The monkey-like gentleman who had halted beside Mr Babble was M. Boileau, the former Windsor habitue who had left the ill-fated saloon and so slipped through Commissioner Gauche’s net.
Speaking in a low voice directly into Clarissa’s ear, the diplomat told her:
‘The man you see here is a criminal and a villain. Most probably a dealer in opium. He lives in Hong Kong and is married to a Chinese woman.’
Clarissa burst into laughter.
“Well, you’re really wide of the mark this time! That is M. Boileau from Lyon, a philanthropist and the father of eleven completely French children. And he deals in tea, not opium.’
‘I rather think not,’ Fandorin replied calmly. ‘Look closely, his cuff has bent up and you can see the blue circle of a tattoo on his wrist. I have seen one like that before in a book about China. It is the mark of one of the Hong Kong triads, secret criminal societies. Any European who becomes a member of a triad must be a master criminal operating on a truly grand scale.
And of course, he has to marry a Chinese woman. A single look at the face of this “philanthropist” should make everything clear to you.’
Clarissa didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but Fandorin continued with a serious expression:
‘And that is by no means all, Miss Stamp. I can tell a lot about a person even if I am b-blindfolded - from the sounds that he makes and his smell. Why not test me for yourself?’
And so saying he untied his white satin necktie and handed it to Clarissa.
She fingered the fabric - it was dense and non-transparent and then blindfolded the diplomat with it. As though by accident she touched his cheek - it was smooth and hot.
The ideal candidate soon put in an appearance from the direction of the stern - the well-known suffragette, Lady Campbell, making her way to India in order to collect signatures for her petition for married women to be given the vote. Mannish and massive, with cropped hair, she lumbered along the deck like a carthorse. He would never guess that this was a lady and not a boatswain.
‘Right, who is this coming our way?’ Clarissa asked, choking in anticipatory laughter.
Alas, her merriment was short-lived.
Fandorin wrinkled up his brow and began tossing out staccato phrases:
‘A skirt hem rustling. A woman. A heavy stride. A strong c-character. Elderly. Plain. Smokes tobacco. Short-cropped hair.’
‘Why does she have short-cropped hair?’ Clarissa squealed, covering her eyes and listening carefully to the suffragette’s elephantine footfall. Flow, how did he do it?
‘If a woman smokes, she must have bobbed hair and be progressive in her views,’ Fandorin declared in a firm voice. ‘And this one also despises fashion and wears a kind of shapeless robe, bright green with a scarlet belt.’
Clarissa was dumbstruck. This was quite incredible! She took her hands away from her eyes in superstitious terror and saw that Fandorin had already removed the necktie and even retied it in an elegant knot. The diplomat’s blue eyes were sparkling in merriment.
All this was very pleasant, but the conversation had ended badly. When she stopped laughing, Clarissa very delicately broached the subject of the Crimean War and what a tragedy it had been for both Europe and Russia. She touched cautiously on her own memories of the time, making them somewhat more infantile than they were in reality. She was anticipating reciprocal confidences, and hoping to learn exactly how old Fandorin really was. Her worst fears were confirmed: ‘I was still not b-born then,’ he confessed, artlessly clipping Clarissa’s wings.
After that everything had gone from bad to worse. Clarissa had tried to turn the conversation to painting, but she got everything so mixed up that she couldn’t even explain properly why the Pre-Raphaelites had called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. He must have thought her an absolute idiot. Ah, but what difference did it make now?
As she was making her way back to her cabin, feeling sad, something terrifying happened.
She saw a gigantic black shadow quivering in a dark corner of the corridor. Clutching at her heart, Clarissa let out an immodest squeal and made a dash for her own door. Once she was in her cabin it was a long time before she could calm her wildly beating heart. What was that thing? Neither man nor beast.
Some concretion of evil, destructive energy. Her guilty conscience.
The phantom of her Paris nightmare.
No more, she told herself, she had put all that behind her. It was nothing. It was delirium, a delusion, no more. She had sworn that she would not torment herself with remorse. This was a new life, bright and happy - ‘And may your mansion be illumined by the lamp of bliss.’
To soothe her nerves, she put on her most expensive day dress, the one she had not even tried yet (white Chinese silk with a pale-green bow at the back of the waist) and put her emerald necklace round her neck. She admired the gleam of the stones.
Very well, so she wasn’t young. Or beautiful either. But she was far from stupid and she had money. And that was far better than being an ugly, ageing fool without a penny to her name.
Clarissa entered the saloon at precisely two o’clock, but the entire company was already assembled. Strangely enough, rather than fragmenting the Windsor contingent, the commissioner’s astounding announcement of the previous day had brought them closer together. A common secret that cannot be shared with anyone else binds people to each other more tightly than a common cause or a common interest. Clarissa noticed that her fellow diners now gathered around the table in advance of the times set for breakfast, lunch, five o’clock tea and dinner, and lingered on afterwards, something that had hardly ever happened before. Even the captain’s first mate, who was only indirectly involved in this whole affair, spent a lot of time sitting on in the Windsor saloon with the others rather than hurrying off about his official business (but then, of course, the lieutenant might possibly be acting on the captain’s orders). It was as though all the Windsorites had joined some elite club that was closed to the uninitiated. Several times Clarissa caught swift, stealthy glances cast in her direction. Glances that could mean one of two things: ‘Are you the murderer?’ or ‘Have you guessed that I am the murderer?’ Every time it happened she felt a sweet trembling sensation welling up from somewhere deep inside, a pungent cocktail of fear and excitement. The image of the rue de Grenelle rose up clearly before her eyes, the way it looked in the evening: beguilingly quiet and deserted, with the bare branches of the black chestnut trees swaying against the sky. God forbid that the commissioner should somehow find out about the Ambassador Hotel. The very thought of it terrified Clarissa, and she cast a furtive glance in the policeman’s direction.
Gauche presided at the table like the high priest of a secret sect. They were all constantly aware of his presence and followed the expression on his face out of the corners of their eyes, but Gauche appeared not to notice that at all. He assumed the role of a genial philosopher happy to relate his ‘little stories’, while the others listened tensely.
By unspoken agreement, that was only discussed in the saloon and only in the commissioner’s presence. If two Windsorites chanced to meet somewhere in neutral territory - in the music salon, on the deck, in the reading hall - they did not discuss that under any circumstances. And not even in the saloon did they return to the tantalizing subject on every occasion. It usually happened spontaneously, following some entirely unrelated remark.