The judge turned out to be a man of some fifty years, bald and well dressed.
He shook my hand with cool formality. He sat down behind his desk and invited me also to be seated, but directly before him. Then he began speaking, as if he were reciting a lesson.
"I regret to inform you, Dr. Aguirre, that it is my duty to place you under arrest, summarily, as the principal suspect in the murder of a man named Jorge Maximiliano Perez Migali, a crime that took place is his residence at Avalos Street 15**, on or about the date of August twenty-fourth, two thousand seven."
I looked him in the eye.
"Impossible,” I said. “I have never been in that house,” and I added, with a smile, “I have never even heard of Avalos Street."
The judge brought his hands together, as if he were about to pray. He said: “Señor Perez Migali sent me a letter..."
Ah, I thought to myself, a letter from Perez Migali, that chap who's so fond of the epistolary genre.
"A letter?” I said, indicating surprise.
"You may read it,” said the judge. “Here is a photocopy."
I saw once again the damned scribbling. It was a long letter, rambling and incoherent in places. Most of the text dealt with the absurd imaginings of the movements I had carried out, according to Perez Migali, in his house—wild assertions that neither the judge, nor anyone, would ever be able to believe.
But he ended the letter with these words:
"...and if after all this you don't believe me, and you doubt that Luis Aguirre was in my house and killed me, you will find his fingerprints on the cellophane wrapper of the pack of cigarettes that you will find near my body, most likely on the night table."
Christian X. Ferdinandus is the pseudonym of two Argentine writers who are planning a series of crime stories in the manner of the Don Isidro Parodi tales published sixty years ago by their compatriots, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges. Borges's first appearance in print in English was in this magazine in 1948.
(c) 2008 by Christian X. Ferdinandus; translation (c) 2008 by Donald A. Yates
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