Alice Gould’s meeting with the impostor claiming to be Raimundo García del Olmo turns an investigation into an immediate confrontation over identity and captivity. Summoned to discuss the death of Raimundo’s father, she finds that the person introduced as the doctor is not, in her judgment, the man he claims to be. Rather than proceed with the expected account of the murder, she formally challenges the identification and asks the police to protect her from her alleged kidnapping. The encounter leaves the central question of who the visitor is unanswered, but makes Alice’s distrust of Samuel Alvar impossible to mistake.

The meeting and its purpose

The meeting takes place in the director’s office, where Samuel Alvar, Commissioner Ruiz de Pablos, Dr. José Muescas, and another man are present. Raimundo García del Olmo is not there. The director explains that the supposed Dr. García del Olmo has come to hear what Alice knows about his father’s death, placing her before an official audience and apparently offering her the opportunity to give her suspicions directly to the victim’s son.

Alice’s presence follows an investigation she has been conducting inside the hospital. She had asked Alvar for the records of some residents, seeking to identify who had permission to leave the hospital on the dates when García del Olmo was murdered. She says she had seen only one of the relevant files, and that opportunity came when the commissioner had asked for it to be brought to his office. The detail establishes a specific, limited basis for her inquiry: she was trying to compare access to the outside world with the timing of the murder, rather than relying only on impressions of the residents.

The supposed doctor’s arrival sharply alters the meeting’s purpose. Alice first expresses impatience to disclose her suspicions and asks where Raimundo is. The room reacts with surprise when the serious-looking visitor identifies himself as the doctor. What had been arranged as a hearing about a murder thus becomes a test of the visitor’s identity—and, by implication, of the reliability of the people who have brought Alice into the room.

Alice’s recognition and accusation

The visitor is described as short, bald, stout, and plain-faced, with myopic, somewhat protruding eyes likened to those of a fish. These physical details distinguish him in the scene, but the account does not disclose what Alice recognizes, or what evidence enables her to reject his claim. Her reaction is instead conveyed through visible restraint: her face hardens, her eyes remain dry, and her teeth are clenched. She slowly and repeatedly moves her head, in a gesture compared to the motion of the Niña Oscilante.

When Commissioner Ruiz de Pablos asks whether she has anything to say, Alice addresses him formally. She declares that the man is not Raimundo García del Olmo and requests police protection because she is being held against her will. The shift is decisive: rather than answer the inquiry about the murder, she contests the premise that the gathering is what its organizers say it is. Her claim is explicit, but the scene presents it as her accusation; it does not independently establish who arranged her detention or what the visitor’s actual identity is.

Alvar and the unresolved identity

After making her declaration, Alice fixes her eyes on Samuel Alvar with what the narration describes as implacable hardness. The intensity of the look places him at the center of her accusation without adding a spoken explanation. Alvar meets her cold gaze impassively. Neither his expression nor Alice’s stare resolves the charge, and she says nothing further before being told that she may leave.

Once the door closes behind her, the others remain to discuss what has happened, but the scene’s immediate record ends before their response is given. The visitor is established as someone Alice rejects as the real Raimundo, not as a person whose true name or role has been revealed. The meeting therefore produces a clear reversal but no complete solution: the supposed witness to the murder becomes the object of Alice’s formal challenge, while the question of the real García del Olmo’s absence remains open.

Narrative significance

The encounter draws together two kinds of uncertainty that have shaped Alice’s position in the hospital: uncertainty about the murder and uncertainty about whether she is free to leave. Her search through residents’ files shows her pursuing a concrete line of investigation; her declaration before the commissioner turns that investigation into a direct demand for protection. The visitor’s false claim, as Alice identifies it, makes the official setting itself unstable. The director has presented the man as the doctor, yet Alice refuses the authority of that introduction.

The scene’s force comes from the contrast between formal procedure and personal confrontation. The meeting has officials, a stated purpose, and an introduction, but none of those trappings persuades Alice to accept the identity placed before her. She speaks to the commissioner rather than continue with the alleged doctor, and directs her final, wordless accusation toward Alvar. The encounter does not prove the full extent of the alleged kidnapping or explain the impostor’s connection to it; instead, it marks the moment Alice openly names both the false identity and her sense of being detained, leaving the room with her accusation formally on record.