The Little Spanish Girl

by Ales Matko

  As he spoke, Klauder surveyed the room and, much to his satisfaction, ascertained that he had everyone's undivided attention.

  ''We met at that point, on the coridor, and you acted as though you had gotten lost trying to find Beatrice. It certainly wasn't hard to believe she had left you alone, being the irrepressible drunkard that she is. In the evening of that same day, however, you returned to Ana-Maria's room and left that message as well, perhaps using blood that you had collected from the poor boy, then taking care to plant an earring belonging to señora Elizabeth behind the bed. If my guess is correct, you had stolen the keys to her apartment from the servants' room soon after your arrival, thus giving you access to her jewelry, and later on, her firearm.''

  Elizabeth glowered at the would-be Antonia sitting motionless in her chair.

  ''So she kidnapped my daughter!'' Elsa shouted, eliciting the agitated murmuring of the guards.

  ''No, señor,'' Klauder said, shaking his head. ''She merely wrote the message in her room. But she herself never laid a finger on the girl. Remember, she arrived four days after Ana-Maria went missing.''

  ''But why write it then?''

  ''Why not?'' the detective smirked. ''As you are about to see, the kidnapping that took place before her visit had only been grist for her mill, so to speak. She merely took credit for it, if you'll pardon my phraseology. I cannot speak in detail regarding all that went on in the days right after her arrival, but I am quite sure this woman bribed one of your men to set off an explosion in the factory. Remember, a large sum of money was found in his cottage, and when the toxin escaped into the air, killing several of your finest, she simply waited it out, then continued on her path of terror, murdering two more children as soon as it was safe to go out again. And she would have ended many more lives, I'm sure, had the inspector and I not intervened.''

  ''¡Perra!'' Elizabeth screamed at her. ''What kind of monster are you?''

  The anonymous imposter remained stoically silent, but her pallor betrayed her fury. Gustav, on the other hand, was not so taciturn.

  ''I don’t understand, detective! Did she or didn't she harm my daughter?''

  ''No, senior Elsa, she did not, although I'm quite sure she would have without hesitation, had she arrived a few days earlier than she did. So in a twisted sort of way it was a blessing in disguise that the kidnapping took place before she showed up. But whatever the case, this pseudo-Antonia Mirral kept working to frame señoras Elizabeth and Beatrice, planting a coat in your sister’s room, borrowing her gun to fire a shot at me, perhaps even purposely missing – although I highly doubt that – and leaving those frightful, albeit meaningless, demonic messages at the crime scenes to make it seem as if either our famous ‘witch’ or her brother, with his similarly impressive occult résumé, were behind it all. You see, señor Elsa, seeing their childen murdered one by one, your men were sure to lose their composure sooner or later, and it was obvious that they would then rebel, just as they in fact did, jumping to what seemed the obvious conclusion. Naturally, the releasing of poison gas only served to heighten their anxiety and cloud their judgment.''

  Klauder was beginning to feel winded from all this talking, but he consoled himself with the fact that at least he did not have to climb any stairs to deliver his monologue.

  ''If pressed I would even hypothesize that our imposter took her framing game to the next level, so to speak, by cutting herself with a knife – the knife that was found earlier today in Beatrice's bed. She then smeared her own blood on the sheets and planted the weapon next to Beatrice, who was in her customary stupor. When the inspector and I arrived a little while later, she pretended to have discovered the scene herself and been thoroughly traumatized by it. All these histrionics were, of course, intended only to throw Beatra and myself further off track and buy her more time to continue her killing spree.''

  ''But I don’t see any cuts, detective,'' Pilar spoke up uneasily.

  ''Cuts can be made in many places, señora,'' Klauder said, motioning to one of the guards. ''Perhaps we should remove her shoes.''

  ''But do be gentle,'' Beatra added, ''as I expect one of her feet is rather sensitive at the moment.''

  ''Let go of me this instant!'' the lanky blonde vainly demanded as two of Elsa's bodyguards siezed her and held her down while a third grabbed hold of one of her feet and, ignoring Beatra's plea for gentleness, yanked the shoe off, revealing a fresh bandage.

  ''But this is outrageous!'' Elizabeth stormed. ''I don't understand! Why would she do all of this?''

  ''For one reason and one reason alone, señora,'' Klauder said, beginning to feel the need to sit down. ''To cause maximum chaos and ultimately bring you, your family, and your company down.''

  ''But why?''

  ''Why indeed,'' the detective said, turning to the imposter. ''Perhaps we should let her explain.''

  They were all staring at her, this skinny blonde lady with the slightly hooked nose and no name. She saw all too clearly that the charade was over, and her eyes had the look of a captured animal with no means of escape.

  ''You want to know why?'' she said, pushing the words out by sheer force of will, her voice cracked and icy and her facade collapsing. ''You really want to know? Very well, I’ll tell you why.''

  Silence fell across the dining room and everyone sat utterly motionless, such that an innocent observer might well have mistaken the scene for a life-size photograph.

  ''Ten years ago I had a family. I had a devoted husband, two precious boys, and a life I looked forward to getting up to every morning. But then that monster of a man poisoned the entire city with his black magic!'' she hissed, pointing at Elsa. ''And both of my children were among the casualties. The little one took an entire day to rot to death.'' She gulped, tears glistening in her eyes. ''The other one died soon after. My husband and I were utterly devastated, and he committed suicide not long after that. I was left completely alone.''

  Her story made the hair on Klauder's neck stand on end, and by the looks of some of the others, he was not alone.

  ''I wanted to kill myself too,'' she continued. ''I wanted so badly to be reunited with my family. But I couldn't go through with it. I simply didn't have the courage. Instead, for nearly a decade I was in and out of mental institutions. And throughout that entire time, only one thought kept me somewhat sane and gave me the motivation to live another day: revenge on this subhuman beast who took my family away from me.''

  Her pent-up tears began streaming down her cheeks.

  ''I sought help from the police, of course, but they refused to get involved. They were either on his payroll, or else intimidated by his reputation. So what could I do? With the official channels unavailable, there was nothing left to do but take matters into my own hands. I got to work, planning every aspect out in detail, and then just waited for the right time. It took months of work and months of waiting, but I finally caught a break when I learned that one of Beatrice’s old friends, Antonia Mirral, had broken off contact with her and moved away some years ago. I managed to locate some photos of her, and I could see that we had some features in common, so I figured with a little effort I could make myself look similar enough to pass for her. I called Beatrice, pretending to be Antonia, and told her I wanted to make amends. That’s when she invited me here. Of course, I knew she would immediately see that something wasn't quite right about my appearance, so I concocted a story about how I'd had cancer and how drastically it had aged me.''

  Elsa’s wife, bedecked in her usual gold jewlery, had by this time returned to earth, albeit somewhat tenuously, and was blinking at the imposter with a look on her face that made it hard to say exactly how much of the story was getting through.

  ''Once here,'' the woman continued, unaware that Beatrice had now joined the audience in spirit as well as body, ''I learned that their daughter had gone missing. And I was saddened by it – truely, deeply saddened, as I wanted to slit her dainty little throat myself and give her inbred cockroach of a father a taste of
his own voodoo medicine!''

  She stood up and began screaming. ''I wanted you to see what it feels like to have your world torn apart by the demons you so worship! To have everything you ever loved destroyed and butchered as you stood helplessly by and watched it all happening! And then, after your own men had turned against you and slaughtered every last member of your twisted clan, I would rip your heart out of your motionless corpse and eat it!''

  Two of the guards moved to restrain the woman as Elsa sprang from his chair.

  ''You listen to me, you demented little weasel!'' he bellowed, trying to drown out her howling. ''When I'm done with you, the fate of your other family members will seem like a bed time story!'' He grabbed her by the hair and began shaking her head. ''You insufferable ...'' he fumed, choking on his rage and shoving her into the arms of one of his men. ''Get her out of here!''

  This time Elsa's orders were carried out, establishing that the usual hierarchy had been restored. No one knew for sure where they were taking the hapless impostor, but Klauder and Beatra were both certain that this was the last they or anyone else would ever see of her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Once the commotion had died down, Elizabeth Elsa decided to pick up the baton.

  ''How did you come to know all this, detective?'' she asked.

  ''I had my suspisions from the beginning, of course,'' Klauder said with a faint air of gloating, ''but nothing unequivocal until handwriting analysis proved that señora Pilar was having an affair with Chef Pierre. As she herself admitted a few minutes ago, they had been together Tuesday afternoon around the time that Benjamine was abducted. But when the inspector and I spoke to her yesterday, she initially told us that she had been alone at that time, then quickly corrected herself to say that she and this Antonia look-alike had actually been together on that occasion.'' He turned to Pilar. ''I suspect she brought up the idea for you two to team-up, so to speak, to cover each other’s back. Did she find out about your affair with Pierre?''

  Pilar nodded. ''Yes. She also said it was safer for us to stick together. And I didn't want you or anyone else to find out about Pierre and me, not that it matters now. I swear to God I would have never collaborated with her if I'd known what she was up to!''

  ''You needn’t feel guilty, señora. It was a very clever form of blackmail, after all. So she covered for you and vice-versa. Only her secret was much more dangerous than yours.''

  Elsa looked as if someone had poured gasoline in his stomach and set it on fire.

  ''May we get to the point, please,'' he thundered, grabbind an iron candlestick and angrily tossing it down the table, shattering several glasses. ''What was this woman's role in my daughter's kidnapping and my mother's murder?''

  ''None whatsoever,'' Klauder said. ''As I've already mentioned, Ana-Maria’s kidnapping was – or is – the work of an entirely different person. Whoever this person is, he or she recruited Pierre, who then managed to enlist the assistance of the maid Alejandra, though I suspect she didn’t know the person in charge. Pierre put something in the little girl’s dinner on Friday evening, and when she then complained of feeling poorly and went to bed, she was taken by Alejandra and heavily sedated with a substance stolen from the doctor’s office.''

  Klauder turned to the physician. ''What was is called again, doctor?''

  ''Etorphine. It is a strong tranqulizer.''

  ''Quite so,'' Klauder nodded. ''The girl was then stashed away in a secret compartment in Alejandra’s closet. She had been there for roughly five days, receiving water to prevent dehydration, before finally being transferred elsewhere. But this was done by neither Alejandra nor Pierre.''

  Everyone was on edge, glancing surreptitiously around the room and wondering who the detective's finger would point at next.

  Klauder took a deep breath and let it out before continuing.

  ''The reason behind Ana-Maria’s kidnapping is fairly simple, albeit not very obvious at first glance, especially if one does not possess all of the requisite information, as inspector Beatra and I until very recently did not. We initially thought the girl had been the victim of the same lunatic that had gone after the other children. But as we later learned, Ana-Maria had been taken from her real family some three and a half years ago somewhere in the south of Spain.''

  Klauder glanced nervously over at Elsa.

  ''I won’t go into the details of how or why it happened, but one thing is important to keep in mind here, and that is that the girl’s parents, her real parents, must have been devastated by the kidnapping of their child. At the very least it would be reasonable to assume so. Now, there isn't exactly an abundance of direct evidence supporting what I'm about to say, at least for the time being, but I hypothesize that Pierre could very easily have been recruited by Ana-Maria’s real parents or rather someone representing them, for the purpose of returning the child to her original family. I think this may well have been the real motive.''

  A low-level murmuring spread through the dining room like a brush fire.

  ''You can't be serious!'' Elsa bellowed incredulously. ''Who was it? I will route out the traitor if I have to torture everyone who's ever set foot on these grounds!''

  ''That won’t be necessary, señor,'' Klauder said. ''I have a fairly good idea of who it was. Any such person would have to have a strong moral compass, a sense of obligation to help those in need, would they not? After all, whoever it was went as far as killing your mother for her role in poisoning those boys in the greenhouse a while back, and of course, more recently, trying to end my life as well by contaminating my medication with one of her noxious extracts.''

  Klauder turned and pointed at Duvali the engineer, and those sitting nearby instinctively leaned away from him.

  ''It's tragic that such a good and selfless person spent so long forced to participate in the immoral deeds of his employer. But then again, one can never be entirely beyond redemption, given the willingness to set things right. It is only those who refuse to make amends who are damned, isn't that right, señor Duvali? Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is a sin – or something along those lines?''

  Duvali looked as if he had been struck by lightning.

  ''What?'' he cried.

  Klauder nodded, fixing his gaze firmly on the engineer.

  ''You are a devout man, are you not? Sí, señor Duvali, you are. And it was you who broke señora Constanza’s neck. Of course! You knew all too well what kind of a woman she was. The near-fatal poisoning of those boys was bad enough, but the contamination of my insulin resulting in the death of one of señor Elsa's entourage was the last straw. Someone had to stop this woman. So you left yesterday just before Beatra and I did, changed clothes in the cellar, and then paid an unexpected visit to the greenhouse. Isn't that so?''

  Duvali was trying to speak, but nothing was coming out.

  ''And it was also you, señor, who spearheaded the kidnapping of Ana-Maria. She was taken Friday night on your orders to the cook, at which point you only had to wait a couple of days for a suitable opportunity to sneak her out of the mansion and drive her off, away from this awful place that has dragged you so far into the depths of sin for all these years. And yet,'' Klauder said, lifting his finger for emphasis, ''security was tight and got even tighter when the girl went missing, so you found yourself in quite a pickle. Still, an opportunity presented itself on the day the factory was sabbotaged. You knew there wouldn't be many guards patrolling outside in that toxic environment, meaning you could risk smuggling Ana-Maria out in one of the cars. You took that large silver case, which is normally full of equipment, emptied it, and carried it to Alejandra’s room.''

  Beatrice, who was either not interested in Klauder's story or not sober enough to follow it, slumped slightly forward and began snoring, but Klauder was no more listening to her than she was to him.

  ''You knew where the girl was being kept,'' he continued. ''Pierre told you, so you took her out while she was still drugged, probab
ly changed her clothes, and then simply put her in the case. Afterwards, you summoned some of the men to help you carry the case outside, knowing they would all presume you were heading down to the factory to survey the damage and so would naturally require your equipment.''

  Duvali had sat in silence listening to Klauder's narrative as if transfixed, but now he could no longer take it. ''That’s absolutely ludicrous!'' he exploded. ''I did nothing of the sort!''

  Klauder reached into his vest pocket.

  ''As you know, I had Inspector Beatra make an inquiry about Antonia Mirral over the phone a little while ago. In the meanwhile I myself left the mansion, in the company of two of señor Elsa's finest. We unloaded the silver case and emptied it out, and upon close examination found this.''

  Duvali looked at Klauder's outstretched hand for a moment, then at Klauder himself, a mixture of defeat and disbelief on his face.

  ''It’s hair, señor. Black and wavy, just like Ana-Maria’s.''

  ''This ... I didn't ...''

  ''Oh, but you did, señor. You most certainly did. You were trying to rescue the little girl, so you had her carried outside to the parking lot and loaded into one of the cars. You figured she wouldn't be harmed by the poisonous fumes, because the case was airtight. But that street, as you now know all too well, goes both ways. She was indeed protected from the toxin, but her oxygen was also limited, and you had to drive over to the factory first. And even your cursory pseudo-inspection took surprisingly long, did it not?''

  Duvali was visibly twitching and stretching his collar as if he could not breathe properly. His forehead was beginning to glisten with sweat.

  ''The plan was simple, yet clever,'' Klauder continued. ''Once finished at the factory, you would quickly drive off of the estate grounds, perhaps invoking the emergency so as to circumvent the usual inspection of the vehicle. And yet, señor, as I have only recently learned, not a living soul left that day, or anytime thereafter, meaning something must have gone terribly wrong. And we both know what that was, don’t we? When you were finally leaving the factory you rushed to open the case, only to find that Ana-Maria had suffocated.''