THEY’D BEEN DRIVING for almost fifteen minutes through avenues speckled with armies of uniformed gardeners when a boulevard of cypress trees opened up before them, leading to the spiked gates of Villa Mercedes. The sky had acquired a leaden colour; fine drops of rain spattered on the windshield. A porter, waiting by the entrance to the estate, opened the door to let them in. On one side stood a sentry box, where a guard holding a rifle responded with a nod to Vargas’s greeting.
“Have you been here before?” asked Alicia.
“A couple of times since last Monday. You’re going to love it.”
The car glided along the fine-gravel path, winding around groves and ponds. Alicia gazed at the parade of statues, pools and fountains, and the faded rose gardens, disintegrating in the autumn wind. A narrow railway track could be glimpsed here and there among bushes and dead flowers, while farther away, on the far edge of the property, Alicia noticed the outline of what looked like a miniature station. A steam locomotive bearing two cars waited by the platform under the drizzle.
“A toy for the girl,” Vargas explained.
Soon the profile of the main residence rose before them, an overlarge mansion that seemed to have been conceived to dwarf and frighten visitors. Two large houses, one on either side of it, stood at a distance of about a hundred metres from the mansion. Vargas stopped the car opposite the wide staircase leading to the main entrance. A butler in uniform, waiting with an umbrella at the foot of the stairs, instructed them to drive over to a nearby building. As Vargas drove down the path to the garage, Alicia was able to take in the whole outline of the mansion.
“Who pays for all this?” she asked.
Vargas shrugged.
“You and I, I suppose. And perhaps Valls’s wife, who inherited a fortune from her father, Enrique Sarmiento.”
“The banker?”
“One of the bankers of the Crusade, as the papers called it,” Vargas specified.
Alicia remembered having heard Leandro mention Sarmiento. How he and a group of bankers had financed the Nacionales during the civil war, lending them in large measure funds looted from the defeated side, in a mutually beneficial agreement. “I’ve heard that the minister’s wife is ill,” she said.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
The garage attendant opened one of the doors and signalled for them to park the car inside. Vargas lowered the window, and the guard recognized him. “Leave it wherever you like, boss. And the keys in the ignition, please . . .”
Vargas gave him a nod and drove into the garage, a structure consisting of a succession of vaults supported by wrought-iron columns stretching away into an impenetrable darkness. A string of luxury cars was lined up along the walls, the shine of their chromium plating vanishing into the distance. Vargas found a gap between a Hispano-Suiza and a Mercedes-Benz.
The garage attendant had followed them and gave him the thumbs-up. “Nice one you’re driving today, chief,” he remarked as they got out of the car.
“As the young lady was coming today, the bosses let me take the Ford,” said Vargas.
The attendant looked like a cross between a homunculus and a mouse. He appeared to be held upright inside his blue overalls thanks to a jumble of dirty rags hanging from his belt and a film of grease that preserved him from the elements. After staring at Alicia from head to toe, the attendant bowed ostentatiously and, when he thought she didn’t notice, gave Vargas a conspiratorial wink.
“Great guy, Luis,” Vargas said to Alicia. “I think he lives here, in the garage itself, in a shed behind the repair shop.”
They walked towards the exit, passing Valls’s museum pieces on wheels, while Luis, behind them, busied himself polishing the Ford energetically with rag and spit while enjoying Alicia’s gentle swaying and the shape of her ankles.
Vargas covered Alicia with the umbrella they’d been offered as the butler came over to meet them.
“I hope you’ve had a good journey from Madrid,” said the butler solemnly. “Doña Mariana is expecting you.” He bore that cold and vaguely condescending smile of career servants who, as the years go by, start to believe that their masters’ lineage has tinged their own blood blue and granted them the privilege of looking down on others. As they walked the distance separating them from the main house, Alicia noticed that he kept glancing at her surreptitiously, trying to make out from her gestures and clothes what her role was in the show.
“Is the young lady your secretary?” he asked, fixing his eyes on Alicia.
“The young lady is my boss,” replied Vargas.
The servant dropped his arrogant manner, which was replaced with a stiff expression worthy of being framed. His lips remained sealed and his eyes glued to his shoes the rest of the way.
The main door led to a large entrance hall with a marble floor, from which staircases, corridors, and galleries branched out. They followed the butler to the reading room, where a middle-aged woman was waiting with her back to the door, facing the view of the garden under the rain.
The woman turned as soon as she heard them come in, giving them an icy smile. “I’m Mariana Sedó,” she said as the butler closed the door behind him and retired to enjoy his momentary bewilderment. “Don Mauricio’s personal secretary.”
“Vargas, from Central Police Headquarters, and this is my partner, Señorita Gris.”
The secretary took her time conducting the inevitable inspection. She began with Alicia’s face, registering the colour of her lips, then the cut of her dress, and finally the style of her shoes with a grimace of intolerance and contempt, quickly buried in the serene and sorrowful expression the circumstances demanded. Motioning them to sit down on a leather sofa, Mariana chose a chair, which she placed near a small table bearing a tray with a steaming teapot and three cups. As the secretary proceeded to fill the cups, Alicia assessed the feigned smile behind which Doña Mariana took cover and concluded that Valls’s eternal guardian exuded a malicious aura, midway between that of a fairy godmother and a voracious praying mantis.
“How may I help you?” asked Doña Mariana. “I’ve spoken to so many of your colleagues these last few days that I’m not sure there’s anything left to say.”
“We’re grateful for your patience, Doña Mariana,” said Alicia. “We’re well aware that these are difficult moments for the family and for you.”
The secretary nodded with an air of patience, exhibiting the studied demeanour of the faithful servant to perfection. Her eyes, however, betrayed irritation at having to deal with second-rate subordinates. The way in which she focused on Vargas and avoided acknowledging Alicia added another layer of contempt. Alicia could see that Vargas hadn’t missed the slightest detail: she decided to let him take the lead while she listened.
“Doña Mariana,” he began, “from the official report and your statement to the police, we’re assuming that you were the first person to notify the authorities of the absence of Don Mauricio Valls.”
The secretary nodded. “The day of the masked ball,” she explained, “Don Mauricio had given a number of permanent staff the day off. I took advantage of this to go to visit my goddaughter in Madrid. The following day, although Don Mauricio hadn’t told me he would need me, I returned in the early morning, at about eight o’clock, and began to go through his mail and his datebook as I always do. I went up to the office and saw that the minister wasn’t there. A few minutes later, one of the maids informed me that his daughter Mercedes had said her father left by car very early with Vicente Carmona, his chief bodyguard. I found it odd, because when I went through his datebook I noticed that Don Mauricio had added, in his own handwriting, an informal meeting that morning at ten here, in Villa Mercedes, with Pablo Cascos, the sales director of Ariadna.”
“Ariadna?” asked Vargas.
“It’s the name of a publishing company owned by Don Mauricio,” the secretary explained.
“That detail doesn’t appear in your statement to the police,” said Alicia.
“Excuse me?”
“The meeting Don Mauricio had himself set up for that morning. You didn’t mention this to the police. May I ask why?”
Doña Mariana smiled somewhat condescendingly, as if she thought the question were trivial. “Since the meeting never took place, I didn’t think it was relevant. Should I have?”
“You have now, and that’s what matters,” said Vargas amicably. “It’s impossible to remember every detail – that’s why we’re taking advantage of your kindness and insisting so much. Please continue, Doña Mariana.”
Valls’s secretary accepted the apology and went on, although she ignored Alicia, looking only at Vargas.
“As I said, I found it odd that the minister should have left without alerting me beforehand. I asked the servants, and they informed me that apparently the minister hadn’t slept in his room. He’d been in his office all night.”
“Do you spend your nights here, in the main building?” Alicia interrupted.
Doña Mariana looked offended. She shook her head, pressing her lips together. “Of course not.”
“I’m sorry. Do go on, if you’d be so kind.”
Valls’s secretary huffed impatiently. “Shortly afterwards, at about nine o’clock, Señor Revuelta, the head of security at the house, told me he wasn’t aware that Vicente Carmona and the minister had planned to be anywhere that morning, and that, furthermore, the fact that they left together without any other escort was highly irregular. At my request, Señor Revuelta consulted first with the staff at Don Mauricio’s ministry and then spoke to the Ministry of the Interior. No one had any news of him, but we were told they’d call us as soon as they could locate him. It was then that Mercedes, Don Mauricio’s daughter, came to see me. She was crying, and when I asked her what the matter was, she told me that her father had left and would never return.”
“Did Mercedes say why she thought that?” asked Vargas.
Doña Mariana only shrugged.
“What did you do then?”
“I called the secretariat at the Ministry of the Interior and spoke first with José Moreno and later with the head of police, Señor Gil de Partera. The rest you already know.”
“That was the point at which you mentioned the anonymous letters the minister had been receiving.”
Doña Mariana gave herself a moment to reply. “That’s right. The subject arose during the conversation with Señor Gil de Partera and his subordinate, someone called García—”
“García Novales,” Vargas completed.
The secretary nodded.
“The police, of course, were already aware of the existence of those letters. They’d been supplied with copies for months. It so happens that that morning, when I was going through the minister’s datebook in his office, I found the folder in which he kept them.”
“Did you know he kept them?” asked Alicia.
Doña Mariana shook her head, “I thought he’d destroyed them after showing them to the police at the time of the investigation, after the incident in the Círculo de Bellas Artes, but I realized I’d been mistaken, and Don Mauricio had been looking at them. I mentioned this to your superiors.”
“Why do you think Don Mauricio took so long to inform the police, or the security staff, of the existence of those letters?” Alicia asked again.
Doña Mariana turned away from Vargas for a moment, her predatory eyes settling on Alicia.
“Young lady, you must understand that the volume of letters received by a man as important as Don Mauricio is vast. A large number of people and associations decide to write to the minister, and quite often there are eccentric or simply crazy letters, which I throw away, so Don Mauricio doesn’t even see them.”
“And yet you didn’t throw those letters away.”
“No.”
“Did you know the person identified by the police as the most likely to have sent them? Sebastián Salgado?”
“No, of course not,” the secretary snapped.
“But you knew of his existence?” Alicia insisted.
“Yes. I remembered him from the time the minister had been processing his pardon, and later from the time the police reported on the result of their investigation into the letters.”
“Of course, but before that, do you remember ever having heard Don Mauricio mention Salgado’s name? Perhaps years ago?”
Doña Mariana remained silent for a while. “I might have,” she said finally. “I’m not sure.”
“Could he have mentioned him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he did. I think he did.”
“And this would have been in . . .”
Alicia frowned with surprise. “You remember the date clearly, yet you’re not sure he mentioned the name Salgado?”
Doña Mariana blushed. “In March 1948, Don Mauricio asked me to organize an informal meeting with the successor in his post as governor of the prison in Montjuïc Castle, Luis Bolea.”
“For what purpose?”
“I gathered it was an informal get-together, a courtesy meeting.”
“And were you present during that courtesy meeting, as you call it?”
“Only every now and then. It was a private conversation.”
“But perhaps you were able to catch the occasional fragment. Accidentally. As you went in and out of the room . . . taking in the coffee . . . Perhaps from your desk at the entrance to Don Mauricio’s office . . .”
“I don’t like what you’re insinuating, young woman.”
“Anything you can tell us will help us find the minister, Doña Mariana,” Vargas put in. “Please.”
The secretary hesitated. “Don Mauricio asked Señor Bolea about some of the prisoners who had been under his charge. He wanted to find out details, such as whether they were still in the prison or had been released, moved to another prison, or died. He didn’t say why.”
“Do you remember any of the names that were mentioned?”
“There were lots of names. And that was many years ago.”
“Was Salgado one of them?”
“Yes, I think it was.”
“Any other name?”
“The only name I remember well is Martín. David Martín.”
Alicia and Vargas looked at one another. He wrote the name down in his notebook.
“Any more?”
“Perhaps a surname that sounded more like French, or foreign. I can’t remember. As I said, it was years ago. How can that be important now?”
“We don’t know, Doña Mariana. Our duty is to explore all the possibilities. Going back to the letters . . . When he showed you the first one, can you remember his reaction? Did the minister say anything that struck you as unusual?”
The secretary shook her head. “He didn’t say anything in particular. He didn’t seem to think it was important. He put it in a drawer and told me that if any more letters like that one arrived, I should hand them to him personally.”
“Unopened?”
Doña Mariana nodded.
“Did Don Mauricio ask you not to mention the existence of those letters to anyone?”
“There was no need. I’m not in the habit of talking about Don Mauricio’s business to those whom it doesn’t concern.”
“Does the minister usually ask you to keep secrets, Doña Mariana?” asked Alicia.
Valls’s secretary pressed her lips together but didn’t reply. Instead she turned impatiently to Vargas. “Do you have any more questions, Captain?”
Disregarding Doña Mariana’s attempt to avoid her, Alicia leaned forward to place herself directly in the secretary’s line of vision. “Did you know that Don Mauricio was planning to ask the head of state for Sebastián Salgado’s pardon?”
The secretary looked Alicia up and down, no longer making any effort to hide her disdain and hostility. Then she looked at Vargas for support, but he had his eyes fixed on his notebook. “Of course I knew,” she said.
“Didn’t it surprise you?”
“Why should it have surprised me?”
“Did he say why he’d decided to do that?”
“For humanitarian reasons. He’d heard that Sebastián Salgado was very ill and did not have long to live. He didn’t want him to die in prison. He wanted him to be able to see his loved ones and die with his family around him.”
“According to the police report,” Alicia objected, “after almost twenty years in prison Sebastián Salgado no longer had any living relatives or close friends.”
“Don Mauricio is an ardent defender of national reconciliation, of healing the wounds of the past. Perhaps you find that hard to understand, but there are some people who are blessed with Christian charity and generosity of spirit.”
“That being so, do you know whether Don Mauricio has requested other similar pardons during the years you’ve worked for him? Perhaps for some of the hundreds or thousands of political prisoners who passed through the prison when he was in charge?”
Doña Mariana wielded a frosty smile, sharp as a poisoned knife. “No.”
Alicia and Vargas glanced briefly at one another. Give up, Vargas’s look said. It was clear they weren’t getting anywhere pursuing that line of inquiry.
Alicia leaned forward once more and again caught Doña Mariana’s uncooperative gaze. “We’re almost done, Doña Mariana. Thank you for your patience. The minister’s appointment you mentioned earlier, with the sales representative of Editorial Ariadna—”
“Señor Cascos.”
“Señor Cascos, thank you. Do you know what was going to be discussed?”
Doña Mariana stared at her as if making an effort to ignore how absurd the question seemed to her. “Matters concerning the publishing house, of course.”
“Of course. Does the minister usually meet up with members of staff from his private businesses, here, in his home?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you remember the last time it happened?”
“Quite frankly, no.”
“What about the meeting with Señor Cascos. Did you arrange it?”
Doña Mariana shook her head. “As I said, he himself put it down in his datebook, in his own handwriting.”
“Is it usual for Don Mauricio to fix appointments or meetings without telling you, ‘in his own handwriting’?”
The secretary glared at Alicia.
“No.”
“And yet in your statement to the police you didn’t mention this fact.”
“I’ve already said that at first it seemed irrelevant to me. Señor Cascos is one of Don Mauricio’s employees. I didn’t think there was anything unusual about the fact that they’d agreed to meet. It wasn’t the first time.”
“Oh, wasn’t it?”
“No. They’d met before a number of times.”
“In this house?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Did you arrange those meetings, or did Don Mauricio arrange them himself?”
“I can’t remember. I’d have to go through my notes. Why does it matter either way?”
“Forgive my insistence, but when Señor Cascos turned up for the meeting that morning, did he tell you that the minister wanted to talk to him?”
Dona Mariana thought about it for a few seconds. “No. At that moment our main concern was to establish the whereabouts of Don Mauricio, and it didn’t occur to me that whatever he had to discuss with a mid-level employee could be a priority.”
“Is Señor Cascos a mid-level employee?” asked Alicia.
“Yes.”
“Just to clarify, and for reference only, what would your level be, Doña Mariana?”
Vargas gave Alicia a discreet kick. The secretary stood up, her face assuming a severe expression to indicate that the meeting had concluded. “If you’ll excuse me, and there’s nothing else I can help you with . . .” She pointed to the door, a polite but firm invitation to depart. “Even in his absence, Don Mauricio’s affairs require my attention.”
Vargas nodded and stood up, ready to follow Doña Mariana towards the exit. He’d already begun leaving when he noticed that Alicia was still seated on the sofa, sipping the cup of tea that she hadn’t even noticed during the conversation. Vargas and the secretary turned towards her.
“In fact, yes, there is one more thing you can do to help us, Doña Mariana,” she said.
*
They followed Doña Mariana through a maze of corridors until they reached the staircase leading up to the tower. Valls’s secretary showed them the way mutely, without looking back, an almost tangible shadow of hostility trailing her. The sheets of rain licking the facade cast a sombre atmosphere through curtains and windowpanes, creating the impression that Villa Mercedes was submerged under the waters of a lake. On their way they passed an entire army of servants and other staff members of Valls’s small empire, who bowed their heads when they saw Doña Mariana, more than one stopping and moving to one side to bend over in obeisance. Observing this ritual of hierarchies, Vargas and Alicia exchanged an occasional bewildered glance.
At the foot of the spiral staircase leading up to the office in the tower, Doña Mariana took an oil lamp hanging on the wall and adjusted the intensity of the flame. They ascended, enveloped in a bubble of amber light that dragged their shadows along the walls. When they reached the office door, the secretary turned, for once ignoring Vargas as she fixed Alicia with her poisonous stare. Smiling calmly, Alicia stretched out an open palm.
Doña Mariana handed her the key, her lips tightly pressed together. “Don’t touch anything. Leave everything just as you found it. And when you’ve finished, return the key to the butler before you leave.”
“Thank you so much, Doña—” said Vargas.
Doña Mariana turned and set off down the stairs without replying, taking the lamp with her and leaving them in the semidarkness of the landing.
“It couldn’t have gone better,” Vargas said dryly. “Let’s see how long it takes Doña Mariana to get on the phone to García Novales and tear us to pieces. Especially you.”
“Under a minute,” Alicia agreed.
“Something tells me that working with you is going to be a treat.”
“Light?”
Vargas pulled out his lighter and brought the flame to the keyhole so that Alicia could insert the key. The doorknob let out a metallic groan as it turned.
“It sounds like a rat trap,” Vargas said.
Alicia gave him a cunning smile in the light of the flame, which Vargas would have preferred not to see.
Vargas blew out the flame and pushed the door inwards. “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”