“Lovely,” the commissaris said, and Pullini translated and patted the owner on the back. The owner pulled his drooping mustache and hunched in a tremendous effort to comment on the compliment. He found a word: “Happy!”
“Yes. Happy.”
The commissaris and die owner beamed at each other. The owner opened a door and showed the bathroom. More marble, once white but aged to a delicate shade of ivory. A tub with brass faucets. A brass tank resting on solid oak.
“Hot,” the owner said proudly.
Pullini and the owner linked arms and marched to die door. They bowed together. “I come back seven o’clock. O.K.?”
“O.K., Mr. Pullini.”
“Have bath, sleep, then walk. Sesto San Giovanni very small, can’t get lost.”
“Sure. Thank you.”
The commissaris sighed as he lowered himself into the bath. His legs felt like two thin dry sticks that had been thrown into a roaring fire. The steaming water would calm the pain once more. A maid had brought a pot of strong tea and he poured himself a cup that rested on the tiled rim of the bath. He forced himself not to think of further developments and made pleasurable little noises instead as the water swept along his legs and hips and reached his chest and shoulders. He even sang, a wordless song consisting of grunts that lengthened and flowed into each other. He sipped his tea and stopped singing. The case had grabbed his mind again and the image of Papa Pullini dominated the stage of his brain.
If only Papa Pullini had married Elaine Carnet. But perhaps it had been too much to expect. A young Italian businessman romancing with a nightclub singer in Paris. All very well. But she gets pregnant. The young Italian businessman fades away. The months pass. The beautiful nightclub singer doesn’t sing anymore. She watches her body grow in an upstairs bedroom in Amsterdam. She writes letters on blue perfumed paper. There is an answer, on the Pullini furniture company’s letterhead. It is not a romantic letter. It avoids the subject of pregnancy and it doesn’t mention the matter of marriage. It offers an agency in furniture. The commissaris’s hand came down and hit the bath water. For God’s sake! What a way to handle the problem. But a way that suited Papa Pullini’s temperament and it had worked. He didn’t know how it had worked and he would probably never find out. Had Elaine left her baby in the care of a relative or paid help and traveled through Holland by train and visited the big stores? Had she shown her prospective customers a catalogue and a price list or had she organized a showroom somewhere and enticed clients to look at her wares? The preposterous fact was mat Camet and Company was born together with Gabrielle. He hit the water again with such force that some of it splashed into his teacup. He put the cup into the tub and pushed it around. Papa Pullini had been very clever and very businesslike but it would have been better if he had married Elaine, for if he had Francesco wouldn’t have pushed his tamer’s former mistress down the garden stairs of her house in the Mierisstraat. A long chain of events crinkling through a space of thirty years, but set off by Papa Pullini’s brilliant egotism.
He imagined the final scene, knowing that he had to be very close to the truth, that he might as well have been in the room, together with Gabrielle, who saw her lover and half-brother kill her mother. Manslaughter, of course, provoked manslaughter, mere had been no premeditation in the act. He saw Elaine Camet, dowdy and painted to hide die lines and folds caused by loneliness and bitter thoughts and continuous frustration. Drunk, most likely. And angry, vengeful. Convinced of her right, snarling with victory. She had been waiting for Francesco, she had probably telephoned him at his hotel. She had created the situation and was, finally, in charge of her circumstances. Francesco had come for one simple reason, his eighty thousand guilders mat Bergen hadn’t paid and that he couldn’t tell Papa Pullini about, for Papa Pullini didn’t know that his son had organized a private commission on all sales to the Dutch firm. Francesco didn’t know why Elaine Camet wanted to give him the money instead of Bergen and he didn’t care, all Francesco wanted was his cash.
He had gone as a helpless beggar and he must have been in a foul mood. Bergen had been threatening not to give him any more orders. The business might be ending then and there. His trip to Amsterdam had turned into a nightmare. He wasn’t feeling well either, he was sniffling and sneezing. And instead of handing him a discreet brown envelope to be stuffed into his inside pocket Mrs. Carnet had been waving the money at him, a thick wad of thousand-guilder notes, a small fortune that he desperately needed to pay for his expensive private pleasures. She had screamed. It had taken him awhile to understand what she was screaming about, but it became clear soon enough. She was explaining, in French, and at the top of her voice, that Papa Pullini was Gabrielle’s father and that he hadn’t married her but had made her work for him instead, to enlarge the Pullini business. That there had been no choice. That she had had to give Papa Pullini business to pay for the upbringing and education of his own child, Gabrielle, Francesco’s half-sister. That she had known, all along, that Francesco and Gabrielle were having an affair, that history was repeating itself. That she knew that Francesco had married in Italy, a rich girl with the right connections, just as his father had done twenty-odd years ago.
Francesco hadn’t answered her. He had sat in his chair, his handsome bearded head resting on his slender hands. He had wanted her to stop screaming. But she went on and on, repeating herself, waving the money, dropping some of it and picking it up again. She wasn’t going to give it to him. She was only showing it. She would keep it as a small repayment for a lot of suffering. It was hers. Money squeezed out of the pockets of Italian lovers who took their girls for long walks in the moonlight, who sent flowers and beautifully wrapped presents, who slithered into the girls’ beds and who performed so admirably only to slide away in the night if the relationships proved to yield more problems than pleasures.
The gale shrieked around the house as Francesco sat listening and the woman screamed on, her lips bubbling with venom. And when she paused it was only to remember swear words in both French and Italian, flinging them at him as they came to her. She had taken off her wedding ring, wrenching it off her finger. She threw it on die floor and it rolled toward his feet and he stared at it. Francesco was having difficulty understanding Mrs. Carnet. His French was bad, but he did know some words, and he gradually began to fit together what the crazy woman was telling him. His nerves stretched even more tautly as a fresh torrent of abuse burst free. Mrs. Camet’s voice had dropped now; she was whispering and her insults had the sharpness of a dagger. The dagger slid into his feverish, aching brain.
“But times have changed,” Mrs. Carnet was whispering. Oh yes, times had changed. Girls were no longer helpless and had woken up to the hardness and cruelty of the male world that would use and manipulate and discard mem if it was given half a chance. Papa Pullini hadn’t liked to use anything when he made love and neither would Francesco. Men didn’t like a film of rubber to come between mem and their pleasure. They wanted all their pleasure, and if their pleasure led to their girlfriends’ sorrow, well, what of it? They were up and away, hunting for fresh game. But now girls had the pill and they didn’t get pregnant unless they wanted to. And girls had many lovers now, as many as they pleased.
Did Francesco know that he was only one of Gabrielle’s lovers? That Gabrielle only accepted his embraces because he happened to please her for the time being? Other men were asked to come to Gabrielle’s apartment upstairs, and they were told to go when she no longer needed them. Gabrielle didn’t care so much about Francesco. Gabrielle didn’t even care that Francesco was her half-brother. For she knew. She had been told, just now, just a few days ago. Francesco could go back to Italy and never come back and Gabrielle would replace him, just like
that.
And Mrs. Carnet stepped forward, leering, and snapped her fingers in his face.
And it was the last thing she ever did, for Francesco jumped her and tore the money out of her hand and pushed her to die open garden door. They fell together and Francesco came back alone, to face Gabrielle, who hadn’t moved from her corner throughout her mother’s final performance. They had probably gone down into the garden together and ascertained Mrs. Carnet’s death. Perhaps Francesco had cried and Gabrielle had comforted him, she might have stroked his hair. Perhaps Gabrielle had hated her mother and pitied her half-brother. Perhaps she had always wanted a brother and her love could have changed but not ended.
The commissaris pushed the teacup; it filled with soapy water and sank onto his legs. Gabrielle still had a portrait in her room, close to her pillow, that resembled Francesco’s features. What did he know about a woman’s love? Gabrielle also loved the baboon, for she carried his omen, his symbol, between her breasts. She might have protected Francesco out of love, but it could also be that she was levelheaded enough not to want the police to meddle with someone who was her lover, her brother, and an important business contact, the man who controlled the supplies of furniture that her firm depended on. Whatever her motives, she had covered up the mess, removed Francesco’s glass, wiped everything his hands might have touched, and sent him back to his hotel. She hadn’t telephoned the police but the ambulance service, hoping that her mother’s death would be filed away as accidental.
And she had allowed him to leave with the money but had probably contacted him again later, very likely early in the next morning, and had arranged for him to return the cash so that she could pretend to find it. And Francesco had been honest enough to return the full hundred thousand. That Mrs. Carnet had waved a hundred notes at him instead of the eighty she owed would have been due to her state of nerves. She had simply added the twenty notes she had just received from the baboon, perhaps to make the wad thicker amd more impressive.
Perhaps Gabrielle was a courageous girl who should be allowed to take care of her own life and not be charged as an accomplice to a serious crime. But as the killer’s half-sister she might be excused, although she would be charged. The commissaris looked at the submerged cup and thought of refloating it but began to climb out of the tub instead. He wouldn’t let Francesco off, for Francesco had pushed a lady down her own garden stairs and the lady had broken her neck. The young man should have had die sense to confess, but he might still be manipulated into a confession. It would help his case and soften the lesson. And mis trip was part of that manipulation, but so far it had only resulted in a pleasant hour in a marble bathtub. He found his watch and began to dress. There was still plenty of time. He would go for a walk.
The commissaris had walked for no more than a quarter of an hour when he found himself on a long narrow road with a low wall on each side. He had come to the end of the village and the road was leading to a confusion of small fields, all carefully planted with vegetables. He had just decided to turn back when he saw a small green truck roaring around the next curve. A disreputable pickup with a snarling, lopsided grille set between rusted headlights that wobbled on dented mudguards. As the truck hurtled toward him he recognized its driver, a young man in a light blue turtleneck sweater, the same imperturbable young man who had driven Pullini’s limousine. He thought of raising his hand in greeting when he realized that the pickup was coming straight at him, that its left wheels were on die sidewalk, and that its mudguard was razing the crumbling wall. The pickup was sounding its hoarse little horn, but mere was nowhere for the commissaris to go, and he pointed his cane at it in a futile gesture of defiance.
S
ERGEANT OE
G
IER LOOKED AT THE SQUARE ELECTRIC
wall clock that had been hanging, for as long as he could remember, on an improbably thin and bent nail stuck loosely into the soft plaster of his office wall. The clock had said five to eight and had just moved, with an ominous faint click, to four to eight.
“It’s morning,” he said, and his voice reverberated through the empty room. The hollow, artificial sound sent a shiver through the base of his neck. “It’s
very
early in the morning,” he whispered. There had been no coffee in the machine in the washroom and he was out of cigarettes. The cigarette machine in the hall was out of order. The tobacconist’s wouldn’t open up until after nine. Cardozo and his plastic pouch filled with crumbly, cheap, shag tobacco were nowhere to be seen. Grijpstra and his flat tin of cigars hadn’t come in yet. The commissaris’s office was securely locked. There was nothing to do but to stare at the clock and at his desk calendar, which showed no entries at all.
“First things first,” de Gier said and jumped up. He had heard a sound in the corridor. He pulled the door open and jumped out and collided with a uniformed secretary from the traffic department. Her blue jacket showed the stripes of a constable.
“Darling,” de Gier murmured, and he clasped the dumpy girl in his arms and breathed against her thick spectacles. “You smoke, don’t you? Tell me you do.”
The constable had dropped her shoulderbag; her spectacles were sliding down her short broad nose.
“Yes,” she said into de Gier’s shoulder. “Yes, I do, sergeant.”
“Half a pack,” he whispered. “Give me half a pack and maybe I can do some work today. Catch the horrible killer, grab the pernicious poisoner, trap the blond baboon. Please? Beloved?”
Her glasses dropped, but he extended his chest, and they caught on the top button of his jacket. He plucked them away, released the girl, whipped out his handkerchief, and polished them before replacing them gently onto her nose and sliding the stems over her ears.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the girl said. “You are a pig, sergeant.” Her breathing was still irregular but her tight little smile had a hard twist to it. “So you’re out of cigarettes?”
“Yes, darling,” de Gier said, “and I caught your spectacles. They would have broken if I hadn’t caught them and you would have been blind as a bat, they would have smashed to smithereens on the nasty floor.”