“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.
7
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.”
8
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.
9
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 en
tirely 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.
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