The Flanders Panel

“Look closely at the board. It doesn’t matter what the white rook now on b5 did, because the other white rook, the one on b6, would already have been holding the black queen in check. Do you see?”

Cesar studied the game again, this time for quite a long time.

“I still don’t get it,” he said at last, demoralised. He’d drained his gin and lemon to the last drop, while, at his side, Julia was smoking cigarette after cigarette. “If it wasn’t the white rook that moved to b5, then all your reasoning collapses. Wherever the piece was, that nasty queen had to move first, because she was in check before…”

“No,” said Munoz. “Not necessarily. The rook could, for example, have taken another black piece on b5.”

Encouraged by that possibility, Cesar and Julia studied the game with new heart. After a few more minutes, Cesar glanced up and gave Munoz a respectful glance.

“That’s right,” he said, astonished. “Don’t you see, Julia? A black piece on b5 was protecting the queen from the threat posed by the white rook on b6. When that black piece was captured by the white rook, the queen was under direct threat.” He looked back at Munoz for confirmation. “That must be it. There’s no other possibility.” He looked at the board again, doubtfully. “There isn’t, is there?”

“I don’t know,” Munoz replied honestly and, when she heard that, Julia uttered a desperate “Good God!”

“You’ve just formulated a hypothesis,” he continued, “and when you do that, you always run the risk of distorting the facts to fit the theory, instead of finding a theory that fits the facts.”

“What then?”

“Well, that’s just it. So far we can only consider as a hypothesis the idea that the white rook took a black piece on b5. We still have to ascertain if there are any other variants and, if so, discount all the impossible ones.” The gleam in his eyes grew dim. He seemed more tired and grey as he sketched an indefinable gesture in the air, which was part justification and part uncertainty. The confidence he’d displayed in explaining the moves had disappeared; now he seemed shy and awkward. “That’s what I meant,” he said, avoiding Julia’s eyes, “when I told you I’d run into problems.”

“What’s the next step then?” asked Julia.

Munoz regarded the pieces with a resigned air.

“A long, painstaking examination of the six black pieces that are off the board. I’ll try to find out how and where each one was taken.”

“That could take days,” said Julia.

“Or minutes, it depends. Sometimes, luck or intuition lend a hand.” He gave a long look at the board and then at the Van Huys. “But there’s one thing I’m sure of,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“Whoever painted this picture or thought up the problem, had a very peculiar way of playing chess.”

“How would you describe him?” asked Julia.

“Who?”

“The absent player. The one you just mentioned.”

Munoz looked first at the carpet and then at the painting. There was something like admiration in his eyes, Julia thought. Perhaps the instinctive respect a chess player always feels for a master.

“I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, as if unwilling to be pinned down. “Whoever it was, he was very devious. All the best players are, but this one had something else: a particular talent for laying false trails, for setting all kinds of traps. And he enjoyed doing it.”

“Is that possible?” asked Cesar. “Can you really judge the character of a person by the way he behaves when playing?”

“I think you can,” replied Munoz.

“In that case, what do you think of the person who thought up this game, bearing in mind that he did so in the fifteenth century?”

“I’d say” – Munoz was looking at the painting, absorbed – “I’d say there was something ‘diabolical’ about the way he played chess.”

VI Of Chessboards and Mirrors

And where is the end?

You’ll find that out when you get there.

Ballad of the Old Man of Leningrad

Since they were double-parked, Menchu had moved over into the driver’s seat by the time Julia got back to the car. Julia opened the door of the small Fiat and dropped into the seat.

“What did they say?” Menchu asked.

Julia didn’t reply at first; she still had too many things to think about. Staring into the traffic flowing down the street, she took a cigarette out of her handbag, put it to her lips and pressed the automatic lighter in the dashboard.

“There were two policemen here yesterday,” she said at last, “asking the same questions as me.” When the lighter clicked out, she held it to her cigarette. “According to the man in charge, the envelope was delivered to them that Thursday, first thing in the afternoon.”

Menchu’s hands were gripping the wheel hard, her knuckles white amongst the glittering rings.

“Who delivered it?”

Julia slowly exhaled.

“According to him, it was a woman.”

“A woman?”

“That’s what he said.”

“What woman?”