A buffoon, not a sailor.
In the course of the twelve days that had elapsed since they sailed, the commissioner had subjected his saloon-mates to close scrutiny, absorbed the rudiments of society manners (that is, he had learned not to smoke during a meal and not to mop up his gravy with a crust of bread), more or less mastered the complex geography of this floating city and grown accustomed to the ship’s pitching, but he had still made no progress towards his goal.
The situation was now as follows:
Initially his list of suspects had been headed by Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes, an emaciated, ginger-haired gentleman with tousled sideburns. He looked about twenty-eight or thirty years old and behaved oddly, either gazing vaguely into the distance with those wide green eyes of his and not responding to questions, or suddenly becoming animated and prattling on about the island of Tahiti, coral reefs, emerald lagoons and huts with roofs made of palm leaves. Clearly some kind of mental case. Why else would a baronet, the scion of a wealthy family, go travelling to some God-forsaken Oceania at the other end of the world? What did he think he would find there? And note, too, that this blasted aristocrat had twice ignored a question about his missing badge. He stared straight through the commissioner, and when he did happen to glance at him he seemed to be scrutinizing some insignificant insect. A rotten snob. Back in Le Havre (where they had stood for four hours) Gauche had made a dash to the telegraph and sent off an inquiry about Milford-Stokes to Scotland Yard: who was he, did he have any record of violent behaviour, had he ever dabbled in the study of medicine? The reply that had arrived just before they sailed contained nothing of great interest, but it had explained away the strange mannerisms. Even so, he did not have a golden whale, which meant it was still too early for Gauche to remove the ginger gentleman from his list of potential clients.
The second suspect was M. Gintaro Aono, a ‘Japanese nobleman’ (or so it said in the register of passengers). He was a typical Oriental, short and skinny. He could be almost any age, with LEVIATHAN that thin moustache and those narrow, piercing eyes. He remained silent most of the time at table. When asked what he did, he mumbled in embarrassment: ‘An officer of the Imperial Army.’ When asked about his badge he became even more embarrassed, cast a glance of searing hatred at the commissioner, excused himself and left the room, without even finishing his soup. Decidedly suspicious! An absolute savage.
He fanned himself in the saloon with a bright-coloured paper contraption, like some pederast from one of those dens of dubious delight behind the rue de Rivoli, and he strolled about the deck in his wooden slippers and cotton robe without any trousers at all. Of course, Gustave Gauche was all in favour of liberty, equality and fraternity, but a popinjay like that really ought not to have been allowed into first class.
And then there were the women.
Mme Renate Kleber. Young, barely twenty perhaps. The wife of an employee of a Swiss bank, travelling to join her husband in Calcutta. She could hardly be described as a beauty, with that pointy nose, but she was lively and talkative. She had informed him she was pregnant the very moment they were introduced.
All her thoughts and feelings were governed by this single circumstance.
A sweet and ingenuous woman, but absolutely insupportable. In twelve days she had succeeded in boring the commissioner to death by chattering about her precious health, embroidering nightcaps and other such nonsense. Nothing but a belly on legs, although she was not very far along yet and the belly was only just beginning to show. Gauche, naturally, had chosen his moment and asked where her emblem was. The Swiss lady had blinked her bright little eyes and complained that she was always losing things. Which seemed very likely to be true. For Renate Kleber the commissioner felt a mixture of irritation and protectiveness, but he did not take her seriously as a client.
When it came to the second lady, Miss Clarissa Stamp, the worldly-wise detective felt a far keener interest. There was something about her that seemed not quite right. She appeared to be a typical Englishwoman, nothing out of the ordinary. No longer young, with dull, colourless hair and rather sedate manners, but just occasionally those watery eyes would give a flash of devilment.
He’d seen her type before. What was it the English said about still waters? There were a few other little details worthy of note. Mere trifles really, no one else would have paid any attention to that kind of thing, but nothing escaped Gauche, the sly old dog. Miss Stamp’s dresses and her wardrobe in general were expensive and brand new, everything in the latest Parisian style.
Her handbag was genuine tortoiseshell (he’d seen one like it in a shop window on the Champs-Elysees - three hundred and fifty francs), but the notebook she took out of it was old and made of cheap writing paper. On one occasion she had sat on the deck wearing a shawl (it was windy at the time), and it was exactly like one that Mine Gauche had, made of dog’s hair. Warm, but not at all the thing for an English lady. And it was curious that absolutely all of Clarissa Stamp’s new things were expensive but her old things were shoddy and of the very poorest quality. This was a clear discrepancy. One day just before five o’clock tea Gauche had asked her: ‘Why is it, my dear lady, that you never put on your golden whale? Do you not like it? It seems to me a very stylish trinket.’ And what was her response? She had blushed an even deeper colour than the ‘Japanese nobleman’ and said that she had worn it already but he simply hadn’t noticed. It was a lie.
Gauche would have noticed all right. The commissioner had a certain subtle ploy in mind, but he would have to choose exactly the right psychological moment. Then he would see how she would react, this Clarissa.
Since there were ten places at the table and he only had four passengers without their emblems, Gauche had decided to make up the numbers with other specimens who were also noteworthy in their own way, even though they had badges. It would widen his field of inquiry: the places were there in any case.
First of all he had demanded that the captain assign the ship’s chief physician, M. Truffo, to Windsor. Josiah Cliff had muttered a little but eventually he had given way. The reason for Gauche’s interest in the physician was clear enough - skilled in the art of giving injections, he was the only medic on board the Leviathan whose status entitled him to a golden whale. The doctor turned out to be a rather short, plump Italian with an olive complexion, a tall forehead and a bald patch with a few sparse strands of hair combed backwards across it. It was simply impossible to imagine this comical specimen in the role of a ruthless killer. In addition to the doctor, another place had to be allocated to his wife. Having married only two weeks previously, the physician had decided to combine duty and pleasure by making this voyage his honeymoon. The chair occupied by the new Mme Truffo was completely wasted. The dreary, unsmiling Englishwoman who had found favour with the shipboard Aesculapius appeared twice as old as her twenty years and inspired in Gauche a deadly ennui - as, indeed, did the majority of her female compatriots. He immediately dubbed her ‘the sheep’ for her white eyelashes and bleating voice. As it happened, she rarely opened her mouth, since she did not know French and for the most part conversations in the saloon were, thank God, conducted in that most noble of tongues. Mme Truffo had no badge of any kind, but that was only natural, since she was neither an officer nor a paying passenger.