“By peeling off the layers of each of the businesses and establishments located at the road junction where the vanished girls had last been seen, Alicia discovered that the garage belonged to the old charity almshouse known as the Casa de la Caridad.”

“Another dead end.”

“In this case, dead is the key word.”

“I’m lost again.”

“That garage was used to house part of the fleet of hearses belonging to the city council, and there was also a storeroom for coffins and funeral sculptures. In those days, the municipal funeral services were still managed by the almshouse, and most of its menial employees, from gravediggers to young helpers, were godforsaken people: convicts, beggars, and so on. In other words, miserable souls who had ended up there because they had no one else in the world. Applying her skills, which are plenty, Alicia managed to get employed as a typist in the administrative department of the Casa de la Caridad. Soon she discovered that on the nights when there were police raids, the girls from the neighboring brothels ran to hide in the garage of the funeral services. It was always easy for them to persuade any of the poor souls who worked there to let them hide in one of the carriages in exchange for their favors. Once the danger was over, and the benefactors’ desires had been satisfied, the girls went back to their posts before daybreak.”

“But . . .”

“But they didn’t all go back. Some were never seen again. Alicia discovered that among the people working there, there was one character unlike the rest. Like her, he was a war orphan. They called him Quimet, because he had a boyish face and such a pleasant manner that all the widows wanted to adopt him and take him home with them. The fact is that this so-called Quimet was an outstanding student and already very skilled in funeral arts. What caught her attention was that he was a collector and had a photograph album of porcelain dolls that he kept in his desk. He said he wanted to get married and form a family, and that was why he was looking for the right woman, pure and clean, both in spirit and in flesh.”

“The simulation?”

“Decoy would be a better word here. Alicia started to watch him every night, and it didn’t take her long to discover that her suspicions had been well founded. It turned out that when one of those women who’d gone astray went to Quimet for help, if the girl satisfied all his requirements of height, complexion, looks, and build, far from demanding a sexual payment, he would pray with her and assure her that with his help and that of the Holy Virgin Mary, nobody would ever find her. The best hiding place, he argued, was a coffin. Nobody, not even the police, would dare to open a coffin to see what’s inside. The girls, captivated by Quimet’s childlike face and gentle manners, would lie down in the coffin and smile at him when he closed the lid and sealed them inside. There he would let them suffocate. Then he would undress them, shave their pubes, wash them from head to foot, bleed them, and inject an embalming liquid into their hearts, which he then pumped through their bodies. Once they had been reborn as wax dolls, he would apply makeup and dress them in white. Alicia also discovered that all the clothes that had been found on the bodies came from the same bridal shop on Ronda San Pedro, just two hundred meters away. One of the employees remembered having served Quimet more than once.”