TALLAGONGA WAS NOW FOCUSED ON THE MINE, SINCE EVERYONE else was as well. If she could get Mary Cyr convicted of being criminally responsible, as a representative of Tarsco, it would make Tallagonga a national figure. Blaming an English-speaking international would show the prejudiced predilections of certain kinds of people. None of this, however, could be said in this way, but it could be understood, in the way all things were understood these days. And the campaign to promote Mary Cyr as an example of the last vestiges of colonial thought was pronounced within the very jurisdiction Tallagonga worked. Of course it was the French and the Spanish who had dominated them before, but one colonial power was as good as another. This is what John was beginning to sense. It was in the drafts of air from the sea, and from the roadway dust. The charge of murder had got her into jail, but now this was even bigger, much more international. And indeed bigger was better for the world audience.
But then something slightly more favourable happened. The German-Dutch couple spoke to him again. At first they were not going to get involved. However, given his wife’s connection with “the woman in the cell”—as the tabloids in Mexico called her—the Dutch doctor, Norma van Haut, decided she must help. So they did something clandestine, to prove to themselves that Mary Cyr was innocent.
After people were declaring Mary had poisoned a child, Norma van Haut took samples of children’s hair, indiscriminately—those kids who hung around selling them lotto tickets, or worked setting up umbrellas on the beach. Each child whose hair they snipped they gave five euros to. They sent the hair to a friend who worked in Phoenix.
Yesterday he phoned them. The doctor told John that all of these children—just as she suspected—had traces of arsenic, because of the poor ground water—which meant that so many of the people here would have had the same amount as Victor. That alone would be a cause to discredit the charge of poison. And they would make sure the findings were presented at the trial. The Dutch doctor said she would testify that she had seen bruising on the body around and about the neck, which Señor DeRolfo for some reason overlooked. That along with the disproving of the arsenic theory might help.
She was also sure that Ángel Gloton had seen these marks as well—for he stood beside her for a moment.
The German then told John he had sent these findings to Constable Fey, who seemed to be heading the investigation.
But they did not get an answer back. They did not know what Fey might be up to, or if he had any preconceived notions. That was the trouble with the world, the Dutch doctor affirmed.
“So wie wir vermuteten,” the German said.
Just as we suspected.
The Dutch doctor, tall and blond and beautiful, believed nothing was farther from the truth than the charges escalating against this Canadian woman. And it was years ago, and people certainly transform or change—and Mary Cyr was nothing like the young girl who wrote to her in all her innocence—but when she went to visit her, she still felt they were connected in some remarkable way.
“Die ganze Welt will sie schuldig machen,” the German said.
“The whole world wants her guilty,” the doctor translated.
“It seems that way now,” John Delano said.
“We will see to it the world hears another story!” the Dutch doctor said. And she smiled. “We have to, don’t we.”
“But you see they will make her an offer—and it’s an offer she can’t refuse.”
They asked what that would be.
“They will offer her a deal—admit either to the murder, or to criminal responsibility in Amigo,” John said. “I feel it in my bones. They will tell her that if she admits to Amigo, then they will blame her family, and she can go free—if she admits to the murder of the boy, then she will do hard time.”