Fandorin acted in similar fashion. He stopped obstinately setting his reason and his heart at odds. If this was love, so be it, let it be considered a normal state of soul.
He immediately felt slightly better. At least an end had been put to his inner discord. Erast Petrovich had enough reasons for torment without self-flagellation.
Falling in love with an actress was a truly heavy cross to bear – a thought to which Fandorin’s mind returned a hundred times a day.
With her he could never be sure of anything. Apart from the fact that in the next moment she would be different from the way she was in the previous one. Now cold, now passionate, now false, now sincere, now sweetly clinging, now spurning! The first phase of their relationship, which had lasted only a few days, had made him think that Eliza, despite her actress’s affectation, was nonetheless a normal, real, live woman. But how could he explain what had happened at Cricket Lane? Had it really happened, that explosion of devastating passion, or had he imagined it? Did it really happen that a woman flung herself into a man’s arms and then ran away – and ran in terror, even revulsion? What had he done wrong? Oh, Erast Petrovich would have paid dearly to receive an answer to the question that was tormenting him. Pride did not permit him to ask. Present himself in the pitiful role of a petitioner, a quibbler over feelings? Never!
In fact, everything was clear enough anyway. The question was rhetorical.
Eliza was firstly an actress, and secondly a woman. A professional enchantress, who needed powerful effects, emotional rupture, morbid passions. The sudden shift in her behaviour was dual in nature; firstly, she had taken fright at a serious relationship and didn’t wish to lose her freedom, and secondly, of course, she wanted to get him more securely fastened on the hook. Such paradoxical motivation was typical for women of the theatrical caste.
He was a wise old bird and he had seen all sorts of things, including the eternal female game of cat-and-mouse. And he had seen it performed with greater skill. In the art of binding a man to herself, a European actress was no match for an experienced Japanese courtesan with a command of jyojutsu, the ‘skill of passion’.
But although he understood this uncomplicated game perfectly well, he succumbed to it nonetheless and suffered, and his suffering was genuine. Self-reproach and logic were no help.
And then Erast Petrovich started trying to convince himself that he was very lucky. There was a stupid saying: ‘If you want to fall in love, then love a queen’. But a queen was some kind of nonsense, she wasn’t even a woman at all, but a walking set of ceremonial conventions. If you wanted to fall in love, then love a great actress.
She embodied the eternally elusive beauty of yugen. She was not one woman, but ten, even twenty: Juliet and the Distant Princess, Ophelia and the Maid of Orleans and Marguerite Gauthier. To conquer the heart of a great actress was very difficult, almost impossible, but if you succeeded, it was like conquering the love of all the heroines at once. And if you failed to conquer, nonetheless you loved the very best women in the world all at once. You would have to devote your entire life to the struggle for requited feelings. For even if you did win the victory, it would never be final. There would be no relaxation and peace – but who had ever said that that was a bad thing? Genuine life was this eternal trepidation, and not at all the walls that he had built round himself when he decided to grow old correctly.
Following the break-up, after having denied himself any possibility of seeing Eliza, he frequently recalled one conversation with her. Ah, how well they had spoken together during that brief, happy period! He remembered that he had asked her what it meant to be an actress. And she had answered.
‘I’ll tell you what it is to be an actress. It is to experience perpetual hunger – hopeless, insatiable hunger! A hunger so immense that no one can assuage it, no matter how greatly they love me. The love of one man will never be enough for me. I need the love of the whole world – all the young men, and all the old men, and all the children, and all the horses and cats and dogs and, most difficult of all, the love of all the women too, or at least most of them. I look at a waiter in a restaurant and I smile at him in a way that will make him love me. I stroke a dog and I tell it: love me. I walk into a hall full of people and I think: “Here I am, love me!” I am the unhappiest and the happiest person in the world. The unhappiest, because it is impossible to be loved by everyone. The happiest, because I live in constant anticipation, like someone in love before a tryst. This sweet ache, this torment is my happiness…’
At that moment she had been straining her ability to be sincere to its very limit.
Or had it been a monologue from some play?
But feelings were one thing, and work was another. The vicissitudes of love must not interfere with the investigation. That is, they quite definitely did interfere, periodically stirring up his line of deduction and obfuscating its clarity, but they did not distract Fandorin from his investigative activities. The viper in the basket of flowers was more like some piece of villainy out of an operetta, but a premeditated murder was no joke. Concern for the woman he loved and, when it came down to it, his civic duty, required that he expose the treacherous criminal. The Moscow Police were free to come to any conclusions at all (Erast Petrovich’s opinion of their professional abilities was not very high), but he personally had no doubt at all that Emeraldov had been poisoned.
That had become clear on the very first evening, in the course of his nocturnal visit to the theatre. Not that Fandorin had suspected from the very first that something was amiss with the suicide of the leading man – not in the least. But since another event that was both ominous and hard to explain had occurred in Eliza’s immediate vicinity, he had to get to the bottom of it.
What had become clear?
The actor had remained behind in the theatre because he had an appointment to meet someone or other. That was one.
He was in a wonderful mood, which is strange for someone intending to commit suicide. That was two.
Thirdly. The goblet from which, according to the police report, Emeraldov had voluntarily drunk poison had, naturally, been taken away by the investigator. However, the polished surface of the table bore marks from two goblets. So the actor had received his unknown visitor after all, and they had drunk wine.
Fourthly. Judging from the marks, one of the goblets was intact, but the other had a slight leak. The first had left behind rings of water, the second had left rings of wine. Obviously, before the stage-prop goblets were used, they had been rinsed under the tap and not wiped dry. And then a little wine had seeped out of the second one.
Erast Petrovich had taken away dried-out particles of the red liquid for analysis. There had not been any poison in the wine. So the presumptive murderer had drunk out of the goblet that had disappeared. That was five.
The next day the picture had become even clearer. The following morning, once again employing the useful method known as ‘greasing the palm’, Fandorin had gained entrance to the properties room with the help of an usher. Or rather, the usher had simply shown him where the room was located and Erast Petrovich had opened the door himself, with the help of an elementary picklock.
And what had he found? The second tin goblet was standing on the shelf perfectly calmly, beside the crowns, jugs, dishes and other properties from Hamlet. Fandorin immediately recognised the item he was looking for from its description: it was the only one there like it, with an eagle and a snake on its hinged lid. Judging from the dust, some little time ago two goblets had stood here. On the evening of the murder, Emeraldov had taken them directly from the stage, and then someone (presumably the murderer) had returned only one to its place. Examination through a powerful magnifying glass had revealed the microscopic crack through which the wine had seeped out. And in addition, it was clear that the goblet had been well washed, and as a result, unfortunately, no fingerprints were left.