“You were saying, sir?” de Gier asked again as they found each other under the striped awning of the hotel’s entrance.
“Well, he might be lying. Or giving his version of the truth, which would also be lying. The truth is hard to catch. He has no alibi. He visited some bars. He walked around. So he says.”
De Gier mumbled agreeably.
“Next!” The commissaris rubbed his hands. “The baboon’s turn. This Mr. Vleuten may be a more interesting suspect. Had an affair with the lady and stepped out of it. Also stepped out of his job. He doesn’t have to worry about any continuations for he broke his connection. He isn’t expecting us, is he?”
“No, sir. I have his address, that’s all. We can jump him the way we jumped Francesco just now.”
They got into the car. “Jump him,” the commissaris said. “I never know which attack is most effective. Sometimes it may be better to set up an appointment and let them work themselves into a cold sweat. But when we jump them they can’t lie so easily.” He picked up the microphone.
“CID here, headquarters?”
“Headquarters, sir.”
“Any messages for me?”
“Yes, sir. Would you phone your secretary, please?”
The commissaris pushed the microphone back into its clip and got out again. De Gier waited behind the wheel.
“Yes, dear?”
“There was a call just now from Carnet and Company, sir, Miss Gabrielle Carnet, she left two messages. Mr. Bergen has become ill and went to see his doctor. It seems he has some facial paralysis that may be serious and he has gone to a hospital to see a specialist.”
“That’s bad, dear, but it was very nice of Miss Carnet to let us know. What else?”
“She said that her mother took out eighty thousand guilders in cash from the company’s bank account yesterday, sir. Mr. Bergen found out this morning, after you and the sergeant left the Carnet office. He was very upset. Apparently it wasn’t customary for Mrs. Carnet to deal with the bank directly. If she wanted anything Mr. Bergen would do the necessary. And Mr. Bergen remembered your saying that you had only found a few hundred guilders in Mrs. Camet’s safe last night.”
“Thank you, dear. How did Gabrielle Carnet sound?”
“Cool, sir. A businesslike sort of voice.”
“Well, well, well. How are Cardozo and Grijpstra doing? Weren’t they supposed to visit Gabrielle? That won’t be necessary now for Miss Carnet is at her office, they’ll have to wait until this evening.”
“They are both out, sir. Cardozo has found witnesses to the dog poisoning and is now on street patrol, and Grijpstra is checking whether Mrs. Camet’s ring fits her finger tightly or not. He’ll be in the morgue but he should be back shortly.”
“Ha.” The commissaris rubbed his nose. “Ha. I think I’ll be coming back to headquarters. Grijpstra can take over from me.” As he walked back to the car he put out his left hand and said “Eighty thousand,” then he put out his right hand and repeated the amount.
“Very simple,” he added as he told his findings to de Gier. “Too simple, of course. But murder cases are simple sometimes. So suppose that Francesco went to see Elaine last night after all, and suppose he pushed her down the stairs and took her key from her purse and opened her safe. He did leave the household money, that was very decent of him.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound very convinced, sergeant?”
“No, sir. We know now that Mrs. Camet took out an amount identical to what her firm owed Francesco. Perhaps she took it out to give it to him. She may have taken it for a reason altogether detached from the case. The amount is big enough to buy a house, for instance, and I believe solicitors transacting real estate always demand payment in cash. According to Mr. Bergen, Mrs. Camet wasn’t interested in the day-to-day management of her company, maybe she didn’t even know what her firm owed Francesco. But if she did know she must have taken the money to pay him, and if she meant to pay him there was no reason to kill and rob her.”
'True.”
“But why would Mr. Bergen be suddenly suffering a facial paralysis, sir? Is he going to pieces because the police are questioning him?”
The commissaris grinned. “I knew you would say mat, sergeant, and the conclusion isn’t so far-fetched, but I think I know what is wrong with Mr. Bergen. I suffered from the same affliction some years ago. It is called Bell’s palsy. I thought I had had a stroke and fussed and ran to a specialist, but it wasn’t serious at all. An infection of the facial nerve: if the nerve doesn’t work half the face becomes paralyzed, the eyelid won’t close anymore, it becomes difficult to chew, and half the mouth droops, the way it does when you’ve been to the dentist. The paralysis wears off by itself, however, and the face becomes normal within a matter of weeks.”
“And what causes this palsy, sir? A nervous shock?”
“No, sergeant. A draft. I had been driving with an open window. Did you think the man was having a stroke?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe you were hoping that, eh, sergeant? Because you wanted to think that we had found our man.”
De Gier smiled apologetically.
They met Grijpstra in one of headquarters’ corridors. The adjutant held up the wedding ring. “Not a very tight fit, sir, but not a very loose one, either. The corpse was almost frozen, so maybe the experiment was without value. When I left her, her arms were sticking straight up as if she couldn’t bear my walking away. Brr. That morgue is a nasty place, sir. I saw at least ten bodies of young people dead of drug overdoses or malnutrition caused by drugs, and they were bringing in more as I left. The attendant said that they are mostly foreigners and all of them nameless and unclaimed.”
“Quite,” the commissaris said gently. “Let’s go to my office.” Cardozo’s report with the statements of the two old ladies was on his desk and he read it to the detectives.
“That sounds good enough, sir.”
“Yes. Tell you what, sergeant, why don’t you and the adjutant go and visit this baboon man now. I’ll raise Cardozo on the radio and visit Mr. de Bree with him. Cardozo has done good work so far and a visit may lead to the fruition of his efforts.”
They left the commissaris’s office together and the detectives watched their chief march to the radio room, a dapper little figure in a long empty corridor.
“There he goes.”
“There he goes. He seems a little fiercer than usual. What’s bothering him, do you think?”
Grijpstra shrugged. “Let’s catch that baboon.”
They got into the old-fashioned elevator.
“Now where would this ape fit in?”
“Baboons are randy animals. The ones I have seen in me zoo were always either actually busy with or seemed to be thinking about it. He could represent the sexual aspect of this disorder.”
“So could Francesco,” de Gier said as they entered the garage. “A beautiful little Italian, they are very popular with our womenfolk.”
Grijpstra wasn’t listening.
“Baboons are dangerous too, he may rush us. Are you armed?’
“Of course. I’ll drop him the minute I see his tail twitch.”
They were both grinning when they got into the Volkswagen, but they were discussing lunch by then, and mean-while, back in the morgue, Elaine Garnet’s arms still reached for the ceiling while a grumbling attendant was trying to push her box back into the refrigerator.
\\\\\ 9 /////
Grupstras mouth opened foolishly as he watched the sergeant’s body float elegantly through the fresh wind-swept air above the Amstel River, and it snapped shut as de Gier hit the river’s greenish, garbage-littered surface and broke through it and disappeared. A disorganized swirl of bobbing objects remained. Grijpstra saw the bottletops, condoms, beer cans, and torn stems of waterweeds taking position in a more or less defined circle that moved to the quayside, and he cursed. Then he jumped. But he jumped away from the river and when he landed he ran. The Volkswagen wasn’t too far off. The radio came on as he poked its button and the microphone’s cord nearly broke as he yanked it free.