Murder on the Leviathan Read online

  Murder on the Leviathan

  Series: Fandorin [2]

  Published: 2005

  Tags: Action, Mystery, Historical Novel

  Actionttt Mysteryttt Historical Novelttt

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  SUMMARY:

  Usually, crime writers who give birth to protagonists deserving of future series want to feature those characters as prominently as possible in subsequent installments. Not so Boris Akunin, who succeeds his celebrated first novel about daring 19th-century Russian sleuth Erast Fandorin, The Winter Queen, with the less inventive Murder on the Leviathan, in which the now former Moscow investigator competes for center stage with a swell-headed French police commissioner, a crafty adventuress boasting more than her fair share of aliases, and a luxurious steamship that appears fated for deliberate destruction in the Indian Ocean. Following the 1878 murders of British aristocrat Lord Littleby and his servants on Paris's fashionable Rue de Grenelle, Gustave Gauche, "Investigator for Especially Important Crimes," boards the double-engined, six-masted Leviathan on its maiden voyage from England to India. He's on the lookout for first-class passengers missing their specially made gold whale badges--one of which Littleby had yanked from his attacker before he died. However, this trap fails: several travelers are badgeless, and still others make equally good candidates for Littleby's slayer, including a demented baronet, a dubious Japanese army officer, a pregnant and loquacious Swiss banker's wife, and a suave Russian diplomat headed for Japan. That last is of course Fandorin, still recovering two years later from the events related in The Winter Queen. Like a lesser Hercule Poirot, "papa" Gauche grills these suspects, all of whom harbor secrets, and occasionally lays blame for Paris's "crime of the century" before one or another of them--only to have the hyper-perceptive Fandorin deflate his arguments. It takes many leagues of ocean, several more deaths, and a superfluity of overlong recollections by the shipmates before a solution to this twisted case emerges from the facts of Littleby's killing and the concurrent theft of a valuable Indian artifact from his mansion. Like the best Golden Age nautical mysteries, Murder on the Leviathan finds its drama in the escalating tensions between a small circle of too-tight-quartered passengers, and draws its humor from their over-mannered behavior and individual eccentricities. Trouble is, Akunin (the pseudonym of Russian philologist Grigory Chkhartishvili) doesn't exceed expectations of what can be done within those traditions. --J. Kingston Pierce

  'Pastiche of the highest order, absurd and completely gripping at the same time' Joan Smith, Sunday Times

  'Hugely entertaining, cunningly plotted detective novels . . . clever, witty, wry page-turners to be commended to anyone with a taste for crime fiction and/or the Russian classics, both of which Akunin liberally pastiches . . . pure Agatha Christie' Jasper Rees, Daily Telegraph

  'Akunin writes in a slightly arch style that is not quite a pastiche of i9th-century prose . . . The style is particularly good for expressing the narrator's faintly ironic tone as he describes the mishaps that befall his naive hero . . . Akunin's neatly crafted novels offer intellectual entertainment with no further aim' Robin Buss, Financial Times magazine

  'This is a book you want to gallop through, pitting your wits against the author, desperate to find out who did it. At the same time, the accomplished writing ... is well worth lingering over' Daily Mail

  'Ingenious, diverting, sometimes brilliant take on Agatha Christie-style whodunit, with assorted suspects including a fretful samurai, a clock-watching English pedant, the secret son of an Indian rajah, a jingoistic Brit spinster and a pistol-packing woman of mystery all in the frame . . . Escapist, exciting and altogether innocent. A fresh, lively read' Philip Oakes, Literary Review

  'Some good old Victorian camp . . . There are some great moments of deadpan melodrama . . . such a likeable book' Melanie Brett, TLS

  'Akunin . . . seems able to carry off whatever detective genre he turns to, and makes no bones about incorporating his diverse knowledge into his books' plots. The result is a barnstorming success' Omer Ali, Time Out

  'Akunin has embraced the rules of i9th-century conduct . . . Such charming language and an otherwise romantic setting ultimately highlights the shocking nature of the murders, and

  the switch between a comedy of manners and brutal murder makes this a thoroughly enjoyable read' Rebecca Pearson, Independent on Sunday

  'Fandorin is a beautifully drawn character who more than lives up to comparisons with Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes. Like all the best detectives he is an unlikely, loveable hero . . . Akunin's work is gloriously tongue-in-cheek but seriously edge-of-your seat at the same time' Viv Groskop, Daily Express

  'A delightful and absurd tale of murder and chicanery set entirely on the world's largest steamship, sailing between Egypt and India . . . Akunin succeeds in both the humour and the mystery . . . Clever and fun' The Times

  Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He has been compared to Gogol, Tolstoy and Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Erast Fandorin books have sold over ten million copies in Russia alone. He lives in Moscow.

  By Boris Akunin

  The Winter Queen

  Murder on the Leviathan Turkish Gambit

  The Death of Achilles

  MURDER ON THE LEVIATHAN

  BORIS AKUNIN

  Translated by Andrew Bromfield

  A PHOENIX PAPERBACK

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson as Leviathan This paperback edition published in 2004 by Phoenix, an imprint of Orion Books Ltd, Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London wc2H 9EA

  First published in Russia in 1998 as Leviafan by I. Zakharov

  Second impression 2004

  Copyright © 1998 Boris Akunin Translation © Andrew Bromfield

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  The right of Boris Akunin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The right of Andrew Bromfield to be identified as the translator has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in

  any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 13 978-0-7538-1843-5 ISBN 10 0-7538-1843-4

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  The Orion Publishing Group's policy is to use papers that

  are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  From Commissioner Gauche's black file

  Record of an examination of the scene of the crime carried out on the evening of 15 March 1878 in the mansion of Lord Littleby on the rue de Grenelle (7th arrondissement of the city of Paris) [A brief extract]

  . . . For reasons unknown all the household staff were gathered in the pantry, which is located on the ground floor of the mansion to the left of the entrance hall (room 3 on diagram 1). The precise locations of the bodies are indicated on diagram 4, in which:

  No. 1 is the body of the butler, Etienne Delarue, age 48 years

  No. 2 is the body of the housekeeper, Laura Bernard, age 54 years

  No. 3 is the body of the master's manservant, Marcel Prout, age 28 years

  No. 4 is the body of the butler's son, Luc Delarue, age 11 years

  No. 5 is t
he body of the maid, Arlette Foche, age 19 years

  No. 6 is the body of the housekeeper's granddaughter, Anne-Marie Bernard, age 6 years

  No. 7 is the position of the security guard Jean Lesage, age 42 years, who died in the St-Lazare hospital on the morning of 16 March without regaining consciousness

  No. 8 is the body of the security guard Patrick Trois-Bras, age 29 years

  No. 9 is the body of the porter, Jean Carpentier, age 40 years.

  The bodies shown as Nos. 1-6 are in sitting positions around the large kitchen table. Nos. 1-3 are frozen with their heads lowered onto their crossed arms, No. 4 is resting his cheek on his hands, No. 5 is reclining against the back of the chair and No. 6 is in a kneeling position beside No. 2. The faces of Nos. 1-6 are calm, without any indication whatever of fear or suffering. On the other hand, Nos. 7-9, as the diagram shows, are lying at a distance from the table and No. 7 is holding a whistle in his hand. However, none of the neighbours heard the sound of a whistle yesterday evening. The faces of No. 8 and No. 9 are set in expressions of horror, or at the very least of extreme consternation (photographs will be provided tomorrow morning). There are no signs of a struggle. A rapid examination also failed to reveal any sign of injury to the bodies. The cause of death cannot be determined without a post-mortem. From the degree of rigor mortis the forensic medical specialist Maitre Bernhem determined that death occurred at various times between ten o'clock in the evening (No. 6) and six o'clock in the morning, while No. 7, as stated above, died later in hospital. Anticipating the results of the medical examination, I venture to surmise that all of the victims were exposed to a potent and fast-acting poison inducing a narcotic effect, and the time at which their hearts stopped beating depended either on the dose of poison received or the physical strength of each of the victims.

  The front door of the mansion was closed but not locked. However, the window of the conservatory (item 8 on diagram 1) bears clear indications of a forced entry: the glass is broken and on the narrow strip of loose cultivated soil below it there is the indistinct imprint of a man's shoe with a sole 26 centimetres in length, a pointed toe and a steel-shod heel (photographs will be provided). The felon probably gained entry to the house via the garden only after the servants had been poisoned and sank into slumber, otherwise they would certainly have heard the sound of breaking glass. It remains unclear, however, why, after the servants had been rendered harmless, the perpetrator found it necessary to enter the house through the garden, when he could quite easily have walked through into the house from the pantry. In any event, the perpetrator made his way from the conservatory up to the second floor, where Lord Littleby's personal apartments are located (see diagram 2). As the diagram shows, the left-hand section of the second floor consists of only two rooms: a hall, which houses a collection of Indian curios, and the master's bedroom, which communicates directly with the hall. Lord Littleby's body is indicated on diagram 2 as No. 10 (see also the outline drawing). His Lordship was dressed in a smoking jacket and woollen pantaloons and his right foot was heavily bandaged. An initial examination of the body indicates that death occurred as a result of an extraordinarily powerful blow to the parietal region of the skull with a heavy, oblong-shaped object. The blow was inflicted from the front. The carpet is spattered with blood and brain tissue to a distance of several metres from the body. Likewise spattered with blood is a broken glass display case which, according to its nameplate, previously contained a statuette of the Indian god Shiva (the inscription on the nameplate reads: 'Bangalore, 2nd half XVIII century, gold'). The missing sculpture was displayed against a background of painted Indian shawls, one of which is also missing.

  From the report by Dr Bemhem on the results of pathological and anatomical examination of the bodies removed from the rue de Grenelle

  . . . however, whereas the cause of Lord Littleby's death (body No. 10) is clear and the only aspect which may be regarded as unusual is the force of the blow, which shattered the cranium into seven fragments, in the case of Nos. 1-9 the picture was less obvious, requiring not only a post-mortem but in addition chemical analyses and laboratory investigation. The task was simplified to some extent by the fact that J. Lesage (No. 7) was still alive when he was initially examined and certain typical indications (pinhole pupils, suppressed breathing, cold clammy skin, rubefaction of the lips and the ear lobes) indicated a presumptive diagnosis of morphine poisoning. Unfortunately, during the initial examination at the scene of the crime we had proceeded on the apparently obvious assumption that the poison had been ingested orally, and therefore only the victims' oral cavities and glottises were subjected to detailed scrutiny. Since no pathological indications were discovered, the forensic examination was unable to provide any conclusive answers. It was only during examination in the morgue that each of the nine deceased was discovered to possess a barely visible injection puncture on the inner flexion of the left elbow. Although it lies outside my sphere of competence, I can venture with reasonable certainty the hypothesis that the injections were administered by a person with considerable experience in such procedures: 1) the injections were administered with great skill and precision, not one of the subjects bore any visible signs of haematoma; 2) since the normal interval before narcotic coma ensues is three minutes, all nine injections must have been administered within that period of time. Either there were several operatives involved (which is unlikely), or a single operative possessing truly remarkable skill - even if we are to assume that he had prepared a loaded syringe for each victim in advance. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that a person in full possession of his faculties would offer his arm for an injection if he had just witnessed someone else lose consciousness as a result of the procedure. Admittedly, my assistant Maitre Jolie believes that all of these people could have been in a state of hypnotic trance, but in all my years in this line of work I have never encountered anything of the sort. Let me also draw the commissioner's attention to the fact that Nos. 7-9 were lying on the floor in poses clearly expressive of panic. I assume that these three were the last to receive the injection (or that they offered greater resistance to the narcotic) and that before they lost consciousness they realized that something suspicious was happening to their companions. Laboratory analysis has demonstrated that each of the victims received a dose of morphine approximately three times in excess of the lethal threshold. Judging from the condition of the body of the little girl (No. 6), who must have been the first to die, the injections were administered between nine and ten o'clock on the evening of 15 March.

  TEN LIVES FOR A GOLDEN IDOL!

  Nightmare crime in fashionable district

  Today, 16 March, all of Paris is talking of nothing but the spine-chilling crime which has shattered the decorous tranquillity of the aristocratic rue de Grenelle. The Revue parisienne's correspondent was quick to arrive at the scene of the crime and is prepared to satisfy the legitimate curiosity of our readers.

  And so, this morning as usual, shortly after seven o'clock, postman Jacques Le Chien rang the doorbell of the elegant two-storey mansion belonging to the well-known British collector Lord Littleby. M. Le Chien was surprised when the porter Carpen-tier, who always took in the post for his Lordship in person, failed to open up, and noticing that the entrance door was slightly ajar, he stepped into the hallway. A few moments later the 70-year-old veteran of the postal service ran back out onto the street, howling wildly. Upon being summoned to the house, the police discovered a scene from the kingdom of Hades - seven servants and two children (the 11-year-old son of the butler and the six-year old granddaughter of the housekeeper) lay in the embrace of eternal slumber. The police ascended the stairs to the second floor and there they discovered the master of the house, Lord Littleby, lying in a pool of blood, murdered in the very repository which housed his celebrated collection of oriental rarities. The 55-year-old Englishman was well known in the highest social circles of our capital. Despite his reputation as an eccentric and unsociable individual, archaeologica
l scholars and orientalists respected Lord Littleby as a genuine connoisseur of Indian history and culture. Repeated attempts by the directors of the Louvre to purchase items from the lord's diverse collection had been disdainfully rejected. The deceased prized especially highly a golden statuette of Shiva, the value of which is estimated by competent experts to be at least half a million francs. A deeply mistrustful man, Lord Littleby was very much afraid of thieves, and two armed guards were on duty in the repository by day and night.

  It is not clear why the guards left their post and went down to the ground floor. Nor is it clear what mysterious power the malefactor was able to employ in order to subjugate all of the inhabitants of the house to his will without the slightest resistance (the police suspect that use was made of some quick-acting poison). It is clear, however, that he did not expect to find the master of the house himself at home, and his fiendish calculations were evidently thwarted. No doubt we should see in this the explanation for the bestial ferocity with which the venerable collector was slain. The murderer apparently fled the scene of the crime in panic, taking only the statuette and one of the painted shawls displayed in the same case. The shawl was evidently required to wrap the golden Shiva - otherwise the bright lustre of the sculpture might have attracted the attention of some late-night passer-by. Other valuables (of which the collection contains a goodly number) remained untouched. Your correspondent has ascertained that Lord Littleby was at home yesterday by chance, through a fatal confluence of circumstances. He had been due to depart that evening in order to take the waters, but a sudden attack of gout resulted in his trip being postponed - and condemned him to death.