Criminal Conversation (10 page)

“We might not,” said van der Valk, “be far off that right now.”

There was a long sullen silence. Just so does the engine in the marshalling yard collapse into lengthy immobility, for no reason any outsider can see. Dead stillness. Outside the window a whole crowd of Amsterdamse sparrows chattered and gibbered in a tree. Sun, warm and cheerful, giving again that holiday illusion, poured down.

“I want to talk to this girl myself.” Another unexpected burst of activity from the old engine. “I'm not going to decide whether or not to let you go any further into this till I have seen her. I'll send a polite note. No question of any interrogatory summons or anything judicial. A polite impersonal form. Where's my idiot boy? Blom… Blom, get a form, the one that says please present yourself with a date and time. Not the one saying failure to comply is punishable. In my name, here to this room. Van der Valk, you give him the address, and I'll want you here when she comes, to take notes.”

“Leave out Motive,” said Van der Valk. “Leave out Commissaris and leave out Criminal Branch. Just put Room Twenty-five.”

The secretary, who was not a real secretary at all, but a trainee inspector learning administrative routine, put the form in one of those brown envelopes with ‘Service' printed on them and a transparent panel in the front. Van der Valk, who was watching, put a hand out, removed the envelope and handed it back; the boy looked puzzled.

“Look,” patiently. “You get one of those in the post and anybody that sees it knows what it is. Which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes bad and most times indifferent. This time it is a good idea to avoid publicity. Take a plain white envelope, address it by hand, and trot out for a fifteen-cent stamp, there's a good boy.”

The form was sufficiently minatory not to be disregarded. ‘You are politely requested,' it ran in officialese, ‘to present yourself at Police Headquarters, Amsterdam. Please observe strict punctuality to the time mentioned hereunder. This form should be handed to the concierge on arrival.' The concierge had been tipped off.

Van der Valk, sitting at the secretary's table, was struck by Suzanne's clothes. There is a lot of difference between a sixteen-year-old wearing blue jeans and a rebellious look and the same sixteen-year-old in a summer frock with stockings on and white high-heeled sandals, and Suzanne was carefully composed. She looked quite calm, was alone, and had appeared on the dot. The face was pretty, young and round. She behaved simply as though called up to the headmaster's office. Van der Valk was curious to see how Mr Samson, who had an old-fashioned earthiness about his way with the public, would handle this girl.

The old man was going through some mail, which he shuffled into a pile and pushed aside.

“Good morning,” he said casually. “Sit down then, Miss Wilde.” He picked up a neglected cigar and drew on it a couple of times to get it going. There was a sputtering noise and a redhot fragment flew off, which the old man killed with a thick finger, wiping the cinders off carefully with someone's envelope. Fifth of November, thought van der Valk. Or, as the French put it, fires of artifice…

“Let me explain why I asked you to come and see me,” began Samson quietly. “You probably, in common with most of the public, think of the police as concerned with nothing but crime, and if the average person gets a summons to the bureau, he starts examining his conscience and wondering what he's been caught at. Eh?”

“Well, I did wonder…”

“There you are, you see. Nobody ever thinks that our function is always first and foremost to protect the public. And of course a good deal of that is the prevention of what is loosely called crime. Beginning with the local district police who pick up somebody who drives while drunk and lock him up for the night. That sort of thing has nothing to do with us, here. If, however, they come across an involved tale, they call me, because they haven't the time to spend on unwinding complicated stories. You might call this the department of involved stories, that may or may not have anything to do with crime but do involve the protection of the public. Eh? I don't suppose you've ever had anything to do with the police and that's why I'm telling you this. Eh?”

All this paternalism seemed to be having the desired effect: the girl sat quietly and with relaxed muscles.

“Very good. These complicated stories drag in all sorts of people, whom we have to pester because they may have heard or known something that helps us to understand. People quite uninvolved in anything disgraceful. Clear so far? Good. Happens that a man died recently, and there are some surrounding incidental circumstances we aren't altogether happy about. They may all have a perfectly simple natural explanation and that's why we're trying to meet all the people who knew him, even slightly, and listen to anything however trivial or irrelevant they may be able to tell us. This man was a painter called Cabestan.”

Watching the face that he could see in profile van der Valk could not see anything beyond an increase in attention, perhaps. It was nothing more than the face of a girl practically of student age who is accustomed to concentrating on spoken words. To her,
Mr Samson appeared no more intimidating or important than her professor of Formal Design.

“You are an art student as I understand, Miss Wilde?”

“Yes.”

“You go to a special school, where you learn languages and history and all the usual things, but with less emphasis on maths and physics and so on but special courses in the development of art or whatnot – is that all correct?”

“Yes.” Her voice was small and shy, but apart from that she gave a poised, even an assured impression. She looked older than sixteen. One would have said eighteen, nineteen. Of course these girls wear much more sophisticated clothes than they used to. They have their hair done professionally, they study their make-up carefully and they have all that carefully cultivated air of worldly wisdom. Not really surprising, since these schools are forcing-grounds of their development.

“Was it through this artistic atmosphere that you met Mr Cabestan?”

“No – well, I should say not exactly.”

“Can you tell me how it was?”

“We have an art appreciation class, you see, and we often get sent or taken to exhibitions. At one of these we were in a group with Dr Geyl, who's one of our professors, and he introduced us to a lady who was there who knew him, and she was talking to me, and because of something she said – I don't know how to explain – she took me to a house…”

“Apropos?”

“Yes, that's it, apropos, well, a house where there were some pictures and I met Mr Cabestan there.”

Never thought to see the old man being so patiently gradual, van der Valk told himself. Learn something new each day.

“The lady is called?”

“Mrs van der Post. She knows an awful lot of painters and dealers and – oh, everybody.”

“The house belongs to her?”

“No, a sort of dealer – present day stuff. A Mr Simons. Well – “in rather a hurry – “Mr Cabestan was there and he was making jokes about a picture they all thought good and he said was no good. And he asked me more or less as a joke whether I thought it good, but I wanted to be serious and I said no, to be honest, I couldn't see it, and he laughed like anything and told me I had good taste. Mr Simons was rude and said he was about as far behind modern taste as Ary Scheffer – Mr Cabestan I mean. I rather liked him. And then Mr Simons gave us a drink and said I had a lot to learn and I shouldn't listen too much to Dr Geyl and – ach – it just happened I got to know him so. I can't really explain any more.”

“You don't have to,” said Samson composedly. “That's perfectly clear and reasonable. So you saw a bit of Mr Cabestan from then on.”

“Oh yes, he took me to a few places, and to see his own work, and was always amusing and funny, though I thought, to be honest, he talked awful nonsense about most things.”

“Um. And do you think he was just anxious to teach you about art?”

She laughed. Without affectation, perfectly naturally.

“Of course not. Oh, he talked about art all day, but he wanted to make love to me, of course. He was always trying to get me to pose for him.”

This directness in the rising generation disconcerted the old man a bit and van der Valk had to grin.

“In the nude?” he said a bit awkwardly.

“What else? I didn't, naturally. But I liked him in an odd way. He was a poor old fellow – nobody took him very seriously, I could see, but he had nice sides too. I thought he was even a pretty good painter once. He drank too much.”

“And did you ever meet Mrs Post again?”

“Yes, outside his house: I was there three or four times. He used to get amorous but I used to sort of shake him loose. Later I found she lived there, downstairs I mean, it's a big house. She said hallo
very nicely and asked me to have coffee with her in town. And I met her once at a party.”

“Did Mrs Post know Casimir? I mean she obviously knew him but was there a closer acquaintance?”

She laughed again clearly.

“He couldn't stick her. He called her the art whore. That was just spitefulness of course because she despised his work.”

“You liked her yourself, though?”

“Like, like, I don't know her well enough: she was always polite and nice to me, like I say,” a little impatiently, as though she found the old man a wee bit obtuse.

“She knew that you were friendly, or acquainted, with Cabestan, at least?”

“Oh yes, of course. There wasn't any secret about it.”

“So your parents knew it as well.”

Not quite so obtuse…first tiny sign of hesitancy and confusion in the girl's manner. Van der Valk, quietly writing shorthand, could see her very well.

“Now…to be honest, no. I mean they're very reasonable about letting me go where I please and meet whom I choose, especially when it's anything to do with work, but – well, it's a question of tact really. I mean if I'd mentioned Casimir at home there might have been a flap and questions and it might have led to a row and I just prefer to avoid that.”

“That's quite natural.” It was decidedly the first time van der Valk had ever known the old man being silky.

“Would both your parents have been inclined to disapprove?”

“Perhaps,” she said carefully. “My father's more strict but he has to be because he's very well known, you see. My mother wouldn't really have minded much but she'd back him up, if you understand.”

“But you find it reasonable that she should back him up, eh?”

“A wife ought to back her husband up,” immediately, decidedly.

“Have you ever met Dr Post?”

Again a hesitation and this time tension. Slight; only noticeable because her answers had been coming so easily and loosely.

“Well – met isn't quite the word. He treated me a couple of months ago for anaemia.”

“I thought he was a neurologist.”

“I don't know. My mother says he's a good doctor. He certainly cured me.”

“Ah, your mother suggested it. I don't know why, I thought perhaps Mrs Post had suggested your consulting her husband.”

“No, no,” emphatically. “She knew nothing about it.”

“She never introduced you to her husband?”

“I'd never seen him. I supposed he wasn't interested in pictures. That's to say I'd never thought about it.”

“Um. You know Mrs Post and your mother knows Dr Post but your paths just hadn't crossed, uh?”

She just looked a little puzzled.

“I don't think my mother knows him all that well. She'd consulted him one time, she told me and I suppose she found him good.”

“Exactly. Now this Mr Simons; did you ever meet him again?”

She was going to balk; he could see it. Mr Samson lit another of his terrible cigars: van der Valk got a cigarette out one-handed, awkwardly.

“You are pretty inquisitive about all my doings, aren't you?”

“But that's our work, you see. Just like painting pictures, or building a wall, come to that,” poking with his burnt match-point to get a better draught in the horrible thing.

“Can't you tell me what it's all about, then?”

“I may,” said Mr Samson briefly. “We'd got to Mr Simons.”

“I met him a couple more times. You know how it is – you get into a sort of group.”

“You've been to his house again?”

“I don't know who can have told you that.”

“Nobody told me; that's why I ask.”

“A couple of times, yes.”

“When was it that you heard Cabestan was dead?”

“I hadn't heard anything of him in a while and I supposed he'd just got tired of trying to make me. A couple of the boys told me he was dead. It was a shock because – ja, it always is, isn't it? – I mean hearing someone is dead. I mean one knows people die, of course, but you don't expect people you know ever to die. But I wasn't terribly surprised because I knew he wasn't well. He drank much too much, and he used to go a funny colour and breathe heavily, after climbing all those stairs.”

“You said a couple of the boys.”

“Yes, at school, but not the same class. They heard at the arts club, they said. Casimir used to go there. He took me once but I didn't care for it – all that unwashed crowd of pseudos.”

Mr Samson, beginning to look more recognisable to van der Valk now, made another of his swerves.

“Did your mother know you had met Mrs Post? You would have had no especial reason to be tactful about meeting her, I take it?”

“Well, I suppose not, but I don't think I ever mentioned it; I suppose it just never came up,” lamely.

“I see… Did you know that Simons found Cabestan dead?”

“I haven't seen Mr Simons in quite a while,” very cold.