Daniel rereads Pene9lope Aldayas love letter through the night, letting its tenderness erase the lingering fear and bitterness left by Inspector Fumeros threats. At dawn, Daniel leaves home quietly, leaving Daniels father a note that Daniel has errands and will be at the bookshop by 9:30.

Daniel travels by train and then by the blue tram up Avenida del Tibidabo, but gets off early because Daniel lacks small change and refuses to pay the conductor. Daniel walks to number 32 and finds the Aldaya residence sealed behind an ivy-choked iron gate. Peering in, Daniel sees neglect: weeds, a broken marble staircase, and a fountain with submerged stone limbs, making the mansion feel like a graveyard of the familys former wealth.

Daniel meets a suspicious caretaker from a neighboring house and questions him about the Aldayas. The caretaker says the mansion has been closed for twenty to twenty-five years and claims the Aldayas lost everything around the Republic; he adds that the eldest son, Jorge, went to Argentina, where the family had factories. When Daniel asks about Pene9lope Aldaya, the caretaker insists the Aldayas had no daughters, though he admits he only began working there in 1920.

Enticed with candy and lozenges, the caretaker shares local rumors: people speak of strange noises in the abandoned house, and he remembers hearing sobbing during a nighttime visit years earlier. He also recounts a dare in which Joanet Miravell and friends entered at night; Joanet claimed to hear a voice upstairs and said a door shut in his face, which the caretaker interprets as more than a mere draft. The caretaker concludes the building should be demolished.

On the way back, Daniel imagines Julie1n Carax walking the same avenue long ago, perhaps heading toward Pene9lope. Looking at Pene9lopes photograph, Daniel senses the tragedy embedded in her serene smile and feels the present moment as borrowed light, haunted less by spirits than by absence and loss.