The Paris Enigma: A Novel

by Pablo De Santis

  "The poor woman," I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

  "Poor Lawson," continued Linker. "The press had a field day with him, they even talked of bribery, and he swore undying hatred for Castelvetia. Before Castelvetia had time to report the results of his investigation, Francis Greynes was tipped off and escaped. They say he f led to South America. That f light saved Lawson, because the press paid much less attention to the trial than they would have if the accused were there in the courtroom. Trials in absentia are even more boring than executions in effigy."

  The animosity between the two detectives was a delicate and unpleasant topic, and the assistants were silent, pondering the consequences of that distant episode. I felt a bit ashamed for having taken the conversation in that direction.

  Luckily Benito broke the silence. "But they are also divided by theoretical concerns. I've heard that Castelvetia maintains that an assistant, under certain circumstances, could be promoted."

  "That's enough, Benito, we've already discussed that," said Linker. "Don't dream the impossible dream. They are The Twelve, not The Twenty-four. Who's ever heard of an assistant who was promoted? Nobody."

  "But maybe the laws state that--"

  "And who's ever seen the laws? They're unwritten; the detectives only make veiled references to them when they're alone. They won't tell them to you, or to me. It doesn't make any sense to argue about something we've never seen, and never will."

  "But I have seen them," said Okano, the Japanese assistant. His voice, in spite of being barely the whisper of silk paper, made us all jump. "I've seen the rules."

  Linker attributed his claim to a language problem. "Do you know what we're talking about?"

  Okano responded in perfect French. He was more f luent than Linker.

  "My mentor is very methodical; and any time he received a correspondence about the laws, he wrote it in a separate place. I had a chance to read the papers before he burned them."

  "He burned the laws?"

  "So no one else could see them. He burned them in the garden of an inn where we were staying during an investigation in a southern town. It was summertime and the cicadas were singing. My mentor burned the papers in a stone lantern."

  "Do you mean to say that you read something about an assistant becoming a detective?"

  "That's right. My mentor didn't ask me to keep it a secret, so I'll dare to speak. I even think Sakawa allowed me to read those papers on purpose, so I would know that the remote possibility exists, and so someday you all would know it as well. Knowing that means we have to be better assistants. Not because we have ambitions of becoming detectives, but because the mere fact it could happen exalts us."

  This was much more than the Japanese assistant had said in any of the other sessions, and now he was visibly short of breath. He was drinking a glass of pure absinthe, which was probably the reason for his sudden loquacity. But now the green fairy seemed to have abandoned him. Linker grew impatient.

  "Come on, tell us. How is it done?"

  Okano squinted his eyes, as if he were recalling something that had happened long ago.

  "Four rules have been established for the promotion from assistant to detective. The first is that the detective, on his voluntary retirement, has to nominate his assistant as his replacement. He must be willing to give him his good name and his archives as well. The assistant would carry on his mentor's work, as if he were the same detective. Nine of the eleven other members must approve the appointment. That's the rule of inheritance."

  "And the second one?"

  "The second tenet is called the rule of unanimity. That is when all the detectives agree to fill an empty chair by naming an assistant whom they deem exceptional on the basis of his performance."

  "And the third?"

  "That's the rule of prepotency. When a mystery has stumped three detectives and there is an assistant who is able to solve the case, he can present his application for membership. Their incorporation into the club is subject to a vote, in which two thirds of all the members, not just those present, must agree."

  Benito smiled, pleased with his victory.

  "What now, Linker? Was I right or not?"

  Linker looked at him with irritation.

  "But those are hypothetical situations. Pure theory. In practice none of those three rules have ever been applied. But . . . didn't you say there were four?"

  Okano now regretted that he had said so much. Baldone held up the little green bottle and Okano looked at his empty glass. He had to talk to get his reward.

  "There was a fourth rule, which my mentor called the rule of inevitable betrayal. But Sakawa didn't write anything more on that sheet of paper, as if he found it so shocking that not even the burning f lames could remove the stink of sacrilege. All the clauses are secret, but that one is twice as secret."

  Everyone had fallen silent. Baldone poured two fingers of absinthe into Okano's glass. He drank it straight. Soon he fell asleep.

  "Dream," said Linker. "Dream of secret clauses and rules whispered into ears. Dream of papers burning in the stone lantern of a Japanese garden."

  I said good night to the acolytes and I went up to my room.

  6

  T

  he next morning I was awakened by banging on the door.

  "Get up, assistant! You have the right to sleep late only when you've been out investigating all night."

  It was Arzaky's voice. I jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. I told him to come in because I didn't want to make him wait outside.

  "I envy those gleaming boots."

  "I shined them last night."

  "I have mine shined, but they never look that good."

  "I polish my boots with a special cream that my father makes. It's

  his secret formula." I opened my shoeshine box and showed him the jar, whose blue label showed a picture of a shoe and the name Salvatrio. "Do you want some? It's perfect for when it rains. My father says that it can cure injuries too."

  The detective took the jar, opened it, and breathed in the cream's smoky odor.

  "You put the shoe polish on a wound? I don't trust your father that much."

  Arzaky moved some papers off of the only chair in the room and sat down.

  "I can make your boots shine like mine."

  "You can? Please do."

  I looked in the shoeshine box for a blackened rag and a sable-hair brush. I sat on the f loor and covered the boots with polish and then brushed them vigorously. They soon shone with the blue gleam characteristic of Salvatrio polish.

  "I think deep down you're ashamed that your father is a shoemaker."

  "He works hard. I have nothing to be ashamed of."

  "But you don't mention it either. Do you think all the other assistants come from aristocratic families?"

  "I guess not. If they did, they wouldn't be assistants. They'd be detectives."

  "Is that what you think? The detectives don't come from important families either."

  "Doesn't Magrelli come from Roman aristocracy? I read that somewhere. Castelvetia has a noble title, count or duke, and the Hatters own the largest newspapers in Germany . . ."

  "Counts, dukes, millionaires, relatives of the pope . . . I'm afraid we fall very short of your fantasies. Magrelli's father was a Roman policeman. Zagala grew up in a fishing village and his mother died in a famous storm that destroyed half the ships in port. Castelvetia gave himself a title, but it's fake. The Hatter family used to own a small press in Nuremberg; they printed commercial stationery and wedding invitations. The others I can't recall, I don't know them as well, but I can assure you that Madorakis isn't the heir to the Greek throne, and that good old Novarius used to hawk newspapers on the street. And as for me, I'm a bastard."

  I started, almost imperceptibly, but Arzaky noticed it.

  "Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you any big secret that might threaten your sense of decency. My mother, when she was very young, had an affair with the town pries
t. The priest stayed in his parish, but she was forced to leave, taking her sin along with her. The boy was never baptized. After she moved, my mother had to make up a last name for me. She thought about killing herself, cutting her wrists with the sharp knife she always carried. She read the brand engraved into the steel and that was the name she gave me: Arzaky. Arzaky knives were very common in those days. I understand that in Argentina you are very Catholic . . ."

  "The women are; we men are freethinkers. . . ."

  "Then I hope your mother doesn't mind that her son works for an unbaptized detective."

  We went out onto the street and I quickened my step to keep up with Arzaky.

  "Aren't you going to ask me where we're headed? Or have you already guessed?"

  "I'm in no condition to guess."

  "You don't seem to care either."

  "In ten minutes, after a cup of coffee, I'll start caring about things again."

  Arzaky walked lively in his newly shined boots. He was wide awake at night and in the morning too. I don't know when he slept, I'm not even sure he did. We walked fifteen or twenty blocks and we stopped in front of a building whose bronze plaque announced the society for platonic studies.

  Arzaky rapped with the doorknocker, a bronze fist. A butler opened the door; he was an old man with eyes so pale he looked blind.

  "The secretary of the society, Monsieur Bessard, told me to expect you. It's about the painting, right?"

  He led us up a staircase. He was so old that I wouldn't have bet money on his being able to climb the stairs. But he had gone up and down them so many times that he and that staircase had become friends, and the oak steps pushed him upward; his steps were light, while ours sounded like heavy marching. The staircase led us to a meeting room: a large table, dirty curtains, library shelves. On one of the walls was a painting of four men walking among ruins and olive trees. I guessed that the most broad-shouldered one was Plato, although they were fairly indistinguishable in their tunics and beards. One carried a torch, another a pitcher, the third a handful of dirt, and the fourth was blowing a dried leaf.

  "Here it is, The Four Elements. Stolen by Sorel."

  "A painting that sent a man to his death," I said.

  "No, if you remember correctly it was the woman, not the painting, that sent him to his death. If he had killed someone for the painting, Sorel would now be in crime's gilded archives. But instead he ended up on the endless gray list of all those who kill for love, for jealousy, out of blindness. Love inspires more crimes than hate and ambition do."

  I stared at the solemn, static painting.

  "I wanted to find a relationship between Sorel and Darbon," said Arzaky, as if he were talking to the figures in the painting.

  "Did Darbon have anything to do with the recovery of the painting?"

  "No, nothing at all."

  "So?"

  "So, nothing. The first fact: Darbon's death. The second: Sorel's cremation. What do those two men have in common?"

  "I don't know."

  "There is one thing. They were both my rivals. I'm searching for the missing piece of the puzzle that connects Darbon and Sorel."

  "You said that an investigation was nothing like a jigsaw puzzle."

  "Did I say that?"

  "You agreed with the Japanese detective. He said that investigation was like a blank page. That we think we see mysteries where there may be nothing at all."

  "I'm pleased that you remember. If I manage to solve this case, you must write up the account of it. I don't remember any of my own words, but I remember what everyone else says. So then we won't search for a puzzle piece, we'll search for a line on a blank page."

  I approached the painting.

  "The victims may not be connected through their rivalries with you. Darbon could have been killed by the crypto-Catholics and Sorel could have been burned by someone from his past, someone related to his crime."

  "Perhaps you're right. Our minds always search for hidden associations. We like things to rhyme. We can't accept chaos, stupidity, the shapeless proliferation of evil. We're more like the crypto-Catholics than we think."

  Since we were spending so long in front of the painting, the butler came over to check on us.

  "Has anyone else been to see the painting?" asked Arzaky.

  "A young lady. She was pretty and seemed very determined."

  "Did she mention her name?"

  "Yes, but I don't remember what it was. She just stared at the painting and I stared at her. Her hair was the color of fire."

  "A philosophy enthusiast," I said.

  The old man, to my dismay, shook his head.

  "Women never come here, only old men, sometimes even older than me. And all of sudden this young lady comes in. She told me not to tell anyone that she had been here."

  "So you're betraying her secret."

  "That's true. But ever since she came here I've been asking myself if it was just a dream. Now that I see this young man's face, I can tell that it wasn't."

  Arzaky looked at me sternly.

  "Do you know what he is talking about?"

  "No. Maybe he's right and it was a dream. Why would a young woman come here?"

  The old man seemed to be weighing my words.

  "Then it was a dream," he said. "That's not such a bad thing. After all, a dream can recur."

  We went down the stairs. Standing at the door, we thanked the old man for his kindness.

  "The pleasure is all mine," said the old man. "I got to meet the great Arzaky. They say he is the only living Platonic philosopher."

  "I'm afraid that for a detective that description isn't a compliment. It's my enemies who say that."

  "You yourself said that enemies always tell the truth and that only slander does us justice."

  "If I said that, then I'm more of a Sophist than a Platonist."

  I was afraid that Arzaky would question me about the woman, but as soon as the door closed he hurried off, as he was expected at a meeting.

  As I walked toward the hotel, I thought that my silence about Greta was a betrayal of Arzaky's confidence. This is the only thing I'll keep from him, I promised myself. When I arrived at the Necart Hotel the concierge handed me a note folded in two. The ink was green, and the handwriting a woman's.

  i know you took that photograph from grialet's house. if you haven't mentioned it to arzaky, don't. i want to see you tonight, at the theater after the show. the rear door will be open. go up the stairs. THE MERMAID

  It wasn't even noon, and I had already found another occasion to betray him.

  7

  T

  he Grand Opening was four days away, and Viktor Arzaky had already filled the glass cases of the

  parlor with a variety of objects lent by the detectives. Louis Darbon's widow had donated a microscope with a slide containing a shiny drop of blood. Hatter was displaying some of his toys, including a windup soldier that counted meters while it walked. The best Novarius could come up with was the Remington revolver he had used to kill Wilbur Kanis, the train robber, on the Mexican border. At first Arzaky had opposed the idea of showing such a common weapon, it seemed to be the exact opposite of what a detective represented. But since there was so little time left, he gave in.

  "Don't you have something to display that ref lects your thinking?" I said to Novarius, and he replied: "That is how I think."

  Magrelli had filled several shelves with his portable criminal anthropology office, which didn't look particularly portable at all. It was comprised of endless comparative charts, a photographic archive, and several instruments made of German steel that were designed to measure the length of a nose, the circumference of one's head, or the distance between one's eyes. Some of the objects needed an explanatory card, such as the one Madorakis displayed from the Case of the Spartan Code, which was a short cane on which you could attach a strip of fabric containing a message. Only someone with a similar cane could decipher it. Castelvetia had chosen a set of five Dutch magni
fying glasses, with different gradations.

  Benito interrupted my tour through the cases.

  "Did you read the news from Buenos Aires?"

  "No."

  "Caleb Lawson has been spreading it around everywhere. In Buenos Aires they're accusing Craig of murder."

  I was shocked for selfish reasons. Even though I was now working for Arzaky, I was Craig's envoy. Anything that stained Craig's reputation would stain mine. Mario Baldone had a newspaper. I took it out of his hands.

  "Relax, Salvatrio. There was an accusation, but Craig will take care of disproving it."

  The news was written up in vague terms: the police had stopped searching for the magician's killer in the gambling arena. They then began to look for an avenger in the victim's circle. Alarcon's family hadn't hesitated in pointing a finger at Craig. The newspaper said that there was no proof that implicated the detective but that he, due to his convalescence for an unspecified illness, had refused to defend himself.

  "You look pale," said Baldone. "Here comes Arzaky. The Pole will take care of putting a stop to Caleb Lawson's attack on Craig."

  I was looking at the cases, but my mind was elsewhere. There was the large chest of disguises belonging to Rojo, the detective from Toledo, which was chock-full of makeup and wigs and fake beards; Caleb Lawson's anti-fog specs that he used to work at night in London; and Zagala's wardrobe and nautical instruments that he carried with him when he boarded ships with their f lags at half-mast or boats abandoned in the ocean. Arzaky had contributed only a series of black notebooks filled with his tiny handwriting, which were displayed open. An empty case awaited Craig's cane.The Paris Enigma * 187