Dekok and the Dead Harlequin

by A. C. Baantjer

  The waiter arrived with the coffee.

  Both were silent. DeKok stirred his coffee thoughtfully and stared at her right hand on the table. The hand shook a little.

  “I take it,” he said finally, in his most unconcerned tone of voice, “your husband sent you?”

  “No! No,” she repeated. “I came of my own accord. My husband knows nothing about this. He’s in the office. I found a babysitter for the children.” She sighed deeply. “But I cannot stay long.”

  DeKok nodded, understanding.

  “Well,” he said with an inviting gesture, “you have the floor. I’m here to listen.”

  She nervously crushed an empty sugar wrapper. A nervous tic trembled at the corners of her full, sensuous lips.

  “Well,” urged DeKok, “you certainly didn’t ask to meet me because of my irresistible charm.”

  She gave him a sweet smile. Her hand reached across the table. The tips of her fingers barely touched his arm. The touch, however slight, gave DeKok a warm feeling. His skin tingled.

  “There is something reassuring about you,” she said softly.

  “I don’t quite know,” he answered sadly, “whether to be flattered or not. I’ll take it as a compliment, although I can think of other things a man wishes to hear from a young, attractive female.”

  She looked at him with incomprehension.

  DeKok pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “Pay no attention to me,” he said in a more serious tone. “My day started poorly and it isn’t progressing in an upward direction. Please tell me what I can do for you.”

  “I’m worried.”

  “About your husband?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes. You see, he believes in precise analysis. Despite all the preparations and plans, I believe things can go wrong.”

  “Wrong how?”

  She lowered her head and did not answer.

  “What are you trying to say, Mrs. Brassel? What could go wrong with what?”

  She gave him a bleak look.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. DeKok. Please believe me. I wish I could be more specific. It would put my mind at ease. But I really cannot tell you.”

  DeKok narrowed his eyes.

  “Then why did you ask to meet me?” He sounded annoyed. “Why did you come here? If you cannot be open with me, this meeting serves no useful purpose.”

  He rose as if to leave. She immediately placed a restraining hand on his sleeve.

  “Please, sit down,” she begged. “I want to ask you something. I have a request.”

  “A request?”

  “Yes.”

  DeKok gestured expansively.

  “Go on, then,” he encouraged. “I can never deny the requests of beautiful women.”

  A wan smile flitted over her face.

  “I,” she sighed, “don’t ask much.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She looked at him. Her eyes were beseeching.

  “When you go home tonight, Mr. DeKok,” she whispered, “you will find an invitation for a rummage sale in Oldwater, near where we live.”

  “Yes.”

  She moved a blonde strand away from her face.

  “I urge you most earnestly to accept the invitation, Mr. DeKok. You and your wife should come to the sale.”

  DeKok shrugged his shoulders in a casual movement.

  “Why?”

  She gave him a penetrating look.

  “I already told you, my husband knows nothing about this. I do this on my own. I know the invitation has been sent. I also know why. My husband hopes you’ll come. He is, however, of the opinion that your presence isn’t strictly necessary. He expects enough people to attend the gathering, plenty who will recognize us. Perhaps he’s right, but most people have bad memories for faces. Not you, Mr. DeKok, not you. You’re a trained policeman, used to observing, used to remembering salient facts. That’s why, you see, I want you to be there.”

  She spoke in a compelling voice, convincing, with barely controlled emotions.

  “I have two small children, Mr. DeKok. It is unbearable thinking…”

  “Pierre,” completed DeKok, “could go to jail.”

  She nodded slowly, reluctantly.

  “You understand.”

  DeKok picked up his cup and slowly drained the last of his coffee. Her words echoed in his head, resonating at a high frequency. After a while he replaced the empty cup and rubbed his chin in a pensive manner.

  “You know the plans?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were the woman who called Brets at the Greenland Arms the night he was murdered?”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Why?”

  She did not answer.

  DeKok pressed his lips together.

  “Then I will tell you,” he spoke bitterly. “You wanted to soothe your conscience with a telephone call. It was a miserable attempt. You called at eight o’clock. You knew it would be too late.”

  Her eyes threw sparks.

  “I couldn’t get through,” she hissed.

  “Otherwise you would have told Brets what was about to happen?”

  She bent her head and remained silent. Her cheeks trembled, as if she was about to cry.

  DeKok faced a dilemma. He did not know what to do next. He rubbed his lips with the back of his hand and looked at the woman across the table. How far dare he go?

  “Mrs. Brassel,” he said, hesitating about the words to choose, “I, eh, I could interrogate you officially right here, in the restaurant. It would be easy to mislead, make you admit things you would rather keep secret. Part of my training is in interrogation, so I know all the tricks. It would make my life so much easier if I could use your answers for my own purposes. You could lead me to other sources, or conclusions, which I could use against your husband.”

  He paused and rested his elbows on the table.

  “I could do all that, but I will not.”

  He looked at her, his head cocked to one side.

  “Please answer one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Who will be killed tonight?”

  Mrs. Brassel paled. Her lips parted. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. She was stunned.

  “Who,” repeated DeKok, “will be killed tonight?”

  A shrill, incoherent sound escaped her lips.

  She recovered almost immediately. She stood abruptly, grabbed her coat, and bolted for the exit. She did not take the time to put her coat on. She fled, as if pursued by all the minions of hell.

  DeKok watched her leave, unemotionally. He remained calm, seated, his broad face an expressionless mask.

  The waiter approached.

  “The lady was in a hurry,” he concluded.

  DeKok nodded and ordered his fourth cup of coffee.

  17

  Trouser legs rolled up to his knees, DeKok resembled an old fisherman from times gone by. He was at home, his painful feet in a tub of hot water with baking soda. He cursed. He cursed everything. He cursed his narrow shoes and the formal black suit he had worn to Jan Brets’s funeral. He cursed Ma Brets, who had stained his shirt with mascara-laden tears. He cursed Cynthia Worden, attending the funeral dressed like a silly schoolgirl and behaving accordingly. Above all he cursed himself for staying so long in Utrecht, strolling aimlessly through unfamiliar streets. He’d wandered Utrecht until his painful feet had forced him to sit on a curb and untie his shoelaces.

  In retrospect he understood that his only business in Utrecht had been to attend the funeral. There was nothing else to be accomplished there. Every time he ignored a warning from his feet, things went wrong. The solution to the riddle was not to be found in Utrecht. Jan Brets had lived there, that was all.

  His wife approached with a fresh kettle of hot water.

  “You want a little more hot water?”

  DeKok lifted his dripping feet and looked at the stream of hot water with suspicion in his hawk’s eyes.

&nbs
p; “All right, hold off, though,” he cried anxiously. “Not so much. I’m not a lobster!”

  His wife laughed and felt the temperature of the water with concerned concentration.

  “Just right like this.”

  DeKok carefully lowered his legs until his feet touched the water. Starting with the toes he slowly submerged his feet. After a painful grimace, a comfortable, idiotic smile appeared on his face.

  DeKok’s boxer looked patiently on from a corner of the room. Once the cursing stopped, the dog crept closer. DeKok petted the dog and gave his wife a friendly grin. Slowly the pain left his feet.

  “Did you,” he asked pleasantly, “receive an invitation this morning for some kind of rummage sale?”

  She looked surprised.

  “How did you know?”

  DeKok laughed mysteriously.

  “May I see it, please?”

  She walked over to the small desk in the corner of the comfortable room and returned with the card.

  “Here you are.”

  DeKok accepted the card from her and scrutinized it. It was a simple invitation to a rummage sale. The event was to be held in the building of the YMCA by the organization Oldwater Forward! There would be dancing after the sale. The proceeds were to benefit several Boy Scout groups in the little river town.

  “This came by mail?”

  His wife shook her head.

  “It was delivered.”

  “How delivered?”

  “A slender young man, about thirty.” She pointed at a vase filled with tulips on a sideboard. “With flowers and a recipe.”

  DeKok grinned.

  “Cake recipe?”

  His wife sat down.

  “Yes, you knew? A complicated recipe.”

  DeKok smiled at the questioning face of his wife.

  “Try it sometime,” he said, “success assured.”

  She looked at him searchingly.

  “Jurriaan,” she said in a compelling voice, “what does all this mean?”

  DeKok’s wife was the only one who sometimes called him by his first name. It was an unusual name, even in Holland. It came from one of the small islands in the Zuyder Zee. The island had long since become a part of the mainland as a result of the Dutch penchant for creating living spaces. In this case they had “simply” built a dike around large parts of the Zuyder Zee, pumped the water out, and built farms on what had once been the bottom of the sea. DeKok’s island was now a rather large hill in the midst of a sea of corn. The harbor, where his father’s fishing boat had been moored, was now a museum.

  “Jurriaan,” she repeated, “tell me about it.”

  “What?”

  “Who was the young man? Why the flowers and the recipe? What about the invitation?”

  DeKok raised both arms in the air.

  “Not all at once, my dear. I don’t have all the answers. Not yet. The good-looking young man must have been Pierre Brassel. The recipe is from his very charming wife, and as for the invitation, we accept.”

  His wife did not take her eyes off him.

  “Tonight,” mocked DeKok, “we will mingle with the upper crust of Oldwater. We will admire and promote their attempts to create constructive leisure opportunities for Oldwater youth. We will cheerfully buy a few white elephants, try our luck at bingo, and trip the light fantastic until the early hours of the morning.”

  Mrs. DeKok listened more to the tone than to the content of his words. Something bothered her. Slowly she rose from her chair and stood behind him. With a gentle caress she placed her hand on his bristly

  gray hair.

  “DeKok…”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are we accepting the invitation?”

  DeKok wriggled his toes in the tub of soda water, creating tiny wavelets.

  “Ach,” he said, ducking the question, “a rummage sale, a dance…sounds like fun.”

  She smiled behind his back.

  “Funny,” she remarked, “I never knew you cared so much for village life.”

  DeKok sighed deeply.

  “Now the serpent,” he quoted, “was more subtle than any beast of the field.”

  She played her fingers through his hair.

  “DeKok,” her voice was insistent, “what’s the reason for the invitation?”

  He turned abruptly so that the water spilled from the tub.

  “Murder,” he said curtly.

  The YMCA building was near the center of Oldwater. It was across from the bus stop in front of the town hall. It consisted of a miniscule lobby, a small auditorium, and a smaller stage. Off to one side of the building was a small gymnasium.

  The place was pleasantly crowded.

  Farmers came from the outlying areas around the village. Civil servants and businesspeople came from the bedroom community. Shopkeepers came from the small town. All had responded to the invitation. People walked around, looking at the offerings. A small musical combo was setting up on the tiny stage. Middle-aged ladies with permanent waves were everywhere, organizing, cajoling, and supervising. They were the driving force behind the organization Oldwater Forward! They sold tickets for door prizes, ran the bingo game, and took charge of the stalls. One could throw balls at a stack of tin cans or toss darts for prizes. One sharp-eyed old lady kept a close watch on the young girl in the kissing booth.

  DeKok participated in everything except, in deference to his wife and the elderly chaperone, the kissing booth.

  He threw balls and missed. He dunked his heavy body into a barrel filled with a lot of sawdust and a few meaningless prizes. He threw darts and missed. Last but not least, he had his fortune told by a gypsy fortune-teller, the wife of the local minister. She promised him a long life. “How long?” asked DeKok. The minister’s wife smiled sweetly. “If you wish to live for more than a hundred years,” she joked, “I must refer you to my husband.” DeKok laughed heartily. Fine people, he thought, here in Oldwater. What a shindig to organize this late in the century. It took him back to his youth.

  DeKok rarely forgot anything. He did not forget to keep his eyes open for Brassel. Brassel had not yet arrived. DeKok consulted his watch. It was a little after eight. He was surprised. According to his calculations, Brassel should have been present already. Unless, he reflected, he’d picked another time.

  He nudged his wife.

  “Do you see your young man anywhere?” he asked.

  She stood on her toes and looked around.

  “No, I don’t see him. Is he supposed to be here?”

  DeKok nodded.

  “If I’m right, he’s bound to show up. He needs us.”

  “For murder?”

  DeKok grinned.

  “You could say that.”

  He took his wife by the arm and together they pushed their way to the entrance.

  “Are we leaving?”

  “No, no, we’re staying close. I want to know when he shows up.”

  They had almost reached the door when Brassel appeared.

  DeKok withdrew slightly. He saw Brassel’s eyes search the room. His wife followed him, holding six-year-old Ingrid by the hand. Mrs. Brassel, too, looked nervous. She pulled the child closer to her. It was an anxious moment.

  DeKok pressed himself forward in the crowd. He observed Brassel catching sight of him. He forced his face into an expression of delighted surprise.

  Brassel motioned to his wife. They approached, little Ingrid between them.

  The usual formalities followed.

  “I see,” said Brassel, after everybody had met, “you accepted the invitation.”

  DeKok feigned a puzzled look. His wife intervened tactfully.

  “This is the young man,” she said cheerfully, “who delivered the invitation this morning.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed DeKok, “so the invitation was your idea?”

  Brassel laughed.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Rather, it was my wife’s idea. At first it was not part of my plan.”

  The two women qu
ickly found they had common interests. Together they walked off in the direction of the bargain tables. DeKok had taken little Ingrid by the hand. He, Brassel, and the little girl followed the women.

  The rummage sale was in full swing. There were sales of local embroidery, knitwear, and handicrafts of surprising, sometimes exquisite, quality.

  “You were,” DeKok said nonchalantly, “a few minutes late.”

  Brassel nodded.

  “We hadn’t planned to bring Ingrid,” he explained, “but she woke just as we were ready to leave, coats on, walking out the door. When she saw we were going out, there was no way she was going to stay home without us. We had no other choice but to take her with us. First, though, we had to soothe her and get her dressed. It all took time.”

  DeKok laughed.

  “Yes,” he grinned, “the best-laid plans of mice and men.”

  Meanwhile he came closer to Brassel.

  “Who,” he whispered, “is to be killed tonight?”

  Brassel looked shocked.

  “I, eh, I d-don’t understand you,” he stuttered.

  “Ach, come on, Brassel,” DeKok’s tone was full of reproach. “You understand me perfectly. It’s silly to deny it. My wife and I and all the visitors here tonight have but one purpose. Why in the world would you need us to serve as an alibi unless there is another murder in the works?”

  Brassel reacted strongly.

  “What are you saying?” He hissed the question. “You have some nerve implying I’m only here because I need an alibi! Who says I need an alibi?”

  DeKok grinned broadly.

  “I do.”

  In passing he took a local beauty by the arm. The girl was selling carnations from a large wicker basket. She was a good-looking girl of about twenty years. She was healthy, with long blonde pigtails, soulful eyes, and a sweet mouth.

  “What’s your name?” asked DeKok.

  “Francine,” answered the girl.

  “What else?”

  “Francine Brakel.”

  DeKok smiled in a friendly way.

  “Nice name.” He pointed at Brassel.

  “This gentleman wants to buy one of your carnations. But please pick a nice one. One that goes well with his handsome face.”

  He clicked his tongue.

  “Have you noticed,” he joked, “how handsome this gentleman is? A regular Apollo!” He grinned. “Oh, well,” he continued, “perhaps not an Adonis, but in any case a man you will remember all your life. The sort of man you dream about.”