if only he had a little bit of capital to add to his pension - he needed twenty thousand at least …

He was obliged to make another visit to the port - luckily the ship was delayed as it waited for its turn to enter the Suez Canal - and dash off a brief telegram to the prefecture, asking whether the Russian diplomat Erast P. Fandorin was known in Paris and whether he had entered the territory of the Republic of France at any time in the recent past.

The reply arrived quickly, after only two and a half hours. It turned out that the chap had crossed French territory not once, but twice. The first time in the summer of 1876 (well, we can let that go) and the second time in December 1877, just three months earlier. His arrival from London had been recorded at the passport and customs control point in Pas-de-Calais. It was not known how much time he had spent in France. He could quite possibly still have been in Paris on 15 March. He could even have dropped round to the rue de Grenelle with a syringe in his hand - stranger things had happened.

It now seemed he would have to free one of the places at the table. The best thing, of course, would be to get rid of the doctor’s wife, but he could hardly encroach on the sacred institution of marriage. After some thought, Gauche decided to pack the tea trader off to a different saloon, since the theoretical hopes he had inspired had proved to be unfounded and he was the least promising of all the candidates. The steward could reassign him, tell him there was a place with more important gentlemen or prettier ladies. After all, that was what stewards were for, to arrange such things.

The appearance of a new personality in the saloon caused a minor sensation. In the course of the journey they had all become thoroughly bored with each other, and now here was a fresh gentleman, and such a superior individual at that.

Nobody bothered to inquire after poor M. Boileau, that representative of a previous stage of evolution. The commissioner noted that the person who evinced the liveliest reaction was Miss Clarissa Stamp, the old maid, who started babbling about artists, the theatre and literature. Gauche himself was fond of passing his leisure hours in an armchair with a good book, preferring Victor Hugo to all other authors. Hugo was at once so true to life and high-minded, he could always bring a tear to the eye. Besides, he was marvellous for dozing over. But, of course, Gauche had never even heard of these Russian writers with those hissing sibilants in their names, so he was unable to join in the conversation. Anyway, the old English trout was wasting her time, M. Fandorine was far too young for her.

Renate Kleber was not slow off the mark either. She made an attempt to press the new arrival into service as one of her minions, whom she bullied mercilessly into bringing her shawl or her parasol or a glass of water. Five minutes after dinner began Mme Kleber had already initiated the Russian into the detailed history of her delicate condition, complained of a migraine and asked him to fetch Dr Truffo, who for some reason was late that day. However, the diplomat seemed to have realized immediately whom he was dealing with and politely objected that he did not know the doctor by sight. The ever-obliging Lieutenant Renier, the pregnant banker’s wife’s most devoted nursemaid, had volunteered and gone racing off to perform the errand.

The initial impression made by Erast Fandorin was that he was taciturn, reserved and polite. But he was a bit too spruce and trim for Gauche’s taste: that starched collar sticking up like alabaster, that jewelled pin in the necktie, that red carnation (oh, very suave!) in the buttonhole, that perfectly smooth parting with not a single hair out of place, those carefully manicured nails, that narrow black moustache that seemed to be drawn on with charcoal.

It was possible to tell a great deal about a man from his moustache. If it was like Gauche’s, a walrus moustache drooping at the corners of his mouth, it meant the man was a down-to-earth fellow who knew his own worth, not some featherbrain who was easily taken in. If it was curled up at the ends, especially into points, he was a lady’s man and bon vivant. If it merged into his sideburns, he was a man of ambition with dreams of becoming a general, senator or banker. And when it was like M. Fandorine’s, it meant he entertained romantic notions about himself.

What else could he say about the Russian? He spoke decent enough French, even though he stammered. There was still no sign of his badge. The diplomat showed most interest in the Japanese, asking him all sorts of tiresome questions about Japan, but the samurai answered guardedly, as if anticipating some kind of trick. The point was that the new passenger had not explained to the company where he was going and why, he had simply given his name and said that he was Russian. The commissioner, though, could understand the Russian’s inquisitiveness, since he knew he was going to live in Japan. Gauche pictured to himself a country in which every single person was the same as M. Aono, everybody lived in dolls’ houses with bowed roofs and disembowelled themselves at the slightest provocation.

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.

‘Monsieur ship’s detective, allow me to inform you that modern science has established with certainty that an imprint is left when a finger comes into contact with any dry, firm surface. If a criminal has so much as touched a door in passing, or the murder weapon, or a window pane, he has left a trace which allows the p-perpetrator to be identified and unmasked.’

Gauche was about to retort ironically that there were twenty thousand criminals in France, that between them they had two hundred thousand fingers and thumbs and you would go blind staring at all of them through your magnifying glass, but he hesitated, recalling the shattered display case in the mansion on the rue de Grenelle. There had been fingerprints left all over the broken glass. But it had never entered anyone’s head to copy them and the shards had been thrown out with the garbage.

My, what an amazing thing progress was! Just think what it meant. All crimes were committed with hands, were they not?

And now it seemed that hands could snitch every bit as well as paid informants. Just imagine, if you were to copy the fingers of every bandit and petty thief, they wouldn’t dare turn those filthy hands of theirs to any more dirty work. It would be the end of crime itself.

The very prospect was enough to set a man’s head spinning.