Chapter 4
Doctor Vera Tudela gave Bacigalupi a certificate, which was not the one he presented to the Municipality, but one which should have been used to request the payment of the life insurance.
So here was a new avenue to investigate.
Finding out that the Ransei Insurance Company of Cincinnati, Ohio had insured Mrs. Lewis for $3,000, American gold, the Chief directed a cablegram to the manager of the company asking to be told the name of the person who had collected Mrs. Lewis’s insurance policy and the date on which payment had been made. The company replied that it had resolved to suspend payment, even though the deceased woman’s husband demanded that it be paid to him.
The Captain, informed of the death of his wife, had requested the death certificate, which he presented himself to the insurance company. However, there is no doubt that the incorrect manner in which that document was written and its origin did not seem reliable to the company. The Captain had requested it from the English Consul in Callao, D. Jorge Wilson, who had issued it.
In a second letter from the Captain to the same friend of Callao, he gave new instructions and included the printed form of the certificate to which we have referred, which Bacigalupi showed to Dr. Vera Tudela. Dr. Tudela appeared to the U.S ambassador accompanied by artist Taylor to legalize their signatures as witnesses.
It should be noted, however, that this has not been verified because the ambassador is not certain who owned the insurance, and believes that it came from a company in Chicago, when the other policy comes from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Are there two insurances?…
* * *
Peruvian law allows police officers limited functions: only the investigation of criminal acts during the brief period between the moment they become aware of them and the moment when the judge begins to hear them. After that, the judicial jurisdiction begins and the investigation of the police ceases. Colonel Muñiz could not, therefore, move forward to clarify the coexistence of two insurance policies which would serve powerfully to inform the procedures of the trial.
Only an examining magistrate (Ed note: investigator or detective) would have been able to legally conduct the investigations leading to the discovery of whether there were one or two policies, and to verify the value of the policies, the rightful claimants and the identity of the two insurance companies in different states of North America, one in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the other in Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately, such an examining magistrate does not exist in Peru nor does the law recognize the Chief’s authority to investigate criminal cases, only the Judge.
The Chief was frustrated by this legal obstacle for he was eager to discover new facts that are so intimately related to this anonymous crime. His situation was that of one who pursues a fugitive who, when he is about to be caught, reaches the sacred asylum of a church or that of a foreign Embassy where he must stop due to diplomatic immunity. Colonel Muñíz must have had the same frustrations when the investigations of the two characters that appear among shadows in the events escaped from his hands.
These obstacles upset him. He felt motivated by curiosity and his commitment to an investigation that was entrusted to him. In this investigation, there appeared to be people of some significance and powerful influence. If Colonel Muñíz had read and remembered the Memoirs of M. Claude, the Chief of Police of Paris during the second Empire of Napoleon II, undoubtedly he would see the similarities to his situation. He was openly struggling with legal impotence. He struggled like M. Claude concerning the mysterious author of the anonymous letter. He was trying to cushion his zeal so he didn’t cross the boundary of the written law and suffer the consequences of trespassing over it. He wanted to perform his job well, but was hampered by the legal restriction of his authority to follow leads.
Chief Muniz had not managed to discover who the character hidden behind the window screen in Mrs. Lewis room. Mrs. Martin was not able to get a good look while she was in the room. She said she had seen him in the bedroom very excited and frightened looking through the glass.
It wasn’t Taylor because he was standing near the door of the living room. It wasn’t Bacigalupi either, because during the same scene, he was kneeling next to Mrs. Isabel’s body, holding her hand.
Colonel Muñíz could not discover this unknown person because it was outside the scope of his authority, and he had to leave it to the judge. For the same reason the investigation of the anonymous crime or the characters involved also escaped his inquiries.