And it was at this point that he had knocked on the door. Everyone had frozen and Any had let him in.
In his reconstruction of events, Maigret was mistaken in one respect at least, the character of one of the people concerned. For Madame Popinga, whom he imagined to be in the kitchen, devastated by this revelation, completely overcome and without any strength, entered the room a few moments later with a calm bearing such as is reached only at a high pitch of emotion.
And slowly, she too put some letters on the table. She did not throw them down. She placed them deliberately. She looked at the farmer and then at the inspector.
She opened her mouth several times before managing to speak and then said:
‘You will have to judge for yourselves … Someone should read these out …’
At that moment, Liewens blushed a deep scarlet as blood rushed to his cheeks. He was too Dutch to fall on the letters at once, but they drew him as if by an irresistible spell.
A woman’s handwriting. Blue paper … Letters from Beetje, obviously. One thing was immediately striking: the disproportion between the two piles of letters. There were perhaps ten notes from Popinga, always written on a single sheet of paper, and usually consisting of four or five lines.
There were about thirty letters from Beetje, long and closely written!
Conrad was dead. And there remained these two unequal piles of letters, as well as the stack of timber that had protected the couple’s rendezvous, on the banks of the Amsterdiep.
‘Best if everyone calms down,’ said Maigret. ‘And perhaps it would be preferable to read out these letters without getting too angry.’
The farmer stared at him, with remarkable sharpness, and must have understood since he took a step towards the table, in spite of himself.
Maigret leaned on to the table with both hands, and picked up a note from Popinga at random.
‘Would you have the goodness to translate this, please, Mademoiselle Any?’
But the young woman did not seem to hear him. She looked down at the writing, without speaking. Her sister, serious and dignified, took the letter from her hands.
‘It was written at college,’ she said. ‘There’s no date, just six o’clock. This is what it says:
Dear little Beetje,
Better if you don’t come tonight as the college principal is coming round for a cup of tea. See you tomorrow.
Love and kisses.
She looked around with an air of calm defiance. Then she picked up another note. She read it out slowly:
Dear pretty little Beetje,
You must calm down. And remember that life is long. I’ve got a lot of work to do with the third-year exams. I can’t come tonight.
Why do you keep saying I don’t love you? I can’t leave the college. What on earth would we do?
Take it easy, I beg you. We’ve got plenty of time.
With affectionate kisses.
And as Maigret seemed to say that that was enough, Madame Popinga took up another letter:
‘There’s this one, probably the last.’
My dear Beetje,
It’s impossible. I beg you to be sensible. You know perfectly well that I don’t have any money and that it would take a long time to find employment abroad.
You must be more careful and not get so wrought up. And above all, trust me.
Don’t be afraid. If what you are worried about happens, I’ll do my duty.
I’m anxious because I’ve got a lot of work on just now, and when I think of you, I can’t work properly. The principal passed a critical remark yesterday and I was very upset.
I’ll try to get out tomorrow evening, and tell them I’m going to visit a Norwegian ship in port.
I embrace you fondly, little Beetje.
Madame Popinga looked at each of them in turn, wearily, her eyes hooded. Her hand moved to the other pile, the one she had brought in, and the farmer gave a start. She pulled out a letter.
Dear Conrad, that I love so much,
Good news: Papa has put another thousand florins in my bank account for my birthday present. That’s enough to get to America, because I looked up the boat fares in the newspaper. And we could travel third class!
But why don’t you hurry up? I can’t live here any more. Holland is stifling me to death. The people in Delfzijl seem to be staring at me with disapproval all the time.
But I’m so proud and happy to belong to a man like you! We must absolutely get away before the holidays because Papa wants me to spend a month in Switzerland and I don’t want to. Otherwise our big project would have to wait till winter.
I’ve been buying English books. I can say lots of sentences already. Hurry up, do! We’ll have such a lovely time, the two of us. Won’t we? We can’t stay here. Especially now. I think Madame Popinga is giving me the cold shoulder. And I’m still afraid of Cornelius, who is courting me, and I don’t seem able to discourage him. He’s a nice boy and polite, but really stupid.
And of course he’s not a man, Conrad, not a real man like you: you’ve been everywhere, you know everything.
Remember, a year ago, I used to try and meet you on the road and you didn’t even look at me!
And now, maybe I’m going to have your child! Or anyway, it’s possible.
But why are you being so cool? Don’t you love me as much as before?
That wasn’t the end of the letter, but Madame Popinga’s voice had died away in her throat and she stopped speaking. She leafed through the pile of correspondence with her fingers. She was looking for something.
She read out one more sentence from the middle of a letter:
… and I’m starting to think you love your wife more than me, I’m beginning to feel jealous of her and to hate her. If that isn’t the reason, why would you be saying now you don’t want to go away?
The farmer could not understand the French words, but he was paying such close attention that anyone would have sworn he could guess. Madame Popinga swallowed hard, picked up one last sheet, and read in an even more strained voice:
I’ve heard rumours that Cornelius is more in love with Madame Popinga than with me, and that they are getting on very well. If only that were true! Then we’d be left in peace and you wouldn’t have to feel bad about it.
The sheet dropped from her hands and floated down on to the carpet in front of Any, who stared at it fixedly.
There was another silence. Madame Popinga was not weeping. But everything about her was tragic: her contained pain, her dignity, maintained only through incredible effort, the admirable sentiment which had inspired her.
She had come to defend Conrad! She was waiting for an attack. She would fight if she had to.
‘When did you discover these letters?’ Maigret asked, awkwardly.
‘The day after …’
She choked. She opened her mouth for a gulp of air. Her eyelids were swollen.
‘… after Conrad …’
‘I see.’
He understood. He looked at her with sympathy. She was not pretty. And yet she had regular features. Her face had none of the flaws that made Any’s so unprepossessing.
Madame Popinga was a tall woman, well-built, but not fat. A glossy helmet of fine hair framed her delicately pink Dutch face.
But would he perhaps have preferred it if she had been ugly? Those regular features and her controlled, sensible expression somehow conveyed a total lack of enthusiasm for life.
Even her smile had to be a sensible, measured smile, her joy a sensible joy, always under control.
Already at six years old, she must have been a serious child. And by sixteen, much as she was today.
One of those women who seem born to be sisters, or aunts, or nurses, or widows patronizing good causes.
Conrad was no longer there, and yet Maigret had never felt him to be so alive as at this moment, with his hearty open face, his greed or rather appetite for life, his shyness, his fear of offending people and his wireless set, with which he fiddled
for hours in order to pick up jazz from Paris, gypsy music from Budapest, an operetta from Vienna, or perhaps even faraway boat-to-boat calls on short wave.
Any approached her sister, as one would someone who is ill and about to collapse. But Madame Popinga went towards Maigret, or at least took a couple of steps.
‘I never dreamed …’ she whispered. ‘Never. I lived … I … And when he died, I …’
He guessed, from her breathing, that she had a heart condition, and a moment later she confirmed his hypothesis by standing still for a long moment, pressing her hand to her chest.
Someone else moved in the room: the farmer, with wild eyes and a fevered expression, had gone over to the table and snatched up the letters from his daughter, with the nervous gesture of a thief fearing to be caught.
She let him go ahead. Maigret did the same.
But Liewens did not yet dare leave. He could be heard speaking, without addressing anyone in particular. Maigret caught the word Fransman, and it was as if he could understand Dutch in the same way that Liewens, that day, had understood French.
He could more or less work out the sentence: ‘And you think it was necessary to tell the Frenchman all this?’
Liewens dropped his cap, picked it up, bowed to Any, who was standing in his way, but to her alone, muttered a few more unintelligible syllables and went out. The maid must have finished cleaning the step since they heard the door open and shut and his footsteps going away.
In spite of the younger woman’s presence, Maigret asked some further questions, with a gentleness one might not have suspected in him.
‘Have you already shown these letters to your sister?’
‘No. But when that man …’
‘Where were they?’
‘In a drawer in the bedside table … I never used to open it. It was where the revolver was kept too.’
Any said something in Dutch, and Madame Popinga translated automatically.
‘My sister is telling me I ought to go and lie down. Because I haven’t slept for three nights. He’d never have gone away from here … He must have been imprudent, just one indiscretion, don’t you think? He liked to laugh and play. But now that I think of it, some little things come back … Beetje used to bring over fruits and home-made cake … I thought she was coming to see me. And she would ask us to play tennis … Always at a time when she knew quite well I was busy. But I didn’t see any harm in it. I was glad Conrad had a chance to relax. Because he worked very hard, and Delfzijl was a bit dull for him. Last year, she nearly came to Paris with us … and it was even my idea!’
She said all this simply, but with a weariness in which there was hardly any rancour.
‘He can’t have wanted to leave here … You heard … But he was afraid of causing pain to anyone. That was how he was. He used to be reprimanded for giving exam marks that were too generous. That’s why my father didn’t care for him.’
She put an ornament back in its place, and this precise housewifely act was at odds with the atmosphere in the room.
‘I’d just like all this to be over. Because we’re not even allowed to bury him. You know that? I don’t know … I want them to give him back to me. God will see that the guilty one is punished.’
She became more animated. She went on, her voice firmer now:
‘Yes! That’s what I believe. Things like this, they’re a matter between God and the murderer. What can we know?’
She gave a start, as if an idea had just struck her. Pointing to the door, she gasped:
‘Perhaps he’s going to kill her. He’s capable of it. That would be terrible!’
Any was looking at her with some impatience. She must have been thinking all these words were of no help, and it was with a calm voice that she asked:
‘So now, what do you think, monsieur le commissaire?’
‘Nothing!’
She didn’t insist. But her face showed her dissatisfaction.
‘I don’t think anything, because above all there is the matter of Oosting’s cap!’ he said. ‘You heard Jean Duclos’s theories. You’ve read the books by Grosz he told you about. One principle! Never allow yourself to be distracted from the truth by psychological considerations. Follow to the end the reasoning resulting from material evidence.’
It was impossible to know whether he was serious or whether he was teasing her.
‘And here we have a cap, and the stub of a cigar! Somebody must have brought them or thrown them into the house.’
Madame Popinga sighed to herself:
‘I can’t believe that Oosting …’
Then suddenly, lifting her head:
‘That makes me think of something I’d forgotten.’
Then she fell silent, as if fearing she had said too much, terrified by the consequences of her words.
‘Tell me.’
‘No, no, it’s nothing.’
‘I would still like …’
‘When Conrad went seal-hunting on the Workum sandbanks …’
‘Yes? What about it …?’
‘Beetje went with them. Because she goes hunting too … Here in Holland, girls have a lot of freedom.’
‘Did they spend the night away?’
‘Sometimes one night. Sometimes two.’
She took her head in her hands with a gesture of the most extreme frustration and groaned.
‘No! I don’t want to think about it! It’s too horrible! Too horrible.’
This time, sobs were rising in her throat, ready to break out, and Any took her sister by the shoulders and gently propelled her into the next room.
7. Lunch at the Van Hasselt
When Maigret arrived back at the hotel, he realized that something unusual was happening. The previous day he had dined at the table next to Jean Duclos’s.
Now, three places were laid on the round table in the centre of the dining room. A dazzling white cloth, with knife-sharp creases, had been spread. And at each place stood three glasses, which in Holland is only done for a truly ceremonial meal.
As soon as he came in, Maigret was greeted by Inspector Pijpekamp, who advanced towards him, hand outstretched, with the wide smile of a man who has arranged a pleasant surprise.
He was in his best clothes: a wing-collar eight centimetres high! A formal jacket. He was freshly shaved, and must have come straight from the barber’s, for around him there still hovered a scent of Parma violets.
Less formally dressed, Jean Duclos stood behind him, looking slightly jaundiced.
‘You must forgive me, my dear colleague. I should have warned you this morning … I would have liked to invite you back home, but I live in Groningen and I’m a bachelor. So I have taken the liberty of inviting you to lunch here. Just a simple lunch, no fuss.’
And looking, as he pronounced the last words, at the cutlery and crystal glasses, he was obviously waiting for Maigret to contradict him.
He did no such thing.
‘I thought that since the professor is your compatriot, you would be happy to …’
‘Very good! Very good!’ said Maigret. ‘Would you excuse me while I go to wash my hands.’
He did so, looking grumpy, at the little washbasin in an adjacent room. The kitchen was next door, and he could hear much bustle, the clink of dishes and saucepans.
When he went back to the dining room, Pijpekamp himself was pouring port into the glasses and murmuring with a modest but delighted smile:
‘Just like in France, eh? Prosit! Your very good health, my dear colleague.’
His goodwill was touching. He was making an effort to find the most sophisticated expressions and show that he was a man of the world to his fingertips.
‘I ought to have invited you yesterday. But I was so … how would you say? So shaken about by this affair. Have you discovered anything?’
‘No, nothing.’
The Dutchman’s eyes lit up, and Maigret thought to himself:
‘Aha, my little man, you’ve got some prize exhibit to show me
, and you’ll bring it out over dessert. If you have the patience to wait that long.’
He was not mistaken. The first course was tomato soup, which was served with a Saint-Émilion sweet enough to make you feel bilious, and obviously fortified for export.
‘Your health!’
What a good show Pijpekamp was putting on! Doing his very best or even better. And Maigret didn’t even seem to notice it. He showed no appreciation!
‘In Holland, you know, we never drink with the meal, only afterwards. In the evening, on special occasions a little glass of wine with a cigar. And we don’t have bread with the meal either.’
And he looked at the bread basket, which he had ordered specially. He had even arranged for port as an aperitif, instead of the national drink of genever.
What more could he have done? He was pink with excitement. He looked at the golden wine bottle with emotion. Jean Duclos was eating as if his mind were elsewhere.
And Pijpekamp had been so anxious to inject some gaiety into this lunch, to create an atmosphere of abandon, a real explosion of Frenchness!
The waiters brought in the national Dutch dish: the hutspot. The meat was swimming in litres of gravy, and Pijpekamp assumed a mysterious air to announce:
‘Now, you must tell me if you like it.’
Unfortunately, Maigret was not in a good mood. He could indeed sense some kind of mystery in the air, but as yet was unable to fathom it.
It seemed to him that there was a kind of freemasonry between Duclos and the Dutch policeman. For instance, every time the latter refilled Maigret’s glass, he stole a glance at the professor.
A bottle of Burgundy was warming by the stove.
‘I thought you’d be drinking more wine.’
‘That depends …’
Duclos was certainly ill at ease. He avoided joining in the conversation, and was drinking nothing but mineral water, claiming he was on a diet.
Pijpekamp could wait no longer. He’d chatted about the beauties of the harbour, the volume of traffic on the Ems, the University of Groningen, where the greatest scholars in the world came to give lectures.
A Crime in Holland Page 7