“Is the young lady your secretary?” he asked, fixing his eyes on Alicia.

“The young lady is my boss,” replied Vargas.

The servant dropped his arrogant manner, which was replaced with a stiff expression worthy of being framed. His lips remained sealed and his eyes glued to his shoes the rest of the way.

The main door led to a large entrance hall with a marble floor, from which staircases, corridors, and galleries branched out. They followed the butler to the reading room, where a middle-aged woman was waiting with her back to the door, facing the view of the garden under the rain.

The woman turned as soon as she heard them come in, giving them an icy smile. “I’m Mariana Sedó,” she said as the butler closed the door behind him and retired to enjoy his momentary bewilderment. “Don Mauricio’s personal secretary.”

“Vargas, from Central Police Headquarters, and this is my partner, Señorita Gris.”

The secretary took her time conducting the inevitable inspection. She began with Alicia’s face, registering the color of her lips, then the cut of her dress, and finally the style of her shoes with a grimace of intolerance and contempt, quickly buried in the serene and sorrowful expression the circumstances demanded. Motioning them to sit down on a leather sofa, Mariana chose a chair, which she placed near a small table bearing a tray with a steaming teapot and three cups. As the secretary proceeded to fill the cups, Alicia assessed the feigned smile behind which Doña Mariana took cover and concluded that Valls’s eternal guardian exuded a malicious aura, midway between that of a fairy godmother and a voracious praying mantis.

“How may I help you?” asked Doña Mariana. “I’ve spoken to so many of your colleagues these last few days that I’m not sure there’s anything left to say.”

“We’re grateful for your patience, Doña Mariana,” said Alicia. “We’re well aware that these are difficult moments for the family and for you.”

The secretary nodded with an air of patience, exhibiting the studied demeanor of the faithful servant to perfection. Her eyes, however, betrayed irritation at having to deal with second-rate subordinates. The way in which she focused on Vargas and avoided acknowledging Alicia added another layer of contempt. Alicia could see that Vargas hadn’t missed the slightest detail: she decided let him take the lead while she listened.

“Doña Mariana,” he began, “from the official report and your statement to the police, we’re assuming that you were the first person to notify the authorities of the absence of Don Mauricio Valls.”

The secretary nodded. “The day of the masked ball,” she explained, “Don Mauricio had given a number of permanent staff the day off. I took advantage of this to go to visit my goddaughter in Madrid. The following day, although Don Mauricio hadn’t told me he would need me, I returned in the early morning, at about eight o’clock, and began to go through his mail and his datebook as I always do. I went up to the office and saw that the minister wasn’t there. A few minutes later, one of the maids informed me that his daughter Mercedes had said her father left by car very early with Vicente Carmona, his chief bodyguard. I found it odd, because when I went through his datebook I noticed that Don Mauricio had added, in his own handwriting, an informal meeting that morning at ten here, in Villa Mercedes, with Pablo Cascos, the sales director of Ariadna.”