The Paris Enigma (9 page)
Authors: Pablo De Santis
T
HE
T
OWER'S
O
PPONENTS
T
he tower flaunted its blend of grandiosity and futility at the gray sky. It was made for cloudy days, to be seen through drops of rain, from far away. A few years later, at the 1900 World's Fair, surrounded by automobiles, it would already seem old, but as it was being built the tower projected an air of extravagance and surprise. It wasn't just its height that was exceptional, but the promise of its demise. That something so gigantic could disappear without some kind of cataclysm. Its transitory nature cast a shadow of fantasy around it; whispering in our ears that we shouldn't take life too seriously.
There is something coffinlike about elevators, a tendency toward the worlds below (volcanoes, mines, the dirt on Pluto). But the tower's elevator rose effortlessly. It amazed me that it didn't fall. On that day the mechanism that went up to the second platform wasn't ready yet, so we got off at the first and continued our ascent to the scene of the crime on foot. Arzaky went ahead, and I struggled to keep up with his swift pace. I was very inexperienced back then, but even now, after having seen hundreds of crime scenes, I can say that nothing seemed farther from a murder than the silence and tranquility of that platform. I know that a match, a drop of blood, a stain on the wall, or a newspaper clipping can be signs that lead to the killer, but
my first thought upon arriving at a crime scene is the utter meaninglessness of everything that remains in the face of death.
“Well it seems we are dealing with a locked-room case,” said Arzaky. He wasn't even out of breath. “In this case, the locked room happens to be outdoors. No one saw the killer come in or out.”
I remembered that the now deceased Alarcón maintained that it made no sense to speak of a “locked room.” I barely managed to put together a coherent sentence as I gasped for breath, but Arzaky seemed to understand.
“What authority are you citing?” he asked.
“Alarcón, Craig's original apprentice.”
“Did he solve many crimes?”
“No, he died on his first case.”
“Oh, yes, I remember, he was killed by the magician. With all due respect for the dead, why are you repeating such foolishness? The locked room is the essence of our work. It doesn't matter if the room doesn't actually exist. We must accept its metaphorical power.”
We arrived at the second platform and went up a few more steps. After finding a flaw in the smelting, they had removed the protective railings and hadn't yet installed new ones. It was easy to see where Darbon had slipped and fallen, because the steps were covered with the same thick black liquid that Arzaky had found beneath the detective's nails.
“Be careful what you touch and where you step,” said Arzaky. “There's oil everywhere.”
“And broken glass. Do you think the killer broke a bottle of oil over his head?”
“The killer made sure to be far from here when Darbon fell. He was an old man and had a lot of trouble climbing stairs. He used a cane, which hid only a small sword, not the myriad surprises that Craig's has. The killer proposed a meeting up here, promising information about the attacks on the tower. Darbon was anxious to close that case before our next meeting.”
“But Darbon took on only the most important cases; murders, a few anonymous letters sent by a lunatic⦔
“You're new to this city and you don't understand. You've barely seen anything of Paris besides this tower. To you, Paris is the tower. But those of us who live here have been watching its slow progress for two years. These struts and vertical irons have filtered into our dreams. We all feel compelled to shout either yes or no about this matter, particularly because no one has asked our opinion. For some it is evil, for others the future, for the most pessimistic, it's both evil and the future.”
I didn't know where to lean, where to step. Everything was covered in black oil.
Arzaky's voice sounded remote, almost as if I were dreaming.
“If Darbon managed to solve this case, although it seemed simple on the face of it, his name would be in all the papers again, tied to the heart of Paris itself. He would have achieved the definitive victory over the interloperâ¦.”
“The interloper?”
“Me. He also used to call me âthe damn Polish traitor.'”
Arzaky reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of tiny tweezers, a tiny scissors, and a tiny metal box. They looked like they belonged in a dollhouse. He carefully took a sample of the glass shards. I prayed he wouldn't get any oil on him, because then I'd have to put up with his bad temper. He pointed out a cord that was almost completely soaked in the black liquid, and cut off a piece with his miniature scissors. Arzaky put the cord and the glass into the metal box, which he then returned to his pocket.
“Do you understand the nature of this trap? The killer put a bottle of machine oil on the stairs. It's very thick oil, and made the steps impossibly slippery. Darbon went up without a lantern, perhaps according to the instructions of the killer himself, who must have set up this meeting with him. We should look for evidence of his correspondence. When Darbon's foot hit the cord, the bottle tipped over, spilling its contents onto the steps, causing him to slip and fall.”
“And how could someone get up here and set the trap without anyone seeing him?” I asked.
“At six o'clock the workers leave for the day and only the night watchman remains. Everyone knew that he liked to drink, and that afternoon he received a gift of two bottles, addressed to him from an anonymous benefactor. He drank them and passed out. He didn't see or hear anything.”
I pointed to a small puddle of oil a few stairs farther up. Arzaky shone his lantern on it.
“I think the killer first considered placing the bottle higher up,” I said. “He calculated the trajectory of the fall and decided to move it. In the process he accidentally spilled a little.”
Arzaky looked at me distastefully, as if it was annoying to him that I point out some imperfection in the murder. But then he said, “All the better for us. The killer must have stained his clothes, gloves, or shoes. Have you gotten this all down?”
“You mean the bottle, the cord, and the oil? I remember it perfectly.”
“And my words? Don't you think you should write down what I say?”
I hurried to find a notepad in my pocket. As I hastily took out a pencil, it slipped from my fingers, bounced, and fell into the void. I was suddenly aware of how high up we were. I peeked over the edge, and seeing how far below the ground was made my stomach turn and my hands and forehead began to sweat.
I tried to play off the loss of my pencil as an intentional experiment.
“They say that if you drop a coin from this height, the force of gravity increases the speed of its fall so much that it could go through a man's skull.”
“Don't be an idiot, you're forgetting about the air's resistance. And now what are you going to use to write with?”
I pointed to my forehead.
“Like a steel trap.”
“Old Tanner responded to each and every one of my sentences with an amazed âOh' or a âThat never would have occurred to me.' You don't even pay attention. What are you looking at?”
I didn't answer right away.
“The whole city. Do you realize that I'm incredibly lucky? I just arrived in Paris and I'm observing it from a height that even those born here have never seen.”
“Get away from the edge, before you get even luckier: you could be the first foreigner to fall from up here.”
Avoiding the oil slick, we began our descent.
O
n the way back Arzaky seemed discouraged.
“Do you think this is a difficult case?” I asked him.
“Even the easiest case can get complicated. What worries me is not that it can't be solved, but rather that it will be solved in a trivial way. That in the end the solution will be something absurd. An indignant lover, a jealous husband, a crime of passion⦔
“Don't you like crimes of passion?”
“No. I prefer envy, ambition, revengeâespecially revenge, for something silly that everyone thinks has been forgotten. Even suicides that have been covered up. But not murders committed out of lust or insanity. There's nothing admirable in them. Those cases are purely formulaic. They have no poetry.”
Every once in a while, a passerby turned to look at the great Arzaky, whose photograph often appeared in the newspaper. Arzaky walked briskly, oblivious to the attention.
“Now what are we going to do?”
“I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to rest. At six I have a meeting with the people from the fair's organizing committee. And as for your other assignment, have you figured anything out?” I shook my head no and he continued, “I was told that Castel
vetia wrote the name Reynal in some hotel's register, but no one has seen him yet.”
“And what do you suspect?”
“Castelvetia was the last one to join The Twelve Detectives. Craig insisted on it. I was against it. Caleb Lawson detests him; they harbor a mutual grudge. When we issued the invitations, I double-checked his résumé. Most of his cases are impossible to verify. He could be an infiltrator, a journalist putting together information for an exposé of us, or an envoy from the European police's annual secret meeting.”
“A spy?”
“Who knows? We detectives are men with shady pasts. We can invent our histories, because our career has no supporting institutions, like doctors or lawyers. We are self-made men in every sense of the word.”
We had arrived at the point where our paths separated.
“As soon as you can, follow Castelvetia and find out his secret,” Arzaky ordered me. “Right now, when all eyes are on us, I don't want any surprises.”
Faced with Arzaky's insistence, I had no choice but to follow Castelvetia. Of course it's not easy to follow a man who is a specialist in tracking, since he could easily discover what I was up to. Craig had taught us to become invisible; the first thing one had to do was think about something else, move as if sleepwalking, get closer as if by accident. I followed Craig's teachings so obediently that I forgot I was following the Dutchman and I bumped right into him in the middle of the street. I shouted out an apology, in an intentionally high-pitched voice so he wouldn't recognize me. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't even look up, and immediately went into the Varinsky Hotel.
I distanced myself a few paces. The Varinsky was a hotel for tired travelers who aren't choosy: it was part hostel and part brothel. Like all the hotels and all the pensions in Paris those days, it was completely
full, since the committees of visiting countries had already begun to arrive. I waited outside until he left. Then, instead of following him, I resolutely entered the hotel. A nearsighted young man came out to assist me, which is to say, to get rid of me. I put some coins into his pockets as I mentioned the name Reynal.
“Room twelve,” he said.
Craig had warned me: sometimes investigations are complicated and tiring, and other times we solve them immediately. A detective must be willing to work, but even more willing to receive a revelation. I was certainly willing: I knocked on the door and it opened, with no delay or questions. Inside the room there was a young woman: she looked as if she had just gotten out of bed. Ever since that moment, I have always adored women who've just woken up and are still somewhat in sleep's clutches. She wore a distracted smile as she stretched languidly. I didn't quite know what this situation meant for The Twelve Detectives, but I was even more confused as to what it meant for me. Castelvetia's assistant was a woman: this was unprecedented. I tried to replace the entranced expression on my face with a shocked one.
I had ended up here by following Arzaky's orders, and I had to speak for Arzaky. “Don't tell anyone who I am,” said the young woman, as if I could possibly know who she was.
She invited me in, so we wouldn't be seen together in that hallway traveled by fabulists: the shady men who were the electricians who would light up the fair; the discreet ladies who would welcome foreigners and justify the city's reputation; the young men who seemed to be quintessentially Parisian but were actually South American journalists drunk on absinthe.
“I didn't know the rules allowed⦔
“Where are the rules written? Have you ever seen them?”
“Nowhere. In the detectives' hearts.”
“But they only have brains. They don't have hearts.”
I sat on the edge of a chair, as if I was about to leave at any moment.
I wanted to be shocked, but my ability to be shocked was dulled by intrigue. “Wait till I tell Arzaky,” I thought.
She washed her face in a basin.
“My name is Greta Rubanova. I'm Boris Rubanov's daughter. My father left Russia when he was twenty years old and he met my mother, a Frenchwoman, in Amsterdam. She died giving birth to me. When my father started working for him, Castelvetia was practically still a child. They had an office in Amsterdam, which Castelvetia rented from a shipping company. Together they solved dozens of cases. My father taught me everything he knew. But he had a weakness for women, especially dangerous ones. And when he walked out on a Hungarian woman, she said good-bye with her knife. By the time Castelvetia found him, my father was dying. Castelvetia asked him who had done it. My father's reply was that some cases shouldn't be solved. Castelvetia respected his last wish. At his funeral I asked Castelvetia to let me work for him. He accepted, at first out of sympathy, but later took me seriously.”
“And how did Castelvetia manage to keep you hidden all this time?”
“Detectives are fame seekers, and they know that their renown is an essential part of investigative work: before arriving in a city, their name precedes them, and it's the talk of the town. Sometimes this helps their work, and other times it's an impediment. When a detective is around, fantasies multiply. Castelvetia, on the other hand, always sought anonymity. Since joining The Twelve Detectives, his obsession with secrecy has become even greater. In Amsterdam there are few crimes: we are too polite, too accustomed to ignoring one another. We are so distanced from each other that we never reach the point of murder. There's no need. So Castelvetia and I often have to travel. That helps our cases to go unnoticed. Castelvetia has renounced fame for me: many doubt that he is a true detective, but he did it all to keep me hidden.”
She came closer to me. She smelled of fresh clothes dried in the sun.
“We were confident that during this meeting things could finally be cleared up. Castelvetia was planning to ask that I be recognized as his assistant.”
“A woman? Never,” I said indignantly.
“Who are you, the keeper of the rules?”
“I'm simply the bearer of common sense.”
“Don't get too alarmed, it's not going to happen after all. Things have gotten complicated, and Castelvetia has changed his mind. Now that all the detectives are plotting against each other, they even suspect Darbon's murderer may be among them. If he presented me now, he would have everyone at his throat. Caleb Lawson hates him, he would take full advantage of the situation.”
“Why does he hate him?”
“Lawson considers three of The Twelve Detectives his rivals: Craig, Castelvetia, and Arzaky. Craig and Arzaky are his enemies because he wants to run The Twelve Detectives. Craig has already quit the race so now only Arzaky, the more skilled and more difficult, remains. Lawson hates Castelvetia because, on a trip to London, Castelvetia solved the Case of the Princess in the Tower.”
“I'm not familiar with that one.”
“No? You can ask Lawson about it. He likes to reminisce about old times. And now that you've seen me, you can leave. Or did you want something more?”
“What use is an assistant who has to be hidden away?”
“I can go places that men can't. Doors have opened for me that you couldn't dream of walking through.”
“I'm sure I'd rather not walk through them.”
“You see? In men, curiosity is laborious, something borrowed, and in the long term, a pretense. Men ask questions that they think they already know the answer to. I ask what I don't know.”
“And you never leave here? Castelvetia has you locked up?”
“I go where I like. We meet in secret.”
“Like lovers?”
“Like conspirators. Like revolutionaries. Like father and daughter.”
“Father and daughter,” I repeated incredulously.
“Father and daughter. Can I trust you?”
“No one has ever doubted my honor.”
“I am completely dependent on that dubious honor. Imagine the consequences of the scandal, now that the investigative arts are on display in full view of everyone. Who would maintain their faith in The Twelve Detectives?”
I had to leave, but it wasn't easy; I was comfortable in my discomfort. For a second I saw things from a distance. The detectives, the rules, the hierarchies, murder itself: it was all just a game. And I was like a stamp collector who comprehends, in a flash, that he has been playing with worthless little slips of paper.
“Now I will ask that you keep our secret, and that you leave. I have to finish getting dressed.”
I got up from the chair that I had barely occupied. I was going to say something, but she brought her fingers to my lips. She knew how to ask for silence.