He took several steps forward to take a better look at it. He was right: Stern had handed out the parts to his actors in similar folders. Erast Petrovich’s keen glance made out the words printed in large capitals: ‘TWO COMETS…’
Rapidly stuffing the papers back into his briefcase, the whistling enthusiast scowled at Fandorin.
‘What are you doing always hanging around here, trying to sniff everything out, Nat Pinkerton?’
Now this was interesting.
‘So you kn-know me?’ Erast Petrovich asked, standing over the ruffian, who was squatting down on his haunches.
‘That’s the job – knowing everything.’ The other man stood up and turned out to be half a head taller than Fandorin. ‘What interests keep you hanging about here, Monsieur Sleuth? Professional matters, or perhaps affairs of the heart?’
These impudent words were accustomed by winking and derisive whistling.
Fandorin was in a foul mood today, and his nerves were not in good order. So he behaved in a manner that was less than absolutely worthy. Normally he considered it impossible to touch a gentleman of this type with his hands unless there was some urgent necessity to do so, but this time he broke his own prohibition. He took hold of a button on the man’s jacket between two fingers, tugged gently – and the button was left in his hand. He did the same with the other three buttons. Then he stuck them in the ruffian’s breast pocket.
‘Well, since you know who I am, don’t be impertinent with me. I don’t like it. And sew on your buttons, you’re improperly dressed.’
Good grief, a retired state councillor, a respectable man of fifty-five, and I behave like some pugnacious whippersnapper!
He had to give the scalper-in-chief credit. He obviously really had found out something about Fandorin, because he didn’t look for trouble. But there wasn’t even a hint of fear in his spiteful little eyes either. This time the whistle was mockingly respectful.
‘Jupiter is angry. So it’s an affair of the heart. Well, I wish you luck. No more, no more. I’m going to sew on my buttons.’
He tipped his hat and backed away.
This little outburst finally convinced Fandorin that his state of mind had not yet normalised.
Tomorrow, he told himself. I shall be in better form tomorrow.
He got into his automobile and drove away.
THE PREMIERE
The painful operation was carried out the next day, and on the whole it was a success. Only in the very first moment, when she glanced round, looked at the new arrival in the room and threw her hand up to her throat, as if she couldn’t catch her breath, Fandorin’s breath also faltered, but he controlled himself. Everyone dashed to shake his hand and greet him noisily, complaining about his pallor and rebuking ‘Mikhail Erastovich’ for not telling them that his ‘stepfather’ was unwell.
Erast Petrovich said hello to everyone, including even Eliza – politely and distantly. She didn’t look up. The aroma of her hair presented a clear and distinct danger. Catching the dizzying scent of Parma violets, the convalescent moved away quickly.
That’s it, he told himself in relief, it will be easier now.
But it didn’t get any easier. Every encounter, every accidental (and especially non-accidental) clash of glances, and in particular every exchange of even a couple of entirely insignificant words, paralysed his breathing and triggered a twinge in his chest. Fortunately Fandorin attended rehearsals infrequently. Only if the director asked him to come or the investigation required it.
After the embarrassment with Nonarikin and the enforced break of two weeks, he had to start over again almost from scratch and draw up his list of suspects anew.
He had no answer to the most important question: why had someone wanted to poison that fatuous popinjay Emeraldov? And was there any connection between the murder and the snake in the basket?
He had come up with about ten theories – effectively the number of members in the theatre company – but they were all unconvincing and contrived. On the other hand, in this strange world, many things seemed contrived: the actors’ behaviour, their manner of speaking, their relationships, the motivations for their actions. In addition to the ‘internal’ theories (those that were limited to the bounds of the Ark) there was one ‘external’ theory, which was rather more realistic, but a serious effort was required to elaborate it, and Erast Petrovich was not really in a fit state for serious effort. Although he regarded himself as recovered, he was still subject to fits of apathy and his brain was not working as well as usual.
Conducting the investigation in this condition, all on his own, without an assistant, was like rowing with one oar, setting the boat endlessly describing the same circle over and over again. Fandorin was used to discussing the progress of his deductions with Masa, it helped him to systematise and clarify the direction of his thinking. The Japanese often made useful comments, and in this grotesque case his common sense and close knowledge of the possible suspects would certainly have come in very useful.
But one of the proofs that Erast Petrovich was not yet fully recovered was the fact that he still found it hard to tolerate his old friend’s company. Why, oh why, had he spoken those words: ‘You can feel absolutely free’? The damned oriental Casanova had eagerly taken advantage of his permission and now hardly ever left Eliza’s side. It was more than Erast Petrovich could bear to see them rehearsing the passionate love scene. If he happened to be in the auditorium at the time, he immediately got up and left.
Thank God, the Japanese knew nothing about the investigation, or it would have been impossible to get rid of him. At the very beginning, when it was only a matter of the operetta viper in the basket of flowers, Fandorin had not seen any need to involve his assistant in such a frivolous case. And at the initial stage the matter of Emeraldov’s death had not seemed too complicated to him either. And, as we know, before the fiasco of the ‘Fishing with Live Bait’ operation, relations between master and servant were already ruptured – Masa had arrogantly usurped the role that Fandorin wrote for himself.
The days stretched out in this way. The theatre company was in a feverish state ahead of the premiere. Masa came back from rehearsals late in the evening – and invariably discovered that his master had already retired to the bedroom. And Fandorin, hating himself for the feebleness of his thinking, kept going round and round the same circle. He wrote out names and hypothetical motives on a sheet of paper.
‘Mephistov: pathological hatred of beautiful people?
‘Vulpinova: resentment: pathological psychology?
‘Aphrodisina: was she having a secret affair with the murdered man?
‘Reginina: extremely hostile relations with Emeraldov.
‘Stern: a pathological passion for sensationalism.
‘Gullibin: by no means as simple as he seems.’
And so on in the same vein.
Then he angrily crossed it all out: puerile babble! The word ‘pathological’ appeared in the list more frequently than was permissible in criminalistic theory. But then, beyond the slightest doubt, this environment was itself pathological. Stern loved to repeat Shakespeare’s phrase: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. The actors really were convinced that the whole of life was one big stage, and the stage was the whole of life. Here appearance became immutable reality, the mask was inseparable from the face and dissimulation was the natural norm of behaviour. These people regarded as insignificant those things that constituted the meaning of greatest significance for an ordinary person; and vice versa, they were willing to lay down their lives for things to which everybody else attached no importance…