‘How is it possible, my dear Mrs Agatha,’ Mr Costache replied with feigned astonishment, ‘that you know everything before I do?’
He knew very well that the ladies of Bucharest and the Police employ servants as their morning, afternoon and evening newspapers. He acknowledged that indeed they had not managed to open the case or box or whatever it was. The mistake was his. Instead of immediately ordering it to be broken open with an axe, fearful lest they damage its contents, which might be who knows what valuable items, they had tried to crack the combination and then invited a professional thief to do so: a certain Fane the Ringster, who was being held under arrest. But now, as if part of an illusionist’s number, the box had disappeared!
The stranger had been held in the same cell as Fane for an hour yesterday afternoon, but he is said not to have spoken a word, apart from complaining of the cold a few times. ‘What’s with you, Jean, somebody die?’ The Ringster had apparently asked him.
It amused me to learn from Mr Costache that Fane called everybody Jean, ‘to simplify his life’. Fane is certain that the stranger is some international burglar, he says that he knows all the thieves from Bucharest and the surrounding area by sight, and he knows how the ones from the rest of the country ‘work.’ And this is my opinion too: he must be some chevalier d’industrie wanted by the police commissioners of every country. Nevertheless, I sense, without my being able to explain why, that there is more to this than meets the eye, something mysterious, which causes me heart to beat very fast. I am curious even; it is like an episode from Vanity Fair. The gas lamp has almost burned out; better I go to bed.
2
There are two things in life of which you are never bored: looking at falling snowflakes and gazing at the flames in a fireplace. At dawn that Saturday, Mr Costache was able to do both of these at once. It had started to snow and for a while he had looked out of the window onto Victory Avenue. Now he was looking at the flames. He had finished his Turkish coffee, laced with French brandy, to help him forget his annoyance at the disappearance of the case, and he had glanced at the announcement in Universul, taking note, without surprise, that it had been placed between two stupid advertisements. What prestige could the Police preserve if its requests were placed next to an advertisement for a confectioner’s? And it was not even a renowned confectioner’s, like old man Fialkowski’s, but one that was here today and gone tomorrow. Then he came across the news item about the man found in the snow: ‘The man under arrest who was found unconscious yesterday almost frozen near Băneasa Forest (by the lakes) has declared that his name is Dan I. Kretzu, that he is a…’ and observed two things: primo, that they had spelled his name with a K and a tz, although in his statement the man had written it with a normal C and a normal ț, and secundo, that he, Costache Boerescu, had been omitted from the news item. But these were trifles. And he looked into the fireplace once more, at the dancing tongues of flame, which soothed him, and then he went to the window again. No snowflake resembled any other, and, so Costache hoped, no fingerprint could resemble any other. Unfortunately, it had not yet been proven whether the patterns on a man’s fingertips might alter over the course of his lifetime, but Costache was almost certain that within a few years the fact that they did not would be demonstrated scientifically. His superior arrogantly contradicted him and gave as an example trees, which, when sawn in two reveal their own print. But if you compare the rings of a young tree with those of an old tree, you will see that in the latter the distances between them are greater and increase with the years, and that the accidents of good and bad years change their outlines. The same must also apply to a man, the Prefect of Police concluded.
Costache did not get on with his superior, although he acknowledged that he was not a stupid man. The 22nd of November had been the anniversary of his arrival, the date when, full of complexes and affectations, he had taken up the post. His brother Ion, the Prefect of Bacău, had been mixed up in a scandal involving the torture of a prisoner, from which he had got off scot free, while some poor constable had been made the scapegoat. Costache still missed Colonel Mișu Capșa, who during the year he had held the post of Prefect had made things run smoothly. He had been a just commandant, he knew how to give orders without humiliating a man, and above all he feared nothing. Indeed, he had been a war hero, decorated at Plevna and Vidin. Even the lawyer Deșliu, although he had been with them for only one summer, in ’94, had been better. And the best of all had been in ’89: General Algiu, who had remained a friend and whom he still visited when he needed advice. The more recent ones, good and bad, magistrates and career soldiers, these he did not count: they had come only in order to have a stepping-stone to other positions and so that they could be saluted by the crowd when they followed the King in their own carriage during parades.
The present chief, Caton Lecca, was a politician, the most slippery of species. He thought he knew everything. He had also been a member of parliament and a senator, suspected of electoral fraud. He acted the cockerel in front of his thickset wife, but the cannier agents directly subordinate to Mr Costache used to call him, with a hidden meaning, Cato the Elder. As for Costache himself, they called him Taki the Great, a double-edged epithet, since their dear chief was rather short, although well built and possessed of handsome eyes with velvety depths, seemingly unsuited to his profession. Apart from that, there was constant ill feeling and backbiting among the agents, sergeants and constables of the Prefecture. The turkeys, that is, the sergeants, who had numbers on their caps, laughed at the goldfinches, that is, the constables, because of the green or red patches on their shoulders. And the goldfinches called the commissars and sub-commissars, that is, Costache’s men, who had degrees in law and spoke French and German, coxcombs, bookmen and earwigs. Mr Costache heaved a sigh. Ultimately, the quarrels and the prefects flowed by like water, while he, like a rock, remained. But it was not easy to be a rock.
At the Bucharest Police, they had been taking fingerprints for almost three years, since before the arrival of Caton Lecca. They had first done so thanks to Dr Minovici, the oldest of the three physician brothers, who had experimented with ‘dactylloscopy’ on dozens of convicts. A year later, Costache had proposed that he himself take over the Judicial Identification Service, a department such as existed in other parts of the world to deal with the biggest malefactors, criminals, forgers and rapists. They had anthropometric records, with photographs and fingerprints. Costache had secretly conducted an experiment on Fane The Ringster: he had demanded that his fingerprints be taken the first time he was arrested. It was a real honour for a jewel thief like Fane, who had not understood what was happening and thought it was some kind of signature — which only went to shown his innate canniness — and all the while he had shouted at the top of his voice that he confessed to nothing and that he wouldn’t sign anything. Now, on his second arrest, Fane shouted no longer.
He merely looked at Costache from under lowered eyebrows and said: ‘What you want from me, Jean? Why do you keep forcing me to get me hands dirty? What you got up your sleeve? What you accusing me of? I work clean, so I do, I don’t maim or kill! I just steal.’