A Murder Most Literate

by Jefferson Bonar

  “Of course I did. It’s my job.”

  Armada drank his sherry without thinking, then cursed himself for it. It conceded something to Arturo in a way, accepting his hospitality in the middle of accusing him of crimes. It also made the forbidden oloroso taste so much nicer.

  “And you never thought for a moment these rumours could be true?”

  “He was my friend. I believed him. He wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “And yet, he did.”

  Armada put his sherry down, getting it out of his hand before he finished it. At least he could give some of it back and save some part of his dignity.

  “That’s the problem with loyalty,” Armada said. “Sometimes it is unfounded. And if I find you continue to be loyal to your dead friend by lying to me tonight, I won’t hesitate to put you in irons.”

  “I am a representative of the Crown,” Arturo said. “And threatening someone in my position brings stiff consequences.”

  Armada walked slowly toward the door, wondering if it was worth asking one last question. Not even for the case, it was more for his own morbid curiosity. It rang in his ears so loudly, it was if someone had asked it already and their words were still echoing in the room.

  What did it feel like to see your friend’s body that day?

  He knew the carefully worded answer Arturo had put in his letter. But he wanted to see it in Arturo’s eyes, that first moment the question was put out into the air. Would there be a thrill at being able to recount it again, going over every last detail of something that, for reasons he didn’t yet understand, excited him? Or would it be revulsion and an evasion of the questions to keep the horrors from his mind?

  But with the dying of the candle, which had now spent itself and was in the process of going out, Arturo’s face was becoming lost in the darkness, making it impossible to ever know the answer.

  “Thank you, corregidor,” Armada finally said, and left the office.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It had been a long day, and Armada’s mind was swimming with all the new information he’d gleaned. None of it was connecting anymore, which only spurned his tired mind on. It was time to sleep. He wasn’t going to make any more sense of anything when he was this exhausted.

  Armada made his way back to the university, looking forward to bed. He could feel the dull ache in his knees returning. They’d always ached when he was tired, since he was a young boy. It meant he would have trouble getting to sleep tonight, as they would throb for hours once he was in bed. A sure sign he’d pushed himself too far today.

  Armada reached the main entrance to find the night porter there as always, burning his perpetual candle just inside the doorway, offering the only bit of light on the street now that most sensible people had gone to bed. The Rúa de San Martín was oddly quiet in such darkness. The only sounds here were the crickets that would spend the night calling to each other from across the road.

  As Armada reached the doorway, he smiled and nodded to the man, as always. But his smile was not returned. The porter scrambled to his feet, raced over, and grabbed Armada lightly by the elbow.

  “Sir, I was hoping to catch you. You have a visitor who’s been waiting here for hours. Just a moment.”

  Armada felt a sinking in his stomach. He was so tired. This was the last thing he wanted. His bed seemed to be getting further away.

  He was surprised to find Maria suddenly appearing before him, escorted by the night porter from some unseen corner of his little office. She was yawning and trying to rub the sleepiness from her eyes, which went wide at the sight of Armada.

  “Good evening, Constable,” Maria said with a trained hospitality. “I’m sorry to bother you so late.”

  “It’s fine, Maria. How long have you been waiting for me here?”

  “It’s not important, sir. But there was something I needed to tell you.”

  “But not in front of Señora Cordoba?”

  Maria froze at the mention of Elvira. Confusion flitted across her face.

  “I’m not sure I should have come,” Maria said, mostly to herself.

  “It’s all right. Whatever you tell me tonight, it will be held in the strictest confidence. It need not risk your job.”

  “It might be nothing. Perhaps I’m just wasting your time.”

  “I doubt that,” Armada said.

  Maria took a moment to gather her thoughts. Armada felt his exhaustion begin to melt away, replaced by curiosity.

  “It’s not…it isn’t something I can tell you. I have to show you.”

  Armada caught the eye of the night porter, who was listening intently, glad to have a bit of drama to keep him entertained during what would otherwise be a long, tedious night.

  Armada held an arm aloft, signalling for Maria to lead the way. Maria pulled her thin wool coat over her shoulders, more out of nervous habit than for warmth, then began walking back toward the Rúa de San Martín.

  Armada followed close behind, trying to avoid the worst of the ruts in the road as they walked through the darkness. There was a half-moon out tonight, giving Armada just enough light to see the outline of the top of Maria’s head, where a coif was pulled tight over her brown hair and tied tight under her chin. She moved through the darkness with skill, probably after years of making her way home after putting the Cordoba family to bed at night. Armada felt the safest thing then was to follow her movements, her footsteps, even, if possible.

  But as they moved south toward the southern walls of the city, the tall facades of the buildings fell away, letting more of the moonlight in, and Armada could see they were heading toward the River Gate. Just before they got there, however, they turned west and made the short walk past the castle that loomed over them on the highest hill in the city, and further on to the Arroyo de los Milagros, one of two estuaries that ran through the city to eventually feed into the Tormes River to the south. From the east bank, Armada could make out the outline of the sprawling Benedictine Monastery on the other side, which took up the whole southwest corner of Salamanca. Rumours abounded at how the monks were less than pious, being involved in various corruption schemes and some even claiming to see whores from Santiago entering in the night. As monks, they did not fall under the jurisdiction of the city constables, who were forced to leave it to the ecclesiastical authorities to enforce the law, many of whom were very open to bribes. It gave the whole area a sense of lawlessness that the city could do little about.

  As such, it made a fine location for a warehouse district, where shoddy buildings had been hastily put up along the banks of the estuary, most of which were well-protected with large iron bars in the windows and loading doors with thick chains and cast-iron locks. Dogs could be heard barking away in the night in many of them, most of them left underfed to make them more keenly vicious. The contraband that was kept in these warehouses was unimaginable, Armada knew. And for some reason, despite how unwelcoming this part of the city was, this short, stout maid with a tight coif and who looked so vulnerable, was taking him right into the heart of it.

  Armada tried to keep close to Maria, in case they came across anyone nefarious in these streets. Maria did not seem so concerned, as she weaved her way down a small alleyway that went in between two of the more non-descript warehouses. Just behind a wall somewhere, a dog heard their footsteps and began growling and barking, clawing at a stone surface.

  The alleyway led to the back of these warehouses, where a small clearing had been left between the buildings. Squeezed into this little clearing was a shed, five or ten paces wide, built from the scrap building materials left by the other warehouses. A sloping roof had been cobbled together with several different types of tiles, and there were no windows. Just a large wooden door locked tight.

  The courtyard itself was just bare earth, yet was covered in small piles of something Armada couldn’t quite make out in the darkness. But it smelled of coal. The whole courtyard reeked of it.

  “What is this?” Armada asked. “Why have you brou
ght me here?”

  “This is it, sir. I followed Señor Cordoba here once. I know I shouldn’t of. It wasn’t my business. But I was curious. I couldn’t help it. I knew he wasn’t going to Madrid all those times. I guess I just wanted to see if he was seeing whores. There’s lots of them around here. It wouldn’t have been fair to Señora Cordoba if he had. I love those children, sir, as if they were my own. They deserved to know if….”

  Armada put a calming hand on Maria’s shoulder and she stopped. Then he turned his attention to the large wooden door. Specifically, the lock.

  “I realised he came here a lot. I thought you should know. I don’t know what he did here. I don’t want to know. But—”

  “I think I do,” Armada said. He took Gregorio’s key from his pocket, slid it into the lock, and unlocked it.

  Behind him, Maria gasped.

  Before she could respond, Armada pulled off the lock and went inside. It was pitch black, but he could make out the outline of a torch hanging on the wall next to the door. Armada knew it would be there. How often had Gregorio come here to work under the cover of darkness?

  Armada fumbled around a bit until he found something to light the torch, and suddenly the shed filled with flickering orange light.

  The shed was sparse. Just one room, one half of which was filled with a table where tin measuring bowls had been left strewn about. Next them was to a scale and two large mortar and pestles that had been used to grind up a black powder. Just behind the table, a small pile of coal with a spade stuck upright into it.

  In the other corner, there were two barrels full of glittering sand that had clumped together in large chunks and had stained brown in places. As Armada moved the light closer, they sparkled more brilliantly.

  Maria cautiously stuck her head in, casting her gaze about. From her confusion, the shed wasn’t what she’d thought it would be.

  “I don’t understand. What is it?”

  “A workshop,” Armada said, examining the crystals in his hand. He touched one to his tongue.

  It tasted of soil, with a hint of saltiness.

  Saltpetre. And lots of it. Gregorio Cordoba was already preparing his next batch. Aurelio had been busy in the days before Gregorio’s death. Did that mean anything?

  Armada twisted suddenly, casting the torch about the room while Maria flinched and instinctively moved her head out of the shed, as if it were about to be bitten off.

  “But it doesn’t make sense….”

  Armada moved to shine the burning torch in every corner of the shed.

  “The charcoal is there. Burned and purified outside, then brought in to this pile to mix in with the saltpetre, which is in those barrels over there. But where is the sulphur?”

  Armada sniffed the air, then moved to the other side of the shed and did it again. But there was no hint of it in the air.

  “It’s not here. He must keep it somewhere else. No doubt worried the distinctive smell might give him away.”

  Maria was getting her nerve back, and she stepped into the workshop, her curiosity getting the better of her.

  Armada was disappointed. He’d found Gregorio’s workshop, potentially the geographical centre of the case, and yet there was nothing here that helped. What had he been hoping to find? He wished Lucas was here. When it came to investigating physical spaces, it was where the boy shined. Sometimes, the most mundane items could help. It wasn’t something Armada was particularly good at. Perhaps he would try to bring the boy here later, in the hopes he would find evidence of who else had been here besides Gregorio Cordoba, Teo, and Aurelio Martinez.

  After another twenty minutes or so of looking around, Armada found it difficult to keep his eyes open. The aching in his knees, which he’d been able to ignore for so long tonight, returned with a vengeance and now threatened to keep him up for the rest of the night. And he still had a long walk to get back to his accommodation.

  “Come along, Señora. We should both be getting home. It’s getting very late.”

  “Please, sir. You won’t tell the Lady what I showed you tonight, will you?”

  “Of course not. And I especially won’t tell the Lady where you happened to get all this money.”

  Maria looked up at Armada as he dropped a handful of the ducats they’d found into her hand. Her eyes opened wide.

  “Thank you for your assistance tonight, Señora. It’s been very helpful. Now, if you don’t mind, I have one favour to ask. Can you escort me back to the university?”

  Armada followed Maria closely, as his tired eyes made it even harder to see in the dim moonlight. He wondered if he could find his way back to the workshop in the daylight, when he was rested but when everything would look so different. He wondered if he could get all the way back without tripping and hurting himself. He wondered about Lucas, and about who could react so savagely to learning Gregorio’s secret.

  But one thing he didn’t wonder about—where Gregorio kept his sulphur. And after a bit of rest, he would confirm what he already knew to be true.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lucas entered the tavern after a long walk, dreading every step he took toward Armada, who was waving to him from a table in the back. They were meeting in the parish of Sancti Spiritus, much too far from the university to risk running into any students. Also, meeting so early in the morning helped to guarantee that as well. The only students awake at this hour would be those attending a lecture and would have little interest in going all the way across town just for a bit of breakfast.

  Lucas took his time weaving his way through the tables of the busy tavern. Every way he tried to go, there were other men trying to push past or crossing his path. Yet the mood in the room was subdued. There was none of the boisterous shouting or laughing that there was the night before. These men had a long workday ahead of them and were saving their strength.

  Lucas didn’t want to be here. He felt everything had changed. He’d grown in ways the old man couldn’t possibly understand. Armada had never been to university. How could he know anything? Lucas had been accepted into one of the most exclusive colegios in Salamanca. He’d been matriculated. He was on the rolls now, so technically he was even a student.

  Armada hadn’t done any of that for him. No, that had all been Julian. Armada hadn’t helped him at all. In fact, it was Armada who was preventing him from ever being able to study here. He had the money to pay his tuition, yet the old man wasn’t using it for that, was he? No, he was forcing Lucas to wander the countryside for his own redemption. But what of Lucas’s own? Was Armada even thinking of that? Because Julian was.

  Lucas reached Armada’s table and plopped down in the chair opposite.

  Armada smiled. “Lucas! I see you got my note.”

  Lucas nodded, but said nothing. He’d resented finding Armada’s notes underneath his pillow telling him to meet him here. It was like being rudely woken from a nice dream. In fact, he’d have been fine if Armada had never contacted him again and left him to run around with the Bartolome boys in peace.

  Kings for Bartolome, Bartolome for Kings! Lucas shouted in his own head. There was a warmth to it, a familiar flow. It brought him closer to his new friends, even though he was so far from them at the moment. He had to squelch the desire to shout it at Armada.

  “So, how are things going in the colegio?”

  “You mean San Bartolomé?”

  Armada was taken back by Lucas’s spiteful tone.

  “Yes, I mean San Bartolomé. With the murder suspect you were supposed to be speaking to.”

  The use of the phrase murder suspect seemed offensive. It only made Lucas’s contempt grow.

  “It’s fine.”

  “Are you talking to them? Do they trust you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you learned anything? Is there a connection between Julian and Gregorio Cordoba?”

  Lucas took a long time to answer.

  “It hasn’t come up.”

  “Ambrosio has been telling me you�
�ve been seeing a lot of those boys lately, to the detriment of your duties, in fact. Surely the subject of Gregorio Cordoba’s murder has come up once or twice?”

  Lucas wanted anything to get him out of this conversation. He felt like he was betraying those who were most important to him. What would Julian and Marco and the rest of the boys think if they saw him here, talking to Armada? It would ruin everything. And Lucas would go back to being the lonely little boy, the victim whose parents were murdered and everyone just felt sorry for. There was no pride in that. No dignity. He couldn’t go back to that. Not anymore.

  “They don’t talk about it much. They’re thinking about the election.”

  Lucas briefly thought about telling Armada about the plans to blow up their own building to swing the election. There was still the question of where Julian had gotten the barrel of gunpowder in the first place, a question Lucas pushed to the back of his mind. It wasn’t important. It had nothing to do with the murder case. What right did Armada have to know about it? It was private colegio business, not for outsiders to know.

  “Gregorio Cordoba had been a candidate in the election. And they still don’t discuss him?”

  “No. I told you, it doesn’t come up!” Lucas shouted back to Armada.

  Armada leaned back in his chair, staring at Lucas. The old man didn’t seem angry, which he’d been expecting. Just quizzical, as if trying to read Lucas’s thoughts.

  Well, Lucas wouldn’t let him. His thoughts were his own. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t need Armada’s help anymore. So, Lucas stared at the table.

  “Can I go back now?”

  “Yes, but only if you come with me first. I need to show you something.”

  Lucas gave out a sigh. He knew he was being a bit dramatic, but he didn’t care. The boys were back in the common room, drinking and talking about the election. Now that he’d been let in on the big plan to blow up their building, he didn’t want to miss a moment of it. And Armada was sensing this and taking his time, just to spite him. And he resented Armada for it.