Criminal Conversation (14 page)

I am sitting now as I write in my consulting-room, at my bureau, exactly as I was then. To my left the hall, where patients enter and leave – never seeing one another, for that upsets them. You need see nothing sinister in that; any psychiatrist does likewise. Facing me
across the room are the doors to my examination-rooms, where I keep the electrical machinery that intrigues you, and to the famous bathroom.

You walked in with a solid step (although you are fairly light on your feet for a biggish man) which I have learned since to recognise. I could see at a glance that you were no patient. What you were took me longer to grasp, yes, but I knew before you told me.

“Good afternoon. Tell me how I can be of service to you.”

You began at once with one of your crude jokes.

“My nerves are all right, Doctor, but I do need to be sure I'm not imagining things. I'm in search of the same things as most people - truth, knowledge, reassurance.”

“I see. You wish to be reassured, you want knowledge, and you ask for truth. Those things, as you say, are common to most people's wishes. Have you anything more precise to tell me? You suspect that you imagine things. Do you hear things? See them? Feel them? But we had better start at the beginning.” I took one of my case sheets. “Your name?”

“Van der Valk, Peter.”

“And how old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“And your occupation is?”

“Inspector of police, recherche department.”

I was, of course, far too well under control to make any reaction you might have hoped for.

“Make yourself comfortable. We have plenty of time; all my initial appointments are for an hour. Smoke if you feel like it. I am going to ask you a few questions to give me the feeling of your trouble.”

“Sure,” amicably. A rather sat-on blue packet of Gitane cigarettes; you offered me one in a friendly way, which I took.

“Yes, I'll keep you company. A doctor, you know, must not seem chilly or disdainful.”

“You establish the rapport.”

“Pretentious phrase. I'm not a psychiatrist, you know. If I can help you it will be in a tangible, actual way. Purely mental disturbances are not in my line, but we will see. You have interesting work. At times trying? Irregular hours? A shortage of sleep, sometimes? Interruption of your home life? You are occasionally over-tired?”

“Sounds like a doctor – well, I am a doctor in a way. All that is true but I have no complaints about it. Part of life.”

“Excellent. So you feel equal to the demands of your work, in general. And you have no unusual fears or worries, or a feeling of being inadequate?”

“I'll just have to tell you the details.” You had realised that I was fencing with you. “What is worrying me, as precisely as I can.”

“I am listening attentively.”

“By virtue of your profession you're a very discreet man. And so am I. We have a lot in common. Both nerve specialists, you might say. You might agree that most of your work is palliative, not much more. Mine too.” You had decided to match the glossy joviality of my manner. I was still amused by you.

“I had never guessed that a police officer would one day call on me in this way,” I said, perhaps maliciously.

“That is the point. I haven't come as a police officer in the ordinary way, ringing loudly at the bell with big boots on, giving the girl at the door something to gossip about, embarrassing you from the start. I would like you to appreciate that point. I preferred to try and create a personal, confidential, amicable atmosphere. Nobody likes the police in their house. I say no more than the truth when I say that I come in much the same spirit as a patient. I am slightly worried, a good deal puzzled, and I hope for your help.”

“But my dear Mr van der Valk, you are aware that my consulting time is quite an expensive item. Or are you proposing that I send an account in to the Department of Justice?”

“Why not?” you said, amused by the idea. “Might do them good. They send accounts in to people – demand immediate payment,
what's more.” I admired your parry and riposte but you had decided to stop the double-talk; it was getting you nowhere.

“Come, Doctor,” you said more seriously. “You mustn't be averse to my trying to throw no shadow on your life. I am a reasonable person, and I won't be taking up much of your time.”

“I find your approach most sympathetic, but I'm bound to say that I'm quite in the dark still. What is it I can do to help?”

“The approach,” you were trying now to stretch my nerves by making me wait for it, “was deliberate. Naturally, since I have come as a private person I have no official standing. You could, of course, refuse to speak to me, be pompous or frigid, stand on your dignity. I am hoping that you will meet me half way, and speak freely.”

I wondered whether I was supposed to react to this as to a blackmail effort. It was certainly intended to give that impression. Under that sunny, talkative manner of yours, you are fond of this type of little trap. I did not, of course, fall into it. I leaned back and crossed my legs, and blew smoke across the space between us.

“Various answers to that. First, I am never pompous nor frigid, I hope, with anyone, not even the eccentric, the absurd-sounding, the unbalanced-seeming. I have heard tales far more confused and peculiar than yours: they are a professional commonplace. I might add that my reaction of patience is also professional. I have my human share of impatience with meandering tales of imaginary ills and grievances that waste a doctor's day.

“Second, I never throw anybody out. I used to have a man who made endless threats to kill me. Finally he shot at me across the street when I was getting into my car one day. He'd been released two or three times from psychiatric institutions – the relatives claimed he was quite harmless. I got him fixed up in the end.

“Thirdly, I'm not in the least bothered by policemen; they are just like any other people – no lesser, no greater tendency towards neurosis.”

Yes, I knew I was talking too much. But I had, you see, to fortify my whole position against the stroke I knew was coming.

“Lastly, your tale may be interesting or it may be foolish; I haven't heard it yet. But I will listen attentively, Mr van der Valk. You are, as you tell me, a police officer, and I imagine that this most tortuous approach of yours has some relation to a crime. Some accusation, no doubt. You find me too quick to protest? I am in a very sensitive profession, and we live in a very sensitive land. There are people who feel that a doctor has not listened with sufficient sympathy to tales of self-pity, or who feel that he is insufficiently indulgent towards self-indulgence in alcohol, perhaps, or drugs. What do you suppose is my reaction towards people who come, as they do come, I assure you, to solicit me for narcotics? These people direct at a physician their unbalanced resentments. They make little plots and denunciations, they spread malicious inventions – they are quite safe from pursuit, since what is it but trivial gossip? The physician learns to protect himself against such. No, my friend, nothing you may have to say to me could shock me.”

“You won't be surprised” – I had left you no way out now – “to hear that you have been accused of murder.”

“Not particularly. I am not a surgeon, thank heaven. It happens to them daily. And of course there still persists the old superstition that anaesthetists are no better than a brood of poisoners. But I haven't had a patient die suddenly in years.”

“Not murder by negligence, Dr Post. Nor of a patient. You are accused of wilful homicide of a person known to you. A certain Cabestan.”

“Old Cabestan, really? How remarkable. But I can't think who would wish to blame me for his death, poor old chap.”

“It's even stronger. You are accused of bringing his death about, of your own active agency, by hitherto undetected means.”

“Now that does astonish me, really. I had thought it probable that he had picked up a dose of pneumonia or some such thing that carried him off. He was fairly elderly, somewhat frail, lived alone - such a death, even when sudden, is never very surprising.”

We were fencing again. I am not going on: that is enough to remind you how our first conversation went. It was inconclusive. I
did not ask you how you had received the accusation, nor who had made it; I had, to begin with, a notion that you wouldn't tell me. But principally my whole attitude had to be that of smiling indifference, to murder or anything else. The world is full of people who make accusations. Policemen at your level got hundreds. I decided that you had told the truth. Accusations have to be checked; you had come, politely, tactfully, as you claimed, to do some checking. I found that natural. You would not, I thought, come again.

But after you left, with a few jokes I found rather over-polished through long usage, I found myself wondering. You were too amused, you made too many jokes. A policeman in your position would be excessively stiff and embarrassed in conversation with a person as well known and highly regarded in his profession as I am. You were not stiff enough. You looked, too, as much as you talked - at myself, at my surroundings, at everything – and you are, you will be the first to admit, an expansive talker. I did not find much reassurance in your eye.

I had, of course, considered the fact that Casimir might have had some confidant. But this confidant could be nobody that the police – or anyone else – would think of as a reliable witness, because the confidence would disclose the fact that he was attempting blackmail. I say attempting, because of course he never got a penny from me. I do not understand the mentality of anyone who pays blackmail. One knows it will never stop. However great their cowardice the sensation of being skinned at regular intervals must grow too strong. There will come a time sooner or later to all of them when killing is easier than paying. But if everybody thought like that there would be no blackmailers either. The life expectation would be too short.

There is another possibility. Casimir may have tried this game on with another person, or even several. If that or these persons had an inkling that I was proposed for entry to their club, they might have drawn conclusions from Casimir's demise, and pitched in some accusation, anonymously of course, to divert any eventual suspicion from themselves. But I did not think much of this notion. I have never put your intelligence so low, my friend, as to imagine that a responsible officer of police would entertain an anonymous denunciation of an utterly respectable doctor. In order to approach me at all, however tactfully or obliquely, the police had, I knew, something a good deal stronger. Some live, real, actual person.

Casimir I inherited when I took over this house from old Dr Munck, who retired full of years, honours and wealth at the age of nearly eighty (still enormously active) went immediately on a walking holiday at some winter sports centre, was obstinate enough to disregard local knowledge, and was killed next day by a fall of loose snow. Casimir's tenancy came about, I should guess, some time in the thirties. The supply of country girls began to dry up, servants had grown too dear and too bad. Munck had the servants' story simply chopped off, and he made a thorough job of it: builders, at least, had not yet grown too dear. For it was a drastic job and crude, if effective. A staircase running down the whole side of the house, and a street door built in at the corner! Nobody would do such a thing now. But it was quite common then, when all the rooms were too big and all the houses were too high – and not a one of them with a lift!

It was never the slightest drawback. As the house stood it was quite big enough for a childless couple as well as a busy practice. Casimir never had the slightest contact with my house or myself; there was no need. And old Munck had been quite content with the tiny rent it brought in, and so was I. As for Casimir, he had had more sense than ever to complain at his three flights of steep narrow stairs. A real studio-flat in Amsterdam is the rarest species of game in Holland.

I was under no compulsion, naturally, to tell anyone that I had been in Casimir's quarters. I made, and make no secret of the fact that I have keys to his doors. Why should I? It is normal, because of fire: a special clause in the policies covers that flat. There are, moreover, plumbing fixtures, electric wiring and so on. If I got a burst pipe or something similar I had to be able to let workmen in. As it is, on the very rare occasions when something happened I gave instructions that the workmen were to go and bother Casimir. I am a doctor after all, a busy and harassed, in the eyes of most people an important, personage. Even in his best days he was never any more than a down-at-heels painter, a person plainly born to be bothered by plumbers.

When a polite letter told me that he had trouble with a leaking roof, in fact I went to see, like a good careful landlord. I had become a little curious about Casimir and the pretext was good; a couple of tiles needed replacing. I think the episode increased his curiosity about me; it certainly increased mine about him. I had scarcely been aware of his existence. The house is very noiseless and he was a mouse-like fellow, not given to weight-lifting, tap-dancing, or manipulating pneumatic drills.

Up and up I had to go along that interminable stairway, covered in some sort of coconut matting, mud-coloured long since. It smelt bad; I have an extremely sensitive nose. The rent was low – but not too low, I thought while climbing.

There is a sort of hallway at the top, with various cupboards full of brooms and things, dustbins and electricity meters and ancient overcoats – I have looked since, you see. A short passage, and at the end a door to a kind of glory-hole – decaying trunks filled with junk, and the plumbers' famous piping. On the landing were four doors, for there had been three servants' bedrooms, and a bathroom. The bathroom is now half kitchen, and two contiguous rooms have been knocked into one big studio, with mansard windows at the front of the house. There was water, gas and electricity: it must be a pretty good apartment for a painter. I know little of such things, but it was high, quiet, well lit, secure from interruption, and possessed several roof- and street-scapes. As well as fine opportunities for studying typists changing their frocks in a building opposite, between two of the lindens: sure enough, when later on I hunted about a little, a pair of cheap binoculars was among the first things found.