Arlette was tedious; bombarding everything with sarcasms. The Mimosastraat, to begin with.
‘Why Mimosa? And why is there a Mimosa Street in every piddling town in Holland? None of these people have ever seen mimosa in their lives. Dahlias, tulips, narcissi – I find that understandable …’
Dear Arlette. She comes from the department of the Var and thinks that all the mimosa in the world is her own personal property.
Curses were heaped upon the anthracite stove, though it was modern; upon the curtains in the bedroom, which did, it was true, have an aggressively rural flower-pattern; upon the ‘three-piece suite’, a bargain, shop-soiled after being used for a Show House by a local emporium; upon the extraordinary shower in the bathroom. I admitted her right to that; one was supposed to sit, apparently, in a kind of pit at waist-level – a masterpiece of plumbing that would rouse an incredulous guffaw even at the sources of the Amazon.
By the third day she was settling in; moving furniture with zest, as though determined to leave her individual stamp on even this borrowed anonymous shoe-box of a house. But she was still acid at meals.
‘Milk here’s undrinkable.’
Aha, it was one of my items of knowledge, which I brought out of my rag-bag of Drentse lore. ‘Seems they like it like that. Call it High-Pasteurized.’
‘Which to me means scorched. Butter – rendered cowhide. And the butchers! People live here, I think, on fat salt pork and mince.’
Mince is nearly the dirtiest word in Arlette’s vocabulary.
‘But what I find worst of all is the way they stare. Stare, stare, blatantly, openly, uncaring. Stand there transfixed, with great dull eyes, gaping.’
It was true. Even at me – one would say a harmless-looking object. Here an Amsterdammer, it seemed, was an Indian from the Peruvian uplands, plus blanket and llama. The peasants did stare consumedly; little girls poked at each other and dissolved in giggles. Poor Arlette, with her accent that becomes strong in shops, and she still says ‘in a box’ when she means tinned. And her hair in a fringe, with a beret on top … The women here wore scarves over hair like an O-Cedar mop, and the ‘ladies’ wonderful hairy hats. They asked for a pound of mince, and took obediently what they were given. I felt a little sorry for the butcher. Arlette’s butcher has been accustomed for years to her poking, coming behind the counter, even pursuing the poor fellow into his own cold-room. He is used by now to ‘Too fresh again’, and keeps her steak a week longer than anyone else’s …
‘Be discreet,’ I told her. ‘Disguise yourself. Still, I trundle about all day in a grey suit, clutching a brief-case of crudely imitated pigskin, and even I am stared at. They look, and guess immediately that your name is neither Unk nor Flook and that you don’t belong to the clan.’
‘I am discreet. I shall burst myself with discretion. I found Beaujolais, so-called, but in Albert Heijn, so it might well be drinkable. Dear Albert, his shop is a home from home to me.’
Leek soup for supper, and chicory salad – not a very Drente meal, despite the presence of undoubtedly Drente butter. I settled down for a good go at the letters. Arlette had been much reconciled by discovering that here one could get German television; I had hired a set for her that morning and she was busy with the new toy. The letters were very boring; I found myself staring entranced at the delightful hair-styles of the German announcer-girls. But we must be resolute.
The longest file was the first suicide. She had been the wife, poor girl, of the technical director – second in command – of the little electronics factory; the man who, with the owner, made up the inventive team. What did we know about him, first? Reinders, Will, forty-three. Came from Dordrecht. Impressive engineering qualifications: evidently a brilliant chap. Religion Reformed. Well regarded in his profession. Locally spoken of as calm and steady. Mixes very little with Zwinderen notables, but said to be friendly and easy to get on with. Very dedicated, takes profession very seriously; certainly coming man. Alone or with the boss (who lives in Baarn but comes up at least twice a week) makes frequent trips all over Holland and abroad. Point is that wife was often alone. Absolutely no police record – what a blameless individual!
Wife’s name Betty; thirty-six, born in Groningen, religion Reformed, first marriage. No children. Church-goer, whereas husband was not, but thought of as a little flighty, even frivolous. Active however in various do-good social activities. There had been a rumour that she had got too friendly with a young draughtsman at the factory, who had as a consequence been sacked. But this had not been taken very seriously, since the letters did not threaten her with any such thing as a scandal. It was the husband that was threatened. He was, according to the writer, a dirty dog, and the implication was that the writer would make the girl a much more satisfactory lover. Mm.
They had been found in her jewellery box after her death – not the first to come to light, but the first series. Was it a series? There was no way of telling. Undated, and no way of fixing even chronological order. Moreover there had been phone calls, and after the first contact there were few letters – if they were, indeed, all here.
Naturally, every possible indication had been followed up. Nothing for me there. Just that hint in the style that appeared to have struck nobody much.
‘You may be of opinion … I am well aware with what he is occupied … your position of standing … wallow in corruption and hypocrisy … was that not an agreeable surprise?’ A sort of old-fashioned commercialese. All the letters had the same tone – a kind of affectionate menace. Offers of ‘rescue’ and ‘protection’. Frequent references to the Eye of God and the Ear of God – both, apparently, the writer. The later letters were lyrical about the joys of being in bed together, but nothing showed definitely whether these joys were anticipatory or reminiscent.
Police had raced to the director of the lunatic asylum for a psychiatric opinion. He had read the letters, shrugged, and said, reasonably, that the writer might well be insane but he had no opinion to offer on the basis of these letters alone. Handwriting would have given more and sharper indications, but … ‘I have no judgements beyond those of any normal detached person, without more to go on.’
Quite. The letters were mildly dotty, in much the same way as the letters of a fanatic about racing pigeons or model aeroplanes. It was no more and no less to my mind than the frustrated gentlemen who make indecent propositions to telephone-service girls. Even the explicit remarks could be total fantasy.
One letter had a different tone. It was in the dossier, but there was no proof that the writer was the same. It might have been someone who had a letter, and decided to take a leaf out of the book. It was to a young girl of sixteen – there had been an earlier letter which she had destroyed, terrified. Reconstructed it read, more or less. ‘You little fool. I saw you. Unless you do what I tell you, everything will be known. Show this to no one, but watch carefully for the next, and do exactly what I tell you.’
The one they had read: ‘Cross the bridge tonight at nine exactly. You will get instructions at the right moment. Wear your beige coat, but under it you are not to wear any clothes at all.’
It had gone too far. Shocked even more than frightened, the girl had done nothing, but had finally gone to Mum. Who had had the sense to go straight to the police. Too late, and there had been no more letters. It was one of the first that had come to light, and had remained disconnected.
That looked simply like the work of some elderly voyeur. Possibly.
There was only one other series anything like complete: the unfortunate woman who had gone round the bend. She sat all day in apathy; there was nothing to be got out of her. She had been the wife of a Protestant minister, and quite a mild, reasonable one at that; not one of the hellfire sects. A man against whom there had never been a breath of scandal. This was a puzzle. The letters were all full of religion. But if, say, Reinders was attacked for being an enemy of religion – which seemed the tone often – why attack a man known to all as deeply devout? The unha
ppy man had renounced his living and vanished into obscurity. Police had questioned him, but had nothing to hold him for. He had upheld vehemently that there was no truth in any of the suggestions.
He was one of the few men to have had letters.
‘Do you think that nobody knows about the book of photographs in the locked bookcase? Your wife would be interested. Perhaps I will tell everybody. You would get an enthusiastic reception on Sunday then.’ He had not told the wife. He had done nothing. He had not understood why his wife should have acted strangely. He had disregarded the letter as a ridiculous untruth from someone evidently insane.
Why keep it?
To show the police in case there were more.
Had it never occurred to him that his wife might also have had letters?
No, it hadn’t, unhappily.
Had he been afraid to draw attention to the suggestion? Was it true?
The wife’s were much the same as Betty’s. ‘If you do not want the scandal to ring through the whole country, you must follow the instructions you will receive implicitly.’
Had she? Had anything happened? Was it all just wish-fulfilment?
The other suicide – wife of the manager of the milk-products business – had left no letters. It was only an assumption that she had had any.
I rather thought she had. The husband had acted rather queerly, to my mind.
Police actions had been based on mutual acquaintance. What persons had been in contact with all these others? Remarkably many. None of them remotely suggestive. Whose telephone to tap, whose house to watch? Every idea had petered out.
The whole affair had been kept from the public – but a lot was certainly known. And the public reacted. That large number of respectable wives who had got tetchy with each other in public. That quite violently heated audience for a rather scruffy café where on two occasions – meaning two had been proved – a woman had done a decidedly daring strip-tease. Who knew what went on in a small town? Everything was known, and nothing.
Everything could be seen. The Dutch, especially the more provincial Dutch, do not draw their curtains even at night. There are many explanations of this; I have always thought it due to anxiety – the Dutch neurosis. The anxiety lest anyone thinks us not normal, not conforming, not ‘respectable’.
‘We have nothing to hide,’ announce those curtains.
Hadn’t they? Nothing?
There is a favourite Dutch pastime that they call ‘shadow-watching’. Everybody in Zwinderen does it, I have noticed already. As the name implies, it is an evening occupation, towards twilight. You sit by your own open curtains, one lamp in your room lit, and you observe.
Every home has huge windows, front and back. Walls are paper thin. There is almost nothing one can do that is not seen and heard instantly – and as for flats … This could be called a typical small-town provincial crime. And given a mildly deranged person, two a penny anywhere, you arrived with unpleasant ease at multiple death. Which, however provincial, is as frightening, as horrid, as difficult to stop, as worrying to authority, as the classic psychopath multiple murderer of cities – Jack the Ripper, Franz Becker, and all the other textbook cases. What was the difference between knifing a prostitute, strangling a child, and badgering a housewife into insanity or suicide?
People died, didn’t they?
Resolutely, I shut the file, with its thick supplement of police conclusions. These were really pretty inept. I reach inept conclusions too, but I try not to let other people read them. There is the written report that is intelligent, and there is the written report that at least sounds intelligent.
Example of ineptitude: a reference in one letter to ‘eleven tomorrow’. An annotation put the illuminating query, ‘Is this a Saturday?’ Meaning that if the writer was an employed person, Saturday would be his only free morning.
Ve-r-y helpful.
Further down they had all worked on the assumption that since most of these people were roughly classifiable as bourgeoisie, the writer would be either self-employed, or in a position to find free time at any moment of the day if he wished. Not only inept: asinine. But incidentally it had helped to thicken the blanketing haze of suspicion round the one promising suspect: a certain Mr Besançon. I reached for the file on Mr Besançon. Arlette, who has the un-Dutch idea that tea at night is bad for one, had made two glasses of fresh lemonade with the peel in it, and honey.
‘Honey, honey?’ She thinks this funny. Funny, honey. There was a lot of very attractive steam. I fished out my lemon-peel and chewed on it in a greedy way.
7
It began with an elaborate summary. Points indicating or supporting suspicion. And, to be fair of course, points in favour. Which were, briefly, that no ground existed beyond stupid prejudice to suspect the man of anything at all.
Followed a pretty complete picture of his present circumstances, and a long row of dockets – all that was known of his extraordinary chequered past. I read the whole thing, absorbed. Very, very interesting indeed. Man was in his sixties. Lives alone. Widower.
A stranger, a Jew, an intellectual.
Known to be nervously deranged; result of wartime experiences.
Lives in house with high wall – practically the only one in Holland. You can’t see what he does all day.
Works at home, in own time, in own way, at own pleasure.
Known to take long solitary walks at night. Has also been seen at six in the morning.
Is courteous, formal, but shy and distant in relations with everybody.
Seems to shun human contact.
Has telephone. Does regular work for electronics firm. Has contact with husband of dead woman number one.
Is known as inventor of mysterious apparatus and devices.
Speaks Dutch in formal, correct but slightly stilted way.
Speaks German perfectly; French well; Russian well.
Suspected pacifist, suspected pro-Russian. Lukewarm on alliances, patriotism. Low on political consciousness.
Practises no religion. Never been known to profess any, either Jewish or any other.
Professes, on the contrary, fear of newspapers, radios, television, parties, associations, committees, organizations (everything, in short, that makes Dutch life so agreeable).
There were some perfectly charming annotations here too. ‘Having no newspapers in the house, access to newsprint – i.e., to cut out letters – presumed limited.’
Of course, the greengrocer does have that habit of wrapping cabbages in old newspapers. Arlette starts reading them instead of getting on with the cabbage.
There is a housekeeper, a middle-aged woman who looks after Mr Besançon out of charity and refuses a wage. She says indignantly that any connexion with revolting happenings is quite unthinkable.
During protracted interviews with many most experienced police-officers, Monsieur Besançon showed irritation, nervous strain, and agitation in moments of fatigue. All kept within bounds, all balanced by politeness, self-control, patience and understanding of officers’ unpleasant duties. All this is explainable by his past life – which includes interrogation by the Gestapo, years in camps, and forced labour. All the policemen agreed on this.
One last thing struck me – and hard, because it was the one thing 1 would have given real weight to. An irrational feeling. It was the final annotation, by the State Recherche officer.
‘I have been many times struck in course of conversation with Mr Besançon by the conviction that he possessed some secret. This led me to a persistent belief that he was the author of the crimes under investigation, but that conclusive evidence, since he is certainly a very clever man, would be hard to find. After two days, however, of rigorous interrogation, I am bound to state that this feeling rests upon no factual basis and must therefore be disregarded.’
That, I thought, is damned funny language from the State Recherche. The feeling he had was so strong that he felt he had to put it in the report. But no-factual-basis, so he feels impelled to
warn any reader of said report not to give way to unsupported suspicion. (The police had, quite handsomely, apologized for giving Besançon several thoroughly disagreeable weeks. He had answered politely that he had quite understood.)
The conclusion is typical. Since there is nothing tangible, the theory must be suppressed. Quite right; I have got into trouble often because of these little men that tell me things, who live in my stomach. Remember Edward G. Robinson, in that wonderful part in Double Indemnity? He was right. I have been right too, sometimes.
Sometimes I haven’t been right.
Anyway, I’m not going to get feelings just because a constipated security officer tells me not to. If I did, it would probably be because he had told me not to, with his damned cheek.
But I am certainly going to try and get to know Mr Besançon. Not because I suspect him of anything. He just sounds an interesting man, and everybody else here sounds, I am bound to state, if I may be allowed to quote the State Recherche’s fancy language, remarkably dull. I went back to the dossier.
Born, it began, in 1901, of a South-German Jewish family that had removed itself over the centuries from Prague to München to Breda, in Dutch Brabant. Family were watchmakers there for the last three generations.
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