The King of the Rainy Country (3 page)

Which was not exactly going to make things easy for him …

He went on scratching with the ruler while he made notes. He decided that the courtesy campaign had better begin with going home, having the best lunch he could lay his hands on, putting on a clean shirt, asking his wife to pack a weekend case, and immediately having a quick super-de-luxe haircut. He would then put on his new suit, very dark brown, from Olde Englande – he didn't know who he mightn't be meeting.

*

The tourist, getting the quick rundown on Rembrandt, is told that what makes the city of Amsterdam notable is, firstly, twice as many waterways and bridges as Venice and, secondly, the very fine seventeenth-century architecture. It is true that at a time when the glories of Paris and Vienna were still to come, when the political capital of the world was Madrid and the diplomatic and artistic capital was Venice, Amsterdam was the world's commercial and banking capital. The tourist, seeing little evidence of all this, is inclined to be sceptical. For with less intelligence than Venice, less than Innsbruck, less even than St Malo, the city fathers have allowed the automobile full liberty and destroyed practically all the beauty.

There was beauty; there was a great deal. The money-grubbing
materialists of Amsterdam were among the world's foremost art patrons; they loved beauty and paid money for it. If artists died broke or in the workhouse, like Hals, or sold pictures to pay the baker, like Vermeer, it was not altogether the fault of the money-grubbers, for these vulgar bankers and burgomasters built themselves superb houses and filled them with beauty.

The houses can still be seen, lying in a tight neat belt around the heart of Amsterdam in four concentric circles. The Singel, the Gentlemen's Waterway, the Emperors' Waterway, the Princes' Waterway. Puffy names that sound ludicrous to our ears: these men were, however, all they claimed.

The friends of the automobile claim that the belt strangles Amsterdam. They would like to see all the waterways filled in and made into ring roads, with Underground Parking Lots. The city fathers squirm and snivel, and do nothing.

The beautiful houses are degraded and squalid, and nothing is left but the façades; the insides have been devoured like cheese by the cheesemites of a dingier and pettier commerce than that of the seventeenth century. In each house there are four or five three-ha'penny pricecutters, and as many worthy people crammed into garrets, politely called flats, above. Sometimes a very-important-business has spread its fat bottom over a whole house, and embellished it with a Reception Hall, and massive-marble-and-mahogany, and curly bronze letters, and safes with Deeds, and an air of weight suitable to Atlas.

There are plenty of bombastic nobodies, Delegations and Missions and Consuls, and there are plenty of slummy shysters. If there are two or three of these lovely houses in private ownership still, it is a little miracle.

As far as Van der Valk was concerned there were none. (Does not the Palace of Justice itself take up several hundred metres of hydra ugliness along the Prinsengracht?) He had been in many of these houses to sort out anything from a fraudulent book-keeper to a phony palmist, but private ownership on the waterways encourages nobody's eyes. The houses will be blind and shuttered, with a door that never opens, for against the basement railings
bicycles are piled like bones at Verdun. Typists and clerks clatter on the minuscule cobbled pavement all day long. The business men's famous autos are stacked along the water like the tins of salmon in a grocer's they so resemble. There is dust and straw and dirty newspaper, amid which dogs and humans sniff and pee and rummage about. Vans bump and grind; there is a horrible racket, a bad smell and no room at all. Van der Valk, stepping delicately like a cat, arrived at the offices of the Sopexique, which had, of course, a house to itself.

There was a very small, very highly polished brass plate, and immediately inside the door, allowing room for one thin person to put his mouth somewhere near the concierge's forbidding peephole, there was another door, armour-plated and massive, that would yield to nothing but a teeny button that lived under the concierge's bunion. He showed his card, murmured, and waited humbly while checking went on over the telephone.

Mr Canisius lived in an office like that in many very rich businesses. It was clean, tidy and quiet, and had at least the merit of no pretensions at all.

‘Sit down … I will tell you outright that I do not wish you to question the staff here. I have made very careful inquiries. No eccentricity, no irregularity has been found whatever.'

‘I will tell you something, equally outright, with your permission,' said Van der Valk, pleasantly and politely. ‘I will question whom I please, discreetly, according to my instructions, or I will go quietly and catch the plague and you can find someone élse.'

Mr Canisius smiled very faintly.

‘I make no restriction outside this building. I will give you the addresses of Mrs Marschal, a doctor, a notary, and the last person known to have spoken to Mr Marschal, a man with whom he was friendly. You must take my word for it that nobody in this office can help you.'

‘I'll take your word with pleasure right here and now. What I learn elsewhere may change my mind.'

‘In that case I will give you my home address. Telephone if you
wish, come to see me if necessary – but do not, please, call or telephone here.'

‘Who had most to do with him, here?'

‘His personal secretary. Very well, she is a discreet person: I will allow the exception. Outside the office, please.'

He picked up the telephone.

‘Twenty-three. Miss Kramer? I wish you to meet someone this evening for a short talk. Five-thirty? Café Polen? – that suit you?' to Van der Valk. Nod. ‘Take that as settled, Miss Kramer. I need say no more, I think? Thank you.'

Van der Valk stood up, took the piece of paper handed to him with neat writing upon it, tucked it in his breast pocket, bowed and opened the door.

‘Telephone me from time to time, Mr Van der Valk,' came the polite murmur. ‘Shall we say at least once a week. I am always at home. Oftener, if you have anything of importance.'

He nodded and closed the door.

The piece of paper had ‘From F. R. Canisius' engraved on it. It carried the firm's Amsterdam address, was banknote quality, and had no little pictures or slogans whatever.

Mr Canisius lived in a dinky villa well outside the town, the kind that has glass walls and photo-electric cells to open doors, but all the other addresses, he was pleased to see, were within a couple of hundred metres of where he stood.

At the notary's, he was let in straight away, treated with freezing distaste in the darkest office he had ever seen, as dim and dreary as a pine forest in Lapland on Midwinter Day, and told nothing whatever. The private affairs, financial circumstances, testamentary dispositions and family relationships of Mr Marschal were no concern whatever either of the police, or the Sopex, or all the Canisiuses in creation. He left with a flea in his ear and a suspicion that Canisius had known this all perfectly and staged a tiny trap for him.

The doctor was a lot more difficult of access, but a great deal more forthcoming. Not that it helped.

‘I gave him a routine checkover once a year, and apart from
that he consulted me occasionally for something banal like laryngitis. Constitution of an athlete, lived a regular and pretty sober life, no weaknesses whatever. Sorry I can't help you. No handy medical way out, I'm afraid. No epilepsy, syphilis, tuberculosis, nothing. No neurotic fears or fantasies – or if he had he never told me about them. Anything disabling I'd certainly have noticed. You can rule out a fugue, or any sort of syndrome. No physiological disability at all; heart, lungs and liver of a man of twenty. Psychological troubles …' Shrug.

‘Did he ever consult a doctor of psychiatry or whatever, to your knowledge?'

‘No, not to my knowledge. I'd be surprised, frankly. There'd be a certain neuropsychic pattern. He'd had various slight injuries, ski-ing accidents or whatnot, but no disturbance or dilapidation. If he hadn't better health than you and me put together, my dear inspector, I'll eat that telephone directory.'

‘When was it you last saw him?' A file was flipped through.

‘Last October, a little virus infection; there was quite a bit floating at the time. August, renewal of vaccinations. February, a back-garden strep throat. Three calls in thirteen months.'

‘Many thanks.'

‘Many regrets.'

Mrs Marschal was only just across the road in the Keizersgracht. He had not been surprised, since there are plenty of expensive flats there, but he found a house; a blind closed wall of aristocratic privacy. He had read of such things but never seen one. He walked up steep stone steps, a bit awestruck in spite of himself, and found a bell with some difficulty, concealed in intricate but pure baroque wrought-ironwork.

Nothing happened, and he got a feeling that he had been observed through a periscope and put down as some yob, selling things and knowing no better than to ring here. He had nearly given up when a soft voice surprised him; his back was to the door.

‘Monsieur wishes?'

Astonishment; there stood a majordomo, in full classic costume, striped yellow waistcoat and all. Nestor?!

‘I should very much like to see Madame if she is at home. Here is my card.'

‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir, but Madame cannot receive you unless she is expecting you.' Courteous regret, in the correct, pedantic Dutch of someone who has learned the language off gramophone records.

The answer is, of course, to say ‘Police' but he had been told … Was this chap perhaps Spanish?

‘I hope,' he said slowly, stumbling a little in his elementary Spanish, ‘that Madame agrees when she looks at the card.' On the back he had written ‘Canisius'.

A smile, through the mask of courteous gravity.

‘I am Portuguese, Monsieur. I will certainly ask. Excuse my hesitation; the instruction is formal. If Monsieur will give himself the trouble of coming in …'

He was in a hall, tall and narrow, with a pinkish marble floor and painted walls, apple green and pale gold. Panels of white stuccowork; bunches of grapes and vineleaves in low relief. At the back of the hall was a door, more of that pure wrought-iron repeating the vine pattern. Through this door vanished Nestor.

For a good moment he stood open-mouthed, for he had never seen anything like this in his life; then he walked gently forwards and tried the door. It did not yield; this was the house of very rich people indeed, and burglars might be tempted: doors had secrets known only to owners, Nestor, and the Holmes Protection Company. The house was absolutely noiseless and noiseless too was Nestor's return.

‘Madame will be happy to receive you, sir. Allow me?' The door opened and Nestor paused on the bottom step of a stairway. ‘Will Monsieur have patience for just a moment longer?'

Beyond the stairway was a small formal orangery. To his right, facing the foot of the stairs – they were the same pinkish marble, with a fragile balustrade that was either iron or bronze – was a niche or alcove, in which stood a small marble nude. He knew very little of such things: could it be a Rodin? There was a bronze boy at the foot of the stair, that was supposed to be looked at from the
orangery. Or one could climb the steps and look from above. He was ten steps high, still open-mouthed, wondering if the bronze could really possibly be Donatello, and jumped when a voice spoke just behind him.

‘You are quite right; they are there to be looked at, in just that way.'

He turned, a scrap confused. A woman in a silk housecoat was standing on the steps. Narrow vertical stripes, olive-green and silver-grey.

‘Sorry – I was staring admiring.' She had his card in her hand, which she gave back to him, with a careful slow look of appraisal.

‘That does not matter in the least. Perhaps we will go in here, shall we?' She opened a door beyond the stairs and waited for him.

‘Please sit down, Mr Van der Valk, and be quite comfortable. You have plenty of time? Good. So have I. Would you like some port?'

‘Not just by myself.'

She gave him a slight smile. ‘Oh no. I like port.' She did not ring, but went to do it herself.

It was a small formal sitting room looking out on the orangery; a sort of morning room. Walnut furniture, grave, simple and pure, that was certainly English and he was fairly sure must be eighteenth-century. His father would have known – the old man had been a cabinet-maker – he wished he were here to see this and tell him. The chairs and sofa were in a rusty rose brocade: there was no carpet, the room didn't need one. The floor was plain polished oak boards.

The label on the bottle said ‘Smith Woodhouse'. He couldn't see the year. Did it matter?

‘Your good health,' said Mrs Marschal, sitting down.

He took a sip of port and thought, furiously, ‘Now why did that halfwit run away from this?'

Perhaps it might be the woman; he studied her. Clear skin: clear classic features, but cold for some tastes. Dark noisette eyes, a lot of dark hair held at present in a velvet bandeau. Figure looked quite full; one couldn't tell in a housecoat. Manner polite, even
warm. There was a foot in a leather slipper; a glimpse of neat instep and neat ankle. Lot of blood, lot of race, lot of breeding. Sat very upright – convent trained.

‘You liked the statues,' reflectively. ‘You like this room?'

‘Very much. English? Eighteenth-century?'

‘Hepplewhite. That piece there is William and Mary.' She sipped her port. He drank his, feeling slightly tipsy already, and it wasn't only Smith Woodhouse.

‘We are going to get along, I do believe,' she said to the floor, ‘I really do believe.' He said nothing – what was there to say? ‘It would make things a lot easier … Did you know that the naked girl is by Rodin?'