María Bosco - Death Going Down

“The appearance of the body in the lift, Luchter’s perfect alibi, and the mysterious visit to señora Iñarra meant further dangers for Eidinger. He had to get rid of Czerbó and make us suspect it was a double crime for reasons of political revenge. Meanwhile, Czerbó wanted to get hold of the photographs because if reports were requested from the German police about the organization, it would become clear he had a previous connection to señora Eidinger and his situation would thereby become very dangerous.

“To eliminate Czerbó, Eidinger needed to get into his apartment and hide until both brother and sister went to bed. He knew their habits. The Czerbó siblings used the service quarters as storage space. Hiding there for a few hours wouldn’t be impossible. He planned to dissolve the cyanide in a glass of water and swap it for the one on Boris’s bedside table so he would drink it when he woke up. If his plan worked, no one would suspect him because it was difficult to get into the house. People would probably assume it was another suicide.

“All he had to do was get hold of a key for the apartment’s service entrance. Eidinger could move about freely, no one was watching him. It only took him a morning to find out which suppliers regularly ran errands in the building.

“That same day he found out personal details about them and chose Emilio Villalba, an unintelligent young man without any family, who needed money because he was fond of the races. He bribed him to get a wax impression of the key for the service door on the third floor. Emilio Villalba did this while Rita was looking for the supposed lost ticket.

“Eidinger didn’t waste a minute. He waited for Emilio Villalba in his car and drove him, after he’d handed over the wax impression, to a bus station, giving him enough money to pay for his bus fare and his silence. A poor devil doesn’t go to the police when he’d do better to hide from them.

“He returned home. In his workshop he had a casting kit he’d bought from a hardware shop in another neighbourhood away from where he was going to carry out the last and most dangerous part of his plan. He made a copy of the key, and conveniently disguised, but not so much as to arouse suspicion (a pair of glasses, a moustache, a roomy overcoat to alter his figure), he entered the building on Calle Santa Fe when people’s movements were not yet being monitored by Torres’s peasant-like suspicions, and hid in the Czerbós’s service room.

“From his hiding place he heard Dr Luchter talking to Rita in the kitchen. Luchter said he would go to the pharmacy to have some capsules prepared, which he would personally give to Boris, and told her she should go and rest.

“Luck was on Eidinger’s side. After taking the calming dose the patient would fall deeply asleep, the doctor said. Eidinger decided to change his plan and not wait for Boris to drink the water in the morning. It occurred to him to look for a dropper in the bathroom and administer the poison through his nose.

“When Rita gave her statement, all indications would point to Luchter. Eidinger silently carried out his plan, and Rita, behind the locked door of her room at the other end of the hall, could not hear him. Then he returned to the scullery, carefully washed the glass in which he had dissolved the poison and put everything back in its place. Finally, to further implicate Luchter, he opened one of the capsules and substituted its contents. He naturally took the precaution of wearing rubber gloves.

“The following day he called the police to tell us about the mysterious threat he had received, so as to make Frida’s death seem like a crime between ex-associates. Luchter and Czerbó, being German and former residents of Germany, would be implicated. Not even the discovery of the poisoned lipstick could incriminate him then. The presence of Betty and the fake theft of the photographs helped him further. Eidinger was sailing with the wind in his favour.”

“If Czerbó had decided to act earlier, or if Betty had talked,” said Blasi, “Czerbó wouldn’t have died, nor would Rita.”

“There’s no need for such regrets. The Frida Eidinger case would probably have been classified as a suicide. Time crystallizes facts but the measure of that time does not belong to man.”

Blasi seemed unwilling to get involved with his boss’s philosophical musings.

“How has Betty taken it?”

“Well, the charges against her are minor. Her home will soon get back to normal. Don Agustín is busy saving Gabriela and in the meantime suffers new crises. She, meanwhile, becomes the angel of the house.”

“But is Don Agustín very ill?”

“Ill enough to convince himself he cannot be left alone.”

“Poor Betty! What a way to come unstuck! A scandal was the last thing she wanted.”

“Those are grand words to hide the excessive desire to meddle she inherited from her father. There’s nothing wrong with sparing the suffering of those we love, but someone should tell your pretty protégée that she’d do well to be modest and not claim such a role in the joys or misfortunes of others.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ferruccio admitted. “I’ll call her as soon as I’m free.”

“To tell her?”

“No. To ask her if she’d like to go for a walk. We owe it to Muck.”

Jonathan Ames

You Were Never Really Here

Augusto De Angelis

The Murdered Banker

The Mystery of the Three Orchids

The Hotel of the Three Roses

María Angélica Bosco

Death Going Down

Piero Chiara

The Disappearance of Signora Giulia

Frédéric Dard

Bird in a Cage

The Wicked Go to Hell

Crush

The Executioner Weeps

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

PledgeThe

The Execution of Justice

Suspicion

The Judge and His Hangman

Martin Holmén

Clinch

Down for the Count

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

I Was Jack Mortimer

Boileau-Narcejac

Vertigo

She Who Was No More

Leo Perutz

Master of the Day of Judgment

Little Apple

St Peter’s Snow

Soji Shimada

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Masako Togawa

The Master Key

The Lady Killer

Emma Viskic

Resurrection Bay

Seishi Yokomizo

The Inugami Clan

“A budding Sherlock’s dream; Shimada encourages the reader to be as much of a detective as his protagonist” Crime Scene

“Ignites the mind” Huffington Post

“Groundbreaking… Shimada’s expansive novel of forensic detection is something entirely original” At the Scene of the Crime

Pushkin Vertigo

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Original text © Julian Gil, 1955

First published in Spanish as La muerte baja en ascensor by Emecé Editores in 1955