Criminal Conversation (16 page)

“I'm not a dermatologist. Occasionally, when they are of nervous origin, as they quite frequently are.”

“And cosmetic treatments?”

I decided you needed a snub. “What are cosmetic treatments?”

“Oh, making old women beautiful again with calve's liver or some such thing.”

“My poor friend, you have been reading magazines. There are cosmetic surgeons, and there are gerontologists, who use hormone treatments upon occasion. That has no interest for me. Such ideas.”

“I have been told you made people younger.”

“Let me make myself clear. If a patient comes to me with a disordered system, living an overloaded or unhealthy life, and I am able to help him, he feels better. In a flush of well-being, he tells his friends he feels ‘years younger' and the ignorant, like you, loving drama, imagine that I possess magical powers and miracle cures. Superstition.”

You were not too snubbed. During this absurd speech you looked at me steadily with your sunny, benevolent expression unchanged.

“You have, however, a large number of women patients in early middle age.”

“And do I really need to explain that to you?”

“Do. Why not? Since, as you say, I am ignorant.”

“Every doctor has many patients of the type you describe. They are bored, nervous from doing nothing, needing distractions and amusements: a fertile ground for all sorts of ills. Add that women of this age suffer various biological disturbances and you get the
common coin of every doctor's life. Why do we discuss these trivialities?”

“When they may not be altogether trivial. When they may even have a suspicion of malpractice about them.”

I turned a glassy eye on you.

“I have concluded that you have received some scurrilous letter. Accusing me of making off with old Cabestan and now, apparently, of malpractice with women patients – if I understand you rightly.”

Casual nod.

“What I do not follow is your taking these rubbishy things seriously. A person with a grievance, exactly as I sketched for you at a previous meeting, seizing upon anything that might be ground on which a doctor could be attacked.”

“We got one, quite sober letter, not at all in scurrilous terms, simply saying that you had suppressed Cabestan because he had evidence that you misconducted professional relationships and had threatened to expose the fact.” Your voice was quite colourless.

“Unfortunately,” I spoke drily, “Mr Cabestan's death is the one fact that is real and demonstrable in all this. If you really feel that anyone, not to speak of myself, killed him, you surely need something to support the supposition. Was there any medical examination, for instance?”

“Oh yes.”

“With what result, if I may allow myself the curiosity of asking?”

“None whatever,” cheerfully.

“Then surely the whole idea falls to the ground. This accusation could not stand up in a court. I hesitate to threaten, myself, but you must realise that any person accused on insufficient grounds of criminal action possesses means of defending himself. Wrongful arrest, interference with the liberty of the subject, or whatever.”

“Has anybody interfered with your liberty?”

“Defamation of character.”

“There isn't any. Come, Doctor, I'm your patient, and any conversation between us is private and privileged. The famous medical secrecy.”

“A conversation sounding like blackmail?”

“We don't blackmail people,” mildly. “Nor do we pursue frivolous accusations without grounds.”

“You mean you really think you do have grounds?”

“Oh yes. We even have a witness.”

“Produce this witness.”

“When the time comes.”

“A witness, my friend, that hides, is not a very solid witness, nor one in whom anybody could have confidence. I think that I will ask my professional association to take steps to ensure my protection. I will complain against illegal, unauthorised and unjustifiable police interference.”

You had been leading me on, of course, with deliberately weak arguments, tempting me to come out with this. I had been trapped, as I now realised. You proceeded, now, to blackmail me quite shamelessly. You have, my dear van der Valk, some good qualities, and you have, as well, a sort of low cunning that is revolting.

“You do that, Doctor,” with your country-boy's broad beam, “if you really think it would do you any good to make any aspect of this affair more public. If you take such steps, the press get the substance of the complaint against you; it's inevitable. You might end up by regretting your hasty move. As things stand, this is all no more than a friendly, discreet, personal little chat between you and me. Doctor and patient! This witness – we do not produce him simply because we wish to know how much weight to give his words. A standard of comparison. The person to provide that is yourself; surely that's obvious. You must realise that my movements are heavily biased on the side of your protection and the assumption of your complete innocence of all this. Surely that is how it should be,” silkily. “If you prefer – really prefer – a noisy, public, clumsy enquiry, with your secretary, your patients, even your wife dragged into the dirty-minded stare of the public, well… There would be a cloud of gossip – exactly that malicious and stupid gossip you mentioned at our first meeting. By all means, if you prefer it, but I cannot see that it would help you.

It wasn't badly done. If I did not make an intelligent answer it would look bad whichever alternative I chose. I reached for a cigarette and lit it.

“Listen carefully, Mr van der Valk, to what I have to tell you.”

You indicated jovially that you were all ears.

“I find your behaviour deplorable – typical, I suppose, of the police. You threaten me with mysteries, and when I seek to protect myself you threaten me with publicity. I refuse to be stampeded by this talk of accusations and witnesses, all the purest invention. I cannot see what you hope to gain by pestering me, and I cannot, apparently, stop you without further annoyance. Very well, do what you please; that is at least the smallest of these irritations. I allow you to talk to me since only by so doing can I convince you that you are wasting your time. If you wish to spend your days hanging about my house you must decide for yourself. I will give thought to the problem of how a citizen in a sensitive profession can best shield himself from jacks-in-office. If you wish to go any further than speaking to me, if you nose in my books or my household you must provide yourself with legal authority, which I will contest. I make myself clear?”

You got up, laughing.

“Suits me. This remains between the two of us. Just a friendly chat from time to time. Doctor and patient!” You laid your hand on the doorknob. “Which of us is which, eh, Doctor?” You walked out convulsed with idiot merriment; I watched you go, quietly, smoking and sending a screen of smoke after you, not bothering to make polite faces.

Is this witness of yours a pure invention? Do you really dare me to complain? You must know that if I did you would lose your job, since your approach to me is blatantly unethical and illegal. Consequently, you are very sure. Sure of yourself, sure that I will not risk either an official investigation or the subsequent publicity. You are a good poker-player. I cannot, of course, welcome a knock-down-and-drag-out case, since sooner or later someone would lose their head and yelp out matters sufficiently compromising to me. On the
other hand, you cannot possibly prove I killed Casimir. Of that I am quite sure.

Who could this witness be? Someone you cannot legally use, since you are so coy about it?

Could it conceivably be Beatrix?

Somebody there is, or you would not dare me so brashly to complain of your indefensible behaviour. You have somewhere, an ace in the hole.

I had no patients the evening that Casimir came. It must have been coincidence, since he cannot possibly have known that. I think now that he was merely pushing forward a pawn, thinking that if I reacted he would develop his offensive. I agreed to see him out of curiosity as much as anything. This man whom I hated, whom I feared, who had had, already, an unforeseen effect upon my life – I was curious to try and understand better. Him, his life – which I envied – is it not absurd? Be it as it may I had no evening engagement. No patient, no mistress, no concert. And we live in Amsterdam. There is no question, as there would be in a German city of this magnitude and importance, of saying ‘Have we nothing to do? Let's go to the Opera then.'

Beatrix was going out, of course. She goes out every night that she does not spend prating with her peers here, or staring at her television programmes. What on earth is it that she does? She cultivates her intellectuals, I suppose. She frequents all sorts of pretentious and hollow figures that whim brings into the fashion - so-called painters and writers, very probably the self-styled ‘conférenciers' and ‘cabaretiers' of the television. These excursions she calls ‘being in touch with the stream of modern thought'. I have, naturally, long given up trying to show her that a flow of chatter may well be called a stream, but that it is neither modern nor thought.

I do not speak like that out of vanity, notice. I have myself few pretensions at being intellectual, and none at all at being modern
even in my work. Any doctor will confirm for you that the scientific research into the origins of disease and into new nostrums is sometimes impressive and occasionally heartening. He will also confirm that every lunatic asylum in Europe is filled to three times its maximum capacity.

As for thought… I am fairly widely read. By no means all my energies, whatever you may imagine, nor my curiosities, go into seducing women, an occupation that takes perhaps one per cent of my time. There are people who get more pleasure from the dodging and the plotting, the evasion of others and the making of furtive assignations, than they do from their rather pallid adulteries. I am not among them. My distraction is music. I go perhaps to half of the concerts and recitals given here in Amsterdam, which are often very good.

You will have been puzzled to find that I appear to have no friends. It is true, but friendship is rare. I have a couple of professional friends, with whom I talk medicine or music. But I have a closed character. There is nobody that knows anything about me. There, my friend – believe me, I use the word here in consciousness of its meaning – you will have struck a blank. Make of the fact whatever you please.

I have, of course, a need for affection. You would be surprised to know how much I receive.

Casimir had written no note, of course. He rang at the front and I let him in myself. He had counted on my answering in person, since he must know that I employ only daily help. There has never been a maid that slept in the house, and since Beatrix has always been sterile in every meaning of the word there has never been a child to care for.

Casimir stood in the hallway gibbering and mouthing. Might he explain something? I supposed he was bothered about something the builders had said or done while mending the roof. I hoped they had not found dry rot or anything: I am fond of this house and should be loath to see its fabric altered or replaced.

I let him into my consulting-room. This is much more my private room than that idiotic ‘drawing-room' Beatrix takes pride in, on the first floor. I have inherited all old Munck's arrangements, including the excellent idea that only patients should be allowed at the front door. He put in the iron staircase at the back, and the glassed passage to the back door. The bell at the back rings in the kitchen during the day, and at night it is answered by the chauffeur – he prefers being called that to gardener – or his wife, in the cottage at the back. I have made no alterations at all, except for moving Miss Maas upstairs to make room for the ‘bathroom'. One might think all this awkward, but things of the sort are inevitable when a doctor has his practice under his own roof, an arrangement I prefer to the English system of a house where four or five doctors hive together for consultations. There is no real invasion of privacy. Beatrix complains that since patients have been allowed upstairs they pretend to lose their way and peep at her rooms. I pay no attention; in anyone else's house she would do exactly the same. And if we do, by any chance, have guests, and use as a consequence the front door, the stairs, and the damned drawing-room, it is evening and there are no patients. All European doctors have similar arrangements, and it is never a bother.

I sat Casimir down on the patient's chair, went myself to sit behind the bureau, and offered him the box of cigarettes, since for a wonder his mouth was empty. He took one greedily.

“Well… Repairs gone off all right? No further trouble with the roof?”

“No…no. They replaced a few tiles, I think. I suppose you'll want to look to see exactly what they have done.”

“I haven't the least interest in seeing what they have done.”

I may have sounded a scrap tart; Casimir looked flabbergasted anyway. He is just the type to accuse the servants of theft if there were a rubber band missing. If he were rich as Onassis he would creep about from bathroom to bathroom sticking slivers of old soap together.

“What is it exactly you wish to see me about?”

He shuffled about inside that tweed jacket, as though the hairs tickled his neck.

“It's a – uh, personal matter, really.”

I lit a cigarette myself so that I would notice less the flavour of gin and unmended teeth that hung about.

“Since you asked especially to see me, I take it there is something on your mind.”

“Yes, indeed. Of importance. Just that…uh…” I said nothing, looked at him. In all honesty I had no suspicion whatever.

“The fact is that some time ago one evening I happened to be in the garden.”

“And may I ask not only what you were doing in my garden but how you came to get into it?”