Come on, Salvatrio! Get up! There’s a message for you! ”
I staggered over to open the door. The first thing I saw was Madame Nécart without her makeup; it was not a good omen for the rest of the day. I snatched the message from her hands and read:
“Come to the Galerie des Machines as soon as possible.”
The yellow paper was dirty with soot, and stamped with Arzaky’s big black fingerprints.
The machines were grouped according to function inside the palace of glass and iron. But often a machine belonging to one sector was sent to another, since the boundaries of man’s disciplines have always been unclear. The operators moved them around, trying to place them according to blueprints that were constantly being produced, and then continuously modified by other blueprints brought by messengers sent from the organizing committee. The messengers were very young and wore blue uniforms and leather caps, and they sometimes had to consult the blueprints they were carrying to keep from getting lost amid all the pavilions and corridors. One wrong turn and they would be walking in circles for quite a while, and because of this, it was common for a messenger who had left first to arrive after a later one, so an already established decision could be taken as a last minute change. The dockyard workers, made up largely of foreigners, complained about the excessive work, and threatened to halt operations. In order to resolve the conf lict it was decided that the machines that hadn’t been correctly placed when they arrived would be sent to a special area. There they joined others, no longer united by their function, but by the circumstances of delays and confusion. So a digger used for mining was positioned next to an electric piano and Graham Bell’s metal detector. This area was the most popular with visitors to the World’s Fair because of its variety. That variety represents the world, filled with too many different things for them ever to be able to see them all. There must be a point in which strict classification finally crumbles and confesses that everything is just a dream. All alphabets are letters that don’t have a proper place, or that are hardly ever used, and could easily be overlooked. Their function isn’t so much to represent a sound as to unshackle the alphabet from the constraints of perfection. (In Spanish we have the x, which we use to name what isn’t there and to cross things out.) Loose bricks and twisted beams are the foundation of every building.
At the entrance to the Galerie des Machines I had presented my safe-conduct-a sheet of paper with the official seal of the organizing committee, but also the round seal, always in red ink, of The Twelve Detectives. The guards stared at the seal, unsure whether or not to believe it was real. Everyone had heard of the group but no one knew for sure that it actually existed; the red seal was like a postmark from Atlantis. Since I was in a rush to meet with Arzaky I couldn’t stop to look at the machines, but caught a glance at them while I walked past.
The more esoteric the object’s utility, the more brilliant and successful it seemed; it was magnificent to see the bronze chimneys, and the oiled gears, and the watches with blue hands that measured god knows what pressure, speed, or temperature, and the levers and little control switches. There was a strange effect created in the palace: as in so many other glass monuments, the sun that filtered in showed the myriad dust particles f loating in the air. The machines, while at odds with each other, seemed to be united by the dust that floated above them, confusing the connections and controls, the clocks and pistons, the cords and spark plugs into one common realm, as if the entire palace was inhabited by one single, sleeping machine.
I walked through the corridors admiring the infinite fields of knowledge that I would never master. At the back of the pavilion a group of policemen were waiting, and Arzaky was with them. At that end, in an almost hidden area, were the latest, and, to my mind, bizarre innovations in the funereal industry: the corpse cannon, which sent the dead to the bottom of the sea; the excavating coffin, which dug its own grave with the cadaver inside and disappeared below ground; and various cremation ovens.
Arzaky shook hands with a man who had just arrived; he was as tall as the detective, with a big nose and professionally dressed in a black suit.
“Monsieur Arzaky? My name is Arnesto Samboni; I’m a representative from the Farbus Company. They got me out of bed at dawn to tell me that someone had turned the oven on.”
The oven was built of firebricks and iron, and looked very much like a house. The controls and the emblem with the company’s name were on the front. On one side was a tray and on it lay a blackened body. The features were burned away. It reminded me of a stone idol, a god exhumed in the farthest corner of Asia by some archaeological expedition. The head seemed to be separated from the body, and it was hard to believe it had ever been human.
“It’s a campaign oven,” explained Samboni, with the same tone he used when making a sales pitch. “It reaches extremely high temperatures very quickly. It can run on gas, or with wood or liquid fuel. One of our ovens, I’m proud to say, was used to cremate the body of the poet Percy B. Shelley, after he was shipwrecked on the Ligurian coast.”
“It’s supposed to reduce the body to ashes, and this cor pse is merely blackened. Did something go wrong?”
“It was turned off too soon. Otherwise, Monsieur Arzaky, there would be nothing left but dust, and you wouldn’t have a single clue to start your investigation.”
“Don’t be so sure, Monsieur Samboni. Even ashes can hold clues.”
Arzaky took out a pencil and scraped at the skin of the body around the abdomen. The surface gave way and I could see something that looked like scorched wool.
“Who else knows how to use this oven, Monsieur Samboni?”
“It’s very easy, anyone who has read the instructions could do it. But it was already set up, because we were planning to do a demonstration on opening day.”
We didn’t get to find out what type of demonstration one would do for a crematorium, because a commotion interrupted Samboni. Alarmed, the policemen who had been engrossed in watching Arzaky moved away from us, as if they didn’t want to be associated with the Polish detective or his dark assistant. The newcomer was wearing an oversize plaid overcoat, and sported a gigantic mustache that seemed to precede him, as if to say, “Watch out for the guy behind me.” He looked at the body, took a momentary pleasure in the effect his appearance had caused, and then pulled out a notebook.
“Step aside, Arzaky, from now on I’ll ask the questions.”
For a few seconds it looked as if the two men were going to fight a duel with their pencils. The newcomer was Bazeldin, Paris ’s chief of police. I recognized him from his picture in the newspapers. Since Darbon’s death, he had appeared in The Truth saying that there were no legitimate detectives outside the official police force, and that The Twelve Detectives would be wise in disbanding.
Arzaky stepped back a few paces, distancing himself from the body and Samboni.
“Before interrogating this man”-Bazeldin pointed to Samboni-“I’d like you, Arzaky, to tell me how you found out about this murder.”
“What murder?”
“The body right here.”
“I’m investigating Darbon’s death. I was returning from one of my evening walks when I saw a commotion at the door to the Galerie des Machines. We still don’t know if someone killed this man.”
“Do you think he’s still alive?”
The policemen laughed at their boss’s joke, and they brief ly shook, as if with spasms.
“You’ll have plenty of time to laugh when we’ve found the guilty party. Now go through the pavilions, see if anyone is missing.” Then Bazeldin addressed a plainclothes policeman who never left his side. It was no secret that Bazeldin wanted to be like the detectives in every way, he even had an acolyte. “Rotignac, you guard the body until someone from the morgue comes to pick it up.”
“I want to point something out, Captain,” Arzaky interrupted. “The head seems to be almost detached from the body.”
“You are always giving me false clues, detective. You want to send me off on a wild goose chase. But I am going to conduct this investigation my way, and we’ll see who solves the case first. The fact that Darbon is dead doesn’t automatically make you the Detective of Paris. It’s a responsibility one must earn. In the meantime, consider yourself the Detective of Warsaw, assuming they don’t already have a better one.”
Arzaky moved away from Bazeldin, feigning indignation, and took me aside. While the chief of police continued giving orders, the detective said to me, “I’ll stay here. If I go anywhere, Bazeldin will have me followed and I don’t want to tip him off about my suspicions. You to go the Taxidermists’ Pavilion and ask if they are missing a body.”
“You mean this wasn’t a murder? That the dead man… was already dead?”
“That burned smell is too caustic for an ordinary cremation. You come from a country where they raise sheep, so you should know that in the spinning process they separate a very coarse type of wool called unbonded wool, which is used to stuff cushions and dolls. It’s also used by taxidermists for embalming bodies. I think someone stole an embalmed body and burned it.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“How should I know? If my job were that easy, anybody would be able to solve crimes, even Paris ’s police chief. Right now the only thing that concerns me is that Bazeldin sees me here. I’ll ask some more questions to keep him occupied.”
As I left the Galerie des Machines I found one of the messengers who worked for the organizing committee. He gave me directions to the Taxidermists’ Pavilion. As I walked there I spied several of The Twelve Detectives who were headed over to see if the news had any relationship to Darbon’s death. I saw Hatter, with Linker by his side. I also saw the two Japanese men, who pretended to be distracted by the machines, but I could tell that they were completely focused as they moved forward with a determined stride. Baldone, almost breathless, followed Magrelli, the Eye of Rome.
At the entrance, Novarius tried to get the Sioux Indian in, but the guards insisted that he had escaped from a tribe of South American Indians who were set up on a piece of land on the other side of the fair, and they wanted him to return. To avoid being followed, I entered other pavilions and exited through side doors. I stopped to see the globe they had just finished putting together, and then I sidetracked toward the Palace of Fine Arts. When I was fairly sure no one had followed me to that point, I continued on to the Taxidermists’ Pavilion. Before I went in I saw a young woman waving to me from a distance. It was Greta, looking at me through binoculars. I waved back, embarrassed at being exposed, and casually entered the pavilion, which was built to look like an Egyptian temple.
At the entrance to the temple I was greeted by a stuffed bear, whose open jaws welcomed me to his world of simulated immortality. On glass shelves and large black wood tables nested birds as small as insects and insects as large as birds. A giraffe from Paris ’s zoo, whose death had been announced in the newspaper six months earlier, was still in the wooden box that had been used to transport it, sticking its neck out into the world at last and forever.
A short, stout man passed by me, dressed in a gray coverall. I asked him for the taxidermists and he muttered, between his teeth, the name Dr. Nazar and pointed to a closed door.
I knocked, and without waiting for an answer, opened the door. A doctor in a white coat was writing a letter, with his back to me. Next to him there was an empty gurney.
“Rufus, wait a second, I’ll give you this letter, it’s for the organizing committee…”
I stepped forward.
“I’m not Rufus, doctor. My name is Sigmundo Salvatrio, and…”
He put the pen down and turned to look at me. Nazar had a long beard and eyes reddened by long nights of work.
“I’m busy right now… Perhaps in the future I’ll be taking on apprentices…”
“I don’t want to be an apprentice. I was sent by Detective Arzaky.”
I assumed he would throw me out, but he stood up enthusiastically, as if I had uttered a magic word.
“That’s exactly what I need, a detective! A body has just disappeared. It was our best work and someone took it in the middle of the night.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said with a smug smile.
Nazar stared at me.
“But how could you know that, when I haven’t reported its disappearance yet?”
“We are aware of everything that goes on at the World’s Fair,” I replied, happy that someone, in the midst of so much confusion, deemed me useful.
“Your accent and your arrogance are familiar to me,” said Dr. Nazar in perfect Spanish. “Are you Argentine? Me too.”
Dr. Nazar came closer as if he were going to hug me, his lab coat stained with chemical products, blood, and other substances I was not interested in coming into close contact with. Frightened, I backed up with the agility of a fencer and extended a tentative hand. The deferred embrace evaporated. Anyone who saw Nazar’s exuberance would have thought that it was extremely rare to find another Argentine in Paris, when really the city was full of us.
“So you’re working in Paris?” I couldn’t avoid Dr. Nazar’s presumptuously giving me a pat on the back.
“Just for a short while. I was sent by Detective Craig, for the first meeting of The Twelve Detectives.”
“I met Craig at a meeting of the Progress Club five years ago. He gave a masterful lecture on the difference between deduction and induction.”
“One of his favorite topics.”
“It was brilliant. I didn’t understand a thing, but I could tell he was a cut above. I understand that, in recent years, he has given up detective work.”
“Because of his health problems.”
“And because of the Case of the Magician. Well, you should know better than me.”
I was speechless. I often forgot that I wasn’t the only person who knew about the Kalidán case and Alarcón’s death. When that old business came to light I felt horribly ashamed, as if I had squandered that opportunity. Guilt, in many cases, has no relation to actual events. We feel responsible for things that have nothing to do with us, and don’t give a thought to our real sins. I abruptly returned to the matter at hand.
“I came because a body was found, and we believe it is the same one that was stolen from you.”
Nazar’s face lit up.
“I knew it couldn’t have gone far. Is it in good condition?”
I shook my head.
“Did they take the head off?” he asked. “It’s going to take a lot of work to get that head back where it belongs.”
“I’m afraid, doctor, that won’t be necessary.”
Nazar breathed a sigh of relief.
“They burned it.”
Crestfallen, Nazar sank back into a chair.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“The Grand Opening is in a week. A week. And I’ve had to do everything myself, this whole pavilion, getting the permits… The authorities from the Argentine Pavilion didn’t want to give me any space. The only thing they care about is showing their horses, their sheep, their wheat, and especially their cows… They have an unhealthy obsession with cows… but they don’t want my art displayed there. Life, life, they told me. Life, they kept repeating, rolling their eyes. But do they even know what life is?”
He shook his head slowly and stared at his fingertips.
“I’m the one who knows what life is. I’m the one who knows the decomposition process. I am the one who can stop it. Oh well. I’ll have to go see the disaster. Show me the way.”
“It won’t do any good. Besides, if you go now, they’ll keep you there with questions. Captain Bazeldin will call you into the police headquarters and you’ll have to spend a whole afternoon waiting for them to question you. You’re lucky that Arzaky still hasn’t told the police that the body is one of yours. Don’t you have other things you can show at the opening?”
“I suppose I do. Come with me.”
Nazar led me into a back room filled with the animals that hadn’t yet been classified. There was a lion with its jaws open, a stork, a large crocodile, and an ostrich. In the corners, there were many minor pieces: foxes, otters, pheasants, snakes. Some had no eyes, others had come unstitched. They each had a yellow card attached with a thread, showing their origin, a date, and the taxidermist’s name.
In the middle of the room were four gurneys, holding three bodies. The first was a mummy; the second, a stone statue; the third, a woman who seemed to be made of dust and about to vanish into thin air. The last gurney was empty.
“We were thinking about showing four bodies in different states of embalming. Now we’ll have to make do with three. This one, as you can see, is an Egyptian mummy, which we reproduced strictly following the traditional procedures. We even recited the ancient incantations. If you are interested, the jars with the entrails are around here somewhere…”
He got up to look for the jars in a closet, but I assured him it was unnecessary.
“This other body was embalmed using an ancient Chinese method that uses volcano lava to convert the body into stone. The method is interesting but the results are highly debatable. It looks just like stone, you see? There are taxidermists who don’t believe me when I tell them that it’s a human body, they think it’s a sculpture.” “How’d you get the lava?”
“We made it artificially, heating mud, limestone, and sand to high temperatures. It was an absurd amount of work. There wasn’t a single day that I didn’t burn my hands. Guimard, my closest collaborator, is still in the hospital. I hope they discharge him soon so he can come to the opening.”
Nazar approached the third gurney and delicately touched the woman’s skin. She wore a white dress and still held the ribbon that had tied some f lowers, long since disintegrated. Her hair, streaked with gray, looked exactly like that of a living woman. Nazar gestured to me, inviting me to touch her leathery skin, but I recoiled.
“This isn’t my work; it was executed by time, weather conditions, and chance. The third method, which often keeps the bodies that are stored in churches intact, is the reduction of humidity inside the coffin. We bought this woman from a dealer in relics. She died half a century ago, but looks as if it were only yesterday.”
Last, Dr. Nazar pointed to the empty gurney.
“But Mr. X, preserved in the traditional, Western method, was our most exquisite model. He had been executed by guillotine and we were able to reattach his head and almost perfectly restore him.”
I pulled a black notebook I had recently bought out of my pocket. Its pages had a grid, like graph paper, just like the one that Arzaky used. And without realizing it, I was imitating the way he wrote, with the notebook half shut as if I were afraid someone would peek at my notes.
“How could they have gotten the body out of here?”
“They forced the lock and took the body in a wheelbarrow. At the fair people work all night long, especially now that opening day is so close. No one would have looked twice at someone transporting a bulky load, in the midst of hundreds of carts and wheelbarrows filled with construction materials, machines, statues, animals…”
“Where do you get the bodies you work on?”
“From the city morgue. This pavilion depends on the Ministry of Public Health.”
“And that’s where Mr. X’s corpse came from?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why do you call him that? Mr. X? It would be helpful to know his real name.”
“Is that important to the investigation?”
“Of course. The person who incinerated him may have had a personal grudge…”
“We don’t know his name. We never know any of their names. It’s easier to work on anonymous bodies, you understand? That way one can forget they once walked the earth, that someone gave birth to them, that someone misses them at the dinner table, or in bed. Anyway, it’s a waste of time to search in that direction. This was an attack directed at me by rival taxidermists! It was my job to accept the pieces you see here and reject the ones you don’t. We are a vindictive lot: one of them sends a poorly sewn rabbit, with buttons instead of eyes, and when it’s rejected, a hatred that lasts a lifetime is born. In our business, what’s best preserved is resentment.”
I didn’t want to continue the investigation without further orders from Arzaky. I looked for him in his apartment first and then in the underground parlor of the Numancia Hotel. Arzaky was sitting on a chair with a stack of papers. He grabbed his head in a theatrical gesture while a tiny man with a pointy beard shouted.
“So, Arzaky, you think your problems are bad? It’s never the dead people who are the problem, it’s the live ones! Messengers knock on my door day and night, my wife is threatening to leave me, and, what’s worse, my cook is too! The government’s decision to have the fair this year, as an homage to the Revolution, forces us to constantly exchange information with other countries. A few months earlier or a few later, and the whole thing would be solved. But now, the crowned heads of Europe don’t want to participate officially because they don’t think it’s right to celebrate a king’s decapitation. They don’t like to see the words guillotine and majesty in the same sentence. But their diplomatic advisers, their industrialists, and their technicians have come and are filling our hotels. Men whom we call ‘informal civil servants’ pay us visits, hordes of characters with conspiratorial airs who ask to meet with everyone and hand out business cards, so hot off the presses that they stain your fingers. And we never manage to discern informality from impersonation. The day before yesterday I threw a lout out of my office, and he turned out to be an envoy from the British embassy. My secretary had to spend all morning writing letters of apology. Last Saturday the minister himself was talking for two hours to a German, supposedly the representative of the Swabian industrialists, who turned out to be the conman Dunbersteg, wanted for the Swiss bond scandal. Your murdered detective and incinerated corpse don’t seem like such great problems to me.”
Giant Arzaky looked at him with what seemed to be fear. I must say I’ve often noted that very tall people are completely disconcerted by very short ones, as if they belonged to a quicker, more intimate, more complex world.
“We are doing everything possible, Dr. Ravendel. If you had hired me instead of Darbon, this never would have happened.”
“I didn’t hire Darbon. It was the organizing committee, who were frightened.” Ravendel threw down an envelope filled with banknotes onto the table. “I brought what we agreed on, Arzaky, to serve as inspiration. The other half when the case is solved. We have managed to get the press to portray Darbon’s death as an accident. That’s cost more money than anything else so far. Bribing politicians is much cheaper, because they’re naturally dishonest, but journalists are always expensive because they try to pretend that they’re willing to take their scruples to the limit. Our coffers are not bottomless, we’re not like those ostentatious Argentines who felt they had to build the Taj Mahal.”
Ravendel stormed out without saying good-bye. Arzaky’s gaze followed him as if making sure he was really gone. Then he stuck his hand into the envelope and took out a bill.
“Is your information worth one of these?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure.”
“Did the body come from where I thought it did?”
“Yes, the Taxidermists’ Pavilion. The taxidermist who prepared it is named Nazar. It was a body donated by the morgue. A guillotined man. Nazar was very proud of having reconnected the head.”
166 • Pablo De Santis
“Let’s go to the morgue then. We have to beat Bazeldin’s foot soldiers.”
Arzaky, not convinced that I deserved it, gave me the money.
An hour later we were walking across a square stone courtyard. Arzaky had sent me to buy a bottle of wine, some cheese, and cold meats, and I was carrying the box with the provisions. There were two green ambulances in the courtyard, with yoked horses, ready to go out to the farthest reaches of the city in search of a body. We went down a staircase to the autopsy room. We passed an open door; Arzaky signaled for me to keep quiet but I couldn’t help peeking in. The forensic doctor was talking to Bazeldin and a couple of policemen.
“Right now they are finding out what we already know. We’ve got the upper hand,” said Arzaky in a whisper. And when I smiled complicitly he warned, “But one should never, never rely on that.”
We opened a door that revealed a deserted room: the morgue’s archives. The shelves held cardboard boxes and file folders with papers coming out of them, tied with green ribbon. On the wall was an engraving of an anatomy amphitheater, with medical students and curious onlookers surrounding a professor as he dissected a cadaver. On the desk were photographs of faces and bodies, and judicial orders with the hospital seal and doctors’ pompous signatures. Arzaky, who knew the archive well, searched through a cabinet that, because of its proximity to the desk, was most likely for more recent papers. After much looking he triumphantly pulled out a page.
We heard heavy footsteps approaching. I was scared, but Arzaky didn’t even look up.
An immensely fat man entered the archives. He wore an administrative staff uniform, but his shirt had been mended so many times he looked like a beggar.
“Arzaky! If the doctor finds you in here, he’ll fire me. Do you want me to starve to death? ”
“That would break my heart, Brodenac.”
Arzaky signaled for me to put the box I was holding down on the desk. Brodenac examined the bottle, the cheese, and the cold meats, and smiled with satisfaction.
“There are better places to shop, but the Bordeaux isn’t bad. What are you looking for?”
“I’ve already found it.”
Brodenac studied the sheet of paper Arzaky had in his hand.
“You too?”
“Who else was here?”
“That redheaded girl… the dead guy’s sister.”
Arzaky looked at me.
“The dead guy didn’t have a sister. Someone else got here before us.”
“You already know who the dead guy is?” I asked.
Arzaky took the paper from Brodenac and showed it to me.
“Jean-Baptiste Sorel,” I read. The name meant nothing to me. “Who is he?”
“An art forger. Imprisoned for stealing paintings and for murder.”
“Did you know him?”
“I met him under unpleasant circumstances.”
Brodenac had taken out a wood-handled knife and was already cutting off a piece of cheese. “Unpleasant circumstances? Well, they were unpleasant for Sorel… It was Arzaky, the great detective, who sent him to the guillotine.”
Night had already fallen and Arzaky asked me to go with him into a narrow café that stretched out toward a smoky back area. He ordered absinthe and I was going to ask for the same, but he stopped me.
“An assistant’s mind always has to be sharp. You shouldn’t get clouded up on this poison.”
A short waiter, practically a midget, brought us our drinks: a glass of wine for me, and for Arzaky a slotted spoon, a lump of sugar wrapped in blue paper, and a glass filled with green liquid. Arzaky put the sugar in the spoon and poured water over it until it dissolved. As it lost its purity, the absinthe turned opalescent. When it was still, before the water was completely stirred in, it seemed to turn into green-veined marble.
“ Sorel was a two-bit forger,” Arzaky told me. “His specialty was academic painting, all those big canvases with mythological figures, a little tree over here, some ruins over there, and a naked lady in the middle. But that went out of style, and Sorel found there was no market for his fake Bouguereaus and Cabanels anymore. He was broke, and he spent his days growing deeper in debt in the back room of the Rugendas Café. One night Sorel met Bonetti, a Sicilian smuggler, among the other lost souls at the café. They became friends, discussing art, reciting the names of their favorite paintings, and exchanging information about which famous works in France and Italy ’s great museums were actually forgeries. Within six months Bonetti knew everything about Sorel, who was a very talkative chap, and he was able to convince him to steal a painting that hung in the house of one of Sorel ’s old clients. The former client was a textile manufacturer who had profited from the sale of overpriced uniforms to Belgian army detachments sent to the Congo. Sorel got into the house under the pretense of selling him a painting, and Bonetti, dressed as a gentleman, came in with him. Sorel introduced Bonetti as an expert from the Vatican gallery. Bonetti cased the house and discovered there was almost no security. Fifteen days later they pulled off the heist, entering through an open window.”
“That’s not enough to send somebody to the guillotine. Did they kill someone?”
“No. They were thieves, not murderers. Bonetti knew what he was after: several books had been published on The School of Athens by Raphael, and at that time, minor painters were benefiting from the renewed interest in paintings with philosophical subjects. Bonetti was planning to sell the painting to the president of the Platonic Society of Paris, but he never got the chance.”
At the back of the café, in front of a mirror, two men were arguing loudly. I looked in that direction and saw my ref lection. I barely recognized myself. At that distance and with all the smoke, unshaven and bleary eyed, I looked older. In that moment I wanted to go back to Buenos Aires and, at the same time, never wanted to go back, ever. But if I did return, who would I be? The shoemaker’s son sent by Craig with a cane and a secret, or the tired man who looked back at me from the mirror?
Arzaky waited for the men’s shouting to stop before continuing.
“ Sorel had only one serious fault: he was very jealous. Bonetti foolishly took the liberty of sleeping with Sorel ’s common-law wife, a pale, consumptive-looking woman. Sorel attacked Bonetti with the knife he used for cutting canvases and left him in the street, so that it would look like a mugging or a drunken fight. When the police found him, Bonetti was still alive and conscious, but he refused to name his attacker. Five days later Sorel sold a forged painting to one of his clients, unaware that the police were on his trail. The owner of the painting, who was abreast of the matter, asked me to examine the painting. In one corner of the canvas I found a bloody thumbprint. It was so easy to prove his guilt that I won’t even bother boring you with the details that led him to the gallows. They found the stolen painting in his studio.”
“Had he harmed the girl too?”
“No, he hadn’t even beaten her. He loved her too much. I saw her recently; she was selling violets on the street. I bought a small bouquet and paid way too much for it, leaving quickly before she could recognize me because I was afraid she would refuse to accept the money. I didn’t like sending Sorel to the guillotine, but we detectives strive to know the truth and when we find it, it no longer belongs to us. It is the other men: the police, the lawyers, the journalists, the judges, they decide what to do with that truth. I hope that young woman hasn’t found out that Sorel ’s body was defiled and burned.”
“And the stolen painting?”
“The businessman got it back, but shortly afterward went bankrupt and sold it to the Platonic Society, exactly what Bonetti had planned on doing. It still hangs there. It’s called The Four Elements and, according to what I’ve been told, it depicts Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Pythagoras. How can anyone tell? In paintings, all philosophers look more or less the same: tunics, beards, and pensive eyes.”
When I arrived at Madame Nécart’s hotel, the assistants were all gathered there. I never saw them in groups of three or four; it was all or nothing. Perhaps they had agreed behind my back when to appear and when to disappear. Baldone shouted at me from a distance, with his Neapolitan terseness. “The Argentine, finally! Come here, come here! ”
I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to disappear but I took a seat beside the Japanese assistant, who looked at me harshly. I greeted him with a nod, which he returned, somewhat exaggeratedly. Tamayak and Dandavi were missing from the group.
“And what does Arzaky say about what happened in the Galerie des Machines?” asked Benito, the Brazilian.
I was honest: “Arzaky doesn’t know what to think.”
“Magrelli says that the two incidents are related. They both happened on a Wednesday,” Baldone said smugly.
“Your Roman detective has a distinct tendency to find serial murders in isolated cases,” interjected Linker.
“That’s our mission, isn’t it?” said Baldone. “Finding a pattern in the chaos. The police see isolated events, then the detectives connect the dots, creating constellations.”
“Good for Magrelli. When he retires from investigation he can take up astrology, which is, I’ve been told, a much more profitable business. At least in Italy.”
Baldone chose not to respond. Benito seemed to agree with Linker: “But there’s no sequence here. In one case a murder, in the other, the theft and incineration of a corpse. If it is a series, it is going backward: burning a body, as unpleasant as it is, is not as serious as killing. What could be next? Stealing a wallet? The killer could finish off his list of crimes with a final act: leaving a restaurant without paying.”
“Or leaving the Numancia Hotel without paying,” said Linker. “The Twelve Detectives are a club, but they’re also rivals. It’s inappropriate to mention it, but we know that many of them hate each other, and we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the killer is among us.”
“Among them, you mean,” corrected Baldone.
Linker’s round face turned red. I don’t know if it was because he had suggested that one of the assistants could be mixed up in the case, or because he had included the detectives and the assistants in the same group.
“Among them, of course.”
There was an awkward silence. Everyone wanted to discuss it, but nobody dared start the conversation.
“I’d like to know who hates whom,” I said to get things rolling.
“There’s plenty of hate to go around,” said Baldone. “But the real animosity, the most serious… well, it’s best not to talk about it.”
“Don’t I at least deserve a clue?”
Benito came closer to my ear and whispered, “Castelvetia and Caleb Lawson.”
Linker turned red, this time with indignation.
“You’re taking advantage of the fact that their assistants aren’t here to speak ill of them.”
Benito shrugged his shoulders.
“You brought it up, Linker. Besides, it’s not our fault that the Hindu is never around and that Castelvetia has an invisible assistant.”
“That is an old subject and it makes no sense to dig it up again. The Argentine is young and the impressions formed now will stay with him for the rest of his life.”
“He has plenty of time to forget everything he runs the risk of learning here,” said Baldone.
“I want to find out everything I can about the detectives,” I insisted. “Besides, it isn’t fair for me not to know what you all do. I might say something inappropriate in front of them.”
They looked at each other in silence. There were two possibilities: they could either include me in the group so that mutual loyalty developed, or they could completely exclude me. If I were somewhere in the middle, I could hear some careless comments, and repeat them to the detectives. They had no way of knowing for sure that I wasn’t a snitch. They had to decide if I was truly going to be part of their group or not. After exchanging glances with those who hadn’t yet spoken, Linker said, “Okay, then I’ll tell him myself. I’m impartial, and I hate Baldone and Benito’s gossiping. When this happened, Caleb Lawson was already a famous detective and prominent member of The Twelve. Castelvetia on the other hand, was a complete unknown. The case that made them enemies for life was the Death of Lady Greynes, whose father had been president of the North Steamboats Company, a shipping business. Lady Greynes suffered from a nervous condition. Francis Greynes built a tower to support her voluntary isolation from the world. The townspeople called her the Princess in the Tower. Lady Greynes very rarely left her refuge. She said that she couldn’t stand contact with other people, that they might infect her with fatal contagious diseases. Her husband managed the family fortune, but he couldn’t do anything without his wife’s signature. One stormy night, the woman fell from the window of her tower. Her head hit a stone lion, and she died immediately.”
“And her husband?” I asked.
“He was several miles away, at a party in Rutherford Castle. As a social event it was terrible, not enough wine, champagne, or food, but there were plenty of witnesses. They were very reliable (no one got drunk with such a shortage of liquor) so Lord Greynes wasn’t considered a suspect. But rumors of his involvement in his wife’s death spread by word of mouth and were printed in the newspapers. Francis Greynes wanted to clear his good name and honor so he called his old Oxford buddy, Dr. Caleb Lawson, and asked him to investigate the case and absolve him of any guilt.”
“Agreeing to help an old friend and then accusing him of murder is behavior unbecoming to an English gentleman,” I said. “I hope Lawson didn’t do something like that.”
“Of course not,” continued Linker. “Lawson interviewed the servants, the doctor who had treated Lady Greynes, and Lord Rutherford’s dissatisfied guests, and he confirmed Greynes’s alibi. He declared it a suicide. Everyone knew that Lawson was the most famous detective in London and the judge wouldn’t question his opinion. And yet this judge, a provincial civil servant, decided to keep the case open. He felt he had to.”
“Had Caleb Lawson changed his mind?”
“No, that wasn’t it. Caleb Lawson has never, not in his entire career, ever admitted to making a mistake. But Lady Greynes had a sister, Henriette, who didn’t believe the suicide theory. Henriette was married to a Flemish painter who knew Castelvetia, and he enlisted his help. At that time, Castelvetia worked with a Russian assistant, a remarkably strong man named Boris Rubanov. Boris had acquired the habit, on every new case, of engaging the domestic help in conversation, without interrogating them. He let them talk about their families, about their little everyday complaints, he bought them drink after drink, and after a few days of increasing trust and alcohol, there were no secrets between them. Thanks to Boris, Castelvetia solved a case which, outwardly, was not a mystery.”
“Castelvetia contradicted Caleb Lawson?” I asked.
“Contradict him? Castelvetia almost ruined Lawson’s reputation! After that, Lawson’s assistant, Dandavi, had to force him to practice those breathing exercises that Hindus do so they won’t succumb to a dizzy spell. Boris had gathered the following information: before the crime, a cook and a coachman had heard the sound of furniture being moved around in a room of the tower. Those nighttime noises were what enabled the Dutchman to solve the case. Castelvetia maintained, before the judge, that Francis Greynes had planned his wife’s murder long before it happened. He had the tower built in such a way that there were two identical windows, one facing east and the other west. One opened onto a small stone balcony, the other onto nothing. Architecturally the room was completely symmetrical. Every night the cat would meow and Lady Greynes would go out to the balcony and tend to her. That night, Greynes doubled his wife’s medication so that she would fall asleep in the dining room. When he carried her to the tower in his arms, he had already switched the furniture around, so that the window that faced east, instead of being on the left side of the bed, was on the right. Then he went to Lord Rutherford’s castle, so he would have an alibi. That night the cat meowed, as always, and Lady Greynes, disoriented by the medication and the reconfigured furniture, went out the wrong window.”
“The poor woman,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Poor Lawson,” continued Linker. “The press had a field day with him, they even talked of bribery, and he swore undying hatred for Castelvetia. Before Castelvetia had time to report the results of his investigation, Francis Greynes was tipped off and escaped. They say he f led to South America. That f light saved Lawson, because the press paid much less attention to the trial than they would have if the accused were there in the courtroom. Trials in absentia are even more boring than executions in effigy.”
The animosity between the two detectives was a delicate and unpleasant topic, and the assistants were silent, pondering the consequences of that distant episode. I felt a bit ashamed for having taken the conversation in that direction.
Luckily Benito broke the silence. “But they are also divided by theoretical concerns. I’ve heard that Castelvetia maintains that an assistant, under certain circumstances, could be promoted.”
“That’s enough, Benito, we’ve already discussed that,” said Linker. “Don’t dream the impossible dream. They are The Twelve, not The Twenty-four. Who’s ever heard of an assistant who was promoted? Nobody.”
“But maybe the laws state that-”
“And who’s ever seen the laws? They’re unwritten; the detectives only make veiled references to them when they’re alone. They won’t tell them to you, or to me. It doesn’t make any sense to argue about something we’ve never seen, and never will.”
“But I have seen them,” said Okano, the Japanese assistant. His voice, in spite of being barely the whisper of silk paper, made us all jump. “I’ve seen the rules.”
Linker attributed his claim to a language problem. “Do you know what we’re talking about?”
Okano responded in perfect French. He was more f luent than Linker.
“My mentor is very methodical; and any time he received a correspondence about the laws, he wrote it in a separate place. I had a chance to read the papers before he burned them.”
“He burned the laws?”
“So no one else could see them. He burned them in the garden of an inn where we were staying during an investigation in a southern town. It was summertime and the cicadas were singing. My mentor burned the papers in a stone lantern.”
“Do you mean to say that you read something about an assistant becoming a detective?”
“That’s right. My mentor didn’t ask me to keep it a secret, so I’ll dare to speak. I even think Sakawa allowed me to read those papers on purpose, so I would know that the remote possibility exists, and so someday you all would know it as well. Knowing that means we have to be better assistants. Not because we have ambitions of becoming detectives, but because the mere fact it could happen exalts us.”
This was much more than the Japanese assistant had said in any of the other sessions, and now he was visibly short of breath. He was drinking a glass of pure absinthe, which was probably the reason for his sudden loquacity. But now the green fairy seemed to have abandoned him. Linker grew impatient.
“Come on, tell us. How is it done?”
Okano squinted his eyes, as if he were recalling something that had happened long ago.
“Four rules have been established for the promotion from assistant to detective. The first is that the detective, on his voluntary retirement, has to nominate his assistant as his replacement. He must be willing to give him his good name and his archives as well. The assistant would carry on his mentor’s work, as if he were the same detective. Nine of the eleven other members must approve the appointment. That’s the rule of inheritance.”
“And the second one?”
“The second tenet is called the rule of unanimity. That is when all the detectives agree to fill an empty chair by naming an assistant whom they deem exceptional on the basis of his performance.”
“And the third?”
“That’s the rule of prepotency. When a mystery has stumped three detectives and there is an assistant who is able to solve the case, he can present his application for membership. Their incorporation into the club is subject to a vote, in which two thirds of all the members, not just those present, must agree.”
Benito smiled, pleased with his victory.
“What now, Linker? Was I right or not?”
Linker looked at him with irritation.
“But those are hypothetical situations. Pure theory. In practice none of those three rules have ever been applied. But… didn’t you say there were four?”
Okano now regretted that he had said so much. Baldone held up the little green bottle and Okano looked at his empty glass. He had to talk to get his reward.
“There was a fourth rule, which my mentor called the rule of inevitable betrayal. But Sakawa didn’t write anything more on that sheet of paper, as if he found it so shocking that not even the burning f lames could remove the stink of sacrilege. All the clauses are secret, but that one is twice as secret.”
Everyone had fallen silent. Baldone poured two fingers of absinthe into Okano’s glass. He drank it straight. Soon he fell asleep.
“Dream,” said Linker. “Dream of secret clauses and rules whispered into ears. Dream of papers burning in the stone lantern of a Japanese garden.”
I said good night to the acolytes and I went up to my room.
The next morning I was awakened by banging on the door.
“Get up, assistant! You have the right to sleep late only when you’ve been out investigating all night.”
It was Arzaky’s voice. I jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. I told him to come in because I didn’t want to make him wait outside.
“I envy those gleaming boots.”
“I shined them last night.”
“I have mine shined, but they never look that good.”
“I polish my boots with a special cream that my father makes. It’s his secret formula.” I opened my shoeshine box and showed him the jar, whose blue label showed a picture of a shoe and the name Salvatrio. “Do you want some? It’s perfect for when it rains. My father says that it can cure injuries too.”
The detective took the jar, opened it, and breathed in the cream’s smoky odor.
“You put the shoe polish on a wound? I don’t trust your father that much.”
Arzaky moved some papers off of the only chair in the room and sat down.
“I can make your boots shine like mine.”
“You can? Please do.”
I looked in the shoeshine box for a blackened rag and a sable-hair brush. I sat on the f loor and covered the boots with polish and then brushed them vigorously. They soon shone with the blue gleam characteristic of Salvatrio polish.
“I think deep down you’re ashamed that your father is a shoemaker.”
“He works hard. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“But you don’t mention it either. Do you think all the other assistants come from aristocratic families?”
“I guess not. If they did, they wouldn’t be assistants. They’d be detectives.”
“Is that what you think? The detectives don’t come from important families either.”
“Doesn’t Magrelli come from Roman aristocracy? I read that somewhere. Castelvetia has a noble title, count or duke, and the Hatters own the largest newspapers in Germany…”
“Counts, dukes, millionaires, relatives of the pope… I’m afraid we fall very short of your fantasies. Magrelli’s father was a Roman policeman. Zagala grew up in a fishing village and his mother died in a famous storm that destroyed half the ships in port. Castelvetia gave himself a title, but it’s fake. The Hatter family used to own a small press in Nuremberg; they printed commercial stationery and wedding invitations. The others I can’t recall, I don’t know them as well, but I can assure you that Madorakis isn’t the heir to the Greek throne, and that good old Novarius used to hawk newspapers on the street. And as for me, I’m a bastard.”
I started, almost imperceptibly, but Arzaky noticed it.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you any big secret that might threaten your sense of decency. My mother, when she was very young, had an affair with the town priest. The priest stayed in his parish, but she was forced to leave, taking her sin along with her. The boy was never baptized. After she moved, my mother had to make up a last name for me. She thought about killing herself, cutting her wrists with the sharp knife she always carried. She read the brand engraved into the steel and that was the name she gave me: Arzaky. Arzaky knives were very common in those days. I understand that in Argentina you are very Catholic…”
“The women are; we men are freethinkers…”
“Then I hope your mother doesn’t mind that her son works for an unbaptized detective.”
We went out onto the street and I quickened my step to keep up with Arzaky.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re headed? Or have you already guessed?”
“I’m in no condition to guess.”
“You don’t seem to care either.”
“In ten minutes, after a cup of coffee, I’ll start caring about things again.”
Arzaky walked lively in his newly shined boots. He was wide awake at night and in the morning too. I don’t know when he slept, I’m not even sure he did. We walked fifteen or twenty blocks and we stopped in front of a building whose bronze plaque announced the society for platonic studies.
Arzaky rapped with the doorknocker, a bronze fist. A butler opened the door; he was an old man with eyes so pale he looked blind.
“The secretary of the society, Monsieur Bessard, told me to expect you. It’s about the painting, right?”
He led us up a staircase. He was so old that I wouldn’t have bet money on his being able to climb the stairs. But he had gone up and down them so many times that he and that staircase had become friends, and the oak steps pushed him upward; his steps were light, while ours sounded like heavy marching. The staircase led us to a meeting room: a large table, dirty curtains, library shelves. On one of the walls was a painting of four men walking among ruins and olive trees. I guessed that the most broad-shouldered one was Plato, although they were fairly indistinguishable in their tunics and beards. One carried a torch, another a pitcher, the third a handful of dirt, and the fourth was blowing a dried leaf.
“Here it is, The Four Elements. Stolen by Sorel.”
“A painting that sent a man to his death,” I said.
“No, if you remember correctly it was the woman, not the painting, that sent him to his death. If he had killed someone for the painting, Sorel would now be in crime’s gilded archives. But instead he ended up on the endless gray list of all those who kill for love, for jealousy, out of blindness. Love inspires more crimes than hate and ambition do.”
I stared at the solemn, static painting.
“I wanted to find a relationship between Sorel and Darbon,” said Arzaky, as if he were talking to the figures in the painting.
“Did Darbon have anything to do with the recovery of the painting?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“So?”
“So, nothing. The first fact: Darbon’s death. The second: Sorel ’s cremation. What do those two men have in common?”
“I don’t know.”
“There is one thing. They were both my rivals. I’m searching for the missing piece of the puzzle that connects Darbon and Sorel.”
“You said that an investigation was nothing like a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Did I say that?”
“You agreed with the Japanese detective. He said that investigation was like a blank page. That we think we see mysteries where there may be nothing at all.”
“I’m pleased that you remember. If I manage to solve this case, you must write up the account of it. I don’t remember any of my own words, but I remember what everyone else says. So then we won’t search for a puzzle piece, we’ll search for a line on a blank page.”
I approached the painting.
“The victims may not be connected through their rivalries with you. Darbon could have been killed by the crypto-Catholics and Sorel could have been burned by someone from his past, someone related to his crime.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Our minds always search for hidden associations. We like things to rhyme. We can’t accept chaos, stupidity, the shapeless proliferation of evil. We’re more like the crypto-Catholics than we think.”
Since we were spending so long in front of the painting, the butler came over to check on us.
“Has anyone else been to see the painting?” asked Arzaky.
“A young lady. She was pretty and seemed very determined.”
“Did she mention her name?”
“Yes, but I don’t remember what it was. She just stared at the painting and I stared at her. Her hair was the color of fire.”
“A philosophy enthusiast,” I said.
The old man, to my dismay, shook his head.
“Women never come here, only old men, sometimes even older than me. And all of sudden this young lady comes in. She told me not to tell anyone that she had been here.”
“So you’re betraying her secret.”
“That’s true. But ever since she came here I’ve been asking myself if it was just a dream. Now that I see this young man’s face, I can tell that it wasn’t.”
Arzaky looked at me sternly.
“Do you know what he is talking about?”
“No. Maybe he’s right and it was a dream. Why would a young woman come here?”
The old man seemed to be weighing my words.
“Then it was a dream,” he said. “That’s not such a bad thing. After all, a dream can recur.”
We went down the stairs. Standing at the door, we thanked the old man for his kindness.
“The pleasure is all mine,” said the old man. “I got to meet the great Arzaky. They say he is the only living Platonic philosopher.”
“I’m afraid that for a detective that description isn’t a compliment. It’s my enemies who say that.”
“You yourself said that enemies always tell the truth and that only slander does us justice.”
“If I said that, then I’m more of a Sophist than a Platonist.”
I was afraid that Arzaky would question me about the woman, but as soon as the door closed he hurried off, as he was expected at a meeting.
As I walked toward the hotel, I thought that my silence about Greta was a betrayal of Arzaky’s confidence. This is the only thing I’ll keep from him, I promised myself. When I arrived at the Nécart Hotel the concierge handed me a note folded in two. The ink was green, and the handwriting a woman’s.
i know you took that photograph from grialet’s house. if you haven’t mentioned it to arzaky, don’t. i want to see you tonight, at the theater after the show. the rear door will be open. go up the stairs. THE MERMAID
It wasn’t even noon, and I had already found another occasion to betray him.
The Grand Opening was four days away, and Viktor Arzaky had already filled the glass cases of the parlor with a variety of objects lent by the detectives. Louis Darbon’s widow had donated a microscope with a slide containing a shiny drop of blood. Hatter was displaying some of his toys, including a windup soldier that counted meters while it walked. The best Novarius could come up with was the Remington revolver he had used to kill Wilbur Kanis, the train robber, on the Mexican border. At first Arzaky had opposed the idea of showing such a common weapon, it seemed to be the exact opposite of what a detective represented. But since there was so little time left, he gave in.
“Don’t you have something to display that ref lects your thinking?” I said to Novarius, and he replied: “That is how I think.”
Magrelli had filled several shelves with his portable criminal anthropology office, which didn’t look particularly portable at all. It was comprised of endless comparative charts, a photographic archive, and several instruments made of German steel that were designed to measure the length of a nose, the circumference of one’s head, or the distance between one’s eyes. Some of the objects needed an explanatory card, such as the one Madorakis displayed from the Case of the Spartan Code, which was a short cane on which you could attach a strip of fabric containing a message. Only someone with a similar cane could decipher it. Castelvetia had chosen a set of five Dutch magnifying glasses, with different gradations.
Benito interrupted my tour through the cases.
“Did you read the news from Buenos Aires?”
“No.”
“Caleb Lawson has been spreading it around everywhere. In Buenos Aires they’re accusing Craig of murder.”
I was shocked for selfish reasons. Even though I was now working for Arzaky, I was Craig’s envoy. Anything that stained Craig’s reputation would stain mine. Mario Baldone had a newspaper. I took it out of his hands.
“Relax, Salvatrio. There was an accusation, but Craig will take care of disproving it.”
The news was written up in vague terms: the police had stopped searching for the magician’s killer in the gambling arena. They then began to look for an avenger in the victim’s circle. Alarcón’s family hadn’t hesitated in pointing a finger at Craig. The newspaper said that there was no proof that implicated the detective but that he, due to his convalescence for an unspecified illness, had refused to defend himself.
“You look pale,” said Baldone. “Here comes Arzaky. The Pole will take care of putting a stop to Caleb Lawson’s attack on Craig.”
I was looking at the cases, but my mind was elsewhere. There was the large chest of disguises belonging to Rojo, the detective from Toledo, which was chock-full of makeup and wigs and fake beards; Caleb Lawson’s anti-fog specs that he used to work at night in London; and Zagala’s wardrobe and nautical instruments that he carried with him when he boarded ships with their f lags at half-mast or boats abandoned in the ocean. Arzaky had contributed only a series of black notebooks filled with his tiny handwriting, which were displayed open. An empty case awaited Craig’s cane.
The Paris Enigma• 187
“I’m leaving it for the last minute,” Arzaky had told me. “I want to use my friend’s cane for a few days. As if he were here with me.”
It made me nervous to see the impulsive Arzaky handling Craig’s cane, loaded and ready. I feared an accident.
The Japanese detective had chosen to show a wooden square filled with sand, accompanied by black and white stones. He called it the Garden of Questions, and he used it to study the relationships between circumstances and events. When anyone asked him what it was, he responded, “I sit on the f loor and contemplate it, and I move the stones as my thoughts move inside me. Then I take away the stones and I see the shape traced by their movements. That drawing sometimes tells me more than all the evidence and eyewitness accounts and clues, and all those other annoying details we detectives have to deal with.”
All the detectives were now in the center of the room, seated in armchairs. And we stood around them, their satellites, with one exception: Castelvetia’s acolyte.
“Hey, Baldone,” I said. “That guy over there, who can’t seem to make up his mind about coming in, isn’t that Arthur Neska?”
I pointed to a man dressed in black who stood behind a column. Baldone wasn’t surprised to see him.
“He keeps hanging around the hotel. They say he was sent by Darbon’s widow to see how the investigation is going. But I don’t think that’s true. If it were, he would try to make conversation, try to get us talking. And he hasn’t said a word. He just stands around staring at the detectives, especially at Arzaky. As if the acolytes didn’t exist for him.”
Neska’s situation perplexed me. And at the same time, in spite of the fact that I didn’t like him at all, it made me sad.
“If his detective dies, can an acolyte still keep coming to meetings?”
“No one has relieved him of his post. He’s like a ghost Darbon left behind. Besides, in these chaotic times, who would dare to throw anyone out? I would assume that the events here in Paris will lead to new rules.”
“Or perhaps he hopes to be named as Darbon’s successor,” I dared to say.
Baldone shook his head.
“No, nobody ever really liked Neska. He has the kind of negative charisma that causes people to dislike him before he’s even opened his mouth. Wherever he goes, women stop laughing and birds stop singing.”
Neska had now approached the cases and was looking at Darbon’s microscope as if it were a religious relic. Arzaky was asking everyone to be quiet, so Baldone had to whisper in my ear.
“I used to hate him, but now I feel sorry for him. He wants to cling to his old job; he wants to believe that he still has a mission. When the symposium ends, and everyone returns to their own countries, or to some city that murder leads us to, he won’t have anything to do, except tearfully put his mentor’s archive in order.”
Arzaky loudly asked everyone to come to order again. Magrelli was the first to speak. His words struggled to impose themselves upon the scattered conversations that continued. Everyone knew that the important stuff was what was said in the corners, not in the center of the room. The truth is a secret, and secrets are whispered.
“When we had our first meeting, ten years ago, only five of us were present. Craig was among us then, even though he’s not here today. We agreed on proposing locked-room cases as the highest art in our field, but those types of crimes are now a thing of the past. These days they don’t attract anyone’s attention. I want to propose, without forgetting the glory and prestige the locked room has given us, that we add the serial crime to the list of our greatest challenges.”
“I was there on that occasion, Magrelli,” interjected Lawson, “and I’m not willing to change what we established with so much effort and what made the formation of The Twelve Detectives possible. We founded an order, an orthodoxy, a set of rules. If we change one, we’ll end up unraveling them all.”
“Come on, Lawson,” said Castelvetia’s voice. He hadn’t stood up, and the fact that he was speaking from his armchair added a defiant note. “You just don’t want to hear anything about serial murders ever since the Case of the London Ripper.”
For a few seconds there was perfect silence. We knew that it was a difficult subject for Lawson, but for Castelvetia to be the one to mention it-he who had almost ruined Lawson’s reputation in the past-made us all feel in that moment that The Twelve Detectives was at risk of dissolving. What association, what club, could contain such wrath among its members-the hate in Lawson’s gaze and the disdain that Castelvetia’s words implied? Like so many other associations, The Twelve Detectives had functioned perfectly from a distance, through correspondence and reports. It had functioned well as long as there was the promise of a future meeting, a sum of handshakes and embraces sent over the ocean waves. But now, face to face, The Twelve Detectives’ fragility was showing.
We all knew that Lawson had worked with Scotland Yard on the investigation of the infamous murders by Jack the Ripper, who even twenty years after his heinous deeds is remembered, reviled, and destined to live in infamy-every wax museum still contains a hypothetical image of the killer. But in spite of his efforts to help the police, not one single well-founded arrest was made. There were plenty of suspects, but they all paled in comparison to the murderer’s audacity and savageness.
Caleb Lawson exchanged a look with his acolyte and kept quiet, as if obeying the Hindu. Why was he silent, why didn’t he respond to Castelvetia’s attack? It was clear to all of us that Caleb Lawson’s silence meant he had some sort of surprise in store for the Dutchman. The ace up his sleeve, I would find out later, was me.
“I don’t see why we can’t also include serial murder among our greatest challenges,” said Arzaky. “The series and the locked room complement each other perfectly. The locked-room crime happens on a very limited stage, but one with a very high potential significance, since any seemingly circumstantial element can end up in the evidence box: a pack of cigarettes, a key, a torn-up letter, or rope strands like in the case Castelvetia told us about during our first meeting. Serial crime, on the other hand, can spread throughout an entire city, one corpse here and another there, or even over a whole country, or the world. But the chain of signs is limited and one has to find a common pattern created by the killer’s obsession or intelligence. In a minimal setting, there is the maximum possibility of combinations; in a maximum setting, the minimum possibility of combinations. I propose that we consider both variants from now on, and that we don’t deem inferior the intelligence of a detective that takes on the challenge of a series of crimes to that of one who faces the famous locked door.”
“And what do you have to say about this series, Arzaky?” said a raspy voice. Madorakis, short and stout, had stepped forward. He was smoking a cigar and wore a tacky, threadbare jacket. He held tight to some sort of worn leather attaché case, tied with a cord (the catch was broken), from which yellowing papers, unbound books, and mended gloves struggled to escape. Surrounded by gentlemen, he looked like a traveling salesman. Arzaky was a good two heads taller than the Greek detective.
“And what series is that?”
“I’m talking about Louis Darbon, and your friend, Sorel, whom you sent to the guillotine.”
A murmur of surprise was heard. Several of those present weren’t aware of the identity of the cadaver incinerated in the Galerie des Machines.
“That’s not a serial crime. A series has to be based on a scene that the killer has imagined, inspired by a desire for revenge or by the criminal’s childhood. The murderer seeks to repeat that ideal image. There is none of that here.”
Madorakis laughed.
“That is pure Platonism, and I thought that you were in favor of exiling Plato from investigative work. There is no original, archetypal scene that the criminal seeks to replicate. He starts out committing crimes by chance, until he finds an element that strikes a chord with him, and then in the crimes that follow he tries to repeat that element. So if there is something that resembles the archetype, we’ll find it at the end of the series, not at the beginning.”
Arzaky moved toward him defiantly, using his height to his advantage. Madorakis didn’t back up.
“Don’t think you scare me with your so-called philosophy. That’s applying the third man defense. You think that the chain of similarities between one crime and another, and the vague model that inspires them, means that the true crime is nowhere to be found, the total crime that is the killer’s full expression and that therefore-”
“Therefore,” Madorakis interrupted, “all the pure murderers, and history shows us this, have kept killing until someone stopped them.”
“And what sort of link can there be between these two crimes without rhyme or reason?”
Madorakis adopted a mysterious air. “When the third one happens, you’ll know.”
“You sound like a fortune-teller. First you’re a philosopher and now the Delphic oracle. No one understands your message.”
“I’m sure that you do, Arzaky.”
Madorakis and Arzaky weren’t enemies, but they were looking at each other as if they were. What was it in the air that was canceling out past alliances? Was it the electricity of the World’s Fair, the thousands of lamps prepared to make life go on even after nightfall? Arzaky himself seemed shocked by Madorakis’s aggressiveness. Going up against Caleb Lawson or Castelvetia didn’t bother him, or having a shouting match with his friend Magrelli, but the Greek’s outburst had disconcerted him.
I took my watch out of my pocket and checked the time: the argument continued, but I had to leave. I made my way through the acolytes, who didn’t even look at me, because their attention was on the detectives’ increasingly heated discussions. Only the Sioux nodded his head in acknowledgment. I went past Neska, who pretended not to see me.
Although no one could have any interest in following me, I walked through the night looking back every couple of steps, like a conspirator. It was late: that time of the night when we no longer check our watches, and the only people we pass on the street are entirely joyful or entirely melancholy. I was so distracted I almost got hit by a carriage. I heard an insult, but by some strange auditory hallucination it seemed like it was the horse and not the coachman who shouted at me. It was such a deep voice and a sensible tone: one couldn’t help but agree. We should take a cue from horses, they never shut their eyes.
When I arrived at the theater, the last audience members were leaving. In opera, or any kind of theater performance, light or profound, you see the same phenomenon: the first audience members leave the theater chatting and laughing, eager to abandon the world of fiction and reenter the real, where they feel at home. The last ones to leave, on the other hand, have to be forced out by the ushers or the lights going up or the silence that follows the applause. If it were up to them, they would remain there in the imaginary world the performance offers them. These last stragglers came out without saying a word, grieving over having to abandon the Mermaid’s island. They didn’t know their place in the world outside; in real life the seats aren’t numbered.
I found the side door mentioned in the note and entered without knocking. Dusty sets, papier-mâché statues, armor, and costumes from other shows. I was reminded of the Victoria Theater, where the murderous magician had performed. I thought that in some way all theaters are the same, as if their architects filled them with nooks to show that to create just one stage of illusion you need hundreds of wooden artifacts, moth-eaten curtains, and costumes covered in cobwebs.
I followed the sound of a woman’s singing down a hallway. Her voice was so sweet that I longed to stop right there, not wanting to break the spell. I had been to the opera a couple of times and once to a concert, and all three times I fell asleep. I prefer unexpected music, the music one hears without seeking it out, that is unaware that I’m listening.
My footsteps made the woman’s voice grow quieter; by the time I was in front of her door and read her name, The Mermaid, she had already stopped singing. She received me with a nervous smile and peeked out into the dark hallway to see if anyone had followed me. She was dressed in a green mermaid costume; some sort of oil made her hair shine as if it were wet.
“Did you bring the photograph?”
I had expected a greeting, some friendly conversation, not just an urgent demand. Once I handed over the photograph, I had no power. I held it out to her but I didn’t let go of it immediately and she had to tug at it a bit. I was ashamed by my hand’s attitude, acting on its own, without even consulting me. The Mermaid looked at the photo to make sure it was the one she was looking for, turned it around and read her own handwriting: “I dreamed in the Grotto where the Mermaid swims.”
She stared and stared at the green writing.
“Does Arzaky know about this postcard?”
“No,” I lied.
“You are a gentleman, and you did the right thing by returning it.
I am eternally grateful.”
“I’m not a gentleman. A gentleman wouldn’t have stolen it.”
“Why did you? Did you think it would help you solve the crime?”
“No. I don’t know why. I’ve never stolen anything else in my life.”
“Now that I don’t believe. There’s never a first time, we’ve always sinned, hinting at what’s to come.”
The Mermaid had barely spoken those words when I remembered another slight infraction: two months before my trip, I had gone into the Craig family kitchen and found a pile of Señora Craig’s clothes on top of the wooden table, fresh off the line and still warm from the sun. I hadn’t stolen anything, but I had stroked the garments for a few seconds before I heard the footsteps of the cook approaching. If someone had caught me, what would I have been able to say to them? What worried me about these behaviors was not that they were my most shameful, my most illicit, but rather that they seemed more truthful than all my polite words and kind gestures.
“Are you going to tell Arzaky about our conversation?” The Mermaid’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.
“No,” I answered.
“It’s better that way. Remember, I work for Arzaky too, but I can’t tell him everything. Arzaky wouldn’t know what to do with all the things I find. He sends me to the grottos and caves so I can bring him the clues that are submerged, the worn-out pieces of sunken ships.”
“Did he send you to Grialet?”
“Arzaky has his agents. But sometimes he doesn’t trust us. Viktor believes that Grialet killed Darbon.”
“And that’s not true?”
“No.”
I felt her hand on my arm.
“Come toward the light. Your boots are so shiny. Is that Argentine leather? ”
“Yes, but that’s not why they shine. I polish them with a cream my father makes.”
“It’s raining. But your boots still gleam.”
“And my father says that this polish also cures wounds.” “I could use a bottle of that.”
“I’ll send you one when I go back to my country. Do you have black shoes?”
“No, but I’ll have to get either some shoes or a wound so I can test the cream’s effectiveness.”
A creaking noise was heard in the dressing room. There was a coat stand, a shapeless mountain heaped with garments. For a moment I was afraid that she had led me into a trap because it was obvious that someone was hiding there.
“You can come out,” said the Mermaid.
I thought maybe it was a hidden lover, I thought maybe it was Grialet, maybe even Arzaky, but it was Greta. I felt a mix of rage and relief.
“These theaters are labyrinths. She can show you the way out.”
I was sorry that the show ended so soon. I was starting to be like the people who always leave the theater last. The Mermaid closed the door to her dressing room. Greta and I walked out together.
“Are they hiring performers? It’s a good idea to try a new career. I don’t think Castelvetia can keep you much longer as an acolyte.”
“The detectives have more important things to worry about,” she said in an untroubled voice. “Castelvetia’s secrets aren’t a pressing subject.”
“Caleb Lawson is going to go after him, sooner or later.”
“Castelvetia doesn’t care about Caleb Lawson or his Hindu. He beat him once and he’ll beat him again. He’s worried about Arzaky.”
“Why Arzaky?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. But he talks about it in his sleep.”
It looked like she regretted having told me. I didn’t dare ask her why she knew so much about Castelvetia’s dreams. Did she secretly go to the Numancia Hotel for clandestine meetings? Or was he the one who came to her?
We arrived at the hotel, but had to keep a safe distance away because the detectives were talking at the entrance. The acolytes were getting ready to march, in formation, toward the Nécart.
“Why did you go to see the Mermaid?” I inquired.
“I wanted to ask her about the Case of the Fulfilled Prophecy.”
“That’s an old case.”
“It’s still unresolved. Castelvetia thinks that Grialet was the guilty party that time, but even though Arzaky sent the Mermaid over to investigate Grialet, they weren’t able to prove anything. Perhaps the Mermaid protected Grialet then. Perhaps she’s protecting him now.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“Nothing. She talked about Arzaky and she sang a song, the song she had sung the night they met. I thought after that she might be willing to talk. But something interrupted her.”
“What?”
“The footsteps of an idiot.”
Now Greta looked at the detectives and assistants, who were disappearing into the night.
“Is this the first time you’ve seen them?”
“No. I’ve been here before. I like to watch them, to imagine the day when I’ll enter the circle of acolytes. If I can become a member, it will be as if my father did too.”
I didn’t raise any objections to her fantasies. Who was I to pass judgment, among the ambitions and worldly matters, on what was possible and what was impossible? Greta took a step back and the streetlight illuminated her; but her face shone so brightly that it looked as if she were the one illuminating the streetlight. It was the face of a girl looking through a store window at a shiny toy she knew she would never possess.
The next day, at ten in the morning, I was in front of the theater again. Some acolytes were with me, as well as their respective detectives: Magrelli, Hatter, Araujo. Then Zagala arrived, wearing a hat that exaggerated his nautical air. He was complaining, saying that Benito should have been there but he was still sleeping. A policeman tried to keep the group from getting through, but Magrelli, used to wrestling with the carabiniere, had no problem getting rid of him. He f labbergasted him with convoluted pronouncements of authority, constantly pointing upward with his index finger, indicating his friendship with very important civil servants, and showing him papers affixed with bureaucratic-looking signatures and seals.
“You always have to show the police some piece of paper. They are very sensitive to written documents,” he explained to us later.
Captain Bazeldin went white when he saw the detectives burst into the room and climb the stairs toward the stage. I followed their impatient and happy march like an automaton. The fights had been forgotten and they were once again a cohesive group, now that crime had called to remind them that they had a purpose in life.
“The show is canceled,” said the inspector. “We don’t need any actors.”
But he couldn’t stop them; they surrounded him like a chorus, all questioning him at once, heaping on the praise and f lattery just to distract him. On the stage, large blocks of ice created a sort of frozen grotto. The Mermaid’s body was sunk into a circular lagoon in the center. Her black hair f loated around her. Blood had traced streaks in the water, like veins in marble. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were black, holding on to the kiss of death. I looked at her without sadness or horror, as if there were no relationship between the cold scene before me and the splendid woman I had spoken to the night before. I could still smell the mix of perfumes in her dressing room. I looked at my hands, the hands that had touched the photograph. I wondered if it wasn’t that photograph that had been the passport to the frozen place she now inhabited.
The captain, who was unable to contain the detectives, tried one last gesture of authority, and austerely gave the order for the body to be taken out of the ice. Four policemen knelt down and, after rolling up their sleeves, plunged their arms into the water. They reached hands and ankles and pulled up, insecurely and brusquely. The Mermaid hadn’t lost her beauty in death; one could imagine that all her arduous insistence on green costumes, grottos, and her stage name had been the preparation for this perfect scene of underwater sleep. But when she was pulled out of the water, with her hair oily and sticky and her slack limbs taking on the slapdash poses of a broken doll, we were keenly aware that she was no longer the Mermaid; she was a corpse. Bazeldin knelt down out of pity, wiped a handkerchief over her face, cleaning it of oil, hair, and blood. Her lips were now white.
The rescue maneuver had left the nape of the Mermaid’s neck showing. It was covered in blood. Without realizing what I was doing, I took a step forward and almost fell into the water. Benito, who had just arrived and was still buttoning his shirt, held me back.
“What’s going on? Did you know her?”
I managed to say, after much effort, “No.”
200• Pablo De Santis
“And Arzaky?” asked Magrelli. “Where is he?”
“He was the first one here,” the chief of police responded with annoyance. “I was ready to throw him out, because his arrogance aggravates me, but luckily that wasn’t necessary. He left on his own. As soon as he saw her he took off with those giant strides, as if he had urgent business to attend to. This case has nothing to do with you detectives, so if you don’t mind I’m going to have to ask you all to leave. The World’s Fair is expecting you.”
“Of course it has something to do with us,” said Hatter. “This woman was Arzaky’s lover.”
Captain Bazeldin started to say something, but when he opened his mouth no sound came out. He dropped the handkerchief he had used to clean the Mermaid’s face. Perhaps he was thinking about all those agents he had sent to follow Arzaky, all those reports that piled up on his desk, all the informers he had bought useless information from who weren’t even able to tell him the name of Arzaky’s lover.
Zagala made a murmur of displeasure. He didn’t want Arzaky’s secrets aired in front of the police. Hatter realized he had said too much and tried to defend himself.
“What? We all knew it. That’s why we came as soon as we heard the news.”
Baldone made the sign of the cross, very quickly, so that no one would notice. I imitated him, unashamed: the detectives could fight with positivism, but we acolytes were allowed to be religious. I knelt down for a few seconds beside the body, to pick up the handkerchief Bazeldin had just dropped. I said two Our Fathers in a soft voice: one for the Mermaid’s soul and the other for the chief of police not to discover my sleight of hand.
Madorakis stepped forward and bent down beside the body. He touched the Mermaid’s oiled hair with one finger.
“First Darbon, Arzaky’s adversary. Then Sorel, whom Arzaky had sent to the guillotine. And now this young lady dressed up as a mermaid, Arzaky’s lover. The Polish detective finally has his series.”