Double-Barrel (8 page)

‘That is correct.'

‘Why did you not call a doctor?'

‘I knew that it would serve no purpose. My wife had been exposed too long to the poisonous effects of gas. I opened the windows; I locked the doors, not only because the cleaning woman was due to arrive and might have been exposed to danger, but because it was no affair of hers.'

‘How did you know how long your wife had been exposed?'

‘She had been in bed. I heard her go downstairs. I told the inspector that.'

He had; it was in the report. She had gone down at night in her pyjamas, when the husband was awake, or had at least wakened.

Had she hoped that he would find her, stop her? I felt that he didn't know – that she had perhaps chosen this as a way of telling him. But he had fallen asleep without waiting for her to return.

A poignant aspect of the whole thing was that not only is a gas-oven death a rarity in Holland; the gas-oven itself is a rarity. The Dutch scarcely use ovens in their cooking. This had been another example of provincial pretentiousness – an imposing gas-stove, whose oven had never once been used.

Why then had she used it now–for the first, the only time? How had she heard that this is a suicide method? In England, now, it is common, and reported in the Press, but she would not have known that. Had she really put her own head in the oven? Or had she been put? The State Recherche had considered this too, but as with the other questionable points, no clear conclusion could be reached.

The man was still sitting unmoved.

‘Tell me – why go to see the inspector? Why not ring your doctor, and let him see to the formalities? He could have made the statutory notification to the police.'

‘As everybody found quite natural, Inspector, I was upset. I suppose I thought that in a case of suicide …'

‘Is your doctor not a friend of yours?'

‘Certainly he is.'

‘Is he no good?'

‘I have complete confidence in him.'

‘I rather thought you had. He suggested – or at least concurred in this invention of a disease. Whereas there was no disease. We know – and you know – that your wife was perfectly healthy. Therefore, I think, you went to the inspector. Saying, “Come quick”. Yet you claim that you know nothing about the letters some people have received – or that there had been another suicide, fairly recently at that, under circumstances that were fairly mysterious too, or so the village gossip ran.'

‘I know nothing about letters, and I do not listen to gossip. I have since been told that certain persons appear to have received anonymous letters, but it has never been proved that my wife was among them. And you have no right to insinuate that she was.'

‘Have
you
had any letters?'

‘No. As I have told the other officers. And I fail to see what purpose this repetition will serve.'

‘You can just leave me to be the judge of that. I am in authority here.'

It squashed him. These people are scared sick of their government.

‘Well, I intended no discourtesy …'

‘You still maintain that it was normal to leave your wife lying on the kitchen floor, while you ran for the inspector – even waiting twenty minutes for him, refusing to give any details to the staff on duty?'

Not even this reached a target. He just sat, prissily.

‘The inspector is an acquaintance; it seemed to me natural that my contact should be with someone I knew could be relied on.'

‘Relied on not to gossip?'

Hell, what could I do to penetrate? I knew it wasn't right; it didn't sound right. This fellow knew about the letters – I was damn sure of it. But how to make him spill?

Well, with the other, the engineer, a thrust had disarmed, laid open. But that was at least a highly intelligent man, and not a provincial. This man is lowish on intelligence. I decided to take the stick. Make a crude smash through all the careful defences and hedges of propriety.

‘Just tell me one thing.'

‘If I can, naturally,' very stiff.

‘Have you ever done anything that would give a person – any person – the smallest opening to make an accusation, to your wife or yourself? An accusation of immorality?'

Looked as though slapped with a wet, stinking floorcloth.

‘Most certainly and decidedly not.'

‘Never?' sweetly. I picked rough, direct phrases; street-words. ‘These nice bits you have there in the white overalls; never kissed one of them? Never craftily sort of slid your hand up a skirt when no one was looking? Or that kitchen-maid – fresh, young, nice white teeth. Quite appetizing in that tight skirt. You could quietly slip the pants off that behind the ice-box door; nobody would know.'

Outrage, looking like a dying cod.

‘How dare you – how can you – I would never dream – I swear to you – never never never – such filth – obscenity from the mouth of an official – it's unthinkable.'

It had worked. That was truth at least.

‘But the letters accused you of these things,' I said cheerfully. The poor bugger stopped dead.

‘But I destroyed all the letters.'

‘Now we're getting somewhere.'

‘Oh …'

I thought myself a dirty stinker, to play such an old low trick on a sanctified cheesemonger.

I drilled in for half an hour, and was ready to bet at the end that he was telling the truth. He had not dreamed – well, he might have dreamed but had certainly not dared. Not only had the wife's sharp eyes been on godliness (next to cleanliness) but a hundred other vinegary hawk-eyes … Avoid the very appearance of evil – I could hear the dominie, mellifluously. Ironically, the same one that had been accused of having naughty photos.

Yet, even here, these things were done; even in the smallest, primmest places. They had been done at Staphorst. And last year, in just such another enclosed, schismatic dorp, the accusation I had just made had been made too, and against a minister. By another minister.

The court had decided it was not true, and minister number one had caught a sharpish rap for defamation. But it didn't matter whether it were true or not. Such accusations had only to be made to be, already, effective. There would certainly be elderly saints ready to believe all this and more.

Just so here. These accusations were quite likely, even probably, not true at all. But the blackmailer had known they would be most efficacious. Whoever it was, it was someone who thoroughly understood the workings of villages.

This chap, I felt sufficiently sure, was telling the truth and had not strayed. And wasn't that just what caught him, as it
had caught the wife? The sheer enormity of being accused of straying had paralysed them. They had known that the very appearance of evil would ruin them.

I went to see the burgomaster that evening for the first time since coming. At his home, in the evening, by arrangement. I left the Volkswagen a street away, deliberately, and walked to the pleasant house, almost a villa, on the Koninginne-weg, Queen Street. There is a Koninginne–weg in every town in Holland, just like the Mimosastraat. It is grander, that is all the difference. There are trees. Houses of the bourgeois. Doctors, dentists, notaries, bank managers, burgomasters. Was it the Mimosastraat that would be the most important, here?

A pleasure to be able to make verbal reports, in language as brief and colloquial as I cared to make it. I was even quite an almighty personage here; I could puncture the burgomaster's evening and make any one of fifteen thousand people shake in his shoes. Which I couldn't do in Amsterdam!

I thought that I preferred, on the whole, being a small fish that looks very small indeed in a very big pond. Still, to be free of reports was nice. I am accustomed, heaven bear witness, to written reports – they are seven-tenths of a policeman's life. I am even good at them, but I've never got over detesting them.

I was received by the wife. Pretty woman, a bit artificially blonde. With the wrong make-up she would have looked thoroughly vulgar, but she had been very careful with clothes and face and voice. Lady of the manor, but ever so unspoilt and charming when receiving flowers from little girls. I instantly saw her cutting the ribbon for the orphanage's
new wing, and did not care greatly for her at first sight. She looked at me as though I were a lavatory attendant, drunk on duty at that.

‘I'm afraid you cannot – you must ask for an appointment in writing.'

I supposed it was the maid's day off.

‘Just give him my card if you will be so good.' I still got a disapproving look for not knowing my place. I watched her walk away with more pleasure. Clothes a bit offensively Christian, but nice legs and a certain allure from the back. Van der Valk – blow your nose, and avoid lechery.

Burgomaster appeared, in rather self-conscious television-undress of tweed jacket and woolly slippers.

‘Of course, of course. Er – I'm sorry, Ansje, this is business of importance and confidential. Come into my study – er, Mr van der Valk.'

He fussed a bit, wondering whether to be genial, or whether to be the superior official, on the frigid side. Decided to be genial. More tactful.

‘Er – perhaps a glass of sherry?'

‘Many thanks.'

‘There we are. And – what progress have you made, so far? I realize these are early days. Is your house adequate, by the way?'

‘Yes, thank you. Your admirable secretary filled all the gaps and even got some things my wife forgot; I was most grateful to her.'

‘Ah yes; Miss Burger's splendid; admirable is the word; she knows how to get hold of anything. So – you're not too dissatisfied, with your start?'

‘Sure I'm dissatisfied.'

‘Oh.' Wind taken out of municipal sails, a scrap. ‘But you've reached some fruitful conclusions? Suspects, for instance; you've succeeded in isolating some suggestive uh, discoveries?'

‘There aren't any suspects, so I can't isolate any. Unless
you mean in the sense that everyone is suspect, even yourself.'

‘Ah – quite.'

‘I'm isolating victims. Indeed the author of these crimes, disturbances – call it what you will – is a victim. Someone unable to resist pressure.'

‘I hope,' earnestly, ‘you're not in danger of taking an over – what shall I call it – metaphysical viewpoint, Inspector? When can we all be reassured that an end is being made? I do agree that the mental state of this uh, author will give psychiatrists a headache. But is that the most fruitful ground for your approach?'

‘I haven't any approach. But everybody spent months hunting for suspects – I still think there's more to be learned from the victims.'

‘Can you give me no concrete reassurances, though – based on what you've seen and done, these – three isn't it? – days?'

‘Certainly. We'll soon run this amorous letter-writer to earth, burgomaster; you can be reassured. And I don't even think the field of inquiry will prove to be all that large. Further than that I would not like to go yet.'

‘Excellent. By the way, have you yourself formed any opinion about our friend Besançon?'

‘Yes indeed. I've met him. I like him very much.'

‘You don't think yourself that he's involved in any way?'

‘Not for a minute. Except that he's a victim too, of course.'

‘I suppose so. Naturally, that terrible history would lead anybody into feeling deep sympathy for such a man, and yet who knows what goes on in the head of a man who has seen the things he has?'

It was the first sensible remark I had heard from him, and I looked at him with proper respect.

‘How d'you get on?' Arlette asked sympathetically.

‘Oh, I smeared him with jam. When he got jam on his eyelids and between his fingers, and couldn't pester me any more, I shoved a bit down his throat and left him to enjoy it. He's all right; only wants reassurance.'

‘I'm glad to see you're feeling better.'

‘I go round like Father Brown, being enigmatical and paradoxical. And now I could do with a drink; I got thimblefuls of sherry doled out to me.'

I am not, I am grateful to say, the least like James Bond. Don't have hanging locks of hair, don't kill people – not, that is to say, quite that many – am not very British, and am left unmoved by passionate women with eccentric names. Not even a muddied oaf and a flannelled fool – I am simply a clot in a ready-made suit. But I do like large cold expensive drinks in large cold expensive glasses. Here's to you, Bond; may your sexual capacities never grow less. But do be careful, old boy; don't ever tap yourself on the head with the emerald Fabergé spoon, thinking you're a boiled egg in a four-and-a-half-litre Bentley egg-cup.

‘You ought to get that Miss Burger to see about finding me a fridge,' said Arlette. ‘Don't eat all the salt biscuits; I haven't had any yet.'

I woke up in deep gloom and knew it was going to be one of those days. The coffee was revolting, the weather beastly, the windscreen wipers were on the blink all day, and when
I got home Arlette had (a) forgotten to put the dustbin out, (b) forgotten that it was early closing day.

Still, that was all unimportant. Things like this happened to Rembrandt too. What worried me the whole day was not understanding a damn thing about provincial towns in Drente. Serve me right. Puffed up with braggadocio, thinking all the other policemen were imbeciles. The elaborate disguise, the calculated politenesses and rudeness, the vaunted urban sophistications … pooh.

I was a vain, tattle-mouthed dolt.

I knew nothing.

I understood nothing.

When you meet the unorthodox, meet it in an unorthodox way. Pooh – with froth on top.

I was sitting in Monsieur Cousteau's bathyscaphe, exploring the great silent wonders of the submarine world. Suddenly I noticed a signboard; neat white paint on shiny blue enamel. Very common, in Holland.