The Time in Between: A Novel by María Dueñas, Daniel Hahn

head back to one side. And I started to cry.
    “Look at me,” he insisted a third time.
    He waited awhile, until he realized that this time I no longer had the intention, or the strength, or the courage to face him. Then I heard him get up from his chair, walk around the foot of the bed, and approach on the other side. He sat down on the neighboring bed, on which my eyes were set, his body destroying the smoothness of the sheets, and fixed his eyes on mine.
    “I’m trying to help you, ma’am. Or miss, it’s all the same to me,” he explained firmly. “You’ve gotten yourself into a tremendous bit of trouble, although I realize it’s not your own fault. I think I know how it all happened, but I need you to confirm my suspicions. If you don’t help me, I won’t be able to help you, you understand?”
    With some effort I managed to say yes.
    “Well then, stop crying and let’s get down to it.”
    I dried my tears with the turndown of the sheet. The commissionergave me a brief minute. No sooner had he sensed that my crying had abated than he was conscientiously back at his task.
    “Ready?”
    “Ready,” I murmured.
    “Look, you’ve been accused by the management of the Hotel Continental of having left a pretty sizable bill unpaid, but that’s not all. The matter, regrettably, is much more complicated. We’ve learned that there is also a charge against you from the Casa Hispano-Olivetti for fraud to the value of twenty-four thousand eight hundred and ninety pesetas.”
    “But I, but . . .”
    He gestured for me to stop talking. He had more to say.
    “There is another charge against you for stealing jewelry from a private residence in Madrid.”
    The impact of what I’d heard destroyed any capacity I had to think or answer coherently. The commissioner, aware of my confusion, tried to calm me.
    “I know, I know. Calm down, don’t trouble yourself. I’ve read all the papers you were carrying in your suitcase and from them I’ve been able more or less to reconstruct what happened. I’ve found the note you were left by your husband, or your fiancé, or lover, or whatever this Arribas was, and also a certificate confirming these jewels were given to you, and a document setting out that the previous owner of these jewels really is your father.”
    I didn’t remember having brought those papers with me; I didn’t know what had become of them since Ramiro had put them away, but if they were among my things it had to be because I had taken them from the hotel room myself without being aware of doing so at the moment of my departure. I sighed with some relief to learn that in them might perhaps be found the key to my redemption.
    “Talk to him, please, talk to my father,” I begged. “He’s in Madrid, his name is Gonzalo Alvarado, he lives on Calle Hermosilla, number nineteen.”
    “There’s no way we can track him down. Communication with Madrid is terrible. The capital is in turmoil, a lot of people are displaced: detained, fled, or leaving, or hidden, or dead. Besides, thingsfor you are even more complicated because the charge came from Alvarado’s own son, Enrique, I think that’s his name, your half brother, right? Yes, Enrique Alvarado,” he confirmed after checking his notes. “It seems a servant informed him a few months back that you had been in the house and had left quite changed, carrying some parcels: they suppose that the jewels were in them, they believe that Alvarado senior might have been the victim of blackmail or submitted to some kind of extortion. In short, a pretty ugly business, even if these documents do appear to exonerate you.”
    Then he drew from one of the outer pockets of his jacket the papers that my father had given me when we had met months earlier.
    “Luckily for you, Arribas didn’t take them with him along with the jewels and the money, perhaps because they might have been compromising for him. He ought to have destroyed them in order to protect himself, but in his