Strike Out Where Not Applicable

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘You mean would she hit them on the head?’ asked Arlette.

  ‘That would be a very stupid question, wouldn’t it?’ mildly.

  ‘You mean anybody could – I know I could.’

  ‘I mean she’d be competent about it. Not sudden, spontaneous – like you? Or?’

  ‘She’d think it out. Marguerite might hit out – I don’t know. Are you thinking a woman killed him?’

  ‘I’m just keeping every possibility handy. I don’t want to be like General Navarre and get caught with my pants down.’ She laughed with affection. He didn’t go about constructing theories about people – he wasn’t that stupid.

  ‘You know that Thurber drawing – the man who looks crossly at the dog and says, “Oh why don’t you go out and track something”? I love you,’ she said, meaning it. ‘You’ll never learn.’

  His turn to get as near blushing as he ever would. It had been while ‘going out and tracking something’ that he had got shot. By a woman, too!

  ‘I love you,’ she said again.

  The veal was good. The Muscadet less good; cheap because young and acid – the grapes hadn’t had enough sunshine last year – but it did him no harm.

  At a quarter past two he was in his office again, occupied but not for very long by a young, pleasant, attractive, successful married couple, his brother, and her sister, who had stolen over eight thousand guldens’ worth of stuff from local shops. The stuff was all in their home, except for the generous presents they had made to friends and relatives.

  What made them do it? Why eight transistor radios?

  Was it that the things looked so attractive, so ingeniously miniaturized, so much the toy of the times? He had sympathy with people who could not resist a toy of the times, from dear little trains that made real smoke to eighteen-year-old featherheads with big breasts (making real smoke), but his sympathy put no brake on his professional wheels. That was what prisons were for. A sharp month in a nasty prison – Dutch prisons are not nasty enough – made a suitable corrective to self-indulgence.

  Murder was a different matter. Prisons were admirable for the something-for-nothing brigade, who were frightened of nothing but getting their hands dirty. Putting murderers in prison, though … He had had various ideas throughout his life about how to deal with murderers – he was president of a special association called ‘Murderers Eponymous’ – but none of them had found favour in the eyes of penal authorities. One must not forget the bishops, as the English say.

  You needed to be a good actor, didn’t you, to be in the criminal brigade and get on well with all the murderers? A ‘good mixer’ – a ‘good team man’. To understand someone who had been very poor and was now rich you needed to have been the same. You needed inspectors born in the back streets, who knew what it was like to have grown up in the depression – good, you still had them – a few! You needed modern bright young men from bourgeois families, like those two idiot boys of his, who had never seen a dead man, let alone a pretty girl who had died alone, of haemorrhage following an abortion.… Good, you had them – plenty of them! But how did you manage both together? A woman like Marion and a woman like Janine, who simply didn’t talk the same language …

  He would have to go disguising himself tonight – he was going to cultivate an acquaintance with Dickie the painter: that was going to be his little contribution, and he hoped that it was a good idea.

  He did not, after all, need any disguise; following the painter around, even several nights in succession, was surprisingly easy.

  The fellow paid little attention to his surroundings, seeming entirely wrapped in his thoughts, or his fantasies, or whatever they were. Was that it? Perhaps he had spent his days looking at things which interested him, very closely and carefully, storing himself up to the brim, soaking himself to saturation. After this he would wrap himself in his cloak and meditate on the shimmer of light over skin, or whatever.… Later on he would distil, but first came the process of fermentation, during which impurities and irrelevances scummed up and heaved and turned into the thick crust of rubbish that the winegrowers call ‘the hat’, while sediment sank, and the turbid unattractive liquid clarified, and the sugar got lighter and grew wings as it turned into alcohol. Van der Valk was amused at his analogy. Perhaps when a painter took his brushes and made the first strokes on canvas it was alchemy, the heating of the still to the seventy-eight degrees at which alcohol takes leave of sugar-and-water. When all the alcohol had gone through the still there would be a painting. So much at the start, baskets full of fruit being gathered in, all mixed with stalks and leaf, dust and insects and copper-sulphate spray, and so little, apparently, to show at the end. To the casual onlooker it was just a field and a horse and a rider, just as to the onlooker it is just an orchard. Only to the distiller is it a bottle of mirabelle instead of just a basket of plums. And perhaps these dull passive-seeming visits to cafés and cinemas, Van der Valk found himself thinking, are just a process of fermentation. For obviously Dickie was a good painter.

  Nearly every evening – Van der Valk taking post in a little black Volkswagen in the dimness that was turning to darkness at eight o’clock – the painter would climb on the bus and go to the town. Van der Valk risked sitting on the bus under his nose and he still saw nothing, wrapped up under his hat.

  He would go to cafés, and drink there an apple juice or a coffee, sitting staring for long minutes, his ascetic face pale and even distinguished under the dark short hair. He did not choose cheap, poor cafés – his favourites were the two or three solid, old-fashioned meeting-places in the very centre of the town that had remained unchanged for a hundred years – heavy and ornate mahogany, plush-upholstered, and great massive plated mono-grammed ashtrays. Places where hobbly old waiters brought quiet elderly gentlemen games of dominoes or chess. No billiard tables, but music at night made by a trio of elderly flatbreasted virgins in dowdy black velvet – violin, piano, and cello, and ‘The Dollar Princess’ or a depressingly dainty ‘Ziguenerbaron’. Van der Valk liked these places too, where you got coffee in heavy scratched little pots, and a glass of water with it, and on the big marble centre table lay Le Monde and Figaro, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Corriere della Sera and the New York Herald-Tribune rolled round solid wooden batons, and you sat for hours over very brown cognac – did it just look browner in this heavy yellowed light that was like a Caravaggio drowned in varnish? – and gazed back at layer after layer, generation after generation of cautious conservatism, of Dutch Forsytes cooked in their juice like Agen plums.

  What did the painter see in places such as these? He spoke to nobody. He watched no games. He read no papeis. Shopgirls do not come into such, and though in the big harbour towns of Holland there will be a few discreetly overdressed whores of ripe years, the prim university towns inland are too cautious for such goings-on. Van der Valk knew three ladies of easy virtue, all very friendly with the police, all taking a keen interest in the Stock Exchange and owning their own houses, who wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting in cafés.

  After finishing his drink the painter would go for a walk, along the quiet streets of evening, along the narrow canals reflecting streetlamps and neon signs in their placid ribbons of water that seemed so clean at night. He walked slowly, so that Van der Valk, hip and all, had no trouble at all in holding the thread between thumb and finger. But nothing happened. The Commissaire kept it up for a week and got more and more fascinated by these pilgrimages.

  During the daytime he worked steadily and it needed little detective work to keep an eye on that. He did his distilling in the little shed he rented from Francis, coming out occasionally to stretch and gaze enraptured at a tree the way he did at the huge hideous chandelier in the Café de la Bourse. Sometimes he would take a pencil and a sheet of paper and sketch something. He had an old broken-down couch in there, on which he often lay down and had a little sleep. Sometimes he would sit on a tree-stump in the corner of the field and watch the riders practising jumps with the
same absent look. At slack times, when it was rainy, he often went into the house, asked for a cup of coffee, and sat reading the paper while it got cold, paying no heed to anyone. There was nothing to see, and nothing to write on bits of paper to be turned into a typed transcript by police stenographers. Once he came with a painting wrapped in brown paper, a thing done for one of the ‘millionaires’, and there was the usual jargon about frames and varnish and where to hang it; he seemed a competent salesman.

  People had learned to pay no heed to Van der Valk. He often pottered about the riding-school, and the regulars had grown used to it. If anyone were showing signs of unease at his continued wandering around they were very small signs.

  One afternoon he came upon the painter leaning over the fence, making pencil strokes upon a sheet of paper that did not seem much to do with a young horse being held by a stable-boy on a lunging rein, while Francis watched, fists on hips and his switch playing up and down slowly behind his back, like the tail of a cat watching a gluttonous big blackbird. He stood alongside the thin clean hand that sketched, got no reaction, and said, ‘Tell me something about Stubbs, can you?’

  Dickie did not look up, took another piece of paper, made two rapid lines that became suddenly Francis’ boots and breeches, and said calmly, ‘You interested in Stubbs? Remarkable! What d’you want to know?’

  ‘I’m just getting interested in these animals, since I’m spending time out here. Stubbs is the only horse painter I’ve ever heard of much. And Géricault – or is it Delacroix? I get them mixed up.’

  The painter was quite accommodating, even polite.

  ‘Not much in common. Géricault paints bones, skeletons, likes horses in violent and distorted positions – rear, prance, hup, charge – clippety-clop. He was very good at anatomy and cannon-smoke. Started doing other more interesting things – died young.’

  ‘Stubbs is English, I take it?’

  ‘I don’t know – English, American. Paints muscles, all the nerves exposed even if the skin’s on. Arabs – can always tell a Stubbs horse – small delicate head, big long arched neck, very g-rr-aceful. Were six Arab stallions imported by some goddam duke to improve bloodstock. They stand there very beautiful, in fields or by houses, sometimes with a carriage. No action in particular. Sometimes there are grooms, little Moorish page-boys in fancy dress, put in just to make it more exciting and flatter the duchess.’

  ‘No interest in people?’

  ‘Not an awful lot. Dead right too. Where did you hear about Stubbs? Not much of a subject for police; they’re too busy pinching things that belong to the poor to make it easier for the rich.’

  ‘Some gallery, I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t see them much in galleries – most in private ownership. There are quite a few phonies though, most by some English chap called Hall, but if you know horses you can tell the difference. Now bugger off, will you – I can’t breathe with other people heaving deep sighs just behind me.’

  Van der Valk buggered off, obediently.

  ‘Damned false position to be in,’ Francis was complaining. ‘Complain and like as not they’d think I had a bad conscience or something. If the fellow would do something I wouldn’t mind as much, but that endless pottering around gets on my nerves. God knows what he sees or hears. Each time he goes off with that mysterious air I tell myself it’s finished at last and then damn me if he doesn’t turn up again three days later.’

  ‘Darling, are you talking to me, or just to yourself?’

  ‘Both of us.’

  ‘You’ll have to turn the sound down; I can’t understand a thing.’

  ‘I like this music. Look at that chap twiddlin’ away at his saxophone or whatever it is.’

  ‘I said Turn the Sound Down.’

  ‘Well you don’t have to shout at me. I think that police fellow is just wanting to taper off without losin’ face. Make a dignified exit, what.’

  ‘He thinks we’ve something to hide, maybe.’

  ‘Who’s got something to hide?’ aggrievedly. If Marion had something to hide it was her look-out.

  ‘Everybody’s got something to hide, in his mind.’

  ‘I’m damsure I haven’t. ’Cept maybe the prices I pay in Hanover. Don’t usually like that – damned hotels – but this time I’m lookin’ forward to it. Stay away a week. Time I’m back, maybe the fuss will have petered out. They can’t go on worryin’ for ever, not about a chap like Fischer. Who cares?’

  ‘You want me to come with you?’

  ‘No no, you’ve got to stay here and keep an eye on things. I can’t trust any of these people – there’s talk about swamp fever again.’

  ‘Talk …’

  ‘Yes, talk – still, it’s died down, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Fischer you’re talking about – or swamp fever?’

  ‘Damn it, Marion, you know perfectly well what I mean. There’s another thing – I have to work like a fool for every penny and these policemen have nothing to do but stroll about. Government employees … I see these people are messin’ about with their survey again – they did one only six months ago!’

  ‘Maybe they got it wrong.’

  ‘Would be just like them. Walkin’ about with those red and white pickets and gettin’ their sums wrong. And the taxpayer foots the bill, as usual.’

  ‘I certainly think it would be a good idea to go to Hanover a few days early. Give you a good break. You need that. It might be better weather too – Stephen was down in Wiesbaden; he said it was lovely there – all the blossom out.’

  ‘Blossom – what blossom? Ha – this is always a good programme.’

  The ‘observation’ seemed to be making little progress. Francis and Marion La Touche had friends in most nights. The inner ring: a company lawyer and his wife; a paint manufacturer who cared deeply about paint, to listen to him at the office, but much more deeply about horses, to hear him at the manège. An elderly hussar colonel, with an impressive façade, like the Iron Duke, that made you wonder what there was behind: there was nothing much, except an honorary court position, Grand Ecuyer or something to the House of Orange, involving an appearance in gold-laced full fig two or three times a year: the Opening to the States General, Royal weddings, Royal birthday parties.… In his Grace-and-Favour quarters out at Het Loo he refused to have any television, he said, but Marion believed he really came to look at theirs. Stephen, a show-jumping rider, son of a wealthy farmer and one of the well-known faces of the European circus. A pleasant young man with fair hair and muscular athletic figure, straight and proud in snow-white stock and the velvet cap he would sweep off for a deep elegant bow, with one hand controlling the horse, caracoling in a camera-conscious manner.… Born to it: you couldn’t imagine Robbie Zwemmer doing that. He had a sentimental attachment to Marion, but liked even better having long orgies with Francis, explaining to one another why one show-jumping champion after another had a bad style.

  The group played bridge, drank tea, weak brandy punch, lemonade, ate little cakes and salted biscuits, watched the television, gossiped, discussed horses’ illnesses and their own, the best ways of worming dogs, swamp fever. It was very dull.

  Things were enlivened by Francis going to Hanover to buy horses. Preparations for this filled a whole week, and there was a great fuss whether he should go by plane, or by train, or by car – Francis was the type that insists on open cars, because in closed ones you Asphyxiate (he had a shabby, splendid, noisy old Borgward cabriolet, but once in it he would need many caps and scarves, and complain continually about draughts).

  They did not bother following him to Germany, of course, and never knew whether he had created a whirlpool in the placid waters of the local call-girl system.

  Marion stayed at home, quietly, and certainly did not misbehave herself with the handsome Stephen. She went sometimes to Amsterdam in her Mini-Cooper to buy some clothes, have her hair done, drink a cup of coffee in the Hotel Polen with an acquaintance. If she ever did anything fishy she did it in London,
concluded the policemen. There was nothing slinking about any of her movements in Holland, and if Francis, enjoying his change of air, was doing any slinking in Hanover she showed neither disquiet nor curiosity.

  Came a day when she put them in a great state of excitement because she did behave furtively. She drove her little Mini-Cooper to Rotterdam and hid it, and while they skulked with bated breath she had an assignation with a young man. Disappointing when with extreme ease they found that it was the son, the one under a cloud – Van der Valk had not been able to find out just what was fishy about that half-dropped charge.… The young man had come from South America for business in Bremen and Danzig, and his ship had called in at Rotterdam. He showed great affection for Marion, she felt great affection for him, and all policemen present felt slightly ashamed of themselves, though they wondered whether she had encouraged Francis to stay dallying extra days in Hanover.

  Marguerite, said the reports, was only faintly more interesting. There was at least more movement, and the little Renault and littler Simca had to do a lot of buzzing to keep up with her smart Fiat fifteen hundred. She had needs. Needs to fly about and buy things – a tremendous, almost neurotic quantity of things got bought, most of them serving little purpose. Not just clothes, though there was, they noticed, a need to be admired.

  Miss Groenveld was generally brought along on these expeditions, apparently to serve as Chorus. And to Admire. She had decided views about clothes, and what-really-suits-you-darling. About such things as antiques, expensive bric-à-brac, not pictures or furniture, she had less to say. As for the restaurant, it ran very smoothly, and with the summer coming along business increased every day, and so did the bank account, despite the numerous punctures made in it.

  ‘Hallo.’

  ‘Hallo – ah, it’s you, Marguerite. Very agreeable to hear your voice again.’

  ‘You haven’t been ill or anything?’

  ‘By no means. But I did not want to seem intrusive. Anyway – the telephone …’