Manuel broke the connection and noticed the blinking icon advising him that he’d received a voice mail. Who the hell kept leaving those voice mails? He saw Nogueira climb up the Vulcan’s steep staircase and push aside the youngsters clustered there. Nogueira got to him just as he opened the voice mail. He turned the speaker on so the policeman could hear it too.
“Listen, Manuel, I’ve tried to call but I guess your phone’s turned off. I’m not going to be able to join you tonight. They just called me from the clinic where Santiago is; he’s asked me to hear his confession, and apparently the doctors consider that a good sign. I’m headed that way now. I’ll call you when we’ve finished, unless it’s too late.” A beep signaled the end of the recording.
“When did he call?” Nogueira asked.
“At ten thirty. I left the phone charging in my room during dinner,” Manuel said, regretting that decision. “He must have called then. I didn’t notice until just now.”
He called Lucas’s number but a recorded voice advised him that the number was turned off or out of coverage.
“She refused to let me in to see him,” Manuel said. “She used the excuse that she was protecting him, but obviously she was protecting herself. She must have done it. Somehow she must have given him the overdose that killed him. And three years later she murdered álvaro because he was about to blow her world apart.” His eyes filled with tears, and he had to swallow a thick knot in his throat before he could continue. “She followed her husband that night, and when she saw álvaro refusing to pay, she took care of it. If you think about it,” he said with a bitter smile, “a hug looks the same as the position she had to take to stab him. I’m sure he didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. She took care of both brothers, and finally they had what they wanted. Santiago is a weakling who falls apart under pressure, but she knows how to manipulate him. She isolates him from everyone else until she gets him under control again. But this time it was different, and the difference was that Santiago was in love with To?ino.”
Nogueira nodded emphatically as he followed the train of logic. “Do you know what this means? Santiago’s going to commit suicide; he has nothing left. But he wants to confess first, and he knows she won’t let him. A confession is the only way he has of communicating the truth. He has to isolate himself from her in the company of another person.”
Manuel was already on the way to the car, and the policeman raced after him.
The lowering storm pushed across a sky of otherworldly light.
NEVERMORE
Vicente’s face felt taut, wizened, and salty. He brushed it with his frigid but sweaty fingertips, feeling the silky smoothness of skin washed with tears, stiff and tired. The gardener looked into the rearview mirror, trying to make contact with the eyes in that empty reflection. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but there’d still been light in the sky when he arrived. Now the night was so black that the far-off flashes of the approaching storm had jolted him out of his lethargy. His chest ached from all his weeping; he felt as hollow as a broken and discarded drum, empty and immense. In contrast, his stomach seemed to have contracted into one great cramp with no room for anything. As if to test that thought he gulped down the thick, hot saliva that had accumulated in his mouth. He felt its acid sink deep into his gut, provoking a heave he barely managed to suppress. He looked up at that threatening sky and then over to the exterior lamps bathing the front of the manor house in that atmospheric but totally inadequate light.
He got out of the pickup and felt the stirring breeze, forerunner of the storm. Lightning again lit the heavens sufficiently for him to look down and realize the shabbiness of his attire. He grabbed his raincoat and covered himself. It wasn’t much more presentable. The wind flattened it against his figure, and the lower edges flapped as he walked toward the manor.
Herminia started in surprise when his blurred and altered face appeared at the window in the kitchen door. She opened the door, pressing her hands to her chest and laughing as she scolded him. “What, Vicente, home! What a scare you gave me!” She ushered him in. “Come in, hurry up! What a little rogue! You look like a ghost!”
Damián, seated silently at dinner, gave him a mystified look as he observed Vicente’s dark stubbled face, shaking hands, and swollen eyes. Alarmed now, Herminia scrutinized him, trying to identify some hint of catastrophe; she’d become an expert at that, and these days the prospect of disaster seemed to loom over them. “Something bad’s happened . . .”
It was more of a statement than a question.
“No,” he denied it hoarsely. The sound of his own voice frightened him. He cleared his throat. “Herminia, tell the se?ora marquess I want to speak to her.”
Damián’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He rose and signaled Herminia he would go.
Herminia gaped at him in surprise. “So something’s happened?” she insisted in alarm, glimpsing dimly the arrival of the disaster that she’d tried to keep from imagining throughout the day.
Vicente shook his head and tried to steel his nerves. It was obvious Herminia and Damián didn’t know he’d been fired. And why would they? Why would masters bother to inform servants of their decisions? A bitter smile spread across his face, but even so he appeared sufficiently self-possessed to reassure Herminia.
Damián came back to the kitchen a minute later. “The marquess says you may come upstairs.”
Vicente took the staircase and went down the dim hallway, attracted by the warm light thrown across the corridor by the open door of her room, a rosy rectangle painted across the dark wood floor. Vicente stopped in the doorway and looked inside. The dowager marquess reclined upon a sofa. Although the temperature in the room was comfortable and she was wearing a sweater with a rolled collar, she had a blanket over her legs. Across from her the nurse crouched before the hearth, feeding a fire that had filled the upstairs suite with scents of the forest.
Hesitant, he rapped softly on the heavy wooden door that must have been left open for him.
The nurse didn’t move, but the dowager raised a hand as pale and withered as that of a corpse to beckon him in. He crossed the threshold and was immobilized by indecision. Should he close the door or leave it as he’d found it? He felt nausea wash over him again. He was nervous and ashamed. He knew the nurse wouldn’t leave them in private, for she never left her mistress. Anguish surged in his chest, stifling him, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to speak without sobbing. He decided that although everything was sure to come out—everything always did, here on the estate—he wanted the fewest possible witnesses to his impending collapse. He shut the door behind him and walked straight forward, his gaze lowered, aware of the thick carpet beneath his feet and sensing from afar the eyes of the great lady, calm, motionless, and indifferent.
For seconds that seemed interminable to Vicente, the three of them remained fixed just like that: the nurse taking care of the fire, he standing like a cowed prisoner facing the scaffold, and the marquess with her eternal pallid grave decorum.
“Good evening, se?ora. I apologize for intruding at this time of night, but I need to speak with you.”
She sat motionless, as if she hadn’t heard a word. Vicente was about to repeat himself, but the marquess raised her hand and gestured impatiently to signal him to continue.
“It was . . . well . . . It’s because of the fact, I’m sure you’re already aware, that I’ve been dismissed. Again.”
“What was your name?” she demanded.
“What?” That’s all the reply he could manage.
“Your name,” she said again impatiently. She snapped her fingers to call for the nurse.
“Vicente,” he whispered.
And almost at the same time the nurse responded, “Pi?eiro, Vicente Pi?eiro.”
“It’s these horrible pills I take,” the dowager commented to the nurse. “They leave my head entirely vacant.” She sounded annoyed. She looked back to the man, and with her characteristic dignified severity instructed him. “Come to the point, se?or . . .” She snapped her fingers again.