ANDREA ATTEMPTED TO ENLIST ME IN HER search for Miguel, but I managed to get free of her. I entered Mary’s room in time to prevent the typist—that excessively busy incarnation of Muscarius, the god who shooed flies from altars—from committing an irreparable error. Indeed, she had already put the papers that were on the table in order, and was preparing to tidy the nightstand.
“Don’t touch anything!” I shouted. “You are going to muddle the fingerprints.”
I gave Cornejo and Atuel a severe look. The latter seemed to be smiling with veiled slyness.
My words did not ruffle the typist. She clutched the flyswatter. Her eyes took on a contented sibylline luster.
“I told you something was going to happen,” she exclaimed. Then, whacking at the walls, she hurried off.
When the gong sounded Emilia said that she wasn’t going upstairs to have lunch. With more impertinence than gallantry, Cornejo insisted on taking her place.
“I sympathize with you, Emilia. But believe me, the rest of us also feel responsible in the face of such a terrible tragedy. Your nerves are shattered. You should eat. We’re all a little family here. As I am the eldest, I claim the honor of sitting with your sister.”
A typical example of false courtesy: to inconvenience everyone in order to be kind to one person. Had he consulted me? And yet, he was putting me in the position of having to offer myself as a mourner and go without lunch. Furthermore, he himself had suggested that Emilia should feel responsible for her sister’s death. It was only natural that she should want to spend a little time alone with her before the officials and the police arrived.
Atuel approached Emilia and spoke to her in a paternal tone:
“You should do whatever you want, Emilia.” He caressed her arm. “If you would like lunch, I will stay, of course. If not, tell me if you want me to stay with you, or if you want to be alone. Do just as you like.”
“The manner makes the man,” I thought. Atuel’s manner, like that of an overly debonair tango crooner, was beginning to exasperate me.
Emilia insisted on staying. I looked at her with the mixture of admiration and gratitude that men feel—sons of women, after all—toward the finest examples of the feminine spirit. As I was leaving, however, I noticed that in the midst of her pain Emilia had mustered the energy to change her clothes and powder her nose.
During lunch, the noise of the silverware and the drone of the flies were strangely pronounced. We spoke so little it made Manning seem almost chatty …
It is horrible to say it, but the members of our “little family” were eyeing one another with suspicion.
No one gave a thought to Miguel, except for Andrea. When we stood up, she took me aside.
“We haven’t found him,” she informed me. “Surely he’s crying in the boat. Or in the sand. Or down in the crab bogs. We’ll keep looking. When I have word, I’ll let you know.”
Why would she let me know? It irritated me that she would take me as an accomplice in these pseudo-maternal worries.