“Carry on, Eidinger.” The Inspector’s voice was authoritative.
“I don’t know how or why it occurred to me afterwards to think she might have different motives to the ones I’d suspected up to then. Do you see? I was tortured by mistrust. It weighed on my conscience. I spent my days imagining scenarios and came to the conclusion that Frida’s apparently innocent curiosity was covering up a plan.”
“Amateur detectives,” Ericourt muttered through his teeth.
“Frida only brought her personal documents and those blasted photographs with her. She was vain, her desire to keep them seemed very straightforward.”
“Did you employ a professional to follow your wife?”
Eidinger shook his head.
“Why not? That would have been the most sensible.”
“They’re expensive,” Eidinger admitted humbly. “I couldn’t afford it.”
But Frida was a rich woman. Had she been tight-fisted with her husband? Was that the cause of their marital disagreements? Or had Eidinger felt it morally wrong to use his wife’s money as a weapon against her?
“You will recall,” Eidinger went on, “that in one of the photographs there was a door behind Frida bearing some insignia. She told me it belonged to a student body. I thought that perhaps if I knew more about that organization it would guide the thread of my investigation. I knew the photograph had been taken in Hamburg near a summer camp.”
“My God! All those investigations would be very expensive, too.”
“I have friends in Germany. I spoke with Czerbó and asked him to help me make an enlargement of the emblem. He was noncommittal.”
“What did he say exactly?”
“That he’d left the business. It was the day before Frida’s death. I was readier than ever to do the job. And now…”
“Why didn’t you tell us about all this before, señor Eidinger? Didn’t it occur to you that this might be of interest to the police?”
Eidinger was not in control of his nerves. He frowned and rubbed his hands against his thighs.
“I know I was wrong, but you have to understand, I couldn’t accuse Frida without being sure.”
This struck Ericourt as foolish, and foolish motivations invariably end up complicit in the criminal actions of others.
The doorbell rang. A car had stopped outside the house. A van was about to do the same. The “backup” had arrived. Ericourt went to let them in, leaving Betty with the female police auxiliary tasked with searching her clothing. The girl behaved herself. She seemed not to even blink.
A current of healthy activity began to flow around the house. Ericourt told Blasi to call Czerbó and say he would be stopping by. The fingerprinting team were beginning their nosy search of the past. The automatic thinking of the men whose job it was to construct an event outside its real place in time unleashed a chain of possibilities: climbing of walls, forced locks, fingerprints, footprints. Clues blossomed on powdered surfaces. The photographer ran back and forth.
The female police auxiliary planted herself in front of Ericourt:
“I haven’t found anything in the suspect’s clothing, sir. Should I take care of the transfer?”
The two women, Betty with her haughty reserve and the irritable, overbearing auxiliary, found each other intolerable. Betty waited behind the other woman, her pallor draining all the charm from her features.
“I’ll accompany the young lady,” said Ericourt.
Where had Blasi got to? He’d been keen to get out of there. Routine practices bored him terribly. Oh, yes! He would be calling the Czerbós’s apartment.
Blasi rushed down the stairs.
“Caramba, look where you’re going!” screeched one of the photographers.
Blasi’s agitation was disguised among the bustle of newcomers.
“Sir,” he said in a low voice when he was next to Ericourt. “I’ve just called. They found Czerbó dead in his room. There are officers already there.”
6
The Horsefly
Boris Czerbó’s body was lying in his bed. The curtains had been drawn back and the light of a cottony midday merged with the yellowish skin stretched over his prominent cheekbones. Brachycephalic skull, observed Ericourt privately, surrendering to an untimely thought that served to release some pressure in his overburdened mind. Purplish marks were appearing around Czerbó’s eyes and the slow draining of colour gradually high-lighted the imperfections of his face. On his left cheek was the pale button of a wart.
Lahore was also next to the bed.
“We received the call approximately an hour ago. His sister found him. She said she hadn’t woken him early because Dr Luchter advised her to let him sleep. Last night he came to see him.”
“Who rang the station? Did she?”
“No, Soler did. Señorita Czerbó ran to get help. Do you want to question anyone straight away?”
“Not yet.”
On a side table there was an ashtray with a cigarette stub, a used match and a strip of paper that was singed at one end. Next to the ashtray, the kind of cardboard box commonly used by pharmacies as a container for capsules and two glasses; in one of them discoloured prunes floated in brownish, cloudy water. The other was empty.
“What does it say?” said Ericourt, pointing to the paper.
“It looks like a rendezvous. Some words have been burnt. I can only read ‘you tonight’. It’s typewritten.”
“And what did the medical report say?”
“He died ten or twelve hours ago. Cyanide, just like the other case. I’m going to send the ashtray and everything else to the laboratory at once. Where were you? I sent for you.”
“Following the trail of some souvenir hunters. I’ve just witnessed the Argentinian version of The Mystery of the Yellow Room with a fifty-year-old Rouletabille weighing eighty-five kilos. That’s me.”
He covered Czerbó’s face with a sheet. Death had not disfigured him in its merciful prolongation of sleep.
They went into the adjoining room, the dead man’s study. Lahore drummed his fingers on the scratched leather of the desk as he listened to Ericourt’s account. The midday sun stripped the second-hand furniture of the mask of decency usually provided by the gloom in the Czerbós’s home.
“So far they’ve found no trace of the photographs or the thief. We’ll see if they come across any suspicious finger prints.”
“What do you think?”
“I’m a rationalist. I’ve never been tempted by three-legged tables.”
“The girl lied.”
“That’s the most likely. She had time to tear up the photographs and throw them down the toilet. Is Vera here? Send him to get señorita Iñarra, have him take her to the station. And tell Blasi to come here. He’s at Eidinger’s house. We’ll need him to interpret when we question Czerbó’s sister.”
Lahore went to call Blasi. In the living room he found Soler, Andrés and two officers. The caretaker’s expression, which seemed to say “I told you so”, puzzled the Superintendent.
When he returned to the desk he found Ericourt smoking with distasteful enjoyment.
“Do you believe it was suicide?” asked Lahore.
“Yes, two suicides in the same building and a girl who’s a compulsive liar. Some coincidence.”
Lahore squirmed gently in his seat, like a cat that feels someone is tying a dog to its tail.
“I don’t believe one word of that story about the photographs.”
“There could be someone else involved. Strangers who were threatening Frida and Czerbó. Maybe Czerbó sent Iñarra’s daughter to get hold of a compromising piece of evidence.”
“Why her, when she didn’t know him?”
“We can’t be sure of that. Rita will tell us who was in the apartment yesterday.”
“Luchter was there. I’ve sent for him. They didn’t find him at home or at the hospital.”