As they walked down the tower staircase, Vargas took Alicia’s arm gently and stopped her. “We’ll have to tell Doña Mariana that we found this book and we’re taking it with us.”
She fixed her eyes on his hand, and he removed it apologetically. “I thought I heard her say she would rather not be bothered again.”
“Well, at least it will have to be included in the report . . .”
Alicia gave him an impenetrable look. In the half-light, Vargas thought, those green eyes shone like coins sinking into a pond, lending their mistress a somewhat spectral air.
“I mean as evidence,” the policeman specified.
“Of what?” Alicia’s tone was cold, cutting.
“What the police find during an investigation . . .”
“Technically the police didn’t find it. I found it. All you’ve done is act as locksmith.”
“Listen . . .”
Alicia sailed down the stairs before he could reply.
Vargas groped his way down behind her. “Alicia . . .”
When they reached the garden, they were greeted by a drizzle that clung to their clothes like powdered glass. One of the maids had lent them an umbrella, but before Vargas was able to open it, Alicia headed for the garage without waiting for him.
The policeman hurried after her and managed to cover her with the umbrella. “You’re welcome,” he said.
Alicia limped slightly, he noticed, and was pressing her lips together.
“What the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s an old wound. The damp doesn’t help. It’s not important.”
“If you like, you can wait here, and I’ll go and get the car.”
Once again, Alicia didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes were lost in the distance as she stared at a vision between the trees: a structure veiled by the rain.
“What?” asked Vargas.
She walked off, leaving him holding the umbrella.
“For God’s sake,” mumbled the policeman, following her again.
When he caught up with her, Alicia only pointed toward what looked like a conservatory buried in the depths of the garden. “There was someone there,” she said. “Watching us.”
“Who could it be?”
Alicia stopped for a moment and hesitated. “You go ahead to the garage. I’ll come in a minute.”
“Are you sure?”
“Take the umbrella, at least . . .”
Vargas watched her walk away in the rain, limping slightly, until she faded into the mist, one more shadow in the garden.
10
She found herself walking along a path of pale stone. Lines of moss nestled in the cracks between carved slabs that looked, Alicia thought, like tombstones stolen from a graveyard. The path wound through the willows, their branches oozing raindrops and grazing her skin as she passed, like arms trying to hold her back. Beyond the trees she glimpsed the structure of what at first she had mistaken for a conservatory but, closer up, looked more like a neoclassical pavilion. The miniature railway tracks that followed the perimeter of the estate ran along the front of the pavilion, with a platform, like a little station, by its main entrance. Alicia stepped over the rails and walked up the steps to the front door, which was ajar. Her hip throbbed, a sharp stabbing pain that made her think of barbed wire wrapped around her bones. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then pushed the door inward. It gave way with a faint groan.
Her first thought was that she was in a ballroom that had been abandoned for years. A trail of footprints marked the dust covering the diamond-patterned wooden floor. From the ceiling hung two lamps with crystal droplets, like frost flowers.
“Hello?” she called.
The echo of her voice traveled through the room, but there was no reply. The footprints trailed off into the gloom. A little farther away she made out a dark wooden display cabinet covering an entire wall, divided into small pigeonholes like funeral niches. Alicia took a few steps forward, following the trail on the floor, but stopped when she realized that she was being watched. Glass eyes emerged from the shadows, framed by an ivory face that smiled with an expression of malice and defiance. The doll had red hair and wore a black silk outfit.
Alicia walked on a couple of meters and then noticed that the doll wasn’t alone. Each of those compartments housed a small being dressed in finery—over a hundred figures, all of them smiling, all of them looking without blinking. They were the size of tiny children, and even in the gloom she could appreciate their meticulous, exquisite finish, from the shining nails to the small white teeth peeping behind glossy lips to the pupils within each iris.
“Who are you?” The voice came from the back of the room, where a figure was seated on a chair in the corner.
“I’m Alicia. Alicia Gris. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The figure stood up and approached her very slowly. It emerged from the shadows into the dim light filtering in through the entrance, and Alicia recognized the face of the girl in the set of photographs she’d seen in Valls’s office. “You’ve got a lovely collection of dolls,” she said.
“Hardly anyone likes them. My father says they look like vampires. Most people are frightened by them.”
“That’s why I like them,” said Alicia.
* * *
Mercedes observed that curious presence intently. For a second she thought the stranger had something in common with the pieces in her collection, as if one of them had not become frozen in an ivory childhood and had grown up to become a woman of flesh, blood, and shadow.
The woman called Alicia smiled and held out her hand. “Mercedes, right?”
Mercedes nodded and shook her hand. Something in those cold, penetrating eyes calmed her and gave her confidence. She reckoned the woman was not quite thirty, but like the dolls in the display cabinet, the closer Mercedes looked at her, the more difficult it was to determine her age. She had a slender figure and dressed the way Mercedes herself would secretly like to dress, had she not been certain that both her father and Doña Irene would never have allowed it. This woman exuded that indefinable air that Valls’s daughter knew could captivate men and make them behave like children, or lick their lips like old men when she went by. She’d seen her arrive with that policeman and go into the house. The very idea that somebody high up could have thought of that creature as the ideal person to find her father seemed to her both incomprehensible and hopeful.
“You’ve come about my father, haven’t you, miss?”
Alicia nodded. “There’s no need to be all formal and call me ‘miss.’ I’m not much older than you.”
Mercedes shrugged. “I was brought up to address everyone politely.”
“I was brought up to behave as if I came from a good home, and look at me now.”
Mercedes gave a little laugh, slightly embarrassed. She wasn’t used to laughing, Alicia thought: she laughed the same way as she observed the world, like a child hiding in the body of a woman. Or a woman who had lived almost all her life in a children’s storybook, peopled by servants and dolls with glass hearts.
“Are you a policewoman?” Mercedes asked.
“Something like that.”
“You don’t look like one.”
“Nobody is what they seem.”
Mercedes considered those words. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Can we sit down?”
“Of course.” Mercedes rushed over to a corner to grab a couple of chairs and placed them within the pool of light coming through the door. Alicia sat down with care and when the girl noticed the agony in her face, she helped her. Alicia smiled weakly, cold sweat covering her forehead. Mercedes hesitated for a moment but then dried Alicia’s forehead with a handkerchief she carried in her pocket. Alicia’s skin was so fine and soft that she wanted to stroke it with her fingers. She banished the idea from her thoughts and felt herself blushing without really knowing why. “Are you better?”
Alicia nodded.
“What is it?”
/> “It’s an old wound. From when I was a little girl. Sometimes, if it’s raining or there’s a lot of humidity, it hurts.”
“An accident?”
“Something like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“These things happen. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
The girl’s eyes filled with anxiety. “About my father?”
Alicia nodded again.
“Are you going to find him?”
“I’m going to try.”
Mercedes looked at her longingly. “The police won’t be able to find him. You’ll have to do it.”
“What makes you say that?”
Valls’s daughter lowered her eyes. “Because I think he doesn’t want to be found.”
“Why would that be?”
Mercedes continued looking crestfallen. “I don’t know.”
“Doña Mariana says that the morning your father left, you told her you thought he’d left forever, that he wasn’t going to return.”
“It’s true.”
“Did your father say something that evening that would make you think such a thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you speak to him on the night of the ball?”
“I went up to his office to see him. He didn’t come down to the party at any point. He was with Vicente.”
“Vicente Carmona, the bodyguard?”
“Yes. He was sad. He was odd.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No. My father only tells me what I want to hear.”
Alicia laughed. “All fathers do that.”
“Does yours too?”
Alicia replied with a smile, and Mercedes didn’t insist. “I remember he was looking at a book when I went into his office,” she said instead.
“Do you remember whether it was a book with a black cover?”
Mercedes looked surprised. “I think so. I asked him what it was, and he said it wasn’t a book for young ladies. I felt as if he didn’t want me to see it. Perhaps it was a banned book. ”
“Does your father have banned books?”
Mercedes nodded, again looking slightly embarrassed.
“They’re in a locked cupboard, in his ministry office. He doesn’t know that I know.”
“He won’t find out from me. Tell me, does your father often take you to his office in the ministry?”
Mercedes shook her head. “I’ve only been there twice.”
“And in town?”
“In Madrid?”
“Yes, in Madrid.”
“I’ve got everything I need here,” she said, rather unconvinced.
“Perhaps we could go into town together sometime. For a stroll. Or to the cinema. Do you like going to the cinema?”
Mercedes bit her lip. “I’ve never been. But I’d like to. Go with you, I mean.”
Alicia patted her hands and gave her a winning smile. “We’ll go and see a Cary Grant film.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He’s the perfect man.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t exist.”
Mercedes laughed again with that sad laughter that seemed imprisoned inside her.
“What else did your father say that night? Do you remember?”
“Not much. He said he loved me. And that he’d always love me, come what may.”
“Anything else?”
“He was nervous. He wished me good night and then stayed there, talking to Vicente.”
“Were you able to hear what they were saying?”
“It’s not right to listen behind closed doors . . .”
“I’ve always thought that’s how you get to hear the best conversations,” Alicia suggested.
Mercedes smiled mischievously. “My father thought that someone had been there. During the party. In his office.”
“Did he say who?”
“No.”
“What else? Anything that struck you as unusual?”
“Something about a list. He said someone had a list. I don’t know who.”
“Do you know what kind of list he meant?”
“No, I don’t. A list of numbers, I think. I’m sorry. I’d like to be able to help you more, but that’s all I managed to hear . . .”
“You’ve helped me a lot, Mercedes.”
“Really?”
Alicia nodded and stroked Mercedes’s cheek. Nobody had caressed her like that since ten years earlier, when her mother had been confined to her bed and the bones in her hands had ended up like hooks.
“What do you think your father meant when he said ‘come what may’?”
“I don’t know.”
“Had you ever heard him say that before?”
Mercedes fell silent and stared straight at Alicia.
“Mercedes?”
“I don’t like talking about that.”
“About what?”
“My father told me never to talk about it to anyone.”
“But I’m not anyone. You can talk to me.”
“If my father found out that I’d told you—”
“He won’t find out.”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Tell me, Mercedes. What you tell me will remain between you and me. You have my word.”
Mercedes looked at her, her eyes brimming with tears. Alicia pressed her hand.
“I must have been seven or eight, I don’t know. It was in Madrid, at the Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus School. Every afternoon my father’s bodyguards would come and fetch me from school. We girls all waited in the cypress-tree patio for our parents or maids to come and pick us up at five thirty. The lady often came. She always stood on the other side of the gates, looking at me. Sometimes she smiled at me. I didn’t know who she was. But she was there almost every day. She would signal to me to come closer, although she scared me a bit. One afternoon, the security guards were late. Something had happened in Madrid, in the center of town. I remember that all the other cars came and took the other girls away, and I was left alone, waiting. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but when one of the cars was leaving, the lady slipped in through the gates. She came up to me and knelt down before me. Then she hugged me and began to cry. She was kissing me. I got frightened and started shouting. The nuns came out. The security guards arrived, and I remember that two of the men grabbed her by her arms and dragged her away. The lady shouted and cried. I remember that one of my father’s men punched her in the face. Then she pulled out something she’d been hiding in her handbag. It was a gun. The bodyguards moved out of the way, and she ran toward me. Her face was covered in blood. She hugged me and told me she loved me and I should never forget her.”
“What happened next?”
Mercedes swallowed hard. “Then Vicente came closer and shot her in the head. The lady collapsed at my feet in a pool of blood. I remember because one of the nuns picked me up and took off my shoes, which were stained with the lady’s blood. She handed me over to one of the bodyguards, who took me along to the car with Vicente. Vicente started up the engine and we drove off very fast, but through the rear window I could see two of the security men dragging the lady’s body away . . .”
Mercedes searched Alicia’s eyes, and Alicia hugged her.
“That night my father told me that that lady was mad. He said the police had arrested her a few times for trying to kidnap children from Madrid schools. He told me that nobody would ever hurt me, and that now I had nothing to worry about. And he told me never to tell anyone what had happened that day. Come what may. I never returned to the school. Doña Irene became my tutor, and I was schooled at home from then on . . .”
Alicia let Mercedes cry in her arms, stroking her hair. A desperate calm was falling over the girl when Alicia heard the horn of Vargas’s car in the distance and stood up. “I have to go now, Mercedes. But I’ll come back. And we
’ll go to Madrid and I’ll take you to the cinema. But you must promise me you’ll be all right until then.”
Mercedes took her hands and nodded. “Will you find my father?”
“I promise.”
Alicia kissed her on the forehead and walked away, limping. Mercedes sat on the floor, hugging her knees in the shadows of her dolls’ world, now broken forever.
11
The drive back to Madrid was marked by rain and silence. Alicia sat with her eyes closed and her head leaning on the misted-up window, her mind a thousand miles away. Vargas watched her out of the corner of his eye, throwing the occasional bait here and there to see if he could draw her into conversation and fill the void that had persisted since they’d left Villa Mercedes.
“You were hard over there with Valls’s secretary,” he ventured. “To put it mildly.”
“She’s a harpy,” retorted Alicia in an unfriendly murmur.
“If you’d rather, we can talk about the weather.”
“It’s raining,” said Alicia. “What else do you want to talk about?”
“You could tell me what happened in there, in the garden cottage.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You were there for half an hour. I hope you weren’t tightening the screws on anyone else. It would be good if we didn’t get everyone against us on the first day. Just saying.”
Alicia didn’t reply.
“Listen, this only works if we work together. Sharing information. Because I’m not your chauffeur.”
“Then perhaps it won’t work. I can take taxis if you prefer. It’s what I usually do.”
Vargas sighed.
“Pay no attention to me, OK?” Alicia replied. “I’m not feeling very well.”
Vargas observed her carefully. She kept her eyes closed and clutched her hip in agony.
“Shall we go to a pharmacy or something?”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. You don’t look too good.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I get you something for the pain?”
Alicia shook her head. Her breathing sounded labored.
“Shall we stop for a moment?” Vargas said at last. He spotted a roadside restaurant a few hundred meters farther on, next to a service station, where about a dozen trucks had congregated. He left the main road and stopped opposite the entrance. Then he walked around the car and opened the door, offering Alicia his hand.
The Labyrinth of the Spirits Page 14