The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten 2)

“How did you get in here?”

“I was in the gallery and I heard a noise. I thought it was you coming back, but when I went into the corridor I saw that this door was open. I thought you’d told me it was locked.”

“Get out of here. I don’t want you coming into this room. It’s very damp.”

“Don’t be silly. With all the work there is to do here? Come on. Look at all the things I’ve found.”

I hesitated.

“Here, come in.”

I stepped into the room and knelt down beside her. Isabella had separated all the items and boxes into categories: books, toys, photographs, clothes, shoes, spectacles. I looked at all the objects with a certain apprehension. Isabella seemed to be delighted, as if she’d discovered King Solomon’s mines.

“Is all of this yours?”

I shoo

k my head.

“It belonged to the previous owner.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. It had all been here for years when I moved in.”

Isabella held a packet of letters out to me as if it were evidence in a magistrate’s court.

“Well, I think I’ve discovered his name.”

“You don’t say.”

Isabella smiled, clearly delighted with her detective work.

“Marlasca,” she announced. “His name was Diego Marlasca. Don’t you think it’s odd?”

“What?”

“That his initials are the same as yours: D.M.”

“It’s just a coincidence. Tens of thousands of people in this town have the same initials.”

Isabella winked at me. She was really enjoying herself.

“Look what else I’ve found.”

Isabella had salvaged a tin box full of old photographs. They were images from another age, postcards of old Barcelona, of pavilions that had been demolished in Ciudadela Park after the 1888 Universal Exhibition, of large crumbling houses and avenues full of people dressed in the formal style of the time, of carriages and memories the color of my childhood. Faces with absent expressions stared at me from forty years back. In some of those photographs I thought I recognized the face of an actress who had been popular when I was a young boy and who had long since disappeared into obscurity. Isabella watched me in silence.

“Do you remember her?” she asked, after a time.

“I think her name was Irene Sabino. She was quite a famous actress in the Paralelo theaters. This was a long time ago. Before you were born.”

“Just look at this, then.”

Isabella handed me a photograph in which Irene Sabino appeared leaning against a window. It didn’t take me long to identify it as the one in my study at the top of the tower.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Isabella asked. “Do you think she lived here?”

I shrugged my shoulders.