The Mystery of the Sintra Road E-Book

Eça De Queiroz

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Potugal's first detective novel which now has classic status

Das E-Book The Mystery of the Sintra Road wird angeboten von Dedalus und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

The Author

Eça de Queiroz (1845–1900) is considered to be Portugal’s greatest novelist. Dedalus has embarked on a project to make all his major works available in English in new translations by Margaret Jull Costa.

Published so far are: The Mandarin, The Relic, The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers, The Crime of Father Amaro, Cousin Bazilio, The Maias, The City and The Mountains, and Alves & Co.

The Translators

Margaret Jull Costa

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers. She won the Portuguese Translation Prize for The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa in 1992 and for The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersão in 2012, and her translations of Eça de Queiroz’s novels The Relic (1996) and The City and the Mountains (2009) were shortlisted for the prize; with Javier Marias, she won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for A Heart So White, and, in 2000, she won the Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Jose Saramago’s All the Names. In 2008 she won the Pen Bookof-the-Month Club Translation Prize and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Maias by Eça de Queiroz.

Nick Phillips

Nick Phillips is a New Zealander with a passion for the Portuguese language and the literature of Portuguese-speaking countries. His collaboration with Margaret Jull Costa on the translation of The Mystery of the Sintra Road mirrors the co-authorship of the original novel.

Contents

Title

The Author

The Translators

Prefatory Letter to the Publisher

Doctor ***’s Account

The Letter from Z.

From ‘F.’ to the Doctor

Z.’s Second Letter

The Tall Masked Man’s Account

The Revelations of A.M.C.

Her Confession

The Concluding Revelations of A.M.C.

The Final Letter

Afterword

Two Authors : Two Translators

Prefatory Letter to the Publisher of‘The Mystery of the Sintra Road’ Prior to the Publication of a Third Edition in 1884.

One summer evening fourteen years ago, while sitting before our respective cups of coffee in a café in the Passeio Público and slowly succumbing to the melancholy of Lisbon as it dozed off to a tearful pot-pourri of tunes from Verdi’s I Due Foscari, we made up our minds to do something and make a loud enough noise to wake the whole place up, with said noise taking the form of an extraordinary novel to be sent blaring out across the Baixa from the dizzy heights of the Diário de Notícias.

To that end, without plan, without method, without training, without qualifications, without style, merely huddled round the ‘glass tower of the Imagination’, we began to concoct this book, one of us in Leiria, the other in Lisbon, each equipped only with a ream of paper and a fund of good humour and audacity.

It seems that Lisbon really did wake up, out of kindness perhaps or curiosity, for, having read The Mystery of the Sintra Road in the pages of the Diário de Notícias, its citizens then went out and bought it as a book. And today, gentlemen, you send us the proofs of a third edition, asking us what we think of that work written all those years ago, a time we recall now with great nostalgia.

The happy reign of João VI had already ended. Obliging Garção, merry Tolentino, and much-mourned Reis Quita had all passed away. Beyond the Passeio Público, which, like the rest of the country, had been evacuated by Junot’s troops, it fell to M. Octave Feuillet to stimulate our imaginations. The name Flaubert was unknown to writers of popular serials. Ponson du Terrail cried out in the wilderness of minor journals and lending libraries. M. Jules Claretie published a book entitled… (well, no one nowadays can remember what it was called) of which the critics so movingly wrote: ‘Here is a work that will endure!’ In short: we were young.

What do we think today of the novel we wrote fourteen years ago? We think – praise the Lord! – that it is quite atrocious, and that neither of us, whether as novelist or critic, would wish its like on anyone, not even on our worst enemy, because it contains a little of everything that a novelist ought not to include, and almost everything that a critic would wish to see removed.

We will spare you – so as not to make matters worse by filling three volumes – the enumeration of all its faults! We shall draw a discreet veil over its masked men of various statures, its mysterious doctors, its fair-haired English captains, its dangerous countesses, its tigers and elephants, its yachts on which are hoisted white linen and lace handkerchiefs like flags of fantasy, its sinister glasses of opium, its elegant corpses, its romantic costumes and, finally, its horses spurred on by riders in pale-grey capes who disappear into the dust of incredible adventures as they gallop through Porcalhota and off into the distance!

All these things – though pleasant, invariably sincere and even, on occasions, moving – are displeasing to their now more mature creators, who long ago averted their gaze from the misty horizons of sentimentality in order to devote themselves to the patient, humble study of the stark realities of their own street.

Why then do we allow the reprinting of a book, which, being entirely imagined and invented and based not at all on real life, goes entirely counter to our campaign in favour of analysis and objective certainty?

We consent because we believe that no workman should be ashamed of his work.

Legend has it that Murat, when King of Naples, ordered the old riding-whip he had used as a chasseur in Napoleon’s army to be hung in the throne room, and that he would often point first to his sceptre and then to the whip, saying: ‘That is where I started.’ This glorious tale only confirms us in our view – not, of course, that we are applying it literally to ourselves. As thrones, we still have the same old chairs we sat in fourteen years ago, with no ornamental canopy to cover us; and our greying heads have not, as yet, been encircled by any crown, be it of laurels or of Naples.

It is a source of modest satisfaction that, since we finished this book, we have not ceased to labour, not even for a day, not until now, with its unexpected reappearance in a third edition, a guise it wears with an impudent air of triumph that rather suits it!

Then, as now, we wrote honestly, that is, as well as we could; and it was perhaps that love of perfection – our artistic integrity – that explains the public’s warm feelings for this book of our youth.

There are two more reasons for this new edition.

The first is that the reprinting of this book – which was quite unlike any other when it first appeared – may contain, for a generation greatly in need of it, a useful lesson in independence.

Far from being inventive, audacious, revolutionary and iconoclastic, the younger generation that followed us seem servile, imitative, copy-cat and altogether too deferential to their teachers. New writers nowadays cannot take a step forward without stepping into someone else’s footprints. Such pusillanimity makes their work seem hesitant and dull. To those of us on our way out, the upcoming generation gives the impression of having emerged from the cradle already old and to be entering the writerly profession on crutches.

We long ago burned the letters from our first romantic excesses, but we want those from our intellectual extravagances to remain. At the age of twenty, one should be irreverent, not, perhaps, in order to make the world progress, but at least to stir it up a little. There is time aplenty in old age to be prudent, correct and sedentary.

In art, the waywardness of the young and their rebellious resistance to tradition is indispensable if new life is to be breathed into inventiveness, creative power and artistic originality. Preserve us from literature that lacks the spark of youth! For like old people who have gone through life without ever having experienced the shock of a single adventure, there will be nothing in it worth remembering. Furthermore, for those who, in their maturity, were wrenched by duty from the pleasures of spontaneity and forced into the harsh, sad, mean land of exactitude, where, instead of the splendour of heroic deeds and the beauty of passion, they find only shrivelled characters and wretched feelings, for them, it would be a great comfort to be able to hear once in a while, on sunny mornings, along with the returning Spring, the golden bee of fantasy buzzing in the blue, as it used to do in the good old days.

Our other reason for not rejecting this book is that it remains a witness to the close collaboration of two old men of letters, whose friendship has lasted for twenty years in the midst of a crumbling society. And while that may not be a triumph for our intellect, it is a source of sweet joy for our hearts.

Lisbon, 14 December, 1884.

Yours in friendship,

Eça de Queiroz

Ramalho Ortigão

Doctor ***’s Account

I

To the Editor of the Diário de Notícias

Sir,

I am placing in your hands my personal account of an extraordinary affair in which I became involved in my capacity as a doctor, and I ask that you publish – in whatever way you deem appropriate – at least the substance of what I set before you.

So grave, so veiled in mystery, so seemingly steeped in criminality are the events I am about to describe, that I feel it is vital to make the facts available to the general public, as a way of providing the only key to unlocking what seems to me a truly horrifying drama, even though I was only present at one act, and know nothing of the preceding scenes, nor how it may end.

Three days ago, I was travelling back to Lisbon from the outskirts of Sintra in the company of F., a friend of mine, at whose house I had been staying for a few days.

We were riding horses kept by F. on his estate and which were due to be returned to Sintra by a servant who had set off for Lisbon the previous evening.

It was late afternoon as we crossed the moors. The melancholy of both the hour and the place coloured our mood, and we gazed silently about us as we trotted slowly along.

About halfway between São Pedro and Cacém – at a deserted spot whose name I do not know because I so seldom pass that way – we came across a coach stopped in the road.

It was a coupé, painted dark green and black and drawn by a pair of chestnut horses.

The coachman, who wore no uniform, was standing in front of the horses with his back to us.

Two fellows were bent over the wheels on the side of the coach we had to pass, and seemed to be intently studying some detail of the steering mechanism.

A fourth individual, also with his back to us, was standing near the ditch on the other side of the road, where he appeared to be looking for something, perhaps a stone to place beneath the wheel.

‘It’s all down to the disgraceful state of this road,’ observed my friend. ‘The axle’s probably broken or else a wheel’s come adrift from the hub.’

By this time, we were passing between the three men I mentioned, and F.’s conjectures had barely left his lips when the horse I was riding veered suddenly and fell to the ground.

The man beside the ditch, and to whom I had paid little attention, being too engrossed in studying the stationary carriage, had caused my horse to fall by snatching at its reins and tugging as hard as possible, while, simultaneously, driving the animal in the opposite direction with a hefty kick to its flank.

My mount, an inexperienced yearling that handled poorly at the best of times, slipped and tumbled over when it made that rapid, enforced about-turn.

The unknown man gave another tug at the reins to make the horse get up and, while helping me to my feet as well, he asked with some concern if I had hurt my leg, which had remained pinned beneath my horse when it fell.

He spoke in the modulated tones of the educated. The hand he offered me was smooth and delicate. A black satin mask of the kind used at masquerades covered his face, and I seem to recall that he wore a narrow black crêpe band about his hat. As demonstrated by the way he had caused my horse to fall, he was an agile and extremely strong young man.

I sprang to my feet and, before I could utter a word, I saw that during the time it had taken for me to be unseated from my horse, a scuffle had broken out between my companion and the other two individuals who had been pretending to examine the wheels and who also had their faces covered with masks like that of the man I have already described.

You may well say, sir, that this is pure pot-boiler fiction, worthy of Ponson du Terrail! But that is because life, even on the road from Sintra, can at times seem more like a novel than artistic verisimilitude can tolerate. But I am not creating art, I am recording facts.

Seeing one of men grab the bridle of his horse, F. had forced the man to let go by dealing him a blow to the head with the handle of his riding crop, which the other masked man immediately managed to wrench from his hand.

Neither of us was carrying a weapon. Nevertheless, my friend had pulled from his pocket the heavy key to the main door of his house in Sintra and, digging his spurs into his horse, he was stretching out along its neck as he attempted to use the key as a weapon to strike the head of the masked man still holding the bridle.

The fellow, however, kept a firm grip on the rearing horse with one hand, drew out a revolver with the other, and pointed it at my friend’s head, saying calmly:

‘Steady now!’

The man whom F. had set upon with the riding crop had felt obliged to sit down for a few minutes, leaning against the carriage door, visibly dazed but not wounded, for F.’s riding crop was made only of light whalebone with a handle of plaited horsehair. The man had now got up from the ground and put his hat back on.

By this time, the assailant who had felled my horse and helped me to my feet was also holding a pair of small silver-handled pistols, the kind the French call coups de poing and which can pierce a door at thirty paces. He now cordially offered me his arm, saying affably:

‘It seems a far more sensible option to accept the seat I have available in the carriage than for you to continue on horseback or to have to walk from here to the pharmacy in Porcalhota dragging a bruised leg.’

I am not readily intimidated by a show of weapons. I know what a gulf lies between threatening to fire a gun and actually doing so. I could move my bruised leg easily enough and F. was riding a strong horse; we are both of us robust types; we could perhaps have held out for another ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, during which time it was highly likely, on such a heavily frequented stretch of road, that some other travellers would arrive and help us out.

I must confess, though, that I felt greatly intrigued by the very unexpectedness of this strange adventure.

There was nothing in our previous lives to suggest that anyone would want to exert pressure on us or threaten violence.

For reasons I cannot satisfactorily explain, it did not seem to me at the time that the people surrounding us had robbery in mind, far less homicide. I’d had little chance to observe them closely and had only heard them utter a few fleeting words, but they appeared to me to be decent people. Considering these events calmly, I realise that my conjecture was based on various disparate details, which, however glancingly, I had made an unconscious attempt to analyse. For example, I remember that the lining of the hat belonging to the masked man whom F. had lambasted with his riding crop was made of pale grey satin. The one who had pointed the revolver at F. was wearing a pair of pewter-grey gloves fastened with two buttons. The one who had helped me up had very narrow feet shod in patent leather boots; his close-fitting nut-brown trousers had adjustable tabs at the waistband; and he was wearing spurs.

Notwithstanding my inclination to give up the fight and get into the coach, I asked my friend – in German – if he thought we should resist or surrender.

‘Surrender! Surrender!’ said one of the strangers gravely. ‘So that we can save precious time! Please come with us! One day you will know why we donned these masks and why we ambushed you. We give our word that tomorrow you will be safe in your homes in Lisbon and your horses will be back in Sintra two hours hence.’

After some reluctance, which I helped to overcome, F. dismounted and climbed into the coach. I followed him.

They gave us the most comfortable seats. The man who had been standing in front of the pair of coach-horses now roped together our two mounts; the one who had made my horse stumble climbed onto the coachman’s seat and took up the reins; the other two joined us in the carriage and settled into the seats facing ours. Then they closed the wooden blinds covering the side-windows of the carriage and drew a green silk curtain across the inside of the front window.

At the moment of our departure, the man who had taken up the reins tapped on the window and asked for a cigar. The other two men passed him a straw-work cigar box, and he tossed the mask he had been wearing through the same opening. Then we set off at full speed.

As I was getting into the carriage I thought I caught a glimpse in the distance of a horsedrawn omnibus and a cabriolet approaching from the direction of Lisbon. I don’t think I am deluding myself when I say that the occupants of these coaches must have seen our horses, one of which was grey and the other chestnut, and may perhaps be able to identify both the carriage in which we were travelling and the person who served as our coachman. As I mentioned earlier, the vehicle was green and black. The polished mahogany blinds had four narrow oblong slits at the top, in the form of a cross.

I do not have time now to write the rest of my story and still be able to despatch this letter by today’s mail. I will, therefore, continue later. And I will reveal, if you have not already guessed it, my reason for concealing both my own identity and that of my friend.

II

24 July, 1870

I have just seen the letter I addressed to you published in full on the page reserved for popular serials. In view of this, I will try to ensure that any future letters do not exceed the space available in that section of the newspaper.

I neglected to date my earlier letter, thus leaving it unclear as to when exactly we were ambushed on the Sintra Road. It was Wednesday last, the 20th of the current month of July.

I will move on swiftly to tell you what took place in the carriage, omitting no detail and trying to reconstruct our conversation, as far as possible using the actual words.

The carriage set out towards Sintra. I assume, however, that it made a number of wide detours along the way, so smoothly done that we did not even notice any sudden variations in the speed and pace of the horses. Only certain perceptible climbs and descents led me to suppose this, although we continued to travel along a smooth macadamised road. Moreover, there were slight changes in the amount of light filtering in through the green silk curtain, indicating to me that the coach was changing its position relative to the sinking sun.

Their clear intention was to confuse us as to which route we were taking, and the fact is that only two minutes after setting out, I would have been quite unable to say whether we were travelling from Lisbon to Sintra or from Sintra to Lisbon!

The light inside the carriage, though dim, was enough for us to be able to make out certain objects, for example, I could read the numerals on my watch. It was a quarter past seven.

The stranger opposite me was also looking at his watch, but he failed to put it back in his waistcoat pocket properly and it fell out again almost immediately and remained hanging on its chain in full view for some time. It was a very singular watch that could not easily be mistaken for any other and which, when I describe it, will be instantly recognisable to anyone who might have seen it before. The lid was made of smooth black enamel, with, in the centre, underneath a helmet, a gleaming gold coat of arms.

We had only been travelling for a few minutes when the man seated opposite F., the one who had urged us so vigorously to accompany them, said to us:

‘I hardly need say that you can have every confidence as regards your personal safety.’

‘Of course,’ my friend replied. ‘We are not in the least worried. I hope that you will do us the justice of believing that we were not coerced into coming by fear. Neither of us is such a child as to be terrified by the sight of your black masks or your firearms. You have just been so kind as to assure us that you mean us no harm. We, for our part, ought to advise you that were your company, at any point, to become disagreeable to us, nothing would be easier than for us to tear off your masks, smash the blinds and invite you, in the presence of the first coach that happens by, to hand over your weapons before placing you in the custody of the first parish law officer we meet. It seems right to me, therefore, that we begin by respecting the friendly feelings that have brought us together. Otherwise we would all become grotesques: you the terrifiers and we the terrified!’

While F. was saying these words with an air of cheerful good will, the man he was speaking to seemed to become increasingly angry. He was compulsively joggling one leg up and down, meanwhile resting one elbow on his knee, stroking his beard and looking intently at my friend. Then, leaning back as if he had changed his mind, he said:

‘Yes, you’re right and perhaps, in your shoes, I would do and say the same.’

Then, after a brief pause, he continued:

‘What would you say, gentlemen, if I were to prove to you that this mask, which you choose to see as mere burlesque, is, rather, confirmation of the seriousness of the matter that brought us here? Imagine if you will, one of those amorous liaisons of which there are so many. A married woman, for example, whose husband has been away travelling for a year. This lady, well known in Lisbon society, is pregnant. What is to be done?’

There was a silence.

I took advantage of the brief pause that followed this somewhat primitive exposition of the problem to declare:

‘Send the husband a deed of separation in law. Then, if she is rich, she can go off to South America or Switzerland with her lover. If she is poor, she can buy a sewing machine and slave away in a garret somewhere. That is the fate of women, both rich and poor alike. Anyway, death comes quickly enough in such circumstances, whether in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva or in a rented room in Rua dos Vinagres. One dies just the same, of consumption or tedium, worn out from work or pining away in paradise.’

‘And the child?’ enquired the masked man.

‘The child, since he is both outside the family and outside the law, is a poor wretch whose misfortune derives in large part from a society that remains unable to define the responsibilities of the clandestine father. If the parents are as hopeless as the law and have to resort to ambushing people on the Sintra Road in order to ask them what they should do, the child would be better off being left at the gates of a foundling hospital.’

‘You speak as fluently as any distinguished philosopher. As a physician, however, you are perhaps forgetting that in this situation, there is a small formality to comply with before you leave the child on the foundling wheel: you first have to bring him or her into the world.’

‘That is for the specialists. You have not, I believe, brought me here in that capacity.’

‘You are mistaken. It is precisely because you are a doctor that you are here. It is precisely because of your medical skills that we ambushed you on the Sintra Road and are now taking you in secret to give succour to someone in need.’

‘But I am not a practitioner.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You are not in practice: so much the better for us. We will not be inconveniencing any patients by having you abandon them for a few hours while you pursue this adventure with us. You qualified in Paris and even published a thesis on surgery that attracted much attention and drew high praise from the Faculty. Let us pretend, therefore, that you are going to help at a birth.’

My friend F. began to laugh:

‘But I have no medical qualifications nor have I published a thesis,’ he said. ‘Would you care to tell me what role I am to play?’

‘You want to know the reason why you are here? Well, I shall tell you.’

At this point, however, the carriage came to an abrupt halt and our companions, startled, sprang to their feet.

III

I heard the sound of our coachman jumping down from his seat, followed by that of the two lanterns being opened one after the other and a match being struck on the steel rim of the wheel. Then I heard the spring on the little door that you close after lighting the candles and a faint creaking as he adjusted the lanterns on their stands.

I did not initially understand why we had stopped to carry out this task when night had not yet fallen and we were travelling along a good road.

It can be explained, however, as a precautionary measure. Our coachman preferred not to have to stop where there might be other people about. If we were to pass through a village, the lights being lit in the streets – and which we would be able to see through the curtain or the cracks in the blinds – might give us a clue as to our whereabouts. By lighting the lamps early, any such discovery would be thwarted. As we passed between buildings or high walls, the projection of the bright light from the lanterns onto those walls and its reflection back into the coach would make it impossible for us to know whether we were driving through a village or along a well-lit street.

As soon as the lanterns were lit and the carriage had set off again, the masked man who had promised to explain to F. the reason why he had been chosen to accompany us, proceeded to do so:

‘Imagine I am the lover of the lady whom I described. The matter is known only to three friends of mine, close friends, childhood playmates, comrades from university, constant companions, each of us ready to make whatever sacrifice that friendship might demand. Alas, none of those friends is a doctor. We had to find one and, at the same time, ensure that my secret would not be passed on to other people, whoever they might be, a secret that involves a man’s love and a lady’s honour. My child will probably be born tonight or tomorrow morning. Since no one must know the identity of the mother or even suspect, by some clue, who she might be, it is vital that the doctor does not recognise the people he is speaking to or, indeed, the house to which he has been taken. That is why we are wearing masks and why you gentlemen must allow us to keep the shutters closed and the curtain drawn, and also why we will blindfold you before you leave the carriage and enter the house we are going to.’ He turned to face F. and continued: ‘Now do you understand why you are here? We could not prevent you from accompanying your friend from Sintra today, nor could we postpone this visit or leave you at the point on the road where we kidnapped the doctor. You would easily find some means to follow us and discover who we are.’

‘Most ingenious,’ I observed, ‘but you clearly have little regard for my discretion.’

‘To entrust someone with someone else’s secret is to betray the owner of the secret,’ the masked man countered.

F. agreed wholeheartedly with this point of view and said so, praising the masked men’s spirit of romantic adventure.

The very sincerity with which he spoke these words appeared to trouble the stranger somewhat. It seemed to me that he had expected it would prove far harder to persuade us and so was rather put out by F.’s sudden acquiescence. He who had always been ready with a prompt retort and a glib word now found himself unable to respond to the confidence invested in him, and from then until we reached our destination, he kept a silence that must have weighed heavily on his normal talkative, expansive self.

It should be said, however, that shortly afterwards, the coach left the macadamised road on which we had been travelling and continued along what was either a local road or a short cut. The ground was stony and potholed. Given the jolting of the carriage – which, under the expert hand of the driver, continued to proceed at a gallop – and the racket made by the wooden shutters banging against the window frames, conversation was well nigh impossible.

At last, we turned onto a smooth road. The carriage stopped for a second time, and the coachman climbed quickly down from his seat, calling:

‘Coming!’

He returned shortly afterwards and I heard someone say:

‘They’re taking some girls to Lisbon.’

The coach proceeded.

Could it be some kind of customs barrier near the city? Perhaps our driver had made up a plausible excuse so that the officials would not come and open the carriage door? Would the phrase I had overheard be intelligible to my companions?

I cannot say for certain.

Soon afterwards, the carriage drove onto some kind of paved area and two or three minutes later, it stopped. The coachman knocked on the window:

‘We’re here,’ he announced.

The masked man, who had not uttered a word since the moment I mentioned earlier, took a handkerchief from his pocket and said to us with some embarrassment:

‘I do apologise for this, but that’s how it must be!’

F. leaned towards him and the fellow put the blindfold over his eyes and I, in turn, was blindfolded by the man opposite me.

We then climbed down from the coach and were led by our companions into a house and down a corridor. As far as I could deduce from the way in which we had to stop and make way for someone coming in the opposite direction, it was clearly a very narrow corridor.

‘Shall I take the coach?’

‘Yes, do,’ answered the voice of our guide.

We paused for a moment. The door through which we had entered was locked, and the man who had served as coachman went on ahead saying:

‘Let’s go!’

We shuffled forwards, went up two stone steps, then turned to the right and reached a staircase. It was an old, steep, wooden staircase covered with a narrow carpet. The steps were very worn and their once sharp projecting edges had grown smooth and round. Along the wall beside me ran a cord that served as a banister; it was made of silk and, to the touch, felt little used. The air was damp and had the musty smell common to uninhabited houses. We climbed eight or possibly ten stairs, turned left at a landing, climbed yet more stairs and stopped on the first floor.

No one had said a word, and there was a sombre quality to the silence that enveloped us like a cloud of gloom.

I heard the carriage moving off and felt a sense of dread, a childish anxiety.

A key turned in a lock, we crossed the threshold and the door was locked again behind us.

‘You may take off your blindfolds now,’ said one of our companions.

I uncovered my eyes. It was night.

One of the masked men struck a match, lit five candles in a bronze candelabra, picked it up, went over to a piece of furniture covered by a travelling rug, and lifted the rug.

I could not contain my shock and let out a cry of horror. There before me lay a man’s dead body.

IV

I feel exhausted and on edge as I write to you today. The obscure affair in which I find myself involved, the ill-defined sense of danger surrounding me, the tension as I try to divine the truth behind this adventure, the sudden disruption to my normal, sedate routine – all this is creating a state of unhealthy agitation that I find hard to bear.

As soon as I saw the corpse I asked abruptly:

‘What does this mean, gentlemen?’

The tallest of the masked men replied:

‘There is no time for explanations. Forgive us for having misled you, but, please, doctor, take a look at this man! What’s wrong with him? Is he dead? Is he sleeping off some narcotic?’

He spoke these words in a voice filled with such urgent, anxious supplication that, given the entirely unforeseen nature of the situation, I went over to examine the corpse.

It was lying on a chaise longue, its head on a cushion, its legs casually crossed at the ankles, one arm bent and resting on its chest, the other hanging loose, the motionless hand touching the floor. There was no sign of a blow, a bruise or a wound or any sign of bleeding; there were no signs of choking or strangulation. The expression on his face did not indicate suffering, convulsion or pain. His eyelids were lightly closed, as if he were asleep. He was cold and deathly pale.

I prefer not to give a detailed account of what I found on the corpse. That would mean overloading this brief narrative with scientific explanations. Even without a thorough examination, and the supporting data that only close analysis or a post mortem can provide, it appeared to me that the man was under the now fatal influence of a narcotic.

‘What did he drink?’ I asked, out of purely medical curiosity.

I was not thinking at the time about a possible murder or about the mysterious incident that was keeping me there; I wanted only to know the sequence of events that had brought about that drugged condition.

One of the masked men picked up a glass that had been placed on an upholstered chair beside the chaise longue.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This perhaps?’

The liquid in the glass was clearly opium.

‘The man is dead,’ I said.

‘Dead!’ one of them repeated, trembling.

I lifted the corpse’s eyelids; the pupils were horribly dilated.

I looked hard at the men one by one and said calmly:

‘I don’t know why you brought me here. I can be of no use as a doctor, and as a witness I could be dangerous.’

One of the masked men came over to me and said in a grave, insistent tone:

‘Tell me, from your experience, do you really think the fellow is dead?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And what do you believe was the cause of death?’

‘Opium, but I imagine that men who go about wearing masks and kidnapping people on the Sintra Road must know that better than I.’

I was annoyed. I wanted to provoke some reaction that would bring this awkward situation to an end.

‘Forgive me,’ asked another, ‘how long do you think he’s been dead?’

I did not reply. I put on my hat and began to draw on my gloves. Beside the window, F. was tapping his foot impatiently. There was silence.

Everything conspired to give that moment a highly sinister quality, the room heavy with upholstery, the prostrate corpse with its deathly pallor, the masked figures, the lugubrious stillness of the place, the bright lights…

‘Gentlemen,’ said the tallest of the masked men, the one who had driven the coach, ‘you must realise that if we had killed this man we would know perfectly well that a doctor was useless and any witness inopportune! We feared, obviously, that he was under the influence of some narcotic, but wanted confirmation that he was dead. That’s why we brought you here. As for the circumstances of his death, we know as little as you. We have a good reason for not handing the case over to the police, for surrounding your visit to this house with such mystery and violence, and for blindfolding you, and that is because we were afraid that the inevitable police investigation might lead to someone whom we are honour-bound to protect from being charged either as a criminal or an accomplice. If this explanation sounds…’

‘Your explanation is utterly absurd!’ shouted F. ‘A crime has been committed here. The man is dead, you masked blackguards! You brought us to this isolated house against our will, and this whole mysterious business simply reeks of crime, and we want no part in it, however involuntary. We have nothing further to do here. Please open that door.’

One of the masked men laughed at F.’s violent response.

‘Oh! So you mock me, do you!’ roared F.

And lunging furiously at the window, he tried to wrench open the catches. Two of the men hurled themselves upon him, overpowered him, dragged him across to an armchair and let him fall into it, panting and shaking with rage.

I sat through all this quite impassively.

‘Gentlemen,’ I observed, ‘please note that while my friend reacts with anger, I respond only with apathy.’

And I lit a cigar.

‘Damn it, man, do you take us for murderers!’ one of them cried angrily. ‘Don’t you believe in honour, in a man’s word? If the rest of you don’t take off your masks, then I will! They need to see our faces! I don’t wish to be thought a murderer, not even while concealed behind a piece of cardboard! Gentlemen, I give you my word that I do not know who killed this man.’

And he made a furious gesture, at which his mask came unfastened and slipped down. He immediately turned away, instinctively covering his face with his hands. The others surrounded him, glancing quickly over at F., who remained unmoved. One of our captors who had not yet spoken, the one who had sat opposite me in the carriage, kept eyeing my friend with fear and suspicion. There was a long silence. The masked men were talking quietly together in a corner. I, meanwhile, was examining the room.

It was small, its walls hung with pleated silk, and the soft, deep carpet invited one to run about on it barefoot. The furniture was upholstered in red silk with a single diagonal green stripe, as appears on the coats-of-arms of bastard sons. The curtains at the windows hung in wide, loose folds. There were jasper vases, and, pervading everything, the warm, penetrating aroma of verbena and marechala.

The dead man was young and had fine, attractive features and a fair moustache. His tailcoat and waistcoat had been removed too, revealing a ruffled shirt front and gleaming pearl buttons; his light-coloured trousers were narrow and well cut. On one foot he was wearing a patent leather shoe, and his silk socks were patterned with large white and grey squares.