He was in a hall, tall and narrow, with a pinkish marble floor and painted walls, apple green and pale gold. Panels of white stuccowork; bunches of grapes and vineleaves in low relief. At the back of the hall was a door, more of that pure wrought-iron repeating the vine pattern. Through this door vanished Nestor.
For a good moment he stood open-mouthed, for he had never seen anything like this in his life; then he walked gently forwards and tried the door. It did not yield; this was the house of very rich people indeed, and burglars might be tempted: doors had secrets known only to owners, Nestor, and the Holmes Protection Company. The house was absolutely noiseless and noiseless too was Nestor’s return.
‘Madame will be happy to receive you, sir. Allow me?’ The door opened and Nestor paused on the bottom step of a stairway. ‘Will Monsieur have patience for just a moment longer?’
Beyond the stairway was a small formal orangery. To his right, facing the foot of the stairs – they were the same pinkish marble, with a fragile balustrade that was either iron or bronze – was a niche or alcove, in which stood a small marble nude. He knew very little of such things: could it be a Rodin? There was a bronze boy at the foot of the stair, that was supposed to be looked at from the orangery. Or one could climb the steps and look from above. He was ten steps high, still open-mouthed, wondering if the bronze could really possibly be Donatello, and jumped when a voice spoke just behind him.
‘You are quite right; they are there to be looked at, in just that way.’
He turned, a scrap confused. A woman in a silk housecoat was standing on the steps. Narrow vertical stripes, olive-green and silver-grey.
‘Sorry – I was staring admiring.’ She had his card in her hand, which she gave back to him, with a careful slow look of appraisal.
‘That does not matter in the least. Perhaps we will go in here, shall we?’ She opened a door beyond the stairs and waited for him.
‘Please sit down, Mr Van der Valk, and be quite comfortable. You have plenty of time? Good. So have I. Would you like some port?’
‘Not just by myself.’
She gave him a slight smile. ‘Oh no. I like port.’ She did not ring, but went to do it herself.
It was a small formal sitting room looking out on the orangery; a sort of morning room. Walnut furniture, grave, simple and pure, that was certainly English and he was fairly sure must be eighteenth-century. His father would have known – the old man had been a cabinet-maker – he wished he were here to see this and tell him. The chairs and sofa were in a rusty rose brocade: there was no carpet, the room didn’t need one. The floor was plain polished oak boards.
The label on the bottle said ‘Smith Woodhouse’. He couldn’t see the year. Did it matter?
‘Your good health,’ said Mrs Marschal, sitting down.
He took a sip of port and thought, furiously, ‘Now why did that halfwit run away from this?’
Perhaps it might be the woman; he studied her. Clear skin: clear classic features, but cold for some tastes. Dark noisette eyes, a lot of dark hair held at present in a velvet bandeau. Figure looked quite full; one couldn’t tell in a housecoat. Manner polite, even warm. There was a foot in a leather slipper; a glimpse of neat instep and neat ankle. Lot of blood, lot of race, lot of breeding. Sat very upright – convent trained.
‘You liked the statues,’ reflectively. ‘You like this room?’
‘Very much. English? Eighteenth-century?’
‘Hepplewhite. That piece there is William and Mary.’ She sipped her port. He drank his, feeling slightly tipsy already, and it wasn’t only Smith Woodhouse.
‘We are going to get along, I do believe,’ she said to the floor, ‘I really do believe.’ He said nothing – what was there to say? ‘It would make things a lot easier … Did you know that the naked girl is by Rodin?’
‘I didn’t, but I did think it might have been.’
‘We are going to get along … You’re plainly enjoying that, have some more. Get it yourself.’
Pouring, he had a crafty peep at the year. Nineteen forty-five!
‘Mr Van der Valk, what do you know about your errand in this house?’
‘That your husband is missing. That I have been asked to find him. Beyond that, absolutely nothing.’
‘Was that really all Mr Canisius had to say?’
‘He gave me a brief superficial sketch of a life and a character.’
She pushed her lower lip out a scrap.
‘He has not a high opinion of either, and he isn’t necessarily right. He is only a business man after all. One day – before I knew him better – he was drinking tea here from Sevres china. I told him it was Sevres, since he asked. His immediate reaction was to tell me that three isolated Sèvres dinner-plates had just brought an unheard of sum at Drouot. Soul of an auctioneer. My husband knows about such things and loves them. There’s a strong Jewish streak in that family, though they get furious if you suggest any such thing.’
‘You want him back?’
‘That is a fairly complex question. It might be for everyone’s good if he came back. Since he has gone deliberately, I am not sure.’
‘You don’t think, then, he’ll come back on his own, eventually?’
‘That is hard to say, even for someone that knows him as well as I do. I don’t think he will. I could be wrong.’
‘He got sick of being in leading strings?’
‘No, Mr Van der Valk, you’ve only had Canisius to go on. It isn’t that simple.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me more.’
‘I had decided that it would be a waste of time to tell anybody anything. Perhaps I am mistaken.’
He was wide awake now, sharpened by Smith Woodhouse, Rodin, and William-and-Mary. She didn’t want him to look for her husband. She hadn’t wanted to call the police and it hadn’t been her idea. There had, of course, been no suggestion made that she had brought about this disappearance. Or that she had anything to do with it. She plainly didn’t like Canisius. That gentleman, very likely, didn’t care much for her. He had no particular interest in Jean-Claude Marschal, though. Why had Canisius called the police?
He had a lot of understanding to do. A policeman, by the law of averages, gets his experience from ordinary people with ordinary jobs: they are quite complex enough, but one starts at least with a common background, a common set of impressions. One has had after all a very similar life; everybody in Holland has a very similar life. All this experience counts for nothing when you meet the very rich or the very poor. So poor you live in a bidonville, which does not exist in Holland, it is not allowed. To be as rich as this is not allowed, either. This house was a fortress against hostility and incomprehension: that could explain this woman; she was not necessarily a criminal.
‘I want to convey to you, simply, that this is not simple,’ she said slowly. ‘It is of very little use just asking me if I know where he went.’
‘Do you know where he went?’ The little half-secret smile again.
‘You want to tell me that you’ll make up your own mind about how simple or how complicated it is. It is your job, and you don’t want a silly woman making things more difficult. Very well. I’ll show you around. You can make up your mind. I will make no comments and I will tell you whatever you ask, with nothing hidden, if you want it that way. All about him. Read into everything just what you please – conclude what you wish.’
‘Tell me about you.’
He must have looked uneasy, not quite daring to smoke in this room, where it might not be allowed and where there were no ashtrays. She saw this. From the William-and-Mary piece the port had come from she got a silver box with a wooden tray inside it that made a perfectly good ashtray, and a wooden box holding Cuban claros. Her movements were quick and athletic; she didn’t ring for any footman. There was also a box of very large kitchen matches. The arrangement would have been Jean-Claude’s.
‘I live alone in this house. I have two children, both girls, away at school in Belgium. You s
ee that there are no more Marschals.
‘I am Belgian. My name was De Meeus, my father was a baron. I used to be a ski champion. Champion means you are among the ten best. I had a bad fall when I was twenty-one, but I can still ski. I met my husband at a time when he was also among the ten best. There was a lot of opposition from my family – all that money, and from pretty dubious sources. The old Marschal, Jean-Claude’s grandfather, was a very nasty person, I imagine, hand in glove with everything shady. They certainly saw me as something to increase their respectability. Get on good terms with the monarchist money as well as the republican. They never pretended to become castle-owners or landed squires – too smart. They knew they’d look foolish and Marschals, Mr Van der Valk, never allow themselves to look foolish. Never try to humiliate a Marschal – a lesson I had to learn early. The old man, my beau-papa, is a very tough nut. It is very much his business. Canisius is just an accountant, an organization man. A nobody.
‘The business, though, bores my husband stiff. Always did. He didn’t feel humiliated at being just a master of ceremonies because he couldn’t have cared less. Money to him is a tool like a hammer, to drive in nails with. It doesn’t drive him.
‘He went to a public school, in England. I’ve sometimes wondered whether that didn’t do him a lot of harm … he never learned any philosophy. I don’t pretend to understand him, you know. Not completely. But I can tell you that his whole life has been a ferocious pursuit of something that would satisfy. His sensibility is very fine, very fragile. He is possessed by passionate enthusiasms every now and then. They absorb his whole life for three months, and then they are dropped, because he is blunted from over-eating. Crazes for sports, for arts, for exploring or mountains or whatever. Never has it satisfied his thirst. Not just pleasure, you know. He isn’t a vulgar voluptuary. I don’t know what it is he lacks. How often haven’t I sat with him at a show or a spectacle and heard him mutter ragingly, “How can they bear to sit here?” Anything bad or stupid, pretentious or false, was shameful and humiliating to him. And how often haven’t I sat with him on a terrace somewhere watching a lot of people enjoying themselves – more mutters – “How do they do it, what is it they see, they feel?” –ready to scream with envy. He just utterly lacked the gift of being happy. He had no simplicity. Nothing was ever perfect.’
‘Mr Canisius told me he had sometimes “pursued women in a lack-lustre way”.’
‘I hadn’t credited the grocer with that much observation.’
She thought for a while, as though struggling with herself. ‘Come – I will show you something. I want to show you that I haven’t anything to conceal and that I am not ashamed of being humiliated. Jean-Claude had no inclination towards crime, but he tried various vices at one time or another.’
She was walking up the stairs; there was no sign of any servant, or were they trained to keep out of the way?
‘How many servants have you?’
‘Four, inside the house. The majordomo is married to a typist at the Portuguese Embassy. The cook, my maid – they are sisters – and a housemaid.’
‘Any living in this house?’
‘No. They all live in a house we bought for them and had made into flats. There is a gardener, but he never comes inside. This is my bedroom.’ It was quite plain and unremarkable. No fourposter that had belonged to Napoleon, or anything. She led him on without comment.
‘This is my bathroom,’ colourlessly. Ah – they’d saved it up for in here.
It was twice the size of the bedroom, and must have been one of the biggest rooms in a big house. One long wall was all wardrobe, with sliding doors. These were faced with green marble – he couldn’t see how thick the layer was. The floor was a more broken yellowish-creamy marble, with streaks of dark red in it. The room was surprisingly warm: he stooped suddenly and laid his hand on the floor – yes, electric wiring underneath.
The bath was a small sunken swimming-pool. Swimming … well, it was five metres by three; it was white marble, this time. There were steps at one side, at each end were fountains – one was made out of a huge boulder. Maybe several boulders; he couldn’t see. He didn’t know what rock it was, nor where the water came from, dripping down on all sides in musical tinkling trickles. It was rough and creviced and shaggy and seemed very old. It was a moss garden, a fern garden, and lord only knew what those plants down there were, probably South American orchids or something.
The other fountain was dull green bronze, a little slim naked figure, a psyche. Mrs Marschal must have turned a tap somewhere; two plumes of sensitive wavering water fanned out from the psyche’s upstretched hands; it was as though she strewed blessings, or light, or warmth – he didn’t know.
Down the other side of the room ran a slight airy colonnade. There were more statues but he didn’t look at them; he had had all the statues he could take for a while. The ceiling was marble too – a sort of cracked uneven paving – upside down! More moss grew there. Light came like rosy-fingered Aurora from behind the colonnade: he could not help it, the whole thing, he was forced to admit it, had beauty.
‘Still I gazed and still the wonder grew,’ he muttered crossly.
‘It kept him happy for a remarkable length of time,’ she answered in a dry murmur. ‘You don’t ask what it cost?’ maliciously.
‘If it didn’t matter to him it doesn’t to me.’
‘For that you shall have a reward.’
Jean-Claude’s bedroom was on the far side. It told nothing at all; like his wife’s, it was modern, tidy and without extravagance. There were plenty of things like clothes, hairbrushes, and cufflinks, simple and expensive, and he had left them all behind without a glance. He wanted his evening shirt-studs to be real black pearls and not just jet, but they meant nothing to him; the only things that interested him were the things one couldn’t buy, like peace or the green Dresden diamond.
It was the same story everywhere. There was a beautiful library, with a Matisse, some of those very good cigars, a splendid collection of Beethoven records, and some fine morocco bindings, any one of these to an ordinary man like Van der Valk the summit of a life’s ambition. It was all rather pathetic.
‘Did he spend much time at home?’
‘Yes. There might come a time when he was out every evening for a fortnight, and there came other fortnights when he never put a foot outside the door. He liked it here, and he liked me here. Peculiar as it may seem, he was very attached to his wife. She was, I say without any pride, the only woman who had any meaning for him. She failed, somewhere.’
‘Was there anything in his behaviour at all that struck you, in the days – weeks, if you like – before he went?’
‘No. He just went, silently. No scene, no edginess, no pointer at all. He was as he always is, and one morning he was not there. He took nothing. Which means nothing, since he has virtually unlimited money and can pick up anything he fancies anywhere – down to another bathroom.’
‘One stupid, obvious, rude question that I have to ask. Were you ever unfaithful to him?’
‘No. I am, oddly, quite Spanish about such things.’
‘Thank you very much indeed.’
‘If you give your name on the telephone, this house will be open to you at any time.’
‘Again thanks. May I ask your name?’
‘Anne-Marie.’
*
He walked back towards the centre of the town, uninterested in all the antheaps that were disgorging. Daylight was beginning to fade, and as each traffic light turned green the incredible crowd of bicycles that astonish every stranger to Amsterdam surged forward like the charge of the Light Brigade. He paid no attention.
‘Anne-Marie, que fais-tu dans le monde?
J’irai dans la ville, où’ly aura des soldats’
Professional skill at keeping appointments brought him to the door of the Hotel Polen at precisely five-thirty, despite bicycles. Miss Kramer was not hard to recognize, a stocky woman of fifty with a bush of greying fair
hair and a tweed suit, standing just inside the doorway clutching a huge secretarial handbag and the sort of secretarial shopping bag containing a folded raincoat, indoor shoes, knitting and the raw materials of the coming evening’s supper.
‘What would you like?’
‘Might I have whisky?’ Just what he liked, a robust woman with no nonsense.
‘Two whiskies, please. Well, you know what I’m after.’
‘I have thought and thought, but I can’t recall anything the least unusual. He was as usual, in every sense. He was always quiet and polite, not at all a difficult person to work for once you knew his little ways.’
‘Was he talkative at all? I mean that some men in the little intervals of their work chat vaguely about where they’ve been, who they’ve seen, how they feel. With you, was he open or closed?’
‘Closed on the whole, but he did talk to me – it wasn’t just grunts all the while like some. I mean that he mentioned things and people. Not much; just enough to be human.’
‘Remember at all what he talked about the last day? A person, a thing, a book, a play?’
‘Nothing specific that I can recall. It was one of those very grey lowering afternoons when one almost thinks it will snow again, and I had to turn more lights on, and he said something about how dismal the town looked. I mean it was just a vague remark with no particular bearing.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, some inconsequential remark.’
‘Yes, but what?’
‘Well, I come from Brabant, you see, and I said something about there at least one had the carnival at this time of the year to cheer people up and give them some gaiety. I miss that here in Amsterdam.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘Oh just vaguely that yes, a carnival would enliven things a bit.’
‘And there was no oddity or tension at all? Nothing harassing or especially boring?’
‘Not at all, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m very grateful.’
‘Not much reward for a whisky.’
‘Do you know his wife at all?’
‘Never even seen her. He never mentioned anything private – don’t think he was the type to weep on his secretary’s shoulder. I liked him; I miss him a lot.’
The King of the Rainy Country Page 3