“A toy for the girl,” Vargas explained.

Soon the profile of the main residence rose before them, an overlarge mansion that seemed to have been conceived to dwarf and frighten visitors. Two large houses, one on either side of it, stood at a distance of about a hundred meters from the mansion. Vargas stopped the car opposite the wide staircase leading to the main entrance. A butler in uniform, waiting with an umbrella at the foot of the stairs, instructed them to drive over to a nearby building. As Vargas drove down the path to the garage, Alicia was able to take in the whole outline of the mansion.

“Who pays for all this?” she asked.

Vargas shrugged.

“You and I, I suppose. And perhaps Valls’s wife, who inherited a fortune from her father, Enrique Sarmiento.”

“The banker?”

“One of the bankers of the Crusade, as the papers called it,” Vargas specified.

Alicia remembered having heard Leandro mention Sarmiento. How he and a group of bankers had financed the Nacionales during the civil war, lending them in large measure funds looted from the defeated side, in a mutually beneficial agreement. “I’ve heard that the minister’s wife is ill,” she said.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

The garage attendant opened one of the doors and signaled for them to park the car inside. Vargas lowered the window, and the guard recognized him. “Leave it wherever you like, boss. And the keys in the ignition, please . . .”

Vargas gave him a nod and drove into the garage, a structure consisting of a succession of vaults supported by wrought-iron columns stretching away into an impenetrable darkness. A string of luxury cars was lined up along the walls, the shine of their chromium plating vanishing into the distance. Vargas found a gap between a Hispano-Suiza and a Mercedes-Benz.

The garage attendant had followed them and gave him the thumbs-up. “Nice one you’re driving today, chief,” he remarked as they got out of the car.

“As the young lady was coming today, the bosses let me take the Ford,” said Vargas.

The attendant looked like a cross between a homunculus and a mouse. He appeared to be held upright inside his blue overalls thanks to a jumble of dirty rags hanging from his belt and a film of grease that preserved him from the elements. After staring at Alicia from head to toe, the attendant bowed ostentatiously and, when he thought she didn’t notice, gave Vargas a conspiratorial wink.

“Great guy, Luis,” Vargas said to Alicia. “I think he lives here, in the garage itself, in a shed behind the repair shop.”

They walked toward the exit, passing Valls’s museum pieces on wheels, while Luis, behind them, busied himself polishing the Ford energetically with rag and spit while enjoying Alicia’s gentle swaying and the shape of her ankles.

Vargas covered Alicia with the umbrella they’d been offered as the butler came over to meet them.

“I hope you’ve had a good journey from Madrid,” said the butler solemnly. “Doña Mariana is expecting you.” He bore that cold and vaguely condescending smile of career servants who, as the years go by, start to believe that their masters’ lineage has tinged their own blood blue and granted them the privilege of looking down on others. As they walked the distance separating them from the main house, Alicia noticed that he kept glancing at her surreptitiously, trying to make out from her gestures and clothes what her role was in the show.