A Brilliant Darkness by Joao Magueijo

Author:Joao Magueijo [Joao Magueijo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

* Anderson coined the term positron, a contraction of positive and electron; but he also wanted the electron to be renamed negatron for consistency. There were other proposals: The eccentric Herbert Dingle, recalling that Electra’s brother is called Orestes in Greek mythology, suggested that the antielectron be named Oreston.

FOURTEEN

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

The story of the burnt baby—”the outrageous Majorana affair”—is so improbable that it may prove useful to consider a fictional prelude: a short story from La Paura di Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri; a tale well tuned to the world of Sicilian vendetta.

Detective Salvo Montalbano, a multibook character renowned for his cynical attitude toward Sicilian officialdom, comes across a story that has its roots more than fifty years in the past. An old lady on her deathbed confesses to a priest, who is, naturally, bound to silence. But the priest then drops disturbing hints to the detective.

The old lady had had a friend who’d asked her for rat poison many years before, while going through a difficult phase with her husband: a good-for-nothing who slept around, spent his nights playing cards, and ran up large debts that his wife then had to pay. The old lady had easy access to poison, since her own husband, recently deceased, had left her a pharmacy. But seeing the obvious intent in her friend’s request, she gave her a harmless white powder instead.

A few weeks later, her friend’s husband felt unwell while playing cards late at night. He was brought home, the doctor reporting that it was nothing more serious than the effects of excess. He recommended rest, less drinking and smoking, and left the wife a medicine—a white powder—asking her to administer it to the patient. The next morning, the wife was still locked in their bedroom when the servants broke in to find her in a state of shock, her husband bathing in his own shit and vomiting his guts out.

He died shortly afterwards, and the wife promptly confessed that instead of giving him the medicine, she’d poisoned her husband. Fifty years later, the old lady who’d provided the “poison” still feels guilty and insistently murmurs to the priest, “It was not rat poison!” before she expires.

Given the long period of time that has elapsed since the original events, it takes Montalbano quite an effort to find out what actually entered the official records. It appears that the wife did go to prison at first—after all, she confessed her crime. However, the case was reopened several times. Her father was an important politician (read: a powerful mafioso) who was engaged in open warfare with several political enemies (read: competing Mafia factions). He claimed that his daughter had been forced to confess under duress by his enemies and ordered an autopsy in Palermo. After careful testing, the doctors found no evidence of poison in the husband’s corpse. The woman was promptly released . . . still claiming that she really had poisoned her husband.

Naturally, her father’s enemies argued that he had bribed the doctors and asked for an independent autopsy to be carried out in Florence.

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