“No, that wasn’t it. Caleb Lawson has never, not in his entire career, ever admitted to making a mistake. But Lady Greynes had a sister, Henriette, who didn’t believe the suicide theory. Henriette was married to a Flemish painter who knew Castelvetia, and he enlisted his help. At that time, Castelvetia worked with a Russian assistant, a remarkably strong man named Boris Rubanov. Boris had acquired the habit, on every new case, of engaging the domestic help in conversation, without interrogating them. He let them talk about their families, about their little everyday complaints, he bought them drink after drink, and after a few days of increasing trust and alcohol, there were no secrets between them. Thanks to Boris, Castelvetia solved a case which, outwardly, was not a mystery.”
“Castelvetia contradicted Caleb Lawson?” I asked.
“Contradict him? Castelvetia almost ruined Lawson’s reputation! After that, Lawson’s assistant, Dandavi, had to force him to practice those breathing exercises that Hindus do so they won’t succumb to a dizzy spell. Boris had gathered the following information: before the crime, a cook and a coachman had heard the sound of furniture being moved around in a room of the tower. Those nighttime noises were what enabled the Dutchman to solve the case. Castelvetia maintained, before the judge, that Francis Greynes had planned his wife’s murder long before it happened. He had the tower built in such a way that there were two identical windows, one facing east and the other west. One opened onto a small stone balcony, the other onto nothing. Architecturally the room was completely symmetrical. Every night the cat would meow and Lady Greynes would go out to the balcony and tend to her. That night, Greynes doubled his wife’s medication so that she would fall asleep in the dining room. When he carried her to the tower in his arms, he had already switched the furniture around, so that the window that faced east, instead of being on the left side of the bed, was on the right. Then he went to Lord Rutherford’s castle, so he would have an alibi. That night the cat meowed, as always, and Lady Greynes, disoriented by the medication and the reconfigured furniture, went out the wrong window.”
“The poor woman,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“Poor Lawson,” continued Linker. “The press had a field day with him, they even talked of bribery, and he swore undying hatred for Castelvetia. Before Castelvetia had time to report the results of his investigation, Francis Greynes was tipped off and escaped. They say he f led to South America. That f light saved Lawson, because the press paid much less attention to the trial than they would have if the accused were there in the courtroom. Trials in absentia are even more boring than executions in effigy.”
The animosity between the two detectives was a delicate and unpleasant topic, and the assistants were silent, pondering the consequences of that distant episode. I felt a bit ashamed for having taken the conversation in that direction.
Luckily Benito broke the silence. “But they are also divided by theoretical concerns. I’ve heard that Castelvetia maintains that an assistant, under certain circumstances, could be promoted.”
“That’s enough, Benito, we’ve already discussed that,” said Linker. “Don’t dream the impossible dream. They are The Twelve, not The Twenty-four. Who’s ever heard of an assistant who was promoted? Nobody.”
“But maybe the laws state that-”
“And who’s ever seen the laws? They’re unwritten; the detectives only make veiled references to them when they’re alone. They won’t tell them to you, or to me. It doesn’t make any sense to argue about something we’ve never seen, and never will.”
“But I have seen them,” said Okano, the Japanese assistant. His voice, in spite of being barely the whisper of silk paper, made us all jump. “I’ve seen the rules.”
Linker attributed his claim to a language problem. “Do you know what we’re talking about?”
Okano responded in perfect French. He was more f luent than Linker.
“My mentor is very methodical; and any time he received a correspondence about the laws, he wrote it in a separate place. I had a chance to read the papers before he burned them.”
“He burned the laws?”
“So no one else could see them. He burned them in the garden of an inn where we were staying during an investigation in a southern town. It was summertime and the cicadas were singing. My mentor burned the papers in a stone lantern.”
“Do you mean to say that you read something about an assistant becoming a detective?”
“That’s right. My mentor didn’t ask me to keep it a secret, so I’ll dare to speak. I even think Sakawa allowed me to read those papers on purpose, so I would know that the remote possibility exists, and so someday you all would know it as well. Knowing that means we have to be better assistants. Not because we have ambitions of becoming detectives, but because the mere fact it could happen exalts us.”
This was much more than the Japanese assistant had said in any of the other sessions, and now he was visibly short of breath. He was drinking a glass of pure absinthe, which was probably the reason for his sudden loquacity. But now the green fairy seemed to have abandoned him. Linker grew impatient.
“Come on, tell us. How is it done?”
Okano squinted his eyes, as if he were recalling something that had happened long ago.
“Four rules have been established for the promotion from assistant to detective. The first is that the detective, on his voluntary retirement, has to nominate his assistant as his replacement. He must be willing to give him his good name and his archives as well. The assistant would carry on his mentor’s work, as if he were the same detective. Nine of the eleven other members must approve the appointment. That’s the rule of inheritance.”
“And the second one?”
“The second tenet is called the rule of unanimity. That is when all the detectives agree to fill an empty chair by naming an assistant whom they deem exceptional on the basis of his performance.”
“And the third?”
“That’s the rule of prepotency. When a mystery has stumped three detectives and there is an assistant who is able to solve the case, he can present his application for membership. Their incorporation into the club is subject to a vote, in which two thirds of all the members, not just those present, must agree.”
Benito smiled, pleased with his victory.
“What now, Linker? Was I right or not?”
Linker looked at him with irritation.
“But those are hypothetical situations. Pure theory. In practice none of those three rules have ever been applied. But… didn’t you say there were four?”
Okano now regretted that he had said so much. Baldone held up the little green bottle and Okano looked at his empty glass. He had to talk to get his reward.
“There was a fourth rule, which my mentor called the rule of inevitable betrayal. But Sakawa didn’t write anything more on that sheet of paper, as if he found it so shocking that not even the burning f lames could remove the stink of sacrilege. All the clauses are secret, but that one is twice as secret.”
Everyone had fallen silent. Baldone poured two fingers of absinthe into Okano’s glass. He drank it straight. Soon he fell asleep.
“Dream,” said Linker. “Dream of secret clauses and rules whispered into ears. Dream of papers burning in the stone lantern of a Japanese garden.”
I said good night to the acolytes and I went up to my room.
6
The next morning I was awakened by banging on the door.
“Get up, assistant! You have the right to sleep late only when you’ve been out investigating all night.”
It was Arzaky’s voice. I jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. I told him to come in because I didn’t want to make him wait outside.
“I envy those gleaming boots.”
“I shined them last night.”
“I have mine shined, but they never look that good.”
“I polish my boots with a special cream that my father makes. It’s his secret formula.” I opened my shoeshine box and showed him the jar, whose blue label showed a picture of a shoe and the name Salvatrio. “Do you want
