"Did you hit him?"
"I threw a book at his head."
"A heavy book?"
"Yes, a dictionary."
"Did it hit him?"
She didn't answer. He took her by the hand and they went upstairs. The dictionary was on the floor of Piet's room. There were other books on the floor as well.
"Can you remember whether it hit him? Did he fall over?"
"I don't know," Th amp;ese said. "I walked out of the room and slammed the door. I never looked around."
De Gier rephrased his question in several ways but got nowhere. She hadn't hung Piet. When he asked her she began to laugh, through her tears.
De Gier tore a sheet of paper from a notebook on the table and wrote a short statement. He read it to her and asked her to sign.
"You don't really think I hung him, do you?" she asked. De Gier didn't answer but telephoned Headquarters and was connected with Grijpstra. Grijpstra played his drums and spoke at the same time, the telephone hooked between his head and his shoulder.
"I am coming," Grijpstra said.
'Take the car," said de Gier, "it's a long walk," and hung up.
"The noose," he said to the girl. "Did you know that there was a noose in the room and someone had screwed a hook into one of the beams supporting the ceiling?"
"That hook has always been there," Therese said. "Piet used to have a mask hanging from that hook but it frightened me when I was on the settee with him and then he sold it. And that noose is nothing but an ordinary bit of rope isn't it? We have a lot of that sort of rope in the house. Piet used to import foods from Japan and it would come in lovely little casks, wound with rope. We used to take it off and use it for decoration. The noose was made with it."
"Did you see the noose?" de Gier asked quickly.
"No," the girl said. "Van Meteren told me."
"You think he committed suicide?" de Gier asked.
The girl looked indifferent. "It wouldn't surprise me. He wasn't quite right in the head, I think. When his wife left him he complained terribly. Even to me, while we were in bed together."
"What else did he complain about?" de Gier asked.
"Anything you like to mention. The purpose of life, and enlightenment. He thought he wasn't enlightened. He should be, he said, for he had lived according to the rules, but nothing had happened."
"Enlightenment?" asked de Gier.
"Yes," Th6rese said. "It always made me think of light bulbs. Buddhists, and Hindus too, I think, claim that you will be enlightened if you live according to the right rules. You should do everything you have to do as well as you can and meditate a lot and gradually you will begin to understand all sorts of things you never did before and you'll have visions, I believe. I don't know anything about it really. But I thought that enlightenment meant happiness, and absence of problems, and I think Piet thought that way too from the way he talked. But he kept all his problems, he said. And he didn't know what he was doing wrong."
"Suicide doesn't seem to be very Buddhist to me," de Gier said, "or Hindistic, or what he called it. A man who commits suicide stops trying and if you give up trying you won't get anywhere. Or not?"
Thgrese had sat down on the settee and rubbed her eyes. "Piet said that there had been Japanese, Samurai or monks, I can't remember what, who had committed suicide because they had found themselves to be in a hopeless situation. Then it's all right, he said. Admirable even. But you have to do it in the right way. First you have to clean your body and your spirit and then you have to find a quiet spot and meditate for a while and then, when everything has become very quiet and you have said goodbye, in your mind, to all you love, you can do it."
De Gier thought about the crease in Piet's trousers, the combed hair, the beautiful mustache.
"What did you think of Piet's religion?" he asked. "This Hindism?"
"Bah," the girl said, "it made me puke. He talked such a lot of rot. Nothing really exists. Everything is illusion, everything changes and comes to an end. Life is a dream and nothing matters. It seems real but it isn't."
De Gier thought.
"But that could be true," he said.
"It is true," the girl said, "but you shouldn't hear P. et saying it. If one really knows that nothing is important and that we are only here to perform some sort of exercise (he used to say that as well), then one doesn't behave the way Piet behaved."
"And how did he behave?"
"In a silly way," Therese said. "Boring, depressive. He was very attached to property as well. He always said that property was just an idea and didn't matter and that we only have things so that we can use them and enjoy them, but that we should always be detached from them. But he was attached to every bit of furniture in the house, every book, every record. If you borrowed from him you would have to return it almost immediately. I never had a chance to finish a book. And he never gave anything away. He gave me things when he was trying to make me but I had to give it all back to him later. A little statue, a few shells, a record. I might as well give it back, he said, then we could share it. And he was always cleaning and polishing his car. And every day he calculated the exact worth of the Society. He was the Society. We were members but we weren't allowed to really touch it. Even when we went to the little house he bought in the south he checked the food we took with us and if he thought it was too much he would take it from the bag and put it back on the shelf. But when he went himself he took all he wanted."
De Gier shook his head.
"But if you disliked him so much, then why did you go to bed with him?"
Therese began to cry again.
"I don't know," she said. "Why did I? He kept on coming to my room and I don't make contact easily with people. When a man smiles at me I never know what to do. And men are always so difficult, they flirt and make silly jokes and Piet didn't. He said he wanted to go to bed with me and asked me to take my clothes off. The first few times I said 'No' but one evening I did."
Not bad, de Gier thought. He had heard about the method but had never met it in actual life. Perhaps I should try it on the girl in the bus, de Gier thought. I look her straight in the face and say "Miss, my name is Rinus de Gier. I want to go to bed with you. Here is my card. Could you come to my flat tonight? I'll be home from seven P.M. onward but don't come after eleven for then I am usually asleep."
"Are you listening to me?" Theiese asked.
"Sure, sure," de Gier said.
"Can I go then? Or do you still think that I hung Piet?"
"You can go," de Gier said. "If anything comes up I'll phone you. I have your address and your number."
"What could come up?" Theiese asked. "Piet is dead and I am pregnant and I must find a way to stop being pregnant."
Grijpstra had come in and de Gier told him what he had found out.
"Well, well," Grijpstra said, "throwing books, hey?"
Therese said nothing.
"Never mind," Grijpstra said. "Have a good trip to Rotterdam," and he gave the girl a kind look.
Together they searched the house again, room by room. They had plenty of time and worked slowly. They were disturbed by voices and went to investigate. The men from the city's health service had come to collect Mrs. Verboom. They were going to take her to a clinic for neuroses, near the coast.
Mrs. Verboom allowed herself to be taken away quietly. She didn't recognize the detectives. Van Meteren had given her another Palfium tablet and the old lady was only partly conscious and could hardly walk. Van Meteren carried her bag.
"How did you manage that so quickly?" de Gier asked when van Meteren returned.
"The physician helped. He wanted Mrs. Verboom to go to a clinic anyway and now that Piet isn't here to frustrate the idea it was very easy. She'll never be allowed to live in a normal house again. She is really mad, you know."