“Has she gone in?” she asked without preamble.
I stood up and gave her my seat so that she could watch the entrance herself, and sat down opposite her.
“Yes, a while ago. Actually I only caught a brief glimpse but I think it was her: she was carrying the handbag you used to have and wearing a navy blue coat.”
Luciana nodded. “Yes, a long coat. It used to be mine too. What time did she go in?”
“About ten minutes ago. But I told you, nothing’s going to happen to her. I spoke to him as you asked.”
“And he convinced you,” she said, looking into my eyes, unrelentingly searching for the truth. “Now you believe him.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said, uncomfortable. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything so direct. And certainly not in his own house.”
“He could do other things to her,” she said darkly. “Valentina has no idea, she’s just an impulsive teenager. She doesn’t know what he’s like. I don’t know what image of him she’s built up from his novels. But remember, I know him. I know how captivating he can be.”
“That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about. His version of events is pretty different from yours.” I saw her draw back warily.
“I suppose a writer can invent all sorts of stories. What did he say?”
“That when you started working for him it never entered his head to try anything. He was too happy with the arrangement and with the way his work was progressing to ruin it all by trying anything more. He thought you were pretty but he wasn’t attracted to you. He said it was you who made him notice you. He told me that on one occasion he was dictating a section about a scar on a woman’s arm. He said you showed him the vaccination mark on your shoulder and invited him to touch it.”
“I showed him the mark, that’s true, but I never asked him to touch it. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in it. I’d forgotten all about it. I can’t believe he’s trying to give it another meaning.”
“He said it was the first time he’d touched you, and you seemed proud to have got his attention. He also said that later on you let him massage your neck.”
“Well, I see you’ve become good friends. How did you get him to tell you about that? One day he enquired about my neck. I bent my head to show him where it hurt and he started massaging it. It’s true that I didn’t stop him, but I didn’t think he had any other intention. I trusted him. I told you, I thought of him as a father. I didn’t think he had anything else on his mind. And it was only one time.”
“One time, and then another. He said he stopped the second time because you weren’t wearing a bra.”
“It may well have been twice. And I didn’t wear a bra very often in those days.”
“You did when you worked for me,” I said.
“Because I knew I had to be careful around you. But it never occurred to me he was getting ideas. Until he got back from his trip, when he seemed to have turned into a completely different person, none of it had ever occurred to me. But what are you driving at? Even if I did lead him on, which I didn’t, even if I was wrong to sue him, does that justify what happened later? Does that justify killing my whole family?”
“Of course not,” I said. “It doesn’t justify anyone’s death. I just want to know whether so far, in this part of the story, he was telling me the truth.”
“That all happened,” she said, looking away, “but he got the wrong idea. And I’ve told you a thousand times I regret suing him. But I can’t believe that this is my punishment.”
“He does blame you for his daughter’s death. You were right about that.”
I recounted what Kloster had revealed about his relationship with his wife, the fears he’d had since Pauli’s birth, and the unspoken pact he and Mercedes had had in the last few years. Luciana looked increasingly shocked: she seemed to have no idea of any of it. I told her about the wife’s reaction, her outburst when she read the accusation at the head of the letter, her immediate decision to get a divorce and the court order she’d used to separate Kloster from his daughter, using Luciana’s accusation as justification. I told her how Kloster had had to move out to a hotel, about his waiting to be allowed to see his daughter again, and what happened on the day of his visit. I tried to use the same words as Kloster had when describing that afternoon, from the time when he telephoned to when he found his daughter’s body in the bath. I told her about the crypt, the gallery of photos and the film of his daughter holding the little bunch of flowers. By the time I finished, Luciana’s eyes were filled with tears.
“But none of it was my fault,” she whimpered.
“Of course not,” I said, “but he thinks it was.”
“But it was his wife who…who…It was his wife,” she said helplessly.
“He believes it was your letter that broke their pact. He was sure he could have maintained their agreement for a few more years, until Pauli was older. He put it like this: his daughter would still be alive if his wife hadn’t read that letter. And there’s something else you’re right about: his being in Villa Gesell that summer wasn’t a coincidence. He said he couldn’t bear the thought that you were carrying on with your life as if nothing had happened, when his daughter was dead. He wanted to be there to make you remember. So that you’d think of her every day, as he did. So that your life should stop, as his had.”
“If that was his only aim, he succeeded a long time ago. But you see he admitted he wanted to get his revenge. That’s what I wanted to know. Because I don’t expect he confessed to the murders, did he?”
“No. All he said was that as he was leaving the beach that day, from the promenade, he saw your boyfriend disappear from sight out at sea. And when he found out next day that he’d drowned, he felt that, with that death, the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth had been carried out. He said it gave him the idea for a novel about justice and proportionate punishment.”
“It wasn’t enough for him. My God, Ramiro’s death wasn’t enough.”
She looked once more across the street while feeling in her pocket for a handkerchief. She glanced at her watch again and dried her eyes.
“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But he claims that since that day all he’s done about it is write his novel. A novel in which you and he are characters. He assured me he hasn’t seen you since then and that he only found out your parents had died when he got your letter.”
She shook her head, still looking out of the window. “That’s a lie: he was at the cemetery the day of their funeral.”
“I asked him about that: he goes there every day to visit his daughter’s grave. He claims not to have seen you.”
She turned to look at me angrily. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected him to admit anything. And he seems to have a lie ready for everything.”
“Actually what I found most disconcerting was that he seemed to be telling the truth. He talked as if he had nothing to hide. He even told me something he could have kept secret, about your brother’s death, something we didn’t know: he did correspond with inmates of that prison at various times. He said the police had looked into it and that he gave Superintendent Ramoneda any letters he’d kept.”
“But there might have been other letters that he got rid of-that he made sure to get rid of,” Luciana interrupted. “He could have found out from other inmates that that prisoner got out to commit robberies. And if he’d followed my brother and knew he was involved with that woman, all he had to do was send the anonymous letters to goad the killer on. Kloster wrote them. I knew it as soon as I saw them. He can’t fool me.”