The detective’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Conrad. ‘I’ll answer your questions now. I won’t sign a statement, and I won’t guarantee that I will testify in a criminal court; somehow I think someone will find a way to stop me, don’t you?’
The detective grunted, stubbed out his cigarette in one of the ashtrays, lit another, and as an afterthought offered Conrad one, which Conrad took. He pulled out a torn notebook.
‘Very well. Take me through what you did since you arrived in Holland on the seventh of November.’
Conrad answered all the detective’s questions. Van Gils’s English was good, although Conrad had to pause from time to time to clarify some of his responses. Conrad realized that he was giving away information that was supposed to be secret, but it was information that he was pretty sure both the British and German intelligence services knew already, as did the Dutch probably. He told van Gils about meeting Theo in Leiden, then about travelling to Venlo with Payne Best, Stevens and Klop, about the kidnapping of the British agents, about his return to Holland to see Theo again, and his travel onwards to Paris to check up on one of Theo’s agents. Van Gils didn’t ask him to be specific about the agent, or about the peace negotiations, and so the issue of plots to overthrow Hitler, real or fake, didn’t come up.
The detective asked some questions about Constance Scott-Dunton: who was she, what was her relationship with Millie, why were they travelling together? Conrad told van Gils what he could, including that Constance was a friend of Sir Henry Alston, who was an ally of his father in the quest for peace with Germany.
Then Conrad asked something himself. ‘Why all these questions? I thought you had evidence that Millie’s killer was Theo von Hertenberg.’
Van Gils snorted. ‘It all depends what you call evidence.’
‘What do you call evidence?’ Conrad asked.
The detective took a pull at his cigarette, examining Conrad. ‘You really don’t know much about all this, do you?’
‘No,’ said Conrad.
‘Well. Firstly, Mrs Scott-Dunton says she saw Hertenberg heading towards the tram stop from the sand dunes a few minutes after she had discovered Millie’s body. She was confident, and seemed to have convinced my military intelligence colleagues, but not me. She might have seen someone who looked a lot like Theo, but she cannot be certain it was him.’
‘But then another witness came forward?’ said Conrad.
‘Yes. A walker says he saw Theo hurrying through the dunes with blood on his hands.’
Conrad’s heart sank. ‘That sounds convincing. Constance told me Theo had arranged to meet Millie in the dunes that morning.’
‘It doesn’t sound convincing to me,’ said the inspector. ‘I haven’t interviewed the walker — I wasn’t allowed to — I just have a copy of his statement.’ Van Gils reached into the file and extracted a sheet of paper. ‘A Mr Frank Donkers. He’s not a local, he’s from Eindhoven. Apparently it was only after he returned home that he heard about the murder and got in touch with us, which explains the delay in coming forward. Or it’s one explanation.’ Van Gils snorted. ‘And that detail about his hands being covered with blood. Really! I think Mr Donkers has been watching too many Shakespeare plays.’
‘You said that’s one explanation. What might another be?’
‘It took them a day or two to manufacture him.’
‘“Them”? Who are “them”?’
‘I don’t know. Our people. Your people. Maybe even the Germans’ people.’
‘But why would they manufacture evidence?’
‘Who knows?’ said van Gils. ‘Perhaps it was just convenient to blame the German secret service, and then diplomatically forget what happened. I don’t know. But I do know that Hertenberg being the murderer does not fit with the one piece of hard evidence we do have.’
‘Which is?’
Van Gils puffed at his cigarette, clearly turning over in his mind whether to pass on to Conrad what he knew.
Conrad waited as the detective stubbed out his old cigarette and lit the fifth of the interview.
‘The knife in your sister’s chest,’ he said at last.
‘It had fingerprints on it?’ Conrad asked.
The inspector shook his head. ‘No, it was wiped clean. But an identical knife had been taken the day before from the kitchens of the Hotel Kurhaus, where both your sister and Mrs Scott-Dunton were staying.’
‘Really?’ said Conrad. ‘Is that why you were asking me about Constance?’
‘Absolutely. It certainly raises questions about her. Did she have a motive? Did she dislike your sister? Was she jealous of Hertenberg? Constance mentioned that Millie and Hertenberg had some kind of romantic attachment.’
Conrad shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. I have no reason to think so. Did you question Constance?’
‘Oh, yes. She denied all knowledge of the knife, which was hardly surprising.’
‘Could someone else have taken the knife from the kitchens?’
‘It seems unlikely that a professional spy like Hertenberg would do that. He would have his own knife, one would think.’
‘Unless he was trying to put blame on Mrs Scott-Dunton?’
Van Gils shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘You must have seen plenty of suspects lie in the past,’ Conrad said. ‘Was Constance lying? Perhaps she never saw Theo after all?’
‘I certainly have,’ said van Gils. ‘But actually, she was quite convincing. She is a strange woman, Mrs Scott-Dunton, very strange. She comes across as a naive, innocent English girl. She is very young, only twenty-three, and yet there is something else there, a kind of suppressed excitement. Passion. Most un-English.’
‘So you couldn’t arrest her?’
Van Gils smiled. ‘No. I couldn’t even keep her in the country. Remember “my colleagues”, as you called them, had informed me they had evidence that Miss de Lancey had been murdered by a German spy. Hertenberg.’
‘And you don’t believe them?’
‘Not one bit. They let her go back to England. The investigation died. Our spies are happy and I suspect yours are too.’
Could it have been Constance? Conrad wondered. There was certainly something distinctly odd about her. But why would she want to kill Millie? That was something Conrad could try to find out back in England, perhaps with Anneliese’s help.
‘There isn’t any chance that they could be right after all? That Theo von Hertenberg murdered her? Did you speak to him?’
‘In theory there is a chance. We did ask to see him at the German Embassy. He wouldn’t cooperate; he invoked diplomatic immunity, unsurprisingly. He was staying at the Hotel du Vieux Doelen in The Hague that evening, and flew to Berlin the following morning from Schiphol Airport. He has been flying back and forth a lot in the last few weeks. No one whom we spoke to, including the hotel staff on duty, saw him leave his hotel early that morning. Just this mysterious Mr Donkers whom I am not allowed to interview. And of course, if Hertenberg never left the hotel, then it implies he never arranged to meet Millie in the dunes in the first place.’
As Conrad considered the detective’s words, a surge of relief flooded through him; he had hated the idea that Theo could have murdered Millie. He much preferred the possibility that Constance had stabbed her. But perhaps that was too much to hope and he was fooling himself.
He would have plenty of questions himself for Theo when they met the following day in Leiden.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ The detective’s eyes narrowed again.
‘Can you arrange for Millie’s body to be sent back to England? I assume you have already performed a post-mortem.’
‘We have,’ said van Gils. ‘It shows what one would expect: your sister died from stab wounds to the chest. But I am sorry. Technically the case is still open and the investigation is continuing, although in practice they expect me to do nothing more. But it means we cannot release the body, at least for now.’ The policeman sounded genuinely regretful.