by Boris Akunin
The rehearsal came to an end and the actors started going their separate ways.
Erast Petrovich deliberately dawdled. He sat down, crossed his legs and lit up a cigar. Eventually he was left on his own. But even then he didn’t hurry. Let the criminal’s nerves suffer a bit, let him languish in suspense.
The building was absolutely quiet now. Probably it was time.
THE JUDGEMENT OF FATE
He went out onto the stairs and walked down to the service floor. The dead-end corridor, onto which the doors of storerooms and workshops opened, was dark.
Fandorin stopped in front of the properties room and jerked on the door handle. It was locked – from the inside, he presumed.
He opened the door with the picklock. Inside it the darkness was pitch black. Erast Petrovich could have switched on the electric light, but he wanted to make the criminal’s task easier for him. The strip of pale light seeping in from the corridor was entirely adequate for him to walk over to the shelf and pick up the watch that he had left there.
As he walked through the darkness, expecting an attack at any moment, Fandorin felt a slight prick of shame at the extreme pleasure of his excitement: his pulse was beating out a drum tattoo, his skin was covered with goosebumps. This was the real reason why he hadn’t backed this home-grown Borgia up against the wall, why he hadn’t tangled him up in the chain of evidence. Erast Petrovich wanted to shake himself up, refresh himself, set the blood coursing through his veins. Love, danger, the anticipation of victory – this was genuine life, and old age could wait.
He wasn’t taking much of a risk. Not unless the criminal decided to shoot, but that was not very likely. Firstly, the watchman would hear and call the police. Secondly, judging from the impression that Fandorin had formed of the director’s assistant, this ‘poor man’s Lermontov’, as Stern had called him so accurately and pitilessly, Nonarikin would choose some more theatrical method.
Nonetheless, Erast Petrovich’s hearing was stretched to the limit, prepared to catch the quiet click of a firing hammer being raised. It wasn’t so very easy to hit a fast-moving black cat in a dark room (Fandorin was wearing a black suit today).
He had already determined the killer’s location from a very faint rustling that he heard coming from the right-hand corner. No one but Fandorin, who in his time had made a special study of listening to silence, would have attached any importance to that sound, but Erast Petrovich immediately recognised it as the rustle of fabric against fabric. The man waiting in ambush had raised his hand. What was in it? A cold weapon? Something blunt and heavy? Or was it a revolver after all, and the hammer had been raised in advance?
Just to be on the safe side, Fandorin took a rapid step to one side, out of the greyish strip of light and into the darkness. He started whistling Alyabiev’s romance ‘Nightingale, My Nightingale’ in a special way, shifting his lips to one side and pursing them up. If the criminal was taking aim, he would have the illusion that his target was standing one step farther to the left.
Come on now, Monsieur Nonarikin. Be bold! Your victim suspects nothing. Attack!
However, there was a surprise in store for Erast Petrovich. A switch clicked and the properties room was flooded with light that was very bright by contrast with the darkness. There now, so that was why the assistant director had raised his hand.
It was him, naturally – with his forelock tousled and his eyes glinting feverishly. Fandorin’s powers of deduction had not let him down. But even so, there was yet another surprise, apart from the light. Nonarikin was holding in his hand not a knife, not an axe, not some vulgar kind of hammer, but two rapiers with cup-shaped hilts. They had previously been lying one shelf below the goblet – stage props from the same show.
‘Very impressive,’ said Erast Petrovich, clapping his hands silently. ‘It’s a pity that there’s no audience.’
There was one spectator, however: Fandorin’s acquaintance, the rat, was sitting in its former position with its little eyes glittering in fury. No doubt from the rat’s point of view they were both ignorant louts who had impudently invaded its private domain.
The assistant director blocked off the way out of the room. For some reason he was holding out the rapiers with the handles forward.
‘Why d-did you switch on the light? It would have been easier in the dark.’
‘It’s against my principles to attack from behind. I’m offering you up to the judgement of Fate, you false playwright. Choose your weapon and defend yourself!’
Nonarikin was strange. Calm, one could even say solemn. Exposed murderers didn’t behave like that. And what was this fairground burlesque with stage weapons? What was the point of it?
Even so, Fandorin took a rapier, the one that was closer to hand, without examining them. He glanced briefly at the point. You couldn’t stick that through a man, but you might just scratch him with it. Or raise a lump on his head if you took a good swing.
Erast Petrovich had not yet assumed a defensive posture (that is, he had not even decided yet whether to participate in this charade) when his opponent launched into the attack with a cry of ‘Gardez-vous!’, making a rapid lunge. If Fandorin had not possessed outstandingly fast reactions, the rapier would have pricked him straight in the chest, but Erast Petrovich swayed to one side. Even so the rapier tip tore through his sleeve and scratched his skin.
‘Touché!’ Nonarikin exclaimed, shaking the drop of blood off the blade. ‘You’re a dead man!’
An excellent frock coat had been completely ruined, and the shirt together with it. Erast Petrovich ordered his clothes from London and he was dreadfully angry.
It should be said that he fenced rather well. Once in his youth he had almost lost his life in a sabre duel and after that incident he had taken care to fill this dangerous gap in his education. Fandorin moved onto the attack, cascading blows on his opponent. So you want some fun? Then take that!
Incidentally, from the psychological point of view, one sure way to crush your opponent’s will is to defeat him in some kind of competition.
Nonarikin was under serious pressure, but he defended himself skilfully. Only once did Erast Petrovich succeed in striking the assistant director a serious blow to the forehead with the length of the blade, and once he caught him on the neck with a slashing blow. Backing away under the onslaught, the assistant director gaped in ever greater amazement at Fandorin, who was pale with fury. Nonarikin evidently hadn’t expected this kind of sprightliness from the playwright.
Right, that’s enough playing the fool, Erast Petrovich told himself. Finiamo la commedia.
With a double thrust he hooked up his opponent’s weapon, performed a twist – and the rapier went flying into the farthest corner. Forcing Nonarikin back against the wall with his blade, Fandorin said scathingly:
‘Enough theatre. I suggest a return to the confines of real life. And real death.’
His defeated enemy stood there quite still, squinting downwards at the rapier point pressed against his chest. Beads of sweat glinted on his pale forehead, where the lump was flooding with crimson.
‘Only don’t stab me,’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘Kill me some other way.’
‘Why would I kill you?” Fandorin asked in surprise. ‘And in any case, that is rather hard to do with a blunt piece of metal. No, my good fellow, you will serve hard labour. For cold-blooded, villainous murder.’
‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’
Erast Petrovich frowned.
‘My dear sir, don’t try to deny the obvious facts. From a theatrical point of view it will turn out very b-boring. If you did not poison Emeraldov, then why on earth would you arrange an ambush for me?’
The assistant director raised his round brown eyes and started batting his eyelids.
‘Are you accusing me of murdering Hippolyte? Me?’
For an actor of third-level parts he portrayed astonishment rather well. Erast Petrovich even laughed.
‘Who else?’
<
br /> ‘But surely you did it, didn’t you?’
Fandorin had not often encountered such barefaced insolence. He even felt slightly disconcerted.
‘What?’
‘But you gave yourself away! Today, during the tea break!’ Nonarikin cautiously touched the rapier blade, moving it away from his chest. ‘I’d been tormented by doubt since the day before yesterday. A man like Hippolyte couldn’t kill himself! It simply doesn’t make any sense. He loved himself too much. Then suddenly you started talking about goblets. And it hit me! There was someone there with Hippolyte! Someone drank wine with him. And slipped poison in his drink! I went to the properties room to take a look at the other goblet. And then I saw the Bure watch. It was as if a veil fell from my eyes! It all fitted together! The mysterious Mr Fandorin, who turned up here for no obvious reason, then disappeared and then appeared again – the day after Hippolyte was killed! That slip about the goblets! The lost watch! I guessed that you would come back for it. You know, I’m no great master at solving mysteries, but I believe in the justice of Fate and God’s judgement. So I decided that if you came, I would challenge you to a duel. And if Fandorin was the criminal, Fate would punish him. I went to my dressing room, came back here and started waiting for you, and you came. But you’re still alive, and now I don’t know what to think …’
He shrugged in bewilderment.
‘Raving nonsense!’ Fandorin sniggered. ‘Why on earth would I want to kill Emeraldov?’
‘Out of jealousy.’ Nonarikin gave him a look of weary reproach. ‘Emeraldov was pestering her far too openly. And you’re in love with her, that’s obvious. You’ve lost your head over her too. Like so many others …’
Feeling himself blushing, Fandorin didn’t even bother to ask who Nonarikin meant by that and raised his voice.
‘We’re not talking about me, but you! What was that nonsense you were spouting about the judgement of God? You can’t kill anyone with these twigs!’
The assistant director cast a wary look at the blade.
‘Yes, it’s a stage-prop rapier. But with a precisely directed blow you can pierce the skin with it – I did that with my first thrust.’
‘What of it? No one has ever died from a little scratch.’
‘It depends what kind of scratch. I told you that I went to get something from my dressing room. I have a medicine chest there, with remedies for every possible occasion. All sorts of things happen in the company, you know. Mr Mephistov has epileptic fits, Vasilisa Prokofievna has the vapours, and there are injuries too. And I’m responsible for everything and everyone. I have to be a jack-of-all-trades. They taught us that in the officers’ school: a good commander must know how to do everything.’
‘What are you t-telling me this for? What business is your medicine chest of mine?’ Fandorin interrupted him irritably, annoyed that the secrets of his heart had been so obvious to an outsider.
‘Along with everything else in there I have a little bottle of concentrated venom of the central Asian cobra. I brought it from Turkestan. An indispensable remedy for nervous ailments. Our ladies often suffer very serious hysterics. If Madam Vulpinova gets really carried away, she can go into convulsions. But I just have to put a couple of drops on cotton wool, rub her temples – and it’s gone, like magic.’ Nonarikin demonstrated how he rubbed the venom into the skin. ‘So I got this idea. I smeared the tip of one of the rapiers. The way Laertes did in Hamlet. I thought: if Fandorin poisoned Hippolyte, let him die of poison too, it will be God’s judgement. The rapiers are absolutely the same to look at, I didn’t even know myself which of them was poisoned. So our duel wasn’t theatrical at all, it was absolutely, genuinely, to the death. If the venom gets into the blood, the terminal spasms set in after two minutes, and then the breathing is paralysed.’
Erast Petrovich shook his head – this was raving lunacy after all.
‘But what if you’d been scratched by the poisoned rapier?’
The assistant director shrugged and replied:
‘I told you, I believe in Fate. Those are more than just empty words to me.’
‘But I don’t believe you!’ Fandorin raised the tip of the rapier right up to his eyes. It really did seem to have a damp gleam.
‘Careful, don’t prick yourself! And if you don’t believe me – let me have it.’
Erast Petrovich willingly handed him the weapon, but also lowered his hand into his left pocket, where his revolver lay. This assistant director was a strange individual. It wasn’t clear what to expect from him. Was he pretending to be half-witted? Would he attack again now? That would be the simplest finale. Fandorin deliberately turned his back, since he could follow Nonarikin’s movements from the shadow on the floor.
The former lieutenant’s silhouette swayed, then folded over double at lightning speed, with his outreached arm ending in the thin line of the rapier. Erast Petrovich was prepared for an attack, he jumped to the left and turned round. However, the shadow had misled him. It turned out that Nonarikin had made a thrust in the opposite direction.
With a cry of: ‘I lay a ducat that it is dead!’ he jabbed the rapier at a rat sitting peacefully on the floor, but didn’t run it through, merely pricked it slightly and flung it against the wall. The little beast squealed and darted away, knocking over cardboard goblets and papier-mâché vases.
‘You’ve l-lost your ducat. Now what?’ Erast Petrovich asked spitefully. He felt embarrassed about his desperate leap. At least he hadn’t pulled out his revolver.
But Nonarikin didn’t seem even to have noticed that Fandorin had shied away from him. The assistant director wiped the tip of the blade very cautiously with a handkerchief and started moving out the shelves.
‘Feast your eyes on that.’
The rat was lying there belly up, with all four legs twitching.
‘On this little animal the venom acted almost instantaneously. I told you, I wanted to punish a murderer. But Fate has acquitted you. You have been purged in my eyes.’
Only at this point did Erast Petrovich really believe that he had escaped an absurd, cruel death by a miracle. If not for his eternal good luck, which had prompted him to choose the poisoned weapon without even pausing for thought, he would be lying on the floor now, like that rat, with his open mouth straining convulsively. It would have been an idiotic death …
‘M-merci beaucoup. Only you have not yet been purged in my eyes. Afterwards the poisoner brought the second goblet back to the properties room. You are the only one with free access to the properties room. And you also had a motive: Emeraldov had been given the part that you were counting on.’
‘If we killed each other over parts, the theatres would have turned into graveyards a long time ago. You have an excessively romantic idea of actors.’ Nonarikin actually smiled. ‘As for the properties room, I certainly do have the key. But your example shows that it is possible to gain entry without it. And another thing. Do you know when exactly Hippolyte met his killer?’
‘I do. The nightwatchman saw him shortly after nine. And according to the post-mortem results, death occurred no later than midnight. I enquired from the police.’
‘So the crime was committed some time between shortly after nine and twelve o’clock. Then I have an alibi.’
‘What is it?’
Nonarikin hesitated before he replied.
‘I would never have said, but I feel guilty for almost having killed you. I repeat, I was certain that you were the poisoner, but now it turns out that you are searching for the poisoner. Fate has acquitted you.’
‘Stop talking about Fate!’ Erast Petrovich exploded, angry because he realised that he had missed the mark with his theory. ‘It gives me the impression that I’m talking to a lunatic!’
‘You shouldn’t talk like that.’ Nonarikin flung out his arms and looked up at the ceiling, or, to use a more solemn expression, raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘The man who believes in a Higher Power knows that nothing happens by accident. Especially when i
t is a matter of life and death. And the man who does not believe in a Higher Power is in no way different from an animal.’
‘You said something about an alibi,’ Fandorin interrupted him.
The assistant sighed and spoke in an ordinary voice, without any declamatory intonation.
‘Naturally, this is strictly between the two of us. Give me your word of honour. It concerns the reputation of a lady.’
‘I won’t give you any k-kind of word. You were with a woman that evening? With whom?’
‘Very well. I rely on your common decency. If you ever tell her about it (you understand who I mean), it will be a base and dishonourable act.’ Nonarikin hung his head and sighed. ‘That evening I left the theatre with Zoya Nikolaevna. We were together until the morning …’
‘With Comedina?’ Erast Petrovich asked after a second’s pause: he hadn’t understood immediately who Nonarikin meant. No one had ever called the little ‘leading boy’ by her first name and patronymic in his presence. However, if he was surprised by this confession, it was only for a moment.
‘Yes.’ The assistant director rubbed his bruised forehead unromantically. ‘As Terentius said: “I am human and nothing human is alien to me”. You are a man, you will understand me. After all, there are physiological needs. Only don’t ask me if I love Zoya Nikolaevna.’
‘I won’t,’ Fandorin promised. ‘But I shall definitely have a word with Madam Comedina. And you and I will continue this conversation …’
A MILLION TORMENTS
Despite the rather late hour, he drove directly from the theatre to the hotel in his automobile, so that Nonarikin could not get there ahead of him and conspire with Comedina. The precaution was strictly superfluous: Erast Petrovich had no doubt that the alibi would be confirmed, but in a serious case like this every detail had to be checked.
After Fandorin had managed, not without some difficulty, to locate the little actress’s room in the Madrid, he apologised to her for this unexpected visit and apologised even more profusely for the bluntness of the question he was about to ask. He had to talk to this young lady without any beating around the bush. And that was what he did.