“And what did Mr. de Bree say?”
“He didn’t say very much. sir. He slammed the door in my face after telling me not to bother him and that he had had nothing to do with the damn dog.”
“Hmm.” The commissaris still looked fierce. “Ah, there we are. Nice fresh coffee, I can smell it. Just the thing on a horrible night like this.”
Gabrielle smiled. Only one shaded light had been switched on and her small shape blended well with the exotic background of the fairly large room. An Arab princess entertaining important visitors. The commissaris smiled too, the thought had cheered him up. She had gone to great trouble to decorate the room; he wondered what her daydreams were like. She seemed to be living by herself, for there was no trace of a man’s presence. A very feminine room. He remembered de Gier’s remark about drugs, the sergeant could be right. The commissaris had been in the rooms of junkies often, far too often. Junkies like the Middle and Far East and imitate their, to them, bizarre environment. He had noticed the torn Persian carpets and dirty cushions bought at the flea market, but this room looked both expensive and clean. Junkies are messy, Gabrielle was not. Junkies also like a profusion of plants and any number of trinkets, small objects strewn about. No, this room was different. He saw the neat row of potted house plants on the windowsill and a bookcase filled with paperbacks arranged according to their color.
Tell me about your mother, Miss Carnet, what was she liker
Gabrielle didn’t respond. She ws trying to but no words came, her small hands gestured vaguely.
“Your father?’
The hands balled and then relaxed suddenly. “Mother was never married. I don’t know who my father is. I don’t think she knew either, the subject was never mentioned. If I brought it up she would evade my questions, so I gave up.”
“I see. Your name is French, isn’t it? Carnet, I can’t recall ever having heard it before.”
“Belgian. Mother was bom in Brussels but she lived in Paris for some time. Her father ran away and she had to support herself and her mother. We haven’t been very lucky with men in the family.”
Her voice was light, conversational. There seemed to be no grudge in it.
“And how did your mother support herself in Paris?”
“She sang. There’s a stack of old records downstairs, she was famous once. She sang chansons in nightclubs, just after the war, for a few years. She did very well until she became pregnant.”
The commissaris’s brain produced a small question but he didn’t ask it. There was no point in asking; Gabrielle wouldn’t know the answer. Pregnancy can be solved by abortion. An abortion in Paris wouldn’t have presented a large problem. Did Elaine Carnet have hopes of marrying the father of her child? There was a wedding ring on the floor of the porch below. Had the father bought the ring or had Elaine Camet got it herself, later, after she had given up all hope?
“Yes,” he said. “And then your mother came to Holland?”
“Yes, my grandmother had friends here but they are dead now, my grandmother is dead too. Mother liked it here, she never left.”
“And she sang again?”
“No. She has a business, Carnet and Company. The company sells furniture, Italian furniture mostly. Mother made some good contacts, and she used to be very energetic. She had saved money from her singing and she was looking around for a way to invest it, and then she saw an advertisement of some Italian firm that wanted to have an agent here. The Italians spoke French and Mother spoke French too, of course, and she went to Milan and got the agency and bought some stock and she was lucky, I think.
The firm does very well now. Oh!” The hand had come up suddenly and covered her mouth.
Cardozo jumped up, but the commissaris touched his leg and he sat down again.
“Yes, miss?”
“Mr. Bergen. He will be very upset about Mother. He is her partner, you see. I should have called him.”
“Perhaps you should call him tomorrow. With mis weather he’ll be better off at home. Does Mr. Bergen live in Amsterdam?”
“Yes, but on the other side of the city.”
“We shouldn’t disturb him then. Did your mother start the business with him?”
“He came in a little later. She started on her own and he was working for another firm selling furniture. I think they met somewhere and she offered him a job on commission and he did well. Later he became a director and a partner; she gave him a quarter of the shares.”
“Mr. Bergen is married, is he?”
“Yes.”
The commissaris shifted on his cushion. “I am sorry, miss. You don’t have to answer the question if you don’t want to. Did your mother have any close friends? Men, I mean.”
She giggled. Cardozo hunched his shoulders. He had been watching the girl carefully, fascinated by her flowing hair and startling green eyes and firm breasts, but he had reminded himself that he was a police officer and that the girl had just lost her mother, by an accident or otherwise. Her purring voice had set off tiny ripples below the skin of his back. He had been impressed by the room and the way the girl’s small body controlled the room. He had had the feeling that he had been venturing out into a new world, a world of beautiful sadness, of delicate shades of emotion that he didn’t usually come into contact with. But the girl’s giggle broke his rapture. The giggle was almost coarse, exciting on another scale, the excitement of a low bar with a juke box going and beer slopped into cheap straight glasses.
“Yes. Mother had a lover but the affair broke up. He came for several years “
“His name, miss?”
“Vleuten, Jan Vleuten, but everybody calls him the baboon, the blond baboon.”
“You liked him?” The question was irrelevant at that point and came up suddenly, but the giggle had shaken the commissaris too.
“Oh, yes.”
“But the connection broke up, you said. When was that, miss?”
“About two years ago, I think. She would still see him occasionally but then it stopped altogether. He worked for the company, but when he left the affair ended too.”
“I see. Well, I think we can go now. We have to see you a few more times, but that will be later. You need a good rest now. You’re sure that your mother didn’t have a visitor tonight, aren’t you, miss? If we knew she had and we knew who the visitor was our work would be easier and take up less time.”
“I don’t know, there was only one glass on the table when I came down. I didn’t hear the bell, but I may have been in the kitchen here when the bell rang. It isn’t a very loud bell.”
Cardozo jumped up again. “Shall I check the bell, sir?”
“No, that’s all right. Thanks for the coffee, miss.” The commissaris was attempting to get up and his face grimaced with pain. Cardozo helped him to his feet.
\\\\\ 3 /////
The Commissaris wouldnt let Gabrielle accompany him to the front door but said good-bye at die door of her room. He held her shoulder lightly as he said his good-night, having nudged Cardozo into the direction of the staircase. There was a gentleness in his touch that seemed to reach her. She no longer purred; her voice had become slightly hoarse instead. She left the door open as she walked back into her room and he closed it, for he had heard the constables come in to fetch the corpse. They were maneuvering awkwardly, bumping the stretcher against a wall. A trickle of water ran from die sodden body and the head flopped. The victory that Grijpstra had seen in Elaine earner’s face earlier in the night was still there, but the joyous expression wasn’t very substantial as her head moved past the commissaris. A thin victory, reached through great agony, the agony of a useless life. The commissaris had only a glimpse of the victim, but the moment cut into his perception and the shock bared his long yellowish teem and aggravated the cold pain in his legs so mat he stumbled and had to support himself against a wall.
Death was his game, of course, and as the officer in charge of Amsterdam’s murder brigade he dealt with it continuously, but he had never made his peace with death. On a few occasions he had seen people die and seen fear change into surprise, a surprise mingled with horror. This was the first time he had seen surprise mingled with joy, or was joy the wrong definition?