Otonaruto Bonafacio

Honorato Bonafé’s death at Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas is the case’s central unsolved crime and a collision between physical evidence and a priest’s admission of responsibility. Bonafé was discovered dead in the confessional; the police reconstructed a fall from the high altar’s scaffolding, while Father Príamo Ferro insisted that Bonafé was already dead when he closed the sacristy door. The distinction matters to Lorenzo Quart, who is trying to help a fellow cleric but cannot make the evidence—or Ferro’s own account—fit comfortably into a defense.

Identity and Circumstances

Bonafé is discussed here through the circumstances of his death rather than through a broader account of his life. When Macarena Bruner recounts what happened in the parish during Ferro’s absence, she includes Bonafé’s death and the police suspicions surrounding it. The story thereby brings the dead man back into the action: his absence becomes the fact that draws Quart into the question of what happened in the church.

The death is tied to a specific interval on the evening in question. Quart tells Ferro that the critical window ran from about seven or half past seven until roughly nine, depending on when the church was locked. Witnesses who could establish Ferro’s movements during those hours might provide an alibi. But Ferro says there are no witnesses, and the lack of corroboration leaves the priest exposed to suspicion rather than clearing him.

The Confessional and Ferro’s Account

Quart frames the absence of an alibi as a practical problem. Ferro rejects the premise that he needs one. He tells Quart that when he shut the sacristy door, Bonafé was dead inside the confessional. In Ferro’s account, then, the body’s location is not proof that the priest killed him: Bonafé had already reached the confessional, and the decisive question is how he got there and when he died.

Ferro’s certainty does not resolve the case. It narrows Quart’s options. Quart asks how Ferro can be sure, already anticipating the answer, and briefly closes his eyes when the priest’s statement leaves no easy way out. The confessional, ordinarily a place associated with confession and spiritual care, becomes the last point in a sequence whose missing moments cannot be recovered through testimony. Ferro’s blunt insistence is not an alibi; it is an account that places him near the dead man without explaining the events that preceded his discovery.

The Police Reconstruction

Simeón Navajo lays out a reconstruction based on the evidence gathered by his officers. Bonafé was apparently on the scaffolding beside the Virgin’s image, on the high altar. Ferro is believed to have climbed up as well. The two men may have argued or struggled; Navajo leaves the exact encounter uncertain, as does the question of whether Bonafé fell or was pushed.

The fall was from about five metres. A wound on Bonafé’s hand, Navajo explains, could have come from his attempt to catch hold of a screw on the scaffolding. He was badly injured but not immediately dead. Unable to walk, he crawled several metres, managed to get upright, and made for the nearest place he could reach: the confessional. He collapsed there and died. Navajo illustrates the sequence with his fingers, first mimicking two men climbing and then tracing Bonafé’s slow movement across the floor. The small gestures turn an investigative theory into a vivid physical sequence, but the account remains a reconstruction: it cannot settle whether the fall was accidental or caused by Ferro.

The Pearl and the Stakes of the Case

Navajo produces a small plastic bag containing a nacreous bead found on Bonafé’s body. Quart recognizes that it looks like a pearl; Navajo confirms that it is one of the twenty set into the Virgin’s face, mantle, and crown. Bonafé had the pearl in his jacket pocket. Its presence links the dead man not only to the altar scaffolding but also to the Virgin’s ornament, giving the police reconstruction a concrete object that the church setting alone could not explain.

The pearl sharpens the questions without answering them. It supports the suspicion that Bonafé had been handling or taking something from the image, and it gives a possible context for his presence on the scaffolding. But it does not establish precisely what passed between Bonafé and Ferro, why the men met there, or whether the fall was a fall or a push. The same evidence that makes the scene more legible leaves its central action undecided.

Narrative Role

Bonafé’s death is structured around competing kinds of knowledge. Ferro offers direct certainty about the moment he closed the sacristy door; Navajo offers a physical reconstruction assembled from the wound, the route to the confessional, and the pearl; Quart sees that neither a missing witness nor a plausible reconstruction can supply a complete answer. The reader receives a chain of material clues, not a final account of the encounter on the scaffolding.

That unresolved gap makes the case more than a question of whether Ferro can be cleared. Bonafé’s body, the confessional, and the pearl pull the inquiry toward the church’s sacred image and the possibility of theft, while the uncertainty over the fall keeps responsibility unsettled. His death brings the investigation to a point where what can be reconstructed is not the same as what can be proved.