Criminal Conversation (7 page)

Mrs Merckel was installed in one of those swinging garden sofas with fringes and a canopy, pretending to be reading
Ideal Homes
with an eye cocked on his approach. He had expected her to try an icy madam act, gaze fixed on his shoes (they were quite expensive shoes, since any policeman is kind to his feet, but they needed mending and could have done with a lick of polish). He was agreeably surprised when she jumped up, in a lithe, active way, offered her hand, and said, “I am Mrs Merckel; how do you do”, in a voice that had a pleasant warmth in it, like a ripe apricot.

“Do sit down. Have some orange juice?”

“Yes, please.” She poured him a glass full, out of a Provençal earthenware jug that made a nice tinkling sound of ice-cubes and had that primitive look he liked, as though it had been dug up in a field with bones of ancient Gauls.

“Cigarette? Oh, I love those ones of yours; may I have one?” It made a good impression, easy and unaffected and no kittenish gurgling.

She was a solid, well-constructed woman, not fat at all but all curves, with the very fine-textured, pearly skin that goes so well with dark chestnut hair. Small good teeth, quite rare in Holland, where the women have excellent teeth looking like a well-polished row of marble gravestones. A big wide comic mouth. She should have had large clear brown eyes, but they were small, with crinkles round them, and brilliant dark blue. He liked this face, and he liked her for not trying to hide behind the dark glasses, which she had taken off to look at him with a kind of honest curiosity.

“I must sound awfully inquisitive, but lunch with my husband sounds quite important, and I'm wondering where I come in?”

“That is quite easily told. My name is van der Valk, I am an inspector of the recherche in the Amsterdam Police, and trouble is my business, as Sam Spade used to say. Has anybody ever tried to blackmail you, Mrs Merckel?” The well-known raid technique: the amiable little domestic pleasantry and the bomb in the same breath. Van der Valk, the smiler with the knife.

No, he could swear the reaction was genuine; she was too unguarded and too spontaneous.

“I'm sorry…but talk about a bolt out of the blue… Do you mean my husband thinks…?…oh…” It had suddenly come to her to wonder why anyone should think she was being blackmailed, and she immediately looked stricken.

“Don't look so worried,” kindly. After the flash, the burn cream. “I think I know why someone might, possibly, have tried to blackmail you.” She looked then with relief at him, wanting to be open, but too cautious to put her feet in the water before she knew how cold it was likely to be.

“What has my husband told you?”

“Nothing. I told him. A little succession of things that had come to my notice, giving me a notion that an attempt of the sort might have been made.” There was something rather theatrical about this talk, he thought. Blackmail, in this summery birdy garden, sitting on a padded swinging sofa on the lawn, innocently drinking orange juice with a pretty woman in primrose yellow shorts and a white shark-skin shirt. It did not sound convincing at all. He didn't mind, because he didn't believe in it either. She was looking wary, but there was something transparent about this woman that was a most attractive quality.

“Did you ever hear of a man called Casimir Cabestan?”

“No. Sounds like a juggler in a cabaret.”

“A painter – quite well known at one time.”

“I'm afraid I don't know much about painting.”

“Mrs Merckel, I'm going to tell you quite honestly what I know about all this, and you can tell me then quite honestly whether it means anything to you, and if so, whether there are things I don't know, or have maybe misunderstood.”

She laughed now. She had never heard of Capstan, as Mr Samson called him, and that made her think she was in the clear. It was evident that she thought he was driving at something else altogether, and was greatly relieved about it.

“I'm quite willing to try,” amiably.

“This Cabestan – your husband knew him slightly, because a good few years ago he did a portrait, it appears, for him – lived in a flat in Amsterdam, on top of a house owned by a Dr Hubert van der Post. I say lived, because, you see, he is dead.” The laughter went out of the eyes and they glanced around nervously before she fixed them on the ground, pretending to be puzzled.

“I know Dr Post of course; he has treated me. But I'm afraid I've never heard…”

“I'm going to put this quite bluntly, so please forgive me. The implication is that this man got the idea that you and the doctor
were too friendly, and was so certain he could establish this that he decided to try and make trouble.”

“Have you told my husband this?”

“Yes. Your husband is interested in nothing but in supporting you, and if necessary protecting you. And so am I; it is what I am here for.”

“Do you mean that Dr van der Post complained to the police that this horrible man tried to – to get money from him – with this revolting tale?”

“No, Mrs Merckel. The man is dead. He may have been a horrible man; we don't know, yet. But he's dead, and when a man dies soon after an attempt to extort money it may be a complete coincidence but we do tend to believe that there may have been something in his story.”

“You don't mean perhaps that you think I killed this man?”

“Hush, not so loud. No, I don't. It might be thought, not necessarily by me, that your husband did.”

“But that's impossible. You simply don't know my husband. He's intensely scrupulous, very very upright – even if something…”

“Mrs Merckel, the story is true, isn't it? You are, or have been, the doctor's mistress?”

“Oh my god. Yes.”

“Listen, this is very important. Your husband – and I – wish to keep this whole tale from the public, the press, maybe even from a court, where you might be called as a witness, upon oath. He is as concerned for your good name as for his own. You must be quite straightforward with me; if you try to bottle up anything you know you simply increase the risk of its coming out another way. Better me, your husband, a few lawyers, than the boulevard press. Are you sure now that you know of no effort to blackmail you, or your husband, or the doctor?”

“No. Honestly.”

“Have you seen him in the last three weeks?”

“No.”

“Phoned?”

“No. Wait. He did phone me, but only to ask whether I was all right. It's true – really – that I wasn't quite well, not ill but not quite a hundred per cent, and he did make me better. He did call up maybe two to three weeks back; I couldn't say for sure. But he just asked whether I had any troubles.”

“In those words – any troubles?”

“Well, I can't swear to the words. He might have said troubles, or bothers, or miseries – but meaning just was I all right.”

“Or, possibly, meaning has anyone tried to blackmail you?”

“But – I suppose it could be twisted – but I knew nothing; how could I have guessed – god, what have I done?”

“Let me give you a piece of advice. Don't say anything at all to your husband, unless he does, and I feel myself extremely sure that he won't. He will behave exactly as he always does; do the same.”

“But if my name gets in the paper?”

“It won't. Dr Post has many patients. None of them would be at all happy if this business gets broadcast. The trouble is that someone was banking on exactly that fact. You get on well with your husband, don't you?”

“Very well indeed. This is the second marriage, you know, for both of us. Perhaps that's why some things appear strange…” Her voice trailed off; she decided not to try and explain or justify.

“Neither of you has any children?”

“My husband hasn't. I have a daughter from my first marriage - she's sixteen now. She's studying art at the Royal College. But that isn't an obstacle between us if that's what you're thinking. Carl is devoted to Suzanne, quite openly. Perhaps the more since he has none of his own. In fact, I'll tell you quite frankly, Mr van der Valk, because I don't want any misunderstandings, if my husband's attitude seems odd to you it doesn't to me. He's fond of me, certainly, but if he appears, how shall I put it, indulgent towards any failings of mine it will be more for Suzanne's sake than for mine, or even for his, touchy though he is about his good name.”

“Thank you, Mrs Merckel. If I do have to come back again, I'll try and be very discreet about it. Remember what I said – be the same.”

Attractive woman, he thought as he drove off. He didn't know that he felt altogether quite so indignant about Dr van der Post.

Before going home he phoned an acquaintance, a man who owned a picture shop, dealer and restorer in a small and specialised but skilful way, who always amused him. Charles was a lucky person, always effervescent, with an enormous sense of the ridiculous and limitless ability to enjoy himself.

“Hallo, Charles. No, don't tell me how you are; it takes too long. Are you well up in modern artists? Come come, you move in the circle – you go to the parties, you can speak the absurd language.”

“What circle?” crossly. “There are dozens; they don't necessarily intersect.” Charles' voice always came over the telephone in a high scream. “And there aren't any modern artists. There used to be a few but they've all run away to Paris like wise men. That was forty years ago anyway. Now they're all terribly old-fashioned, and can only paint with torn up dirty newspaper or bits of old bicycles. Deathly boring and totally unsaleable. There is of course Pop Art. You want a quick course in Pop Art?”

“No. I want a quick course in Casimir Cabestan.”

“That gin-sodden old fraud? There you are – went to Paris forty years ago, was stupid enough to come back because he didn't get the admiration there he felt he deserved – never been any good since except for very young girls.”

“What's this about girls?”

“Nobody knows. Cas looks the revolting old wreck he is every inch, but possesses a sort of eerie appeal for tiny little girls of
fourteen, whose blood he drinks. He generally has two or three in tow.”

“Had, you mean. Been dead nearly a month.”

“You don't tell me. Well, all I can say is it really was high time. That just shows you – I have little or no contact with these circles as you call them.”

“Yes, but since you know about the tiny girls you plainly saw him from time to time. You will know the stamping ground – perhaps where these famous tiny girls were collected, or paraded, or whatever.”

“Oh that. Yes, a sort of squalid dive they call the New Arts Club. Was probably new when Berthe Morisot was a tiny little girl. Now I've got it; you want to be taken? When? Tonight if you like.”

“It really is deplorable, this place,” Charles was saying a few hours later; he was looking very fetching in a dark olive-green suit and an enormous yellow carnation. “It belongs perfectly to Casimir's era; one expects to see people like Ezra Pound all shaggy and youthful. Casimir fancied himself as a sort of painters' Scott Fitzgerald. I suppose we have to say Poor Old now instead of Dirty Old. But the poor dears have nowhere to go. They still gather here and talk all excited about Trends. I haven't been here in a year. Now who are you today, if I may ask?”

“I'd better be Mr Petersen, come from Denmark, awfully keen about art. Do these types speak French?”

“Artists' French, fearfully twee. Here we are.”

They had reached a very dingy entrance in a dingy street full of wholesalers, squashed in between the Damrak and the old quarter. The New Arts Club occupied a basement under a building filled to bursting point, as far as van der Valk could tell, with old rags and papers done up in bundles.

“They're always praying there'll be a fire upstairs and then they could run away to Tahiti with the insurance money,” said Charles. “Belong, you see, to the time when people really did run away to Tahiti. That's old Ben over there.”

The light was excessively dim, but van der Valk distinguished a few eccentric haircuts, though quite unable to say whether male or female. Behind a candle stuck on the tiny bar, in the grave of thousands of other candles forming a dusty and discoloured volcano of grease, loomed a dishevelled man looking about sixty, with a monastic hairdo, a goatee, a blue sailor's jumper, and mermaids tattooed on the backs of his hands. His face was quite weather-beaten, but in a pasty way, like a Pirate of Penzance that has forgotten to put his make-up on.

“Hallo, Ben, how are you, old chap? This is a friend, comes from Denmark, so let's all speak French, shall we?”

“Grand, my dears, grand. And how about a wee droppie?” The voice of this square-rigger crimp was that of the eternal hanger-on; piping, precious. The tattooed hand sketched a coy arabesque in the air and a gin bottle appeared.

“Mr Petersen was having a chat about old days and happened to mention Casimir, whom he knew before the war in Paris. We thought we'd find him here.”

“Oh, haven't you heard? – poor, poor old Cas. Daid. Yais sir, daid.” The voice had dropped into a sort of pretend-American, as though it thought it had strayed back somehow into Sylvia's Bookshop. “So tragic. Just a few weeks ago, only. Ah, Charlie, my dear, the old faces drop out one by one.”

“Ben, I am not an old face, so don't include me. But what about the young faces? Surely there were some sweet young faces gathered round at the end?”

“No, no, he was all alone in the flat; heart attack. Young Harry Simons found him after nobody'd seen him for a day or two. As for the gorgeous lovelies, the last one I ever saw was a perfect pet. Cas called her his Sweet Sue, but she didn't come in to us. He brought her a couple of times to show her off, but she didn't really belong, you know. Amateur girl, Charlie, some rich pig's spriglet out slumming. Young Harry might know, of course, but we haven't seen him either lately. Got above the friends who gave him his start.” Not a bad witness, thought van der Valk professionally. They notice and
record everything; you just have to know what percentage of that harmless tattling malice you have to discount.