Questioning of Benno and Berengar

The Questioning of Benno and Berengar, conducted by William of Baskerville on the morning of the second day, marks the first systematic attempt to penetrate the wall of silence surrounding the abbey's two deaths. By exploiting the weakness of the most vulnerable suspects, William extracts two confessions that, taken together, expose the hidden chain of lust, blackmail, and despair that led to Adelmo of Otranto's suicide and set the stage for the subsequent murders.

Benno's Confession: The Debate on Laughter and the Secret of the Library

William first corners Benno of Uppsala, a young rhetoric scholar whose nervous demeanor betrays his eagerness to speak. Under questioning, Benno reconstructs the learned debate in the scriptorium that had taken place days before Adelmo's death. The discussion had centered on the licitness of laughter and the use of ridiculous images in sacred books, with Jorge of Burgos condemning such frivolity and Venantius of Salvemec defending it by citing Aristotle's Poetics. The conversation had escalated when Berengar of Arundel, the assistant librarian, made a cryptic reference to the "finis Africae"—a forbidden zone within the library—prompting Malachi of Hildesheim to drag him away in fury. Benno reveals that after the debate, both Venantius and Adelmo had separately approached Berengar, pressing him for information, and that on the evening before his death, Adelmo and Berengar had been seen confabulating in the cloister. This testimony establishes Berengar as the keeper of a dangerous secret and links both dead men to his knowledge.

Berengar's Ghost Story: A Hallucinated Confession

William then confronts Berengar of Arundel, whose pale, sweat-glistening face betrays his terror. Pressing him with the accusation that he was the last to see Adelmo alive, William exploits Berengar's fear of torture to extract a confession. Berengar, weeping, describes a nocturnal encounter in the cemetery after compline, where he claims to have seen Adelmo's ghost—a damned soul with a corpse's face, burning with infernal fire. The ghost, according to Berengar, reproached him for having taught him monstrous things and called him "my beautiful master," then vanished. Berengar insists he had encountered a lemur, not a living man. William, however, immediately sees through the hallucination: the ghost's speech is a page from a preacher's book, the "burning sweat" is a drop of wax from a taper, and the entire story is a screen for Berengar's own guilt. By forcing Berengar to admit that he was in the cemetery after compline and that Adelmo was heading toward the Aedificium—not the dormitory—William reconstructs the true sequence: Adelmo, after confessing to Jorge of Burgos and being filled with despair, had encountered Berengar, hurled his remorse at him, and then proceeded to throw himself from the cliff.

William's Deduction: Suicide, Remorse, and the Chain of Guilt

After the two interrogations, William synthesizes the evidence into a coherent hypothesis. He concludes that Adelmo had committed suicide, driven by remorse after a sexual relationship with Berengar, which Berengar had exploited to extract a secret about the library. Adelmo, after confessing to Jorge and receiving a harsh reprimand, had despaired and killed himself. Berengar, now consumed by guilt, had projected his own remorse onto a hallucinated ghost. William further deduces that Venantius, having learned of the secret from Berengar, had continued the search on his own, leading to his own death. The questioning thus transforms the investigation from a search for a murderer into a hunt for a forbidden book—the object of desire that had set the entire tragedy in motion.