A Question of Ethics

by James Holding

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  A QUESTION OF ETHICS, by James Holding

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 1960.

  Copyright © 1960, renewed 1988 by Davis Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  A QUESTION OF ETHICS, by James Holding

  On this occasion, his contact in Rio was a man called simply Rodolfo. Perhaps Rodolfo had another name, but if so, Manuel Andradas did not know it. He was to meet Rodolfo in the Rua do Ouvidor on a corner by the flower market. While he waited, standing with his back against a building wall on the narrow sidewalk, he looked with admiration at a basket of purple orchids being offered for sale in a flower stall opposite. He wore his camera case slung prominently over his left shoulder.

  Rodolfo, when he brushed past Manuel and murmured “follow” from the corner of his mouth, proved to be a nondescript, shabbily dressed man. Manuel followed him through the noonday crowd to a small cafe. There, over a cafezinho, they faced each other. Manuel kept his attention on his tiny cup of jet-black coffee.

  Rodolfo said, “Photographer, would you like a little trip?”

  Manuel shrugged.

  “To Salvador,” Rodolfo said. “Bahia. A beautiful city.”

  “So I have heard. Is there a deadline?”

  “No deadline. But as little delay, Photographer, as possible.” Manuel was known to his contacts simply as The Photographer. He was a photographer, in truth. And a good one, too.

  “The price?” And as he asked the question, Manuel lifted his muddy brown eyes to Rodolfo, and sipped delicately at his coffee.

  “Three hundred thousand cruzeiros.”

  Manuel sucked in his breath. “Your principal must need the work done desperately,” he ventured.

  Rodolfo smiled, if you could call the oily lift of his lip a smile. “Perhaps,” he said. “I do not know. Is it satisfactory?”

  “Very generous, yes. Perfectly satisfactory. Expenses, of course, and a third of the price now?”

  “Va bem.”

  The man called Rodolfo idly scratched with a pencil stub on the back of the cafe menu, and turned it toward Manuel. On it, he had written a name and an address. Automatically, Manuel committed them to memory. Then he folded the menu and tore it into tiny pieces and dropped them into the pocket of his neat dark suit. He was frowning.

  Watching his expression, Rodolfo said, “What’s the matter?”

  Manuel said with disapproval, “It’s a woman.”

  Rodolfo laughed. “Business is business, isn’t it?”

  “I prefer men, that’s all,” Manuel said.

  They rose after draining their coffee cups and turned out into the avenue. Rodolfo, when he shook hands, left a thick pad of currency in Manuel’s hand.

  Manuel stopped in an open street stall on his way back to his studio and drank a glass of cashew juice. It was better than coffee for settling the nerves, he believed.

  * * * *

  Six days later, he went ashore at Bahia from a down-at-the-heels freighter that stopped there on its way north to take on a consignment of cocoa, hides and castor-beans.

  Unwilling to invite attention, he walked from the landing place through the teeming traffic of the Baixa to one of the municipal elevators he could see towering against the cliff above the lower town. The elevator lifted him quickly to the Alta and spewed him out into the municipal square of the upper town. From there, he had a magnificent view over the foliage of fire-red flamboyant trees to the harbor below him, with its lively shipping and quiet fortress.

  In the shadowed lobby of the Palace Hotel on Rua Chile, he registered for a room under his own name, Manuel Andradas. And for two days thereafter he behaved exactly as a photographer on assignment for a picture magazine might behave. With two cameras draped about him, he visited Bahia’s places of interest, taking numerous photographs of everything from the elaborately carved facade of the Church of the Third Order to the Mondrian-like blue and tan egg-crate walls of the new Hotel Bahia. On the third day of his stay, having established for himself in the city the character of a harmless, innocent photographer, he set about his true business in Bahia.

  About an hour after noon, he stuffed a pair of swimming shorts into his camera case with his cameras and left the hotel. He walked up Rua Chile to the square where scores of busses were angled into parking slots, bearing with mechanical indifference the deluge of propaganda and music that cascaded upon him from loudspeakers placed around the plaza. He swung confidently aboard a bus that was labeled Rio Vermelho and Amaralina, and took a seat at the rear, a sallow, fine-boned man of quite ordinary appearance except for disproportionately large hands and heavily muscled forearms. Not one among the vociferous, pushing passengers that soon filled the bus to overflowing gave him more than a passing glance.

  Manuel closed his eyes and thought of the work ahead. He felt the bus start, heard the excited gabble of the passengers, but did not open his eyes. The name, now? He remembered it perfectly. Eunicia Camarra. Yes. The address? Amaralina, Bahia. Yes.

  Eunicia Camarra. A woman. What was she, or what had she done, that somebody in Rio—his formless, nameless, unknown “customer” in Rio—should want her nullified? That was the word Manuel always used to himself: nullified. Was she a faithless mistress, perhaps? A woman who had spurned an offer of marriage? Three hundred thousand cruzeiros was a substantial sum. Perhaps a woman of whom his customer—also a woman? —was jealous?

  Manuel, of course, never knew the truth about his assignments. After the job was done by whatever means seemed most appropriate and practical to Manuel, he never found out the true reason why his professional services had been required. And that was just as well. He preferred to remain emotionally uninvolved in his work. He did each job quietly and efficiently, and avoided becoming entangled in its moral or ethical ramifications.

  He put Eunicia Camarra from his mind and opened his eyes. The bus went inland a little way, giving him brief glimpses of raw red earth, patchy gardens, lush tropical foliage. Then its route took the bus back within sight of the sea again, and he felt a cool ocean breeze, entering through the bus windows, begin to dry the slick of perspiration off his face.

  At the Amaralina bus stop, he was deposited beside a thatched circular shelter house only a few yards from the beach. Directly before him stood a cafe, scrubbed clean of paint by the endless pummeling of wind and blown sand. It had an open terrace facing the beach. Nearby, a man with shiny white teeth smilingly sold coconuts to half a dozen schoolgirls, hacking off the top of the nuts for them with a machete so that they could drink the sweet milk.

  The children’s voices, gay with school-is-over-for-the-day spirits, rang merrily in Manuel’s ears as he walked slowly past the cafe terrace and up the beach to a tumble-down bathing pavilion where he changed into his swimming trunks. Then he took his camera case and went out to the beach.

  There were not many people about. He saw one couple lying in the sand behind some outcropping rocks, completely engrossed in each other. He saw a small knot of bathers off to his right, wading knee deep in the foaming surf and emitting shrill cries of pleasure. Far off to his left, he could sec the buildings of Ondina hugging the sapphire bay. And before him, close to the water’s edge, the same schoolgirls he had noticed buying coconuts, were cavorting in the sand.

  He went and sat on the sand near the children, cradling his camera case in his hands. The girls wore a simple blue and white school uniform, he saw, and were approximately of the same age…twelve or thirteen, perhaps. He smiled at them and greete
d them gravely, “Bons dias, Senhoritas.” That was all. He didn’t push himself forward. He was more subtle than that. When they returned his greeting, they saw the camera case in his hands. And at once, they evinced a lively interest in it, especially the blonde child who seemed to be the leader of the group.

  She approached Manuel. “Is there a camera in that case?” she asked. “May we please see it? Will you take our picture? Are your photos in color? What kind of pellicula do you find most satisfactory, Senhor? Will you show me how to adjust the lens so that I may take a photo also?”

  This was said so breathlessly, so beguilingly, with such animated childish curiosity, that Manuel laughed in spite of himself and said, “Not quite so fast, Senhorita, if you please! So many questions all at once! Yes, it contains a camera. Several of them. And yes, you may have a quick look at them, but be careful not to get any grains of sand in them.” He held out the camera case and the children clustered around it, chattering and exclaiming. The little girl who had requested the privilege of seeing his camera opened the case.

  “Wonder!” she said. “A Leica! It is very expensive, no? My grandmother has one.” She delved deeper. “And a baby camera!” she exclaimed, holding up Manuel’s Minox. “Such a small camera I have never seen.”

  Manuel sat quietly in the sand and let the children handle his equipment, keeping an eye on them to prevent damage, however. Then he said, “I shall take a photo of you now, all in your school uniforms.” They stood demurely together, smiling while he snapped their picture.

  The blonde child said, “Will you send us the picture? My grandmother would like to see it.”

  “Certainly,” Manuel said. “And I shall not charge you for it, though I ama professional photographer and get large sums for my work.”

  “Oh, thank you, Senhor,” the blonde girl said. Manuel nodded to her, realizing with satisfaction that he had now so ingratiated himself with these children that they would answer eagerly any questions he chose to ask them: questions about Amaralina, their homes, their neighbors, their parents’ friends, even questions, no doubt, about a woman named Eunicia Camarra. But there was no hurry.

  The blonde child said, “Are you going into the water, Senhor? If so, we will care for your cameras while you bathe. No harm shall come to them.” She appealed to her friends; they chorused agreement.

  “Why not?” Manuel said. “If you will be so kind. Muito obrigado.” And in rising to enter the water, he made his first mistake. But he was hot and sweaty, and a swim would be welcome, even though he was not a good swimmer. And the girls would remain until he came back, because they would be watching his cameras for him.

  “Have a care, there by the rocks,” the blonde-child said. “There is a strong current there.”

  He scarcely heard her. His mind was on other things. And only when he had plunged boldly into the water and stroked his way some distance out from shore did he fully comprehend what the child had said. Then it was almost too late. He felt himself in the grip of a force too powerful for even his big hands and muscled arms to resist. His head went under the water and he choked. And he thought, foolishly, how much better to remain hot and sweaty than to cool off at such a price. Then he couldn’t think any more at all.

  * * * *

  When he opened his eyes, the glaring blue of the sky hurt them. He was lying on his back in the sand. He felt weak, sick. And as he shifted his pained gaze, it centered on the skinny naked body of the blonde girl standing not far from him, about to drop her grubby uniform dress over her head to cover her wet skin. Near her, as his eyes turned, were two of the other schoolgirls, also engaged in slipping on their dresses over wet bodies. He made a choking, grunting sound and sat up suddenly.

  The girls screamed and went on wriggling happily into their dresses. “Do not look, Senhor!” the blonde child cried gaily. “We must first arrange our clothing! We have been swimming without suits.” The other girls’ laughing voices joined hers like the twittering of small parrots. Manuel shook his head to clear it, coughing water onto the sand. The little blonde girl was saying, “We warned you, Senhor. There is a strong undertow. You paid no attention!” She scolded him gently, but he could tell that she was mightily pleased he had ignored her warning so that she and her friends might have the marvelous excitement of saving him from the sea. “We are all excellent swimmers,” she continued chidingly, “because we live here in Amaralina. But you are not a good swimmer, Senhor.” She smiled at him. “But we pulled you out. Maria and Letitia and I.” Scornfully she said, “The others ran away.”

  Now Manuel Andradas felt a wave of a very unfamiliar emotion sweep through him, and he said, “Senhoritas, I owe you my life. I am grateful. I thank you from my heart.”

  They were embarrassed.

  He looked at the blonde child, who was combing her fingers through her wet taffy-colored hair and asked with a premonition of disaster, “Come se chama? What is your name?”

  “Eunicia Camarra,” she said. “What is yours?”

  * * * *

  He sent the other children home with his thanks, but prevailed upon Eunicia to stay a little longer on the beach with him. “I wish to take your picture again,” he explained. “Alone. To have a record of the lady who saved my life.” And curiously enough, he found himself for the first time in his career regarding a proposed victim with something besides cold objectivity. He felt an unaccustomed lift of his heart when he looked at Eunicia—an emotion compounded of gratitude, admiration, liking and strangest of all tenderness, almost as though she were his own child, he thought vaguely. At the end, after snapping her in a series of childish, charming poses, he said on an impulse, “Now show me how I looked when you pulled me from the water and dragged me onto the beach.”

  She laughed delightedly and flopped down like a rag doll on the sand. Her arms were disposed limply at her sides; her legs lay loosely asprawl; the closed eyes in her thin face were turned up to the sky; and her mouth gaped. She looked remarkably like a corpse. Manuel leaned over her then, and used his Minox to snap her like that.

  And all the time, they were talking.

  “Do you live here with your mother and father?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, Senhor Andradas, my mother and father are dead. I live with my grandmother, in that big house up there on the hill.” She waved inland.

  “I see. A big house, you say. Your grandmother is a rich woman, I suppose. Not likely to want you saving the life of a poor photographer.”

  She was indignant. “My grandmother is a great lady,” she averred stoutly. “But of course, she is very rich, as you say. After all, when my grandfather was alive, was he not the greatest diamond merchant in Brazil?”

  “Was he?”

  “So my grandmother says.”

  “Then I am sure it is true. And you are alone there with your grandmother, eh?” He peered at her with his muddy eyes. “No brothers or sisters or relatives to keep you company?”

  “None,” she said sadly. Then she brightened. “But I have a half brother in Rio. He is an old man now, over thirty I believe, but he is my half brother nevertheless. His mother was the same as mine,” she explained importantly. “But a different father, you see?”

  Manuel was, in truth, beginning to see. “Your grandmother does not like your half brother?” he guessed.

  “No. She says he is malo. A liar and a cheat and a disgrace to her family. My mother ran away and married when she was too young. And brother Luis was born then. I feel sorry for him, because his father is dead, like mine. I write to him sometimes, but I do not tell my grandmother.”

  “I can see that you might not want her to know,” Manuel agreed gravely.

  “Especially when she will not help him, even with money. And he asks her many times, I know. She refuses, always.”

  “Perhaps she will leave him some money in her will when she dies.”

  “Oh. no, she will not. I am to have it all. Luis will not get a penny, grandmother says, while anybody else is alive in
the family. She has no patience with brother Luis, you see. Poor Luis. But I think he is quite nice. I shall go to Rio and visit him and do his cooking for him,” she finished in a dreaming voice, “when grandmother gives me enough money.”

  “You’ve never seen him?”

  “No. Only his picture. He sent me a picture in a letter last year, the one in which he asked whether Grandmother had softened toward him. And I sent him a picture of me when I answered. He’s quite handsome, really.”

  “What is his name?” Manuel said.

  “Luis Ferreira.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “Yes. He works in the office of the Aranha Hotel.”

  After he had changed out of his swimming trunks in the pavilion, Manuel took Eunicia up to the cafe terrace and, with unaccustomed generosity, bought her a bottle of orange pop. She guzzled the pop energetically. Then she went home, saying her grandmother would be anxious if she didn’t soon appear. Manuel said in parting “I am very grateful, Eunicia. Perhaps I shall be able to do you a service in return.”

  Long after she had gone, he sat alone on the cafe terrace, crouching uncomfortably on a fixed pedestal seat beside a square slate table, and stared out across the beach at the foam-laced sea. He ordered three Cinzanos and drank them down rapidly, one after the other, wrestling with his unexpected problem. Three hundred thousand cruzeiros! The whole thing, he thought gloomily, had now come down simply to a question of ethics.

  He wished he had a glass of cashew juice.

  * * * *

  Manuel Andradas returned to Rio on the night plane that evening. He went from the airport directly to his studio, developed the Minox film he had exposed in Bahia, and carefully examined the tiny negatives with a magnifying glass before selecting one and making a blown up print of it. He called the anonymous telephone number that eventually put him in touch with the man called Rodolfo, and arranged to meet him again in the Rua do Ouvidor in the morning. Then he went to bed and slept dreamlessly.

  Next day, he showed the print to the man called Rodolfo. “It was not a woman,” he said with disapproval. “It was a child.”