The Antiquarian (19 page)

Another thing he had to figure out was her surprise trip to Barcelona, brought about, as she herself had said, because she was the only person capable of helping him at that time. After a period of almost radically imposed distance, which was hard to manage in a city as small as San Sebastián, especially sharing friends as they did, she had appeared out of thin air to be at his side, eager and willing to share his pain. How was he to interpret her attitude? If she hadn't mentioned Mariola, Enrique would have never imagined it: she was jealous; and if she was, that meant she was thinking of him in a way that was deeper than just the residual friendship following a few years of life shared together.

Happier than he'd been in months, Enrique had a final glass of juice and went to bed. For the first time since Artur's death, he had no trouble getting to sleep.

* * *

Friday morning went by in a fast-paced succession of events that lacked the intensity and liveliness of improvising, and not necessarily because they had been mapped out previously. He dropped Bety off at Casa de l'Ardiaca following a tense commute. After leaving her in the library, Enrique spent the first hours of the day at his publisher's office, ready for the awkward shower of sincere condolences he had no desire to hear, to turn in his latest work to Juan Vidal, his editor. The staff received him with the kindness he had expected. Juan, with whom he had a friendship forged over years of constant battles between his desire to leave an original text untouched and Juan's to change it to improve its quality, wasted little time on social graces. He was a good friend and a solid professional, but he was absolutely incompetent when it came to expressing feelings. After receiving Juan's sympathies, Enrique guided their conversation to strictly literary matters. Juan took the memory stick containing Enrique's files with visible relief. They spoke for much of the morning on the changes Enrique had made to the plot over the final chapters. Juan was less than taken by them at first, but promised to get right to them to give Enrique an informed opinion. As they said their good-byes, Juan invited Enrique to a dinner with other authors, but he declined, saying it was for personal reasons. The time was not right.

Having attended to his professional affairs, he headed for La Palla Street. As he had during the meeting with Juan, he felt that things were happening differently than usual. Around him, time seemed to have changed its course. He could only manage to focus on the meeting he was to have with Artur's supposed killer. Everything else—the streets, the other pedestrians—had lost its force, as if it was all made up of barely visible clandestine spirits skittering here and there. First he talked to the two suspects; later,
with Samuel. Everything was tinged with the unreal feeling of a dream. He went from entering Guillem's shop one minute to leaving Samuel's the next, having completed the mission of inviting the three to Artur's shop at eight thirty, after they had closed for the day. He had not given them any pretext; they would assume he was going to respond to their offers, which he was—though not in the way they expected.

With the groundwork laid, he returned to the library to pick up the manuscript. Bety gave it to him with a certain reluctance, well aware of the danger it meant for Enrique. She didn't go into detail on her progress, which was excellent, and reminded him to be as careful as he could once his little act was over. Enrique offered her the car keys, but she refused, replying that she wasn't going to Vallvidrera without him.

“It wouldn't be good for you to be at the meeting.”

“And I won't be. I'll meet you at nine thirty, an hour after you've met with them. I'll be waiting in a bar in the square. And that's final,” Bety stated emphatically.

He left Bety in Plaça del Pi, with worry written all over her face. She was still mad at him, but concern outweighed her anger. Enrique entered the shop through the front door. He turned on the showroom lights, left the door ajar, and walked to the stairway. Once there, he could not help but look at the antique altar where an expert hand had removed any trace of Artur's death—any trace except for the broken railing and an indelible reminder: a reddish stain on the old marble of the altar.

In the study, he arranged the trap with rich detail: he pulled one of the comfortable armchairs up to the broad table and placed the manuscript on top of the table, opened to its final pages and surrounded by sheaves of notes. He tested the impression it would make on anyone coming up the stairs, and reached an unquestionable conclusion: it looked absolutely real.

As he wondered how the killer would react upon returning to the shop, he smiled, realizing that the old murder mystery cliché was going to come true: the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime. Enrique was sure the killer wouldn't feel anything, but what would he think? What thoughts would be concealed behind the mask of grief on his face? The hypocrisy of the guilty party incensed him, but he made an effort to ignore this train of thought. He had a role to play, and he had to play it perfectly.

Five minutes after the scheduled time, the three antiquarians knocked on the shop door. Enrique leaned out from the study and made a gesture to invite them in. He went down to meet them as they made their way into the showroom.

“Come in, my friends,” he greeted them.

They greeted him in turn. Samuel, with an absent air about him, allowed his eyes to wander to the altar, and shook his head. A tear came to his eye.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Seeing you come down the stairs like that, I couldn't help but think back to the last time we were here, with Artur. He came down to greet us, like you just did …” His voice cracked, and he couldn't go on.

Enrique firmly grasped his shoulders.

“Courage, Samuel, don't worry. Don't think about it.”

“I try, son, I really do. And I did get it out of my head, but coming back here, and seeing you come down the stairs, I couldn't help it.”

“Well, let's discuss other matters. Let me tell you why I've invited you here.” They all looked at him expectantly. “The three of you have made offers to buy the furniture and pieces in the shop in the event I liquidated Artur's business. Well, I've decided to sell it, but I won't accept your generous bids, or any other,” he added, on purpose, after a studied pause. “Puigventós suggested that the best system to wind up the business
would be to hold a private auction for members of the antiques community and a few people connected to it, and I've decided to accept. His daughter Mariola will help me with the appraisal of the entire inventory over the weekend.”

None of the three antiquarians showed any emotion after hearing Enrique, who continued his speech.

“But, I feel somehow indebted to you, not just for your friendship with Artur, but also for the help you've been so willing to give from the very beginning. So to show my appreciation for that, and in Artur's memory, I hope you'll accept a gift from me. I know that, in the shop or warehouse, there must be—I'm sure of it—a piece of furniture or other item you're particularly fond of. And I hope you'll do me the honor of choosing one and taking it.”

Samuel, Enric, and Guillem all spoke at once. They insisted on how unnecessary the gesture was, but Enrique was inflexible.

“My mind won't rest, and I won't be at peace with myself, if you walk out of here empty-handed. You must take something, even if it's just to give me that pleasure.”

Guillem was the first to react. After looking at his colleagues, he spoke up.

“I think I'm speaking on behalf of the three of us when I say how much we appreciate the gesture. I repeat, I find it unnecessary, but I won't argue with you. We accept the offer for what it's worth—which is a great deal—and I want you to know that I, personally, will never forget it.”

“I'm a discreet person by nature,” Enric said, with unusual decisiveness. “I only speak when I have to, or rather, very rarely. You all know that. But now I'm going to talk. Artur was an exceptional man in many ways: his encyclopedic, tireless desire for knowledge was combined with an unmatched talent for antiques, but those weren't the traits that shone most in his character. If anything made him stand out, it was his
humanity, an essential quality among all good men. This combination of virtues was what gave him that exceptional charisma that he had among the entire antiquarian community.

“If Guillem and I had the privilege to call ourselves his friends, it was because he was willing to share the magic of our funny little world with anyone who felt it. There's not much else I can say, except for this: it's clear he raised you, because you have so many of his virtues—most of all, friendship and generosity.”

Samuel was the next to take the floor.

“I won't say anything. You know how I feel. Thank you.”

Enrique thanked them effusively, and a feeling of doubt sprang up inside him. How could anyone who said such things be capable of killing Artur? Either he was mistaken or they were the world's slickest liars.

He pushed aside these concerns. The three antiquarians seemed unable to react, rendered immobile by surprise, and waiting for an order to move. Enrique encouraged them to take whatever they liked, regardless of the value, except for the books, which, he explained, he planned to add to his own collection.

Guillem and Enric ambled through the shop, looking around, not knowing what to choose. Guillem chose a collection of fans displayed in a cabinet, and Enric, a tiny Parisian automaton from the turn of the twentieth century. A hesitant Samuel decided after his colleagues had made their choice.

“Artur kept a deck of antique French cards from the eighteenth century in one of his desk drawers. A real collector's item, in excellent condition, and consequently, priceless.”

“It's yours.” Enrique smiled. “Come upstairs with me. I'll give Samuel his gift, and make you all a cup of coffee while we're up there. It won't be as tasty as his, but it's the thought that counts.”

They walked up the stairs behind him. With reverent delicacy, an original Tiffany lamp filtered the light that fell on the working table where the Casadevall manuscript lay, ignorant of its role in the scene. It was tucked among the ream of notes that Enrique had taken trying to crack its secrets. Enrique stood aside on the landing to let them pass; a deferential gesture actually meant to watch for any reactions to the manuscript. If anyone had one, it went unseen. He turned the overhead light on while, following the custom imposed by his father over so many afternoons, his guests took their seats. It didn't take him long to prepare the thick and steamy coffee, which he served in the same set Artur used. Samuel himself then took the deck from the desk drawer.

Their conversation covered several different topics. Enrique was surprised by how indifferently they treated the bait. He felt his confidence in rapidly finding Artur's murderer crumbling. Could he have been wrong? It may have been, after all, that Artur had died at the hands of a burglar from a rough neighborhood suffering from withdrawals. And yet it was also possible that the killer was right there sitting next to him, still as a rock to dodge any suspicion.

Their talk eventually died down. The setting didn't lend itself to expressions of happiness; the wounds from Artur's death were still fresh, and Enrique had offered them an exact replica of the Friday afternoon ritual that his guests and adoptive father had shared for years. Guillem brought them out of the lull with a new and opportune topic.

“Are you working on a new novel?” he asked Enrique.

The question was a godsend. “I finished my last book right before I came to Barcelona, but by chance I've found another idea I like that I'm thinking about using.”

“What idea is that?” Samuel asked.

“The story's still a work in progress. But here, in the shop, I found an old manuscript in a place where my father wouldn't normally keep a book. I was so intrigued by it that now, when I need something to take my mind off things, I've been translating it, and the results are amazing.”

Enrique himself was the first to be surprised by the ease with which he improvised a lie that couldn't have sounded truer even if he'd deliberately prepared it.

“What do you mean?” asked Guillem.

His three guests showed a sudden attention that confounded Enrique, incapable of telling whether their faces expressed mere interest or something more.

“I'm not very sure,” improvised Enrique, still inspired. “My Latin's not what it used to be, and I've just looked through it, but I've come to the conclusion that it tells the story of a secret society in fifteenth-century Barcelona. It has to do with the church and the Jews of back then, and it refers to some mysterious object. But that's not the important part. It's going to be my guide, a reference work, for what I hope will be my first historical novel. I'm not yet sure what it will be about, except that it has to follow the conventional structure of a mystery novel.”

“Historical fiction is highly complex; you need to be well-documented to avoid any incongruities,” Samuel said. “If you go ahead with it, I could help you. You know I'm an expert in everything that has to do with my people. And now that you mention it, Artur was also working on a document he called ‘the Casadevall manuscript.' He showed it to us the weekend … he died.”

“That's the one. I've been taking notes on it for days. And I appreciate your offer, Samuel. I suppose I'll eventually take you up on it, although for now, I'll have enough work, planning the plot up here.” He pointed to his head. “Well, gentlemen, the company is pleasant, but if you don't mind, I'm getting picked up in a few minutes—”

“—and you'd like to be alone.” Guillem finished his sentence for him. “Very well. Friends, let's take the gifts that Enrique has been kind enough to give us in Artur's memory, and be on our way.”