Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Club Dumas

Arturo Perez-Reverte

The Club Dumas

Arturo Perez-Reverte was born in 1951 in Cartagena. He is a television journalist who has reported on some of the worlds most dangerous crises. He is the author of two previous books, The Fencing Master and The Flanders Panel.

The Club Dumas

A Novel

Arturo Perez-Reverte

Translated from the Spanish by

Sonia Soto

CONTENTS

T he flash projected the outline of the hanged man onto the wall. He hung motionless from a light fixture in the center of the room, and as the photographer moved around him, taking pictures, the flashes threw the silhouette onto a succession of paintings, glass cabinets full of porcelain, shelves of books, open curtains framing great windows beyond which the rain was falling.

The examining magistrate was a young man. His thinning hair was untidy and still damp, as was the raincoat he wore while he dictated to a clerk who sat on a sofa as he typed, his typewriter on a chair. The tapping punctuated the monotonous voice of the magistrate and the whispered comments of the policemen who were moving about the room.

... wearing pajamas and a robe. The cord of the robe was the cause of death by hanging. The deceased has his hands bound in front of him with a tie. On his left foot he is still wearing one of his slippers, the other foot is bare....

The magistrate touched the slippered foot of the dead man, and the body turned slightly, slowly, at the end of the taut silk cord that ran from its neck to the light fixture on the ceiling. The body moved from left to right, then back again, until it came gradually to a stop in its original position, like the needle of a compass reverting to north. As the magistrate moved away, he turned sideways to avoid a uniformed policeman who was searching for fingerprints beneath the corpse. There was a broken vase on the floor and a book open at a page covered with red pencil marks. The book was an old copy of The Vicomte de Brage-lonne, a cheap edition bound in cloth Leaning over the policemans shoulder, the magistrate glanced at the underlined sentences:

They have betrayed me, he murmured.

All is known! All is known at last, answered Porthos, who knew nothing.

He made the clerk write this down and ordered that the book be included in the report Then he went to join a tall man who stood smoking by one of the open windows.

What do you think? he asked.

The tall man wore his police badge fastened to a pocket of his leather jacket Before answering, he took time to finish his cigarette, then threw it over his shoulder and out the window without looking.

If its white and in a bottle, it tends to be milk,he answered, cryptically, at last, but not so cryptically that the magistrate didnt smile slightly.

Unlike the policeman, he was looking out into the street, where it was still raining hard. Somebody opened a door on the other side of the room, and a gust of air splashed drops of water into his face.

Shut the door, he ordered without turning around. Then he spoke to the policeman. Sometimes homicide disguises itself as suicide.

And vice versa, the other man pointed out calmly.

What do you think of the hands and tie?

Sometimes theyre afraid theyll change their minds at the last minute ...If it was homicide, hed have had them tied behind him.

It makes no difference,objected the magistrate. Its a strong, thin cord. Once he lost his footing, he wouldnt have a chance, even with his hands free.

Anythings possible. The autopsy will tell us more.

The magistrate glanced once more at the corpse. The policeman searching for fingerprints stood up with the book.

Strange, that business of the page, said the magistrate.

The tall policeman shrugged.

I dont read much, he said, but Porthos, wasnt he one of those... Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and dArtagnan. He was counting with his thumb on the fingers of the same hand. He stopped, looking thoughtful. Funny. Ive always wondered why they were called the three musketeers when there were really four of them.

I. THE ANJOU WINE

The reader must be prepared to witness the most sinister scenes.

E. Sue, THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS

M y name is Boris Balkan and I once translated The Charterhouse of Parma. Apart from that, Ive edited a few books on the nineteenth-century popular novel, my reviews and articles appear in supplements and journals throughout Europe, and I organize summer-school courses on contemporary writers. Nothing spectacular, Im afraid. Particularly these days, when suicide disguises itself as homicide, novels are written by Roger Ackroyds doctor, and far too many people insist on publishing two hundred pages on the fascinating emotions they experience when they look in the mirror.

But lets stick to the story.

I first met Lucas Corso when he came to see me; he was carrying The Anjou Wine under his arm. Corso was a mercenary of the book world, hunting down books for other people. That meant talking fast and getting his hands dirty. He needed good reflexes, patience, and a lot of luckand a prodigious memory to recall the exact dusty corner of an old mans shop where a book now worth a fortune lay forgotten. His clientele was small and select: a couple of dozen book dealers in Milan, Paris, London, Barcelona, and Lausanne, the kind that sell

through catalogues, make only safe investments, and never handle more than fifty or so titles at any one time. High-class dealers in early printed books, for whom thousands of dollars depend on whether something is parchment or vellum or three centimeters wider in the margin. Jackals on the scent of the Gutenberg Bible, antique-fair sharks, auction-room leeches, they would sell their grandmothers for a first edition. But they receive their clients in rooms with leather sofas, views of the Duomo or Lake Constance, and they never get their hands or their consciencesdirty. Thats what men like Corso are for.