“How do you mean?”
“I mean he’d have claimed the gangs had put pressure on him and he had been obliged to do what he did. Protection means that business people, bankers and industrialists are left in peace as long as they give a certain proportion of their income to the gangs. Mortimer could simply have come up with the excuse that his own bank was under protection, and the police would have had to accept this since they were in no a position to shield him against such protection.”
The detective gave a sign to indicate that these comments were off the record.
“So,” he said, “Montemayor claimed, therefore, that Mortimer had been the victim of bandits?”
“Yes. These people are always fighting one another for control. It’s a case of open gang warfare. Don’t you know that? Doesn’t it happen here?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Our police,” the detective observed curtly, “appear to be more efficient than the American.”
“Or your bandits,” Winifred retorted, “appear to be less ruthless than theirs.”
“We don’t wish to go into that!”
Winifred shrugged her shoulders.
“All the same,” she added, “my husband had a better opinion of your police than I have. Otherwise he wouldn’t have wanted to prevent me reporting the crime. He assumed, however, that even if I’d reported the driver, it wouldn’t have misled the police, and they’d have tracked down the real murderer all the same.”
“No doubt,” the detective said.
So, Sponer thought, the driver — that was him.
“Do you think so?” Winifred said. “Of course, as has already been said, José was also of the same opinion, though he still maintained for a long time that I’d only cover the tracks of the real murderer if I reported the driver, with the result that he’d never be found. He prevented me using the phone, and after the driver had gone, José kept on and on about it until almost morning, and only then did he give up.”
The detective began translating this into German and dictating it. Sponer took this opportunity, stepped forward and touched the detective’s arm.
“Could I have a word with you, please?” he said.
“Yes, what’s the matter?” the detective asked.
“Here I am,” Sponer said.
“Who are you?”
“I am Ferdinand Sponer.”
“Oh?” the detective said.
“Yes. Ferdinand Sponer.”
“And what do you want?”
“What do I want?”
“Yes. Were you told to come?”
“Told to come?”
“Yes, told to come!”
“No, I came of my own free will!”
“Then please be kind enough to wait,” the detective said, “until you are called. Please don’t interrupt the proceedings.” And with that, he brushed past him and continued dictating.
Sponer, bewildered, stared at Winifred, but she ignored him completely. She opened her handbag and looked inside, then closed it again. The others just stood still and looked straight ahead. Sponer asked himself whether he was going mad.
“Montemayor,” the detective continued, “wanted to leave with you this morning?”
“Yes,” Winifred replied.
“After the driver had gone, your husband must have said to himself that both Mortimer’s and the driver’s disappearance would be noticed immediately. Didn’t he want you to report the matter after all?”
“No,” Winifred said. “He tried to silence me right up to the end. And it was only when he finally realized that I’d report the matter as soon as I could that he told me the truth. He even believed that the police, once they’d got the driver, would also be sure to find the murderer. I didn’t agree. I thought that they’d suspect the driver and no one else. My husband would have denied everything he ever said to me and he would have talked himself out of it. That’s why I shot him.”
Sponer could have sworn he misheard her. Was she mad? Whom had she shot? Mortimer? Impossible! But the others, too, when it was now being dictated in German, appeared not to have understood, judging by their calm looks.
“Mortimer’s Colt,” Winifred continued, “was still lying on the table where the driver had left it, together with Mortimer’s other things. Montemayor finally said to me that even if I didn’t want to keep quiet, in spite of him begging and even ordering me to do so, I’d surely keep quiet after I found out that it was he, Montemayor, who did it because of his love for me. I didn’t quite understand him at first. Then he said that he’d known when Mortimer was arriving, had driven to the station, waited until Mortimer had left the station and got into a taxi, whereupon he had jumped on the running board from the other side as the taxi drove off, opened the rear door, fired several shots at Mortimer, slammed the door shut, jumped off, run away, and was back in the hotel a little later. After he had finished, I took the Colt from the table and shot him.”
The reporters went on writing. The others stared silently at Winifred. The words hit Sponer like an avalanche. The car screeched, Mortimer’s car, with Montemayor on the running board, the shots echoed in his ears, the three bullets that had passed through Mortimer on that fatal journey… The dark night, the drive with the dead man on board, the streets, the surge of the river, the dark staircases, the look in Marisabelle’s eyes, the greying dawn — the scenes of the night all raced through Sponer’s brain like a terrible tornado.
“José did not love me,” Winifred continued. “It was only vanity, jealousy and hatred that drove him to kill Mortimer. But I loved Mortimer with all my heart. If I could have died for his sake, I’d have gladly done so. Now he’s really dead, and I’m alive. But my life is merely a sacrifice for him, because I killed Montemayor for his sake.”
There was a pause. The detective said something in connection with the statement to the effect that it would still have to be corroborated by evidence that Montemayor had actually murdered Mortimer. The sequence of events leading up to the murder could, however, be provisionally reconstructed on the basis of the available evidence.
He opened the door to the salon. Montemayor lay there on the carpet in his evening suit and, with Winifred at the head, they all filed into the room and stood round the body in silence. By the light that poured in through the windows, the powder and rouge on her face looked strangely incongruous. Her bleached hair appeared unreal, and the folds of her crimson evening gown seemed to shoot up her body like tongues of flame every time she moved. Montemayor lay stretched out on his right side, his fists clenched, and his face, which was turned upwards, was already deathly white. At the same time, however, it bore a strangely calm and serene expression.
For even though an ocean separated this city and the savannas, he had fallen like the true peon that he was. He had fallen like a peon falls in a fight with his enemy, a fight for a beloved one, with a bullet, with Mortimer’s bullet, in his heart.
While the rest stood there in silence, Sponer started backing away without making a sound. Nobody took any notice of him. Slowly walking backwards, he reached the door. Feeling behind him, he opened it, bounded out of the room, slammed the door and ran along the corridor, down the stairs, through the entrance hall and the revolving door and out into the street. He ran straight across the ring road. He knew that, come what may, he would still have to report to the police and make a statement, and would have to explain the disappearance of the body. But now, at that moment, he just couldn’t be restrained. He ran across Karlsplatz, through the gardens, and down Alleegasse to Marisabelle’s house, flung open the gate and dashed through the entrance hall and up the stairs. He stopped, breathless, in front of the Raschitzes’ flat and rang the bell. Still panting for breath, he pulled his cap off his head and smoothed his hair. The door was opened after a short pause. The young girl to whom he had spoken the night before stood there. He wanted to say something, but was still so out of breath that at first he was unable to utter a word.