A Not So Perfect Crime (30 page)

Segimon Messegué straightened slightly and tried to recover his composure. He wasn't crying now and seemed calmer, as if the prospect of telling us all was a form of liberation.

“In September, at the beginning of the school year, Mrs Font came to see me in my office and told me she wanted her daughter to get into Oxford. It was very important to her, for some reason or other. The girl” – he swayed his head – “wasn't a very good student, at least in Latin. After thinking it through later, I realized Mrs Font had offered me money, a financial reward or something like, but at the time I'd not really understood her and I thought all she wanted was for me to put pressure on her daughter to study harder. I told her I'd do all I could to ensure Núria got good marks, but, obviously, I meant I'd be on top of her, would pay particular attention to what she did, not that I'd give her a top mark for the fun of it. Núria only just passed when it came to her assessments. Her mother rang me at home in a rage and summoned me to meet her in a bar.”

“And you met in the Zurich,” I said.

“
Caramba
! You know that as well?” he said rather shocked.

“Please continue,” said Borja looking daggers at me.

“She was very angry and insulted because I'd refused to take her money ... and hadn't really understood what she'd been talking about. She said I was a nonentity, a shitty teacher, and demanded I change the mark and give her daughter an A. Then I got angry as well. I told her there was no way I'd do that, that if her daughter wanted to get the top mark, she'd have to earn it.”

“But didn't you realize who you were dealing with?” Borja asked. “I mean Mrs Font was an important ... influential person.”

Segimon Messegué sighed and lowered his head. He looked exhausted.

“I know I'm nobody,” he said, “but I don't deserve someone like Mrs Font coming and rubbing my face in it. I do my job well, and with the salary they pay me I can't live in the lap of luxury, as you see, but it's more than a lot of people can aspire to and I count my blessings. Maybe I've not done anything important in my life ... compared to Mrs Font. But although you won't believe this in these circumstances,” he paused, looked us in the eye and then stared back at the floor, “I am a good person.”

“Good people don't sent boxes of poisoned sweets,” I said gently.

“I told you it was in self-defence,” he insisted.

“And what happened then? Did she offer you money again? Did she threaten you with something and you decided you had to poison her?” asked Borja.

“When I told her I wouldn't change Núria's mark, she got very angry and told me I'd regret it for the rest of my life. She said she'd spread it around that I abused my pupils and was a pervert ... that she knew a couple of girls who'd be prepared to tell tales ... indecent things. She also said she'd make sure I was thrown out of the school and would never find another teaching job.” He paused, “You know? I thought she was quite capable of doing that.”

“My, my, Mrs Font!” exclaimed Borja.

“And that's not all,” the teacher continued. “She said she'd spread these terrible lies around the neighbourhood so everyone, my mother included, would find out ...” And he burst into tears.

“What a bitch!” I shouted.

I don't know why, but I believed him. After seeing Lídia Font in action, I wasn't at all surprised by his revelation.

“But you'd already had problems last year when you got some girls to translate a racy Catullus poem in class.”

Segimon Messegué sighed again.

“I don't know if you can imagine what an effort it is teaching Latin nowadays. The pupils don't take the slightest interest in anything. Do you know what they thought the Rubicon was after they'd spent three months doing Caesar to death? A disease ... And do you know what they'd write in exams?” He sighed once more. “In the film
Gladiator
...”

“I understand,” I said, thinking of our twins' apathetic attitude to their school work.

“I thought perhaps I'd motivate them with Catullus, connect with them ...” he paused. “In fact anything Catullus wrote they've heard a thousand times on television with fully consenting parents. But it was a mistake on my part.”

“You mean, Lídia Font trumped up those accusations,” said Borja remembering nothing was on the file found in the Fonts' house.

“Of course she did!” he exclaimed very angrily, going red, whether from anger or embarrassment. “I've never, never, ever laid a hand on a pupil or done anything ...”

“Calm down,” said Borja, patting him on the arm. “Obviously, if as you say, none of this was true ... I can understand you felt threatened, but you did have other options ...”

Segimon Messegué looked at us as if we'd just touched down from the moon, a feeling that was beginning to feel familiar.

“You know what? I'm a bachelor, getting on in years, and still live with my mother. People think this isn't at all normal. Do you two never go to the cinema?”

“But you told us you have a fiancée?” I retorted.

“Her name's Lluïsa. We've been going out for a year and a half but nobody at school knows. She also teaches, although she works in another school. She's divorced with two children, a boy who's married and a girl who is on the brink. Lluïsa was going to live here after the wedding, but of course ...” he said abjectly.

“So why didn't you tell anyone what Mrs Font was planning? Your headmistress, for example,” Borja asked.

“You could have gone to the police and accused her of attempted blackmail,” I added very professionally.

Segimon Messegué looked at us again, as if we were the freak show. He sighed, closed his eyes for a few seconds and slowly opened them again before resuming.

“I know what some people think, not just at school, but here too, in this neighbourhood: that I have a domineering mother and that's why I've never married, because I'm an only son and still cling to her skirts. That I'm a repressed homosexual ... That I'm suffering from some kind of mental illness because my father left us ... If you add to all this that I teach a subject as peculiar as Latin has become today ... How do you think the police would have reacted if I'd told them this story?” He paused and added solemnly: “‘And Brutus is an honourable man ...'”

“Brutus? Who's this Brutus?” asked Borja alarmed.

“What I mean is that Mrs Font had the odds stacked in her favour. Who do you think they'd have believed? A wealthy, important wife of an MP, or a Latin teacher who's over fifty and does things people think are peculiar, like being a bachelor, reading books, not having much social life and living with his handicapped mother?”

Segimon Messegué was right. A few moments ago I'd put all those ingredients together and come up with the protagonist of
Psycho
. I felt ashamed of myself.

“I haven't offered you anything to drink,” he said getting up. “I thought it might make you feel uncomfortable, given the circumstances ... But I need a cognac.”

He took three glasses from the cabinet and poured himself a glass of Magno. Just in case, we declined his offer.

“Do you know,” he said, recovering slightly after his first sip, “films and all this psychoanalytical palaver have done a lot of harm to many people who don't lead what others consider a normal life. There are lots of neighbours on the staircase who look at me as if I am peculiar just because I live with my mother and never married. Whenever they put one of those films on telly, they look at me the day after as if they're trying to detect something ...”

He went silent for a few moments, thinking what to say next. In the end he sighed and finished telling us his story: “When I was six, my father abandoned ship and left us just with the clothes we were wearing. He took the tiny amount saved in the bank, the jewels, cutlery and silver picture frames. He left us with the walls and furniture. Someone told us he went to Argentina, but we never heard any more
of him. I don't even know whether my father is dead or alive ...” He paused and took another sip of cognac. “My mother had to slave away to make ends meet and give me a decent schooling. She said she was working as a seamstress but was really cleaning houses. She was ashamed people might find out, you know? A maid doing the housework ...”

Borja and I looked down, upset. We could still remember what things were like thirty or forty years ago.

“I'd finished my degree and was working as a teacher: I was about to get married. Suddenly my mother fell ill and, when she recovered, the doctor told us she'd have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. It was a virus, one of those rare diseases that affect the spinal column ... Carmen, the woman who was my fiancée at the time, insisted we put her into a home, and even found a very nice one on the outskirts of Barcelona. Carmen,” he added even more miserably, “wasn't prepared to take responsibility for that kind of situation.”

“Sometimes, when you're young, it's difficult to cope with this kind of misfortune,” I said to console him.

“Do you know how old my mother was?” he stared at us. “Forty-three. Only forty-three,” he repeated, “I couldn't sentence her to a life among the sick and deranged for the rest of her life. It wouldn't have been fair.”

“So you decided to break off your engagement.”

“Carmen forced me to choose between my mother and herself ... And I chose. From then on I couldn't find any woman prepared to accept my situation, until I met Lluïsa, obviously. Whenever I got to know a young woman and told her I lived with my handicapped mother, she wouldn't even deign to come home and meet her ... You can see I'm an average-looking man of modest means and as the years passed by, it got more difficult to get to meet women. But I've never felt so desperate that I wanted to propose to the first person who came along. Time has shown I was right because I did finally find the woman of my dreams.”

The sky was starting to darken and we were almost engulfed by shadows, but Messegué showed no sign he was going to switch the light on. That penumbra, together with the clock's monotonous tick-tock, created a strange feeling of peace within me.

“I know it doesn't fit the stereotype,” he went on, “but, despite her condition, my mother isn't domineering or embittered or one of those who always find fault with their potential daughters-in-law,” he said, as if he'd read my thoughts. “On the contrary, she's always been very optimistic and notices people's good qualities rather than any defects. She tried to understand my father's decision from the beginning, and even today absolves him of any blame. She says that sometimes people take decisions they will later regret, but it's often difficult to retrace one's steps.” He paused again. “I couldn't put her into a home. You do understand that, don't you?”

I suppose we are used to clutching to stereotypes as props to get us through life. They often work but not always. How often did I employ those same clichés day-in day-out to judge others? Just before that confession, I'd been feeling terrified at the thought that Borja and I had a disturbed criminal on our hands, simply because the man's life was slightly different from how people think things should be. I'd been unfair.

“Of course she doesn't know,” he added, “that I didn't marry because I didn't want to consign her to a home, I mean. I've always told her that I couldn't find the right
woman.” He smiled. “Now she's delighted by the prospect of Lluïsa. They both are. If they,” his voice fell despondently, “had ended up believing, even slightly, the evil slander that woman wanted to ...”

“So you decided to send her a box with a few poisoned
marrons glacés
...” said Borja.

“Initially I thought that what Mrs Font had said was pure bluff, a ridiculous threat, and that would be that. In fact, I'd already decided that Núria's next mark would be an A star. But, one day, just before the start of the Christmas holidays, I had to go the headmistress's office and I overheard Maribel, her secretary, cancelling a lunch appointment that Mrs Font and the headmistress had arranged. The headmistress, Mrs Casas, was in hospital recovering from gastro-enteritis, the holidays were approaching, and Maribel was arranging for them to have lunch after the holidays. I remember she told me Mrs Font was always pursuing the headmistress and this time claimed she had something very important to tell her ... I was alarmed. I thought nothing would stop that woman and that I had to do something.”

“Take her out of circulation, for example ...” I said.

“No ... I never thought in such brutal terms,” he said, embarrassed. “But what would you have done in my place?” he implored. “What could I do?”

I imagined the situation, with Montse and the children in the middle, and the truth is I couldn't think what to say. Borja lowered his eyes and said nothing.

“Naturally I was incapable of doing anything ... physically, you understand. I ... the most that I ... that I can ...” he avoided using the word “kill” “... I wouldn't hurt a fly, I swear. In fact, it was Suetonius who gave me the idea.”

“So you had an accomplice,” Borja rushed in.

“I think he means the Latin writer. He's been pushing up daisies for centuries,” I pointed out.

My brother knows all there is to know about what kind of flowers you should take to a dinner, but zilch about classical literature.

“It was her name. As she was a Lídia, I immediately remembered the story according to which Livia killed Augustus by poisoning the figs he'd picked off the tree. At school all the teachers knew Mrs Font was partial to glazed chestnuts. I know nothing about poisons but I am a mushroom lover. One Sunday, after overhearing that conversation in the headmistress's office, I went to the countryside with Lluïsa to look for mushrooms, and by chance found some amanitas. That's when I thought of the idea.”