“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.”
“I won’t give you any cigarettes,” she said firmly, “unless…”
“I’ll kiss you,” de Gier said. “How’s that?”
“On your knees!”
“What?”
“On your knees!”
De Gier looked around. There was nobody in sight in the long corridor. He dropped onto his knees.
“Repeat after me: ‘I am a male chauvinist!’”
“I am a male chauvinist.”
She opened her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. De Gier looked at the brand. It was the wrong brand. Long and thin and low on tar and tasteless and with noted filters that would let the smoke drift away before it could reach his mouth. His lips curled down, but she was watching his face, so he smiled pleasingly.
“I’ll give you four, that’s all you’re worth.” She counted mem out on his palm.
“Well, well, well,” Grijpstra said.
The girl was on her way, her heels tapping firmly on the thick linoleum of the corridor. De Gier had got up.
“Well what, adjutant? I was out of cigarettes.”
Grijpstra’s grin was still spreading. “Ha!”
“Ha what, adjutant?”
“Pity Cardozo wasn’t here. There he is! Late again, always late.”
Cardozo looked at his watch. “Five to nine, adjutant.”
“Nevermind.”
They went in together. Cardozo was sent out to buy coffee and to pay for it out of his own pocket. De Gier puffed on his cigarette, threw it on the floor, and stamped on it. Cardozo came back.
“Give me your pouch, Cardozo, and some cigarette paper and a light.”
Cardozo put the coffee mugs down and fished a crumpled plastic pouch of shag tobacco from his pocket. “Do you want me to smoke it for you too, sergeant?”
De Gier reached out and took the pouch. The three men smoked and drank coffee and stared at each other. Grijpstra sighed. “Well…”
“Yes?”
“It seems the case is solved. I saw the commissaris’s secretary just now. The old man has gone to Milano, he’s due back tomorrow. He telephoned her last night and wanted Papa Pullini’s number in Sesta San Giovanni, a little town close to Milano. The round-trip ticket to Milano must cost a bit of money and he wouldn’t be wasting it, would he now?”
De Gier stretched and began to cough. He glared at Cardozo. “Terrible tobacco, you should change your brand.” Cardozo tried to say something but winced instead.
“Right,” de Gier said. “So Francesco is our man, as we nought, but there’s still a chance that we’re wrong, for the commissaris could be wrong too.”
Grijpstra yawned.
“Small chance, but still… Let’s go through it again: Why did we pick Francesco?”
“We picked Francesco,” Grijpstra said patiently, “for a number of reasons, all of them flimsy and none of them good enough to stand up in court.”
“Let’s have the reasons.”
“O.K. We agreed that whoever smokes long thin cigars with plastic mouthpieces made to resemble ivory must be a vain man. We had three suspects, apart from Gabrielle. All the suspects were vain. Bergen is a nicely dressed gentleman if he isn’t going to pieces in the privacy of his own home. The baboon is a strange-looking man, but he takes great care about the way he looks, and Francesco dries and sets his lovely hair with a dryer and sports a silk dressing gown. All three suspects are vain, but Francesco wins the race. A very faint hint, but something to go on if we can bring up supporting hints.
“A man who pushes a lady down the stairs is violent We couldn’t picture Bergen pushing Elaine and we had trouble imagining the baboon in that position. The baboon is violent, for he got you in the river, but you are a man, not a nicely dressed lady in her own house. Francesco could be an excitable young fellow and he had some sort of motive. He thought the Carnet firm owed him eighty thousand guilders and we knew that Elaine Carnet took out eighty thousand in cash from her company’s bank account.
The figures tally, she had the money the evening of her death, and Francesco could have visited her. Suppose she showed him the money but wouldn’t give it to him so he jumps her, right?”
“Hmm.”
“It was your idea,” Grijpstra said, “and I agreed with it. Eighty thousand guilders form a motive. What motives could Bergen and the baboon have?”
“The wedding ring.”
“Yes, sergeant, a powerful indication. A wedding ring on the floor and the lady was never married. Yet she wore a ring. And she threw it on the floor that evening; it didn’t just drop off her finger. Marriage, love or the lack of love.”
“Humiliation,” de Gier said.
“Exactly. Women like to humiliate men these days. You were on the corridor’s floor a little while ago, groveling. You wanted a cigarette, I believe, and the girl was using her power.”
“What?” Cardozo had jumped up. “The sergeant on the floor? What happened?”
“If you had been on time you would have seen what was happening. A female constable had our sergeant on the floor, on his knees, whining.”
“Really?”
“Let it go,” de Gier said, 1 was only play-acting. You’re right about the humiliation. So you’re saying mat Elaine Carnet had her future killer in a position where he felt silly and his pathetic predicament had something to do with her wedding ring. But Francesco is a young man, he couldn’t have made Elaine Carnet pregnant way back in nineteen forty-five or forty-six.”
“Papa Pullini could have. Papa Pullini is a businessman and he was a businessman in nineteen forty-five too. He must have traveled. We know he speaks French, Bergen told us so. Maybe he went to Paris, strayed into a nightclub, saw the beautiful singer, bought her a bunch of roses, started a romance.”
“So she waits thirty years and revenges herself on Papa Pullini’s son, is that what you’re saying?”
Grijpstra got up and walked over to the window.
“Very weak,” de Gier said softly. “Now what if Bergen was the wicked father? Or the baboon? They’re the right age.”
Grijpstra turned around. “I know. But the commissaris went to Milano. I thought of Bergen too, but why would she pick him as a business partner? And the same goes for the baboon. She worked with both men for many years. Why would she work with a man, and allow him to share her profits, if she had every reason to despise that man? And where do the eighty thousand guilders fit in? And the twenty thousand that the baboon borrowed and returned? That money does exist. Did you count the money Gabrielle showed to you, Cardozo?”