A Not So Perfect Crime

by Teresa Solana

  Segimon Messegué sighed again.

  “I don’t know if you can imagine what an effort it is teaching Latin nowadays. The pupils don’t take the slightest interest in anything. Do you know what they thought the Rubicon was after they’d spent three months doing Caesar to death? A disease ... And do you know what they’d write in exams?” He sighed once more. “In the film Gladiator ...”

  “I understand,” I said, thinking of our twins’ apathetic attitude to their school work.

  “I thought perhaps I’d motivate them with Catullus, connect with them ...” he paused. “In fact anything Catullus wrote they’ve heard a thousand times on television with fully consenting parents. But it was a mistake on my part.”

  “You mean, Lídia Font trumped up those accusations,” said Borja remembering nothing was on the file found in the Fonts’ house.

  “Of course she did!” he exclaimed very angrily, going red, whether from anger or embarrassment. “I’ve never, never, ever laid a hand on a pupil or done anything ...”

  “Calm down,” said Borja, patting him on the arm. “Obviously, if as you say, none of this was true ... I can understand you felt threatened, but you did have other options ...”

  Segimon Messegué looked at us as if we’d just touched down from the moon, a feeling that was beginning to feel familiar.

  “You know what? I’m a bachelor, getting on in years, and still live with my mother. People think this isn’t at all normal. Do you two never go to the cinema?”

  “But you told us you have a fiancée?” I retorted.

  “Her name’s Lluïsa. We’ve been going out for a year and a half but nobody at school knows. She also teaches, although she works in another school. She’s divorced with two children, a boy who’s married and a girl who is on the brink. Lluïsa was going to live here after the wedding, but of course ...” he said abjectly.

  “So why didn’t you tell anyone what Mrs Font was planning? Your headmistress, for example,” Borja asked.

  “You could have gone to the police and accused her of attempted blackmail,” I added very professionally.

  Segimon Messegué looked at us again, as if we were the freak show. He sighed, closed his eyes for a few seconds and slowly opened them again before resuming.

  “I know what some people think, not just at school, but here too, in this neighbourhood: that I have a domineering mother and that’s why I’ve never married, because I’m an only son and still cling to her skirts. That I’m a repressed homosexual ... That I’m suffering from some kind of mental illness because my father left us ... If you add to all this that I teach a subject as peculiar as Latin has become today ... How do you think the police would have reacted if I’d told them this story?” He paused and added solemnly: “‘And Brutus is an honourable man ...’”

  “Brutus? Who’s this Brutus?” asked Borja alarmed.

  “What I mean is that Mrs Font had the odds stacked in her favour. Who do you think they’d have believed? A wealthy, important wife of an MP, or a Latin teacher who’s over fifty and does things people think are peculiar, like being a bachelor, reading books, not having much social life and living with his handicapped mother?”

  Segimon Messegué was right. A few moments ago I’d put all those ingredients together and come up with the protagonist of Psycho. I felt ashamed of myself.

  “I haven’t offered you anything to drink,” he said getting up. “I thought it might make you feel uncomfortable, given the circumstances ... But I need a cognac.”

  He took three glasses from the cabinet and poured himself a glass of Magno. Just in case, we declined his offer.

  “Do you know,” he said, recovering slightly after his first sip, “films and all this psychoanalytical palaver have done a lot of harm to many people who don’t lead what others consider a normal life. There are lots of neighbours on the staircase who look at me as if I am peculiar just because I live with my mother and never married. Whenever they put one of those films on telly, they look at me the day after as if they’re trying to detect something ...”

  He went silent for a few moments, thinking what to say next. In the end he sighed and finished telling us his story: “When I was six, my father abandoned ship and left us just with the clothes we were wearing. He took the tiny amount saved in the bank, the jewels, cutlery and silver picture frames. He left us with the walls and furniture. Someone told us he went to Argentina, but we never heard any more of him. I don’t even know whether my father is dead or alive ...” He paused and took another sip of cognac. “My mother had to slave away to make ends meet and give me a decent schooling. She said she was working as a seamstress but was really cleaning houses. She was ashamed people might find out, you know? A maid doing the housework ...”

  Borja and I looked down, upset. We could still remember what things were like thirty or forty years ago.

  “I’d finished my degree and was working as a teacher: I was about to get married. Suddenly my mother fell ill and, when she recovered, the doctor told us she’d have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. It was a virus, one of those rare diseases that affect the spinal column ... Carmen, the woman who was my fiancée at the time, insisted we put her into a home, and even found a very nice one on the outskirts of Barcelona. Carmen,” he added even more miserably, “wasn’t prepared to take responsibility for that kind of situation.”

  “Sometimes, when you’re young, it’s difficult to cope with this kind of misfortune,” I said to console him.

  “Do you know how old my mother was?” he stared at us. “Forty-three. Only forty-three,” he repeated, “I couldn’t sentence her to a life among the sick and deranged for the rest of her life. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

  “So you decided to break off your engagement.”

  “Carmen forced me to choose between my mother and herself ... And I chose. From then on I couldn’t find any woman prepared to accept my situation, until I met Lluïsa, obviously. Whenever I got to know a young woman and told her I lived with my handicapped mother, she wouldn’t even deign to come home and meet her ... You can see I’m an average-looking man of modest means and as the years passed by, it got more difficult to get to meet women. But I’ve never felt so desperate that I wanted to propose to the first person who came along. Time has shown I was right because I did finally find the woman of my dreams.”

  The sky was starting to darken and we were almost engulfed by shadows, but Messegué showed no sign he was going to switch the light on. That penumbra, together with the clock’s monotonous tick-tock, created a strange feeling of peace within me.

  “I know it doesn’t fit the stereotype,” he went on, “but, despite her condition, my mother isn’t domineering or embittered or one of those who always find fault with their potential daughters-in-law,” he said, as if he’d read my thoughts. “On the contrary, she’s always been very optimistic and notices people’s good qualities rather than any defects. She tried to understand my father’s decision from the beginning, and even today absolves him of any blame. She says that sometimes people take decisions they will later regret, but it’s often difficult to retrace one’s steps.” He paused again. “I couldn’t put her into a home. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  I suppose we are used to clutching to stereotypes as props to get us through life. They often work but not always. How often did I employ those same clichés day-in day-out to judge others? Just before that confession, I’d been feeling terrified at the thought that Borja and I had a disturbed criminal on our hands, simply because the man’s life was slightly different from how people think things should be. I’d been unfair.

  “Of course she doesn’t know,” he added, “that I didn’t marry because I didn’t want to consign her to a home, I mean. I’ve always told her that I couldn’t find the right woman.” He smiled. “Now she’s delighted by the prospect of Lluïsa. They both are. If they,” his voice fell despondently, “had ended up believing, even slightly, the evil slander that woma
n wanted to ...”

  “So you decided to send her a box with a few poisoned marrons glacés ...” said Borja.

  “Initially I thought that what Mrs Font had said was pure bluff, a ridiculous threat, and that would be that. In fact, I’d already decided that Núria’s next mark would be an A star. But, one day, just before the start of the Christmas holidays, I had to go the headmistress’s office and I overheard Maribel, her secretary, cancelling a lunch appointment that Mrs Font and the headmistress had arranged. The headmistress, Mrs Casas, was in hospital recovering from gastro-enteritis, the holidays were approaching, and Maribel was arranging for them to have lunch after the holidays. I remember she told me Mrs Font was always pursuing the headmistress and this time claimed she had something very important to tell her ... I was alarmed. I thought nothing would stop that woman and that I had to do something.”

  “Take her out of circulation, for example ...” I said.

  “No ... I never thought in such brutal terms,” he said, embarrassed. “But what would you have done in my place?” he implored. “What could I do?”

  I imagined the situation, with Montse and the children in the middle, and the truth is I couldn’t think what to say. Borja lowered his eyes and said nothing.

  “Naturally I was incapable of doing anything ... physically, you understand. I ... the most that I ... that I can ...” he avoided using the word “kill” “... I wouldn’t hurt a fly, I swear. In fact, it was Suetonius who gave me the idea.”

  “So you had an accomplice,” Borja rushed in.

  “I think he means the Latin writer. He’s been pushing up daisies for centuries,” I pointed out.

  My brother knows all there is to know about what kind of flowers you should take to a dinner, but zilch about classical literature.

  “It was her name. As she was a Lídia, I immediately remembered the story according to which Livia killed Augustus by poisoning the figs he’d picked off the tree. At school all the teachers knew Mrs Font was partial to glazed chestnuts. I know nothing about poisons but I am a mushroom lover. One Sunday, after overhearing that conversation in the headmistress’s office, I went to the countryside with Lluïsa to look for mushrooms, and by chance found some amanitas. That’s when I thought of the idea.”

  “And why did you only poison some of the marrons glacés?” asked Borja. “Do you know I ate one by accident?”

  “I’m so sorry ...” he said genuinely upset. “But that’s why I did it. In case somebody else ate them ...”

  “Did you never think you might poison the whole family?” It was obvious that if he’d intended to put an end to Mrs Font, he’d acted rashly.

  “I knew Núria wouldn’t eat them because she’s anorexic. Mr Font, her father, suffers from diabetes and never eats sweets. Besides, Mrs Font was really crazy about them.” He added, “I know all this thanks to Miss Rourell, a teacher who spent a weekend with them in Cadaqués and spent the next month gossiping about them in the staffroom.”

  “The poisoned sweets formed a ‘V’ in the box,” I recalled. “That was no accident, I suppose?”

  “I pledged myself to the goddess of Victory,” he said head bowed. “By way of a small homage to the ancients who’d inspired me ... That may seem absurd, but, at the time it felt opportune.” Then he insisted again, “What else do you think I could have done? Let her get on with destroying my life?”

  “Why didn’t you take her to court? ...” my brother retorted.

  “It may not seem that way, but I assure you I do believe in the legal system. Don’t think I’m one of those people who argue you should take justice into your own hands or anything like that. Quite the contrary. But,” he continued after a pause, “in this case the law couldn’t help. Many things fall outside its realm: rumours, insinuations, rank, suspicions ... Perhaps nobody would ever accuse me of anything formally, but you know what people say: where there’s smoke ... And I can tell you,” he added conclusively, “Mrs Font was all geared up to ensure there was no shortage of smoke.”

  The three of us stayed silent for a moment. My brother and I were reflecting on the implications of his confession, and from time to time Messegué wiped away his tears. What should we do now? Tell the police what the man had confessed and let the law courts deal with him? It was clear that a legal-aid lawyer, the only kind that a modest schoolteacher would get, could never stand up to a practice like Font and Associates. They’d bankrupt him before any judge ever passed sentence.

  “You must believe me: I do sometimes have regrets,” he said sorrowfully. “I know what I did was wrong. I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life.”

  Borja and I looked at each other without saying anything. We were both in agreement. We wouldn’t be the ones to ruin that poor fellow’s life. Hunting down Lídia Font’s murderer was a task for the police, not for us. At the end of the day, we’re just a couple of dreamers trying to survive in a cruel world.

  So we informed him our task was to protect Lluís Font, not to discover the identity of his wife’s murderer. As long as the police didn’t accuse our client or any other innocent, we’d say nothing, we assured him.

  Initially Segimon Messegué didn’t take in what we’d said. He listened very intently, dried his tears and asked: “You mean you’re not going to call the police? You’re not going to tell anyone?”

  “Our lips are sealed,” Borja assured him. “As long as no innocent soul takes the rap.”

  “I’d never allow that to happen. You have my word,” he replied, his eyes welling with tears.

  He showered us with thanks, in a trembling voice, and was so overwhelmed that he started to explain about the partition walls his fiancée wanted to pull down in order to extend the kitchen, and gabbled on about a thousand other details that weren’t really relevant.

  We were almost in darkness when Segimon Messegué switched on the lights in the dining room. The clock had just struck seven and the telephone rang. It was his fiancée. The teacher told her euphorically that he’d ring her back in a while, and that, if she was up for it, they could look at some furniture in the morning. It was if he’d been reborn.

  “You’re lucky,” Borja said dramatically as we walked towards the lobby, “that God doesn’t play dice.”

  “Truth be told,” Messegué replied, rather put out by my brother’s philosophical comment, “God is a hypothesis I put behind me long ago. But if I had to choose,” he looked at the shelves full of bound classical volumes, “I’d go for the gods of Rome. They did play dice, and were fortunately too busy to bother about us.” He added, “I expect if the gods of today left us alone a bit more, our lives would be all the better for it.”

  “I quite agree,” I nodded. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  While we were still on the landing waiting for the lift, Segimon Messegué took Borja’s arm and whispered: “There was no alternative, was there?” he asked as if that question was going to torture him for the rest of his life. “Tell me you understand, that I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t allow that woman to destroy my family ...”

  One of the disadvantages of not believing in God is not being able to enjoy his forgiveness. After that long conversation, I was sure that doubt, even remorse, would pursue that teacher for the rest of his days. It would be his hell, a hell he’d live with, but a hell all the same. We couldn’t absolve him, and although I didn’t unreservedly approve of the crime the desperate man had committed, I thought he deserved some sympathy. That’s why I finally muttered very softly, though loudly enough for him to be able to hear me: “No, I don’t think you could ...” And I pressed the button hoping my brother and I would never regret the difficult decision we had just taken.

  25

  From time to time I’ve tried to get Borja to understand that Einstein didn’t mean that chance doesn’t exist when he said God doesn’t play dice. Rather, Einstein was referring to the fact that if there are still dark areas in the theories that try to explain the workings of
the universe it is because the theories in question have yet to be refined sufficiently. But he doesn’t seem at all convinced by this argument, and in the case of Lídia Font’s murder, Borja was convinced both the circumstances by which we discovered her murderer and decided to keep our lips sealed were the culmination of a strange chain of events that in his view wasn’t at all random.

  “Don’t you see, Eduard? If a painter hadn’t photographed Lídia Font while she slept and then painted her portrait, and if, as a result of the painting, her jealous husband hadn’t decided to contract us because he thought his wife was cheating on him ... Segimon Messegué would have committed the perfect crime!” he tells me when we recall this adventure, adding, excitedly: “And we were the ones no less who tracked him down!”

  As I already have something of a reputation as a spoilsport, I decided not to tell my brother that, by definition, the perfect crime does not exist, and that, in any case, perfect crimes are committed day-in day-out.

  Unfortunately we’ve become quite accustomed to coexisting with them: doddery grandparents who receive an extra dose of medicine because the family’s at the end of its tether; children starving to death in the Third World while representatives of the world’s governments meet around a succulent banqueting table to justify not doing anything; civilians massacred in so-called legal wars or hijacked by governments who believe themselves to be exemplary ... These are the perfect crimes and not the murder of Lídia Font. Conversely, in the case we investigated most of the rules as to what constitutes a would-be perfect crime, where chance should play no role, had been broken. However, as I said, I keep these thoughts to myself. It’s always comforting to work with someone who has a more naïve – and hence more optimistic – vision of life. If we both thought the same way, we’d have to shut up shop.

  A week after the exchange with Segimon Messegué, Borja and I went to see Lluís Font in his parliamentary office and put to him our interpretation of the facts: his wife had been the unfortunate victim of a macabre role play. Although the police were shuffling a number of suspects, himself included, the business of the poisoned marrons glacés and the fact nobody recognized the motorcyclist who’d delivered the parcel meant that Borja and I favoured this hypothesis, which had already been headlined by a couple of newspapers. At first Lluís Font looked at us incredulously, as if we were out of our minds, but he gradually came to appreciate the virtues of our explanation.