Blond Baboon (12 page)
“I did.”
“Badly?”
“No. A scratch. But I did get very wet and dirty.”
The baboon touched de Gier’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. You came to see me about the fine, did you? I won’t pay it.”
“Fine?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t come to see you about a fine, we came to ask you some questions. A Mrs. Camet died. Elaine Carnet. We were told you knew her.”
“Ah.” The baboon sighed. “I might have known. I read about Elaine’s death but the journalist said it was an accident. Wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps. What is this business about a fine, Mr. Vleuten?”
“Call me baboon. I don’t like the word but it has stuck to me for a long time. That fine is a conglomeration of parking fines. Some parking police constable is irritated by my Rolls-Royce, he goes out of his way to plaster tickets all over it. I’ve complained to his chief but nothing happens. I don’t mind paying an occasional fine like everybody else, but I’m damned if I’ll have one every day. There aren’t enough parking places in the city and I have a car, so have a hundred thousand others.”
“But why associate us with your fines?”
“I’ve been bothered by you before, not by you personally, but by detectives. They keep ringing my bell in the early morning and shouting at me through the microphone at the front door.”
“Different branch, you must be referring to personnel from the court. They will be after you to try and get you to die court’s cashier and they have powers to hold you until you pay—if you open your door to them, that is. They aren’t authorized to break it down or to grab you in the street. They’ll have to take you from your house and you have to be willing to be taken.”
“I am not.”
De Gier was watching the baboon’s calm face. “You might be in trouble now, you know. You made me suffer a bad fall.”
“Can you arrest me?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“Not just now. But we’ll have to question you. Where do you want to be questioned? Here?”
They had finished their tea and the baboon called die girl and paid. “No, not here. And I am sorry about your fall. I thought you were sent by the parking police and I feel badly about this nonsense. A misunderstanding. I apologize, do you accept?”
De Gier nodded. “Maybe I will.”
“Then be my guests a little longer, gentlemen. We can take the boat back to my house and you can question me there, but I may not have much to say. I had no reason to kill Elaine, and I wouldn’t have killed her if I’d had a reason. Maybe there’s never a reason to kill, except to avoid old age, and Elaine wasn’t old.”
Grijpstra felt the little hairs in his neck bristle. He had detected the tremendous strength that seemed to come out of the baboon’s being, waves of strength that enveloped the detectives and neutralized their own force. Grijpstra remembered other occasions when he had been almost hypnotized by suspects. He had felt it during some arrests and also, once or twice, when he had been a witness for the prosecution in court. He had seen high police officers, lawyers, judges even, wilt while an unruffled criminal pleaded his case, made statements, proved himself to be innocent. But the criminals had been guilty.
They ambled across the quay together and de Gier lowered himself carefully into the launch. He was looking at some rubbish floating under the jetty as the baboon started the launch’s engine.
“Bah,” de Gier said. “Look at that mess. That water sergeant is a chauvinist. His part of the world is dirtier than ours.”
The baboon looked too. “We’re making an effort. The river is getting cleaner, it was much worse before.”
“Bah. People used to swim in the river.”
“They will again.”
“I was swimming in it just now.”
The baboon laughed. “I said I was sorry.”
“Sure,” de Gier said. “That was very nice of you.”
“H
E ISN’T IN,” THE SQUARE LADY IN THE FLOWERED DRESS
said, “but he’s due back any moment. Could you come again in half an hour, perhaps?”
The conunissaris and Cardozo had stood for quite a while on the porch of the de Bree house while Mrs. de Bree peered at them through the door’s peephole and tried to make up her mind whether or not to open the door. She had seen Cardozo before and knew he was a policeman. Her husband had told her not to let in the police. But the other man was much older than the boyish detective, and he didn’t seem to be the sort of man who could be sent away. She had decided that the conunissaris looked, in an unobtrusive way, both dignified and intelligent, and she had taken the risk. But now she was stuck again.
“We won’t go away, Mrs. de Bree,” the commissaris said softly, “and you will have to let us in.”
“My husband says that the home is private and that…”
“The home is private, your husband is right.”
She faltered and blushed. “So…?”
“But there are exceptions to any rule, madame. A crime has been committed and the police have been asked to investigate. In such circumstances the police have the right to enter any dwelling by force if a warrant has been issued or if an officer of a certain rank wants to visit the home.”
“I see.” She didn’t want to ask for the commissaris’s rank, but he had given her a card and she glanced at it. She didn’t know anything about police ranks. “Well, would you come in then, please. I hope you’ll explain to my husband when he comes…”
“We will.”
Cardozo stepped aside and the commissaris marched into the corridor and waited for Mrs. de Bree to lead the way. They were taken to a room in the rear of the house, similar to the enclosed porch in the Camet house. Evidently the same architect had been used for all the homes in the two streets sharing the enclosed garden area. Mrs. de Bree offered tea and gratefully retired to the kitchen.
Cardozo jumped out of his chair the minute they were alone. “My witnesses live over there, sir. They have the top floor of the house, there with the balcony, behind the geraniums. Two old ladies with binoculars, ideal witnesses, they have a full view of both this garden and the Carnet garden opposite. And there’s the liguster hedge and Mr. de Bree must have stood next to that rhododendron bush when he fed Paul. With binoculars my witnesses could have seen that he was feeding him chopped meat. With the laboratory test that proves that there was both chopped meat and arsenic in Paul’s stomach, and with the matching times of the witnesses’ statements and Gabrielle Carnet’s complaint plus the statement of the veterinarian we have an airtight case against de Bree.”
The commissaris had come to the window. “Yes, good work, Cardozo. I wonder if I can smoke here. Does de Bree smoke?”
Cardozo looked around. “There’s a pipe rack on die wall, sir, and several ashtrays.”
“Then I’m sure Mrs. de Bree won’t mind. Hey!”
A cat had landed on the balcony outside. It had dropped from a tree branch with such a thud that Cardozo, who was still studying the pipe rack, had turned around. The cat was oversize, not only fat but enormous in proportions. A lynx with tufted ears, with thick fur spotted with black and orange and with a cruel square head, bright orange on one side, deep black on the other. The line dividing the two colors didn’t run in the exact middle of the face, shortening the black half slightly, with the result that his expression was startlingly weird.
“That’s a cat, sir?”
“I think so. But perhaps it has a small panther or an ocelot as an ancestor, although I do believe that some breeds of domesticated cats grow rather large. All of twenty pounds, I would say, more perhaps.”
The cat walked to the window and stood up, pressing its face and front paws against the glass. The soles of its feet were heavily haired.
“It’s purring,” the commissaris said. “Perhaps it means well. Should we let it in, Cardozo?”
Mrs. de Bree was with them again, carrying a tray. “Ah, Tobias. Would you mind opening the door, sir? Poor thing must be hungry. He probably tried to come in before but I was vacuum-cleaning upstairs and didn’t hear him. He’s been out all morning.”
The commissaris released the door’s latch and Tobias rushed in, forcing the door out of his hand. He ran across the room and loped off into the corridor.
“An amazing animal, madame. Very big, isn’t he?”
“Yes. But he’s getting old and is blind in one eye now and not too well. We had him operated on for cancer last year and he recovered, but the vet says that the cancer may still be there and that a second operation wouldn’t do any good. My husband is very upset about it. Tobias is like a child and we have had him fourteen years—we don’t have any real children, you see. And Tobias is so clever!”
The commissaris stirred his tea. The room was pleasant and quiet; there was no sound in the house except a rattling in the kitchen where Tobias was gulping his food and pushing its container around.
“You know why we came, don’t you, Mrs. de Bree?”
She was sitting unnaturally upright and playing with a lace handkerchief. There were tears in her mild eyes, enlarged by the thick lenses of her gold-rimmed spectacles. “Yes, sir, you came about Paul. I’m so saddened about that. I don’t know what got into my husband, he’s never done anything like that before. He won’t admit what he did to Paul, but he knows that I know. He hasn’t talked to me much since it happened. And the old ladies opposite saw him do it, Alice came to see me about it an hour ago. She said they had told the police and that they were sorry but they couldn’t help it, so I was expecting you, you see.”
“What does your husband do, Mrs. de Bree?”
“He’s retired in a way. He’s an engineer and has invented things, we have an income from royalties. Sometimes I wish he were still working.”
They heard a key turn in the front of the house and Mrs. de Bree jumped up and rushed into the corridor, shutting the door behind her. The conversation took a full five minutes and de Bree’s voice gradually lost its anger. Mrs. de Bree was crying. He came in alone.
“Mr. de Bree?”
The policemen were on their feet. De Bree pointed at their chairs and thought of something to say. Tobias was bumping the door. “My cat, I’ll let him in.”
De Bree sat down, he sighed, and all the air appeared to go out of him. The sigh seemed endless.
“I’m sorry,” the commissaris said. “But what has to be done has to be done, sir. You weren’t getting anywhere when you refused my detective entry, surely you knew mat, didn’t you?”
“Are you arresting me?”
“No.”
De Bree reached for his pipe rack and tobacco tin. The tobacco spilled as his trembling hands tried to fill the pipe. He couldn’t find a match and looked about helplessly. The commissaris gave him his lighter.
“So why did you come?” de Bree asked between puffs.
“lb obtain your confession, sir. It isn’t strictly needed, the evidence against you is conclusive, but a confession might help you, the judge will be better disposed.”
“Judge? You’ll make me go to court?”
“Yes.”
Tobias walked past de Bree’s chair and de Bree grabbed the cat’s tail. It closed with strength and the cat pulled, finding support in the carpet. De Bree’s chair moved an inch but stuck on the carpet’s edge. The cat looked around, turned, and put a paw on de Bree’s hand. It purred and its good eye opened until it was a large shiny green disk. De Bree grunted and released the tail.
“He must be very fond of you,” the commissaris said. “His nails didn’t come out.”
“He’ll never scratch me. He did once, by mistake, and drew blood and he was sorry for a week. He followed me everywhere I went. He loves me, he even hunts for me. He is always bringing me birds and mice, rats even. Once he caught a crow, a big crow. Crows are hard to catch. He brought the bird to my bed, I was ill at the time, and dropped it on the blanket. Made a mess, my wife didn’t like that, but he loves her too.”
“You like animals, don’t you?”
“I like Tobias. I don’t get on with other animals, or with people. My wife and I live very much on our own, but we don’t mind. If they don’t bother us we don’t bother diem. I have my books. I am an engineer. I have a basement where I can work. I don’t need anybody anymore.”
The commissaris had been looking at a large framed painting hanging in the shadows of the room.
“That’s Tobias,” de Bree said. “My wife did it. It isn’t painted but embroidered, in very small stitches. We found a store where an artist will do a portrait on canvas and they sell you wool so that you can embroider the portrait yourself. People usually like to make portraits like that of their children but we don’t have any. I gave my wife the canvas for her birthday. It took her months to stitch it.”
The commissaris had got up to study the gobelin. “Remarkable! An amazing likeness. Your cat has an interesting face.”
Cardozo whipped out his handkerchief and began to blow his nose furiously.
De Bree had lost interest. He was staring at the floor, his hand resting limply on the cat’s back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Does mat help? If I say I am sorry? I’ll pay if you like. The Carnet ladies must have had some expenses, perhaps they want to put in a claim. I’ll pay for the vet and whatever you say I should pay on top of the vet’s bill for damages. I suppose I owe it to mem.”
“The judge would like to hear you say that.” The commissaris had sat down and was stirring his tea. “But why did you want to kill Paul? Death through arsenic poisoning is very unpleasant, painful. The victim suffers cramps, vomits, he may suffer for a fairly long time until the coma finally sets in. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t think of it. Arsenic is the only poison I could find, they sell it to kill rats. I would have bought a better poison if it had been available.”
“But why kill the dog?”
De Bree shrugged. “There was no choice. Paul is a young strong dog. Terriers are fierce and quick on their feet. So is Tobias, but Tobias can only see on one side. The silly cat doesn’t know that the gardens around belong to others, he thinks they are all his private hunting ground. The other cats run away when they see him coming but Paul is a hunter too, and he has been out to kill Tobias for a while now. I have broken up some of their fights, but I can’t be in the garden all the time. So…”