“We don’t know, Doña Mariana. Our duty is to explore all the possibilities. Going back to the letters . . . When he showed you the first one, can you remember his reaction? Did the minister say anything that struck you as unusual?”

The secretary shook her head. “He didn’t say anything in particular. He didn’t seem to think it was important. He put it in a drawer and told me that if any more letters like that one arrived, I should hand them to him personally.”

“Unopened?”

Doña Mariana nodded.

“Did Don Mauricio ask you not to mention the existence of those letters to anyone?”

“There was no need. I’m not in the habit of talking about Don Mauricio’s business to those whom it doesn’t concern.”

“Does the minister usually ask you to keep secrets, Doña Mariana?” asked Alicia.

Valls’s secretary pressed her lips together but didn’t reply. Instead she turned impatiently to Vargas. “Do you have any more questions, Captain?”

Disregarding Doña Mariana’s attempt to avoid her, Alicia leaned forward to place herself directly in the secretary’s line of vision. “Did you know that Don Mauricio was planning to ask the head of state for Sebastián Salgado’s pardon?”

The secretary looked Alicia up and down, no longer making any effort to hide her disdain and hostility. Then she looked at Vargas for support, but he had his eyes fixed on his notebook. “Of course I knew,” she said.

“Didn’t it surprise you?”

“Why should it have surprised me?”

“Did he say why he’d decided to do that?”

“For humanitarian reasons. He’d heard that Sebastián Salgado was very ill and did not have long to live. He didn’t want him to die in prison. He wanted him to be able to see his loved ones and die with his family around him.”

“According to the police report,” Alicia objected, “after almost twenty years in prison Sebastián Salgado no longer had any living relatives or close friends.”

“Don Mauricio is an ardent defender of national reconciliation, of healing the wounds of the past. Perhaps you find that hard to understand, but there are some people who are blessed with Christian charity and generosity of spirit.”

“That being so, do you know whether Don Mauricio has requested other similar pardons during the years you’ve worked for him? Perhaps for some of the hundreds or thousands of political prisoners who passed through the prison when he was in charge?”

Doña Mariana wielded a frosty smile, sharp as a poisoned knife. “No.”

Alicia and Vargas glanced briefly at one another. Give up, Vargas’s look said. It was clear they weren’t getting anywhere pursuing that line of inquiry.

Alicia leaned forward once more and again caught Doña Mariana’s uncooperative gaze. “We’re almost done, Doña Mariana. Thank you for your patience. The minister’s appointment you mentioned earlier, with the sales representative of Editorial Ariadna—”

“Señor Cascos.”

“Señor Cascos, thank you. Do you know what was going to be discussed?”

Doña Mariana stared at her as if making an effort to ignore how absurd the question seemed to her. “Matters concerning the publishing house, of course.”