A Crime in Holland (12 page)

Instead of going straight through town from the police station to the Van Hasselt, Maigret went round by the quayside, followed by Jean Duclos, whose bearing, expression, and the tilt of his head all indicated ill temper.

‘You do realize you're making yourself utterly obnoxious?' he muttered at last, his eyes fixed on the crane unloading a ship in the harbour, as its arm swung across just above their heads.

‘Because …?'

Duclos shrugged, and walked on a few paces without replying.

‘You wouldn't even understand. Or perhaps you're deliberately refusing to understand. You're like all the French …'

‘But I thought we were the same nationality.'

‘Yes, but I've travelled a lot. My culture is worldwide. I know how to fit in with the country where I find myself. But you, ever since you've been here, you've just been barging ahead without bothering about the consequences.'

‘Without bothering to find out, for instance, whether people really want the murderer to be found?'

Duclos reacted angrily.

‘Why should they? This wasn't a gangland killing. So the murderer isn't a professional criminal. We're not talking
about someone who has to be put away in order to protect society.'

‘So in that case …?'

Maigret had a self-satisfied way of puffing at his pipe, with his hands behind his back.

‘Just take a look,' Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all around them, the picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantelpiece of a tidy housewife, the harbour too small for serious trouble, the placid inhabitants standing there in their yellow clogs.

Then he went on:

‘Everyone here earns his living. Everyone's more or less content. And above all, everyone keeps his instincts under control, because that's the rule here, and a necessity if people want to live in society. Pijpekamp will confirm that burglaries are extremely rare. It's true that someone who steals a loaf of bread can expect a jail sentence of at least a few weeks. But where do you see any disorder? There are no prowlers. No beggars. This is a place of clean living and organization.'

‘And I'm the bull in the china shop!'

‘Hear me out! See the houses on the left, by the Amsterdiep? They're the residences of the city elders, wealthy men, powerful locally. Everyone knows them. There's the mayor, the church ministers, the teachers and civil servants, everyone who sees to it that nothing disturbs the peace of the town, that everyone knows his place and isn't a nuisance to his neighbours. These people, as I think I've already told you, don't even approve of one of
their number going to a café, because it would be setting a bad example. Then a crime is committed. And
you
suspect some family quarrel.'

Maigret listened to all this as he watched the boats, their decks riding higher than the quayside now, like a series of brightly coloured walls, since it was high tide.

‘I don't know what Pijpekamp thinks,' Duclos went on. ‘Certainly he's well-respected. What I do know is that it would be preferable, and in everyone's interest, to announce this evening that Popinga's murderer was some foreign seaman, and that the search is still under way. For everyone's sake. Better for Madame Popinga. For her family. For her father, too, who's an eminent intellectual. For Beetje and
her
father. But above all for the sake of example! For all the people living in the little houses in this town, who watch what happens in the big houses on the Amsterdiep and are ready to do the same. But you, you want truth for truth's sake, for the glory of solving a difficult case.'

‘Is that what Pijpekamp said to you this morning? And he took the opportunity, didn't he, to ask you how he could discourage my persistent habit of raising awkward questions? And you told him that in France, men like me can be bought off with a good lunch, or even a tip.'

‘No such precise words passed our lips.'

‘Do you know what I think, Monsieur Jean Duclos?'

Maigret had stopped, the better to admire the panorama. A tiny little boat, kitted out as a shop, was chugging along from ship to ship, barge to yacht trailing petrol fumes and selling bread, spices, tobacco, pipes and genever.

‘I'm listening.'

‘I think you were lucky to come out of the bathroom holding the revolver.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Nothing. Just tell me, again, that you saw nobody in the bathroom.'

‘That's right, I didn't see anybody.'

‘And you didn't hear anything either?'

Duclos turned his head away.

‘Nothing very clearly. Perhaps just a feeling that something moved under the lid of the bath.'

‘Oh, excuse me – I see there's someone waiting for me.'

And Maigret strode off briskly towards the entrance of the Van Hasselt, where Beetje Liewens could be seen pacing up and down on the pavement, looking out for him.

She tried to smile at him, as she had before, but this time her smile was joyless. She seemed nervous. She went on glancing down the street, as if afraid of seeing someone appear.

‘I've been waiting almost half an hour for you.'

‘Will you come inside?'

‘Not to the café, please.'

In the corridor, he hesitated for a second. He couldn't take her to his room either. He pushed open the door of the ballroom, a huge empty space where voices echoed as if in a church.

In broad daylight, the stage looked dusty and lacklustre. The piano was open. A bass drum stood in a corner and piles of chairs were stacked up to the ceiling.

Behind them hung paper chains, which must have been used for a dance.

Beetje looked as fresh-faced as before. She was wearing a blue jacket and skirt, and her bosom was more enticing than ever under a white silk blouse.

‘So you were able to get out of the house?'

She did not reply at once. She obviously had plenty to say, but didn't know where to begin.

‘I escaped!' she said at last. ‘I couldn't stay there any more, I was scared. The maid came to tell me my father was furious, he was capable of killing me. Already he'd shut me in my room without a word. Because he never says anything when he's angry. The other night, we went home without saying a thing. He locked me in. This afternoon, the maid spoke to me through the keyhole. It seems he came back at midday, white in the face. He ate his lunch, then went stalking off around the farm. After that he visited my mother's grave. That's what he does every time he's going to make an important decision. So I broke a pane of glass in the door, and the maid passed me a screwdriver so that I could take off the lock. I don't want to go back. You don't know my father …'

‘One question,' Maigret interrupted.

He was looking at the little handbag in glossy kid leather she was holding.

‘How much money did you bring with you?'

‘I don't know … Perhaps five hundred florins.'

‘From your own bedroom?'

She reddened and stammered:

‘It was in the desk. I wanted to go to the station. But there was a policeman on duty there, so I thought of you.'

They were standing there as if in a waiting room, where
an intimate atmosphere is impossible, and it occurred to neither of them to take two of the stacked chairs and sit down.

Beetje might be on edge, but she wasn't panicking. That was perhaps why Maigret was looking at her with some hostility, which found its way into his voice when he asked her:

‘How many men have you already asked to run away with you?'

She was entirely taken aback. Turning away, she stammered:

‘Wh— What did you say?'

‘Well, you asked Popinga. Was he the first?'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I'm asking you if he was your first lover.'

A longish silence. Then:

‘I didn't think you'd be so nasty to me. I came here …'

‘Was he the first? All right, so it had been going on for a little over a year. But before that?'

‘I … I had a bit of a flirtation with my gym teacher at high school in Groningen.'

‘A flirtation?'

‘It was him, he …'

‘Right. You had a lover before Popinga, then. Any others?'

‘Never,' she cried indignantly.

‘And you've been Barens's mistress too, haven't you?'

‘No, that's not true, I swear …'

‘But you used to meet him …'

‘Because he was in love with me. But he hardly dared even kiss me.'

‘And the last time you had a rendezvous with him, the one that was interrupted when both I and your father turned up, you suggested running away together?'

‘How did you know?'

He almost burst out laughing. Her naivety was incredible. She had regained some of her self-possession. In fact, she spoke of these delicate matters with remarkable frankness!

‘But he didn't want to?'

‘He was scared. He said he didn't have any money.'

‘So you proposed to get some from your house. In short, you've been itching to run away for ages. Your main aim in life is to leave Delfzijl with a man, any man.'

‘Not just any man,' she corrected him crossly. ‘You're being horrible. You're not trying to understand.'

‘Oh yes I am! A five-year-old could understand! You love life! You like men! You like all the pleasures the world has to offer.'

She lowered her eyes and fiddled with her handbag.

‘You're bored stiff on your father's model farm. You want something else in life. You start at high school, when you're seventeen, with the gym teacher. But you can't persuade him to leave. In Delfzijl you look around at the available men, and you find one who looks more adventurous than the others. Popinga's travelled the world. He likes life too. And he too is chafing at the prejudices of the local people. You throw yourself at him.'

‘Why do you say …?'

‘Maybe I'm exaggerating a little. Let's say, here you are, a pretty girl, devilishly attractive, and he starts to flirt a bit
with you. But only timidly, because he's afraid of complications, he's afraid of his wife, of Any, of his principal and his pupils.'

‘Especially Any!'

‘We'll get to her later. So he snatches kisses in corners. I'm prepared to bet he wasn't even bold enough to ask for more. But you think you've hit the jackpot. You engineer meetings every day. You go round to his house with fruit. You're accepted into the household. You get him to see you home on his bike, and you stop behind the timber stacks. You write letters to him about your longing to run away …'

‘You've read them?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you don't think it was him that started it?'

She was launched now.

‘At first, he told me he was unhappy, Madame Popinga didn't understand him, all she thought about was what people would say, that he was leading a stupid life, and so on.'

‘Naturally!'

‘So you see …'

‘Sixty per cent of married men say that kind of thing to the first attractive young woman they meet. Unfortunately for him, he'd come across a girl who took him at his word.'

‘Oh you're so horrible, so horrible!'

She was on the point of crying. She restrained herself, and stamped her foot as she said ‘horrible'.

‘In short, he kept putting off this famous escape, and you started to think it was never going to happen.'

‘That's not true!'

‘Yes it is. As is proved by your taking out a kind of insurance policy against that happening, by letting young Barens pay his respects. Cautiously. Because he's a shy young man, well brought up, respectful, you have to be careful not to scare him off.'

‘That's a mean thing to say!'

‘It's merely what happens in real life.'

‘You really hate me, don't you?'

‘Me? Not at all.'

‘You do hate me! But I'm so unhappy. I loved Conrad.'

‘And Cornelius? And the gym teacher?'

This time she did shed tears. She stamped her foot again.

‘I forbid you …'

‘To say you didn't love any of them? Why not? You only loved them to the extent that they represented another life for you, the great escape you were always longing for.'

She wasn't listening any more. She wailed:

‘I shouldn't have come, I thought …'

‘That I would take you under my wing. But that's what I am doing. Only I don't consider you a victim in all this, or a heroine. Just a greedy little girl, a bit silly, a bit selfish, that's all. There are plenty of little girls like that around.'

She looked up with tearful eyes, in which some hope already glistened.

‘But everyone hates me,' she moaned.

‘Who do you mean by everyone?'

‘Madame Popinga, for a start, because I'm not like her. She'd like me to be making clothes all day for South Sea islanders, or knitting socks for the poor. I know she's told
the girls who work for those charities not to be like me. And she even said out loud that if I didn't find a husband soon, I'd come to a bad end. People told me.'

It was as if a breath of the slightly rancid air of the little town had reached them once more: the gossip, the girls from good families, sitting knitting under the watchful eye of a lady who dispensed good works, advice and sly remarks.

‘But it's mostly Any.'

‘Who hates you?'

‘Yes. When I went round there, she'd usually leave the room and go upstairs. I'm sure she guessed the truth a long time ago. Madame Popinga, in spite of everything, means well. She just wanted me to change my ways, to wear different clothes. And she especially wanted to get me to read something different from novels! But she didn't suspect anything. She was the one who told Conrad to see me home.'