The Paris Enigma (15 page)

I
didn't want to continue the investigation without further orders from Arzaky. I looked for him in his apartment first and then in the underground parlor of the Numancia Hotel. Arzaky was sitting on a chair with a stack of papers. He grabbed his head in a theatrical gesture while a tiny man with a pointy beard shouted.

“So, Arzaky, you think your problems are bad? It's never the dead people who are the problem, it's the live ones! Messengers knock on my door day and night, my wife is threatening to leave me, and, what's worse, my cook is too! The government's decision to have the fair this year, as an homage to the Revolution, forces us to constantly exchange information with other countries. A few months earlier or a few later, and the whole thing would be solved. But now, the crowned heads of Europe don't want to participate officially because they don't think it's right to celebrate a king's decapitation. They don't like to see the words guillotine and majesty in the same sentence. But their diplomatic advisers, their industrialists, and their technicians have come and are filling our hotels. Men whom we call ‘informal civil servants' pay us visits, hordes of characters with conspiratorial airs who ask to meet with everyone and hand out business cards, so hot off the presses that they stain your fingers. And we never manage to discern informality from impersonation. The day before yesterday I
threw a lout out of my office, and he turned out to be an envoy from the British embassy. My secretary had to spend all morning writing letters of apology. Last Saturday the minister himself was talking for two hours to a German, supposedly the representative of the Swabian industrialists, who turned out to be the conman Dunbersteg, wanted for the Swiss bond scandal. Your murdered detective and incinerated corpse don't seem like such great problems to me.”

Giant Arzaky looked at him with what seemed to be fear. I must say I've often noted that very tall people are completely disconcerted by very short ones, as if they belonged to a quicker, more intimate, more complex world.

“We are doing everything possible, Dr. Ravendel. If you had hired me instead of Darbon, this never would have happened.”

“I didn't hire Darbon. It was the organizing committee, who were frightened.” Ravendel threw down an envelope filled with banknotes onto the table. “I brought what we agreed on, Arzaky, to serve as inspiration. The other half when the case is solved. We have managed to get the press to portray Darbon's death as an accident. That's cost more money than anything else so far. Bribing politicians is much cheaper, because they're naturally dishonest, but journalists are always expensive because they try to pretend that they're willing to take their scruples to the limit. Our coffers are not bottomless, we're not like those ostentatious Argentines who felt they had to build the Taj Mahal.”

Ravendel stormed out without saying good-bye. Arzaky's gaze followed him as if making sure he was really gone. Then he stuck his hand into the envelope and took out a bill.

“Is your information worth one of these?” he asked me.

“I'm not sure.”

“Did the body come from where I thought it did?”

“Yes, the Taxidermists' Pavilion. The taxidermist who prepared it is named Nazar. It was a body donated by the morgue. A guillotined man. Nazar was very proud of having reconnected the head.”

“Let's go to the morgue then. We have to beat Bazeldin's foot soldiers.”

Arzaky, not convinced that I deserved it, gave me the money.

An hour later we were walking across a square stone courtyard. Arzaky had sent me to buy a bottle of wine, some cheese, and cold meats, and I was carrying the box with the provisions. There were two green ambulances in the courtyard, with yoked horses, ready to go out to the farthest reaches of the city in search of a body. We went down a staircase to the autopsy room. We passed an open door; Arzaky signaled for me to keep quiet but I couldn't help peeking in. The forensic doctor was talking to Bazeldin and a couple of policemen.

“Right now they are finding out what we already know. We've got the upper hand,” said Arzaky in a whisper. And when I smiled complicitly he warned, “But one should never,
never
rely on that.”

We opened a door that revealed a deserted room: the morgue's archives. The shelves held cardboard boxes and file folders with papers coming out of them, tied with green ribbon. On the wall was an engraving of an anatomy amphitheater, with medical students and curious onlookers surrounding a professor as he dissected a cadaver. On the desk were photographs of faces and bodies, and judicial orders with the hospital seal and doctors' pompous signatures. Arzaky, who knew the archive well, searched through a cabinet that, because of its proximity to the desk, was most likely for more recent papers. After much looking he triumphantly pulled out a page.

We heard heavy footsteps approaching. I was scared, but Arzaky didn't even look up.

An immensely fat man entered the archives. He wore an administrative staff uniform, but his shirt had been mended so many times he looked like a beggar.

“Arzaky! If the doctor finds you in here, he'll fire me. Do you want me to starve to death?”

“That would break my heart, Brodenac.”

Arzaky signaled for me to put the box I was holding down on the
desk. Brodenac examined the bottle, the cheese, and the cold meats, and smiled with satisfaction.

“There are better places to shop, but the Bordeaux isn't bad. What are you looking for?”

“I've already found it.”

Brodenac studied the sheet of paper Arzaky had in his hand.

“You too?”

“Who else was here?”

“That redheaded girl…the dead guy's sister.”

Arzaky looked at me.

“The dead guy didn't have a sister. Someone else got here before us.”

“You already know who the dead guy is?” I asked.

Arzaky took the paper from Brodenac and showed it to me.

“Jean-Baptiste Sorel,” I read. The name meant nothing to me. “Who is he?”

“An art forger. Imprisoned for stealing paintings and for murder.”

“Did you know him?”

“I met him under unpleasant circumstances.”

Brodenac had taken out a wood-handled knife and was already cutting off a piece of cheese. “Unpleasant circumstances? Well, they were unpleasant for Sorel…. It was Arzaky, the great detective, who sent him to the guillotine.”

N
ight had already fallen and Arzaky asked me to go with him into a narrow café that stretched out toward a smoky back area. He ordered absinthe and I was going to ask for the same, but he stopped me.

“An assistant's mind always has to be sharp. You shouldn't get clouded up on this poison.”

A short waiter, practically a midget, brought us our drinks: a glass of wine for me, and for Arzaky a slotted spoon, a lump of sugar wrapped in blue paper, and a glass filled with green liquid. Arzaky put the sugar in the spoon and poured water over it until it dissolved. As it lost its purity, the absinthe turned opalescent. When it was still, before the water was completely stirred in, it seemed to turn into green-veined marble.

“Sorel was a two-bit forger,” Arzaky told me. “His specialty was academic painting, all those big canvases with mythological figures, a little tree over here, some ruins over there, and a naked lady in the middle. But that went out of style, and Sorel found there was no market for his fake Bouguereaus and Cabanels anymore. He was broke, and he spent his days growing deeper in debt in the back room of the Rugendas Café. One night Sorel met Bonetti, a Sicilian smuggler, among the other lost souls at the café. They became friends, discussing art, reciting the names of their favorite paintings, and exchanging information
about which famous works in France and Italy's great museums were actually forgeries. Within six months Bonetti knew everything about Sorel, who was a very talkative chap, and he was able to convince him to steal a painting that hung in the house of one of Sorel's old clients. The former client was a textile manufacturer who had profited from the sale of overpriced uniforms to Belgian army detachments sent to the Congo. Sorel got into the house under the pretense of selling him a painting, and Bonetti, dressed as a gentleman, came in with him. Sorel introduced Bonetti as an expert from the Vatican gallery. Bonetti cased the house and discovered there was almost no security. Fifteen days later they pulled off the heist, entering through an open window.”

“That's not enough to send somebody to the guillotine. Did they kill someone?”

“No. They were thieves, not murderers. Bonetti knew what he was after: several books had been published on
The School of Athens
by Raphael, and at that time, minor painters were benefiting from the renewed interest in paintings with philosophical subjects. Bonetti was planning to sell the painting to the president of the Platonic Society of Paris, but he never got the chance.”

At the back of the café, in front of a mirror, two men were arguing loudly. I looked in that direction and saw my reflection. I barely recognized myself. At that distance and with all the smoke, unshaven and bleary eyed, I looked older. In that moment I wanted to go back to Buenos Aires and, at the same time, never wanted to go back, ever. But if I did return, who would I be? The shoemaker's son sent by Craig with a cane and a secret, or the tired man who looked back at me from the mirror?

Arzaky waited for the men's shouting to stop before continuing.

“Sorel had only one serious fault: he was very jealous. Bonetti foolishly took the liberty of sleeping with Sorel's common-law wife, a pale, consumptive-looking woman. Sorel attacked Bonetti with the knife he used for cutting canvases and left him in the street, so that it would look like a mugging or a drunken fight. When the police
found him, Bonetti was still alive and conscious, but he refused to name his attacker. Five days later Sorel sold a forged painting to one of his clients, unaware that the police were on his trail. The owner of the painting, who was abreast of the matter, asked me to examine the painting. In one corner of the canvas I found a bloody thumbprint. It was so easy to prove his guilt that I won't even bother boring you with the details that led him to the gallows. They found the stolen painting in his studio.”

“Had he harmed the girl too?”

“No, he hadn't even beaten her. He loved her too much. I saw her recently; she was selling violets on the street. I bought a small bouquet and paid way too much for it, leaving quickly before she could recognize me because I was afraid she would refuse to accept the money. I didn't like sending Sorel to the guillotine, but we detectives strive to know the truth and when we find it, it no longer belongs to us. It is the other men: the police, the lawyers, the journalists, the judges, they decide what to do with that truth. I hope that young woman hasn't found out that Sorel's body was defiled and burned.”

“And the stolen painting?”

“The businessman got it back, but shortly afterward went bankrupt and sold it to the Platonic Society, exactly what Bonetti had planned on doing. It still hangs there. It's called
The Four Elements
and, according to what I've been told, it depicts Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Pythagoras. How can anyone tell? In paintings, all philosophers look more or less the same: tunics, beards, and pensive eyes.”

W
hen I arrived at Madame Nécart's hotel, the assistants were all gathered there. I never saw them in groups of three or four; it was all or nothing. Perhaps they had agreed behind my back when to appear and when to disappear. Baldone shouted at me from a distance, with his Neapolitan terseness. “The Argentine, finally! Come here, come here!”

I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to disappear but I took a seat beside the Japanese assistant, who looked at me harshly. I greeted him with a nod, which he returned, somewhat exaggeratedly. Tamayak and Dandavi were missing from the group.

“And what does Arzaky say about what happened in the Galerie des Machines?” asked Benito, the Brazilian.

I was honest: “Arzaky doesn't know what to think.”

“Magrelli says that the two incidents are related. They both happened on a Wednesday,” Baldone said smugly.

“Your Roman detective has a distinct tendency to find serial murders in isolated cases,” interjected Linker.

“That's our mission, isn't it?” said Baldone. “Finding a pattern in the chaos. The police see isolated events, then the detectives connect the dots, creating constellations.”

“Good for Magrelli. When he retires from investigation he can
take up astrology, which is, I've been told, a much more profitable business. At least in Italy.”

Baldone chose not to respond. Benito seemed to agree with Linker: “But there's no sequence here. In one case a murder, in the other, the theft and incineration of a corpse. If it is a series, it is going backward: burning a body, as unpleasant as it is, is not as serious as killing. What could be next? Stealing a wallet? The killer could finish off his list of crimes with a final act: leaving a restaurant without paying.”

“Or leaving the Numancia Hotel without paying,” said Linker. “The Twelve Detectives are a club, but they're also rivals. It's inappropriate to mention it, but we know that many of them hate each other, and we shouldn't rule out the possibility that the killer is among us.”

“Among them, you mean,” corrected Baldone.

Linker's round face turned red. I don't know if it was because he had suggested that one of the assistants could be mixed up in the case, or because he had included the detectives and the assistants in the same group.

“Among them, of course.”

There was an awkward silence. Everyone wanted to discuss it, but nobody dared start the conversation.

“I'd like to know who hates whom,” I said to get things rolling.

“There's plenty of hate to go around,” said Baldone. “But the real animosity, the most serious…well, it's best not to talk about it.”

“Don't I at least deserve a clue?”

Benito came closer to my ear and whispered, “Castelvetia and Caleb Lawson.”

Linker turned red, this time with indignation.

“You're taking advantage of the fact that their assistants aren't here to speak ill of them.”

Benito shrugged his shoulders.

“You brought it up, Linker. Besides, it's not our fault that the Hindu is never around and that Castelvetia has an invisible assistant.”

“That is an old subject and it makes no sense to dig it up again.
The Argentine is young and the impressions formed now will stay with him for the rest of his life.”

“He has plenty of time to forget everything he runs the risk of learning here,” said Baldone.

“I want to find out everything I can about the detectives,” I insisted. “Besides, it isn't fair for me not to know what you all do. I might say something inappropriate in front of them.”

They looked at each other in silence. There were two possibilities: they could either include me in the group so that mutual loyalty developed, or they could completely exclude me. If I were somewhere in the middle, I could hear some careless comments, and repeat them to the detectives. They had no way of knowing for sure that I wasn't a snitch. They had to decide if I was truly going to be part of their group or not. After exchanging glances with those who hadn't yet spoken, Linker said, “Okay, then I'll tell him myself. I'm impartial, and I hate Baldone and Benito's gossiping. When this happened, Caleb Lawson was already a famous detective and prominent member of The Twelve. Castelvetia on the other hand, was a complete unknown. The case that made them enemies for life was the Death of Lady Greynes, whose father had been president of the North Steamboats Company, a shipping business. Lady Greynes suffered from a nervous condition. Francis Greynes built a tower to support her voluntary isolation from the world. The townspeople called her the Princess in the Tower. Lady Greynes very rarely left her refuge. She said that she couldn't stand contact with other people, that they might infect her with fatal contagious diseases. Her husband managed the family fortune, but he couldn't do anything without his wife's signature. One stormy night, the woman fell from the window of her tower. Her head hit a stone lion, and she died immediately.”

“And her husband?” I asked.

“He was several miles away, at a party in Rutherford Castle. As a social event it was terrible, not enough wine, champagne, or food, but there were plenty of witnesses. They were very reliable (no one got
drunk with such a shortage of liquor) so Lord Greynes wasn't considered a suspect. But rumors of his involvement in his wife's death spread by word of mouth and were printed in the newspapers. Francis Greynes wanted to clear his good name and honor so he called his old Oxford buddy, Dr. Caleb Lawson, and asked him to investigate the case and absolve him of any guilt.”

“Agreeing to help an old friend and then accusing him of murder is behavior unbecoming to an English gentleman,” I said. “I hope Lawson didn't do something like that.”

“Of course not,” continued Linker. “Lawson interviewed the servants, the doctor who had treated Lady Greynes, and Lord Rutherford's dissatisfied guests, and he confirmed Greynes's alibi. He declared it a suicide. Everyone knew that Lawson was the most famous detective in London and the judge wouldn't question his opinion. And yet this judge, a provincial civil servant, decided to keep the case open. He felt he had to.”

“Had Caleb Lawson changed his mind?”

“No, that wasn't it. Caleb Lawson has never, not in his entire career, ever admitted to making a mistake. But Lady Greynes had a sister, Henriette, who didn't believe the suicide theory. Henriette was married to a Flemish painter who knew Castelvetia, and he enlisted his help. At that time, Castelvetia worked with a Russian assistant, a remarkably strong man named Boris Rubanov. Boris had acquired the habit, on every new case, of engaging the domestic help in conversation, without interrogating them. He let them talk about their families, about their little everyday complaints, he bought them drink after drink, and after a few days of increasing trust and alcohol, there were no secrets between them. Thanks to Boris, Castelvetia solved a case which, outwardly, was not a mystery.”

“Castelvetia contradicted Caleb Lawson?” I asked.

“Contradict him? Castelvetia almost ruined Lawson's reputation! After that, Lawson's assistant, Dandavi, had to force him to practice those breathing exercises that Hindus do so they won't succumb to
a dizzy spell. Boris had gathered the following information: before the crime, a cook and a coachman had heard the sound of furniture being moved around in a room of the tower. Those nighttime noises were what enabled the Dutchman to solve the case. Castelvetia maintained, before the judge, that Francis Greynes had planned his wife's murder long before it happened. He had the tower built in such a way that there were two identical windows, one facing east and the other west. One opened onto a small stone balcony, the other onto nothing. Architecturally the room was completely symmetrical. Every night the cat would meow and Lady Greynes would go out to the balcony and tend to her. That night, Greynes doubled his wife's medication so that she would fall asleep in the dining room. When he carried her to the tower in his arms, he had already switched the furniture around, so that the window that faced east, instead of being on the left side of the bed, was on the right. Then he went to Lord Rutherford's castle, so he would have an alibi. That night the cat meowed, as always, and Lady Greynes, disoriented by the medication and the reconfigured furniture, went out the wrong window.”

“The poor woman,” I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

“Poor Lawson,” continued Linker. “The press had a field day with him, they even talked of bribery, and he swore undying hatred for Castelvetia. Before Castelvetia had time to report the results of his investigation, Francis Greynes was tipped off and escaped. They say he fled to South America. That flight saved Lawson, because the press paid much less attention to the trial than they would have if the accused were there in the courtroom. Trials in absentia are even more boring than executions in effigy.”

The animosity between the two detectives was a delicate and unpleasant topic, and the assistants were silent, pondering the consequences of that distant episode. I felt a bit ashamed for having taken the conversation in that direction.

Luckily Benito broke the silence. “But they are also divided by
theoretical concerns. I've heard that Castelvetia maintains that an assistant, under certain circumstances, could be promoted.”

“That's enough, Benito, we've already discussed that,” said Linker. “Don't dream the impossible dream. They are The Twelve, not The Twenty-four. Who's ever heard of an assistant who was promoted? Nobody.”

“But maybe the laws state that—”

“And who's ever seen the laws? They're unwritten; the detectives only make veiled references to them when they're alone. They won't tell them to you, or to me. It doesn't make any sense to argue about something we've never seen, and never will.”

“But I have seen them,” said Okano, the Japanese assistant. His voice, in spite of being barely the whisper of silk paper, made us all jump. “I've seen the rules.”

Linker attributed his claim to a language problem. “Do you know what we're talking about?”

Okano responded in perfect French. He was more fluent than Linker.

“My mentor is very methodical; and any time he received a correspondence about the laws, he wrote it in a separate place. I had a chance to read the papers before he burned them.”

“He burned the laws?”

“So no one else could see them. He burned them in the garden of an inn where we were staying during an investigation in a southern town. It was summertime and the cicadas were singing. My mentor burned the papers in a stone lantern.”

“Do you mean to say that you read something about an assistant becoming a detective?”

“That's right. My mentor didn't ask me to keep it a secret, so I'll dare to speak. I even think Sakawa allowed me to read those papers on purpose, so I would know that the remote possibility exists, and so someday you all would know it as well. Knowing that means we
have to be better assistants. Not because we have ambitions of becoming detectives, but because the mere fact it could happen exalts us.”

This was much more than the Japanese assistant had said in any of the other sessions, and now he was visibly short of breath. He was drinking a glass of pure absinthe, which was probably the reason for his sudden loquacity. But now the green fairy seemed to have abandoned him. Linker grew impatient.

“Come on, tell us. How is it done?”

Okano squinted his eyes, as if he were recalling something that had happened long ago.

“Four rules have been established for the promotion from assistant to detective. The first is that the detective, on his voluntary retirement, has to nominate his assistant as his replacement. He must be willing to give him his good name and his archives as well. The assistant would carry on his mentor's work, as if he were the same detective. Nine of the eleven other members must approve the appointment. That's the rule of inheritance.”

“And the second one?”

“The second tenet is called the rule of unanimity. That is when all the detectives agree to fill an empty chair by naming an assistant whom they deem exceptional on the basis of his performance.”

“And the third?”

“That's the rule of prepotency. When a mystery has stumped three detectives and there is an assistant who is able to solve the case, he can present his application for membership. Their incorporation into the club is subject to a vote, in which two thirds of all the members, not just those present, must agree.”

Benito smiled, pleased with his victory.

“What now, Linker? Was I right or not?”

Linker looked at him with irritation.

“But those are hypothetical situations. Pure theory. In practice
none of those three rules have ever been applied. But…didn't you say there were four?”

Okano now regretted that he had said so much. Baldone held up the little green bottle and Okano looked at his empty glass. He had to talk to get his reward.

“There was a fourth rule, which my mentor called the rule of inevitable betrayal. But Sakawa didn't write anything more on that sheet of paper, as if he found it so shocking that not even the burning flames could remove the stink of sacrilege. All the clauses are secret, but that one is twice as secret.”

Everyone had fallen silent. Baldone poured two fingers of absinthe into Okano's glass. He drank it straight. Soon he fell asleep.

“Dream,” said Linker. “Dream of secret clauses and rules whispered into ears. Dream of papers burning in the stone lantern of a Japanese garden.”

I said good night to the acolytes and I went up to my room.