Maigret listened to all this as he watched the boats, their decks riding higher than the quayside now, like a series of brightly coloured walls, since it was high tide.
‘I don’t know what Pijpekamp thinks,’ Duclos went on. ‘Certainly he’s well-respected. What I do know is that it would be preferable, and in everyone’s interest, to announce this evening that Popinga’s murderer was some foreign seaman, and that the search is still under way. For everyone’s sake. Better for Madame Popinga. For her family. For her father, too, who’s an eminent intellectual. For Beetje and her father. But above all for the sake of example! For all the people living in the little houses in this town, who watch what happens in the big houses on the Amsterdiep and are ready to do the same. But you, you want truth for truth’s sake, for the glory of solving a difficult case.’
‘Is that what Pijpekamp said to you this morning? And he took the opportunity, didn’t he, to ask you how he could discourage my persistent habit of raising awkward questions? And you told him that in France, men like me can be bought off with a good lunch, or even a tip.’
‘No such precise words passed our lips.’
‘Do you know what I think, Monsieur Jean Duclos?’
Maigret had stopped, the better to admire the panorama. A tiny little boat, kitted out as a shop, was chugging along from ship to ship, barge to yacht trailing petrol fumes and selling bread, spices, tobacco, pipes and genever.
‘I’m listening.’
‘I think you were lucky to come out of the bathroom holding the revolver.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Just tell me, again, that you saw nobody in the bathroom.’
‘That’s right, I didn’t see anybody.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything either?’
Duclos turned his head away.
‘Nothing very clearly. Perhaps just a feeling that something moved under the lid of the bath.’
‘Oh, excuse me – I see there’s someone waiting for me.’
And Maigret strode off briskly towards the entrance of the Van Hasselt, where Beetje Liewens could be seen pacing up and down on the pavement, looking out for him.
She tried to smile at him, as she had before, but this time her smile was joyless. She seemed nervous. She went on glancing down the street, as if afraid of seeing someone appear.
‘I’ve been waiting almost half an hour for you.’
‘Will you come inside?’
‘Not to the café, please.’
In the corridor, he hesitated for a second. He couldn’t take her to his room either. He pushed open the door of the ballroom, a huge empty space where voices echoed as if in a church.
In broad daylight, the stage looked dusty and lacklustre. The piano was open. A bass drum stood in a corner and piles of chairs were stacked up to the ceiling.
Behind them hung paper chains, which must have been used for a dance.
Beetje looked as fresh-faced as before. She was wearing a blue jacket and skirt, and her bosom was more enticing than ever under a white silk blouse.
‘So you were able to get out of the house?’
She did not reply at once. She obviously had plenty to say, but didn’t know where to begin.
‘I escaped!’ she said at last. ‘I couldn’t stay there any more, I was scared. The maid came to tell me my father was furious, he was capable of killing me. Already he’d shut me in my room without a word. Because he never says anything when he’s angry. The other night, we went home without saying a thing. He locked me in. This afternoon, the maid spoke to me through the keyhole. It seems he came back at midday, white in the face. He ate his lunch, then went stalking off around the farm. After that he visited my mother’s grave. That’s what he does every time he’s going to make an important decision. So I broke a pane of glass in the door, and the maid passed me a screwdriver so that I could take off the lock. I don’t want to go back. You don’t know my father …’
‘One question,’ Maigret interrupted.
He was looking at the little handbag in glossy kid leather she was holding.
‘How much money did you bring with you?’
‘I don’t know … Perhaps five hundred florins.’
‘From your own bedroom?’
She reddened and stammered:
‘It was in the desk. I wanted to go to the station. But there was a policeman on duty there, so I thought of you.’
They were standing there as if in a waiting room, where an intimate atmosphere is impossible, and it occurred to neither of them to take two of the stacked chairs and sit down.
Beetje might be on edge, but she wasn’t panicking. That was perhaps why Maigret was looking at her with some hostility, which found its way into his voice when he asked her:
‘How many men have you already asked to run away with you?’
She was entirely taken aback. Turning away, she stammered:
‘Wh— What did you say?’
‘Well, you asked Popinga. Was he the first?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m asking you if he was your first lover.’
A longish silence. Then:
‘I didn’t think you’d be so nasty to me. I came here …’
‘Was he the first? All right, so it had been going on for a little over a year. But before that?’
‘I … I had a bit of a flirtation with my gym teacher at high school in Groningen.’
‘A flirtation?’
‘It was him, he …’
‘Right. You had a lover before Popinga, then. Any others?’
‘Never,’ she cried indignantly.
‘And you’ve been Barens’s mistress too, haven’t you?’
‘No, that’s not true, I swear …’
‘But you used to meet him …’
‘Because he was in love with me. But he hardly dared even kiss me.’
‘And the last time you had a rendezvous with him, the one that was interrupted when both I and your father turned up, you suggested running away together?’
‘How did you know?’
He almost burst out laughing. Her naivety was incredible. She had regained some of her self-possession. In fact, she spoke of these delicate matters with remarkable frankness!
‘But he didn’t want to?’
‘He was scared. He said he didn’t have any money.’
‘So you proposed to get some from your house. In short, you’ve been itching to run away for ages. Your main aim in life is to leave Delfzijl with a man, any man.’
‘Not just any man,’ she corrected him crossly. ‘You’re being horrible. You’re not trying to understand.’
‘Oh yes I am! A five-year-old could understand! You love life! You like men! You like all the pleasures the world has to offer.’
She lowered her eyes and fiddled with her handbag.
‘You’re bored stiff on your father’s model farm. You want something else in life. You start at high school, when you’re seventeen, with the gym teacher. But you can’t persuade him to leave. In Delfzijl you look around at the available men, and you find one who looks more adventurous than the others. Popinga’s travelled the world. He likes life too. And he too is chafing at the prejudices of the local people. You throw yourself at him.’
‘Why do you say …?’
‘Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Let’s say, here you are, a pretty girl, devilishly attractive, and he starts to flirt a bit with you. But only timidly, because he’s afraid of complications, he’s afraid of his wife, of Any, of his principal and his pupils.’
‘Especially Any!’
‘We’ll get to her later. So he snatches kisses in corners. I’m prepared to bet he wasn’t even bold enough to ask for more. But you think you’ve hit the jackpot. You engineer meetings every day. You go round to his house with fruit. You’re accepted into the household. You get him to see you home on his bike, and you stop behind the timber stacks. You write letters to him about your longing to run away
…’
‘You’ve read them?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t think it was him that started it?’
She was launched now.
‘At first, he told me he was unhappy, Madame Popinga didn’t understand him, all she thought about was what people would say, that he was leading a stupid life, and so on.’
‘Naturally!’
‘So you see …’
‘Sixty per cent of married men say that kind of thing to the first attractive young woman they meet. Unfortunately for him, he’d come across a girl who took him at his word.’
‘Oh you’re so horrible, so horrible!’
She was on the point of crying. She restrained herself, and stamped her foot as she said ‘horrible’.
‘In short, he kept putting off this famous escape, and you started to think it was never going to happen.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Yes it is. As is proved by your taking out a kind of insurance policy against that happening, by letting young Barens pay his respects. Cautiously. Because he’s a shy young man, well brought up, respectful, you have to be careful not to scare him off.’
‘That’s a mean thing to say!’
‘It’s merely what happens in real life.’
‘You really hate me, don’t you?’
‘Me? Not at all.’
‘You do hate me! But I’m so unhappy. I loved Conrad.’
‘And Cornelius? And the gym teacher?’
This time she did shed tears. She stamped her foot again.
‘I forbid you …’
‘To say you didn’t love any of them? Why not? You only loved them to the extent that they represented another life for you, the great escape you were always longing for.’
She wasn’t listening any more. She wailed:
‘I shouldn’t have come, I thought …’
‘That I would take you under my wing. But that’s what I am doing. Only I don’t consider you a victim in all this, or a heroine. Just a greedy little girl, a bit silly, a bit selfish, that’s all. There are plenty of little girls like that around.’
She looked up with tearful eyes, in which some hope already glistened.
‘But everyone hates me,’ she moaned.
‘Who do you mean by everyone?’
‘Madame Popinga, for a start, because I’m not like her. She’d like me to be making clothes all day for South Sea islanders, or knitting socks for the poor. I know she’s told the girls who work for those charities not to be like me. And she even said out loud that if I didn’t find a husband soon, I’d come to a bad end. People told me.’
It was as if a breath of the slightly rancid air of the little town had reached them once more: the gossip, the girls from good families, sitting knitting under the watchful eye of a lady who dispensed good works, advice and sly remarks.
‘But it’s mostly Any.’
‘Who hates you?’
‘Yes. When I went round there, she’d usually leave the room and go upstairs. I’m sure she guessed the truth a long time ago. Madame Popinga, in spite of everything, means well. She just wanted me to change my ways, to wear different clothes. And she especially wanted to get me to read something different from novels! But she didn’t suspect anything. She was the one who told Conrad to see me home.’
An amused smile floated across Maigret’s face.
‘But with Any, it’s not the same. You’ve seen her, haven’t you? She looks a fright! Her teeth are all crooked. She’s never had a man interested in her. And she knows it. She knows she’ll be an old maid all her life. That’s why she did all that studying: she wanted to have a profession. She’s even a member of those feminist leagues.’
Beetje was getting worked up. One sensed an ancient grievance coming to the surface.
‘So she was always creeping around the house, keeping an eye on Conrad. Because she doesn’t have any choice about being virtuous, she’d like everyone to be in the same boat. You understand? She guessed, I’m sure. She must have tried to get her brother-in-law to give me up. And even Cornelius! She could see that all the men look at me, and that includes Wienands, who’s never dared say a word to me, but he goes red when I dance with him. And his wife hates me too, because of that. Maybe Any didn’t say anything to her sister. But maybe she did. Maybe she’s the one that found my letters.’
‘And then went on to kill?’ said Maigret sharply.
She stammered:
‘N-no, I swear I don’t know, I didn’t say that. Just that Any’s poisonous! Is it my fault if she’s ugly?’
‘And you’re sure she’s never had a lover?’
Ah, the little smile, or indeed giggle, in Beetje’s answer, that instinctively victorious giggle of a desirable woman scorning one who is plain!
It was like little misses in boarding school, squabbling over a trifle.
‘Not in Delfzijl, at any rate.’
‘And as well as hating you, she didn’t like her brother-in-law either, did she?’
‘I don’t know. That’s not the same thing, he was family. And perhaps all the family belonged to her a little. So she had to keep an eye on him, see he didn’t get into trouble …’
‘But not shoot him?’
‘What can you be thinking? You keep saying that.’
‘I don’t think anything. Just answer my questions. Was Oosting aware of your relationship with Popinga?’
‘Did they tell you that too?’
‘You went on his boat together to the Workum sandbanks. Did he leave you two … on your own?’
‘Yes, he was up on deck, steering the boat.’
‘And he let you have the cabin.’
‘Naturally, it was cold outside.’
‘You haven’t seen him since … since Conrad’s death?’
‘No! I swear I haven’t.’
‘And he’s never made any advances to you?’
She laughed out loud.
‘Him?’
And yet she was again on the brink of weeping, clearly distressed. Madame Van Hasselt, having heard their raised voices, put her head round the door, then muttered her apologies and went back to her post behind the till. There was a silence.
‘Do you really believe your father’s capable of killing you?’
‘Yes! He would …’
‘So he might also have been capable of killing your lover.’
She opened her eyes wide with terror, and protested fiercely:
‘No, no! That’s not true! Papa wouldn’t …’
‘But when you got home on the night of the crime, he wasn’t there.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He came in a little later than you, didn’t he?’
‘Straight afterwards. But …’
‘In your last letters, you showed signs of impatience. You felt Conrad was getting away from you, that the whole escapade was starting to frighten him, and that, in any case, he wouldn’t leave his home to run off abroad with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Just recapping. Your father will soon be here looking for you.’
She looked around in anguish, and seemed to be searching for the exit.
‘Don’t be afraid. I will be needing you tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes, we’re going to stage a reconstruction of what everyone did the night of the crime.’
‘He’ll kill me!’
‘Who?’
‘My father.’
‘I’ll be there, never fear.’
‘But …’
Jean Duclos came into the room, shutting the door behind him quickly and turning the key in the lock. He stepped forward, looking important.
‘Watch out! The farmer’s here. He …’
‘Take her up to your room.’
‘To my …!’
‘Or mine, if you prefer.’
They could hear footsteps in the corridor. Near the stage was another door communicating with the se
rvice stairs. Duclos and Beetje went out that way. Maigret unlocked the main door, and found himself face to face with Farmer Liewens, who was looking past his shoulder.
‘Beetje?’
The language barrier was between them again. They could not understand each other. Maigret merely interposed his large body to obstruct passage and gain time, while trying not to enrage the man in front of him.
Jean Duclos was quickly back downstairs, trying to look casual.
‘Tell him he can have his daughter back tonight, and that he will also be needed for the reconstruction of the crime.’
‘Do we have to …’
‘Just translate, for God’s sake, when I tell you.’
Duclos did so, in a placatory voice. The farmer stared at the two men.
‘Tell him as well that tonight the murderer will be under lock and key.’
This too was translated. Then Maigret just had time to spring forward, knocking over Liewens, who had pulled out a revolver and was trying to press it to his own temple.
The struggle was brief. Maigret was so massive that his adversary was quickly immobilized and disarmed, while a stack of chairs they had collided with collapsed noisily, grazing the inspector’s forehead.
‘Lock the door!’ Maigret shouted to Duclos. ‘Don’t let anyone in.’
And he stood up, recovering his breath.
9. The Reconstruction
The Wienands family arrived first, at seven thirty precisely. There were, at that moment, only three men waiting in the Van Hasselt ballroom, some distance apart, and not speaking to each other: Jean Duclos, on edge, pacing up and down the room, Farmer Liewens, looking withdrawn and sitting still on a chair, and Maigret, leaning against the piano, pipe between his teeth.
No one had thought to switch on all the lamps. A single large bulb, hanging very high up, cast a greyish light. The chairs were still stacked at the back of the room, except for one row, which Maigret had had lined up at the front.
On the little stage, otherwise empty, stood a table covered in green baize, and a single chair.
A Crime in Holland Page 9