COMMISSIONER AUBRY GRABBED THE enormous embalmed albatross.
Tied to the neck of the bird with a green ribbon hung a little boy’s photograph, with the inscription, To My Dear Parents, a souvenir from Miguel. In the whiteness of its breast I saw all the nostalgia of the days in which the light, “shadow of the gods,” illuminates with limpid clarity the world beside the sea, days that, for us, seemed definitively buried under the sandstorm.
In the trunk itself, wrapped in newspaper, we found a small amount of arsenic. For the past twenty minutes, Commissioner Aubry, Andrea and I had been searching Miguel’s room. The Commissioner asked Andrea:
“Do you think that Miguel was able to embalm the bird all by himself?”
“I think so,” the woman answered. “He spends his whole life …”
“What reasons would he have had to hide it?” Aubry interrupted.
“He knew I didn’t like it. While he was in the house, he couldn’t torture animals. We had forbidden it. I believe that cruelty in children should be repressed.”
Aubry showed her the packet of arsenic.
“Did you know that the boy had this poison?”
Andrea didn’t know, nor did she know that the poison was used in taxidermy and in the preservation of algae.
The Commissioner told her she could go. We remained alone, considering the possible connections between our findings and Mary’s death. But in the cause-and-effect account we tried to establish, there was a fatal gap. The poison that killed Mary wasn’t arsenic.
It was necessary for Doctor Cornejo to witness the boy’s horrific kiss in order for Aubry to take into account my accusation with reference to the embalmed bird. From that moment on I was given the consideration I deserved. Aubry consulted me for everything. Perhaps one could object to this manner of conducting an investigation. Why didn’t Aubry look for fingerprints? Why didn’t he order an autopsy of the corpse? Only a small-town detective—one might add—would take on a stranger as his confidant. But it’s not difficult to respond to these objections. With fingerprints he wouldn’t make much progress (all our fingerprints, without any doubt, would show up); the autopsy would prove what everyone already knew (that she had been poisoned by strychnine); after all, I am not a stranger, and this way of proceeding as if we were all a family has its advantages: it creates an atmosphere of trust, in which the suspect will inadvertently forget to be cautious.
With ridiculous timidity Manning knocked on the door. He had something important—he dared to pronounce the word “important”—to declare. With pleasure I heard this reply from the Commissioner:
“I beseech you to postpone your revelation until after tea.”