‘Oh – did you leave something behind? You were just here with my brother, weren’t you?’
‘A little word with you if I may, Miss van Eyck.’
‘Oh – you know my name. Uh, won’t you come in out of the snow?’
‘Only because it’s my job. I’d better introduce myself; my name is Van der Valk and I’m an inspector of police. Don’t be nervous or alarmed at that – nothing threatening about me. Simply to learn a little more, if I can, about your sister.’
‘But.… surely you talked to Will just now?’
‘Yes indeed. And he was most helpful. Good old Will. Be an excellent idea to marry him when all the fuss dies down. Good chap. Coming man; fine career in front of him.’
She had gone white, of course.
‘Did – did Will tell you that?’
‘Let’s say that this is a little secret of yours I hold, because you have a little secret of mine. You don’t know me, you don’t know who I am, and in fact I haven’t been here at all. I only wish to get from you a detail or two to add to what we know about your sister. Were you friends?’
‘Oh yes, always; we went everywhere together till she married.’
‘What is the age difference between you?’
‘Just under two years.’
‘Did she ever tell you any little secrets, after she got married?’
Another big blusher.
‘I don’t quite know what you mean.’
‘I mean that when you saw her, as you did fairly often – mm?’
‘Well, every couple of months or so maybe, no more.’
‘Yes – you had a nice chat together. Just between girls, between sisters. She used to tell you all about her life.’
‘Not particularly,’ evasively.
I changed tack. ‘Am I right in thinking you were both always a bit rebellious? The atmosphere at home – of course, you’re fond of your home and your parents, but living there was a bit oppressive sometimes, I think.’
‘I suppose that’s true, yes.’
‘And Betty married a bright young fellow. And you went away to learn fashion journalism. Was that a success? Are you good at it?’
‘Not very,’ with an honest grin.
‘Did you have a good job?’
‘No, rotten.’
‘Were you really rather pleased to have this excuse for getting out of it?’
‘Yes, to tell the truth, I was, really.’ She gave me another beaming grin.
‘I don’t suppose the idea of fashion photographing was ever terribly well received at home either, was it?’
I got one of her straightforward, naïve looks for that – how on earth did I know so much about her? I was a policeman; I knew everything.
‘You persisted even though it wasn’t much of a success. But you’re rather happy at the idea of Will marrying you. You and Betty used to have real heart-to-hearts about things. You both liked a good time, and occasionally, just to show you were emancipated a bit from the strait-laced ways at home, you both enjoyed feeling a tiny bit wicked.’
Very wide-eyed now. Uncanny. I wanted to laugh; they were such very easy guesses and she was regarding me as an absolute sorcerer.
‘You knew about Betty’s boy-friend, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But there was nothing wrong, I promise. Betty would never have really …’
‘Did you know about the letters?’
‘No, honest. Betty just never said a word.’
I was sure she was telling the truth.
‘She must have got all broody about them – if she’d only said something to someone it would have made her feel better, I’m sure.’
‘I’m sure too. She didn’t, unhappily. But looking back, thinking back, did she ever say anything, now that we have afterknowledge, that sounds to you now odd, queer, unlike her, that could point to anything to do with those letters?’
‘No,’ earnestly. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Never mind. Thank you, I hope I’ll never worry you any more and –’ I shook a heavy finger at her – ‘no tales to anyone. Remember, you don’t know who I am; you’ve never seen me. That’s the only way I’ll ever be able to find out who wrote horrible letters to your sister. So –’
‘Honest.’
Coming out, the snow was denser still, the lumps thicker, more cotton-woolly than ever. I yielded to a childish impulse and, with my face turned upwards and my grim granite jaws wide open, I did a sort of balancing act for ten good seconds before I succeeded in catching the especially huge one on which I had set my sights and practically my heart. It was like spun sugar to eat – a great anticlimax.
5
‘Wonderful livid light, all lurid and sinister. I’ve nothing particular to go out for again; I’m going to sit by the fire and spin.’
Arlette nodded but did not answer. She picked up my cigarettes and took one, snapping irritably at the lighter when it didn’t work; it never will for her and I can never find out what it is she does wrong, although I am supposed to be a detective. Her face was closed and heavy; she had given herself a pugnacious double-chinned look.
‘I’m making pea-soup,’ abruptly.
This was good news. Arlette’s pea-soup takes two days to make, but is worth waiting for. I made a vulgar noise with my mouth; she blew smoke in a loud nervous puff.
‘I’ll be happy when we’re at home; I’m disliking all this intensely. This mean prying; this passionate interest in the footling street – the hatefulness of it. If I lived here I should start becoming just like the ghastly neighbours.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘This is the very first time that you’ve ever been involved, even remotely, in work of mine. I know it’s disagreeable, but quite honestly I need your help. This is so simple I can’t see it. So simple nobody’s been able to see it. It bores me very much. I thought I’d be interested in this social study nonsense but really I’m not. The only thing I’m interested in here is Besançon – I’m feeling that I’m even becoming friends with him. I think that’s why I can’t make any headway here; I’m just not able to whip up interest. Today I had a talk to the husband, Reinders-remember the first girl that killed herself, poor little bitch? He’s got her sister there, and is all set to marry her when the gossip dies down. In six months he won’t notice any difference between her and the first one. It’s dull, it’s flat, it’s petty – bah, I’m just as fed up with it as you are. It’s my work, alas.’
She got an unwilling grin on her face.
‘Shall we have a drink to give us courage?’ I said.
‘Of course. Alcohol for the machine.’ She poured two. ‘We’re not really like the neighbours, you see – they don’t drink at eleven in the morning.’
We drank, solemnly.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll be home soon despite everything, and when you look at yourself you’ll find you haven’t changed. The first day you’ll be fighting with the greengrocer about carrots.’
The grin was getting less unwilling; I don’t know whether it was the drink or the sparkling line of chat.
‘The first time I made pea-soup,’ reminiscently, ‘he said you didn’t put carrots in pea-soup. I said of course that well, I did, and he got indignant. Said that pea-soup was a Dutch thing, by God, and he wasn’t going to be told how to do it by any damned French women.’ She took a big drink, obviously much cheered by the memory.
‘You’re probably the one that can see through this at a glance. I’ll show you. Where’s my notebook.’
She had to go and look at the soup first. It was moving, bubbling barely perceptibly with tiny subterranean upheavals. She gave it a stir, regarded it with approval, moved the asbestos mat a centimetre and clanked the lid back on the pot. I knew exactly. One can hear every single damn thing in these horrible little houses. And that, I thought, is just the trouble. She sat down alongside me on the ridiculous sofa that was only just wide enough for the two of us and picked up her forgotten cigarette.
‘T
here is a correlation between all these people, which I am still trying to work out. Look now. Here – first Betty; that’s the wife of Reinders whom I saw this morning. Here’s all the facts I can get about her.
‘Next the minister’s wife – pretty blank. He’s packed up and gone far away; don’t blame the poor devil – the gossip about him was poisonously malicious. The wife is still sitting in one of these schizophrenic apathies. They’re trying the usual things on her – electricity, insulin and so on – but they’ve no very hopeful results, yet at any rate.
‘Here’s the second suicide – the milk-products factory manager.
‘This is an interesting one – waited some time, then brought three letters to the police. They aren’t at all sure that there weren’t more that haven’t been shown. However, the letters then stopped abruptly, she says. If that’s true it may be significant. She’s the wife of the engineer who’s building that big flat complex – he comes from near Rotterdam.
‘And here is our new one down the road, though I won’t have the police report on that till this afternoon. What I know is just facts available to everybody: he’s the local sales manager for a range of imported drinks and comes from Amsterdam.
‘Lastly – I’m not able to support this at all yet – I’ve put down the burgomaster.’
‘Burgomaster?’ Arlette was taken aback.
‘I have a little man who is telling my stomach all the time that all is not as it should be with the burgomaster’s wife. I have to go there to pick up that report this afternoon, and I intend to try a trick on her. If it doesn’t come off, I think that I could manage to smooth it all over with oily talk.’
‘But what have they in common with the other couples – you’re talking about some correlation?’
I tried to explain. Even to me it sounded very silly.
‘To start with, there’s no proof that any of the allegations made in any of the letters are true at all. They all could be true, but I’m damn sure myself that most aren’t true. If not all. I just don’t believe that these people are the sinks of iniquity that is suggested.’
‘But if they aren’t,’ said Arlette reasonably, ‘why on earth pretend they are?’
‘That is what is eating me, exactly. The supposition is and always has been that the author of these letters spied on people, possibly with glasses, possibly listening with this tiny radio there’s been a ballyhoo about, and caught people out in acts of immorality. Conclusion, the attack is on immorality. Well, I’ve been wondering whether there really is all that much immorality. I can’t, strictly speaking, find any trace of any.’
‘But if there isn’t, what is the attack on?’
‘I just don’t know,’ I admitted, helplessly. ‘The only thing I have to go on is that all the men are in positions of some influence, possibly even authority. Minister, two factory managers, a builder, a sales manager, even a burgomaster. And all of them are from outside – what we could call foreigners. Whereas all the wives are local women. That much is fairly clear. Where do I go from there?’
‘You mean you want me to have a guess?’
‘Just look at my notes and tell me if anything strikes you.’
‘Mm,’ dubiously. ‘You know me – stupe. Still, I’ll try.’
She read over my notes carefully. I poured a second drink for both of us and looked at my wife with affection. Very nice. Her hair needs washing, slightly.
‘Lot about religion in your notes. All these women are big church-goers and the men not. Still, there’s the minister, and the milk-factory man’s a churchwarden. Can’t be an attack on religion.’
‘More a defence of religion, I’ve thought.’
‘Attack on false gods? I can see that the letters are very calvinist. But the minister …’
‘Seems he was a left-wing minister – unorthodox, even dangerously liberal, some people thought. Miss Burger tells me that when the rumours started a lot of people were rather jubilant.’
‘So that a really hellfire right-wing calvinist would have attacked him?’
‘Possibly. But it’s very unsatisfactory,’ gloomily.
‘There’s a feminist side, isn’t there?’
‘Which interests me greatly, but I can’t see the point.’
‘The letters are somehow sympathetic to the women and anti all men. And the men are strangers whereas the women are local. Huh?’
‘It’s too consistent, I think, to be pure coincidence.’
‘And now you feel about the burgomaster … Could it be a local reaction – I get this sort of thing each day in the shops – less against authority than – than – government interference. Industrialization? – I mean that would account for Reinders, and the builder, and the sales manager, and even the milk-factory – and the burgomaster could be held responsible for a lot of it too? Anything in that?’
I sat up. ‘What is it exactly that you get every day in the shops?’
‘Well, one feels a strong hostility to the outsiders – they call them, or us, if you like – “the imports”. But there’s more. There’s a hatred, almost, of all this progress. You hear all the old wives nattering. They don’t like the modernity, the progress, the new shops or the flats, really. But I don’t understand it – the depression here must have been cruel; they were all as poor as rats and now they’ve plenty. All got good jobs; no unemployment. How can they have nostalgia for the good old days?’
I started to interrupt but she wasn’t finished.
‘Of course they all say that this building doesn’t help them a bit. They all moan that the new houses are far too dear for them and that nobody profits from the factories and the building but the imports, and that it hasn’t helped them a bit. They say that despite all the new building the housing shortage is as bad as ever it’s been. Even worse. Am I talking very stupidly?’
‘Quite the contrary. A resentment of the outsider, plus strong conservative calvinist religion, plus distrust of government, plus an insinuation that all this attacks morality – it could all link up.’
‘Now I’m not following.’
‘You could say you disliked progress because it attacks religion, basic political beliefs, the whole foundation of their ethics. The government is too Catholic for their taste.’
‘You’re losing me altogether now.’
‘Their big political party here – it’s called Anti-Revolutionary. Very odd-sounding to us today, but in the nineteenth century there was great strength behind it, and here there still is. Anti-liberal, anti-Catholic. The Papists are the Scarlet Woman, the schools spread false doctrine – they were opposed to all the principles of the Revolution. To them universal education and giving Catholics the vote was disastrous – practically the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now a liberal minister would be seen as attacking them in the very sanctuary, and even the burgomaster, who is Anti-Rev himself, as well as orthodox Protestant, could be seen as the willing tool of the wicked politicians. Perhaps they see all this modernization as a corruption and a victory for the Great Beast of Rome.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘I’ve no idea whether I am or not.’
Arlette heaved a deep sigh and went over to the gramophone.
‘Back to the eighteenth century,’ she muttered, getting out her album of Figaro.’ This is too complicated for me.’
‘They think the same, maybe,’ I said, lighting a cigar. ‘Before the Revolution and those horrible Frenchmen, life was much more their cup of tea.’
‘What, aristocratic government?’
‘Why not? Man knew his place in the world. Man and God worked together for salvation, and each man could attain grace through struggle. Whereas, with the Revolution, they lost their grip on God, and that worried them all dreadfully.’ I relapsed into scribbling; Arlette heaved another deep sigh and started on the vegetables for her soup.
6
Between Act One and Act Two we had dinner – Hamburg steak, not really very eighteenth century, but nice. I fel
l into a sort of trance while Arlette did the washing-up. Halfway through Act Two – all the tremendous goings-on in Countess Almaviva’s bedroom – I found myself just staring at the curtain of sound.
‘I’m falling too deep into my theories,’ I said at the end of the record. ‘I’m going over to pick up that report – that, anyway, is my pretext. I don’t think the report will tell me anything much, but I want a go at Madame Burgomaster. I probably won’t be more than an hour or so.’
The maid opened the door; I put on the friendly open smile of men with genuine Persian rugs to sell, made just this last week in Middlesbrough-on-Tees.
‘Van der Valk is my name. Ask Madame to be so good as to spare me a moment.’
‘Oh, I have a packet she told me to give you if you came – I think she’s busy.’
‘Ask her just the same.’
The girl went off obediently, but was back directly.
‘I’m afraid she can’t spare the time,’ in a saucy tone.
I beamed at her – I had already marched in three steps. ‘Ah. Luckily I have plenty of time. I’ll just wait till she’s less busy – nice and warm it is here.’ She wouldn’t keep me waiting, I thought. She must know – or at least have a strong notion who I was. However good my alias, however cautious my behaviour had hitherto been, I couldn’t nose around indefinitely without being rumbled. Not in private houses.
Still, I thought, it was time to come out of the shell a bit. As I had told the burgomaster, I couldn’t just sit observing for an eternity. Neither the taxpayer nor the Procureur-Général would stand for that. Time for Van der Valk to show a little action.
Sure enough, there she came, rather white around the nose too. Full of indignation. Now what had she to get indignant about?
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