Chapter 3

My friend Zarco was one of the keenest criminal judges in Spain. Within
a very few days he discovered that the corpse to which this skull
belonged had been buried in a rough wooden coffin which the grave
digger had taken home with him, intending to use it for firewood.
Fortunately, the man had not yet burned it up, and on the lid the judge
managed to decipher the initials: "A.G.R." together with the date of
interment. He had at once searched the parochial books of every church
in the neighborhood, and a week later found the following entry:

"In the parochial church of San Sebastian of the village of ----,
on the 4th of May, 1843, the funeral rites as prescribed by our
holy religion were performed over the body of Don Alfonzo
Gutierrez Romeral, and he was buried in the cemetery. He was a
native of this village and did not receive the holy sacrament, nor
did he confess, for he died suddenly of apoplexy at the age of
thirty-one. He was married to Doña Gabriela Zahara del Valle, a
native of Madrid, and left no issue him surviving."

The judge handed me the above certificate, duly certified to by the
parish priest, and exclaimed: "Now everything is as clear as day, and I
am positive that within a week the assassin will be arrested. The
apoplexy in this case happens to be an iron nail driven into the man's
head, which brought quick and sudden death to A.G.R. I have the nail,
and I shall soon find the hammer."

According to the testimony of the neighbors, Señor Romeral was a young
and rich landowner who originally came from Madrid, where he had
married a beautiful wife; four months before the death of the husband,
his wife had gone to Madrid to pass a few months with her family; the
young woman returned home about the last day of April, that is, about
three months and a half after she had left her husband's residence to
go to Madrid; the death of Señor Romeral occurred about a week after
her return. The shock caused to the widow by the sudden death of her
husband was so great that she became ill and informed her friends that
she could not continue to live in the same place where everything
recalled to her the man she had lost, and just before the middle of May
she had left for Madrid, ten or twelve days after the death of her
husband.

The servants of the deceased had testified that the couple did not live
amicably together and had frequent quarrels; that the absence of three
months and a half which preceded the last eight days the couple had
lived together was practically an understanding that they were to be
ultimately separated on account of mysterious disagreements which had
existed between them from the date of their marriage; that on the date
of the death of the deceased, both husband and wife were together in
the former's bedroom; that at midnight the bell was rung violently and
they heard the cries of the wife; that they rushed to the room and were
met at the door by the wife, who was very pale and greatly perturbed,
and she cried out: "An apoplexy! Run for a doctor! My poor husband is
dying!" That when they entered the room they found their master lying
upon a couch, and he was dead. The doctor who was called certified that
Señor Romeral had died of cerebral congestion.

Three medical experts testified that death brought about as this one
had been could not be distinguished from apoplexy. The physician who
had been called in had not thought to look for the head of the nail,
which was concealed by the hair of the victim, nor was he in any sense
to blame for this oversight.

The judge immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of Doña Gabriela
Zahara del Valle, widow of Señor Romeral.

"Tell me," I asked the judge one day, "do you think you will ever
capture this woman?"

"I'm positive of it."

"Why?"

"Because in the midst of all these routine criminal affairs there
occurs now and then what may be termed a dramatic fatality which never
fails. To put it in another way: when the bones come out of the tomb to
testify, there is very little left for the judge to do."

In spite of the hopes of my friend, Gabriela was not found, and three
months later she was, according to the laws of Spain, tried, found
guilty, and condemned to death in her absence.

I returned home, not without promising to be with Zarco the following
year.