“Do you mind if we come in, Mr. Bergen? We’re sorry having to disturb you again today, but we won’t be long.”
Bergen stepped back and they walked through a hall, stumbling over a pair of rubber boots and two or three coats dropped on the floor, and stopped in the corridor. The door to the kitchen was ajar, and Grijpstra saw a heap of dirty dishes dumped into the sink. There was a smell of burned meat. Bergen passed them and opened the door to the living room. He was still holding his cheek. His voice sounded muffled and, after he dropped his hand, slurred. Grijpstra sniffed; there was no smell of alcohol.
Bergen shifted a pile of laundry on the settee and motioned for the commissaris to sit down. Grijpstra had found a leather recliner, next to a waste basket overflowing with crumpled newspapers topped by banana peels.
“Your wife isn’t back yet, Mr. Bergen?”
Bergen had found a chair too and faced die comraissaris dumbly.
The commissaris asked the question again.
“No. It’s a mess here. I’ve been camping out, more or less, waiting for her to come back. She won’t. There was a letter in the mail today, a lawyer’s letter. She wants a divorce.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Bergen muttered something.
“Pardon?”
“Can’t speak so well, paralysis, you know.” The word “paralysis” seemed to be causing him considerable trouble.
“It’s all right, sir, we can understand you. I must really apologize for this intrusion, but we’re still working on Mrs. Carnet’s death, as you will understand.”
Bergen’s round eye stared fiercely. “Any progress, commissaris?”
“Some, we hope. But what’s this about your face? Your office told us that you had some tests done this afternoon. The results are encouraging, I hope?”
“No.”
“Oh, dear.”
“No. Terrible day. This started last night but I didn’t think it was anything serious until this morning, and when I got to the hospital they told me they were busy and wouldn’t have time for me for a few days. I found a private clinic and the specialist said that I needed a skull photograph, an X-ray. Here.” He got up and rummaged through a stack of papers on a side table, impatiently tossing the top sheets on the ground. “Here. This isn’t the photograph but a report that has to do with it. They found a spot, a white spot, chalk, and they said there might be something behind it that they couldn’t see. Read it for yourself.”
The commissaris took the sheet and put on his glasses. He began to mumble bis way through the photocopy’s faint print. “Hmm. Technical talk. Let’s see. “The chloroid plexuses are calcified bilaterally, left greater than right. There is a small area of calcification that appears to be in contact with the right frontal calvarium and measured to be greater than one hundred seventy-five EMI density units.’ Hm hm. And here we seem to have some sort of conclusion. ‘In spite of this, the presence of a small underlying meningioma cannot be ruled out entirely.’”
He peered at Bergen over his glasses. “Is that so bad, Mr. Bergen? I’m afraid I don’t understand the terminology. It would just seem that they found a little chalk somewhere in your skull. What’s a meningioma?”
Bergen’s reply was unclear and he repeated it. “A tumor, and a tumor would mean cancer, brain cancer.”
The commissaris read on. “‘Further serial studies suggested.’” He gave the paper back and sat down. “Yes. So what they are saying is that the chalk could hide a tumor, and then perhaps we might assume that the tumor could indicate cancer. But there is no need to jump to conclusions. Were these further serial tests in fact done?”
“Not all of them. I’ll have to go again tomorrow and the neurologist said he would know then. I took this copy with me and showed it to my doctor but he wouldn’t say anything. They never do when they suspect cancer.”
“I see.”
The silence lasted for a while, and Bergen’s eye, the lid drawn away by the paralyzed nerve, kept on boring into the commissaris’s face.
“This really is not the time to disturb you, Mr. Bergen, and I’m sorry about coming here, but what can we do? You heard that Gabrielle located a hundred thousand guilders under her mother’s mattress?”
“Won’t do any good,” Bergen muttered. “She said she would pay it back into the company’s account. Eighty thousand; the rest she’ll keep, of course, that’s Elaine’s private money. But on top of everything else I had this letter delivered by messenger. A letter from the bank.”
He jumped up and began to look through the papers on the side table again. “You know what this is?”
“No idea, Mr. Bergen.”
“A note to say that the bank is curtailing the company’s credit. For a few years now the bank has let us borrow a million, and we have been using that credit, of course, and now they have decided to cut that in half. Any money paid in by us from now on will be taken out of our account until we have paid in half a million. They would send the letter today. With Elaine dead they’re worried about their pennies.”
The commissaris sat up and pushed his glasses back. “Really? They have no faith in your presidency of the company?”
“So it seems.” Bergen had dropped the letter on the floor. “The manager has come to see Elaine and me a couple of times this year. He had noticed that we were using our full credit continuously and he wasn’t impressed by my last balance sheet. I have been selling large quantities at minimal profit and we have a lot of stocks. 1 told him it was all right. I’m aiming for government business and the transactions are profitable, so why should he be anxious?”
“But he is, evidently.”
“An idiot.” Bergen’s mouth curved on one side. “A perfect idiot. He even suggested that we should hire the baboon again. I think he is a personal friend of Vleuten’s. He sort of suggested that we shouldn’t have fired the baboon and I told him that we never did, that the man left by his own free will, that he resigned.”
“The profit margin of your business was better when Mr. Vleuten was still on your staff?”
“Yes, but since then we have had more competition. Business always has its ups and downs. I am trying to get better prices from Pullini now and we have a new salesman on the road. The pendulum will swing back again. But it’s hard to convince a bank manager, and with Elaine’s death…”
“I see, a new factor to be considered or, rather, the lack of an old factor. Gabrielle will replace her mother, I imagine?”
“The bank is not impressed by Gabrielle.”
The commissaris sighed. “I see you have some problems, sir, but problems can be overcome. I’m sure you’ll find a way. Just one question before we go. Do you have any idea why Mrs. Carnet took out that eighty thousand on the day of her death?”
Bergen’s hands moved about on his skull. The silvery hair that had been so stately during their interview of the morning stood up in tufts. “No.”
“Carnet and Company owe that amount to Pullini, isn’t mat so?”
“Yes, but that had nothing to do with Elaine. She left the day-to-day management to me, she never interfered anymore. She did read our list of creditors every month and she may have known that eighty thousand was payable to Pullini, but why would she concern herself with that? And even if she did intend to pay mat debt, why would she pay it in cash? She could have given Pullini a check and he would have cashed the check himself. We don’t like to move banknotes around, nobody does.”
Grijpstra had gotten up and was looking out through the garden doors. An untidy collection of clumsily sawed logs was pushed against the low stone wall of the terrace. There were scattered and broken roof tiles on the terrace and red stains of crumbled bricks, knocked out by the tree’s falling trunk. He walked back to the center of the room and looked at Bergen’s trousers and hands. No, they were clean. Bergen hadn’t touched his tree today. But even so, the alibi was thin. The tree wouldn’t have taken all evening. He could have used his Volvo to visit Mrs. Carnet, a few minutes’ ride.