by Graham Brack
‘Very well,’ I answered. ‘Voet showed me every courtesy. He was a little reluctant to accept that his powers were in any way diminished, but accepted that he can’t go on forever.’
‘And are they diminished?’
‘Mentally he is as sharp as ever, but he has a weakness in the legs that precludes standing for a long time and makes his movement quite slow. His grandson tells me he is improving, and they still hope he may regain his full vigour.’
The Stadhouder sniffed. ‘I see. And this grandson — is he sound?’
I took this to be a reference to his potential loyalty to the Orange cause rather than a comment on his physical state. ‘He is a very accomplished young man, soon to be a Professor of Law at Utrecht University.’
‘I don’t suppose his grandfather being the Rector influenced that in any way?’
‘The two of them are very animated by any such suggestion. In fact, they are so sensitive to the idea that Gijsbert has offered to maintain his grandson for the first two years, during which he will draw no salary.’
‘How public-spirited of him. I wish more of my people would offer the same. I should send you to count the money in my treasury, Mercurius. It won’t take you long.’
I have no knowledge of high finance, but one thing is for sure. If the Stadhouder counted the contents of my treasury, it would take him a lot less time. ‘I suggested that if enemies of your cause were to gain the upper hand in Utrecht, both of them would probably be arrested, and that therefore it would be good to have an alternative outside their family.’
‘Good for you. How did they receive that?’
‘The younger man persuaded the elder that it was likely to be so, and suggested a fellow called Van Leusden. I have met him, Stadhouder, and he seems entirely suitable.’
‘What’s his profession?’
‘He is an undertaker.’
‘Excellent. Even during enemy occupations, undertakers are rarely restricted in their work. They’re normally among the first to be given a pass to go wherever they need. You’ve done well, Mercurius. Care for an apple?’
He held the bowl towards me, so I selected one and thanked him while hoping this was not going to be the entire extent of any reward. I did not know what I was hoping for, though following New Testament precedent I might have asked for Van Looy’s head on a platter.
‘I have also brought my proposals for the Utrecht salaries. They are the same as the Leiden ones.’
‘Good. I shan’t have to read them, then. I’ll write to the Rectors today to tell them to put them into effect. I’ll call Pieters in and we’ll do it now, so you can take the two letters with you.’
I had expected him to have a small bell or some similar contrivance, but he simply strode to the door, flung it open and shouted for Pieters. The rapidity with which the secretary appeared strongly hinted that he had been somewhere near the keyhole when summoned.
‘Pieters, I will dictate two letters to you which you are to write out in your fairest hand and deliver to Master Mercurius here so that he can take them this afternoon. Ensure that Mercurius gets some dinner while he’s waiting, give him ten guilders from my privy purse and whatever he needs for a barge back to Leiden. And you’d better write out one of those letters that tells people he is my official and not to mess with him.’
That all seemed very satisfactory to me, though the look on Pieters’ face betrayed his belief that I was not the class of person who should be receiving letters like that. However, like the good and faithful servant he was he just bowed so low I expected his breeches to rip at the back and indicated that we could leave now with a sweeping gesture of his arm. I bowed to the Stadhouder and made to follow Pieters from the room.
‘Good man, Mercurius. You’ve done well. I won’t forget this.’
I thought that was just one of those things important men say. Unfortunately, he meant it.
You can imagine that there was a certain jauntiness in my step as I left the barge and returned once more to the Academy to report to the Rector and give him the Stadhouder’s letter. I had ten guilders in my pouch, and while money was not something that I coveted, that is much easier to say truthfully when you already have some.
The Rector opened the Stadhouder’s letter and read it carefully. Like all such letters, it was designed to be displayed in public and therefore could be represented as a mark of approval of the university; and since it held out the prospect of pay rises for many of the staff, it was bound to be a popular achievement that would redound to the Rector’s credit. He was a modest man, a fine man, a fair man, and I do not believe for a moment that he planned to take personal pride in this, but you could see at once that he was happy.
‘This is splendid!’ he exulted. ‘Mercurius, you have done wonderfully well! Sit down, man, and let us share a flask of wine to toast your achievement.’
I attempted to brush away the praise, but such half-hearted efforts were easily deflected.
‘Oh, don’t be so self-deprecating, Mercurius. You have exceeded all the expectations I might reasonably have had. Let me fill your goblet.’ He sat opposite me, sipped his wine and stared reflectively into its mulberry red depths. ‘I will open my heart to you, Mercurius. I feared the worst. It is impossible for a man in my position not to attempt to maintain friendly relationships with the powers that be. I was never close to the De Witts — I barely knew them — but universities need stability, which means that I was bound to support them when opposition arose.’
The Rector was an honest man, and I had no reason to believe that he was dissembling, but I confess that I could not think of a single word he had uttered in favour of either side in the great dispute.
‘Naturally,’ he continued, ‘when the current Stadhouder claimed his office, I feared that he might seize the opportunity to cleanse the Augean stables, and that anyone who had done any service for the De Witts could expect to be removed. And when he began to interest himself in our finances, I thought my fears were entirely justified. I was sure he would pretend to have found some small irregularity and cast me out in shame. I could withstand the loss of office, Mercurius. I have my books, and it would afford me time for my own work which has been neglected far too long. But a man loses everything if he loses his good reputation.’
He took another draught of his wine. I tried to think of something apposite to say, some comforting word to share with him, but my mind had gone utterly blank. Fortunately he supplied the deficiency himself.
‘I am not a man to fawn over the mighty, Mercurius. Power is transitory, and the great men of today are the jailbirds of tomorrow. But I will confess I submitted to any whim of the Stadhouder’s in the hope of deflecting his wrath. And when he said he wanted to meet you, I was only too happy to make the arrangements.’
‘He asked for me, Rector? By name?’
‘Not exactly. He asked for the man who solved the abductions of the girls in Delft. He has a high view of your abilities, Mercurius, as I do myself. And you have justified it. I feel that the clouds have lifted from above our heads.’
Just then, there was a commotion outside. I cannot quite recall the order of events, but there was a woman’s scream, the sound of rushing footsteps, a period of quiet, and then a stampede of feet on the stairs followed by an urgent hammering at the door. Before the Rector had given the command to enter, one of the kitchen boys threw the door open and rushed in.
‘Rector, sir, you’d best come. There’s been an accident.’
The Rector put his wine down and beckoned me to follow him. Quickly, but without running, we followed the boy who led us downstairs and along the corridor towards the dining hall. Just before its doors we turned to the left, where a small crowd had gathered. One of the lecturers was comforting Mechtild, leaving me in no doubt as to whose scream we had heard. The Rector demanded passage, and the bystanders stepped aside to allow him through. I followed like a lapdog, with no authority of my own except the right to follow my master.
&nbs
p; On the stairs was a man who had evidently tumbled down and broken his neck. The Rector gently eased the head towards us, and I found myself gazing into the staring eyes of Van Looy.
One of the advantages of a modern university is that it houses experts on every conceivable branch of knowledge, so when an emergency strikes the right person is close at hand. Admittedly, I have not yet met with an accident that has called for me to push my way through the crowd whilst yelling, ‘Let me through! I’m a moral philosopher!’ but it may happen one day.
In this case there were two medical men in the dining room who could certify that Van Looy was certainly dead, though if truth be told you did not need a medical degree to see that. When a man’s head seems to be unattached to his shoulders, it is a fairly safe wager that he is not going to recover well.
I was marvelling at the realisation that two surgeons had just agreed on something, a rare event in my recollection, when I noticed that the Rector was speaking to me.
‘I need to talk to you, Mercurius.’
‘Rector?’
‘There are matters touching on this accident upon which I would welcome your advice.’
I did not quite understand him at the time, and I assumed that he meant that he had doubts whether it was an accident, which is why I turned my mind to that line of thought.
‘Two things puzzle me, Rector.’
‘Speak on, Mercurius.’
‘Can we encourage people to leave us alone for a moment?’
The Rector gently persuaded onlookers to retire to the dining room and await him there, dispatching one of the servants to inform the Mayor and, through him, the Sergeant of the Civic Guard. Since the Mayor is responsible for law and order, he is also the person who investigates any unexpected deaths. A pair of gardeners were ordered to prepare a cart so that Van Looy could be transported with decorum, though none of us could be quite sure where his next destination would be.
I climbed the stairs and examined the panelling and the balustrades carefully before turning my attention to Van Looy himself. Fortunately, I am not a man given to squeamishness, so I felt no inhibition about turning the head slightly so that I could see the rear. I saw what I expected to see.
‘You are thoughtful, Mercurius. What is it that disturbs you?’
‘You knew Van Looy, Rector. Are you as surprised as I am that he should be on the servants’ staircase?’
‘It had not struck me, but you’re right. He had a fierce sense of pride.’
‘I never knew him to use it, even when it was the shortest route. He would always use the main stairs in preference. And then we come to the greater problem. Have you ever known a man to fall down stairs and make no attempt to save himself?’
‘It sounds unlikely.’
‘There are no scratches on the wood panelling, no damage to his fingernails, in short, no sign that he tried to arrest his fall. And while it is possible that he caused the damage to the back of his head on the way down, I can see no patch of blood on the stairs that corresponds to the wound on his head, but just round the corner at the top of the stairs there is a small smear on the floor.’
‘Leading us to conclude that someone attacked him there and pushed him down the stairs to make it look like an accident?’
‘I fear so, Rector. Van Looy was murdered.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
I think even the most doltish of my readers will have realised that I was not a great admirer of Van Looy. The man was proud, arrogant, devious, suspicious, and exuded as much warmth as a dead herring. But he was a child of God, and therefore his life was not to be taken away lightly.
Allow me to digress briefly to observe that there are certain difficulties about investigating a murder in a Calvinist milieu. First of all, some of my colleagues in the theology department will tell you that Almighty God ordains all things, and therefore decides who should be murdered and who should not. He has measured out a man’s span of life, and some are allotted much and some less, and that’s an end to it. For these men, asking why someone has been killed is quite pointless, because the only answer they can give is that the murderer was doing God’s will. Any investigation of motive that keeps coming back to the notion that God wanted the victim dead is not conducive to a successful enquiry.
I will digress further to note that if you say to them that if the murderer is doing God’s will it seems rather unfair to hang him, they will tell you that it is much more complicated than that and suddenly find other things they urgently need to do.
The Rector had left me to speak to those in the dining hall, and the servants were standing by to move Van Looy to wherever you take dead bodies as soon as I gave permission, but I wanted to fix the image firmly in my mind and assure myself that I had not overlooked anything.
The first thing I had overlooked, it seemed to me, was praying for this poor man, so I knelt by his side and placed a hand on his head as I said a short prayer.
‘Where are you taking him?’ I asked the servants.
‘The crypt of the Hooglandse Kerk, Master,’ one replied. ‘At least until they tell us to take him somewhere else.’
I nodded and bade them get on their way. They lifted their melancholy cargo onto a board and then through the kitchen to the back door where the cart was waiting. Lying him there, they draped a black cloth over him, then one walked the horse while the other kept an eye on their load to ensure he did not slide off the open cart.
When I returned to the Academy, the Rector was waiting for me.
‘I have something to discuss,’ he reminded me, and we both ascended to his rooms where he closed all the doors and offered me no wine. This was obviously serious. ‘We will need to inform the Stadhouder of what has happened,’ he began.
‘But surely it is enough to tell the Mayor,’ I protested.
‘There is more to this than meets the eye, Mercurius,’ answered the Rector, at which point my heart did its customary wobbling. No good conversation ever starts that way. ‘This is why I wished to speak to you when we saw the body. Whoever the victim is, I’m fairly sure he isn’t Van Looy.’
My heart’s callisthenics were joined by a slight thumping in the temples. ‘No?’
‘No. That is, I’m not sure there even is a Van Looy.’
‘Forgive me, Rector, but this is a riddle to me.’
The Rector sighed deeply, composed himself, and began to tell the tale. ‘Van Looy — let us call him that, as we always have — presented himself here last year bearing a letter from the Stadhouder. In it, the Stadhouder made an odd request. A request from the Stadhouder is not like that of ordinary men, Mercurius; one does not refuse it, especially if one sees what happens to those who do. I have no taste for a dungeon.’
Well, there was something on which we were agreed, and if I detected one was in the offing, I could be packed and on the road within the hour.
‘He wished me to give Van Looy employment. He explained that Van Looy had specific duties to perform here, which were secret, but for which he required room and lodging and an explanation of his presence that would deflect curiosity. There would be no difficulty with his salary, because Van Looy would not require one. That is why I told you not to include him in your remuneration plan. Had you enquired at the University Treasury, you would have discovered we had never spent a stijver on him.’
‘So Van Looy was the Stadhouder’s eyes and ears in Leiden?’
‘I don’t know, but I would not be surprised. I’m sure part of his function was to report on my loyalty or otherwise. But he was a man of some gifts, and it seemed to me that the simplest option was to employ him as my secretary, so I did. In such a position he could go almost anywhere he wished without questions being raised by curious observers.’
I liked this less and less. I could not say anything to the Rector, but it occurred to me that what Van Looy was doing in Leiden was not very different to what I had been doing in Utrecht, and it had resulted in his death. I am not a coward — well, actually, yes, I
am — but I am not martyr material either. On the other hand, it is not the done thing to tell the Stadhouder to take his job and shove it — never mind, my point is made. On top of which, he would probably want the ten guilders back.
‘So you see why I say we must let the Stadhouder know what has happened, Mercurius?’
‘Yes, Rector, I do.’
‘Sound man. Off you go, then.’
‘Now?’
‘Well, you don’t want him to hear from anybody else first, do you?’
I don’t care, I thought, but I can see that you do. ‘Isn’t it rather late to be setting out for The Hague?’
‘You can take my carriage. It has lamps and Adriaan is a good driver.’
‘Thank you. I’ll prepare myself.’
There may have been an hour or so of daylight left when we set out on our journey. You can walk from Leiden to The Hague in a little over three hours, so I hoped the horse might cut that time in half. It would be dark before we arrived and I was by no means certain that the guards would let me in, but there was no shirking the duty.
I might have felt more comfortable had I been walking. A clergyman on his own is self-evidently too poor to bother robbing, whereas a fine carriage with a coachman is asking for trouble, especially since there was nobody on the roof with a weapon. I thought briefly that I would feel safer if I rode on the roof, because people would then assume I was armed and leave us in peace. Against that, the presence of a guard might cause them to think that the carriage bore something worth guarding, and I recalled that the first person killed in a robbery is usually the armed guard, so I decided to stay where I was.
The road to The Hague is straight and well-kept, so we were able to make good time and it was not yet ten o’clock when we drove into the courtyard of the Binnenhof. The sentries raised their guns ominously as if expecting a large number of armed brigands to spring from the carriage, and seemed a little disappointed to see only one minister alight.