Sascha Arango - The Truth and Other Lies

Two days before the funeral, Henry Hayden put in an appearance at the office. He was wearing a dark suit. He kissed Honor’s hand in greeting and invited her to call him Henry. They drank gunpowder tea and talked for a while about the deceased man. Honor told him how they had spent his last days together in the city of lagoons until his liver failed and he proposed to her in the Ospedale Giovanni e Paolo. Henry sat in Moreany’s Eames chair and listened to her, deeply moved. He was ashamed not to have seen his friend and patron Moreany one last time.

Honor laid her hand on his. “It was so quick and so many awful things have happened, Henry. Things we can’t comprehend. The greatest gift for him was finding your novel again.”

“Have you read it?”

Honor nodded, smiling. “I know you didn’t want me to. Claus printed it out and took it with him to Venice. We read it together. It’s a great book, Henry. It’s great literature.”

“And the end? What did you think of the end?”

There was a longer pause. “That was amazing,” Honor finally replied. “I found it quite by chance in the mail.”

She got up and went over to Moreany’s desk, opened a drawer, and took out a brown envelope. She pulled out a pile of typescript, half a finger thick. Henry recognized the font of Martha’s typewriter.

“It was a very odd feeling reading this , Henry.”

She handed Henry the pages. He sat glued to the seat of the Eames chair, his ears burning. It felt as if a hot, wet cloth had been pressed into his face. In Martha’s handwriting on the front page was a — how shall we put it? — a note.

Dear Henry, my darling husband, I’m saving you and saving this ending, because I could never bear to leave you without anything. I don’t know what has happened or what is going to happen today, but the bright colors which shone out of you from the day we first met are now granite-black. I’m frightened for you.

At this point we must pause, because Henry was sobbing so much that with the best will in the world he couldn’t carry on reading.

Whatever it is that drives you to destroy the things you love, I have always felt exempt from your rage. You protect me, you understand me, you let me be myself. You have thrown away this beautiful ending to your novel in order to follow your demon to a shady rendezvous. I shall make sure it gets to you. I shall keep it for you and send it to Moreany. With fondest love, Martha.

We often have the wrong idea about things we’ve never actually seen. When we do finally get to see them, they are often surprisingly familiar. Honor had never seen a grown man cry. Henry cried long and hard, like a child calling for its mother. If Honor hadn’t gently taken the manuscript from him, his tears would have made a watercolor out of it. She left him alone and closed the door to Moreany’s office behind her.

When she had found the last chapter among Moreany’s unopened mail, late in the evening of the night before last, her first thought had been that it was a mistake, especially as Martha’s note was addressed to Henry. But on the envelope, in her exquisite handwriting, Martha had written Moreany’s private address. It couldn’t be a mistake. To Honor’s esoterically broadened intellect, the connection between Martha’s disappearance and this lovingly sinister farewell letter was irrefutable. Martha wrote of ruin and of Henry’s shady rendezvous with his demon; there was something disturbing about her note. Honor would have informed the police if she hadn’t been the director of a publishing house and Henry Hayden its golden idol. The closing chapter of the novel was a blank check and as such it took priority over moral reservations. For that reason, rather than consult the police, Honor Moreany, née Eisendraht, consulted the Arcana of Tarot. The eleventh card fell from the deck — Justice. Well, there you are then. Some doubts are dispelled all by themselves.

——

If it is true that there are funerals at which the mourners make a show of false humility and shocked grief, then it is often the dead themselves who are to blame for this hypocritical playacting: maybe they didn’t keep the best company when they were still alive, or just met the wrong people. Claus Moreany was buried as he had lived. With respect, with pathos, and attended by honest tears. A lot of people had gathered in the little cemetery on this overcast day in early autumn. Some three hundred mourners lined the path from the chapel to the mausoleum, many of them without umbrellas. The coffin was carried past them and at that moment it began to rain.

Within eyeshot of Henry were Jenssen and a few other gentlemen from the police. They were the only ones not dressed in dark clothes, which suggested they had come on official business. Why not? thought Henry. Today’s a good day to talk about death. Between a couple of old plane trees stood Gisbert Fasch. He waved shyly with a crutch when their eyes met. He had put on weight, and hair now covered the shaven side of his head. About an hour later the last mourners placed their flowers on the coffin, then the procession moved toward the cemetery’s exit, where a convoy of vehicles was waiting to shuttle the guests to the wake in the Moreany offices.

“We’ve found your wife,” Jenssen murmured to Henry as he passed him. The heartless nature of this greeting must have become clear to Jenssen the minute he’d spoken, for he fell silent — or perhaps it was Henry’s glare.

“Are you sure you’ve got the right woman this time?” Henry asked.

Jenssen’s superior, the aforementioned genius of case analysis, butted in. “My name is Awner Blum. I’m in charge of the homicide squad and I’d like to apologize for the somewhat brusque manner of my colleague.”

Henry came to a halt. “You really have found my wife?”

“Not a doubt about it. I’m… sorry, but that’s how it is. She’s been identified.”

“Not by me, she hasn’t. Is she dead?”

“I’m afraid she is. My condolences.”

“Where? Where did you find her?”

“ We didn’t find her. She was found. But maybe, rather than discussing it here, we’d be better off talking in peace down at headquarters, if that’s all right with you.”

“Where is she?”

“In forensics.”

Honor Moreany left the head of the funeral procession to join Henry and the policemen. “What’s happened?”

“They’ve found Martha.”

Honor stared at the policemen. “And you come here to tell us that?”

“We’ll explain everything calmly at headquarters, Mr. Hayden. It won’t take long.”

Honor put her arms round Henry and gave him a big hug.

“Go along with them, Henry. Claus would want you to.”

Henry kissed Honor’s hand and looked at Jenssen. “Which way?”

“Over here, please.” The man walked away from the funeral procession to the side exit of the cemetery.

Henry caught the mourners’ speculative glances. “It looks as if you’re arresting me. Is that what you want?”

“Not at all. Our meeting here is purely for reasons of convenience, Mr. Hayden. We need your help. This is not an arrest or a formal interview.”

They had made a public spectacle of him. They could just as easily have waited for him at the exit. Experts on police interviewing tactics might like to note that neither Blum nor Jenssen had volunteered until asked by Henry the information that Martha was dead. They had not told him where, how, or when she was found. They had obviously decided to extract every last scrap of guilty knowledge out of Henry. Be my guest, motherfuckers, thought Henry. He was extremely well prepared.

Jenssen stopped when he saw Gisbert Fasch limping along behind them as quickly as his stiff legs would allow. He went to meet him and they exchanged a few words while Henry, escorted by the three gentlemen from the police, left the cemetery grounds and got into a white Audi A6. Fasch remained behind. Henry never saw him again.