THE BURIED CRIME

THE BURIED CRIME by MARA MASOLINI

Agatha, a young woman of twenty five years, had disappeared since months, without a trace, no one had heard anything from her or about her,  when a voice had begun to be heard in the small town. The voice ( rumors) said that Agatha had not gone away of own free will, and even no one had taken her away___or had kidnapped her___, but instead she had been killed by her family, who then had buried her body (corpse) in the cellar of their house. These rumors had also reached the police. However, who knows why, the policemen who were investigating, instead of looking for the girl’s body in the cellar, they went to look for it in the meadow which was in front of the house where the Agatha’s family still lived. Agatha’s family consisted of her mother and her two brothers.                                                                                                                                                   Mildred had known Agatha only by sight, but she had been very intrigued not so much by the girl’s disappearance, as by the rumors she had heard about her disappearance. Could it really have gone as it was rumored , that the poor girl had been killed by her mother and her brother, who would have later buried her in the cellar? And then, but why did the policemen, who had come, having heard the rumors, not have looked for the dead girl in the cellar, but in the meadow, in which they had also drug, but where they couldn’t find Agatha’s corpse.            Agatha’s younger brother, Paul, was a boy of fourteen years to which Mildred, had given private lessons in both Latin and mathematics. Since Mildred had never been in confidence either with Agatha’s mother or Agatha’s elder brother, she decided to talk with Paul. So she invited the boy to her home and prepared him a rich, wonderful snack, with the sweets she knew Paul was greedy for :chestnuts with cream, sacher, strawberry ice cream, walnut and almond pastries….

“ You know why I wanted to meet you, don’t you?” Mildred said as soon as Paul arrived.

“ I think it is for…for my sister…for Agatha” Paul said and, after a moment of silence, he, thoughtful, shaking his head, added: “ Agatha….when she there was no one cared of her….

Since she had disappeared, it seemed that all people had started to look for her….”

It was not easy for Mildred to find out from Paul what he could know about his sister’s disappearance. The boy continued to repeat that he didn’t know anything about Agatha missing, he didn’t know if she had gone alone, on her own free will, or if someone had taken her away.

When Mildred remembered him what the voices (rumors) said____that Agatha had been her family to kill her____Paul replied that it wasn’t true, that is was all slander.

“ You repeated that you don’t know how, why your sister is missing, then, if you don’t know anything, how can you be sure it wasn’t your mother and your father, or one of them, to make her disappear? “ Mildred pointed to  him . Paul had become nervous, very agitated at this remark, but he had kept on repeating that it was not true that Agatha had been killed by her mother and her brother.                                                                                                                                     “ Well, Paul, when I heard those rumors, I never thought that, even if Agatha had really been killed by someone from her family ( I never thought) that you could get in with her killing……But now, to hear you speaking so, it makes me think that you too could have participated in the killing of Agatha.”Mildred dared to say, since she was impatient that what the boy knew___what he couldn’t not know____came out. Then Paul started to protest, shouting, that no, never could he hurt his sister, and he burst into tears, while he kept on shouting: “No, I would never have been able to do anything bad to Agatha!”

“Oh, of course, I believe you could never have hit your sister….you not, I cannot see  you hitting her, killing her, okay….But come on, tell me the truth…it was they, your mother and your brother, who killed Agatha, wasn’t?” Mildred said, impatient that  what the boy knew, what he couldn’t not know, came out. Then it took a little more insistence from her and Paul, weeping, admitted that it was they, his mother and his brother, who had killed poor Agatha. He had not seen them kill her, but he had seen Agatha dead : there was blood, a lot of blood on her face, on her head, on her neck, on her chest. Those there, his mother and his brother, who would have preferred that Paul knew nothing about ….the end of Agatha, that he had not even seen her mangled body, had kept him locked up into a trap door, a real hole, in the cellar for months. Not only, they had threatened him, he could say that they had promised him to make him do the same end of Agatha, if he dared to tell anyone about what he had seen.    Mildred had to reassure the boy that she would never and never  have mentioned his name, even if she had decided to tell someone about what he had told her, about what he had seen, and also she would never have referred his name if it happened to her to talk about Agatha, her disappearance…. Paul was trembling like a leaf, while, crying, he kept on repeating: “ Oh, they will kill me….they will kill me, too”

No, Paul didn’t know where they, the murderers, had taken or hidden the Agatha’s body.

Mildred asked him: “ Why did your mother and your brother kill Agatha? Do you know why they killed her? And they….did they tell you why?” Paul answered, speaking with difficulty, with a cropped and, at the same time, strident voice,  that Agatha had been killed since she was having

an affair…with someone…with a man with whom she shouldn’t have…..

“ Ah, but listen.....who would have thought it? Agatha….she was having a love affair with a married man…..I barely knew her….oh, but I never could imagine it” Mildred was really surprised by….by what she thought to have understood. “ Do you know who this man was?” she asked, taken by an implacable curiosity. Then Paul, very embarrassed, avoiding to look at her, with a broken and trembling voice, alternating sobs with words, said that Agatha was the lover of….of her mother’s partner….And after saying it, he dropped his head on the table at which he was sitting.

The news was a shock for Mildred too, but she tried not to show it to Paul. She knew who the partner of Agatha’s mother was, he was named Karl V., a big man with a very bad reputation, for being violent, bully…….Then Karl V. too could have taken part in her killing. Mildred asked Paul about it: did he know if also Karl V. had participate , or if he had been present when Agatha was killed? But Paul knew nothing about this, since he had not witnessed the crime. He had seen Agatha after she had been killed, and that she had been killed was evident. As for who had killed her, from how they have behaved with him, he would however have understood ( he couldn’t help

But understand that they, his mother and his brother, had killed her. Who else besides they two could be involved in the crime he didn’t know.

Years went by, nothing was known about Agatha, she was not found either alive or dead.

As time went by people stopped  wondering what could have happened to her. Even the searches to find the girl probably ceased or, in any case, ( they) were no longer carried forward with conviction .

The mother and the brother of Agatha, despite the rumors which had said that they were the ones who had killed the girl, were never investigated.

 After an almost long time from her disappearance, no one thought Agatha could be still alive. Even the rumors ( the voices) that there had been, those rumors saying that Agatha had been killed by her family, that they would then have buried her in the cellar, even those voices had ceased, as if they were been fading little by little.

It seemed that , over time, the poor girl, in addition to having disappeared, she had even been forgotten, as if she had slipped away with time, that time of every day  that keeps on slipping away from day to day and you don’t even notice it.

Shortly before Mildred left the town to move to a country in Northern Europe, she remained surprised reading the news that Agatha’s family, who had reported the girl disappearance, had not long after withdrawn the complaint. As if…..at least they didn’t care anything about Agatha.

She had been away from Italy for years when Mildred happened to read on a magazine that Agatha’s older brother had been arrested for murder. He had killed his mother at the end of a violent dispute. In the article reporting the fact it was written that the murderer’s younger brother was an established lawyer, but no mention was made of Agatha’s disappearance.

One May morning in Prague, among the crowd thronged in the square, waiting for the hour to strike, their eyes fixed on the astronomical clock, jewel inlaid over time, on the tower, Mildred caught a glimpse of his face, only for a few moments. Even Though it had been so many years . and he was no longer a teenager, she was sure to have recognized him: he was Paul. Slipping into the crowd she had reached him.

Sitting in a bar they had talked friendly about this and that for some time. When Paul had mentioned , but only in passing, to his brother, who was in prison, Mildred, instinctively, impulsivity  said: “ It must have been for what happened to your sister Agatha that he killed your mother.” At those words  Paul’s face had suddenly changed in an impressive way. His face had hardened, even elongated , and his smiling, friendly gaze had become ice, or rather wood, as his eyes seemed to have become, wooden. “ What? What did you say? What does Agatha have to do with my brother’s crime?” He asked , in a harsh, resentful voice. Mildred was stunned. “ Bur…you told me then, a long time ago, that Agatha was killed by your mother and your brother” She stammered.  Paul made a surprised, incredulous, even a little disgusted face. “ But no! You’re wrong! I can never have told you something like this!”He said in a sure , and also a little scornful tone, as if to imply: ____But look what that..one tells me!____” Especially since Agatha is very likely still alive” He added, throwing Mildred more and more in a total amazement.

“ Yes, we have received letters from her in recent years, letters from Argentina and also from Australia” At that point Mildred could no longer speak, she preferred not to insist on asking about Agatha. It  was clear for her that to lie it was the grown up Paul____a renowed lawyer_, not the teenager Paul of that day far away, who had told her, crying, that Agatha had been killed by his mother and his brother.