The Diamond Chariot (67 page)

‘There you go with your
ninso
again! You’re just laughing at me!’

‘I counted ten dead bodies on his face,’ she said quietly. ‘And those are only the ones he killed with his own hands.’

Fandorin didn’t know whether she was being serious or playing the fool. Or rather, he wasn’t absolutely certain that she was playing the fool. And so he asked with a laugh:

‘Can you see dead bodies on my face?’

‘Of course. Every time one man takes the life of another, it leaves a scar on his soul. And everything that happens in the soul is reflected on the face. You have those traces as well. Do you want me to tell you how many people you have killed?’ She held out her hand and touched his cheekbones with her fingers. ‘One, two, three …’

‘St-stop it!’ he said, pulling away. ‘Better tell me more about Bullcox instead.’

‘He doesn’t know how to forgive. Apart from the ten that he killed himself, I saw other traces, people for whose deaths he was responsible. There are a lot of them. Far more than there are of the first kind.’

The titular counsellor leaned forward despite himself.

‘You mean you can see that too?’

‘Yes, it’s not hard to read a killer’s face, it’s moulded so starkly, with sharp contrasts of colour.’

‘Positively Lombroso,’ murmured Erast Petrovich, touching himself on the cheekbone. ‘No, no, it’s nothing, go on.’

‘The people with the most marks on their faces are front-line generals, artillery officers and, of course, executioners. But the most terrible scars I have ever seen, quite invisible to ordinary people, were on a very peaceable, wonderful man, the doctor in a brothel where I used to work.’

O-Yumi said it as calmly as if she were talking about a perfectly ordinary job – as a seamstress or milliner.

Fandorin felt his insides cringe and he went on hastily, so that she wouldn’t notice anything.

‘A doctor? How strange.’

‘It’s not strange at all. Over the years he had helped thousands of girls get rid of their fetuses. Only the doctor had fine, light marks, like ripples on water, but Algie’s are deep and bloody. How could I not be afraid of him?’

‘He won’t do anything to you,’ the titular counsellor said sombrely but firmly. ‘He won’t have time. Bullcox is finished.’

She looked at him in fearful admiration.

‘You’re going to kill him first, are you?’

‘No,’ replied Erast Petrovich, opening the blind and peering cautiously at Doronin’s windows. ‘Any day now Bullcox will be expelled from Japan. In disgrace. Or perhaps even put in prison.’

In was lunchtime. Shirota, as usual, must have taken his ‘captain’s daughter’ to the table d’hôte at the Grand Hotel, but – dammit! – there was a familiar figure hovering in the window of the consul’s apartment. Vsevolod Vitalievich was standing there with his arms folded, looking straight at the carriage stuck there at the gates.

The very idea of leading O-Yumi across the yard, in a state of undress, and with only one shoe, was quite unthinkable.

‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked. ‘Let’s go! I want to settle into my new home as quickly as possible. Your place is so uncomfortable as it is!’

But they couldn’t sneak in like thieves either. O-Yumi was a proud woman, she would feel insulted. And wouldn’t he cut a fine figure, embarrassed of the woman he loved!

I’m not embarrassed, Erast Petrovich told himself. It’s just that I need to prepare myself. That is one. And she is not dressed. That is two.

‘Wait here for now,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

He walked across the yard with a brisk, businesslike stride, but he squinted sideways at Doronin’s window anyway. He saw Vsevolod Vitalievich turn away with a certain deliberate emphasis. What could that mean?

Clearly he must already know about Suga, and he realised that Fandorin had been involved in some way; waiting at the window was a way of reminding the vice-consul about himself and showing how impatient he was to hear a few explanations; his demonstrative indifference made it clear that he did not intend to demand these explanations – the titular counsellor would decide when the time was right.

Very subtle, very noble and most apposite.

Masa was standing outside the cupboard, as motionless as a Chinese stone idol.

‘Well, what has he been like?’ Erast Petrovich asked, gesturing to clarify the meaning of the gesture.

His servant reported with the help of mime and gesture: first he cried, then he sang, then he fell asleep, he had to be given the chamber pot once.

‘Well done,’ the vice-consul said approvingly. ‘
Kansisuru. Itte kuru
.’

That meant: ‘Guard. I go away.’

He looked into his room for a second and went back quickly to the carriage. He opened the door slightly.

‘You are not dressed and have no shoes,’ he said to the charming passenger, setting down a sack of Mexican silver on the seat beside her. ‘Buy yourself some clothes. And, in general, everything that you think you need. And these are my cards with the address. If you need to have something taken in or whatever, I don’t know, leave one with the shop assistant, they’ll deliver it. When you get back, you can settle in. You are the mistress of the house.’

O-Yumi touched the jingling sack with a smile, but without any great interest, thrust out a little bare foot and stroked Erast Petrovich on the chest with it.

‘Ah, what a dunce I am!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t even go into a shop in that state!’

He glanced furtively over his shoulder at the consulate and squeezed her slim ankle.

‘Why would I go inside?’ O-Yumi laughed. ‘They’ll bring everything I need to the carriage.’

The anti-Bullcox coalition, assembled at full strength, held its meeting in the office of the head of the municipal police. Somehow it turned out that the role of chairman had passed to Asagawa, although he had not been appointed by anyone. The Russian vice-consul, previously acknowledged by all as the leader, ceded his primacy quite willingly. First, having abandoned his brothers-in-arms for the sake of a private matter, Erast Petrovich had, as it were, forfeited his moral right to lead them. And secondly, he knew that his mind and heart were preoccupied with a quite different matter just at the moment. And that matter happened to be a most serious one, which could not be dealt with half-heartedly.

In any case, Asagawa conducted the analytical work surpassingly well without any help from Fandorin.

‘So, gentlemen, we have a witness who is prepared to testify. But he is an unreliable individual of dubious character and what he says is of little value without documentary confirmation. We have the Satsuman warriors’ oath, signed in blood, but this evidence incriminates only the late Intendant Suga. We also have the police reports confiscated by Suga, but again, they cannot be used against Bullcox. The only unquestionable piece of evidence is a coded diagram of the conspiracy in which the central figure is the senior foreign counsellor of the British imperial government. But in order for this diagram to become proof, we must first decipher it completely. We cannot hand the document over to the authorities before that – we might be making a fatal mistake for, after all, we do not know which other officials are involved in the conspiracy. Since the intendant of police himself was one …’

‘That’s right,’ said Lockston, who was puffing on his cigar on the windowsill, beside the open window – in order to spare Dr Twigs’ sensitive nose. ‘I basically don’t trust any of the Jappos … Apart from you, of course, my good friend Go. Let the doc try to figure out what the squiggles mean. We’ll identify all the bad guys and then smash them all at once. Right, Rusty?’

Erast Petrovich nodded in reply to the sergeant, but he looked only at the inspector.

‘All this is c-correct, but we don’t have much time. Bullcox is a clever man, and he has powerful allies who will stop at nothing. I have no doubt that Bullcox will pay particular attention to my person [the vice-consul cleared his throat in embarrassment at this point] and to you, since it is known that we were working together on investigating the case of the Satsuma trio.’

At this point Erast Petrovich allowed himself to deviate from the truth somewhat, but only in the details. Even if the Englishman had not had personal reasons to hate him, the members of the conspiracy, frightened by the intendant’s strange death, would certainly have taken an interest in the vice-consul. He and Suga had been actively involved in the investigation of the conspiracy against Okubo – that was one. The blow struck against the intendant was in the interests of the Russian Empire – that was two. And there was also a three: in his recent confrontation with Bullcox, the titular counsellor had been incautious – his actions had intimated his suspicion that the Briton was intending to burn certain compromising documents. In the emotional heat of the moment, the Right Honourable had probably not paid any attention to this, but later, of course, he would call it to mind. And there could certainly be no doubt that at present he was thinking unceasingly of the Russian diplomat, and with quite exceptional intensity.

It was getting stuffy in the office. Asagawa walked over to the window and stood beside the sergeant in order to take a breath of fresh air, but instead he choked on the ferocious tobacco fumes and started coughing. He waved his hand, scattering the cloud of smoke, and turned his back to the window.

‘Perhaps Fandorin-san is right. In any case, extra caution will do no harm. Let’s divide up the evidence, so that it is not all kept in the same place. Twigs-sensei will take the diagram – that is obvious. You are our only hope now, Doctor. For God’s sake, do not leave your house. No visits, no patients. Say that you are unwell.’

Twigs nodded solemnly and stroked his pocket – obviously that was where the crucial clue was.

‘I shall take the police reports, especially since three of them were written by me. That leaves the oaths for you, Sergeant.’

The American took the three sheets of paper covered with brown hieroglyphs and examined them curiously.

‘You can count on me. I’ll keep the papers with me, and I won’t set foot outside the station. I’ll even spend the night here.’

‘Excellent, that’s the best thing to do.’

‘And what will I get?’ asked Erast Petrovich.

‘You have custody of the only witness. That is quite enough.’

That left Fandorin feeling at a loss.

‘Gentlemen … I was about to ask you to take the prince off my hands. My domestic circumstances have changed somewhat, you see. I can’t possibly keep him now … I’ll exchange him for any of the clues. And please, as soon as possible.’

The inspector gave the vice-consul a curious glance, but he didn’t ask any questions.

‘All right, but it can’t be done in daylight – he’ll be seen. I tell you what. I know where we can accommodate the prince, there’s a good place that he won’t escape from. Tonight, just before dawn, bring him to pier number thirty-seven, it’s beside the Fujimi bridge.’

‘Th-thank you. And what if the doctor doesn’t manage to decipher the diagram? What then?’

The Japanese had an answer ready for this eventuality.

‘If the sensei does not decipher the diagram, we shall have to act in an unofficial manner. We shall give everything that we know, together with the material evidence and witnesses’ testimony, to one of the foreign newspapers. Only not a British one, of course. To the editors of
L’Echo du Japon
, for instance. The French will be absolutely delighted by a sensational story like this. Let Bullcox try to explain everything and demand a retraction. Then all the secrets will come out.’

On the way home Erast Petrovich’s eye was caught by the fashion shop ‘Madame Bêtise’ or, rather, by a huge advertising poster covered with roses and cupids: ‘The novelty of the Paris season! Fine and coarse fishnet stockings in all sizes, with moiré ties!’ The vice-consul blushed as he recalled a certain ankle. He went into the shop.

The Parisian stockings proved to be wonderfully fine, and on the aforementioned lower limb they ought to look absolutely breathtaking.

Fandorin choose half a dozen pairs: black, lilac, red, white, maroon and a colour called ‘Sunrise over the Sea’.

‘Which size would you like?’ the scented salesman asked.

The titular counsellor was on the brink of confusion – he hadn’t thought about the size, but the owner of the shop, Madame Bêtise herself, came to his assistance.

‘Henri, the monsieur requires size one. The very smallest,’ she cooed, examining the customer curiously (or at least, so it seemed to him).

Yes, indeed, the very smallest, Erast Petrovich realised, picturing O-Yumi’s tiny foot. But how did this woman know? Was it some kind of Parisian
ninso
?

The owner turned her face away slightly, still looking at Fandorin, then suddenly lowered her eyes and turned to look at the shelves of merchandise.

She made eyes at me, the titular counsellor deduced, and, even though he was not attracted to Madame Bêtise in the slightest, he squinted at himself in the mirror. And he found that, despite his rather exhausted appearance and creased suit, he was quite positively good-looking.

‘So glad to see you, do call more often, Monsieur Diplomat,’ a voice called from behind him on his way out.

He was surprised, but only very slightly. Yokahama was a small town. No doubt a tall young man with dark hair and blue eyes and a wonderfully curled moustache, who was always (well, almost always) impeccably dressed, had simply been noticed.

Although there was a fine rain falling (still the same kind, plum rain), Erast Petrovich was in a totally blissful state of mind. People walking towards him seemed to look at him with genuine interest and even, perhaps, gaze after him when he had walked by, the smell of the sea was wonderful and the sight of the ships at the anchorage was worthy of the brush of Mr Aivazovsky. The titular counsellor even tried to sing, something that he would not usually have allowed himself to do. The tune was distinctly bravura, the words entirely frivolous.

Yokohama, little town,

See me strolling up and down;