Pablo De Santis - The Paris Enigma

“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 f led to South America. That f light 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.”