In the trunk itself, wrapped in newspaper, we found a small amount of arsenic. For the past twenty minutes, Commissioner Aubry, Andrea and I had been searching Miguel’s room. The Commissioner asked Andrea:
“Do you think that Miguel was able to embalm the bird all by himself?”
“I think so,” the woman answered. “He spends his whole life …”
“What reasons would he have had to hide it?” Aubry interrupted.
“He knew I didn’t like it. While he was in the house, he couldn’t torture animals. We had forbidden it. I believe that cruelty in children should be repressed.”
Aubry showed her the packet of arsenic.
“Did you know that the boy had this poison?”
Andrea didn’t know, nor did she know that the poison was used in taxidermy and in the preservation of algae.
The Commissioner told her she could go. We remained alone, considering the possible connections between our findings and Mary’s death. But in the cause-and-effect account we tried to establish, there was a fatal gap. The poison that killed Mary wasn’t arsenic.
It was necessary for Doctor Cornejo to witness the boy’s horrific kiss in order for Aubry to take into account my accusation with reference to the embalmed bird. From that moment on I was given the consideration I deserved. Aubry consulted me for everything. Perhaps one could object to this manner of conducting an investigation. Why didn’t Aubry look for fingerprints? Why didn’t he order an autopsy of the corpse? Only a small-town detective—one might add—would take on a stranger as his confidant. But it’s not difficult to respond to these objections. With fingerprints he wouldn’t make much progress (all our fingerprints, without any doubt, would show up); the autopsy would prove what everyone already knew (that she had been poisoned by strychnine); after all, I am not a stranger, and this way of proceeding as if we were all a family has its advantages: it creates an atmosphere of trust, in which the suspect will inadvertently forget to be cautious.
With ridiculous timidity Manning knocked on the door. He had something important—he dared to pronounce the word “important”—to declare. With pleasure I heard this reply from the Commissioner:
“I beseech you to postpone your revelation until after tea.”
23
EVERYONE LEFT THE DINING ROOM AFTER tea, except for Atuel, Aubry, Montes and myself.
“Let’s see what Doctor Manning here has to tell us.”
“I have already discussed the hypothesis I am going to propose with Inspector Atwell.”
First I thought I had heard wrong, but then, by virtue of that sentence the world was transformed, and what was familiar became unknown and dangerous. I barely contained my irritation:
I repeated: “Atuel, Atwell.” Manning explained: “I don’t deserve credit. It was just luck. As you folks know, yesterday morning I spent a long time in Miss Mary’s room. The table was covered with papers. Suddenly, on a notepad page I read a phrase that drew my attention. Perhaps I gave it excessive importance: I copied it. When we went up to the dining room I told Atwell about it.”
Commissioner Aubry put out the cigarette he had just lit in the ashtray and said:
“I’m not in the mood, Inspector, to reprimand you, but why didn’t you say anything? As soon as I knew who you were, I asked for your collaboration.”
“How could I bother you with a suggestion I myself didn’t believe? But let’s not be hindered by matters of procedure: the important thing is results. Let Manning tell us.”
“You folks probably didn’t see the piece of paper because the typist tidied up the table,” the doctor explained. “There were galley proofs and handwritten pages, the latter being the translation Miss Gutiérrez was doing of a novel by Michael Innes. As it was part of a continuous text, you folks did not keep reading, but the page should be there.”
The Commissioner breathed with a heavy sigh. His frustration was visible. Manning continued:
“The phrase in question was either part of a book or a message from Miss Gutiérrez. The former could be easily determined. The night before her death, the young lady told us that she had in her room a small library made up of all the novels she had translated. I asked the Commissioner to let me read the handwritten pages. He told me we couldn’t touch them. I got him to let me read the books: they were less personal objects. On these last two evenings I have read the original of the novel the young lady was translating and a good part of the books already translated. The Inspector read the rest. We have worked conscientiously. We can assure you that the phrase does not figure in any of the books.”
There was a silence. Finally the Commissioner exclaimed:
“Dear Inspector, what a way to collaborate with your colleagues!”
In the tone of these words I thought I detected that Aubry was resentful, accepted Manning’s solution and had no curiosity to hear it. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t suppress my curiosity (I pride myself on it: our hold on life is measured by the intensity of our passions). I begged Manning not to delay any longer in communicating the phrase, the key that permitted him and Atwell to penetrate a mystery that still remained obscure to the rest of us.
“What Miss Gutiérrez wrote before dying is this,” Manning replied monotonously. Then he read from a piece of paper:
Sorrowfully I must announce to you my decision, which I know too well will leave you in a state of shock, and if something in this hard world could induce me to abandon my resolve it would be our long friendship and the thought of your good will and your affection. But things have reached such a point that the only thing I can possibly do is to say farewell to the world and leave it.
24
AS WRITERS WHO FOLLOW THE CALL OF THE vocation and not the pursuit of wealth, our fate is a continuous search for pretexts to postpone the moment of putting the pen to paper. How solicitously doth reality provide those pretexts and with what delicate devotion does it conspire with our indolence! I could not continue to be bewitched by that sterile problem of suicide, or murder, in Bosque del Mar. The time to react had arrived. I withdrew into the silence and asylum of my room, sank into the comfortable embrace of the armchair, opened the almost virginal notebook and the book by Petronius. I thought of Mary.
As one investigating a text capable of subtly contradictory interpretations, I re-examined the dispute between the two sisters that happened the night before Mary’s death. I also probed the motives that could lead a suicide to leave her posthumous message lost among papers.
I wondered if this last act were not one of tortuous honesty. Through it Mary placated her conscience. She left the proof that would save an innocent person, but she left it hidden.
This suicide was the inevitable end of a drama of which I had caught a glimpse. With the desperate vehemence of bad causes, Mary falls in love with Emilia’s fiancé. Secretly she tries to take him away from her. When she sees that she’s losing, she resolves to die. In the project of her death she finds the sweetness of revenge. And if someone were to interpret the suicide as murder? On her last night she manages to make Emilia angry with her. Then she writes the message declaring that she dies by her own hand, but writes it on a sheet of paper identical to those she uses for her translation of Michael Innes; she places it among the translation papers. She lets it be discovered and revealed by chance and thus believes she will save her soul.
I next considered Atwell’s role in the investigation. He told me that he hadn’t wanted to intrude upon the procedures because of something I didn’t understand about the general rules of the law and because of his relationship with Emilia and with Mary. The argument seemed convincing to me. I’m a doctor and I know how feelings get in the way of our professional judgment. He added, besides, that he hadn’t wanted to offend the emotional susceptibility of the Commissioner.
I did not resign myself to admitting that Atwell’s participation was as simple as he would like it to seem. It seemed obvious that Manning had succeeded in solving the mystery. But had he done
it alone? In Manning’s deductions, couldn’t one divine the directing mind of Atwell?
Later, I took Aubry aside and asked him who the Inspector was.
“The most valuable man of the lot,” he answered. “Atwell is so famous today that to take time off he has to go incognito like a king.”
I looked into Aubry’s eyes. They did not express any irony. They expressed respect.
“The lot” was the police department of the Federal Capital. Atwell worked in the Investigative Analysis Division.
25
AFTER DINNER THERE WAS A MOMENT IN which Emilia and I were sitting alone at one end of the table. I took immediate advantage of it. “I have to talk to you,” I said with an emphasis that in my attempt not to seem amatory came out heavy-handed. I suspect that she didn’t then know what I had to talk to her about. But I had to talk because I felt in me that social, gregarious instinct that is one of the most noble and beneficial traits of the human spirit.
Nobody was watching us. I took Emilia’s hand and, with a feeling that came from the bottom of my heart, I communicated to her the Commissioner’s sinister conjectures. She didn’t take her hand away. Nor did she answer me. No amazement, no disappointment seemed to perturb her serene grief. I should have been glad, but inexplicably I felt cheated.
Very soon, however, I was grateful to realize that I owed the recovery of my good sense to Emilia’s apparent coolness. How I had dramatized my sympathy and concern for the girl! What a relief to find myself free of that unjustifiable madness!
It’s difficult to acknowledge, but the mystery of Mary’s death was beginning to wear down the perfect equilibrium of my nerves. I decided to go to bed early to regain my strength. I said “Good night” and went to the office to fill my pen with ink and leave it ready for the literary labors of the next morning. When I entered the room, Atwell and the Commissioner were examining a piece of paper. They handed it to me. It had neither a heading nor a date nor a signature. It was Mary’s message. What suffering, what unhealthy intentions were betrayed by the complicated and bombastic features of that handwriting to those of us who never turned our backs on the truths of graphology! But now it is time to probe the occult sciences, to reread and write again the muddle of books composed with the criteria, methods, and ink of the darkest Middle Ages, to undertake the Great Adventure, the voyages, without a compass, of the astrologer, the alchemist and the magician. Men of every profession awaken today to the Marvelous Dream … But, who will deny that it is among the homeopaths that we recruit the most vigorous champions of the new crusade?
The Commissioner looked with his austere eyes at the Inspector and gravely pronounced:
“With all due respect, I still think that the suppositions against Miss Emilia are conclusive. My plans have not changed: to arrest her and take her to Salinas. They will be carried out unless the matter passes into the hands of others.”
Instinctively I tried to looked outside but in the white wall the window was a rectangle as dark and impenetrable as onyx. I pressed my ear against the glass. It seemed that the wind was dying down.
26
I REMEMBERED, LIKE SOMETHING UNREACHABLE, those mornings in my home in the city, which began with the provincial servants bringing the wicker tray, the fragrant tea, the toast and the pastries, the jam and the honey. That was indeed a “happy awakening,” as they say in the primary-school books; then came the pleasures of leisure, books, and then the chance events of the afternoon, the office with rewards for the professional and for the man. My real vacation had remained back there, with those domestic and everyday rituals that now seemed lost. What anxieties would the new day bring? Fearful, skeptical about my fear (it seemed incredible that this abnormality was continuing to upset my life), I opened the door to my room. Upon reaching the staircase I met up with Andrea.
“Did you hear the news?” she said. “The dead girl’s jewelry has been stolen.”
I decided to question Aubry. He was in the office. When I entered, he gave orders to one of the officers.
“Keep everyone out of here!” he shouted.
“Who is ‘everyone’?” I inquired.
“Everyone,” the Commissioner said wryly, “except you and Atwell.”
I wondered if my exclusion wasn’t due to the fact that I was, at that moment, his interlocutor. In any case, the order had a calming effect on me: it warded off the imminent danger that all of us in the hotel—except the victim—would become detectives. The Commissioner offered me a cigarette and proceeded to explain the facts to me.
“Miss Emilia came to me first thing in the morning with the news that her sister’s jewelry had been stolen. I told her to stay calm, that Atwell had taken charge of the jewels. Atwell and I had planned that. When I saw him, I asked him about the matter. He admitted to me that after talking to me he had completely forgotten. I have questioned some people; the only ones left are you, Doctor Cornejo and the typist. I believe I am correct that the jewels were in the victim’s room until that boy showed up. Nobody has seen them since. But the most interesting thing remains to be said. I gave the order for them to search the deceased’s room and … guess what we found?”
He showed me a handwritten piece of paper. I read:
For Mary:
I have to talk to you. I’ll wait for you at siesta time, in the hallway. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
CORNEJO
The words I have to talk to you brought to my mind an uncomfortable memory. I think I blushed.
After several bold statements, adduced gravely, almost with sadness, the Commissioner continued:
“Cornejo and the typist are in the dining room. The woman’s statement is of interest to me. She was in the room shortly after the scene with the boy.”
At that moment an officer entered in an agitated state:
“Doctor Cornejo is dead,” he announced.
27
WE WENT INTO THE DINING ROOM.
The future will belong to politicians, to the literati, to the educator who controls the rhetoric of detail. There is always a particular detail whose alteration paves the way for the most radical change of the whole. The fact that a person was lying down on the floor of that room, which was so big and empty, was enough to create an image of profuse chaos.
Manning came over to me.
“He’s been poisoned,” he said.
Doctor Montes, on his knees beside Cornejo’s prone body, patted his vest searching for his watch. Atwell and the typist looked on.
“Bring my bag,” stammered my colleague, in a drunken voice.
“I’ll bring it right away,” answered Manning, and he diligently disappeared.
Just at that moment I remembered that Manning, in accordance with the Commissioner’s information, was supposed to be incommunicado.
Cornejo’s condition was not serious. Regarding the attempted murder, I reached these conclusions: 1) the drug used was not the same as in the previous case; 2) there had been a mistake in the dosage. This could suggest a new guilty party, or that the guilty party did not know the properties of the new drug.
Manning was still not back.
Mentally, I scrutinized the persons in the hotel and wondered to whom to attribute that error. I encountered too many candidates. Thinking of some of them gave me the chills.
“Why is Manning taking so long?” Atwell exclaimed impatiently. “I’m going to get the bag.”
Aubry’s serious and stunned expression followed him to the door.
“At this rate we’ll be left alone,” the drunkard remarked.
Aubry didn’t respond. At that moment I began to doubt his efficacy.
Atwell came back with the bag, and explained:
“It was on Montes’s bed. I can’t understand why Manning couldn’t find it.”
“Perhaps the problem now will be finding Manning,” Montes replied.
The gods, who are not ignorant of the future, usually speak through the mouths of children and madmen. I a
lso understand that they favor alcoholics.
My colleague opened the bag, and while he looked for caffeine, he discovered that he was missing a tube of barbiturates.
I admit that for a moment I looked upon Doctor Montes with some suspicion and wondered if, in his drunken state, he was not in part pretending. But now I must make an incredible statement: when I looked directly into Montes’s half-closed eyes, I caught a suspiciously jocular twinkle.
I didn’t dilly-dally with details. Again I thought about Cornejo’s case. Veronal, a barbiturate, is the erroneous weapon of those who dream the moderate madness of love and don’t want to waste the fruits of a tragic death.
And now a prudent hand emerged, like a terrifying conjecture, not erroneous, measuring the dose of the narcotic. Cornejo’s hand.
History highlights personalities that have grown because of the defects of others. I had the sensation that all of Aubry’s past deficiencies aggrandized Atwell. Can I say, as a symbol of my feelings, that I looked at the black face of my antimagnetic watch, and that I mentally imprinted the exact time the great detective entered upon the scene? I will only add that this reminds me of Parolles’s assertion that merit is seldom attributed to whomever it corresponds. “Is it not monstrous?” as Hamlet wonders, in his monologue.
Atwell ordered:
“We have to go out to look for Miguel and Manning. One of the two has taken the jewels. He shouldn’t be given time to hide them forever.”
The Commissioner looked at him with interest.
“In this sandstorm you can’t see more than six feet ahead of you,” he observed. “We won’t be able to do anything.”
“We haven’t done anything yet,” replied Atwell. “And allow me to tell you that your ‘rigorous’ incommunicado isolation of the suspects has not produced results. I suggest an elementary measure: order a guard to lock them all up in a room.” Atwell addressed me: “Doctor Huberman, do you consider that Doctor Cornejo’s condition requires your attention?”