Criminal Conversation (11 page)

“But you knew the two were friends?”

“I don't know anything of the sort. I don't think they were friends.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don't know… Casimir never talked about him as a friend – not to me, anyhow.”

“He talked about him, then?”

“Oh well…because we'd met at his house… I really hardly know Mr Simons.”

“I get the impression – correct me if I'm wrong – that Mr Simons is not a pleasant subject of thought to you.”

“I don't care for him much.”

“Had he ever made any advance towards you?”

“No.” She blushed. She hadn't blushed at Cabestan's advances being mentioned.

“Cabestan and Simons hadn't, perhaps, had a disagreement - maybe about you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And you wouldn't know why Simons went to Cabestan's house, on the occasion he found him dead?”

“No. Are you thinking someone killed Casimir?” suddenly. Had it really only just struck her?

“Somebody would like us to believe that.” His voice was very calm.

“And you think it might have been Harry Simons?” The intonation sounded as though the thought did not displease her. Samson did not answer: he knocked the ash off his cigar.

“You don't think I killed poor old Cas, for heavens' sake?”

“You'd prefer we thought it was Simons, no doubt,” without irony. She wriggled, disconcerted. She was looking a lot more her age, now.

“Mr Cabestan,” he said, dry, “had been blackmailing your father. Demanding money from him on the strength of a pretended secret that would cause your father great embarrassment if it were to become public. Any idea what that would be?” She went flaming scarlet.

“My father knows – no, Casimir…”

“Yes, Miss Wilde? You must tell me. This is extremely important. What did your father know?”

“That I…” Freeze. “No – Casimir didn't know,” desperately; it was a wail.

“Yes, Miss Wilde?”

She burst into hysterical sobs. Samson made a face at van der Valk, who got up and came back with a glass of water. He put it on the desk; she sent it across the room with a furious slap. Neither policeman paid any notice: Blom-boy, as Mr Samson called him, could mop that up.

“That Cabestan had seduced you, Miss Wilde, I think you want to say.”

“No. No. No.” Mounting inflection of passionate emphasis. Van der Valk opened his mouth suddenly wide, got a nasty look from his superior officer, and shut it again hurriedly.

“Van der Valk, make out an official form of interrogatory summons to Harry Simons.”

The girl gave a great gulping sob, straightened up and looked at him terrified.

“Harry Simons had seduced you, Miss Wilde.” She made an effort and got a nod made. “That was what your father knew?”

“I would like some water.”

“Van der Valk.”

Sighing slightly, he had to go and get another glass. There wasn't one, but he found a tea-cup.

“I'm sorry if I sound inexorable,” said Mr Samson quite kindly. “I do not wish to bully or frighten you. This won't last much longer but we must have these facts. Of course nobody suspects you of anything criminal, not even knowledge. But I must know the truth here. Would you like some more water? Very well, Simons seduced you. Cabestan was jealous, I think.”

“No. He didn't know. Not from me, anyhow.”

“Good, he didn't know. You encouraged him a little – I see – to help make a break from Simons – no, all right, that doesn't matter for the moment. Ah… Did Simons by any chance become a little jealous of Cabestan? Think maybe that you were too familiar with him? As I have heard, Cabestan had a bad reputation with young girls like yourself, and what you say about telling your parents rather confirms that you knew that – hm?”

She nodded hesitantly. He thought for a while and then made his mind up.

“Very well, very well. I've no wish at all to seem rough with you, Miss Wilde, and I'm sorry you've had a hard time. It's over now. If you like, there's a washroom along the passage. Thank you very much for coming and for being extremely helpful; you're free of
course to go, whenever you like. Show her, van der Valk… By the way, Miss Wilde?”

She turned, dazed still from tears.

“I don't think you'll want to say anything about this at home, will you? Did you mention that you were coming here to see me?”

She shook her head.

“So much the better then. I'll say nothing about it either, then, to your parents. Hm? That console you a little.”

“I won't say anything. You mean it, really? You won't tell my father I was here?”

“No I won't. You have my word.”

When he got back, Mr Samson was trying to read his shorthand.

“Type this up. I want to read it.”

Meekly, he sat down at Blom's typewriter.

Mr Samson read the transcript carefully; van der Valk, with the carbon under his eyes, did the same: there was silence, broken only by the old man's characteristic trick of taking his glasses off, throwing them on the desk with a clatter, staring out of the window, heaving a sigh, and putting the glasses on again.

Van der Valk thought about Mrs van der Post, whom he had never seen. That imbecile De Vries had undeniably had talent. There was something vivid about his ridiculous ‘sketch' that could be seen more clearly after listening to the remarks of a teenage girl, more vivid still because she had not only talent, but the perceptive naïveté that opened windows on obscurity as nothing else could have done. He was full of admiration for Samson, who had known this without ever having met any of these persons.

Was it purely coincidence that the frau Post had crystallised the interrelation between these people? If the girl had not met her at a gallery and through her met Simons she would never have met Cabestan. Who had plainly detested the Post woman – the ‘art whore'. Had Post himself had any idea of all this? He had treated the girl for anaemia, but had he seen anything in her but the daughter of a woman he knew? His mistress, certainly, but was that important?

Had Casimir seen the girl in or leaving Post's house? Had that given him ideas or suspicions? The girl had been important to him; she gave him, plainly, a new lease of life. And, perhaps, his death.

Simons, obviously, counted for nothing. He might have been used as a pawn by the Post woman. Poor fellow – what a blow to his self-esteem. It was possible that he had known or guessed something of Casimir's manoeuvres. Lalalala – who would ever know who had manoeuvred what and why? If Casimir was attached to the girl, would he really have decided to blackmail her father?

“You don't want this Simons picked up, do you?”

“Of course not; that was a squeeze on the girl. One point in her tale rings false. She was seduced by Simons, who is plainly a sort of professional narcissist spending his life admiring his own magnificence. She learns to detest Simons, and in reaction Cabestan comes to appear to her a likeable person. That is all consequent enough. Then we find her suddenly going to this doctor, to be treated for anaemia. That I don't find consequent. In the same house, though she rather disliked the wife, whom Cabestan, moreover, loathed, and whom she had a grudge against as the person who had mixed her up with Simons.”

“The mother…”

“You don't send your daughter for treatment to the man who is or has been your lover,” decisively.

“Everybody agrees that whatever his morals he's a good doctor.”

“No, no, no. If the mother really sent her there's something behind that. I think she went off her own bat.” He took his glasses off again. “The other thing that doesn't satisfy me is the whole attitude Merckel takes up. Look at the chain of events.

“Cabestan learns in some way, possibly through the daughter, who may know or guess – impossible to say whether she was acting when I asked her – that the mother is Post's mistress. He is attached to the girl, but something sours it and his resentment fastens on the whole tribe of Posts. He decides for reasons of his own to put the bite on Merckel. I wonder why.

“Now Merckel has every reason to keep quiet about this, and does in fact keep quiet about it. Cabestan dies. Merckel then comes to us with an absurd tale about a scruple. He accuses Post of killing Cabestan, and he never tells us what grounds he has, since all he has
to go on is Cabestan's tale that his wife is Post's mistress, a fact that by his own admission he cared little about, provided she was discreet. He must have had something more to go on. That something is certainly to do with the daughter. You heard her. Her father knows something about her. And you tell me that the wife's evidence was that Merckel is very attached to his step-daughter, having no children of his own.”

“But if he found out she had been seduced by Simons how would that rouse him against Post – or Cabestan?”

The old man regarded him with dislike.

“I know nothing. I've never seen any of these people. I have nothing whatever but the girl's words to me, and I'm trying to find a logical explanation for them. Since you apparently haven't had the patience to think about these things I have to do it for you. I see a fact.

“A month or so after the girl has an affair with Simons – call it that for a convenient formula – she goes to Post of all people, to be treated, we are told, for anaemia. I can't swallow that.”

Van der Valk, who had swallowed it, was abashed.

“Suppose – suppose – she went there herself, giving possibly some excuse to the mother, and asked Post for an abortion. Thinking possibly that she can twist Post's arm, knowing a few things either from the mother or through Cabestan.”

“Even if it were true we'd never prove it. Couldn't use it against Post without a fearful stink.”

“Yes, yes, you don't need to tell me,” irritably. “Nobody's proposing to use it or even mention it. But if true it explains what does not at present ring true. Merckel, either from the girl or more likely from Cabestan, finds out something of this. He may even have thought Cabestan the putative father, and that he had sent the girl to Post. In which case they are both birds of a filthy feather, and when Cabestan suddenly dies Merckel concludes that Post has removed an awkward and disagreeable accomplice. And that sticks in his throat. The fellow has attacked him, his wife, and now his
daughter, and that goes too far. He comes to us, with hints, but tries to suppress the daughter.”

Van der Valk, who had thought Merckel was holding something back, and wondered why the banker should be indifferent to his approaching the wife, was impressed by the old man's grasp of a situation that had baffled him. But was the old man really proposing to do anything about it?

“We can't use this girl as a witness against Post. And we can't begin any legal action. But you've talked to this fellow a couple of times now. You might see whether there was anything that could be built up there. Don't try to intimidate Merckel. All these people are in a position to make life very nasty for us – bear that in mind, lad. Look at all this mess on the floor; where's my Blom-boy?”

Mr Samson would say no more, van der Valk knew. Either now or at any other time. Now it was up to him. If he reported – after a decent interval for mourning – that there was nothing to be done with any of these people, the old man would take the whole file, bury it in a hole eight feet deep, and never mention it again.

There was nothing he could do with Heer Merckel.

There was nothing he could do with Mrs Post, either. He had nothing whatever against her, and the moment he tried to question her she would smell rats. The woman from the powerful family of magistrates, the shining light of intellectual circles, the ‘art whore'!

As for Post, he had been right outside his book and his powers from the word go. If Post lifted a finger his job was gone. Post must know this. Why hadn't he complained? Better still, why hadn't he simply thrown van der Valk out?

And yet – what was the streak of fatalism or obstinacy that made him persist? – he didn't give up. Quite the contrary, he phoned for another appointment. Devil take it; how stupid he sounded. Would that secretary really not smell a rat this time?

“I'm afraid,” cautiously over the telephone, “my trouble still hasn't cleared up. I would like to see Dr Post again, as soon as it can be managed.”

“That's quite all right, Mr van der Valk, I understand. Afternoons still suit you best? Let's see…you could come tomorrow. It's lucky that it's August, you see – very many of our patients are on
holiday, and don't want to think about disagreeable things like appointments,” sunnily. Her voice was quite innocent – Post could have said nothing to her. No; certainly not.

“Many thanks,” he said. “That'll do very well indeed.”

“Me again,” in a voice stupidly bright, that he would have sworn was not only false but practically falsetto.

“Must be the heat,” remarked Dr Post calmly. “Nervous troubles are precipitated by a heatwave; it's a commonplace.”

Indeed it was hot; it had gone on and on undiminished. Asphalt stuck to the soles of everybody's shoes, and fat Amsterdamse housewives had given up wearing frocks altogether, and hung out of their windows in slips shiny and violently coloured as lollipops, languidly shaking out their dusters and showing a good deal of unaphrodisiac armpit. The sales of fizzy lemonade had reached such dizzy heights that the factories could not keep supplies up, and did not know whether to laugh fatly at their monstrous profits or cut the phone off to stop the shower of complaints. And the Amsterdamse police force was in trouble too. The uniformed members were hoarse with quacks of protest, because some unusually lunatic city father had decided that with all these tourists about the police had to keep their jackets on. “Shirtsleeves,” had run his peroration, “are not only unhygienic and undignified; they are a blot upon our good name in far countries.” Dear man. As for the plainclothes troops, they were prey to the most extraordinary fantasies – wasn't this the proof? – such as never would have been entertained in the cloudy drizzles of a maritime climate behaving as it should in August.