I left the hotel, looking this way and that. The moon shone with a yellow light, promising rain the next day. I began to run through an alley and I heard labored breathing ahead of me. It was Desmorins, who was also pursuing Arzaky.
“I want to hear his confession,” he told me.
I ran in one direction, then the other, without any clue as to which way I should go. I was about to abandon the search, when I heard a bang. It was a single shot, but it was enough. Guided by the noise, I turned the corner. Arzaky lay on the ground, lit by the moonlight. The killer had dropped Novarius’s pistol.
I knelt down beside the fallen giant.
“I’m going to get help,” I promised without conviction as the lake of blood around me grew.
I would have liked to have gone for a doctor, just to get away from Arzaky’s death throes. But the Polish detective held me there.
“It’s too late. Neska knows how to get the job done.”
“It’s my fault, I should have spoken in private….”
“No, it was my mistake. Craig sent me a detective, not an assistant. I didn’t realize in time. You did the right thing by telling the truth.”
“The truth? I didn’t tell the truth.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. And neither did you. I don’t believe you committed those crimes to take revenge on Darbon, or for glory and recognition, or to save The Twelve Detectives. It was for love. The only one you wanted to kill was the Mermaid, because she betrayed you. You knew that she and Grialet were still seeing each other. You did all the rest to hide that crime, the only one that mattered. If they caught you, you could say you had done it for The Twelve Detectives. You didn’t care about being branded a killer, but you didn’t want the name Arzaky to be remembered for the worst of all crimes: the crime of passion.”
Arzaky tried to smile.
“Well done. But that will be a secret between you and me, Detective.”
“Detective? I’m not even an assistant.”
“From now on you are. I invoke the fourth clause: If a Detective were to use his knowledge to commit a crime and his assistant were to discover it…”
Soon Desmorins showed up, breathless. The detectives’ footsteps were heard close behind.
“I’m going to anoint you with the holy oils.”
Desmorins opened his cassock and took a small bottle of holy water from his belt. Magrelli had arrived and was with us too.
“He’s not a real priest,” I said.
“What does that matter now,” said Arzaky. “In this light, no one is what he appears. But let’s pretend that he’s a priest, that I’m a detective, and that you are my loyal assistant.”
The priest took a deep breath and said, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti…”