Luck or witchcraft did indeed watch over Ranalies the night porter. Dorotea had made a friend in France, an odd, shady guy with a blond moustache, a bowler hat, dirty fingernails, and a diamond on his pinky finger. He wore secondhand suits that had been painstakingly restored at the dyers’, filmy pochettes in pastel colors, and metallic ties, with a gold pin in the knot that had a tooth — probably from a child who had been killed for his blood — set right in the middle. He was a rascal who liked to sing, drink red wine all day long, and dine al fresco, and he made love in a roguish, gallant, and theatrical way, like a character out of Beaumarchais. Dorotea had been thoroughly diddled by that strapping fellow, who continued to write her after she left Paris. He had some wine business in Perpinyà and on occasion he would cross the border and come to Barcelona to enjoy “un dîner fin avec la belle Dorothée.”
On one of these getaways, Dorotea accompanied him to a quiet cafè near the Pla de Palau for a glass of Pernod; the Frenchman was in high spirits, and they continued on to the restaurant Can Soler on the Barceloneta. He liked the spattering of the frying oil, the slices of watermelon from the Passeig Nacional, and the whole petty trade in fishing, sailing and distilled liquor that reminded him of the port of Marseille. They dined on lobster in tomato sauce with an exhilarating allioli. “Comme ça sent bon, ma belle!” said the Frenchman, whose cheeks had gone dark, practically purple, like two veal kidneys.
The Frenchman had brought Dorotea “quelque chose de très chic”: a necklace of tiny glass seed beads that practically danced upon her fleshy neck with their peals of laughter.
Later they went to see a revue at the Teatre Còmic. The Frenchman found it dull and a little crass. Then they still found time for a drink, and the Frenchman began to think that despite Dorotea’s excess pounds, her flirty gaze was still quite nice. The Frenchman was staying in a hotel by the Boqueria Market. They couldn’t go there, and Dorotea didn’t want any compromising situations at her own house, so they adopted the most practical solution. The taxi driver pulled up to the meublé that was currently most in demand. After drawing the curtains behind them, a diminutive little man, gray and seedy, wearing the white jacket uniform of the house, opened the door for them. Dorotea was very put out, but she didn’t let on. The Monk pretended not to recognize her. He led them to the lift and deposited them in room thirty-two. At that time of night there were three people on duty. As it was a weekday, the erotic temperature was not so high as on other nights, and the work wasn’t killing them. The Monk was covering both the door and the telephone. The other two were doing their rounds on the upper floors. About two hours had gone by when the Frenchman called down and requested a taxi; in five minutes the cab was at the door. The Frenchman went downstairs and said he would be back within the half hour. When the Monk asked after the lady, the Frenchman, smiling and in the tone used by a man in his cups, responded: “Elle dort, la belle Dorothée … Dommage de la réveiller … Je reviens tout à l’heure …” What had happened to the Frenchman was quite natural. When Dorotea, fatigued and worn out by it all, began to nod off, the man realized that he had left certain papers he didn’t want to lose in a jacket pocket in his lodgings. Since he was a distrustful type, and he, too, believed in witches, he got nervous. He dressed without a sound so as not to awaken Dorotea.
Once the Monk had closed the cab door on the Frenchman, he felt for his knife as he wondered whether the man had been so stupid as to leave the door to the chamber unlocked. He took advantage of a lull to go quickly upstairs, first ensuring that the other two were on duty and unaware of his maneuver. With great caution, he pushed on the door of room thirty-two, and it opened. Inside he found only darkness and the sound of Dorotea snoring. On tiptoe, the Monk turned on the red light. Dorotea continue to snore. He picked up a washcloth lying on the floor in case he had to muffle her voice, and gripped his knife. Dorotea let out a weak guttural groan that wouldn’t have caused the slightest alarm because, in a house like that, the origins of the “ahhhs” were harmless, and no one paid them any mind. The knife pierced her heart and the hemorrhage bubbled up as if from a spring. The Monk left the knife in the wound; earlier, he had scrubbed it down, just in case, and he was wearing the white gloves they wore when taking a meal up to one of the higher-priced rooms. He pulled the sheet up over the dead woman’s body, turned out the light, peeped out to make sure the hall was empty, and opened the door. Three minutes later he was back at the telephone. The maneuver had been perfect; there was not so much as a drop of blood on him anywhere. He looked in the mirror; he had the same gray face of an upstanding man as always.
A half or three-quarters of an hour later, the Frenchman returned. The Monk took him up to the room, and the Frenchman turned the lock on the door. He got undressed in the dark so as not to awaken Dorotea. When he got into bed, he felt the wet stickiness of the blood. The alarmed Frenchman must not have imagined that things could have reached such tragic proportions because he had the wherewithal to say, “Voyons, ma belle! Pas de blague!…” When he put his hand under her left breast he felt the knife. The excitable Frenchman squealed like a pig being pulled by the tail. He was naked, he was locked in that room with a dead woman, he was filthy with blood. Dorotea’s body was still warm. The man wasn’t so unthinking as not to realize that his situation was deeply compromised. By the time he got dressed, cried out, they would be upstairs … His mysterious errand was perhaps the only place where he could find a defense, yet in that moment he felt it simply made him look more guilty. The man felt defeated. He called downstairs, said two incomprehensible words, and dropped back down onto the bed, lacking the resolve to get dressed, staring at his hands, his chest, his stomach, his legs, his whole body, helpless and covered in blood.
Ranalies answered the phone and called for the police patrol who were just a few steps away from the meublé. A couple of guàrdies civils, always in the vicinity, also rushed right over. Ranalies called for the second servant, who was on the top floor. The third man on duty had already gone to answer the door, and he ran into Ranalies just as he came back from calling for the police. They all went up to the room. The Frenchman was screaming like a madman, crying, incapable of getting dressed, incapable of unlocking the door. The Frenchman said over and over again that he was innocent, but no one believed him. They tied him up, he went up before the judge in a state of exhaustion, and everything that happens in such cases happened …
The testimony of Ranalies and the other two servants left no room for doubt. Even worse, as the Frenchman told his story, the judge was laughing up his sleeve. Everything pointed to him, everything conspired against him. Who could doubt the staff, Ranalies in particular, who had been in service at that house for so long? What interest could any of the staff have in committing a crime like that? When the woman was identified and the newspapers said that the body belonged to Dorotea Palau, the well-known dressmaker, a great consternation spread among many ladies from the best families: “Poor Dorotea! Who could have imagined it? She seemed so decent, so utterly beyond reproach!”
The only person who breathed a bit easier on hearing of the crime was the Baró de Falset. Guillem de Lloberola wasn’t the slightest bit moved, nor did it take him by surprise: “What other end could a hag like Dorotea come to?” is what Guillem thought.