The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

  ‘Don’t take off your gloves,’ Ana said.

  She still wore her leather driving gloves, although they had parked the car a street away.

  ‘I should wear some too. I should have grabbed a pair from the glove compartment.’

  Beatriz opened her bag and took out some cotton gloves. She tossed them to Ana. ‘I used them last week when I was in the manuscript section of the Library of Catalonia. See if they fit you.’

  They flew towards Ana like a limp, rather awkward dove.

  ‘You still call it the Library of Catalonia, too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Fifteen minutes later they had covered all the rooms in the two-storey house. An old kitchen with a refrigerator even older than Beatriz’s. The dining room furniture was worn but clean. The upholstery on the armchair in the small adjoining parlour was darned, and the china plates and the crockery were piled up neatly behind the glazed doors of a display cabinet.

  On the first floor there was a study, also small, whose window opened on to the Llobregat River, which flowed by a few metres away. One of the walls was taken up by an enormous wardrobe, disproportionate and rather absurd in that room. The rest of the space was filled with a desk, dominated by an old typewriter, shelves of books and an office cabinet used to store files and folders.

  ‘A good place to work,’ she said, acknowledging the place’s tranquillity. ‘“What a restful life has he who flees the noise of the world!”’

  ‘Fray Luis de León!’ interrupted Ana. ‘Am I right?’

  Beatriz sat at the desk. On the polished wood surface, the rings from many cups of coffee and glasses of wine sketched a pattern whose only regularity was that it avoided the writing area. Yes, that was the desk he worked at. She opened one of the drawers. Inside they found perfectly organised piles of different types of paper, thick letter paper in various shades and also cheap writing paper. To the left of the desk there was a shelf with an old edition of the Royal Academy of Language’s dictionary, countless anthologies of love poems and romantic novels by Carmen de Icaza, Concha Linares… What does one write with a reference library like that? Obviously not a scholarly study on Spanish epic poetry.

  She turned towards Ana.

  ‘I think he writes his Knight of the Rose letters here.’ She pointed out the bookshelf to her cousin. ‘He has everything he needs to write love letters: dictionaries, and little books like Your Social Correspondence by Teodoro Inclán and The Words of Lovers. Love Letters to Touch the Heart by Angelines Peñarroya del Río and the Outline of Spanish Grammar.’

  ‘In case his “beloved” minds errors.’

  ‘Some literary models. Look, here is a complete edition of Bécquer’s Rhymes.’

  Beatriz got up from the desk, went over to the bookshelf and pulled out the volume.

  ‘In case his memory fails him as he’s writing and he forgets a verse. We don’t all have your incredible memory.’

  Again Ana leaned over the filing cabinet she’d been fiddling with for a little while. She had pulled out a hairpin and was trying to pick the lock.

  ‘At last.’

  She smiled victoriously. She went over to the bureau and lifted the rolltop cover; the wooden slats creaked a little, but it opened easily. Behind it were five neatly labelled folders. Ana grabbed the one whose spine read ‘Pi–Su’ and put it on the desk. Beatriz stood next to her as she opened it. Their eyes immediately fell on the archive page where it read ‘Sobrerroca, Mariona. Barcelona.’ Beside that, the address and a date. Inside the card file there were approximately twenty letters, some written on light violet paper; between them were very thin white sheets.

  ‘Copies. Made with carbon paper.’

  Ana went through the sheets.

  ‘Here is their entire correspondence. It starts with the advertisement in Mujer Actual.’

  She continued to page through.

  ‘Look, here is where he does his accounting.’

  His expenses and income were listed in two columns.

  ‘Train to Barcelona. Two coffees and tea biscuits in the Mauri Bakery.’

  ‘That was their first meeting, the one with the white standard.’ Beatriz pointed to an entry that showed two coffees and two glasses of cognac at a place in Sants.

  There were two more mentions of cafés; a meal in a restaurant. Then just train trips. Perhaps they were already meeting at Mariona’s house. Or she had started to take care of all the expenses.

  The column of earnings showed fewer figures, but much higher ones. A thousand pesetas to get him out of a financial jam. Twenty thousand pesetas, investment in a plot of land.

  ‘I don’t make that in two years,’ said Ana.

  ‘The last entry is on 20 April, a week before Mariona was killed.’

  The ‘Sobrerroca, Mariona’ file was only one of the many that filled the filing cabinet. They didn’t need to say out loud what that meant. Beatriz remembered Mariona Sobrerroca. The last image she had of her was the photo accompanying her obituary in La Vanguardia, a woman in her fifties, attractive, maybe a little plump. She had bought a lover, even though the payment was hidden beneath the euphemism of loans. It was one way to combat loneliness; there were worse ways.

  Ana seemed more interested in the other aspect of the, what should she call it? business? She showed her the previous page in the archive. ‘Palau, Carlota’ it read. The address was in Tarragona, the date two years earlier. There was also an advertisement and a lot of correspondence. At the end, the list of income and expenses.

  Beatriz calculated the earnings.

  ‘Nine thousand pesetas from Señora Palau.’

  Ana checked the dates of the first and last letter.

  ‘This relationship lasted at least a year. And here is the previous page.’

  Another woman from Barcelona. The components were repeated: the advertisement, the correspondence, the chart of income and expenses. And, they saw, the dates partly overlapped with those of the woman in Tarragona.

  ‘So he had two at once,’ said Beatriz.

  ‘At least. Now I understand why the girl at the PO box office looked at me with pity. She knew that Mendoza received letters from a lot of women.’

  Ana pulled out another folder, the first one; she rested it on the cabinet and started to write down names and dates. Beatriz wanted to read the letters.

  ‘To this one, Carlota Palau, he also signed himself The Knight of the Rose and Octavian.’

  She read the complete correspondence, the initial sounding out, the letters in which he set out the bait with which, evidently, he managed to reel her in and – the part that she was morbidly fascinated by – the skill with which he got rid of her.

  ‘He gently snuffed out the flame. In one letter he claims he can’t live without her and she, of course, is flattered. But then come the direct demands. He wants them to live together, to make their love public; he wants to meet her family, her friends, he wants to go to Mass with her on Sundays.’ Beatriz can’t hold back a giggle. ‘Too much for poor Carlota.’

  ‘You don’t think he said it seriously?’

  ‘No, not at all. If you look at the evolution of the correspondence and you compare it to the income chart, you can see that there is a certain correlation between the passion and the sums of money.’

  Ana left the filing cabinet for a moment and went over to the desk to see what Beatriz was showing her.

  ‘Imagine if Carlota Palau had said yes.’

  ‘I don’t have that much imagination, a middle-class lady from the provinces marrying a young arriviste. It wouldn’t even work in a novel.’

  ‘And Mariona? What point was the relationship at?’

  ‘Judging by the letters, a crucial one.’

  Beatriz went back to the correspondence; Ana, to another of the files.

  Mendoza had cut out the ad that had brought them into contact and had glued it to a thick piece of paper along with its publication date. So he kept a meticulous record of everything he was doing; i
f he maintained several relationships simultaneously, he needed to do that in order to avoid mistakes. After the advert followed Mariona’s letter, very contained, feeling out the situation. The Knight of the Rose had responded with identical caution. He told her that he was looking for a cultured woman with experience of life. He gave the impression that he didn’t have much interest in young girls. ‘Butterflies that flutter in the sunlight, fleeting beauties, nothing more.’ Mariona had agreed to meet up, and she had suggested wearing a white silk scarf around her neck so he could recognise her.

  Beatriz was pleased with herself. She had been right. She didn’t read Mendoza’s other letters; they were carbon copies of the ones Ana had showed her. She was interested in Mariona’s replies. She was clearly the one setting the pace and determining how far to take the frivolous allusions. If he were Hansel, she wrote in one of her letters, the only thing she wanted was to lick his lollipop. Beatriz already knew his response; his only desire was to lose himself in Little Red Riding Hood’s forest. Beatriz blushed with embarrassment over such direct and pitiful metaphors.

  Fortunately Ana wanted to show her something. She went to stand beside her.

  ‘Look. It’s a reply to the same advert. And here, too.’

  The correspondence that Mendoza had maintained with those other two women who had responded to the advert in Mujer Actual was relatively brief. In one of the letters they saw that he had noted in pencil ‘Not worth the trouble’. In another he put ‘Distrusting nature. Too much work’. The last letters before the next woman arrived were of farewell. The content was the same in both cases: the Knight of the Rose explained to them that he had to go to Argentina. The tone was adapted to the recipient. Sentimental and stuffed with romantic verses for one. For the other he had mostly used Quevedo and Lope de Vega to lament life’s ups and downs. Beatriz couldn’t help but be reminded of a fellow student at university who had been purged by the Regime and now made a living writing romance novels. He had chosen the wrong type of text; writing love letters was much more profitable. She put the letters to one side and looked out of the window. The view wasn’t bad: a garden surrounded by a low wall and behind that, the river. On the other side, fields that were beginning to burst into life. If the study were hers, she would have put the desk right in front of the window.

  Ana’s voice brought her back to reality; they were intruders in someone else’s home. ‘We should leave. We’ve been here for a long time.’

  ‘Really! You don’t say.’

  Beatriz grabbed one of the files. The material was fascinating; she wanted to read more. ‘We can borrow this, can’t we? I suppose this must be very interesting to a journalist.’

  ‘What are you saying? That would be concealing evidence.’

  ‘At this point they aren’t evidence of anything.’

  ‘They’re evidence. Leave them where they are.’

  Beatriz didn’t let go. Ana went on, ‘I don’t know what Castro would do to me if he found out that I’d taken something from the house.’

  Of course. She would have to tell the police about her discovery. She put the folder back in its place, along with the others, and they closed the cabinet.

  They went downstairs. As they were opening the door to leave, a voice came from the other side of it.

  ‘Abel? Señor Abel, are you at home?’

  It was too late for Ana to stop mid-motion; she opened the door and found that the voice belonged to a woman in her thirties. It was obvious that she had come running – her wide skirt was still swaying and a lock of hair had slipped out of the white ribbon she wore around her head.

  Ana, with Beatriz standing behind her, replied, ‘No, he’s not at home.’

  Several different expressions crossed the woman’s face: disappointment, confusion and curiosity.

  ‘Who are you? I haven’t seen you around here before.’

  ‘Relatives. We’re his cousins.’ Ana smiled. ‘And may I ask who you are?’ The woman smoothed her skirt.

  ‘Montserrat Rius, I live over the road. Sometimes I take in parcels that come for Señor Abel. But I haven’t seen him for a few days, and I was surprised because he usually lets me know so I can watch for the postman. And when I saw you…’

  Beatriz held back a smile. The neighbour was obviously fishing to find out more about these women who were visiting Abel Mendoza. She gave them an apologetic smile.

  ‘And, tell me, how did you get into the house?’

  ‘With this key.’ Beatriz turned the key in the lock, pulled it out and displayed it in the air for a moment before dropping it into her handbag.

  Three deep wrinkles appeared on Montserrat Rius’s forehead.

  ‘That’s odd. Señor Mendoza never gives out his key. Not even to me. When he leaves the house, he leaves everything well locked up, the blinds lowered, the shutters closed. He doesn’t even let me go in, and we’ve been neighbours for ever.’

  Beatriz smiled with extreme friendliness. ‘But we are family.’

  She had just found the key hanging from a small hook behind the door. She couldn’t imagine what it was doing there, but that was the least of her concerns; it had got them out of a real fix.

  Ana addressed the neighbour again, ‘Goodness. What a shame cousin Abel isn’t here! We were passing through, and hoped to find him at home. You don’t have any idea where he could be, do you?’

  ‘No, but it’s not the first time he’s gone away for a few days.’

  She gave them a brief stare before saying goodbye and starting back to her house.

  Ana followed her with her eyes as she headed off. Beatriz took her by the arm. ‘We’d better leave. I don’t think she believed us. If we’re not careful, she might even call the police.’

  As they went to the car, she took a last glance at the house. Something on the first floor had made her feel uncomfortable, something strange. She mentioned it to Ana as they got into the car.

  ‘It must have been nerves,’ her cousin replied. ‘You don’t uncover something like this every day, do you?’

  It was true. Although, given the choice, she would rather be unearthing the animal symbolism in The Book of Good Love.

  30

  They were barely out of Martorell when it started to rain hard.

  Beatriz had driven with exasperating slowness on the way there because of her hangover, and now she did so because of the poor visibility.

  ‘You have to drive according to the weather conditions,’ she justified herself to her cousin.

  And according to your age, Ana was about to add spitefully, but she held her tongue. She was aware that her irritation was due to nerves. They had made a real discovery, and she was dying to shout it from the rooftops; she was euphoric. Beatriz took it upon herself to burst her bubble: ‘How sad!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All those letters from abandoned women.’

  ‘True,’ she said, hoping to nip the subject in the bud. Too late. Many of the abandoned women had responded to his ending things in letters. Letters that oozed desperation, regardless of the tone they adopted, from the proud spite of ‘it’s your loss’ to the absolute humiliation of ‘I’m willing to do anything for you. Just ask and I’ll do it’. There were threats, pleas, offers. All of them from lonely women who now felt twice as alone after being duped by that Don Juan.

  ‘Fear of being alone makes us easy targets,’ Ana murmured. She caught a painful wince on Beatriz’s profile when she added, ‘It seems we aren’t meant to be alone.’

  ‘Or we haven’t been taught how,’ responded her cousin, putting her foot down for the first time during the drive, as if she felt a pressing need to reach Barcelona. ‘But everything can be learned. Trust me.’

  She was talking about herself, thought Ana. It was the first time Beatriz had done that. Ana didn’t ask any questions, although she wondered what scab she had unintentionally scratched.

  After a few minutes of silence, Beatriz said, ‘He must be really heartless. When he couldn�
�t get any more dough out of them, he would leave them or get them to end the relationship themselves.’

  ‘What was different about Mariona Sobrerroca?’

  Beatriz immediately understood. ‘Do you think he killed her? Really?’

  ‘Doesn’t it seem probable to you?’

  ‘It seems absurd to me, Ana. It’s killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It’s stupid. And the man may be many things: unscrupulous, contemptible, cruel…’

  ‘Beatriz, you sound like a thesaurus.’

  ‘… but he’s not stupid. Someone capable of deceiving so many women and adopting different personalities, simultaneously even… You shouldn’t think that these women were stupid, either. We aren’t talking about naive teenagers, Ana, but grown women, with experience, who surely had some good times with him.’

  ‘I didn’t take you for such a liberal, Beatriz.’

  ‘Is that a criticism?’

  ‘No, no.’

  They were skating on thin ice. Better get back to the case.

  ‘This Mendoza is someone who is always putting on and taking off masks, with the constant threat of being discovered. He’s someone who could one day lose control. Perhaps he turned up without having studied his role thoroughly enough and Mariona found him out. How would you react if you found out you were the victim of such a humiliating scam?’

  ‘I would report him. Despite the shame of airing the story, I would shop him, no doubt about it.’

  ‘You see? Can’t you imagine the scene she would make, insulting him, telling him she was going to call the police? Then he lost his cool and killed her.’

  ‘Possibly. There was a fight, no doubt about that.’

  ‘And then he strangled her.’

  Beatriz didn’t answer. In profile her expression was one of extreme concentration, her brow furrowed, her lips tight. After a long silence and without turning, she said, ‘But imagine if he had come home while we were in his house? What would he have done to us? From the looks of it, he’s a murderer.’