“So you were the same age, in other words?” said deBries.
“Not quite. I’m one year older. Born in thirty-five. Leopold in thirty-six. But we were in the same class even so. The village school combined three age streams per class in those days-I think they still do, in fact-so I remember him all right. You don’t forget five years in the same school so easily.”
“What impression did you have of him?”
“A loner,” said Irmgaard Gellnacht, without hesitation.
“Why are you so interested in him? Is it true what they are saying, that he’s dead?”
No doubt it will be in tomorrow’s papers anyway, deBries thought.
“We’d prefer not to comment on that, Mrs. Gellnacht,” he explained, holding a finger to his lips. “And we’d be grateful if you are discreet about our little chat.”
He thought that sounded a bit like a veiled threat, which was exactly what he had intended.
“No doubt he had some friends?” said Moreno.
Mrs. Gellnacht thought that over.
“No, I don’t think he did. Well, in the first year or two, perhaps. He used to go around a little with Pieter Wolenz, if I’m not mistaken, but then they moved. To Linzhuisen. I don’t think there was anybody after that.”
“Was he teased at all?” asked Moreno. “Bullied, as they say nowadays.”
She thought again.
“No,” she said eventually. “Not really. We had a sort of respect for him, despite everything, all of us. You tried not to fall out with him, in any case. He could get very angry, I recall.
He had a fiery temperament underneath that silent and sullen surface.”
“How did it make itself felt?”
“Excuse me?”
“This fiery temperament. What did he do?”
“Oh, I don’t really know,” she said hesitantly. “Some pupils were a bit afraid of him, there were a few fights, and he was strong, really strong, even though he certainly wasn’t especially big or powerful.”
“Can you remember any particular occasion?”
“No. . Wait a moment, yes, in fact. I remember he once threw a boy out a window when he lost his temper.”
“Out a window?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds. It was the ground floor, so it turned out all right.”
“I see.”
“Mind you, there was a bicycle rack outside, so he did injure himself slightly even so. . ”
DeBries nodded.
“What was the boy’s name?” asked Moreno.
“I can’t remember,” said Irmgaard Gellnacht. “Maybe it was one of the Leisse brothers. Or Kollerin, he’s the local butcher now. Yes, I think it was him.”
DeBries changed tack.
“Beatrice Holden, do you remember her?”
“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Gellnacht, sitting bolt upright in the easy chair.
“And how would you describe her?”
“I’d rather not. Don’t speak ill of the dead, as they say.”
“But if we were to lean on you a little?”
She gave a quick smile.
“Well, in that case,” she said. “Beatrice Holden was a slut. I think that description fits her rather well.”
“Was she a slut even when she was at school?” wondered Moreno.
“From the very start. Don’t think I’m an old prude just because I’m saying this. Beatrice was a terribly vulgar person. The cheapest kind. She had the looks, and she used them to wrap men round her little finger. Or boys, in those days.”
“They were in love with her?”
“The whole lot. Teachers as well, I think. She was young and unmarried. It was really awful, in fact.”
“She moved away from here later, didn’t she?”
Mrs. Gellnacht nodded.
“Ran off with a man when she was barely seventeen. Lived in two or three different places, I think. Came back with a child a few years later.”
“A baby?”
“Yes. A girl. Her mother looked after it. Beatrice’s mother, that is.”
“When? Was that a long time before she was mixed up
with Verhaven?”
“No, not all that long. I’d say it was round about 1960, that was roughly the same time as he moved back here. She and the girl moved in with her mother, in any case, only for about six months, or thereabouts. The father had gone to sea, people said, but nobody has ever seen him. Not then, not later. Well, after a few months she moved in with Verhaven, up at The Big Shadow.”
“The Big Shadow?”
“Yes, that’s what it’s usually called. The Big Shadow. Don’t ask me why.”
DeBries made a note.
“What about the daughter?” asked Moreno. “Did she take the girl with her?”
“Oh no,” replied Mrs. Gellnacht firmly. “Certainly not. The girl stayed with Grandma. Perhaps that was best, in view of what happened. She turned out all right.”
“What was the relationship like?” asked deBries. “Verhaven and Beatrice, I mean.”
Mrs. Gellnacht hesitated before answering.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There was an awful lot of gossip about it afterward, of course. Some people reckoned it was inevitable from the start that it would end up like it did. Or that it would go wrong, at least; but I don’t know. It’s always so easy for people to understand everything when they have the key in their hands and know what actually happened.
Don’t you think?”
“No doubt about it,” said deBries.
“Quite a few things happened, in fact, before he killed her.
I think they drank pretty heavily, but there again he was a good worker. Worked hard, and no doubt earned quite a bit from his chickens. But they certainly used to fight. Nobody can deny that.”
“Yes, so we understand,” said Moreno.
There was a pause while Mrs. Gellnacht served more coffee. Then deBries leaned forward and asked the most important question of all.
“What was it like during the time before Verhaven was arrested? After they’d found Beatrice’s body, that is. Those ten days, or however long it was? Can you remember anything about that?”
“Well. .,” Mrs. Gellnacht began. “I’m not sure I quite understand what you are getting at.”
“What did people think,” explained Moreno. “Who did
people suspect when they talked about it here in the village?
Before they knew.”
She sat silently for a moment, her cup half-raised to her lips.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose that’s the way people were talking.”
“What way?” asked deBries.
“That it was Verhaven himself who’d done it, of course. I don’t think anybody here in Kaustin was especially surprised when he was arrested. Nor when he was found guilty either.”
DeBries wrote something in his notebook again.
“And what about now?” he asked. “Is everybody still sure that he was the one who did it?”
“Absolutely,” she replied. “No doubt about it. Who else could it have been?”
Something to consider in a little more detail perhaps, he thought when they were back in the car.
As it couldn’t very well have been anybody else, it must have been Verhaven!
One could only hope that Mrs. Gellnacht’s reasoning
hadn’t been copied to too great an extent by the police and the prosecuting authorities. No doubt it would be a good idea to look into that question. What about the forensic evidence, by the way? What exactly was it that had got him convicted, if he really had denied everything so vehemently right to the very end?
DeBries had no idea.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Seems to be an open-and-shut case,” said Ewa Moreno.
“Possibly too open and shut. Shall we take Moltke now?”
19
“Verhaven Arrested! Sensational Development in Beatrice Case!”
The headline ran across the whole of Neuwe Blatt’s front page on April 30, 1962. Van Veeteren drank half a mug of water and started reading.
Was it Leopold Verhaven who murdered his own fiancee, Beatrice Holden?
In any case the police officer in charge of the notorious Kaustin murder, Detective Chief Inspector Mort,