EVERYONE LEFT THE DINING ROOM AFTER tea, except for Atuel, Aubry, Montes and myself.
“Let’s see what Doctor Manning here has to tell us.”
“I have already discussed the hypothesis I am going to propose with Inspector Atwell.”
First I thought I had heard wrong, but then, by virtue of that sentence the world was transformed, and what was familiar became unknown and dangerous. I barely contained my irritation:
I repeated: “Atuel, Atwell.” Manning explained: “I don’t deserve credit. It was just luck. As you folks know, yesterday morning I spent a long time in Miss Mary’s room. The table was covered with papers. Suddenly, on a notepad page I read a phrase that drew my attention. Perhaps I gave it excessive importance: I copied it. When we went up to the dining room I told Atwell about it.”
Commissioner Aubry put out the cigarette he had just lit in the ashtray and said:
“I’m not in the mood, Inspector, to reprimand you, but why didn’t you say anything? As soon as I knew who you were, I asked for your collaboration.”
“How could I bother you with a suggestion I myself didn’t believe? But let’s not be hindered by matters of procedure: the important thing is results. Let Manning tell us.”
“You folks probably didn’t see the piece of paper because the typist tidied up the table,” the doctor explained. “There were galley proofs and handwritten pages, the latter being the translation Miss Gutiérrez was doing of a novel by Michael Innes. As it was part of a continuous text, you folks did not keep reading, but the page should be there.”
The Commissioner breathed with a heavy sigh. His frustration was visible. Manning continued:
“The phrase in question was either part of a book or a message from Miss Gutiérrez. The former could be easily determined. The night before her death, the young lady told us that she had in her room a small library made up of all the novels she had translated. I asked the Commissioner to let me read the handwritten pages. He told me we couldn’t touch them. I got him to let me read the books: they were less personal objects. On these last two evenings I have read the original of the novel the young lady was translating and a good part of the books already translated. The Inspector read the rest. We have worked conscientiously. We can assure you that the phrase does not figure in any of the books.”
There was a silence. Finally the Commissioner exclaimed:
“Dear Inspector, what a way to collaborate with your colleagues!”
In the tone of these words I thought I detected that Aubry was resentful, accepted Manning’s solution and had no curiosity to hear it. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t suppress my curiosity (I pride myself on it: our hold on life is measured by the intensity of our passions). I begged Manning not to delay any longer in communicating the phrase, the key that permitted him and Atwell to penetrate a mystery that still remained obscure to the rest of us.
“What Miss Gutiérrez wrote before dying is this,” Manning replied monotonously. Then he read from a piece of paper:
Sorrowfully I must announce to you my decision, which I know too well will leave you in a state of shock, and if something in this hard world could induce me to abandon my resolve it would be our long friendship and the thought of your good will and your affection. But things have reached such a point that the only thing I can possibly do is to say farewell to the world and leave it.