The Sad Smile -La sonrisa triste
The Sad Smile The abandoned house smelled of damp. The wallpaper was beginning to peel away from the walls. A vast skylight bathed the exotic plants, brought from the most remote corners of the world, in pale light. No one had watered them for days. Their owner had vanished without a trace. In the luxurious drawing room, above an exquisite marble fireplace, hung a large and enigmatic portrait. A faint smile and a sorrowful gaze on the face of a beautiful woman conveyed the unsettling certainty of an inescapable destiny. The portrait depicted the matriarch of a celebrated family of composers. Decades earlier, she had driven her youngest son's fiancée to suicide. That had happened many years before. Now the youngest son, sole heir to the family's fortune, had disappeared as well. The investigators returned to the house several times over the following days. At first, the changes were almost imperceptible. First... the hair changed. The following day... the eyebrows....