“And was that how you learned from señor Czerbó about señora Eidinger’s engraving?”
“Yes.”
“That is to say you saw señor Czerbó after the 23rd of August.”
“I only saw him once.”
“Did you arrange to meet him yesterday?”
With a look the girl measured up the two men who were scrutinizing her words and gestures.
“A rendezvous typed on a slip of paper… Yes, that was me. I told him I wanted to see him last night. I sent him the note in a pack of cigarettes Rita came to get for him. I thought it was a good way to tell Boris I wanted to talk to him.”
“When did you write it?”
“In the afternoon.”
“Did you always arrange to meet that way?”
“Sometimes, when we couldn’t use the telephone. Because of my father,” she clarified.
“Why didn’t you send the note as soon as you’d written it?”
“I was waiting for an opportunity to send it to him. Rita often came to us for help to get out of scrapes. She’s very forgetful. I didn’t absolutely need to see Boris that night, after all. If I didn’t get a chance to announce my visit I could leave it for another time.”
“And did you come here that night?”
“No, I waited for a phone call from Boris answering my note… He didn’t call.”
Ericourt paused and offered Betty a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” replied the girl.
The Inspector exchanged a glance with Lahore.
“Why did you go to señor Eidinger’s house?” Ericourt attacked.
“I told you. I wanted to see the picture.”
Someone called from the laboratory to speak to Superintendent Lahore. Ericourt and the young woman were left alone.
“You didn’t time your request very well,” said the Inspector, taking up his questioning again.
“I didn’t think that. I thought it was most natural.”
Would she be so cynical as to feign naivety? After what she had just revealed about her relationship with Czerbó her position seemed hardly credible.
“How did you justify the request?”
“I didn’t. I simply told him the reason for my visit.”
Horizontal furrows lined Betty’s forehead, and a red patch was spreading across it. She had taken off her green silk scarf and the same patch was continuing down her neck. She was lying, then. Who was she trying to protect? Herself? Someone else?
“If I’m arrested,” she said suddenly in a faltering voice, “I’d like you to be the one to tell my father.”
Ericourt sat up straight in his seat. The appeal to his leniency made him angry, as if she had identified a weakness in him.
“What did you do with the photographs?” he thundered.
“I don’t have them,” Betty stammered. “I don’t know anything about them.”
She broke off. Lahore rushed into the room like a man leading a troop.
“They found cyanide in one of the capsules,” he said all at once. His thoughts seemed to have travelled a long way in a short amount of time. “I’ve already notified the Examining Magistrate.”
Soler was sitting opposite Luchter, waiting for the Examining Magistrate to call him in to make a statement. It was all highly unusual, and consequently ridiculous. When one has lived among other people who have, directly or indirectly, known one since one was a chubby ball in nappies already participating in family life, one cannot run the risk of having them think one is involved in a crime. There are things that must not be called into doubt, and among those are certain rules of life.
He had always taken other people’s respect and consideration for granted, though there are naturally aspects of life that ought to be kept under wraps. He, Francisco Soler, was a man of good breeding who had been taught not to lift the lids off certain silver platters. Anything else would constitute a joke in poor taste, or the inappropriate behaviour of strange folk.
That German doctor, for example. He took keeping his mouth shut to such an extreme! He might at least pretend to make friendly conversation. The distance he put between them called to mind an isolation cell. Supermen, was that not what they had pretended to be? They deserved no better than to be treated with touristic curiosity.
In an attempt to calm down, Soler looked out at the winter sky, framed by the surrounding buildings. If he leant slightly in the chair he could make out the white paved paths of Plaza San Martín. That window in the grey building over there was the bedroom of uncle Octávio’s apartment, where Soler usually ate lunch on Thursdays. In the building on the opposite corner lived the Donaldsons, excellent companions from the bridge club. He sighed, relieved.
That silent room irritated him. He had always used conversation as a protective screen. When one does not know what to think, one speaks. That is common sense. Or one makes love. Or, failing that, one drinks. Anything to stop oneself sinking into the bottomless and torturous pit of thought. The German doctor seemed to be at peace with his own conscience. Did he too give the impression of indifference? It had never occurred to him to confront others with a solid screen of individuality.
In that living room crammed with plush furniture and porcelain, the ghost of solitude pulled horrible faces and unfurled its many threatening tentacles. He got up to examine one of the pictures. Did Luchter think him so guilty that he did not deserve a word of solidarity?
The engraving showed a female nude, a figure with both hands outstretched, as if she were being handcuffed. Surely he was mad if a female body suggested such an idea!
And why not? He had always feared women. If one allowed them too much importance they become a prison, that was certain.
Of course what he had said to the caretaker had been stupid. The man had surely repeated it.
As he slowly became aware of the dark presence of his fears, Soler felt his muscles relaxing as if someone were loosening the pegs of over-tight strings. At the same time another peg turned in his stomach until it became a knot tugging on his brain.
Why had he got angry with Czerbó that day? It was silly and they would never believe him. He did not understand what he had meant to say, but he thought the Bulgarian was overstepping the mark, so he’d asserted his masculinity in throwing him out of his house. The “ladies” who visited him had nothing to lose. He had to humbly accept that. His affected ways were no more than theatrics. Could he say that to the Magistrate? Could he say that an epidemic of necrological exhibitionism had spread through the building, and that he was invariably the victim? He remembered the tall figure and abundant grey hair of Dr Corro, who he’d seen passing when he was walking towards the inner rooms. He looked like the lion in the advert for Ferro Quina Bisleri tonic he remembered from his childhood. How would a lion take the joke?
Dr Corro lowered his handsome head between his shoulders with the patient attitude of someone whose job it is to listen. On either side of the office, Lahore and Ericourt adopted airs of feigned indifference. Soler was smoking one cigarette after another and lining up the matches in the ashtray, failing to understand why his gestures seemed of such interest to the Superintendent and the Inspector. What was he doing wrong?
“And when I went in with señorita Czerbó, I knew her brother was dead as soon as I saw him. I called the police straight away. It was eleven thirty in the morning.”
The precision of his statement was not insignificant. People with nothing to hide give a lot of details. Or do they?
Dr Corro’s face expressed the same good-naturedness as a doctor encouraging a patient to share the detail he has omitted, which always proves to be the most important one.
Soler sucked hard on his cigarette, as if it were an oxygen tube rather than a harmless roll of tobacco. The question came at last.