The Mystery of Rio (23 page)

The quality of the prints on the silver handle—as the expert was able to ascertain by a superficial exam by the naked eye—was excellent. One of them—a right thumb mark—was especially sharp, and this was where Baeta began, gently sprinkling the black contrastive powder he had helped develop with his fellow forensic experts in Los Angeles.

It was an extremely rare arch formation present in only about ten percent of the population. And the comparison, after photographing the dusted fingerprint, was easier than he had imagined: it was identical to those contained on Aniceto's fingerprint cards, prepared by Baeta himself.

For the purposes of revenge, this would suffice. But the expert still had a question to settle: he needed to know, he needed to be certain, whether Guiomar had delivered the whip to the capoeira of her own free will. Therefore, it was necessary to analyze the other surviving prints on the silver handle—not so well preserved, true, but quite acceptable.

To the expert's relief, a summary examination ruled out Guiomar: his wife had whorls in the corresponding fingers, while those on the handle were shaped like loops. These did not match Aniceto's prints either.

Perhaps they belonged to an officer of the First District, in league with the capoeira in the break-in of his house, a case he could make only if he admitted to having taken the whip to Catete.

Baeta could have stopped there. The scientific spirit, despite offering great comfort in times of inner turmoil, can also sometimes leads us to discover more than is strictly necessary. Baeta conjectured that those could still be the old prints he had examined at the time of the crime at the House of Swaps.

And the expert, who was thinking about writing an article on the controversial issue of the durability of fingerprints on smooth surfaces when exposed to air, decided to investigate further. He pulled the secretary's prints (taken from the corpse) and photographs containing Fortunata's prints (or those he assumed were hers because they were the only ones different from the victim's on the bottle of wine, the wine glasses, and the whip's silver handle).

And, on staring at the prints attributed to the prostitute, in a meticulous comparative analysis, his mental acuity could not help but take over, and soon he noticed an interesting detail: Fortunata's right thumb also had an arch formation, like her brother's. And that was not all. He noticed (it was not for nothing that his visual memory was so renowned) two minutiae, two very characteristic traits, near the center, or nucleus, of the fingerprint, which made those prints more similar than normal: a line interrupted by the so-called “lake” formation, immediately above another line, with an intervening “spur” shape.

Baeta had the strange feeling that he had already noticed those details before, that he had already seen that design. He placed Fortunata and Aniceto's fingerprints side by side.

At first glance, they were the same. The expert, with some anxiety, undertook a thorough, careful analysis to exclude any possibility of error. After comparing twenty-one minutiae of the two thumbprints—a number that would be considered excessive by any other expert (who would have been satisfied with twelve or sixteen)—Baeta concluded that they were the same prints, that, absurdly, they were identical.

I repeat: Baeta concluded that the siblings Fortunata and Aniceto Conceição were the first known case of individuals who had exactly the same fingerprints.

 

Although dactyloscopy had already convinced most scientists as to its powers of unequivocal identification, and was officially accepted in countries like Argentina (which had the pioneering case solved by fingerprint analysis in 1892) and the United States (with several celebrated cases, such as the Crispi trial, solved in spectacular fashion by Joseph Faurot in 1911), it was still a developing science in 1913. And the main postulate of dactyloscopy—that no two people have the same fingerprints, even if they are twins—was not yet a consensus.

The main opponents to the technique had, I must admit, a good argument: no one had proved, in strictly theoretical terms, the aforementioned axiom; there was merely a lack of any evidence to the contrary. There were no reported cases of two individuals who had rolled the same fingerprint, but that did not necessarily prove the impossibility of such a coincidence in the world, even if it were only one sole example. The discovery of such prints was, perhaps, just a matter of time.

For Baeta, however, the question had to be treated as a statistical problem. He himself, in 1910, had arrived at very similar results to the Frenchman Balthazard in calculating the probability of two individuals exhibiting fifteen minutiae, or fifteen identical digital features, in the same position. This number was so small, so infinitesimal, that between the decimal point and the first significant digit, there would have been forty-four zeros.

Practical evidence of this was revealed at the Crispi trial, when twin brothers exhibited distinct fingerprints before a jury.

Therefore, Baeta—one of the luminaries in the field, who had placed Rio de Janeiro among the pioneering cities in the recognition and employment of this technique—was incapable of believing such a coincidence was possible.

The first thing that came to his mind, a fact that he noticed during the initial investigation, was that the strangulation of the secretary by force applied to the neck would have been more consistent with the actions of a man. The second thing was that legend, still in vogue, that the House of Swaps, which had been home to the Marquise of Santos, had a secret passageway that connected to it to the Quinta da Boa Vista.

Baeta now had a much stronger case, with much more conclusive evidence. Putting Aniceto at the crime scene—with fingerprints on various objects—was no longer simply fraud motivated by revenge: it was laying bare the true facts.

Perhaps, with the complicity of Madame Brigitte and Dr. Zmuda (or perhaps even one of the nurses), the capoeira had entered the House through the legendary passageway, directly under the stairs, where the Polish doctor had improvised his wine cellar.

After all, witnesses agreed that Fortunata had retrieved a bottle of red wine from there. The fingerprints, however, were those of Aniceto. Aniceto and Fortunata were very similar in appearance—they were siblings, they were twins. It had probably been Aniceto who had returned to the room with the bottle, disguised in Fortunata's clothing.

When they announced Baeta's presence at the House of Swaps, Madame Brigitte's reaction was one of utter fear. And the doctor's reaction was not very different—he immediately stored his famous black notebooks, which he never ceased to peruse, under lock and key. Baeta was the last person they both wanted to see, or should have. And the reason, which the reader will know in due time, was unspeakable.

Zmuda and Brigitte were already somewhat apprehensive in those days because of problems Aniceto had introduced at the House. First, collective Thursdays were seeing fewer and fewer participants. The husbands and male partners (Baeta included) were discouraged because the women were all focusing their attention on the capoeira. Only those who were content to watch the infidelity of their wives—and they were not in the majority—were still attending the parties.

More worrisome still was the hypothesis, suggested by one of the nurses, and which soon had everyone convinced, that Aniceto must be related to Fortunata, that perhaps they were siblings, because their resemblance was so striking.

Madame Brigitte decided, at the time, to confess to Miroslav Zmuda the full story of the letter, whose secret she had concealed so as not to upset him: Fortunata had not, in fact, been a friend of Cassia's. She had been placed at the House by Cassia, but at the request of a certain old
mandingueiro
, a character who was said to be well known in the city, a man by the name of Rufino.

Madame Brigitte, who had asked Hermínio to investigate this man and what interests he might have in all of this this, did not have good news to report: Hermínio had failed to meet with the old man, and he discovered that he had gone into hiding in the forest, a fugitive from the police.

This really upset Zmuda. It was very unpleasant that, so soon after the crime had been committed, a likely brother of the killer had begun attending the House. And it was very unfortunate that it had to be Aniceto, his “problem” Aniceto, Aniceto the phenomenon, who was giving Miroslav Zmuda unthinkable opportunities to refine his theories.

The Polish doctor and Brigitte received Baeta expecting the worst.

“I'll be blunt: did you know that Aniceto, who is Fortunata's brother, was in this house on the day of the secretary's murder, inside the victim's room?”

That was not the subject that Brigitte and Zmuda feared most. Still, they were none the more comfortable for it. They admitted that the suspicion had come up—i.e., that the two were siblings, given their resemblance. But never that they had acted together. Nevertheless, they thought it impossible for him to have entered the House on the day of the crime.

The expert recalled the legend of the secret passageway. Zmuda opened his arms:

“Really, Baeta!”

Baeta was not convinced, and they had to take him down to the cellar, under the stairs. The passageway, of course, was not found. But the expert did not give up on his theory, and he went back upstairs to question the nurses. He wanted to ascertain whether they had really seen Fortunata pick up the bottle of red wine, whether it could have been a man disguised as a woman.

People's memories, in general, especially after a certain amount of time has elapsed, and under some form of emotional suggestion, can easily be confused. And some of the nurses, faced with an attractive man who always treated them well, and an important person, the head of a police forensics department, who stated so categorically that the initial version of their story was impossible, began to reconsider and admit that the person who had passed by them with the bottle in hand might not, in fact, have been, certainly had not been, Fortunata.

Baeta seemed satisfied. And turned his attention to the owners of the house once again.

“I have no interest in doing you any harm. Later we'll figure out how he got in. The important thing is that we arrange for the girls to provide new statements.”

Madame Brigitte and Dr. Zmuda could no longer cancel certain previously scheduled programming, certain services the House had committed to provide. Thus, they maintained the usual discretion concerning the matter. However, seeing that Baeta's intentions were actually friendly, they decided to return the favor. And they revealed something else, which they figured might be relevant: the contents of Cássia's letter.

The expert, however, did not seem to give the slightest importance to this information.

 

This novel will end shortly and so far I have reflected little on my favorite character—the beautiful, the true, the coveted Guiomar. Few women have been able to integrate a city so well, so perfectly into their being. Thus, being so much in agreement with the character of the city she epitomizes, it is only natural that Guiomar, too, was founded twice.

The first Guiomar we know well: Baeta's Guiomar, the accommodating wife, who even at the House of Swaps, paradoxically, derived pleasure from
not
swapping. The second Guiomar began on a specific date—August 21st, 1913—at that same House of Swaps, when she felt the irresistible urge to be slapped by her husband, stimulated by the virility of a stranger, who, only a few steps away, was slapping another woman.

This Guiomar, the second one, the definitive Guiomar, is the one that is going to precipitate the final action—an action that was predicted, or even provoked, by the palm reader on Marrecas Street.

“Over the life line, there's a cross; next to it, five lines: Two up, three down. You're about to cheat on your husband.”

Guiomar's indignation said it all. Something had entered her psyche; something new was operating within her. And she realized—even though she did not want it to happen, even though she could not admit it to herself—that Baeta would not be at her side at her moment of great transition.

This did not mean that the expert had not been important in the process. It had been his idea to take home the silver-handled whip—even if he had not used it in the best way, in the precise way she yearned for it to be used.

Baeta, however, had always been a great lover. In the House of Swaps, she watched, enraptured, as her husband slapped and spit on a woman. The problem was not Baeta; the problem was not Guiomar. The problem was being Baeta and Guiomar, in those respective roles.

And so, on that fateful September 11th, Guiomar, unknowingly, for all intents and purposes, met the character, and for the briefest of moments she fixed her gaze on him. The man, the chosen character, stared back at her. If not for Aniceto, perhaps the affair would have had a different ending together.

When Guiomar found out, on Thursday, October 2nd, that they would not be going to the House of Swaps—the only place she could hope to meet the stranger again—she lost it. There is no better example of the devastating power of the Aniceto “phenomenon.”

I return here to the story that was interrupted a few pages back. I am referring to the woman who, on a dark street leading to Flamengo Beach, by Catete, was pushed into a horse-drawn coupe and was driven to Alfandega Street (in the stretch formerly known as the Quitanda do Marisco), where she was delivered to a man who was waiting in a townhouse to have his way with her.

Before, I told you that Hermínio was our kidnapper. Now, I tell you that Guiomar was the woman. It is not difficult to deduce who the man was.

If some readers marvel at her audacity, perhaps it is because they do not know what she had been capable of a few days before: Guiomar had written to Madame Brigitte, describing a certain man who had done such and such things with two women at the last party she had attended on September 11th. She asked to meet with this man. And she suggested a whip. And Madame Brigitte, as we saw, outdid herself in directing this particular scene.