The Mistery of Belicena Villca officials have doubts whether this will ever be possible . Because two elements as absurd and as irrational intervene in a definitive way in the fatal outcome , preventing any possibility of making coherent conjectures ; the first , is an indisputably verified fact : the crime took place in a hermetically sealed cell for psychotic patients with a heavy steel door , between 0:00 and 2:00 am . of January 6 , when no one , absolutely no one would have entered in that lapse of time . This was proven , happily , thanks to a fortuitous event .
Being the night before January 5 , that is , the day of celebration of The Magi , part of the staff went to distribute gifts to the Children ' s Hospital and San Francisco de Asís Orphanage . Among them was our distinguished Director , Dr . Cortez , who at 11pm had already returned , still wearing the Santa suit and willing to carry out the daily round that , for countless years , he ' s been making to every pavilion to collect the final reports . Well , Dr . Cortez himself saw Belicena Villca alive for the last time at 11:50 pm , when , as a result of hysterical crisis in its second phase , promoted a general disorder in pavilion “ B ”: she ran desperately in the confined space of her cell , with staring , wild eyes , while shouting " Pachachutquiy ", " Pachachutquiy ", words that at that time were incomprehensible , although we recognized that it was the Quechua language . Moreover , the attack was symptomatically abnormal in her .
Dr . Cortez ordered an immediate dose of Valium , plunging the unfortunate Belicena Villca in a slumber from which she would only emerge to see Death Up Close , as suggested by the expression of tremendous horror her face was contorted with when she was found , already dead , three hours later . And here the mystery arises ; the first item that puzzled and surprised the seasoned policemen : after the patient was treated , it would be 0.00 hours , we all left the cell that was closed by Dr . Cortez , who inadvertently put the key in one of the pockets of his Santa Claus suit , then forgetting to deposit it on the general key board . At three in the morning when the nurse on duty went through the usual round , she noticed the lack of the key , which nobody knew how to report . From this she deduced that it should have been carried by Dr . Cortez and , as the duplicates are in his office , she had no choice but to call him at home . It was not necessary to do so , as the internal switch operator reported that Dr . Cortez still remained in the Hospital , although he was about to retire . Notified of his mistake , he decided to go up to pavilion " B " to hand over the key and make a brief ocular inspection . That is to say , during those three hours , the key , the only means to open the armored door of the cell , was in the power of Dr . Cortez . But the Director of the Hospital was a man of recognized social trajectory , whose moral virtues have always been exalted as an example worthy of emulation , and whom , finally , no one would dare to doubt , not even the experienced policeman Maidana in charge of the investigation of the case .
Anyway , Dr . Cortez opened the cell door accompanied by me and nurse García at exactly 3:05 am . A pungent , sweet smell was what first caught our attention . It was a fragrance like sandalwood incense and it looked so out of place there that we looked at each other perplexed . But this was only for a moment because what came next concentrated all of our attention .
Belicena Villca lay in her bed , no doubt dead for some time , with a swollen neck from the strangulation to which she had been subjected . The murder weapon , an ivory rope , was still looped around her head , but let go now . And the two ends fell gently on the chest towards the side stand of the bed .
It was such a horrible sight that the seasoned nurse García screamed with horror and staggered backwards , having to hold her by the shoulders , even though my legs weren ' t quite firm . It wasn ' t for less ; the dead had her hands closed on the blankets on both sides of her body , position in which they should have been at the time of death and that cadaverous rigidity preserved , indicating that she had not defended herself from her mysterious assassin . This must have instilled such terror that , even watching how the loop was passed around the neck , and then , feeling it closing and cutting the breath , she only managed to cling desperately to the blanket . Such a deduction was confirmed by contemplating the gesture of the face : the eyes very large and exorbitant ; and the mouth ajar , allowing to see the swollen tongue , which seemed to break into an unfinished word , something that might never be pronounced , perhaps the mysterious pachachutquiy .
I will now expose the second absurd and irrational element that , by intervening with the forceful weight of the concrete , eliminated any hope of obtaining a quick and simple solution . I will explain myself better . The incomprehensible fact that the door was locked when the crime was committed , first element , could be overlooked by stating the logical hypotheses , although unlikely , that the murderer possessed another key or that there was a conspiracy by members of the medical corps , etc . After all , such hypotheses were formulated by the police and what they wanted was to strip the case of all " mystery " or supernatural illusion . But the ivory rope , second element , was an object too tangible to be overlooked .
10