The Diamond Chariot (31 page)

They started asking the titch about this, but he laughed and waved his hand disdainfully.

‘He says this is all nonsense. The captain was totally sizzled with opium, he was tripping over his own tongue. He must have imagined it. Where would Satsuma samurai get the money to pay for a steam launch? They are all ragged tramps. If they wanted to kill the minister, they would walk to Tokyo. And then, who has ever heard of covering the hilt of a sword with glasspaper? The old
gaijin
simply wanted people to listen to him, so he spun a tall story.’

Erast Petrovich and Shirota exchanged glances.

‘Right, get him to tell us all the d-details. What else did the captain say? Did anything happen to him?’

The Yakuza was surprised that his story had aroused such great interest, but he was diligent in his reply.

‘He didn’t say anything else. Only about the reward. He kept going to sleep, then waking up and talking about the same thing. He probably really did carry some passengers, but as for the swords, they were an opium dream, everybody said so. And nothing unusual happened to the captain. He sat there until dawn, then suddenly got up and left.’

‘Suddenly? Exactly how d-did it happen?’ enquired Fandorin, who did not like this story about the mysterious samurai at all – especially in the light of Blagolepov’s sudden demise.

‘He simply got up and left.’

‘For no reason at all?’

The Yakuza started thinking hard.

‘The captain was sitting there, dozing. With his back to the room. I think someone walked past behind him and woke him. Yes, yes! Some old man, totally doped. He staggered and swung his arm and caught the captain on the neck. The captain woke up and swore at the old man. Then he said: “Boss, I’m not feeling too well, I’ll be going”. And he left.’

When he finished translating, Shirota added on his own behalf:

‘No, Mr Titular Counsellor, there’s nothing suspicious in that. The captain must have felt a pain in his heart. He got as far as his home and then died there.’

Erast Petrovich did not respond to this piece of deduction, but a slight narrowing of his eyes suggested that he was not entirely satisfied with it.

‘His hand caught his neck?’ he murmured thoughtfully.

‘What?’ asked Shirota, who had not heard.

‘What is this bandit going to do now? His gang has been massacred, after all,’ Fandorin asked, but without any great interest: he simply did not wish to let the clerk know what he was thinking for the time being.

The bandit replied briefly and vigorously.

‘He says he is going to thank you.’

The determined tone in which these words were spoken put the titular counsellor on his guard.

‘What does he mean by that?’

Shirota explained with obvious approval:

‘Now you are his
onjin
for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, there is no such word in the Russian language.’ He thought for moment. ‘Benefactor to the grave. Can one say that?’

‘To the g-grave?’ Fandorin said with a shudder.

‘Yes, to the very grave. And he is your debtor to the grave. For not only did you save him from death, you also spared him indelible disgrace. For that, it is our custom to pay with supreme gratitude, even with our very life itself.’

‘What would I want with his life? Tell him “don’t mention it”, or whatever it is you say, and let him go on his way.’

‘When people say those words with such sincerity, they do not go on their own way,’ Shirota said reproachfully. ‘He says that from now on, you are his master. Wherever you go, he goes.’

The titch gave a low bow and stuck his little finger up in the air, which seemed rather impolite to Erast Petrovich.

‘Well, what does he say? Why does he not leave?’ asked the young Russian.

‘He will not leave. His
oyabun
has been killed, and so he has decided to devote his life to serving you. In proof of his sincerity, he offers to cut off his little finger.’

‘Oh, let him go to the d-devil!’ Fandorin exclaimed indignantly. ‘Tell him to hop it.’

The clerk did not dare argue with the annoyed vice-consul and started translating, but then stopped short.

‘In Japanese it is not possible to say simply “hop”, you have to explain where to.’

If not for the presence of a lady, Fandorin would gladly have provided the precise address, since his patience was running out – his first day in Japan had proved exhausting in the extreme.

‘Hop down the hill, like a grasshopper,’ said Fandorin, gesturing towards the waterfront with one hand.

A look of puzzlement flashed across the titch’s face, but immediately disappeared.

‘
Kashikomarimashita
,’ he said, and nodded.

He gathered himself, raised one foot off the ground and hopped off down the slope.

Erast Petrovich frowned. The blockhead could slip and break his leg on those cobbles. But damn him anyway, the vice-consul had more important business.

‘Tell me, Shirota, can you recommend a reliable doctor, capable of performing an autopsy?’

‘Reliable? Yes, I know a very reliable doctor. His name is Mr Lancelot Twigs. He is a sincere man.’

A rather strange recommendation for a medical man, thought the vice-consul.

From down below came a regular thudding, gradually growing more rapid – it was Fandorin’s debtor to the grave hopping down the cobbled street like a grasshopper.

Bruises will they bring,
the roadway’s rough cobblestones.
Honour’s path is hard.

1
I obey (Japanese)

A PERFECTLY HEALTHY CORPSE

‘I don’t understand a thing,’ said Dr Lancelot Twigs, peeling off the gloves covered in brownish-red spots and pulling the sheet up over the lacerated body. ‘The heart, liver and lungs are in perfect order. There’s no sign of any haemorrhaging in the brain – there was no need for me to saw open the brainpan. God grant every man such excellent health after the age of fifty.’

Fandorin glanced round at the door behind which Sophia Diogenovna had remained in Shirota’s care. The doctor had a loud voice, and the anatomical details he had mentioned might induce another outburst of hysterical sobbing. But then, how would this simple young woman know English?

The autopsy had taken place in the bedroom. They had simply removed the skinny mattress from the wooden bed, spread out oiled paper on the planks, and the doctor had set about his joyless task. Erast Petrovich had played the role of his assistant, holding a lantern and turning it this way and that, following the doctor’s instructions. At the same time, he himself tried to look away, so that he would not – God forbid! – collapse in a faint at the appalling sight. That is, when the doctor said: ‘Just take a look at that magnificent stomach!’ or ‘What a bladder! I wish I had one like that! Just look at it, will you!’, Fandorin turned round, he even nodded and grunted in agreement, but sensibly kept his eyes tightly shut. The smell alone was quite sufficient for the titular counsellor. It seemed as if this torture would never end.

The doctor was elderly and staid, but at the same time exceptionally talkative. His faded blue eyes had a genial glow to them. He had carried out his job conscientiously, from time to time running one hand over a bald spot surrounded by a faint halo of gingerish hair. But when it emerged that the cause of Captain Blagolepov’s death simply refused to be clarified, Twigs became excited, and the sweat started flowing freely across his bald cranium.

After one hour, two minutes and forty-five seconds (the exhausted Erast Petrovich had been timing things with his watch) Twigs finally capitulated.

‘I am obliged to state that this is a perfectly healthy corpse. This was a heroically robust organism, especially when one considers the protracted use by the deceased of the dried lacteal juice of the seed cases of
Papaver somniferum
. Nothing, apart perhaps from traces of tobacco resins ingrained in the throat and a slight darkening of the lungs – here, see?’ (Without even looking, Erast Petrovich said: ‘Oh, yes’.) ‘He has the heart of an ox. And it suddenly goes and stops, for no reason at all. I’ve never seen anything like it. You should have seen my poor Jenny’s heart.’ Twigs sighed. ‘The muscles were like threadbare rags. When I opened up the thoracic cavity, I simple wept for pity. The poor soul had a really bad heart, the second birth wore it out completely.’

Erast Petrovich already knew that Jenny was the doctor’s deceased wife and that he had decided to perform her autopsy in person, because both of his daughters also had weak hearts, like their mother, and he needed to take a look to see what the problem was – ailments of that kind were often inherited. It turned out to be a moderately severe prolapse of the bicuspid valve and, possessing that important piece of information, the doctor had been able to arrange the proper treatment for his adored little ones. Fandorin listened to this amazing story, not knowing whether he should feel admiration or horror.

‘Did you check the cervical vertebrae carefully?’ Erast Petrovich asked, not for the first time. ‘As I said, he might have been struck on the neck, from behind.’

‘There’s no trauma. Not even a bruise. Only a little red spot just below the base of the skull, as if from a slight burn. But it’s quite out of the question for a trifle like that to have any serious consequences. Perhaps there was no blow?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the young man, already regretting that he had started this rigmarole of the autopsy. Who knew what might stop the heart of an inveterate opium addict?

The dead man’s clothing was hanging on a chair. Erast Petrovich looked thoughtfully at the badly worn back of the tunic, the patched shirt with the buttoned collar – the very cheapest kind, celluloid. And suddenly he leaned down.

‘There was no blow as such, but there was a touch!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look, right here, the imprint left by a f-finger. Although it could have been Blagolepov’s own hand,’ the vice-consul added disappointedly. ‘He was fastening his collar, and he took a grip …’

‘Well, that’s not hard to clear up.’ The doctor took out a large magnifying glass and squatted down beside the chair. ‘Aha. The thumb of the right hand.’

‘You can tell that from a glance?’ asked Fandorin, astounded.

‘Yes, I’ve taken a bit of an interest. You see, my friend Henry Folds, who works in a hospital in Tokyo, made a curious discovery. While studying the prints left by fingers on old Japanese ceramics, he discovered that the pattern on the pads of the fingers is never repeated …’ Twigs walked over to the bed, took the dead man’s right hand and examined the thumb through the magnifying glass. ‘No, this is a quite different thumb. No doubt at all about it … And so Mr Folds proposed a curious hypothesis, according to which …’

‘I have read about fingerprints,’ Erast Petrovich interrupted impatiently, ‘but the European authorities do not see any practical application for the idea. Why don’t you check if it matches the spot with the mark that you spoke about?’

The doctor unceremoniously raised the dead head with its top sawn off and doubled right over.

‘Yes, it probably does. But what of that? There was a touch, but there was no blow. Where the burn came from is not clear, but I assure you that no one has ever died from a cause like this.’

Fandorin sighed and gave in. ‘Very well, stitch him up. I ought not to have bothered you.’

While the doctor worked away with his needle, the titular counsellor went out into the next room. Sophia Diogenovna leaned eagerly towards him with an expression on her face as if she were expecting the miraculous news that her father was not dead at all, and the English doctor had just established the fact scientifically.

Fandorin blushed and said:

‘We n-needed to establish the cause of death medically. It is routine.’

The young lady nodded, and the hope faded from her face.

‘And what was the cause?’ enquired Shirota.

Embarrassed, Erast Petrovich coughed into his hand and repeated the medical abracadabra that had stuck in his mind.

‘Prolapse of the biscuspid valve.’

The clerk nodded respectfully, but Sophia Diogenovna started crying quietly and inconsolably, as if this news had finally laid her low.

‘And what am I to do now, Mr Vice-Consul?’ she asked, her voice breaking. ‘I feel afraid here. What if Semushi suddenly shows up, for the money? Is there any way I can spend the night at your office? I could manage somehow on the chairs, no?’

‘Very well, let’s go. We’ll think of something.’

‘I’ll just collect my things.’

The young lady ran out of the room.

Silence fell. The only sound was the doctor whistling as he worked. Then something clattered on the floor and Twigs swore: ‘Damned crown!’, from which Fandorin speculated that the Anglo-Saxon had dropped the top of the braincase.

Erast Petrovich suddenly felt unwell and, in order not to hear anything else nasty, he started a conversation – he asked why Shirota had called the doctor ‘a sincere man’.

The clerk was pleased at the question – he too seemed to find the silence oppressive, and he started telling the story with relish.

‘It is a very beautiful story, they even wanted to write a kabuki theatre play about it. It happened five years ago, when Twigs-sensei was still in mourning for his esteemed wife and his esteemed daughters were little girls. While playing the card game of bridge at the United Club, the sensei quarrelled with a certain bad man, a doerist. The doerist had arrived in Yokohama recently and started beating everyone at cards, and if anyone took offence, he challenged them to fight. He had already shot one man dead and seriously wounded another two. Nothing happened to the doerist for this, because it was a duel.’

‘Aha, a duellist!’ Fandorin exclaimed, after puzzling over the occasional alternating l’s and r’s in Shirota’s speech, which was absolutely correct in every other way.

‘Yes, yes, a doerist,’ Shirota repeated. ‘And so this bad man challenged the sensei to fight with guns. The doctor was in a dreadful situation. He did not know how to shoot at all, and the doerist would certainly have killed him, and his daughters would have been left orphans. But if the sensei refused to fight a duel, everyone would have turned their backs on him, and his daughters would have been ashamed of their father. But he did not want his daughters to feel ashamed. And then Mr Twigs said that he accepted the challenge, but he needed a delay of five days in order to prepare himself for death as befits a gentleman and a Christian. And he also demanded that the seconds must name the very longest distance that was permitted by the doering code – a full thirty paces. The doerist agreed contemptuously, but demanded in return that there must be no limit to the number of shots and the duel must continue until there was “a result”. He said he would not allow a duel of honour to be turned into a comedy. For five days the sensei saw no one. But at the appointed hour on the appointed day he came to the site of the duel. People who were there say he was a little pale, but very intense. The opponents were set thirty paces away from each other. The doctor removed his frock coat, and put cotton wool in his ears. And when the second waved the handkerchief, he raised his pistol, took careful aim and shot the doerist right in the centre of the forehead!’