“Sit down, miss. You’ll feel better.”
He automatically noted her particulars. Small, five foot perhaps, a little over, but that was due to the high heels of her stylish soft leather boots. Dungarees tucked into the boots. Tight dungarees hiding slightly bowed legs. A very short blouse that showed skin at both ends. A narrow waist with a little bellybutton and the shine of a gold chain. A fashionable girl. The blouse’s top button was open, he could see the curve of her breasts. Long, dark brown hair, glossy. No jewelry. A pointed small face, uninteresting if it hadn’t been for the eyes, but the eyes were cleverly made up, they weren’t as large as they seemed. The color was startling, a shiny green. Metallic bright eyes. The possibility of drugs immediately presented itself but he could see her arms. No pricks. Perhaps she sniffed cocaine or took pills. But the feverish shine of her eyes could be just due to anguish. The young lady’s mother had died.
When she began to speak he noticed the purr again. It couldn’t be natural. She was acting, showing off, so the shock of her mother’s death had already worn thin. She had taken time to adjust her make-up. The thin penciled lines around the eyes weren’t ten minutes old.
“I live upstairs,” Gabrielle Carnet was saying, “in my own apartment. Mother and I split up last year. The house was remodeled. My apartment is self-contained.”
“Can you hear your mother’s doorbell, miss?”
“Not when I am in my kitchen or bathroom.”
“Do you know whether your mother had a visitor?”
“I don’t know.” She sobbed in between the words and her hands twitched. Her hair had fallen over her eyes and she pushed it away, smearing the mascara. A genuine rection. But genuine about what? Was she sorry she pushed or kicked her mother down die stairs?
“Go on,” he said gently, trying to tune his voice and mood to hers.
“I came down about an hour ago, I always check before I go to sleep. Mother drinks a bit and sometimes she falls asleep in front of the TV and I have to wake her up and take her upstairs.”
“I am sorry, I have to ask questions. You know that don’t you, Miss Carnet?” She nodded. She was trying to get a handkerchief from her pocket but it stuck and she got up. He got up too. “Do you want to go upstairs, miss?”
“No. It’s all right here.”
They sat down again. She was sitting very close; he could feel the warmth of her thigh.
“Was your mother an alcoholic, miss?”
“Yes. No.”
“How much did she drink, a day, I mean. Did she drink everyday?”
“Most days, but only wine. Good wine. A bottle a day perhaps, but I think she was drinking more lately. I didn’t see very much of her anymore, we were living separately.”
“Because of some trouble? Did you fight?” He kept his voice as low as he could to take the sting out of the key words. Alcoholic. Fight. They weren’t good words but hie had to use them.
“No, we didn’t fight, we just didn’t get on. I’m nearly thirty now. I should have a place of my own but I didn’t want to live somewhere else, she needed care. Oh, my God.”
She was crying and he waited. Her thigh was still pressing against him. He didn’t like the girl, but why didn’t he? She wasn’t pretty but she was certainly attractive. An attractive pushover. He could hear Grijpstra’s booming voice dominating the health officers farther down the house. If they weren’t around he could make the girl right on the stairs, dead mother or no dead mother. He could feel his lips stretching into a sneer. A most unbecoming thought. A policeman is a public servant. But the fact was mat the girl wakened nothing in him, nothing at all. And he was sure she was lying. Gabrielle should have heard her mother scream as she fell down the stairs. But there was the gale. Perhaps its noise had drowned the scream. The gale seemed to have found the street at that very moment, and he could hear its deep, menacing, sonorous whoosh and the rattle of parked cars being pushed into each other.
“Sergeant?”
De Gier looked up. “Yes, Grijpstra?”
“Would you go and fetch the commissaris? I phoned the experts, they’ll come down as soon as they get their gear together. The doctor is on his way too.”
“Sure.”
“And get Cardozo too if you can. He’s off duty tonight, he’s visiting friends, but his mother gave me the address, it’s on the way. He knows you’re coming.”
The girl was still crying and hiding her face. Grijpstra’s eyebrows arched. De Gier shook his head silently. His mouth formed the word “lying.” Grijpstra nodded. De Gier got up and gestured invitingly. Grijpstra lowered his body slowly. The girl felt his bulk on the step and edged away.
“You can tell me what you told the sergeant, miss. Do you know what happened?”
The front door clicked behind de Gier. The health officers came and said good-bye. Grijpstra could hear the engines of the Volkswagen and the ambulance start as the gale breathed in for a second only to roar away at full strength.
“Miss?”
“She must have fallen down the stairs,” Gabrielle said.
“I think she worried about her azaleas and opened the garden door, and then the wind pulled the door out of her hands and she lost her balance.”
“Come with me, miss, please.”
He pulled her to her feet and she followed him down the corridor and into the large sitting room. He glanced at the room’s wall. A bookcase holding a beautifully bound encyclopedia, brand-new and never used. A row of artbooks, just as new. A flower arrangement. A modern painting. There was a thick wall-to-wall carpet under his feet, off-white to set off the darker furniture. A showroom designed by an interior decorator. The porch was more personal, with a battered old TV on a cane table and some easy chairs that looked ugly and comfortable.
“Your mother liked to sit on the porch miss?”
“Yes. She had it glassed in when she moved here, some ten years ago, I think. She was always here, it’s the only part of the house that wasn’t redecorated. And my apartment, of course. I did that myself after the carpenters were done.”
Grijpstra had opened the garden door. “There’s no wind here, miss. These gardens are well protected. The houses won’t let the gale in. See?”
“Yes.”
“So how did your mother fall down the stairs?” Grijpstra’s voice was kind and puzzled. He looked solid, trustworthy, fatherly. He was very concerned. “Now how could such an awful accident have happened? Your mother knew these stairs well, didn’t she? Did she like gardening?”
“Yes.”
“She planted those bushes over there, didn’t she? Those are nice azaleas. Did she plant the hedge in the back as well?”
“Yes.”
Gabrielle wandered around the room dreamily. She reached for the wineglass on a low table near the TV. Grijpstra touched her arm. “Don’t touch anything, please, miss. We’ll have mat glass checked for fingerprints. Is mis your mother’s ring, miss?” He showed her a smooth gold wedding ring that was lying on a bare board near the garden door. She stooped.
“Don’t pick it up please, miss.”
“Yes, that’s my mother’s ring.”
“Did she play with it? Put it on and take it off when she was nervous?”
“No.”
“Did it fit tightly?”
She was crying, fighting the tears, biting on her handkerchief.
“I’m sorry, miss.”
The girl had sat down, and he sat down opposite her and rubbed his cheeks. He could do with a shave again, there hadn’t been much time mat morning. His wife had come into the bathroom and he wanted to get away, so he had done a sloppy job. He would do better later on, she would be asleep by then. The thought of scalding hot water soaking into the stubby folds and the neat strokes of a new razor blade cheered him up somewhat. He didn’t like cornering the girl. De Gier thought she was lying, and she very likely was. But there could be extenuating circumstances. A drunken, nagging mother, wailing, screaming. A family fight. A push. Most anything can be explained and understood, if not accepted. But if mere had been a struggle it would be better for the girl to admit to it, now, when everything was still fresh. It would look better in court. But he wasn’t going to feed her a confession. Perhaps the commissaris would. He would wait.
The girl looked up. “I don’t want to cry.”
“No, miss, I understand. Perhaps we can have some coffee. I’ll make it if you tell me where everything is.”
“No. I can do it.”
He followed her to the kitchen and stood around while she worked. Her movements were organized, efficient.
The percolator began to gurgle, then throb. She was staring out at the garden when he began to look for the garbage container. He found it fitted into a cupboard under the sink, attached to the cupboard door. There was another wineglass in die plastic bag protecting the container. The glass had broken at the stem. It was of the same type as the glass he had seen on the table near the TV. He took a long-handled fork lying on the kitchen counter and poked around in the bag. There were several cigar stubs, each stub connected to a plastic mouthpiece, and some cigar ash. The ashtray stood on the counter. It had been cleaned.
A visitor after all. There was no lipstick on the mouthpieces and both Gabrielle and her mother used lipstick. Women smoked cigars these days, and the cigars would have been long and very thin. De Gier sometimes smoked cigars like that; de Gier was vain. A vain male visitor. But who isn’t vain?
I am not vain, Grijpstra thought, looking down at his crumpled suit. The suit was made of excellent British material, pure wool, dark blue with a fine white stripe. He was vain enough to buy expensive suits, always of the same type, but he treated them badly. All right, he would admit to some vanity. Still, he wouldn’t smoke sissy cigars with imitation mouthpieces. No, perhaps he would. If he could afford them. They would go with his suit. He breathed heavily so that the air burbled past bis pressed lips. Nothing was ever easy. Suspects lie and hide their emotions. Clues aren’t seen or get lost. De Gier thought the girl was lying and he was following the sergeant, but why should he? The sergeant’s impressions were sieved through the sergeant’s own perceptions, forced into shapes, twisted out of truth perhaps.
A man visits Elaine Carnet. Elaine is all dressed up in a long flowered dress. A summer evening. She has done everything possible to doll herself up. She is a woman and she won’t admit to getting old. How old would she be? Early fifties? Yes, most likely. She waits for the man in the intimacy of her porch. She gets up, walks around carefully, her dress rustles. A whiff of perfume pervades the room. The azaleas are blooming behind her. The setting sun touches the tops of the poplars and elms and drooping willows. That’s what she had anticipated but instead there is a storm, a horrible oppressive atmosphere that creeps into everything, into her very soul, into the mind of the man. They drink wine together, a strong Beaujolais, and die storm gets into the wine too and turns it into a violent brew that seeps into their thoughts. She talks to him. Her voice is raw and cutting. She talks about the past. She twists off her wedding ring and flings it on the floor. A sudden accusation hurts the man to the quick, and he throws his cigar into the ashtray and jumps up and grabs her by the neck and shakes her. The garden door is open and he sees it and pushes her and lets go. And then he leaves.
The girl’s eyes were resting on Grijpstra’s face.
“Yes, miss?”
“The coffee is ready. I’ll take it to the porch.”
“Please, miss.”
He sipped the coffee and went through the fabricated scene again. It fitted all the facts. But he wouldn’t ask any more questions now. The girl seemed in a steady frame of mind again.
The bell rang and the girl went to open the door. She came back followed by de Gier, who introduced her to die commissaris and Cardozo. Grijpstra got up and offered his chair to the commissaris, who accepted gratefully and lowered his frail body carefully into its rumpled cushions. Cardozo, looking even more boyish and flushed than usual, brought in a chair from the living room and gave it to Grijpstra and went back to fetch stools for de Gier and himself.
“Well, miss. This is a bad business.” said the commissaris. “My sergeant has been telling me about it in die car We are sorry to bother you, but do you feel you are ready to answer some questions? We’ll be as quick as we can.”
His pale, almost colorless eyes glinted behind the round gold-rimmed spectacles. His thin hands were holding his knees. He looked neat and harmless in his worn but recently pressed three-piece suit. A gold watch chain spanned his slightly protruding stomach, and the perfectly knotted tie and thinning hair combed into two equal halves perfected the image of a kind but exact person of authority, a headmaster, a miniature patriarch even.
“Perhaps you would like some coffee, sir, Miss Carnet has just made some. Excellent coffee.”
“That would be very nice but perhaps Miss Carnet shouldn’t bother. Cardozo can get it.”
Gabrielle got up to show Cardozo the kitchen and the commissaris turned quickly. “Anything of interest, Grijpstrar
He listened as he was told about the wedding ring, the second wineglass, and the cigar stubs.
“Any theory, adjutant?”
“A visitor, male presumably. An argument. We don’t know about Mrs. Carnet’s marital status yet.”
“You haven’t asked?”
“The girl was very nervous, sir. I waited for you.”
“Good.”
The commissaris’s hands moved up and squeezed his thin thighs.
“How are you feeling, sir?”
“It was a bad attack, adjutant, rheumatism in its pure and vilest form, but I think the crisis has passed. The sergeant thought the girl was lying. What do you think?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
The coffee came. The commissaris talked about the gale. De Gier’s car had been the only vehicle on the trip back. Fallen trees and overturned cars everywhere. Cap-sized trucks even. And die gale still in full force.
“Did you hear the news, sir?”
“Yes, it’s bad, but the dikes are holding so far. The army is moving out to help, but we may be flooded by tomorrow. How far are we below sea level here?”
The opinions ranged from ten to thirty feet. The commissaris tittered. He seemed truly amused. The titter loosened the room’s murky atmosphere. De Gier laughed and the girl smiled. Cardozo looked surprised and pulled his long curly hair.