Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 19, November 1944

The Stickpin by Antonio Helú

It seems that, at the time of this writings 75 copies of every issue of EQMM find their way to a bookstore in Mexico City which specializes in American books and magazines; and that one of these 75 copies is reserved in the name of Antonio Helú. But Antonio Helú is more than a South-of-the-Border fan: he is also a writer of detective stories. Result (of our Good Neighbor policy): Señor Helú selected some of his own stories and mailed them to your Editor. Further result: your Editor forwarded the stories, in their original Spanish, to Anthony Boucher (our favorite translator). Final result: we hereby inaugurate a series of Mexican detective-crime stories — the first series of its kind ever to appear in the English language.

Meet Máximo Roldán, Mexican manhunter. Roldán is that rare type of detective who in addition to being a fluent and ingenious sleuth is also a thief of extraordinary ability. Like Arsène Lupin, Máximo Roldán will solve the most intricate and baffling murder if by so doing he can pick up a pocketful of pesos. In fact, the more you read of Roldán’s audacious adventures, the more you’ll think of him as the Mexican Lupin — a bouquet, not a brickbat, since Roldán has executed some roguish-detectival coups brilliant enough to be ascribed to the immortal Arsène himself.

For one of the most interesting parallels in detective-story plot and counter-plot, compare Antonio Helú’s “The Stickpin” with Maurice Leblanc’s “The Red Silk Scarf.” The Lupin story first appeared in 1912, the Roldán story in 1928. Alike in basic Conception, they are continents apart in execution; alike in spirit, they are nevertheless wholly individual. As Sherlock Holmes drew on Dupin, so Roldán derives from Lupin; but like Holmes, Roldán (especially when you get to know him better) achieves a stature all his own.

And now, blaze a trail with the first great detective-thief out of Mexico.

It was, of course, those two details that gave Máximo Roldán the key to the whole affair: the garter that belonged to the nephew and the stickpin that didn’t belong to anyone. But, as he so often asked himself afterwards, if it hadn’t been for those 10,000 pesos in jewels, would he ever have paid any attention to either garter or stickpin?

If the reader has ever passed along the Calle de los Millones, the Street of Millions, in that district of Mexico City known as the Colonia Roma, he may have observed that it is composed of no less than twenty houses all nearly identical. He may have seen the gardens that surround each of them on all four sides. And he may have noticed that only one of these homes violates the uniformity of gardens and façades — one house which has, instead of the railings that surround the others, a very high and thick wall which hides it almost completely from the street. He may have been astonished, not so much because this house is protected by such a wall but because the others, all belonging to millionaires, are surrounded only by easily climbed railings. And most of all he may have been startled to learn that the house with the wall is perhaps the only one on the Calle de los Millones which is not inhabited by a millionaire.

But it is unlikely that the reader knows the street at all. It is reserved exclusively for millionaires (always excepting the house with the wall), and millionaires avoid social intercourse with anyone below their financial level. And the reader, so far as I know, has something less than a million on hand at the moment.

Thus when the crime in the Calle de los Millones became the talk of the town, there were few men who had a clear idea of the locale or of the circumstances in which it was committed. You had to be content with the details which the afternoon papers brought out on the very day of the crime. And these were hardly detailed enough.

This is roughly what the papers said:

That was all.

But among these facts were two items which aroused Máximo Roldán’s attention as soon as he had read the details. Two items which caused him to seize the telephone, call the victim’s home, ask for the Chief of the Security Commission, and say (at the risk of being taken for a madman):

“Hello?...The Chief of the Security Commission?... If you please, sir, do they have a dog in the house?... I said, is there in the dog in the house where the murder took place?... Yes, a dog... No, this is not a gag; I’m completely serious. Is there a dog in the house?... Hello?... Hello?”

The Chief had hung up. Máximo Roldán called back.

“Chief of the Commission?... Please listen, sir; if I am to discover the murderer, you must tell me if there is a dog in the house... No, you don’t know me... Indeed, you don’t... Please! It all depends on this. Because there must NOT be a dog, don’t you see?... I tell you no, you don’t know me... Yes, of course I can tell you who the murderer is — providing there is no dog... I’ll come over in person and tell you... Right away... Now: is there a dog?... No? Bravo! I’ll be right over to tell you the murderer’s name.”

And Máximo Roldán left at once for the scene of the crime.

In one of the rooms in the upper story of the murder house, the Chief of the Security Commission was listening to Máximo Roldán:

“Of course, Chief, you will have noticed the curious thing about your discovery: a garter has no logical reason for appearing as an incriminating clue on the scene of a crime. Generally speaking, incriminating clues are left as the result of a struggle, or forgetfulness, or of the nervous excitement of the moment. You might forget your gloves, your cuff-links might come loose or even your necktie; but there is no reason whatsoever that you should lose a garter. There’s only one explanation: it was left here intentionally. And if the garter is a deliberate plant, so probably are the other clues. You follow, Chief?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“But the garter is the only one of the clues that is definitely and conclusively masculine. The gloves, the cuff-links, the necktie, the stickpin — a woman might possibly wear any or all of these in certain ensembles; but she could never wear a man’s garter. These clues were planted here to distract suspicion from the real murderer; the others seemed insufficient proof of sex, so the murderer added the indisputably male garter to prove that the criminal must have been a man.”

“But there are only two men in the household; it would have to incriminate one of them.”

“I’m coming to that. Now we have the murderer trying to avert suspicion, planting various objects chosen at random, belonging to the nephew or the chauffeur or, like the stickpin, to neither of them, but always masculine objects — never feminine. At first glance these objects seem to incriminate their owners. But their mute accusation is so weak and confused that the police would never make an arrest on the strength of them. The murderer, then, was not trying to frame an individual. He was trying to frame a sex. A man in the same position would have scattered earrings and bobby pins. You understand?”

“Yes...”

“It leaps to the eye, then, that the murderer is a woman.”

“A woman?”

“A woman, Chief.”

“Hm.” The Chief of the Commission meditated for a moment. Then he said, “A woman who had ready access to the rooms of the nephew and the chauffeur.”

“Perhaps.”

“Or, of course, the housekeeper. She does the daily cleaning in their rooms.”

“Possibly.”

“ ‘Possibly’! Can’t you be sure?”

“If you’ll let me examine the room, by myself with no one to bother me, and let me question the three women who live in the house — then I’ll tell you which is the murderess.”

The Chief stared at Máximo Roldán, dubiously weighing the irregularity of his intervention against the convincing clarity of his logic. He began to pace meditatively around the room. At last he made his decision.

“You may do as you please.”

“Thanks, Chief. I’ll be right back.”

Máximo Roldán opened the door and left. “Senora!” he called to the housekeeper who was passing in the hall. “Where is the young lady? Quick I Take me to her. Matter of life and death!”

The housekeeper stood gaping at him. She whispered in a tremulous voice, “Come along. This way.” She traversed the length of the hall and stopped before the last door. “In here.”

“Thanks a lot. You may go now.” The old woman did not budge. “Don’t be afraid, señora. It’s for her best interests. I swear it.”

The housekeeper withdrew somewhat distrustfully. When she had vanished, Máximo Roldán knocked on the door and without waiting for an answer turned the knob and entered. Isabel stood in the center of the room, her eyes fixed on the opening door.

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice shook a little.

Máximo Roldán took a card from his wallet, proffered it to the girl, and said, “Here is my address. If you trust me, go to my house and show this card. They’ll let you in. Lie low until I get there.”

The girl turned pale. She stared at Máximo Roldán, trying to penetrate to the depths of his character.

“Run along. Flee, I believe, is the proper word in this situation. Here’s a note for a hundred pesos. You have your choice: my card or the banknote. Either way you can make a safe getaway. But flee you must, and at once.”

Isabel made no answer. She kept her eyes fixed on those of Máximo Roldán. His gaze did not waver. She extended her hand and took the card.

“Thank you. I trust you.”

The young man bowed and brushed Isabel’s hand with his lips. He murmured, “Why? Because you did it?”

The girl came slowly toward him, took both his hands in hers, and closed them over a bulky object.

“A notebook. Written by me. Read it. Goodbye.”

Máximo Roldán left the room on the run and entered the bedroom where the murder had taken place. There was no one there. He went to the night-table, opened the drawer, and took out the jewels. He wrapped them in a handkerchief and tied it up by its four corners. He thrust the small bundle into the rear pocket of his trousers, left the bedroom, and returned to the room where he had talked to the Chief of the Security Commission.

“Well?” the Chief demanded as soon as Máximo Roldán appeared. “Did you manage to learn anything?”

“I think so,” Máximo Roldán answered. He stood by the window, from which he could see the street door in the wall. “I think I can tell you who the murderer is.”

“All right,” the other said impatiently. “Let’s have it.”

Máximo Roldán kept his eyes on the garden. “You will recall, Chief, that in addition to the clues which belonged to the nephew and the chauffeur, there was one — the stickpin — which belonged to neither. You remember?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” Máximo Roldán went on. His fingers drummed nervously against the windowpane. “The stickpin did not belong to the victim either.”

“So...?”

“So, since it did not belong to any of the three men in the household, the stickpin—”

“— must have come from outside,” the other interrupted.

A woman’s figure scurried across the garden, opened the street door, and disappeared. Máximo Roldán gave a little sigh and turned to the Chief of the Security Commission. “Exactly; it must have come from outside.”

“Then it was an outside job, and the murderer is a man after all.”

“Not at all. We established that it is a woman; I don’t need to go over that. There are three women here: the victim’s sister, his daughter Isabel, and the housekeeper. On the night of the murder all three had ready access to the rooms of the two men, since all three knew that the nephew and the chauffeur would be out all night. One of them is guilty. That one had in her possession a stickpin — an article of jewelry generally affected by young men who dandify themselves for one purpose: to please the girls.”

“Caramba! Then—”

“Yes, Chief. Neither the dead man’s sister nor the housekeeper is young enough to be in touch with such a youth, who might, say, give a girl such a stickpin as a memento or let her take it in a playful moment. There is only one woman in this house who fulfils the conditions: the youngest.”

“The daughter Isabel?”

“Excellent, Chief. The daughter Isabel, exactly.”

An impressive silence followed this announcement. The Chief had no comment. He seemed to balance the enormity of the unknown’s accusation against the inevitability of his reasoning. At last he opened the door, cast a glance along the empty hall, took a whistle from his pocket, and blew three blasts. Then he closed the door and returned to Máximo Roldán.

“There’s something I still don’t understand. Will you tell me why you asked me on the telephone if there was a dog in the house?”

“It’s very simple. The existence of a dog would have torn down all my structure of logic. Who could be sure that a playful puppy might not have dragged to the scene of the crime the garter, the necktie, the gloves, and even a stranger’s stickpin? This may seem a childish-hypothesis; but it had to be disproved. Once it could be struck out, my deductions were established as certain.”

The door opened and a man in uniform came in. “You want something, Chief?” he asked.

“Yes. Call together all the women in the house.”

“Very well.”

“Put a man on the street door with orders to stop any woman who tries to leave.”

“Very well.”

“That’s all.”

“Very well, chief.” The policeman left.

The Chief of the Security Commission walked up to Máximo Roldán. He contemplated him for a moment. Then he put his hands on Máximo Roldán’s shoulders and asked, “You still insist on not giving me your name?”

“No use, Chief. It won’t do you any good — at the moment.”

“And later?”

“Later...? You’ll know some day.”

“It’s up to you. But I should like to know now.”

They were silent a moment. Suddenly Máximo Roldán said, “Doesn’t it strike you as strange, Chief, that the daughter Isabel should be the murderer? Have you any idea what the motive could have been for... parricide?”

The Chief thought a moment. “You’re right,” he said, with a certain astonishment. “It’s terrible!” Then after another pause for thought, “It’s impossible!”

Máximo Roldán smiled. “I thought my reasoning seemed logical to you.”

“Yes, but...”

“But now you’re beginning to have your doubts. Is that it?”

“All right,” the Chief of the Security Commission demanded brusquely. “Can you explain the motive?”

“If you’ll allow me, I think I can.”

“I’m listening,” said the other.

Máximo Roldán took from his pocket the notebook which the girl had given him. “Always, at all times, from every source — in the newspaper articles, in the statement of the housekeeper, in the sister’s statement — you have heard that girl called the daughter Isabel, until finally you’ve grown so used to it that you call her that yourself; never once has she been mentioned as the daughter of the murdered man or simply his daughter. Everyone, including the newspapers, influenced by the manner in which the witnesses made their statements, has referred to the household as the sister, the nephew, and added: the daughter Isabel, the Chauffeur Alfredo. This omission of names in the first group, dealing with indisputable relatives — remember, this is all from the point of view of those who, like the house-keeper, knew the dead man and his relationships intimately — this omission of names in the first group indicates the necessity, in the second group, of adding their names to the title of the position which they held in the household: Alfredo held the position of chauffeur, Isabel held the position of daughter. The housekeeper, referring to each of them, says, ‘This lady is the dead man’s sister, this gentleman is his nephew,’ just like that, without having to add a name; but she comes to the others and says, ‘This man is the chauffeur Alfredo, this young lady is the daughter Isabel.”

The Chief of the Security Commission listened attentively. He neither moved nor breathed. He drank in the words that flowed from the lips of Máximo Roldán.

“The dead man himself calls our attention to it. Take a careful look at the account book which you found in his room and which you showed me when I arrived here. There he writes, to quote from memory, ‘Daily allowance to my sister...’ ‘Monthly allowance to my nephew...’ ‘Expenses of my daughter Isabel.’ And observe that he did not do so to distinguish between one daughter and another, because we know of no daughter other than the girl who passed as such, Isabel. You follow me, Chief?”

“Yes. But I still don’t see—”

“— the motive?”

“Yes. I should think, on the contrary, that Isabel would be deeply grateful to the dead man. Didn’t he take her in and educate her and love her as though she were his own daughter?”

“But that was not the case. Isabel was not taken in by the old man, nor did she have any cause for gratitude. The surface picture was simply contrived to conceal the true facts.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Here the true drama begins, Chief. Some ten or twelve years ago a certain Procurator of Justice issued an edict authorizing crimes passionels as ‘the legitimate defense of honor.’ In accordance with this edict, a man could kill his wife and her lover with impunity. He was not punished, he was not even tried. Rather he was all but urged to commit the crime. And murderers, in the name of ‘the legitimate defense of honor’ increased. You remember?”

“Perfectly. But why should you? Surely you were only a little boy then.”

“I was indeed. But of late I’ve been looking through the newspapers of those days for reports of famous crimes. And around that time there occurred one of these crimes passionels, endorsed by the edict of the honorable Procurator. It was on this street, in this house. Instead of the large wall there was then a railing around the garden. The master of the house came home one night unexpectedly and found his wife in the arms of another man, under one of those orange trees in the garden. He did not lose his equanimity, he did not get excited. With complete control of his nerves, with astonishing sangfroid, he took a revolver from his pocket and fired. The first to fall was his wife. The lover tried to climb the railing and flee, but a second shot brought him down. Later the master of the house had the railing torn down and this wall erected to protect him from the curiosity-seekers who gathered around the place to make their comments on the site where the lovers fell.

“That’s as much of the story as you can learn from the newspapers. But it seems that the husband managed to find out that the little girl, whom he had always considered his daughter, was not his. Partly to avoid even more scandal than he was already enduring, partly to continue his revenge, he kept this fact secret from the public. And thus it was that he had living at his side the daughter Isabel, whom he humiliated and tortured, little by little slaking his thirst for revenge.”

“Anyone would say you’d seen it all happen,” the Chief of Security observed.

“The girl slowly became aware that that man was not her father. She began to hate him. Even when she was a child she felt that she was unjustly treated. And once she knew that she was not obliged to feel for him the natural affection which a child owes its father, she was filled with such a fierce joy that she could find only one means of expressing her emotion without danger: she wrote over and over again in her little notebook:

as when children discover a particular way of jumping that delights them and go on jumping until they’re exhausted.”

The Chief of the Commission of Security fixed his gaze on the little notebook which Máximo Roldán had taken out of his pocket when he began to talk.

Máximo Roldán nodded. “This is the notebook, Chief. You may observe the development that was going on in the girl as the years went by. That first phrase was followed by another:

and then others that indicate progressively the state of her spirit:

and later on these others, still more terrible, marking a new discovery:

until we reach the last, which decided the old man’s fate:

All these phrases constantly reiterated, taking possession of the girl, flowing through her very being, ever feeding her hatred and intensifying her decision to kill the man who had murdered her parents and was mistreating her — And then came the dénouement.”

“Where did you find this notebook?” the Chief asked.

“In the girl’s room, when I went to question her.”

“You managed to take it without her noticing?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“What?” the Chief of the Security Commission exclaimed.

“She wasn’t there,” Máximo Roldán repeated.

The Chief of the Security Commission leaped for the door. Máximo Roldán held him back for a moment.

“Just a minute, Chief. I meant to tell you something else: the jewels have disappeared.”

“What!”

“Yes. They aren’t in the night-table any more.”

This time the Chief of the Commission waited no longer. He opened the door and started running down the hall.

Máximo Roldán left in his turn. Tranquilly he descended the stairs, reached the garden, strolled across it, and stopped before the policeman who was stationed at the street door.

“The Chief says you’re not to leave this spot for a single moment.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Under penalty of arrest, you’re not to let any woman leave, for any reason.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. And if you need it, call for help. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine. Oh — as soon as you see the Chief, tell him not to worry.”

“Not to worry, sir?”

“Everything’s all right. I have the jewels with me.”

“Oh. Yes, sir.”

“See you later.”

And Máximo Roldán went on to the corner, turned it, and vanished.