Confessions

The police took a man into custody because he told people he was guilty. At the start of his interrogation, he said he wanted to confess. He had been very tense, but now he began, slowly, to relax. He said he had murdered his wife. Later, detectives established that he had never been married. He said he had murdered three young women because he didn’t want to marry them, and, he said, one of them was a nun. He said he murdered the nun’s priest and also the priest’s cat. By then, he was breathing much more easily. Later, also, the detectives established that not even one young woman, let alone a priest or his cat, had been murdered; however, during his interrogation, the man was questioned for details that he dutifully provided. He said he had strangled his wife, tied her body to a stone, and dumped it in the canal. He said he stabbed the young women with icepicks, then cut up their bodies and fed them to his neighbor’s hog in the middle of the night. The more he described, the more he relaxed, until he began to smile. They asked him if that was all, and he said no, he would confess everything. He said he had slept with the mayor’s wife and that he had stolen sausages to pay her because she told him she was fond of blood. He said the mayor knew about her frequent dalliances and he not only approved, but even invited him to join her in bed. He said he had often been invited to join beautiful women in bed, because no one knew how many people he had murdered, until now. He said that the priest whom he later killed had also invited him to his bed, but he declined because he was allergic to the priest’s cat. He said the priest’s invitation wasn’t why he murdered him or his cat. He murdered them because when he confessed to his murders neither the priest nor his cat believed him.