“Maybe it’s Señorita Puri who has awoken your wilder side.”

Before Vargas could reply, the abovementioned returned, carrying a plateful of madeleines and a large cup of steaming coffee, which the policeman readily accepted.

“Forgive me for serving it like this, but everything is in boxes . . .”

“Don’t worry. Thanks so much.”

“And why is it you’re moving?” asked Alicia.

“The landlord, he wants to hike up the rent. . . . He’s a greedy oaf. I hope the entire building gets vacant, and the rats move in.”

“Amen,” Vargas agreed. “And where will you go now?”

“I wish I knew. We had a verbal agreement for an office nearby, behind the post office, but the work they were doing to modify the space for us has been delayed, and we’ll have to wait at least another month. For the moment all this is going into a storage warehouse owned by the lawyer’s family.”

“And where are you going to be meanwhile?”

Puri sighed. “An aunt of the lawyer’s, who died not long ago, had an apartment on Calle Mallofré, in Sarriá, and it looks like we’re moving there for the moment. As you can see, we live from one day to the next . . .”

Alicia and Vargas looked over Brians’s decommissioned office again, taking in the air of bankruptcy it exuded. Alicia’s eyes paused on a frame containing what looked like the parody of a graduation photograph. It was a portrait of Brians as a young man, or so she imagined, surrounded by people in rags and starving prisoners shackled up to their necks. Beneath the image were these words:

Fernando Brians

Defender of Lost Causes

Alicia stood up and walked over to have a look at the tableau. Puri joined her, shaking her head. “There he is, the saint of Barcelona’s magistrates’ courts. . . . That’s a joke his classmates played on him years ago, when he was young. And he hasn’t changed. He even thinks the whole thing is funny enough to display it where the clients can see it.”

“Doesn’t the lawyer have clients who are more . . .”

“Prosperous?”

“Solvent.”

“There are one or two, but all it takes is for Don Fernando to meet some poor, godforsaken devil in the street, and he’ll bring him up to the office and sign him pro bono. . . . He’s a bleeding heart, is what he is. And this is the result.”

“Don’t worry. We’re the paying sort,” Vargas put in.

“God bless you. How are the madeleines?”

“Memorable.”

While Vargas was giving a practical demonstration of his hearty appetite, much to Puri’s delight, they heard a crash that sounded like someone bumping into something, followed by a prolonged stumble that ended in a loud curse.

Puri rolled her eyes. “The lawyer will see you right away.”

Fernando Brians looked like a public-school teacher. He wore a secondhand suit and a faded tie that had probably not been knotted afresh in weeks. The soles of his shoes shone like river stones. He cut a slender, nervous figure and despite his age still sported a good head of gray hair and penetrating eyes behind black horn-rimmed glasses—the sort that had been fashionable before the war. He looked as much like a Barcelona lawyer as his secretary Puri looked like a nun. Yet Alicia thought that despite the modest context framing his professional life, Fernando Brians retained the irreverent demeanor of those who have never been told that time has passed and they should adopt a more respectable and settled manner.