A Crime in Holland (9 page)

It was purely by chance that Maigret did not follow the Amsterdiep, but took the cross-country path.

The farm, in the morning sunshine of eleven o'clock, reminded him of his first steps on Dutch soil, the girl in her shiny boots in the modern cowshed, the prim and proper parlour and the teapot in its quilted cosy.

The same calm reigned now. Very far away, almost at the limit of the infinite horizon, a large brown sail floated above the field looking like some ghost ship sailing in an ocean of grassland.

As it had the first time, the dog barked. A good five minutes passed before the door opened, and then only a few centimetres wide, enough to let him guess at the red-cheeked face and gingham apron of the maidservant.

And even so, she was on the point of shutting the door before Maigret could even speak.

‘Mademoiselle Liewens!' he called.

The garden separated them. The old woman stayed in the doorway and the inspector was on the other side of the gate. Between them, the dog was watching the intruder and baring its teeth.

The servant shook her head. ‘She isn't here … 
Niet hier.
'

Maigret had by now picked up a few words in Dutch.

‘And monsieur … 
Mijnheer
?'

A final negative sign and the door closed. But as the inspector did not go away immediately, it budged, just a few millimetres this time, and Maigret guessed the old woman was spying on him.

If he was lingering, it was because he had seen a curtain stir at the window he knew to be that of the daughter of the house. Behind the curtain, the blur of a face. Hard to see, but what Maigret did make out was a slight hand movement, which might have been a simple greeting, but more probably meant: ‘I'm here. Don't insist. Watch out.'

The old woman behind the door meant one thing. This pale hand another. As did the dog jumping up at the gate and barking. All around, the cows in the fields looked artificial in their stillness.

Maigret risked a little experiment. He took a couple of steps forward, as if to go through the gate after all. He could not resist a smile, since not only did the door shut hurriedly, but even the dog, so fierce before, withdrew, tail between its legs.

This time the inspector did leave, taking the Amsterdiep towpath. All that this reception had told him was that Beetje had been confined to the house, and that orders had been given by the farmer not to let the Frenchman in.

Maigret puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. He looked for a moment at the stacks of timber where Beetje and Popinga had stopped, probably many times, holding their bicycles with one hand, while embracing each other with a free arm.

And what still dominated the scene was the calm. A serene, almost too perfect calm. A calm that might make
a Frenchman believe that all of life here was as artificial as a picture postcard.

For instance, he turned round suddenly and saw only a few metres away a high-stemmed boat, which he had not heard approaching. He recognized the sail, which was wider than the canal. It was the same sail he had seen only a short time ago far away on the horizon, and yet it was here already, without it seeming possible that it could have covered the distance so quickly.

At the helm was a woman, a baby at her breast, nudging the tiller with her hip. And a man sat astride the bowsprit, legs hanging over the water, while he repaired the bobstay.

The boat glided past first the Wienands' house, then that of the Popingas, and the sail was higher than either roof. For a moment, it hid the entire façade, with its huge moving shadow.

Once again, Maigret stopped. He hesitated. The Popingas' maidservant was on her knees, scrubbing the front step, head down, hips in the air, and the door stood open.

She gave a start as she sensed him behind her. The hand holding the floor cloth was shaking.

‘Madame Popinga?' he said, indicating the interior of the house.

She tried to go ahead of him, but she got up awkwardly, because of the cloth, which was dripping with dirty water. He was the first to enter the corridor. Hearing a man's voice in the parlour, he knocked at the door.

There was a sudden silence. A total, uncompromising silence. And more than silence: expectation, as if life had been momentarily suspended.

Then footsteps. A hand touched the doorknob from inside. The door began to move. Maigret saw first of all Any, who had just opened it for him, and who gave him an unfriendly stare. Then he made out the silhouette of a man standing at the table, wearing a thick tweed suit and tawny gaiters.

Farmer Liewens.

And finally, leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece and shielding her face with her hand, Madame Popinga.

It was clear that the intruder's arrival had interrupted an important conversation, a dramatic scene, probably an argument.

On the table covered with a lace cloth, some letters were randomly scattered, as if they had been thrown down violently.

The farmer's face was the most animated, but it was also the countenance that froze most immediately.

‘I'm afraid I'm disturbing you …' Maigret began.

Nobody spoke. Not a word from anyone. Only Madame Popinga, after a tearful glance round, left the room and went almost at a run towards the kitchen.

‘Please believe that I am very sorry to have interrupted your conversation.'

At last Liewens spoke, in Dutch. He addressed a few evidently cutting remarks to the young woman, and Maigret could not help asking:

‘What does he say?'

‘That he will be back. That the French police …'

She looked embarrassed as she cast about for a way to continue.

‘… have incredibly bad manners, perhaps,' Maigret finished the sentence. ‘We have already had occasion to meet, Monsieur Liewens and I.'

The other man tried to guess what they were saying, paying attention to Maigret's intonation and expression. And the inspector, for his part, let his eyes fall on to the letters and on the signature at the bottom of one of them:
Conrad
.

The embarrassment was now at its height. The farmer moved to pick up his cap from a chair, but could not resign himself to leaving.

‘He has just brought you letters that your brother-in-law wrote to his daughter.'

‘How did you know?'

For heaven's sake! The scene was so easy to reconstruct, in that atmosphere thick with emotion: Liewens arriving, holding his breath in his efforts to contain his anger. Liewens being shown into the parlour, and into the presence of the two terrified women, then suddenly speaking to them and throwing the letters on the table. Madame Popinga, distraught, hiding her face in her hands, perhaps refusing to believe the evidence, or so distressed that she was unable to speak. And Any trying to stand up to the man, arguing …

And it was at this point that he had knocked on the door. Everyone had frozen and Any had let him in.

In his reconstruction of events, Maigret was mistaken in one respect at least, the character of one of the people concerned. For Madame Popinga, whom he imagined to
be in the kitchen, devastated by this revelation, completely overcome and without any strength, entered the room a few moments later with a calm bearing such as is reached only at a high pitch of emotion.

And slowly, she too put some letters on the table. She did not throw them down. She placed them deliberately. She looked at the farmer and then at the inspector.

She opened her mouth several times before managing to speak and then said:

‘You will have to judge for yourselves … Someone should read these out …'

At that moment, Liewens blushed a deep scarlet as blood rushed to his cheeks. He was too Dutch to fall on the letters at once, but they drew him as if by an irresistible spell.

A woman's handwriting. Blue paper … Letters from Beetje, obviously. One thing was immediately striking: the disproportion between the two piles of letters. There were perhaps ten notes from Popinga, always written on a single sheet of paper, and usually consisting of four or five lines.

There were about thirty letters from Beetje, long and closely written!

Conrad was dead. And there remained these two unequal piles of letters, as well as the stack of timber that had protected the couple's rendezvous, on the banks of the Amsterdiep.

‘Best if everyone calms down,' said Maigret. ‘And perhaps it would be preferable to read out these letters without getting too angry.'

The farmer stared at him, with remarkable sharpness,
and must have understood since he took a step towards the table, in spite of himself.

Maigret leaned on to the table with both hands, and picked up a note from Popinga at random.

‘Would you have the goodness to translate this, please, Mademoiselle Any?'

But the young woman did not seem to hear him. She looked down at the writing, without speaking. Her sister, serious and dignified, took the letter from her hands.

‘It was written at college,' she said. ‘There's no date, just six o'clock. This is what it says:

Dear little Beetje,

Better if you don't come tonight as the college principal is coming round for a cup of tea. See you tomorrow.

Love and kisses.

She looked around with an air of calm defiance. Then she picked up another note. She read it out slowly:

Dear pretty little Beetje,

You must calm down. And remember that life is long. I've got a lot of work to do with the third-year exams. I can't come tonight.

Why do you keep saying I don't love you? I can't leave the college. What on earth would we do?

Take it easy, I beg you. We've got plenty of time.

With affectionate kisses.

And as Maigret seemed to say that that was enough, Madame Popinga took up another letter:

‘There's this one, probably the last.'

My dear Beetje,

It's impossible. I beg you to be sensible. You know perfectly well that I don't have any money and that it would take a long time to find employment abroad.

You must be more careful and not get so wrought up. And above all, trust me.

Don't be afraid. If what you are worried about happens, I'll do my duty.

I'm anxious because I've got a lot of work on just now, and when I think of you, I can't work properly. The principal passed a critical remark yesterday and I was very upset.

I'll try to get out tomorrow evening, and tell them I'm going to visit a Norwegian ship in port.

I embrace you fondly, little Beetje.

Madame Popinga looked at each of them in turn, wearily, her eyes hooded. Her hand moved to the other pile, the one she had brought in, and the farmer gave a start. She pulled out a letter.

Dear Conrad, that I love so much,

Good news: Papa has put another thousand florins in my bank account for my birthday present. That's enough to get to America, because I looked up the boat fares in the newspaper. And we could travel third class!

But why don't you hurry up? I can't live here any more. Holland is stifling me to death. The people in Delfzijl seem to be staring at me with disapproval all the time.

But I'm so proud and happy to belong to a man like you! We must absolutely get away before the holidays because Papa wants me to spend a month in Switzerland and I don't want to. Otherwise our big project would have to wait till winter.

I've been buying English books. I can say lots of sentences already. Hurry up, do! We'll have such a lovely time, the two of us. Won't we? We can't stay here. Especially now. I think Madame Popinga is giving me the cold shoulder. And I'm still afraid of Cornelius, who is courting me, and I don't seem able to discourage him. He's a nice boy and polite, but really stupid.

And of course he's not a man, Conrad, not a real man like you: you've been everywhere, you know everything.

Remember, a year ago, I used to try and meet you on the road and you didn't even look at me!

And now, maybe I'm going to have your child! Or anyway, it's possible.

But why are you being so cool? Don't you love me as much as before?

That wasn't the end of the letter, but Madame Popinga's voice had died away in her throat and she stopped speaking. She leafed through the pile of correspondence with her fingers. She was looking for something.

She read out one more sentence from the middle of a letter:

… and I'm starting to think you love your wife more than me, I'm beginning to feel jealous of her and to hate her. If that isn't the reason, why would you be saying now you don't want to go away?

The farmer could not understand the French words, but he was paying such close attention that anyone would have sworn he could guess. Madame Popinga swallowed hard, picked up one last sheet, and read in an even more strained voice:

I've heard rumours that Cornelius is more in love with Madame Popinga than with me, and that they are getting on very well. If only that were true! Then we'd be left in peace and you wouldn't have to feel bad about it.

The sheet dropped from her hands and floated down on to the carpet in front of Any, who stared at it fixedly.

There was another silence. Madame Popinga was not weeping. But everything about her was tragic: her contained pain, her dignity, maintained only through incredible effort, the admirable sentiment which had inspired her.

She had come to defend Conrad! She was waiting for an attack. She would fight if she had to.

‘When did you discover these letters?' Maigret asked, awkwardly.

‘The day after …'

She choked. She opened her mouth for a gulp of air. Her eyelids were swollen.

‘… after Conrad …'

‘I see.'

He understood. He looked at her with sympathy. She was not pretty. And yet she had regular features. Her face had none of the flaws that made Any's so unprepossessing.