The Fencing Master

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  The journalist, when he saw the letter headings and the signatures on the first letters, swallowed hard. A couple of times he turned around to look incredulously at Don Jaime, but made no comment. He read on in silence, carefully turning the pages, pausing now and then with a finger on one of the names in the lists. When he was halfway through his reading, he suddenly stopped, as if an idea had come to him, and hurriedly leafed back to an earlier page. A faint grimace, resembling a smile, appeared on his ill-shaven face. He then continued with his reading, while Don Jaime, who did not dare to interrupt, waited on tenterhooks.

  "Can you make anything of it?" he asked at last, unable to contain himself any longer.

  The journalist made a cautious gesture. "Possibly. But at the moment it's only a hunch. I need to be quite certain that we're on the right track." He plunged back into his reading, frowning in concentration. After a moment, he slowly nodded, as if he had found the certainty he was looking for. He stopped again, and looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to remember. "There was something...," he said in a somber voice, as if to himself. "I don't quite remember, but it must have been ... at the beginning of last year. Yes, mines. There was a campaign against Narváez; people said he was in on the deal. Now what was that...?"

  Don Jaime could not remember ever having felt so nervous.

  Suddenly, Cárceles's face lit up. "Of course, how could I have been so stupid!" he exclaimed, striking the table with the palm of his hand. "But I need to check the name. Could it be that...?" He leafed rapidly back through the pages. "Good God, Don Jaime, did you really not see it? What you have here is an unprecedented scandal! I swear that...!"

  Someone knocked at the door. Cárceles stopped speaking and looked fearfully toward the hall. "Are you expecting anyone?"

  Don Jaime shook his head, as disconcerted as Cárceles was by the interruption. With unexpected presence of mind, the journalist picked up the documents, looked about him, then jumped nimbly to his feet and stuffed the papers under the sofa. He turned to Don Jaime. "Get rid of them, whoever they are!" he whispered in his ear. "You and I must talk."

  Perplexed, Don Jaime automatically straightened his tie and went to the front door. The knowledge that he was about to have revealed to him the mystery that had brought Adela de Otero to him and had cost Luis de Ayala his life was gradually sinking in, provoking in him a feeling of unreality. For a moment, he wondered if he would suddenly wake up and find that it had all been an absurd joke, the fruit of his imagination.

  There was a policeman at the door.

  "Don Jaime Astarloa?"

  Don Jaime felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. "That's right."

  The policeman cleared his throat. He had Gypsy features and a scrappy beard. "The chief of police, Don Jenaro Campillo, sent me. Would you mind accompanying me to a carriage?"

  Don Jaime looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I'm sorry?" he asked, trying to gain time.

  The policeman saw his confusion and, smiling, said in a calm voice, "Don't worry, it's just routine. It seems some new information has come up, relating to the murder of the Marqués de los Alumbres."

  Don Jaime blinked, irritated by the inopportuneness of the call. But the policeman had spoken of new information. It could be important. Perhaps they had found Adela de Otero. "Would you mind waiting a moment?"

  "Not at all. Take all the time you want."

  He left the policeman at the door and went back into the living room, where Cárceles, who had been listening to the conversation, was waiting.

  "What shall we do?" said Don Jaime in a low voice.

  The journalist made a gesture advising calm. "You go," he said. "I'll wait for you here. It will give me a chance to read through the whole thing more slowly."

  "You found something?"

  "I think so, but I have to go more deeply into it. Off you go now."

  Don Jaime nodded. He had no choice. "I'll be as quick as possible."

  "Don't rush." There was a disturbing glint in Cárceles's eyes. "Has this got anything to do with what I've just been reading?" He pointed to the door.

  Don Jaime blushed. It was all getting out of control. For a while now, a feeling had been mounting in him of crazed exhaustion. "I'm not sure yet." At this stage, it seemed ignoble to lie to Cárceles. "I mean ... we'll talk when I get back. I have to put my thoughts in order."

  He shook his friend's hand and went out, accompanied by the policeman. An official carriage waited below. "Where are we going?" he asked.

  The policeman had stepped into a puddle and was trying to remove the water from his boots. "To the morgue," he replied. And settling himself in his seat, he began whistling a popular tune.

  CAMPILLO was waiting in an office in the Forensic Institute. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, his wig was awry, and his glasses dangled from the ribbon attached to his lapel. When he saw Don Jaime come in, he got up with a polite smile.

  "I'm so sorry, Señor Astarloa, that we should be obliged to meet twice in one day and in such distressing circumstances."

  Don Jaime looked about him suspiciously. He had to muster all his energy to preserve what remained of his sangfroid, which seemed to be leaking from every pore in his body. "What has happened?" he asked. "I have an important matter to sort out at home..."

  Campillo made an apologetic gesture. "I'll only keep you a few minutes, I assure you. I know how tiresome this situation is for you, but, believe me, something most unexpected has happened." He clicked his tongue, as if expressing his own distaste for the whole business. "And what a day for it to happen, too! I've just received some far from reassuring news. There are rebel troops advancing on Madrid. It's rumored that the queen might be forced to go over into France, and here they're afraid there might be disturbances in the streets. So you see how things are. But, regardless of these political events, common justice must follow its inexorable course. Dura lex, sed lex. Don't you agree?"

  "Forgive me, Señor Campillo, but I don't understand. This doesn't seem to me the most appropriate place for..."

  The chief of police raised a hand, appealing for Don Jaime's patience. "Would you be so kind as to accompany me?" He pointed the way. They went down some stairs, then along a dark corridor with white-tiled walls and damp stains on the ceiling. The place was lit by gas lights, whose flames were shaken by a cold draft that made Don Jaime shiver in his light summer jacket. The noise of footsteps set off sinister echoes at the far end of the corridor.

  Campillo stopped by a frosted-glass door and pushed it open, inviting his companion to enter first. Don Jaime found himself in a small room famished with old filing cabinets in dark wood. A municipal employee stood up behind his desk when he saw them come in. The man was thin, of uncertain age, and his white coat was spattered with yellow stains.

  "Number 17, Lucío, if you wouldn't mind."

  The man picked up a form that was on the table and pushed open one of the swing doors on the other side of the room. Before following him, the policeman took a Havana cigar from his pocket and offered one to Don Jaime.

  "Thank you, Señor Campillo. As I told you this morning, I don't smoke."

  Campillo raised a reproving eyebrow. "The spectacle I'm obliged to share with you is not exactly pleasant," he said, putting the cigar in his mouth and lighting it with a match. "Cigar smoke often helps one to bear such things."

  "What things?"

  "You'll see in a moment."

  "Whatever it is, I don't need to smoke."

  The policeman shrugged. "As you wish."

  They went into a low but spacious room, the walls covered with the same white tiles. There were the same stains on the ceiling. In one corner, in a large sink, a faucet kept dripping.

  Don Jaime stopped involuntarily, while the intense, all-pervading cold penetrated to his very entrails. He had never before visited a morgue, nor had he imagined that it would be so desolate and gloomy. Half a dozen large marble tables were lined up in the room; on four of them were sheets, bene
ath which were motionless human forms. He closed his eyes for a moment, filling his lungs, only to exhale at once with digust. There was a strange smell in the air.

  "Phenol," said the policeman. "It's used as a disinfectant."

  Don Jaime nodded silently. His eyes were fixed on one of the bodies stretched out on a marble table. Protruding from the lower end of the sheet were two human feet. They were yellowish in color and seemed to glow blue in the gaslight.

  Campillo followed his gaze. "You've seen him already," the policeman said with a casualness that, to Don Jaime, seemed monstrous. "It's this one over here that interests us."

  With his cigar he indicated the next table, again covered by a sheet. Beneath it lay a smaller, more delicate figure.

  The policeman blew a dense cloud of smoke and brought Don Jaime to a halt by the covered corpse. "It appeared about midmorning in the river, more or less at the time that you and I were having our little chat in the Palacio de Villaflores. She was probably thrown in there during the night."

  "Thrown in?"

  "That's what I said." The policeman gave a sarcastic little laugh, as if, despite everything, the matter was not without its humorous side. "I can assure you that this is not a case of suicide, nor an accident. Are you sure you won't follow my advice and have one of these cigars? I'm very much afraid, Señor Astarloa, that it will take you a long time to forget what you're about to see; it's quite shocking. But I need you to complete the identification process, no easy task, especially in this case, as you yourself are about to find out."

  While he was talking, he made a sign to the clerk to remove the sheet covering the body. Don Jaime felt a wave of nausea rising from his stomach; he took in desperate gulps of air in order to control it. His legs buckled under him, and he had to grip the marble table to steady himself.

  "Do you recognize her?"

  Don Jaime forced himself to look at the naked corpse. It was the body of a young woman, of medium height, who might have been quite attractive a few hours before. Her skin was the color of wax, her belly sunk between her pelvic bones, and her breasts, possibly beautiful in life, fell to either side, toward her inert, rigid arms.

  "Nice piece of work, eh?" murmured Campillo behind him.

  With a supreme effort, Don Jaime looked again at what had once been a face. There were no features, only butchered skin, flesh, and bone. There was no nose, and the mouth was just a dark, lipless hole, through which you could see a few broken teeth. In place of eyes there were two empty red sockets. Her black, abundant hair was dirty and tangled, still bearing traces of slime from the river.

  Unable to bear the sight any longer, trembling with horror, Don Jaime moved away from the table. He felt the policeman's hand on his arm, the smell of cigar smoke, and then the voice that reached him in a low whisper.

  "Do you recognize her?"

  Don Jaime shook his head. Into his troubled mind came the memory of an old nightmare—a blind doll floating in a puddle—but it was the words that Campillo spoke afterward that made a mortal cold slip slowly into the deepest corner of his soul:

  "You should recognize her, Señor Astarloa, despite the mutilation. It's your old client, Doña Adela de Otero."

  VII. The Appel

  To use the appel (striking the ground with the leading foot) unsettles your opponent and induces a reaction.

  It took him a while to realize that the chief of police had been talking to him for some time. They had come up from the basement and were once more at street level, sitting in a small office in the Forensic Institute. Don Jaime was sitting back in his chair, utterly still, staring blankly at a faded engraving on the wall, a Nordic landscape with lakes and fir trees. His hands hung by his sides, and an opaque, expressionless veil seemed to cover his gray eyes.

  "The body got caught in the reeds underneath the Toledo Bridge, on the left bank. It's odd that the current didn't carry her farther when you consider the storm we had last night; that leads us to believe that she was thrown into the water shortly before dawn. What I don't understand is why they went to the trouble of carrying her all the way there, instead of leaving her in her apartment."

  Campillo paused and looked inquisitively at Don Jaime, as if giving him the opportunity to ask a question. Getting no reaction, he shrugged. He still had the cigar clamped between his teeth and was cleaning the lenses of his glasses with a crumpled handkerchief he had taken from a pocket.

  "When they told me that a body had been found, I ordered them to force the door of the house. We should have done it much sooner, because we found a pretty ugly scene there: signs of a struggle, overturned furniture, and blood, a lot of blood. There was a pool of blood in the bedroom, a trail along the corridor ... It looked, if you'll pardon the expression, as if someone had slaughtered a calf." He looked at Don Jaime, judging the effect of his words. He must have decided that his description was not realistic enough to shock, because he frowned, rubbed more energetically at his spectacles, and continued to list macabre details, all the time watching Don Jaime out of the corner of his eye. "It seems that they killed her in that ... thorough manner, and then took her out under cover of night in order to throw her in the river. I don't know if there was any intermediary stage, you know what I mean, torture or the like, although, given the state they left her in, I'm very much afraid there was. There is no doubt, though, that Señora de Otero had a pretty bad time of it before leaving her apartment on Calle Riaño and that by then she was quite dead "

  Campillo paused in order to put his glasses back on, having first held them up to the light with an air of satisfaction.

  "Quite dead," he repeated thoughtfully, trying to pick up the thread of his thoughts. "In the bedroom we found tufts of hair that, as we now learn, came from the dead woman. There was a scrap of blue cloth too, possibly torn off in the struggle; it belongs to the dress she was wearing when we found her in the river." The policeman put two fingers into the upper pocket of his jacket and brought out a small silver ring. "The corpse was wearing this on the ring finger of her left hand. Have you ever seen it before?"

  Don Jaime's eyelids drooped and then opened again, as if he were waking from a long sleep. He turned slowly toward Campillo. He was very pale; the last drop of blood seemed to have drained from his face. "I'm sorry?"

  The policeman shifted in his seat; he had obviously hoped for more cooperation from Don Jaime and was beginning to be annoyed by his behavior, which was very like that of a sleepwalker. After the initial shock, Don Jaime was locked in a stubborn silence, as if this awful murder were a matter of complete indifference to him.

  "I asked if you ever saw this ring before."

  Don Jaime reached out his hand and took the slender silver ring between his fingers. The painful memory resurfaced of that same ring glinting on brown skin. He placed it on the table.

  "It belonged to Adela de Otero," he confirmed in a neutral voice.

  Campillo made another attempt. "What I can't understand, Señor Astarloa, is why they should treat her so mercilessly. Revenge perhaps? Maybe they wanted to drag a confession out of her."

  "I've no idea."

  "Did she have any enemies as far as you know?"

  "I've no idea."

  "It's terrible to do what they did to her. She must have been very beautiful."

  Don Jaime thought of a bare, smooth-skinned neck beneath dark hair gathered at the nape with a mother-of-pearl comb. He remembered a half-open door and the rustle of petticoats; he remembered the warm, pulsing, languorous skin. "I don't exist," she had said to him on that night when everything was possible and nothing happened. Now it was true; she no longer existed. She was just meat rotting on a marble slab.

  "Very beautiful," he replied after a while. "Adela de Otero was very beautiful."

  The policeman judged that he had wasted enough time on this fencing master. He put the ring away, threw his cigar into the spittoon, and stood up. "You're obviously very upset by the events of the day," he said. "I can understand that. If
you like, we could talk again tomorrow morning, when you're rested and have recovered a little. I'm convinced that the deaths of the marquis and this woman are linked, and you are one of the few people who knew them both. Would ten o'clock in my office suit you?"

  Don Jaime looked at the policeman as if he were seeing him for the first time. "Am I a suspect?" he asked.

  Campillo winked one of his fish eyes. "Who isn't nowadays?" he remarked in a frivolous tone.

  But Don Jaime was not satisfied with that reply. "I'm serious. I want to know if I am under suspicion."

  Campillo swayed back and forth on his feet, one hand in his trouser pocket. "Not particularly, if that's any consolation," he replied after a few moments. "It's just that I can't rule anything out, and you are the only person I have at hand."

  "I'm glad to be of use to you."

  The policeman gave a conciliatory smile, as if asking for his understanding. "Don't be offended, Señor Astarloa. After all, I'm sure you'll agree with me that there are loose ends here that insist on tying themselves into knots: two of your clients die; the common factor is fencing. One of them is killed with a fencing foil. Everything turns around the same thing, but what escapes me is the point around which it turns. And your role in this, if indeed you have a role."

  "I see your problem, but I'm sorry to say that I can't help you."

  "Not as sorry as I. You will understand, though, that the way things are, I cannot rule you out as an accomplice. At my age, and with all I've seen during my years in this job, and given these circumstances, I wouldn't even rule out my own dear mother."