Strike Out Where Not Applicable

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘Very sensible. I advise you to go on like that. Above all, pay no attention to rumours.’

  She looked encouraged.

  ‘Since it might have taken several days as far as we could ascertain’ – rather a grandiose word, that – ‘we just said we would close the day of the funeral, not before.’ It sounded almost appealing, as though she wanted to be approved of.

  ‘Perfectly proper.’

  ‘So we will put a notice in the local paper to that effect.’

  ‘Ah, the local paper – have the papers been round here?’

  ‘No – just a man to get a sort of obituary thing – Bernhard was very well known – and of course the Caterers’ Journal.’ One good thing – the national press seemed not to have caught on. Wouldn’t either if he could help it.

  She hesitated a moment, then plumped out with it.

  ‘You talked downstairs almost – almost as though there were something in the rumours.’

  ‘I haven’t heard these rumours.’ He was being rather mean.

  ‘Village gossip,’ angrily. ‘But if one pays attention to it people become convinced there’s something in it. They were saying that Doctor Maartens …’

  ‘That Doctor Maartens?’

  ‘Was not satisfied it was a natural death,’ in a rush – she was rid of it!

  ‘That is perfectly true. And very properly he did not wish to commit himself to so grave an allegation, and that was why he requested an autopsy. And that leads me to ask myself questions.’

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘I haven’t said I wanted to question you, Miss Groenveld.’

  She was saved from embarrassment by the squeak of a handbrake being put on and the mutter of a car engine dying at the same moment.

  ‘Oh, there’s Mevrouw Fischer now – I’ll just go and tell her you’re here.’

  ‘The girl will tell her, I’ve no doubt,’ peacefully. She looked at him quite angrily, being used to getting her own way, but composed herself by straightening ornaments that didn’t need setting straight. The door opened and a woman came in in a bustle. She would always be in a bustle.

  She was as Arlette had sketched her, solidly built with a square and almost heavy face that was goodlooking because full of warmth and animation. She was neatly dressed in a black suit, a frilly batiste blouse, high-heeled shoes and black suède gloves. Seeing him she assumed an alert wide-awake expression as though he were a bank manager who would certainly regard her as a good prospect for a mortgage.

  ‘That’s arranged, darling – but introduce me. I am Marguerite Fischer.’

  ‘This is Commissaris – Van der Valk you said, didn’t you? – from the town – in charge of the criminal brigade, darling,’ with faint emphasis on the words, but no more.

  ‘Delighted to meet you,’ with a firm handshake almost like a man’s. ‘Do you know anything about what’s holding up the funeral?’ She sat with something of a thud and her knees apart, as though accustomed to wearing trousers, saw him glance, and crossed her knees at once, pointing her ankle to make her legs slimmer, arranging the tight skirt with little tugs.

  ‘Now that you’re here, Mevrouw, I will say what I came to say. I had got as far as telling Miss Groenveld that there are no further legal formalities and that you are at liberty to go ahead with the funeral as soon as you like.’

  ‘Oh that’s good – I was beginning to think it might take simply days.’

  ‘More to it than that I’m afraid, darling,’ softly.

  ‘I prefer to explain myself, Miss Groenveld. We had not got so far in our conversation together. I speak bluntly, Mevrouw, since I see that you are a well-balanced and intelligent person. Doctor Maartens was not happy about the sudden death of your husband – that much you already know. Forgetting all scraps of rumour, his opinions were confirmed by the post-mortem, which was conducted by most experienced authorities. As a result of this confirmation, the Palace of Justice has decided to issue what is termed a commission of enquiry, of which I have been placed in charge. I dislike upsetting people with clumsy questioning and I will try to keep this to a minimum. If there is anything particular I wish to know I will come and ask. I am here to satisfy myself about this death.’

  The two women looked at each other with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Have I understood?’ she began. ‘You are convinced, are you – as far as your knowledge goes – that Bernhard’s death was not an accident?’

  ‘I did not say that. Not natural. It could have been an accident, though this at present seems improbable.’

  ‘You don’t think he killed himself?’ shocked.

  ‘I don’t think anything at all.’

  ‘Yes you do – you think it was a semi-accident – that somebody perhaps quarrelled with him, pushed him or hit him, so that he fell under the horse, and that anybody who did that would be frightened to admit it – that’s it, isn’t it?’ She was a lot more downright than the other had been.

  ‘I repeat’ – the cavalry colonel to subordinate; what-I-have-said-I-have-said – ‘I have no hypothetical explanations.’

  ‘Well – what can I say? – we will help you in any way we can, naturally. Saskia, has the Commissaris been offered some coffee or anything?’

  ‘He had a glass of wine.’

  ‘Which I haven’t yet paid for.’

  ‘But please. Would you care for another? Or anything else? Sherry? Whisky?’

  ‘Nothing, thanks.’

  ‘Can we …?’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  ‘Just the usual conventional questions – doubtless seeming useless and stupid – but you understand I am compelled to ask them. Who ran the financial side of the business?’

  ‘I did – and do. If Bernhard wanted money he wrote a cheque.’

  ‘He had life insurance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In your favour, naturally. Better give me the name of the company. You might be well advised to leave them out of it for the time being. Now had he had words with anyone recently? A quarrel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No bad blood either, existing from a longer date, with any neighbour or business acquaintance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He had words constantly with me,’ put in Saskia, ‘we lived at daggers drawn.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of little domestic disagreements,’ politely.

  ‘Sorry – it was a rather misplaced effort at humour.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘She’s embarrassed,’ said Marguerite firmly, ‘because they used to bicker. There’s nothing at all. Bernhard was liked by everybody – he was very easy and friendly, and,’ smiling slightly, ‘if there was anything unpleasant, like a complaint, or someone querying an account, he simply left me to deal with it. He was rather a coward that way.’ Van der Valk had to smile himself this time.

  ‘Quite a human trait – most men are the same. Men who like arguments are generally aggressive in several ways, and there’s generally a good reason.’

  ‘He wasn’t aggressive – he liked things comfortable and the sun to be shining.’

  ‘That was just the point,’ said Saskia, ‘he was a big baby – we may as well be frank – and if he had tantrums it was because he couldn’t find his slippers. Marguerite indulged him too much.’ She had the airy, commonsense voice of an elementary-school teacher talking about quite a likeable but spoilt small child. Who is married to whom around here, thought Van der Valk.

  ‘A personal question, if you will allow it – was your marriage with him always smooth? I am thinking of his relations with other women.’

  Both women laughed slightly, in a way neither malicious nor bitter, but more amused than anything.

  ‘He was inclined to stroke and pat a bit if he thought he could get away with it – waitresses, even customers. Harmless. You might find people to claim he was a sort of Don Juan and it would be total nonsense – you know how people can exaggerate.’

&nbs
p; They were both showing signs of loosening tension, which, thought Van der Valk, was a very good thing.

  ‘Masculine vanity,’ he said laughing. ‘Another human trait. I will ask if I may for another glass of wine, after all.’

  ‘But of course,’ said Saskia. ‘I’ll get it at once.’ Marguerite kicked her shoes off carelessly on the rug.

  ‘Sas, if you’re going down be a love and get me my house shoes – sorry,’ airy-apologetic aside, to him, ‘please forgive my manners, but these are tight.’ It seemed a bit studied. As though to emphasize how relaxed and untroubled she was. The other woman picked them up at once – hm, handy about the house, and encouraging Madam to be lazy.

  Was it acting? They were certainly much more at their ease. They didn’t believe anybody had hit Bernhard. And they didn’t miss him much, it would seem. What was it Francis had said, ‘Bernhard is expendable – nothing he did they couldn’t do as well.’ What appeared to have worried them the most was deciding how long the restaurant should stay closed.

  She seemed to be reading his thoughts.

  ‘You must be thinking me cold-blooded. That is not altogether true, I must say – I was very unhappy and upset indeed. I’ve got over the shock a bit – but we’d been together ten years. We didn’t perhaps have a very strong emotional bond – what people call a marriage of convenience, I suppose – that’s what I find most marriages are, though – affection, of course … I have to learn to live without him, and I must start now. I’m speaking very frankly – you won’t take that amiss, I hope.’

  Saskia came back with the glass of wine and a little silver dish of sponge fingers, with a sharpish glance at Marguerite as though anything she might have missed would be there to read. Van der Valk turned down biscuits but accepted a cigar.

  It did all sound very normal – weren’t people’s lives generally a tiny bit more complex? Plenty of women who live comfortably and pleasantly with husbands, out of habit … didn’t love them, didn’t have any very ferocious grievances. Even if there is affection, doesn’t one have grievances that will corrode after a while? This wasn’t a discontented woman, though. Healthy and active, life full of interest, no awkward encumbrances, mm, appetizing-looking, comfortable and juicy. Was it that simple?

  ‘Why did he take up riding? He was in good health, but he was, of course, overweight.’

  ‘Overweight!’ said Saskia. ‘He was getting really gross!’

  ‘I was against it,’ said the wife. ‘I thought it much too strenuous – but he seemed set on it.’

  ‘You ride yourself?’

  ‘Oh yes – not regularly; I haven’t the time. Saskia does the house-keeping, and there are the girls of course, and the women in the kitchen who help Ted – but the paperwork! Perhaps twice a week.’

  ‘And you, Miss Groenveld?’ politely.

  ‘Me, no, thank you very much, I’m frightened of horses. I prefer a good walk.’

  ‘You have a closing day, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, Tuesdays – the hotel in Lisse closes Mondays. We generally go to Amsterdam for shopping and so on. Bernhard went to the town regularly for his round – the abattoir, the markets and so on, keep people happy.’

  ‘You know just what he did each time.’

  ‘Certainly,’ disregarding any hint of irony.

  ‘I get a very settled, peaceful picture.’

  ‘Oh yes. We live a very even life. The manège brings most of the excitement round here. The gang there come here for lunch a lot – perhaps Bernhard felt left out of all the talk going on about horses and riding – he hated people talking about things and not being able to put in his word.’

  ‘Well,’ said Van der Valk with a beaming smile, ‘I must be getting on.’

  ‘If there should be something – that I didn’t know about – you’ll tell me, I hope?’ She was stumbling, a thing she wasn’t accustomed to.

  ‘Nothing will be done behind your back,’ solemnly. She seemed satisfied. It had been an innocent kind of remark, or would ingenuous be a better word?

  In the bar was a youngish man with a cup of coffee. Dark-haired, pale-skinned, with a greenish-grey terylene suit and a white shirt that made him look paler still. A portfolio propped on the chair beside him helped tell Van der Valk that this must be the painter. He had heard rumours, it would seem, for he looked curiously, then dropped his eyes and picked his cup up with indifference and a faint knowing grin. Van der Valk stared back with big peaceful cowlike eyes and went on out leaving him to go on being knowing.

  Ten past eleven; Doctor Maartens should have finished his morning surgery. The house, a pleasant trim villa with clipped privet hedges, gnomes on the lawn busy with scarlet amanitas, and a brass plate less highly polished only than the windows, looked attractive in the sunlight that had struggled through ragged cloud. The privet gleamed with diamond raindrops; Consulting Room Round to the Side, said a pointing finger painted on a wooden board, so he pealed the front door bell. A slim woman, pretty in a mousy way, opened after a long pause and said, ‘Surely it’s not too difficult to follow clearly printed notices – it’s too late for surgery hours anyway.’ She had a harassed look and a piece of paper in her hand with medical scribbles on it.

  He stayed silent, which made her look at him; she became confused and said, ‘I’m so sorry, I took you for a patient, and my husband told me to expect you. They will come too late and peal away happily here.’

  Maartens was in his surgery with the phone tucked into his collarbone, having a luxurious cigarette.

  ‘Come in, come in – I’m sorry, a ridiculous tangle – schoolchildren’s polio vaccinations,’ apologetically. ‘The town hall has made a nonsense.… What?’ into the phone, swinging his revolving chair nervously to and fro ‘ … I’ve said and I repeat – that list is the one for February.… That’s ridiculous; you’ve mislaid it somewhere in the wrong file.… Quite so, but giving vaccinations is my job, and sending out notifications to parents is yours.… I know it’s a great deal of trouble, but you must realize there’s little point in calling up over fifty children that already had their top-up shots in February.… I’m sorry, I’m very busy, goodbye.… Oof!’ stabbing the cigarette into an ashtray that matched the kind of desk pen-set doctors get from pharmaceutical companies as a friendly hint after passing their finals. Doctor Maartens’ had a little calendar built in, so that he would be grateful to be reminded daily that Rosenblatt and Sohn in Stuttgart make the best pill.

  ‘Delighted to see you – no, not a bit – just my round as usual this afternoon.’

  ‘I have to tell you that the man was clonked all right. Haversma – you know Haversma?’

  ‘Very slightly.’

  ‘I had confidence in you, naturally – you won’t feel injured by my saying that Haversma has had a lot of legal – medico-legal – experience.’

  ‘Of course I’m not injured – the unsupported opinion of a country hick isn’t Spilsbury. What did he think it was hit him?’

  ‘A curved metal thing with a blunted edge – but you wouldn’t need to do anything elaborate like tying sticks to horseshoes – twenty simple household tools or garden implements. An old billhook – a stirrup …’

  ‘Something that could have been picked up on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘Quite, but you’re going too fast. All I have to do is know why.’

  ‘I’d be fascinated to know how you thought of going about that. Anything but simple, I’d have thought.’

  Van der Valk had to go cautiously – he didn’t want a young idealistic doctor rearing up and worrying about his professional oath.

  ‘Might be very simple – people do just up and hit suddenly, quite often, and then you quite often find them standing there with the poker in their hand, wondering what came over them. Or they go themselves to the police. That hasn’t happened. It’s not going to happen. Somebody had a reason – maybe a good reason, which we don’t know. That person banked on the large probability that it would be seen as an accident.
Plenty of possibilities. He was overweight and had a congested look, so he might have got dizzy and fallen off, or even collapsed from some sudden effort like doing up the saddle. Or he was bending and lurched clumsily into the horse. Whatever happened, he hurt it or startled it, so that it lashed out and clipped him. I haven’t looked at any statistics – distrust them anyway – so I don’t know how likely such things are. The point is that an ordinary person would accept it as likely.’

  ‘You want to know why I didn’t,’ slowly. ‘What cast the little seed of doubt? I don’t know myself, exactly. It’s true that anybody would have accepted the accident – I would myself. Just that I’d given him quite a thorough check not three months ago, when he took this riding up. He came after some pushing from his wife, with moans about his liver, and I gave him a lecture on alcohol – but he had an amazing constitution! Anyone else would have had cirrhosis – think of the horrors waiting for the man who abuses eating and drinking to that extent – and his tension and cholesterol figures were virtually normal! Healthy as a Tyrolean wood-chopper. Oh, he had some slight congestions … but heart and lungs – a channel swimmer.

  ‘What’s more, I don’t believe in the clumsiness theory either. I can understand Francis putting it forward – someone from a town, nervous of horses and making a horse nervous, fair enough. But this chap – when he was a child his father had carthorses, and he was saying Wo and Shtiddy to them when he was five years old. Nobody’s going to tell me he was that awkward – Francis says anyway it was a thirteen-year-old Hanoverian with a placid temperament.’

  ‘You’re doing my homework for me,’ said Van der Valk.

  ‘Haversma’s findings confirm mine, do they? And that leaves you with the hypothesis of a criminal in our midst? And now you’ve got to catch him.’

  ‘That’s how it goes in the book. I don’t believe in criminals much.’

  ‘You don’t believe in the book?’

  ‘What about your big eater and drinker that defies convention? People are like that. People who ought by all accounts to be criminals and aren’t. Other people who obviously aren’t – and commit crimes …’