‘He simply got up and left.’
‘For no reason at all?’
The Yakuza started thinking hard.
‘The captain was sitting there, dozing. With his back to the room. I think someone walked past behind him and woke him. Yes, yes! Some old man, totally doped. He staggered and swung his arm and caught the captain on the neck. The captain woke up and swore at the old man. Then he said: “Boss, I’m not feeling too well, I’ll be going”. And he left.’
When he finished translating, Shirota added on his own behalf:
‘No, Mr Titular Counsellor, there’s nothing suspicious in that. The captain must have felt a pain in his heart. He got as far as his home and then died there.’
Erast Petrovich did not respond to this piece of deduction, but a slight narrowing of his eyes suggested that he was not entirely satisfied with it.
‘His hand caught his neck?’ he murmured thoughtfully.
‘What?’ asked Shirota, who had not heard.
‘What is this bandit going to do now? His gang has been massacred, after all,’ Fandorin asked, but without any great interest: he simply did not wish to let the clerk know what he was thinking for the time being.
The bandit replied briefly and vigorously.
‘He says he is going to thank you.’
The determined tone in which these words were spoken put the titular counsellor on his guard.
‘What does he mean by that?’
Shirota explained with obvious approvaclass="underline"
‘Now you are his onjin for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, there is no such word in the Russian language.’ He thought for moment. ‘Benefactor to the grave. Can one say that?’
‘To the g-grave?’ Fandorin said with a shudder.
‘Yes, to the very grave. And he is your debtor to the grave. For not only did you save him from death, you also spared him indelible disgrace. For that, it is our custom to pay with supreme gratitude, even with our very life itself.’
‘What would I want with his life? Tell him “don’t mention it”, or whatever it is you say, and let him go on his way.’
‘When people say those words with such sincerity, they do not go on their own way,’ Shirota said reproachfully. ‘He says that from now on, you are his master. Wherever you go, he goes.’
The titch gave a low bow and stuck his little finger up in the air, which seemed rather impolite to Erast Petrovich.
‘Well, what does he say? Why does he not leave?’ asked the young Russian.
‘He will not leave. His oyabun has been killed, and so he has decided to devote his life to serving you. In proof of his sincerity, he offers to cut off his little finger.’
‘Oh, let him go to the d-devil!’ Fandorin exclaimed indignantly. ‘Tell him to hop it.’
The clerk did not dare argue with the annoyed vice-consul and started translating, but then stopped short.
‘In Japanese it is not possible to say simply “hop”, you have to explain where to.’
If not for the presence of a lady, Fandorin would gladly have provided the precise address, since his patience was running out – his first day in Japan had proved exhausting in the extreme.
‘Hop down the hill, like a grasshopper,’ said Fandorin, gesturing towards the waterfront with one hand.
A look of puzzlement flashed across the titch’s face, but immediately disappeared.
‘Kashikomarimashita,’ he said, and nodded.
He gathered himself, raised one foot off the ground and hopped off down the slope.
Erast Petrovich frowned. The blockhead could slip and break his leg on those cobbles. But damn him anyway, the vice-consul had more important business.
‘Tell me, Shirota, can you recommend a reliable doctor, capable of performing an autopsy?’
‘Reliable? Yes, I know a very reliable doctor. His name is Mr Lancelot Twigs. He is a sincere man.’
A rather strange recommendation for a medical man, thought the vice-consul.
From down below came a regular thudding, gradually growing more rapid – it was Fandorin’s debtor to the grave hopping down the cobbled street like a grasshopper.
Bruises will they bring,
the roadway’s rough cobblestones.
Honour’s path is hard.
A PERFECTLY HEALTHY CORPSE
‘I don’t understand a thing,’ said Dr Lancelot Twigs, peeling off the gloves covered in brownish-red spots and pulling the sheet up over the lacerated body. ‘The heart, liver and lungs are in perfect order. There’s no sign of any haemorrhaging in the brain – there was no need for me to saw open the brainpan. God grant every man such excellent health after the age of fifty.’
Fandorin glanced round at the door behind which Sophia Diogenovna had remained in Shirota’s care. The doctor had a loud voice, and the anatomical details he had mentioned might induce another outburst of hysterical sobbing. But then, how would this simple young woman know English?
The autopsy had taken place in the bedroom. They had simply removed the skinny mattress from the wooden bed, spread out oiled paper on the planks, and the doctor had set about his joyless task. Erast Petrovich had played the role of his assistant, holding a lantern and turning it this way and that, following the doctor’s instructions. At the same time, he himself tried to look away, so that he would not – God forbid! – collapse in a faint at the appalling sight. That is, when the doctor said: ‘Just take a look at that magnificent stomach!’ or ‘What a bladder! I wish I had one like that! Just look at it, will you!’, Fandorin turned round, he even nodded and grunted in agreement, but sensibly kept his eyes tightly shut. The smell alone was quite sufficient for the titular counsellor. It seemed as if this torture would never end.
The doctor was elderly and staid, but at the same time exceptionally talkative. His faded blue eyes had a genial glow to them. He had carried out his job conscientiously, from time to time running one hand over a bald spot surrounded by a faint halo of gingerish hair. But when it emerged that the cause of Captain Blagolepov’s death simply refused to be clarified, Twigs became excited, and the sweat started flowing freely across his bald cranium.
After one hour, two minutes and forty-five seconds (the exhausted Erast Petrovich had been timing things with his watch) Twigs finally capitulated.
‘I am obliged to state that this is a perfectly healthy corpse. This was a heroically robust organism, especially when one considers the protracted use by the deceased of the dried lacteal juice of the seed cases of Papaver somniferum. Nothing, apart perhaps from traces of tobacco resins ingrained in the throat and a slight darkening of the lungs – here, see?’ (Without even looking, Erast Petrovich said: ‘Oh, yes’.) ‘He has the heart of an ox. And it suddenly goes and stops, for no reason at all. I’ve never seen anything like it. You should have seen my poor Jenny’s heart.’ Twigs sighed. ‘The muscles were like threadbare rags. When I opened up the thoracic cavity, I simple wept for pity. The poor soul had a really bad heart, the second birth wore it out completely.’
Erast Petrovich already knew that Jenny was the doctor’s deceased wife and that he had decided to perform her autopsy in person, because both of his daughters also had weak hearts, like their mother, and he needed to take a look to see what the problem was – ailments of that kind were often inherited. It turned out to be a moderately severe prolapse of the bicuspid valve and, possessing that important piece of information, the doctor had been able to arrange the proper treatment for his adored little ones. Fandorin listened to this amazing story, not knowing whether he should feel admiration or horror.
‘Did you check the cervical vertebrae carefully?’ Erast Petrovich asked, not for the first time. ‘As I said, he might have been struck on the neck, from behind.’