‘Had she been with you, Laforêt would not have deserted.’
‘I never thought of that,’ said the general.
Chapter Nineteen
‘How many l’s in intelligence?’
‘One,’ said Ruth.
‘There are two,’ said Arlette severely. ‘Which makes four large horrible faults in your dictation, which means you’d get a six at the very best and probably a five-and-a-half or even a five. Write it out again taking especial pains with the presentation, and if you really concentrate I’m sure you’ll get a nine at least tomorrow.’
There was silence for ten minutes, underlined by a faint muttering noise like a mouse in a wainscot.
‘Bugger.’
‘Where did you learn that expression?’
‘You.’
‘Mm. None the less it’s a vulgar expression which you’re not allowed to use. Don’t lean so heavily on your pen.’
Another minute’s silence and muttering.
‘M’an.’
‘What?’
‘Esther was shot, wasn’t she?’
Arlette had always supposed that a day would come when one had to tell lies to children, and in theory she still had a feeling that this must be so. In practice it never seemed to work out.
‘What – have you finished your dictation?’ to gain time.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. What gives you the idea?’
‘I heard Mevrouw Paap telling her husband. She thought I didn’t understand.’
‘Yes. It’s true.’
‘Who shot her?’
‘Père being a policeman, he’s doing his best to find out. That’s why he went to France.’
‘Somebody in France?’
‘I don’t know – maybe he does by now.’
‘Does it hurt, being shot?’
‘I’ve never been shot but I’m told it doesn’t. A bump and a fright – like falling down the stairs. She died very quickly and I’m sure she didn’t feel any pain.’
‘Like on the television serial. Was it gangsters?’
Arlette, who was on her hands and knees on the floor, cutting a pattern, put down the scissors.
‘Gangsters are a rarity. Luckily. Père thinks perhaps somebody Esther once knew. Somebody unhappy and upset, not at all well, who imagined somehow that he had to shoot her.’
‘Why?’
‘One imagines things when one is ill. Haven’t you sometimes been feverish and had horrible dreams, that you were being chased or something?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t shoot anyone.’
‘Which goes to show that you weren’t very ill. Once when I was very tired and upset I threw a kitchen knife at somebody. That was just as bad.’
‘Who at?’
‘That has no importance – I only wanted to show you that one could shoot people.’
‘Were they frightened, the person?’
‘Yes – a bit.’
‘Esther wasn’t easily frightened,’ with an implied contempt. ‘She was a parachutist.’
‘Would you like to be a parachutist?’ rejoicing in a possible change of subject. ‘Pass me my pins; they’re on the table in your reach – and screw up your pen; it might roll off.’
‘I could be. I know where one can learn.’
‘Really?’ mildly interested but wanting to accelerate down this promising side road. ‘Where’s that?’
‘In Belgium somewhere. It’s quite a long way. Esther took me once, in the car.’ Zomerlust’s old dark-blue Simca Ariane; Arlette felt a slight pinch in her heart.
‘When was that?’
‘Oh, about a month ago. Esther said just for fun she’d show me how it was done.’
‘What is it then, a flying club?’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know – a sort of little airfield.’
‘Yes, like that. You can learn to parachute – there’s a sort of gymnasium. But I don’t know exactly because she didn’t, after all.’
Arlette had begun to prick her ears up.
‘What made her change her mind?’
‘I don’t know – I think she had a row with the man there. Cost too much, very likely,’ with an air of familiarity, as though she knew all about making a row over something that costs too much.
‘These places are pretty expensive, I believe,’ said Arlette cautiously. ‘Tell me about it though – I’d like to try, some time.’
‘I think it’s not far from Hasselt. A long way. Be too far for you in the deux-chevaux, I dare say,’ with a superior voice. She was plainly pleased at knowing about something Arlette didn’t.
‘I’m sure I could – parachute, I mean. One has to conquer one’s fear. I only hope I wouldn’t get vertigo.’
‘Esther said one didn’t get vertigo. You have to learn first jumping off a high platform, with a sort of line strung to you. Landing is the hardest part.’
‘I suppose it would be,’ humbly. ‘And this man – was he in charge?’
‘I think so. He was all right. He was talking to me for a bit, and then Esther came out of a sort of office place, and she told me very crossly to go and wait in the car, and then a bit after she came and said she’d changed her mind. She bought me an ice though – but she was very niggly all day so she was fed up about something. I wanted to go back another time but she shut me up.’
Arlette did get a feeling of vertigo because she suddenly realized that she had understood.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I got a bit dizzy from bending over. Come on; bedtime.’
‘But it is only half past eight.’
‘I said bed and I mean it. But you can have an orange first.’
Her heart beat furiously and she longed for the telephone to ring. She was sure he would ring, since he always did unless there was something very startling. Would he laugh at her?
She paced about nervously, looking at her watch all the time. I am in a trench, she thought, waiting for the signal to be given for a counter-attack. She made several feeble attempts to quieten her nerves, including a drink that was much too strong. I’m a bit pissed, she kept thinking. I am certainly imagining things. I wish he were here. When the telephone did ring, at the time it always did, between nine and half past, she was depressed and as though disappointed, and afraid to say what was on her mind.
‘Hallo – oh, it’s you. Where are you?’
‘Who did you think it was – an unknown admirer who saw you buying a cauliflower and followed you home?’ His voice sounded tired and tart, and none too sure of himself, which made two of them. ‘Where am I? I’m in Paris, and not enjoying it a bit.’
‘I thought you were in Clermont-Ferrand.’
‘I was. I left. I got a plane. It went very fast. I think I left my brains back there or something. It was snowing there. Here it’s quite mild – Breton weather. Which is just as well because I lost a glove.’
‘Oh dear. What are you doing in Paris? – where are you exactly?’
‘In a very odd little hotel near the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Queer things are happening to me. I’m being buggered about by DST. I’m not at all sure how to act – I’ve got to try and think things out. People have been following me about. And this evening I met a rather peculiar individual – I’ve got to digest him. I’m going now to get some sleep – alone, thank heaven.’
‘Are DST still mixed up with this?’ anxiously.
‘I’m damned if I know how much. I’m still trying to find out where Laforêt is. I have a suspicion they know but they won’t tell me. I can’t make out what they’re at. Quite likely they’re listening to me right now, and I’m damned if I care, either.’
‘Are they really?’ asked Arlette, distraught. ‘I’ve got something to tell you but I’d better not if the line is tapped.’
‘No no, that’s all nonsense. I’m pretty sure they’ve better things to do, though I sincerely wish I knew what. Tell me anyway – take my mind off my own clowning about.’
‘Where who is? Your admirer? What are you whispering for? Where is he then – the bathroom?’
‘Shut up, you fool – yes you are clowning. I’m serious. I think I know.’
‘Who?’
‘You know who.’ There was a long silence. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes yes – there was a little green man in here, but I sent him away. Is Ruth there?’
‘She ought to be asleep but I want to keep my voice down.’
‘Let me try and concentrate. Has she said something?’
‘Yes, she had a story about Esther going parachuting and changing her mind.’
‘Where, in heaven’s name?’
‘Belgium somewhere – over the border and I think somewhere near Hasselt. Isn’t that roughly across from Eindhoven?’
‘It is. Parachuting – you mean really jumping out of a plane?’
‘Apparently. She mentioned an airfield. But she said Esther went there for fun, you understand, to show her or something, and there was a man there, and Esther changed her mind abruptly and went straight home and behaved oddly for some time.’
‘Did she talk to this man – Esther I mean?’
‘Ruth talked to him. Esther sent her back in the car – and came herself a little later. How little? – no idea.’
‘What’s he look like, this man?’
‘Darling – a child. Even if one could ask she wouldn’t know.’
‘Sorry, of course. Parachuting. This is extraordinary.’
‘You think there’s something in it?’
‘I don’t know. But it would illumine some remarks I have heard.’
‘You didn’t know though?’
‘No, but I rather think you may have something.’
‘It’s not very funny though, being a detective.’
‘You’ve taken rather a time finding that out. This may be most important. Does the child have any idea?’
‘No, but she does have the idea Esther was shot. They know everything. She saw something funny in this episode, but she didn’t get it worked out. What are you going to do – go there?’
‘Of course I have to go there. You know this is a very strange thing – you know coincidence doesn’t exist.’
‘A coincidence that you should be going to arrest Ruth’s father for killing her mother,’ said Arlette, and burst into tears, and was immediately so angry with herself that she slammed the phone down without another word, and sat on the floor by the telephone table crying to herself for ten minutes and more.
Chapter Twenty
Van der Valk stood heavily planted on the pavement of the Rue Saint-Dominique and looked about without joy. Impressive but wearisome part of Paris, the Faubourg. Overwhelming houses; humbling in their immeasurable wealth and pride. He supposed there were still some hôtels particuliers, last bastions of privilege, with enormous gardens, cavernous salons, hordes of servants: very nice too and he was all for it; he hated nothing more than mediocrity. Most were the seats of the mighty in the administrative sense; ministries and sub-ministries, bureaux for this and for that – very dull, jostling the dukes and the marshals in their Jockey Club entrenchments and making an agreeable meeting place with ancient wealth where the First Minister perched luxuriantly in the Matignon Palace on the Rue de Varenne.
Some houses were divided into apartments just as in less god-begotten quarters, and behind these windows looking down on him there might even be poor: heartening thought. But the whole quarter stank of self-assured wealth from the puffed ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, staring arrogantly across the river, to the Ecole Militaire asphyxiated with rage at the sight of the Eiffel Tower, and at the centre was the Temple of Generals, Saint Louis des Invalides. Hereabouts, what generals said – that went.
Beastly quarter too, where there were no comforting little cafés. Where did the chauffeurs sneak off to? Surely they did not sit all day rigidly at attention behind the wheel of those huge glossy autos with flags flying from their wings. What was a poor policeman to do? Trudge an eternity back down to the Raspail crossing – or hunt around up by the Invalides; there was something there on the boulevard for sure, but one couldn’t hang about here; be arrested for loitering and suspected bomb-thoughts as soon as winking. Oh well, he might as well trail off to that horrible air terminus; he had his case parked there in the luggage office. He crossed the Rue de Bourgogne with a sagging tread, like a worn-out mule in the stony Pyrenees, and was thoroughly cross with DST. Useless lot. Here if anywhere they should be swarming like busy bees. Here in this quarter where their honey burst and bulged from every stately window there should surely be hundreds of them to come swarming up – offering him a nice glass of champagne first – and tell him obligingly whom he should see next.
What! They had been busy enough already in Holland! In Marseilles they had been zinging with ambitious energy, in Clermont-Ferrand eager hawkeyes had even got their feet wet running through the snow, and here, right in the centre of the Seventh Arrondissement, there wasn’t a peep out of them. What did they do nowadays, when there was no longer a marvellous nest of spies out in Fontainebleau, so that they could spend happy weeks grilling talkative colonels from Standing Group suspected of fraternizing with Americans? Crossly, he used a public telephone in the Invalides bus station.
‘Monsieur Borza please.’ For the brown man had given him a name and number, professedly most interested in what the general would have to say, for some obscure reason of his own.
The voice at the other end was young and cheerful.
‘Sorry, Monsieur Borza isn’t in the office. Ring you back?’
‘Yes, the bus station; he’ll be thrilled. All aboard for Le Bourget, next stop Glasgow, thank God to be home.’
‘The gentleman from Holland?’
‘Yes, Comrade.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘I haven’t the least idea.’
‘Oh that won’t do at all; must have somewhere to put your feet up. We have a ducky place where we keep friends, just round the corner so don’t bother with a taxi. I’ll ring them for you, shall I? Saint George and Saint James – we call it the English Martyrs. By-bye now.’
It was perhaps not such a bad idea. He could do with a cup of tea.
Typical secret-service place; almost impossible to find. No vulgar notice boards on the street, but a dark little passage between the two windows of a flower shop, with chaste grey velvet curtains and a card printed in gothic lettering saying ‘Complet’ to discourage the importunate. Inside was a mahogany cavern and an elderly page in a striped waistcoat.
‘I’m afraid we have no rooms.’
‘A kind friend was going to make a phone call?’
‘The Dutch gentleman – I am so sorry.’ He wasn’t asked to fill in a form!
His spirits rose rapidly at sight of the lift, which lived behind rococo spirals of gilded wrought-iron flowers and whose doors opened with large polished brass knobs. Inside there was a large brass handle connecting one with the engine room; one rang for Slow Astern and behold one went astern, slow but splendidly reliable and in Edwardian comfort; it was like a very tiny 1910 Cunarder. He was shown into a small chocolate-box where even the telephone had been salvaged from the Titanic. The window had a view of the Palais Bourbon: aha, this was where those Third Republic Deputies had kept their mistresses. Plumbing like a Wedgwood Ivy tea service got under way with loud clanks; the water was pale rust-colour and deliciously boiling, and there were three colossal towels. This was the life – join DST and Get Aboard the Atomic Age. Wrapped in all three bathtowels he picked up the telephone and said, ‘I’d very much like some tea.’ And it arrived, in massive pot-de-chambre porcelain with little roses on it and ‘Worcester’ written in gold on the bottom. The chambermaid who brought it had an elderly musky perfume and a bunch of huge shiny steel keys.
‘We thought you might like the paper. And would you be wanting a
suit pressed?’
It was the London Evening Standard – he felt as though three large whiskies in quick succession were lifting the top of his head ten metres or so gently heavenwards. The tea was thick and dark and probably Fortnum and Mason’s Darjeeling; he folded the paper to see how his shares were doing on the Stock Exchange.
The phone was wrong; it made a brief Parisian bleat.
‘Aloo-allo.’
‘Comfy?’ The voice, barely recognizable through his opiumeater’s trance, was that of a bright young man with a leather raincoat who had ‘come from the Embassy’ in another continent.
‘Very. I am now going to have a little nap. Send me up the menu and a few mistresses about eight.’
‘Just tell me very briefly about the Rue Saint-Dominique.’
‘Confirmation. You heard about Marseilles?’
‘Yes, we were given a sudden injection of interest as you gathered. Blowing dust off files, and generally doing our little exercises. Consensus of opinion last night was that it should be my baby, so I’ve been Beneluxing like crazy ever since.’
‘I’m feeling too bloody Beneluxurious just now for mental activity. What does all that mean?’
‘It means that after frenzied activity in all that flat boggy country the gamekeeper thinks there must be a rabbit around somewhere. Thing is to find the hole. One of the peasants thought he’d seen a shy little white tail.’
‘Yes,’ said Van der Valk alarmed, ‘but I don’t want the rabbit chased with loud shouts and bangs – I haven’t got my gun. I want this one tamed with lettuce leaves.’
‘Quite all right,’ soothingly. ‘We haven’t the slightest interest in the fur coat industry. For us this is a question mark that’s been pencilled in the margin and left there quite a few years. Our one very small interest is to take our little indiarubber and rub out the pencil mark. Now I may have something for you tonight, arriving on the evening plane from Brussels. Don’t get nervous; it pays its own expenses because it thinks there’s a quick profit to be made. It doesn’t belong to us. Clear?’
‘Clear.’
‘It flatters itself that it is deeply in our confidence because occasionally we have given it a penny in its sweaty little palm. It is for you to handle as you see fit; I hope it may prove useful. Enjoy yourself – enjoy Paris. Why don’t you have dinner at Lapérouse – they have those nice creamy potatoes. Sleep well.’
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