A Long Silence (21 page)

‘Doesn't matter,' said Bates, brisk. ‘We've got to go by elimination anyway and that's the only way to narrow it down. And I may as well say that we'll have to face some discouragements and mistakes; that's Inevitable surely. I've made a note. Arlette, my pet, if you ring up the bank manager he'll tell you, if you haven't already had a statement.'

‘Of course I had one but didn't look at it.' Trixie looked a bit shocked at that but kept quiet.

‘Well a phone call will fix that. Now what else is there?'

‘The thing about the pictures, and the name Louis, and B. and “the boy”, who might be Richard and might not.' Dan, who had been studying the notebooks all day, had all this at his finger-ends.

‘Now that really is vague.'

‘Doesn't matter. We've agreed that anything at all might give an opening. It might be nothing, but it must have been something on his mind, because there are drawings of pictures, like one does of a subject that is occupying one's thoughts.'

‘When it's something to do with pictures,' said Arlette, ‘I could always try a man we used to know, a picture-dealer, who gave him advice sometimes about a question of faking, but that's quite forlorn of course. No earthly reason to believe…'

‘Nothing's a forlorn hope,' said Hilary sternly.

‘And there's always an earthly reason to believe,' said Bates, who was a firm church-goer despite schisms, heresies, errors,
delusions, and much of which one disapproved most emphatically.

‘What else?'

‘Well there's the poetry one. It's a bit off-beat – the thing about the stripped tree and the false apples.'

‘No use,' said Arlette. ‘I know what it's about, or vaguely – something about politics in Scotland a couple of centuries ago.' This cast a chill.

‘No matter,' said Dan, recovering. ‘It must have another reference, to something or someone else. Or why would he have written it down in a working notebook? All these things mean something,' stubbornly. There was a silence. Everybody was feeling that the remark had been made already, and hadn't been especially helpful then.

‘We're agreed to disregard just names and telephone numbers. We'd never get far with them.'

‘The police will have checked them anyway. That's the kind of thing they do well – much better than we could.'

‘Sorry, but just in the notebooks, there's not very much else.'

Light was shed by Trix. She had kept quiet, feeling perhaps a scrap out of her depth. But the word ‘books' stirred something. She fidgeted, looked around, and spoke suddenly.

‘Er – I know it must sound silly – but are we sure we do have all the notebooks?' Everyone looked at her.

‘I only meant, sometimes like, one keeps other ones, private like.'

Nobody laughed though a slow grin ran across Dan de Vries's face as he thought that this would be the nearest Trixie, a most able bookkeeper, would ever get to admitting that tax-evasion existed.

‘Well, upon my word. Are we sure, Arlette?'

‘I don't know at all,' said Arlette slowly. ‘I'd never thought about it. I've no real means of knowing. Nobody ever counted them. It wouldn't have occurred to me that they might not all be there – the police sent me back a packet, with a note about this was personal stuff they were returning to me. I can hardly believe they kept anything back – I mean they'd have sent all or nothing.'

Deep bass grunt from Willy, indicating scepticism.

‘No, honestly I can't believe that,' said Arlette seriously, ‘there was a service memo inside which they'd overlooked, saying they'd been through all this and nothing in it was of any help.'

‘A remark which we, by definition, do not accept.' Dan, tartly.

‘They did though say that anything relevant to the work he was doing had been passed on to some colleague. That might mean there were more books. I could find out from his secretary, I suppose. I'll go to The Hague. And I'll talk to the bank. And just on the off chance I'll try the picture man.'

‘Meeting adjourned for twenty-four hours,' said Dan, business-like.

‘Come to my place,' said Trix. Nobody queried this; it went without saying that it was ‘her turn to make the coffee'. Not even Arlette noticed. A single-minded person, the only thing mattering to her was that she was no longer alone. She had found solidarity, friends, people both competent and intelligent, who out of the sheer kindness of their heart were sorting out her confusions and setting forth to right an injustice. Not even Dan and Hilary de Vries thought anything in the situation at all unusual, and would have been taken aback, even vastly indignant, at anyone finding it funny.

Van der Valk would have found it funny, though. And ‘very Dutch' – even when being very Dutch himself he never lost a sense of detachment, and a highly developed sense of the ridiculous. ‘It takes the Dutch to do a thing like that,' he would have said. ‘There's nothing they like better than forming committees, preferably of protest. A wonder that while they were at it they didn't elect a secretary to keep minutes.'

*

Arlette's flying in the face of her prejudices – bitterly maintained and dearly cherished for twenty years – he would have found uproarious. Just as well really that he wasn't there! He would have made coarse jokes about this new passion for togetherness, and her utterly astounding permissiveness in letting
people like the butcher take a hand in her personal life, and then she would have flown into a tremendous fury … Had it been nothing more than the pilgrimage made to The Hague next day he would have been shaking his head with a sceptical grin.

‘I hope I'm not disturbing you – may I come in?'

‘Oh!' Miss Wattermann leapt to her feet in an agony of nervous embarrassment. ‘Mrs van der Valk!' A folder of papers by her typewriter fell on the floor. ‘I am so … I don't know what … I mean I never did get an opportunity to tell you how very …' The telephone rang, flustering her further. ‘Oh dear, please excuse me … just a sec … who is that? Ring me back, I'm extremely busy,' in a steely rap. Well, maybe I do intimidate her at that, thought Arlette cheerfully, and a good job too. She was aware of looking well – handsome – or, uh, distinguished: she had taken pains with her appearance, and knew the black suit showed her to advantage.

‘How nice of you to come and see us,' said Wattermann shyly.

‘Not very disinterested, I'm afraid.'

‘Oh, if there's anything at all I can possibly do …'

‘It's that I'm told there were some papers my husband had been working on which got passed on to some colleague.'

‘You mean in one of my files? – I typed everything of his so we'd find it here.'

‘More in the nature of just rough notes was what I was thinking of.'

‘You mean the manuscript notes – the famous school exercise-books? – but the police took them all – they thought, I mean they were hoping – ' she had got embarrassed again.

‘I know; they sent them on to me. But they did say there was some stuff with work materials which …'

‘Oh, I know – it's perfectly true – oh, what a fortunate coincidence!'

The door had opened with a breeze and a man came in with it, fistful of papers, pipe, and a handkerchief on which he was blowing his nose. He stopped dead when he caught sight of
Arlette, and said, ‘I beg your pardon' politely, bright eyes behind the hanky approving of her figure.

‘This is the man you want,' said Wattermann, and aware of a certain coyness in her voice added hurriedly, ‘Oh, Professor de Hartog, this is Mrs van der Valk.'

The man got rid of everything neatly: the hanky flashed into one pocket, the pipe still smoking into another, the papers changed hands and were thrust abruptly at the secretary. He bowed formally.

‘Extremely happy to meet you and only saddened by the circumstances.'

‘You are very kind,' said Arlette pulling her glove off and giving her hand.

‘But what's the fortunate coincidence, Miss Wattermann – is it that I can be of some service?'

‘If you can find ten minutes.'

‘Ten minutes? Stuff! – as long as you please. Forgive me one second – Nell, I've had this memo from some jack-in-office hiding behind a reference number – will you kindly draft one in return saying that if they have matters for my attention that's one thing but if they embody suggestions in these impertinent terms I refuse to discuss or even to read their remarks. A bit sharpish, backhand crosscourt. Always make a return of service a passing-shot – sorry, Mevrouw, civil servants; we mustn't let them trample on us – such insolence: do please come into my office – I won't take any calls, Nell … do please sit down, Mevrouw,' with a look of gallantry, ‘and tell me how I may serve you.'

Arlette was immensely encouraged. Everybody – everybody – is so nice! And how especially nice to be looked at with wicked sexy eyes by a Herr Professor Doktor. How nice to be enjoyed; it is dreadfully good for the morale. She crossed her knees, which the man studied with pleasurable attention.

He was large but not fat, a high forehead without being bald, tanned without being brown. The studious look of the horn-rim glasses and the pipe was not pedantic, but sat agreeably with an unlined and youthful look. He was her own age, a
plainly mature and responsible person of intellectual distinction and academic eminence, but had kept a trace of undergraduate jauntiness and enthusiasm which was appealing.

‘Oh, I forgot,' picking up his house telephone. ‘Nell, cups of coffee please.' He started hunting in a drawer for cigarettes.

‘There were some notebooks,' she began, ‘no thanks, I've my own, do smoke your pipe – which had business stuff, and that's no concern of mine, but I wanted to ask one thing, and that's if there were any irrelevant notes or scribbles in any of them.'

‘Yes, there were,' said de Hartog with a crisp rapidity and precision which filled her with hope. ‘In all of them.'

‘Would it be unreasonable of me to ask to have them back when you're finished with them?'

‘You shall have them now,' getting up and striding to a file cabinet. ‘I am finished, and I have prepared a precis of some basic work that will be very valuable to me – to us. I'd like to say this, Mevrouw – you'll virtually never get a scientist to admit that another scientist could conceivably be both brilliant and sound. While he was alive my colleagues would have qualified both. They would have said he was occasionally brilliant and in general unsound. I'm modifying that, and saying it was frequently one and might well be sounder than most, only for the fact that nobody knows either way. I liked your husband greatly and miss him profoundly. Please don't cry. It is a compliment to me to come near making you cry with a sincerely meant remark, but it causes me much pain.'

‘I'm not going to cry.'

‘The notebooks are tangled but to anyone of imagination perfectly lucid – and quite consequent. He followed no special code – I mean that there are heaps of interpolations and irrelevancies in different coloured inks, or upside down or whatnot, but he did not lose his thread, and when I compared the finished work he left me with these roughs I was struck – Hell's bells I am making you cry. Will you have dinner with me tonight?'

Arlette stopped crying at once and took a cigarette out of her bag. De Hartog leapt up, struck a match dramatically, and held it.

‘I refuse to cry. No, I've got to go back to Amsterdam. But when this is finished, then yes, with pleasure.
⁵

He sat down, struck another match, and relit the pipe with nervous, excited gestures.

‘You're detecting,' he said suddenly.

‘Yes. With what success I cannot tell.'

‘The police investigation fell flat. Yes, of course. Well, I'm not going to enquire. If I can at any time be of assistance to you – will you call me? I'm not coming the protective male; it strikes me you don't need one. But if you want a legal opinion – or ach, I hesitate to say advice, or a push in let's call it the burden of establishing proof – or just a hand or a leg – will you say so and I will be happy? – ah, that makes me proud. Here are the books, with my faith, hope, and may I say affectionate confidence.'

‘I receive and feel all three,' said Arlette, and meant it.

*

The bank manager listened with the stony immobility which is neither polite nor impolite, took off his glasses, lifted his telephone, mumbled something to her unintelligible, said, ‘That presents no particular problem', asked politely whether the arrangements for transferring funds to France gave her any cause for concern, said ‘come in' to a knock, received a dossier from a pale and effaced young man who looked at her with curiosity, put his glasses back on again, said ‘ah' twice, took out a silver pencil to help him, cleared his throat, and said, ‘A certain Mr Bosboom. Cleared through the Plantage Middenlaan branch of the Netherlands Credit Bank to the credit of a Mr Bosboom. No trouble at all, Mevrouw, only too pleased to be of service.'

*

‘Mr van Deijssel? Charles? Arlette van der Valk. Yes, I'm in Amsterdam. No, I'm at the station, I've just got in from The Hague. No it's kind but I can get a taxi. No, I'd rather speak to you at home if that's the same to you. May I come over? Yes of course I would.'

Charles van Deijssel had neither gallery nor shop, but like most art middlemen managed very well in his own flat. When Arlette arrived he was standing on a chair, getting a good light on a picture he was photographing.

‘I think I'll have to look at that with a bit of infra red. There is a most suspicious quantity of overpainting. My dear Arlette, just looking at you gives me an appetite for which will dinner alas be a disappointment. My dear girl – a real Chanel. Don't talk nonsense I can tell by the cutting. I hope and trust that your knickers are black crêpe de Chine.'