Criminal Conversation

by Nicolas Freeling

  Had Casimir seen the girl in or leaving Post’s house? Had that given him ideas or suspicions? The girl had been important to him; she gave him, plainly, a new lease of life. And, perhaps, his death.

  Simons, obviously, counted for nothing. He might have been used as a pawn by the Post woman. Poor fellow – what a blow to his self-esteem. It was possible that he had known or guessed something of Casimir’s manoeuvres. Lalalala – who would ever know who had manoeuvred what and why? If Casimir was attached to the girl, would he really have decided to blackmail her father?

  “You don’t want this Simons picked up, do you?”

  “Of course not; that was a squeeze on the girl. One point in her tale rings false. She was seduced by Simons, who is plainly a sort of professional narcissist spending his life admiring his own magnificence. She learns to detest Simons, and in reaction Cabestan comes to appear to her a likeable person. That is all consequent enough. Then we find her suddenly going to this doctor, to be treated for anaemia. That I don’t find consequent. In the same house, though she rather disliked the wife, whom Cabestan, moreover, loathed, and whom she had a grudge against as the person who had mixed her up with Simons.”

  “The mother…”

  “You don’t send your daughter for treatment to the man who is or has been your lover,” decisively.

  “Everybody agrees that whatever his morals he’s a good doctor.”

  “No, no, no. If the mother really sent her there’s something behind that. I think she went off her own bat.” He took his glasses off again. “The other thing that doesn’t satisfy me is the whole attitude Merckel takes up. Look at the chain of events.

  “Cabestan learns in some way, possibly through the daughter, who may know or guess – impossible to say whether she was acting when I asked her – that the mother is Post’s mistress. He is attached to the girl, but something sours it and his resentment fastens on the whole tribe of Posts. He decides for reasons of his own to put the bite on Merckel. I wonder why.

  “Now Merckel has every reason to keep quiet about this, and does in fact keep quiet about it. Cabestan dies. Merckel then comes to us with an absurd tale about a scruple. He accuses Post of killing Cabestan, and he never tells us what grounds he has, since all he has to go on is Cabestan’s tale that his wife is Post’s mistress, a fact that by his own admission he cared little about, provided she was discreet. He must have had something more to go on. That something is certainly to do with the daughter. You heard her. Her father knows something about her. And you tell me that the wife’s evidence was that Merckel is very attached to his step-daughter, having no children of his own.”

  “But if he found out she had been seduced by Simons how would that rouse him against Post – or Cabestan?”

  The old man regarded him with dislike.

  “I know nothing. I’ve never seen any of these people. I have nothing whatever but the girl’s words to me, and I’m trying to find a logical explanation for them. Since you apparently haven’t had the patience to think about these things I have to do it for you. I see a fact.

  “A month or so after the girl has an affair with Simons – call it that for a convenient formula – she goes to Post of all people, to be treated, we are told, for anaemia. I can’t swallow that.”

  Van der Valk, who had swallowed it, was abashed.

  “Suppose – suppose – she went there herself, giving possibly some excuse to the mother, and asked Post for an abortion. Thinking possibly that she can twist Post’s arm, knowing a few things either from the mother or through Cabestan.”

  “Even if it were true we’d never prove it. Couldn’t use it against Post without a fearful stink.”

  “Yes, yes, you don’t need to tell me,” irritably. “Nobody’s proposing to use it or even mention it. But if true it explains what does not at present ring true. Merckel, either from the girl or more likely from Cabestan, finds out something of this. He may even have thought Cabestan the putative father, and that he had sent the girl to Post. In which case they are both birds of a filthy feather, and when Cabestan suddenly dies Merckel concludes that Post has removed an awkward and disagreeable accomplice. And that sticks in his throat. The fellow has attacked him, his wife, and now his daughter, and that goes too far. He comes to us, with hints, but tries to suppress the daughter.”

  Van der Valk, who had thought Merckel was holding something back, and wondered why the banker should be indifferent to his approaching the wife, was impressed by the old man’s grasp of a situation that had baffled him. But was the old man really proposing to do anything about it?

  “We can’t use this girl as a witness against Post. And we can’t begin any legal action. But you’ve talked to this fellow a couple of times now. You might see whether there was anything that could be built up there. Don’t try to intimidate Merckel. All these people are in a position to make life very nasty for us – bear that in mind, lad. Look at all this mess on the floor; where’s my Blom-boy?”

  Fourteen

  Mr Samson would say no more, van der Valk knew. Either now or at any other time. Now it was up to him. If he reported – after a decent interval for mourning – that there was nothing to be done with any of these people, the old man would take the whole file, bury it in a hole eight feet deep, and never mention it again.

  There was nothing he could do with Heer Merckel.

  There was nothing he could do with Mrs Post, either. He had nothing whatever against her, and the moment he tried to question her she would smell rats. The woman from the powerful family of magistrates, the shining light of intellectual circles, the ‘art whore’!

  As for Post, he had been right outside his book and his powers from the word go. If Post lifted a finger his job was gone. Post must know this. Why hadn’t he complained? Better still, why hadn’t he simply thrown van der Valk out?

  And yet – what was the streak of fatalism or obstinacy that made him persist? – he didn’t give up. Quite the contrary, he phoned for another appointment. Devil take it; how stupid he sounded. Would that secretary really not smell a rat this time?

  “I’m afraid,” cautiously over the telephone, “my trouble still hasn’t cleared up. I would like to see Dr Post again, as soon as it can be managed.”

  “That’s quite all right, Mr van der Valk, I understand. Afternoons still suit you best? Let’s see…you could come tomorrow. It’s lucky that it’s August, you see – very many of our patients are on holiday, and don’t want to think about disagreeable things like appointments,” sunnily. Her voice was quite innocent – Post could have said nothing to her. No; certainly not.

  “Many thanks,” he said. “That’ll do very well indeed.”

  Fifteen

  “Me again,” in a voice stupidly bright, that he would have sworn was not only false but practically falsetto.

  “Must be the heat,” remarked Dr Post calmly. “Nervous troubles are precipitated by a heatwave; it’s a commonplace.”

  Indeed it was hot; it had gone on and on undiminished. Asphalt stuck to the soles of everybody’s shoes, and fat Amsterdamse housewives had given up wearing frocks altogether, and hung out of their windows in slips shiny and violently coloured as lollipops, languidly shaking out their dusters and showing a good deal of unaphrodisiac armpit. The sales of fizzy lemonade had reached such dizzy heights that the factories could not keep supplies up, and did not know whether to laugh fatly at their monstrous profits or cut the phone off to stop the shower of complaints. And the Amsterdamse police force was in trouble too. The uniformed members were hoarse with quacks of protest, because some unusually lunatic city father had decided that with all these tourists about the police had to keep their jackets on. “Shirtsleeves,” had run his peroration, “are not only unhygienic and undignified; they are a blot upon our good name in far countries.” Dear man. As for the plainclothes troops, they were prey to the most extraordinary fantasies – wasn’t this the proof? – such as never would have been entertained in the cloudy drizzles of a
maritime climate behaving as it should in August.

  Here in Dr Post’s consulting-room, however, it was cool and delicious. One was deeply grateful for the solidity of old-fashioned houses, for the thick insect-haunted shade of the lindens outside, that shed a kind of sticky deposit on their patches of pavement, above which spiders clambered up and down their ropes with such charming agility.

  Dr van der Post was certainly unaffected by heat. His suit was perfect, his shirt had an elegant sit achieved only by good hand-cutting, his untroubled eyes had their warm smiling sympathy.

  “I like the heat, myself,” said van der Valk.

  “So do I. It is rare, and precious if on that count only.”

  “Cabestan’s flat must be pretty hot on a day like this.”

  “I dare say.”

  “I’d be interested to see that flat.”

  No answer. Post took a cigarette and lit it, weighing a slim lighter in his long well-shaped fingers as though meditating the pros and cons of something.

  “What plans do you have for the place? Going to find another artist as tenant?”

  Suddenly he got up, surprising van der Valk who was used now to immobility and indifference.

  “Come and see for yourself. Satisfy your curiosity. I prefer to hold no secrets from you than to find a legion of spies observing my movements, gossiping with my chauffeur. I wish to put a stop to this itch of yours.”

  He walked out into the hall, a tall man moving quietly. Van der Valk followed him to the street, where he took a key-ring from his pocket and stopped to look at the lindens.

  “Considerable insect population – I’m quite surprised to see no policemen up there.” He opened the door at the corner and motioned van der Valk to go first. Threadbare stair-carpet, steep steps within narrow walls, flight after flight. A twenty-five watt bulb at each narrow landing. One storey, two storeys, three: a painted deal door. The landing was lit by a skylight, but the big studio had mansard windows as well, and enough day came in for any painter. Curtains were now drawn against the sunlight; stained and faded beige cretonne that had once been yellow. It was hot, stuffy and dusty, but not as much as van der Valk had expected. A spider sat motionless in a corner of the ceiling and a big daddy-long-legs had taken up his post on the curtain rail, but it had not a totally deserted or neglected air.

  He realised that someone had swept, even dusted, done something to make it habitable. And had spent time here. Whose was the glass and the bottle of mineral water? Whose was that elegant silk dressing-gown? Not Casimir’s.

  “Ah, I see you’ve taken up camping.”

  “I did not, you may imagine, wish you pawing about among my possessions without my being there to keep an eye on the performance.”

  “Rather pleasant.”

  “I have a certain taste for solitude.”

  “Yes, I’ve noticed. Doing your own cleaning even – no women allowed up here.” He was looking at books with interest. What was this?

  Police work is not a great encouragement to intellectual interests. And van der Valk’s education had been nothing spectacular. But he was in no sense the sheep that looks up and is not fed. More like a goat, that having devoured all the rosebushes in sight gets busy with the neighbours’ vines.

  His father had been a carpenter whose hobby was cabinet-making for his own home: by the time he died he had even taught himself marquetry. Going on a three-day trip to Paris he had stood open-mouthed in the Louvre, and for the rest of his life been full of Oeben and Riesener, Leleu, Weisweiler and Molitor, mispronounced but thoroughly understood.

  His mother had in her own words ‘bookwormed herself through the whole damn public library’. It was not really surprising that he had become the kind of person that cannot pass a book without picking it up.

  One of these books struck him because of a coincidence. The author’s name was Van der Post! When he picked it up it seemed familiar: yes, about Africa, he remembered it; vivid book, by an expert, just the kind of man he liked. There was a phrase in it that had lodged in his memory too, the way a phrase will after the book is forgotten. Something about the individual – one must learn to work out one’s individual problems, and see every other man as an individual, and only when that had been done would it be time to turn to collective thinking, people in groups, people as groups.

  He picked up another book, and was straight away curious about it. What was this? Myth? Elves and dwarfs and goblins – did Dr Post have fairy stories by his bed, then? Yet it seemed to be an adult book, somehow. He sat on the divan absorbed for some time, looked up suddenly, and saw Post the other side of the room. He had hung a picture on the wall, and was now standing back tasting the effect.

  This doctor lived among objects of perfect taste, in luxury, well away from the smell of cheap shops and ugly objects, sweaty people with shapeless shoes crowded around sale counters. What did he like about this half-sordid, shabby room, with a smell of old sun-heated paint and cheap linoleum and paraffin? A heap of rubbish that someone had looked at and decided was not worth the effort of carting away. What was so attractive about this to this man, who was even sleeping up here on a cheap divan carefully made up. A whimsical fantasy? Was that the way a man acted who had killed the last inhabitant of this draggled flat?

  He didn’t know. He would have to think about it. And Post was just standing there looking amused. He beat a retreat, hoping he didn’t look too disconcerted.

  Sixteen

  In the street, however, his detachment switched on, like the photo-electric cell that lights the street-lamps at dusk. Certainly, he thought, I must look exceedingly ridiculous. Both there in Post’s house, and right here in the street. Like the classic caricature of a German tourist, stopping to gaze at buildings of great antiquity and hideous ugliness with cloud-wrapped piety – he had just caught himself raptly reading a torn poster for an exhibition that had been held a month ago, peeling off the metal pillbox of a public lavatory.

  When nearly at home he went into his local bookshop, where several people were standing transfixed, tasting the latest pornographic fiction, oblivious to their surroundings. The owner, who knew him well, was leaning on his counter, maliciously studying these sad people.

  “Two ballpoints, one red, one green…come on, there are cheaper ones than that… You know a book called The Lord of the Rings?”

  “Sure. Got it in stock if you want it.”

  “You have? Let’s see… This a best-seller or something?”

  “No, no. I buy one at a time and it sells every month: has for years. Specialised appeal. I’ve read it – a total new world, landscapes, languages, history, all complete. It has all the things people like – war, poetry, kings, castles – and leaves out everything they have to live with. No money, no sex, no commerce, no industry - remarkable, and great power of imagination. It’s not like anything else; it’s a phenomenon.”

  Van der Valk stood for three-quarters of an hour, quite as transfixed as the students of pornography. When the bookseller told him so, he was so cross he bought the book.

  What was more, he sat up half the night with it. Strange thing for a Dutch policeman. It was English of course; a Frenchman would not write that. But a German would like it too; rustic humour and pastoral verse, many songs and rhymes, mountains full of wizards and romantic horrors, a hero in armour and a pale princess. Just the book for Ludwig of Bavaria but one would hardly have thought for a specialist in women and neurology.

  The author had a strange name, not very English sounding. Tolkien. That could almost be a Dutch name. Which was remarkable.

  The national character, he thought vaguely, is a thing about which a lot of nonsense is spoken and believed. They are very proud of what they call ‘sobriety’ – spoken of as the national virtue daily. Looking at both-sides-of-the-penny, down-to-earth, you-can’t-fool-me. Determined to see what is, and to detect, and abolish, what only might be. It leads to a hateful caution, a loathing of imagination, a fear of fantasy. If hypocrisy is
the English vice, and vanity the French vice, and obedience the German vice, then surely sobriety is the Dutch vice.

  It was four in the morning. His wife had gone to bed indignant with him. It couldn’t be helped.

  ‘Tolk’ in Dutch means an interpreter. ‘Ien’ is a diminutive. Had the man or his ancestors gone to England? That other Van der Post, the African one – his grandfather had run away too, from Holland.

  Why did the doctor go and live in the top-floor studio where poor old Cabestan had been a failed painter? Was this doctor a bit of a failed poet? Being a successful doctor might be a strain on the man? Why had he married the woman from the family of magistrates, with artistic tastes? That first pressing of the grapes of a bourgeois nation, where all the aristocracy and all the tramps had been most carefully, conscientiously throttled, years and years ago. Did he deliberately choose and seduce women from the same background? With his head full of dwarfs and goblins, he took a long while getting to sleep.

  A police department is a rigid hierarchy, like any other civil service branch. Van der Valk, an inspector, was a captain. Under him came a crew of noncommissioned officers and simple soldiers, who had been given a special training to raise them above the common ruck of police duties, which have never been described better than they were by Fouché a hundred and fifty years ago. Whores, thieves, and street-lamps.

  Van der Valk disliked the rigidity of the hierarchy. To take an example, the ‘filature’ or throwing of a net of policemen around any individual whose habits and movements one may wish to study. It is entrusted automatically to flatfeet, whereas, he thought, it is very difficult and delicate. However, this time he could do it himself – he had to do it himself – in his own time at that. Not only was Dr van der Post not official business but he was on the lookout for insects in the linden trees.

  Seventeen

  He had been wondering for some time where he had seen the man before. The dandified narrow suits, the long elegant hands, the delicate gesture pushing the handkerchief up the sleeve to avoid any wrinkles or bulge in the jacket. He was familiar from somewhere with that long neat head, the stiff hair cut short with what would be a fringe were it not suddenly combed sideways to present a level untroubled forehead; the eyes perceptive and melancholy, the wide mouth with its perpetual mocking smile, the large well-modelled ears.