“I suppose you’re referring to Iris Alonso.”
“I’m referring to the Iris who drowned in the pool during a summer camp years ago.”
Fèlix nodded. He drank his coffee. He moved his cup and rested both hands on the table under Héctor’s penetrating gaze.
“It’s been a long time since I heard that name, Inspector.”
It’s been a long time since I thought about Iris, remembered Felix.
“What do you want to know? And,” he hesitated, “why?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. First tell me what happened.”
“What happened? I wish I knew, Inspector.” He was recovering, his voice was gaining strength. “As you said, Iris Alonso drowned in the pool of the house for summer camps we rented every summer.”
“Was she one of the little girls in your care?” He already knew the answer, but he had to extract more information: he wanted to get to Marc, the six-year-old who saw that macabre image.
“No. Her mother was the cook, a widow. For a little over a month, she would move into the house with us.”
“Us?”
“The monitors, the children and me. The kids arrived in groups and stayed for ten days.”
“But Marc stayed all summer?”
“Yes. My brother has always worked a lot. Summers were a problem, so yes, I took him with me.” He lifted both hands from the table with a slightly impatient gesture. “I still don’t see-”
“I’ll explain it all to you at the end, I promise you. Please continue.”
Héctor told himself that the man before him was more accustomed to listening than to expressing himself. He held the priest’s gaze without blinking.
“How exactly did Iris Alonso die?” he insisted.
“She drowned in the pool.”
“Yeah. Was she alone? Did she have stomach cramp? Did she hit her head on the side?”
There was a pause. Maybe Fèlix Castells was determined not to be pressured; maybe he was simply organizing his thoughts.
“That was many years ago, Inspector. I don’t-”
“Did many little girls drown while they were in your care?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then permit me to say that I don’t understand how you could have forgotten her.”
The answer came from his soul, if souls exist.
“I haven’t forgotten her, Inspector. I assure you. For months I couldn’t think of anything else. It was me who took her out of the water. I tried to give her mouth to mouth, revive her, everything. . But it was too late.”
“What happened?” He changed his tone, perhaps softened by the pain in the face in front of him.
“Iris was a strange little girl.” He looked to one side, beyond Héctor, beyond the café, the street, the city. “Or maybe she was at an especially difficult age. I don’t know. I’ve lost the ability to understand young people.”
The priest gave a faint smile and continued speaking without Héctor having to pressure him.
“She was twelve, if I’m not mistaken. Full pre-adolescence. That summer her mother didn’t know what to do with her. The previous years she’d been a happy little girl, secure; she amused herself with the other kids. She even took care of Marc. But that summer it was all rows and sulky faces. And then there were mealtimes.” He sighed. “In the end I had to speak to her mother and ask her to ease up a little.”
“Iris didn’t eat?”
“According to her mother, no, and it’s true she was skin and bone.” He remembered her soaked, fragile little body and shuddered. “Two days before her death she disappeared. God, it was awful. We searched for her everywhere, we scoured the wood for a whole night. The townspeople helped us. Believe me, I mobilized everyone to find her safe and sound. Finally we came across her in a cave in the wood we would usually go to on hikes.”
“Was she all right?”
“Perfectly. She looked at us so coldly and told us she didn’t want to go back. I must own that at that moment I got angry. I got very angry. We took her home. On the way, instead of being more docile and understanding the fright she’d given us, she was still indifferent. Insolent. And I was sick of it, Inspector; I told her to go into her room and not come out; she was being punished. I would have locked her in if there had been a key. Maybe you think I’m exaggerating, but I assure you that during those hours of searching I prayed without stopping that nothing serious had happened to her.” He paused. “She even refused to apologize to her mother. The poor woman was devastated.”
“Nobody went in to see her?”
“Her mother tried to talk to her. But they ended up arguing again. That was the evening before she died.”
This man’s story in essential points coincided with the one on Marc’s blog. But the end was missing, and Héctor hoped the priest could shed some light on it.
“What happened?”
Fèlix Castells lowered his eyes. Something that could be doubt, or guilt, or both, took over his appearance for a moment. It was a fleeting expression, but it was there. Héctor hadn’t the least doubt of that.
“No one knows exactly what happened, Inspector.” He looked him in the eyes again, in an attempt to ooze sincerity. “The following morning, very early, a little boy screaming woke me. It took me a minute to figure out that it was Marc and I went running from my room. Marc was still screaming, from the pool.” He paused and swallowed. “I saw her as soon as I got there. I jumped into the water and tried to revive her, but it was too late.”
“Was there anyone else at the pool?”
“No. Only my nephew and I. I told him to go away, but he didn’t listen. I wanted to save him seeing the little girl’s body laid out beside him, so I stayed in the water, with Iris in my arms. I still remember his frightened little face. .”
“And the dolls.”
“How did you know?” The priest stroked his beard. He seemed truly disturbed. “It was. . sinister. There were half a dozen of them in the water.”
Little dead Irises, recalled Héctor. He waited a few seconds before continuing.
“Who put them there?”
“Iris, I suppose. .” He’d made a great effort to hold back, but the tears glinted in his tired eyes. “That little girl wasn’t well, Inspector. I didn’t know how to recognize it, despite what her mother said. I realized too late that she was disturbed. . deeply disturbed.”
“Are you telling me that this twelve-year-old girl committed suicide?”
“No!” The negative came out of the priest’s rather than the man’s mouth. “It must have been an accident. We guessed that she’d gone down to the pool by night, with the dolls, and at some point got dizzy and fell into the water.”
“We guessed? Who else was in the house?”
“It was three days before the next group of children was to arrive, so we were alone: Marc, the cook and her daughters, Iris and Inés, and I. The monitors were to turn up that afternoon: some were on a summer-long contract and worked through all the camps, but others rotated all summer. However, even the summer-long ones had gone back to the city for a few days. You can’t have young people in the country too long, Inspector. They get bored.”
Héctor sensed the priest hadn’t finished. That he had something else to tell him now his guard was down. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Inspector, Iris’s mother is a good woman, who’d already lost her husband. Thinking that her daughter had died of her own volition would have finished her.”
“Tell me the truth, Father,” said Salgado purposefully. “Forget your collar, your vows, that girl’s mother and what she could or couldn’t take.”
Castells took a deep breath and half-closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he spoke with resolve, in a low voice and almost without stopping.
“The night before, while we scolded her for running away, Iris looked at me very gravely and said to me: ‘I didn’t ask you to come looking for me.’ And when I insisted that we had suffered a lot because of her, that she’d done something very bad, she smiled at me and replied in a scornful voice: ‘You can’t imagine how bad I can be.’ ”