“What makes you say that, che?”
“You threw the knife like you were trying to get it into my mouth.”
His mother returned to her pans.
“You’d better read the newspaper you’ve got there. Then you won’t go asking me what’s up.”
“Off you go again. My old man was right when he said women—”
“You mention your old man whenever it suits. You’re a sly one! What would he have said about taking on a lad we don’t need? And a fine one you picked. Trust you to get one who’s on the run from the police.”
“Are you crazy, Mum?” The young man rested his elbow on the table and turned his head. “What’re you on about?”
“Read about the crime with the German woman. They’re looking for someone exactly like the lad you took on yesterday.”
“Pah! You almost gave me a fright there.” The son unfolded the newspaper and looked for the crime section. “You’re great at twisting things. If you don’t want to spend the money just say, and that’s that.”
“I’ve a mind to give you a slap, you cheeky sod.” The woman carried the pan to the table, holding the handle with the edge of her apron, and poured the contents into two enamelled bowls.
“Read it, go on.”
For a while the sound of spoons on bowls and the crackling of wood on the fire reigned in the silent kitchen. The mother peeked over at what her son was reading. He finally raised his eyes.
“You know, Mum, you’re right,” he said, now on the ball.
The woman turned red with fright.
“What do we do now, Omar?”
“Tell him to get lost. Do you want to get caught up in it?”
“Be careful. What if he realizes and kills us?”
Omar let out a terrifying cackle.
“Don’t be daft! And lead them right to him? Don’t talk rubbish!”
“Take the gun with you.”
“’Course! What do you take me for? Get in the bedroom and lock the door, I’ll be right back.”
He went out into the dark yard. His boots crunched menacingly against the hard dirt on which a web of frost was already settling.
He went into the shed. The yellow cone from the lantern lit up a pile of sacks in one corner. A man with matted black hair was sleeping, half hidden by them. He jumped when he felt Omar touch his shoulder. Then he stayed very still, hunched in his rags, flattened against the shed wall like a praying mantis on a branch.
Omar scratched his head as he spoke.
“Look, che, I can’t keep you on. My old lady’s asking questions. She won’t part with a single peso.”
The other man listened attentively, curled up in his hideout. The words fell on his back like the cold drizzle that had whipped him on the walk from the village to the farm.
“You’ve no idea what my old lady’s like when it comes to money. If you don’t leave she’ll likely go to the police, and the Superintendent listens to her because my old man wrote off a debt for him and he doesn’t want her claiming it.”
The other man’s resigned silence gave him the courage to continue along his smooth-talking path of lies.
“Best thing is if you go early tomorrow before she gets up. Look, at four the freight train to Zapala goes past. Hop on, and off you go. No one will see you at that time. Have you got money?”
He noticed the lad’s eyes shining with interest. A brief parenthesis between fear and suspicion.
“No worries, boss.”
“Good.” Omar felt better. The lad was just a poor devil, after all. Some ideas the old lady had. “Here’s a hundred pesos. Go on like I told you.”
“Sure, boss. No problem.”
He had taken the money with a swipe and curled back up in rags and silence.
Omar crossed the yard clutching the gun, attentive to the slightest sign of footsteps behind him. He heard nothing. All that pursued him was the night, the cold and his fear. The shadows of apprehension closed around him, and opened for Emilio Villalba a path along which he could continue endlessly, leaving no trace.
The large group of onlookers was growing around the main door. Heads turned in time with the coming and going of the people gathered in the building’s lobby. When the car stopped next to the cordon on the pavement, necks craned to see who the newcomer was. It was the kind of crowd that forms outside weddings and funerals with the same festive air of curiosity about either happiness or death. Deserters from boredom and everyday mundanity.
Aurora Torres assumed a ceremonial air, unconsciously playing the role of band leader from childhood romería processions. Overcome with excitement, she was forgetting a detail that tormented her—the detail with which she, in turn, had been making nights hell for her husband: the presence of the murderer. Andrés Torres was shooting Soler appreciative looks like the kind seen among the public at races when the favourite steps onto the track.
This sort of public display was at odds with Lahore’s modest tastes. He was a man of order and preferred the routine of tip-offs and criminals with whom one used the standard procedures. His forced participation put him in a bad mood. He ran his ill-tempered gaze over the four people who were waiting on the brown velvet sofa: Betty, Soler, Luchter, Eidinger. Betty would play the macabre role of Frida. Another of Ericourt’s ‘ideas’, since he maintained that the girl had shown herself to be a good actress the day the photographs were stolen. The image of the young woman, dressed in señora Eidinger’s fur coat and multicoloured silk scarf, was like a punch to his retina. Her hands nervously clutched the suede handbag.
“Good evening,” said Ericourt cheerfully from behind.
“I see no reason to feel so pleased,” thought Lahore, “I can’t say it’s a professional triumph. We started with one death and now we’ve got three deaths and a disappearance.”
Ericourt pulled him into a corner.
“Royal flush,” he said in his ear. “I heard from the laboratory this afternoon. I now know where the cyanide was. I had my suspicions. Where were you? I tried to find you to tell you.”
“Working,” replied Lahore. “I’ve been following the trail of Emilio Villalba. He’s got a history of theft in a butcher’s where he worked. Where did they find the cyanide?”
Ericourt whispered a few words to him. Lahore shrugged his shoulders and shot a vague look over to where Betty was sitting.
“That’s no great help to us.”
Magnesium flashes from the cameras announced the arrival of the Examining Magistrate, accompanied by his secretary and a clerk. Both men stepped forward to meet Dr Corro.
The scene in the lift went smoothly. Betty watched impassively as the two men talked and Luchter went to open the handbag to possibly get rid of the compromising key ring. Soler repeated the movement that made the bag fall from the doctor’s hands.
There were no questions. None of the actors exchanged words or made any gesture besides those strictly necessary. When the cameras focused on them, Luchter lowered his eyes and Soler smiled. Betty discreetly lifted the collar of the fur coat to shield her face, holding it away as if the warmth of the fur disgusted her.
Once the scene had finished, the retinue went up in the service lift to the Iñarra family’s apartment. There the reconstruction would take place without the presence of journalists or photographers. The press had been told it would be nothing more than a simple interrogation.
Señor Iñarra and his wife were under police watch. A tartan blanket covered Don Agustín’s frail knees, and he was freshly shaved and groomed. Gabriela looked like a defeated woman. She was dressed simply and her black clothes gave a greenish tint to her dark skin and eyelids, which were swollen from crying and lack of sleep.
When the retinue entered the living room, all eyes fell on Gabriela’s dark face. A grimace of distress thinned her red lips. She and Luchter made no move to reach out to one another. The world of sensations that had united them for more than two years had brusquely shattered.
She got up, as if awa
iting orders, with the same humble attitude she’d had when she came to that home years earlier, when Don Agustín’s first wife was still alive and she did not want to become what the world calls a loose woman.
On the side table, next to the armchair where Frida had sat, they had laid out a glass of whisky, the silver cigarette case, the spherical lighter and an ashtray. On Ericourt’s orders, all those present sat around the table. Señor Iñarra’s hands clutched the arms of the chair. Everyone else smoked cigarette after cigarette. Betty took her place in the chair next to the small smoking table.
“If you please, madam,” Ericourt called Gabriela, indicating the armchair across from where Betty was sitting.
There was a brief silence before Ericourt began speaking.
“I must tell you that this is not a formal reconstruction as such, because we do not know the true cause of señora Eidinger’s death. The scene we shall witness will, in essence, be a line of questioning. We are making use of the scenario to better grasp certain details, which may lead us to a fuller understanding of the events. Some of you are here because your first statements were not entirely truthful and, as a result, you may have become accomplices by accessory.
“Señora de Iñarra, according to your statement, which was subsequently confirmed by Dr Luchter, it was untrue that señora Eidinger did not visit the building. She used to come at night, using a key that Dr Luchter himself had given her, but she only had a key to the main door.”
Ericourt turned to Eidinger.
“You have stated that you suspected your wife of having relations with persons unknown to you. Were you referring to Dr Luchter?”
“I was entirely unaware of that relationship,” said Eidinger.
“Before I go on, I must tell you that no photographs were stolen from your house. Señor Czerbó promised señorita Iñarra that he would stop his blackmail if she got hold of those photographs for him. She went to see you with the sole intention of getting her hands on them, which she managed. Our presence in the house made her think of faking a robbery. She tore up the photographs and threw them down the toilet.”
Gustavo Eidinger’s eyebrows arched in an expression of deep surprise.
“My God! I had no idea,” he said.
“So we are faced with an incident,” Ericourt went on, “which only subsequent events have led us to consider a crime. Without Boris Czerbó’s death and the disappearance of Emilio Villalba, Frida Eidinger’s death could well have been a suicide.
“Señora de Iñarra was the last person to see Frida Eidinger alive. She states that she had absolutely nothing to do with the death by poisoning. Señor Iñarra also denies having put cyanide in the glass of whisky he served his wife.
“This rare circumstance has given rise to others of a criminal nature. The Examining Magistrate must collect all the elements of the case. One of the most important is the scene that took place here on the night of the 23rd of August.
“Those of you who knew Frida Eidinger are in a position to accept or refute señora de Iñarra’s statements. Your observations may help us arrive at a verdict of suicide or murder.
“In fact, if we accept that Frida felt jealous of señora de Iñarra, we can also accept that she might have thought the battle was lost and decided to implicate her in her mysterious death as a peculiar form of revenge.
“Moving on to the second hypothesis: señora de Iñarra is an unhappy woman. Her family security is compromised because someone is blackmailing her. She trusts her stepdaughter, who offers to deal with the blackmailer personally. A new threat appears unexpectedly in the form of Frida Eidinger.
“Señora de Iñarra could have been lying when she said that the 23rd of August was the first time she saw the victim. She may have deliberately arranged to meet her that night.
“Why run the risk of meeting her in her own home? It wasn’t easy for señora de Iñarra to find pretexts for going out. Perhaps she tried but señor Iñarra’s sudden crises spoilt her plans. Eventually, at the other woman’s insistence, she had to receive her at home.
“The third hypothesis is that señor Iñarra, also seeking revenge, poisoned the whisky to kill his wife. According to señora de Iñarra’s statement, señor Iñarra knew what was going on.”
Ericourt paused. The faces of Betty and her father bore remarkably similar pained grimaces; Luchter and Eidinger were very pale, and drops of sweat shone around their hairlines. Soler was shifting in his seat, waiting for the moment, which was taking far too long to arrive, when his name would be pronounced to explain why he was there.
“We have tried as best we can to reconstruct the dialogue between señora Eidinger and señora de Iñarra. I beg of you, madam,” he said, turning to Gabriela, “please limit yourself to reading what is written here.”
He handed a sheet of paper to Gabriela and another to Betty.
“This is your role, miss. Begin the dialogue from when Frida Eidinger enters the apartment.”
Betty’s voice sounded false. Gabriela’s flattened accents and tailed off at the end of phrases. One could hear the scratching of the clerk’s pen and Dr Corro irritatedly clearing his throat.
“I’m Frida Eidinger…”
As Frida’s cutting replies cornered Gabriela and forced her to make up her mind, the two men who had loved the dead woman half-closed their eyes in gestures of tacit approval. The dialogue faithfully expressed Frida’s true character.
Gabriela suddenly got up from her seat.
“Wait,” she said. “I think my husband has woken up.”
She went to the hall door.
“I stopped here,” she clarified.
“Are you sure?” asked Ericourt.
Gabriela blushed.
“No, you’re right. I went to the bathroom.”
“To get the cyanide?”
“No, not that. I wanted to make sure Agustín was sleeping.”
“Fine, let’s carry on. What did you do then? What was señora Eidinger doing when you came back?”
“She was combing her hair. Then she reapplied her lipstick.”
“Did she say anything more?”
“Yes, she told me to think about what she’d said because she wasn’t prepared to back down.”
“Was that when she drank the glass of whisky?”
“Exactly. She was already getting up to leave. She suddenly grabbed the glass and drank it in one gulp. I realized she was pretending to be calmer than she actually felt.”
“Good, let’s reproduce the scene. Be precise in your movements. You, miss,” he added, addressing Betty, “will act as a woman readying to reapply her make-up. In the handbag you will find everything you need, nothing has been touched.”
He was aware that the attention everyone was paying him oscillated between irritation and mockery.
Betty, who had opened the dead woman’s handbag, took out the comb and smoothed her hair, then lifted the lipstick towards her mouth.
The standard lamp crashed to the floor. Someone had stood up brusquely and knocked it over. The incident was enough to make Betty pause with the lipstick hovering in front of her mouth.
“Don’t be alarmed.” It took Lahore a few seconds to realize it was Ericourt speaking. “Nothing will happen this time. We changed the lipstick in the laboratory. This one is not poisoned like the other one. You have given yourself up, señor Eidinger.”
Eidinger scanned the room as if looking for a way to escape. Moving just as quickly, two police officers immobilized him.
“The facts themselves complete the investigation.”
In a voice that was absolutely flat, as if his words had travelled a long way and emerged blurry with fatigue, Ericourt explained to Blasi the series of circumstances that led him to discover the author of the crime.
“I didn’t like Eidinger the first time we went to visit him. He fiercely guarded his modesty, which to me seemed like patched-up hypocrisy. But what could I accuse him of? Earlier events puzzled me and inclined my suspicions towards t
he Iñarra–Luchter pairing. I later regretted that. Luchter is a true fighter, a man who strives to raise himself through his own efforts, not trampling others or their feelings in the process. As for Soler,” he added disdainfully, “he’s a blank canvas. Remove the frame and there’s nothing left. Who could take him seriously?”
Blasi was listening carefully. Ericourt once more inspired confidence as a boss. He felt the relief of a child who is wholeheartedly convinced that his father’s self-possession is not a capricious desire to wield power, but in fact the product of deep-rooted convictions by which one may live.
“When I learnt about the existence of the poisoned lipstick,” Ericourt went on, “the circumstances led me to suspect Luchter. He might have disposed of the lipstick case along with the keys, counting on Soler not noticing and therefore not saying anything. Of course this was a risk, because it might have drawn attention to two elements that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. But there is always the possibility of a wrong move, and Luchter could well have made one.
“The fortuitous find of the poisoned lipstick ensured that reconstructing the scene of Frida’s death would lead us to the criminal. It was logical to suppose that whoever it was would be afraid to see Betty wielding the deadly lipstick and would be faced with a terrible dilemma: if Betty used it, her death would betray the way in which the first crime was committed; if either she or anyone present stopped the gesture, the act would be equivalent to a confession. Eidinger was in control of his nerves up until the last moment, but the very concentration of his energies provoked the reflex action that was his downfall. They won’t let me live this down,” he added, stretching his lips now in a rictus that on someone else would have been a smile. “Sensationalist is the gentlest adjective that has been applied to me. I must admit that I like a bit of sensation. My aesthetic instruction dates from the first decade of the century.
“The case of Frida Eidinger,” he went on almost without pause, “is one of a passionate obsession and its resulting resentment and devastation. Frida married Gustavo Eidinger for the sole purpose of leaving Europe and coming to Argentina, where Luchter had been living for some time. She was obsessed with the idea that only with him could she find happiness.
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