The tower flaunted its blend of grandiosity and futility at the gray sky. It was made for cloudy days, to be seen through drops of rain, from far away. A few years later, at the 1900 World’s Fair, surrounded by automobiles, it would already seem old, but as it was being built the tower projected an air of extravagance and surprise. It wasn’t just its height that was exceptional, but the promise of its demise. That something so gigantic could disappear without some kind of cataclysm. Its transitory nature cast a shadow of fantasy around it; whispering in our ears that we shouldn’t take life too seriously.
There is something coffinlike about elevators, a tendency toward the worlds below (volcanoes, mines, the dirt on Pluto). But the tower’s elevator rose effortlessly. It amazed me that it didn’t fall. On that day the mechanism that went up to the second platform wasn’t ready yet, so we got off at the first and continued our ascent to the scene of the crime on foot. Arzaky went ahead, and I struggled to keep up with his swift pace. I was very inexperienced back then, but even now, after having seen hundreds of crime scenes, I can say that nothing seemed farther from a murder than the silence and tranquility of that platform. I know that a match, a drop of blood, a stain on the wall, or a newspaper clipping can be signs that lead to the killer, but my first thought upon arriving at a crime scene is the utter meaninglessness of everything that remains in the face of death.
“Well it seems we are dealing with a locked-room case,” said Arzaky. He wasn’t even out of breath. “In this case, the locked room happens to be outdoors. No one saw the killer come in or out.”
I remembered that the now deceased Alarcón maintained that it made no sense to speak of a “locked room.” I barely managed to put together a coherent sentence as I gasped for breath, but Arzaky seemed to understand.
“What authority are you citing?” he asked.
“Alarcón, Craig’s original apprentice.”
“Did he solve many crimes?”
“No, he died on his first case.”
“Oh, yes, I remember, he was killed by the magician. With all due respect for the dead, why are you repeating such foolishness? The locked room is the essence of our work. It doesn’t matter if the room doesn’t actually exist. We must accept its metaphorical power.”
We arrived at the second platform and went up a few more steps. After finding a flaw in the smelting, they had removed the protective railings and hadn’t yet installed new ones. It was easy to see where Darbon had slipped and fallen, because the steps were covered with the same thick black liquid that Arzaky had found beneath the detective’s nails.
“Be careful what you touch and where you step,” said Arzaky. “There’s oil everywhere.”
“And broken glass. Do you think the killer broke a bottle of oil over his head?”
“The killer made sure to be far from here when Darbon fell. He was an old man and had a lot of trouble climbing stairs. He used a cane, which hid only a small sword, not the myriad surprises that Craig’s has. The killer proposed a meeting up here, promising information about the attacks on the tower. Darbon was anxious to close that case before our next meeting.”
“But Darbon took on only the most important cases; murders, a few anonymous letters sent by a lunatic…”
“You’re new to this city and you don’t understand. You’ve barely seen anything of Paris besides this tower. To you, Paris is the tower. But those of us who live here have been watching its slow progress for two years. These struts and vertical irons have filtered into our dreams. We all feel compelled to shout either yes or no about this matter, particularly because no one has asked our opinion. For some it is evil, for others the future, for the most pessimistic, it’s both evil and the future.”
I didn’t know where to lean, where to step. Everything was covered in black oil.
Arzaky’s voice sounded remote, almost as if I were dreaming.
“If Darbon managed to solve this case, although it seemed simple on the face of it, his name would be in all the papers again, tied to the heart of Paris itself. He would have achieved the definitive victory over the interloper….”
“The interloper?”
“Me. He also used to call me ‘the damn Polish traitor.’”
Arzaky reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of tiny tweezers, a tiny scissors, and a tiny metal box. They looked like they belonged in a dollhouse. He carefully took a sample of the glass shards. I prayed he wouldn’t get any oil on him, because then I’d have to put up with his bad temper. He pointed out a cord that was almost completely soaked in the black liquid, and cut off a piece with his miniature scissors. Arzaky put the cord and the glass into the metal box, which he then returned to his pocket.
“Do you understand the nature of this trap? The killer put a bottle of machine oil on the stairs. It’s very thick oil, and made the steps impossibly slippery. Darbon went up without a lantern, perhaps according to the instructions of the killer himself, who must have set up this meeting with him. We should look for evidence of his correspondence. When Darbon’s foot hit the cord, the bottle tipped over, spilling its contents onto the steps, causing him to slip and fall.”
“And how could someone get up here and set the trap without anyone seeing him?” I asked.
“At six o’clock the workers leave for the day and only the night watchman remains. Everyone knew that he liked to drink, and that afternoon he received a gift of two bottles, addressed to him from an anonymous benefactor. He drank them and passed out. He didn’t see or hear anything.”
I pointed to a small puddle of oil a few stairs farther up. Arzaky shone his lantern on it.
“I think the killer first considered placing the bottle higher up,” I said. “He calculated the trajectory of the fall and decided to move it. In the process he accidentally spilled a little.”
Arzaky looked at me distastefully, as if it was annoying to him that I point out some imperfection in the murder. But then he said, “All the better for us. The killer must have stained his clothes, gloves, or shoes. Have you gotten this all down?”
“You mean the bottle, the cord, and the oil? I remember it perfectly.”
“And my words? Don’t you think you should write down what I say?”
I hurried to find a notepad in my pocket. As I hastily took out a pencil, it slipped from my fingers, bounced, and fell into the void. I was suddenly aware of how high up we were. I peeked over the edge, and seeing how far below the ground was made my stomach turn and my hands and forehead began to sweat.
I tried to play off the loss of my pencil as an intentional experiment.
“They say that if you drop a coin from this height, the force of gravity increases the speed of its fall so much that it could go through a man’s skull.”
“Don’t be an idiot, you’re forgetting about the air’s resistance. And now what are you going to use to write with?”
I pointed to my forehead.
“Like a steel trap.”
“Old Tanner responded to each and every one of my sentences with an amazed ‘Oh’ or a ‘That never would have occurred to me.’ You don’t even pay attention. What are you looking at?”
I didn’t answer right away.
“The whole city. Do you realize that I’m incredibly lucky? I just arrived in Paris and I’m observing it from a height that even those born here have never seen.”
“Get away from the edge, before you get even luckier: you could be the first foreigner to fall from up here.”
Avoiding the oil slick, we began our descent.