The King of the Rainy Country (15 page)

He read the poem with a fresh eye; he hadn't had it under his eye in years. It was a lot better than he had thought it.

‘I am like the king of a rainy country: rich – and impotent: young – and very old. Who despises the bowing-down of his
preceptors, is as bored with his dogs as with all his other creatures, whom nothing now, neither game nor falcon, can cheer. Not even subjects come to die beneath his balcony. A grotesque song from the indulged clown can no longer unwrinkle the forehead of this cruelly ill man: his fleurdelysed bed has become a tomb, and the ladies in waiting, who find any prince good looking, can think up no more lewd costumes to drag a smile from this young skeléton. The expert that makes his gold has never managed to purify the corrupt element in his being, and in the bloodbaths the Romans showed us, recalled to their memory by ageing tyrants, he has failed to rewarm the dulled stupor of a corpse in which blood no longer flows, but Lethe's green water.'

The lieutenant of gendarmerie had read Baudelaire, perhaps, but had other things to think about, and no time at the present moment for poems. (It turned out later that at his office desk, when he had spare time, he read Pascal.) Since this was his district, he was mostly interested in what these people were doing here. There wasn't much he could do about the two in the bed; they were dead, and there was nothing the police could do to help that, was there? He found a few stray facts to go on in the village: Mr Marschal, pronounced like Marchal, a common name anywhere in France, had owned this house for five years or more, bought it after the old couple had died, from a nephew in Paris with no interest in a house in some Vosges village he had never heard of. Mr Marschal had not come here often, seven or eight times a year, perhaps; mostly for two or three days only; always alone; longest anybody remembered his staying was a fortnight. Nobody had bothered about this; the world was full of eccentric people that left their houses empty. An old woman in the village had had the keys. She had been very well paid to go there every second day or so, to keep things clean and in order. She was accustomed to light the stove once a week to get the place dry and aired.

Yes, she had seen him arrive with a young girl. No, that hadn't struck her. She had always thought he would turn up with a woman sooner or later. No, he had been laughing and joking. Not
depressed-seeming a bit, if you asked her. Like a couple in love rather than a couple having a furtive week-end.

*

The lieutenant was not happy with Van der Valk. This rigmarole of millionaires and winter sports had really nothing to do with him, he conveyed. There might be something odd about it, he agreed, but that was for Strasbourg to decide. A double death had taken place on his territory, straightforward suicide pact, and he had a lot of forms to fill in. He thought that Van der Valk had better repeat his tale to the criminal divisionnaire in Strasbourg.

Police headquarters in Strasbourg is in a street with a gentle, innocent name. The Street of the Blue Cloud. It has a narrow, heavy frontage, imitation classic, and an archway where uniformed agents stand around bored scratching themselves with submachine-guns. They do not look in the least brutal or sinister; kindly, thickset, family men with corns and five o'clock shadow who do difficult and unpleasant work with good humour and get paid little enough for it.

Inside there is a cobbled eighteenth-century courtyard with radio vans and squad cars parked, and the sober black Peugeots of senior officers. Beyond the courtyard is a big building with a monstrous chill double staircase upon which the most fairy of police feet falls like a rifle-shot. Van der Valk gave all this a professionally appreciative look and decided that it was even dingier than the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, but a great deal gayer. He was directed on his way by a good-humoured old-China-hand that had thirty years on the cops and still nothing wrong with his digestion: a young agent in the hall was doing an imitation of his superior officer for the benefit of two more with a good deal of schoolboy laughter, and the plainclothes man upstairs, walking between room three-oh-four and three-seventy with an armful of files, was whistling ‘
Vissi d'arte
' with verve and some scandalous
fioriture.
Nobody paid the faintest attention: now at home, thought Van der Valk, some piss-vinegar commissaire
would have popped his nose out straight off to complain about levity.

Divisional commissaire Wollek was like an old grey wolf, his face, his voice, all his movements were as quiet as Chinese writing, done on silk with a sable brush, and Van der Valk liked him at once. He had the manners of a cardinal and thin delicate hands, and should have been sitting at a gilt-cornered table covered in Spanish leather, with the walls covered in Rubens paintings, but such things are not found in police bureaus.

‘A cigarette?'

‘Thanks.'

‘Difficult for you, all this. But perhaps you could tell me your story.'

Van der Valk told, leaving out nothing.

‘Yes. A king in a rainy country. One wonders what he was doing there – he would have found Paris more congenial.'

‘The old gentleman, his father, is an old tyrant as I hear. He might have been very dictatorial.'

‘The role of the wife is obscure.'

‘It's all obscure. Luckily we're not called on to understand it. Nothing now but to notify all concerned and say we're sorry. I was one jump behind the whole way. I simply never had the facts to go on that might have helped me understand. They sent me off on this goose-chase, exactly as though they feared or suspected something serious would happen, yet the things they must have known – or feared – they never told me. Now I have to go back and tell them I've found him, and he's dead, under circumstances that almost look as though he had killed himself for fear I would find him.'

‘I don't understand why they were in such a hurry,' suggested Wollek. ‘The reason given was that he was an irresponsible person, as I understand, and might throw money about. Apparently he did throw money about. But with the amount of money involved, that is only a drop. He couldn't have remained hidden for very long, after all. Why the hurry? Why not signal him as a missing person and wait till he was noticed somewhere?'

‘I've wondered the same thing. His wife behaved more as though she didn't want him found. It's possible that when the old man got to hear, he issued a dictatorial order that sonny-boy was to be traced and brought back to reason pretty damn quick.'

‘I think we'll have to find out,' slowly. ‘A French subject has died under obscure circumstances, on French soil. That means that I am responsible for any inquiry that may be made later. I'd better ring up Paris. This old gentleman sounds the type that might draw a lot of water. And perhaps you'd better notify the Germans, since you know these people in Köln. And of course his wife. Both these people will have to be formally identified. Would you like to use my telephone?' He pushed it across the desk towards Van der Valk.

‘Yes.'

He rang Amsterdam. The Portuguese majordomo was full of regret, but he had not seen Anne-Marie, nor had he heard from her. It was peculiar, but since leaving Innsbruck, she seemed to have vanished. He rang Canisius. A private secretary, as full of silky regrets as any majordomo, told him that Mr Canisius was unfortunately away from home: they would be in communication with him that day – was there any message?

‘No. Ask him to leave a number where I can reach him. It's extremely urgent.' They would do that. Would Mr Van der Valk be kind enough to ring again at five-thirty? That was extremely good of him.

‘Polizei Praesidium, Köln. Herr Stössel, please … Heinz? Van der Valk. I'm in Strasbourg. End of the trail, I'm afraid. They're both dead. Double suicide. You'll have to get hold of the father and bring him over here. Office of Commissaire Wollek in Strasbourg. Yes, today – the sooner we get that over the better.'

‘I'll arrange that,' came Stössel's distant, unemotional voice. ‘In fact you've given me a job I'll have to do twice over. Your Mrs Marschal is here. Peculiar thing. She turned up here this morning. Said she wanted to see the girl's parents. She had a tale about persuading the girl to come back home directly she was found, and
so forth. I told her I was waiting to hear something from you. Wouldn't do to be precipitate.'

‘How did she strike you?'

‘Rather shrill and emotional. It would have made matters worse. She's staying here at Park – she said she'd stay here till I heard from you.'

‘Sorry, Heinz. You'd better bring her along as well. She'll have to identify her husband, and make the usual arrangements with the authorities here – funeral and so on.'

‘I'm just looking at the map. Frankfurt – mm – Karlsruhe … Looks as though it'll take about four hours on the road. You'd better expect me around six.'

‘Very well. I'll be here.'

Mr Wollek was nodding gently – every Strasbourgeois can follow German.

‘We'd better have lunch,' he said. ‘Perhaps you'd like to come back to me here this afternoon.'

‘I don't feel much like lunch.'

‘Quite, and that's just the time to have a good one. You know this town at all?' His voice was paternal. These young men, it seemed to say. Getting upset about a death and not eating properly. ‘I'll give you the address of a good place. I'd join you, but I'm afraid this has given me some extra work. Ask them for liver – it's still in season.'

*

The old boy was perfectly right; what was the use of getting in an uproar? There was nothing left but the details of administration. The French would do that. And Heinz Stössel, by a strange coincidence, had the job to do that nobody liked – breaking the news. He himself had nothing to do at all. The lieutenant of gendarmerie in Saverne was filling in forms, Mr Wollek in Strasbourg was there to make sure nothing went wrong, Heinz had a tedious and disagreeable drive in front of him from Köln – and he could twiddle his thumbs. He just didn't know why he felt so damned uneasy. He would go and have a proper meal and plenty to drink; it was a sour
thought that he would put it on his expense sheet, which would go back to the police accounts in Amsterdam, and get sent on, eventually, to Canisius. The executors, as near as made no matter, of Jean-Claude Marschal, deceased. There was no point in thinking about that, either.

There was fresh goose-liver. Very simple, cut in slices and cooked in butter like any other kind of liver. Reinette apples went with it, sliced too and cooked soft in a spoonful of white wine. Van der Valk read the paper, drank a bottle of champagne, and was shamefacedly surprised to find that it had done him a lot of good. Arlette would have agreed. What would be the point, she would have asked with the same common sense as Monsieur Wollek, of sitting being miserable with a dried-out ham sandwich just because you are upset about a suicide? That makes no sense.

*

‘You had a good lunch?' asked Wollek politely. He was sitting where Van der Valk had left him, in the same position. He had had his ashtray emptied, and the window opened to air the room.

‘Very good. Did me no harm. I'm more tired than I had realized.'

‘I can understand that. You were a little bit out of your depth, weren't you? Millionaires are not quite the same as other people, are they? Awkward kind of predicament. You were given ridiculous instructions, too. Nothing clear-cut, nothing defined. No crime, one can't quite see what all the fuss is about, why there is such a panic – the fact is nobody quite knew what they wanted. I've known similar things done. Then if anything goes wrong they can blame it handily on the investigating officer. He didn't understand his instructions, they'd say. Quite right too – omitting only the fact that there never were any proper instructions.'

Van der Valk allowed himself to grin for the first time in days, it seemed.

‘Well, I can add a bit to this picture. I rang a colleague of mine in Paris, who has considerable experience of this financial set. Ask him which Rothschild is which and he'll tell you the whole family history and draw you a pedigree.'

Sounds like Kan, thought Van der Valk. They had one in Amsterdam like that too.

‘I asked him about this Marschal. He knew about him all right. Said he was a bright and able fellow, but completely on the periphery of affairs. Quite frankly, his death wouldn't make a ha'porth of effective odds, to the structure of this business, or to the conduct of their affairs, or anything else. I asked whether the death could possibly create any reverberations, being a suicide, but he seems to think it would make none whatever.'

‘But what about the old man?' asked Van der Valk. ‘This is his son, after all. Heir, what's more, to a terrific fortune. The old man had made over a tremendous amount of money already to him, to avoid inheritance tax or whatnot. Nobody apparently knows quite how much. It's salted away in God knows how many different banks. This one had pretty big balances just on current accounts, under disguised names. I stumbled on that in Germany – they're all names of Napoleon's marshals!'

Wollek lifted an amused eyebrow.

‘We'll find a few in Strasbourg then, maybe. Great breeding-ground for marshals. Romantic-minded chap.'

‘What happens to all this vast quantity of Napoleonic poppy? Sounds like the buried treasure of the SS.'

‘Yes, that's exactly what I asked. Our man in Paris doesn't know, but he says he can probably find out. He thought probably it all reverted to the old man, since the son died while he was still alive. The old man can presumably settle it on anything or anyone he pleases – if there are no descendants he can give it to the cats' home.'

‘There are two children – both girls. He could perhaps make a trust fund or something.'

‘He's going to find out. You see we have a right to ask, since this is, after all, a suicide. He knows this fellow Canisius who approached you, but only vaguely, since he doesn't run the French side of the business. There are two or three more of the same sort that sit in the Paris offices under the old man's eye. He'll probably ring me up this evening with whatever news he's managed to pick up.'