Death of a Delft Blue

‘It’s about the money, if you don’t mind.’

‘Oh?’ said Laura, whose bump of caution was not highly developed but who had an instinctive objection to being accosted by perfect strangers if financial transactions were to be involved.

‘It’s about the Dutch coinage,’ the girl explained. ‘You see, I rather want to take a few presents back with me, but I haven’t unlimited cash, so I want to lay it out to the best advantage, and I just don’t really understand what the Dutch notes and coins are worth.’

‘Oh, well, it’s simple enough if you take the Dutch guilder as being worth about two shillings in our money.’

‘Yes, I know about the guilder, but they seem to have frightful coins called rijksdaalder and kwartje and dubbletje and stuiver. Grandma won’t help me and Bernardo only laughs. He’s half-Jewish, you see, and understands about the exchange, and all that sort of thing.’

‘Well, the rijksdaalder is worth about five shillings. The kwartje is about sixpence, the dubbletje is roughly twopence- halfpenny and the stuiver is equal to a little over a penny. Its value is five cents, and there are a hundred cents to the guilder. Think in terms of cents and guilders, and you can’t go wrong,’ said Laura briskly.

‘Oh, thank you so much. I’ve only been over here for a few days, you see, and I was getting into awful muddles, always paying in bank notes, of which there seem to be dozens of different ones, and never knowing whether the change was right.’

‘I don’t think one need worry about the right change in Holland. I’ve never been done down since I’ve been here. The bank notes are for a thousand guilders downwards, and are perfectly easy to understand.’ With this, Laura nodded and was about to walk on, when the girl said eagerly,

‘And about the presents. Will the English customs be very grabbing?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Show them what you’ve got is my advice. I don’t believe in trying to dodge them. I should think it must be so wearing to the nerves. Apart from that, my husband is a policeman and I have to guard his reputation.’

This time Laura really did walk on, and went back to the hotel for a second breakfast.

CHAPTER ONE

A Conference Ends

The country which we call “Holland” is, in reality, The Netherlands, and the people we call “Dutch” are, in reality, Netherlanders.‘

Bernard Pingaud, trans. Harold Myers

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At the end of a fortnight, the Scheveningen Conference was over. The experts in higher education laughed, clattered and nattered — the last in a dozen different languages. They gathered up papers and pens, surged around their Dutch hosts and, (but for the melancholy fact that there was nothing to drink except the water in an austere carafe on the chairman’s table), they managed to produce the kind of cacophony usually associated with cocktail parties.

The chairman disentangled himself from an enthusiastic group and went over to where the distinguished alienist, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, was the centre of a no less enthusiastic but a very much quieter circle. She was regaling them (by request) with details of some of the more bizarre and interesting deaths by murder and suicide which had fallen within her wide experience.

‘Extraordinary,’ thought the Dutchman, ‘how that mouth, so like the beak of a little bird, can produce those exquisite sounds.’ He paused on the outer fringe of the group to listen to these sounds before he muscled in and cut Dame Beatrice off from her circle of admirers.

‘Ah, Dame Beatrice,’ he said, ‘I am now giving a small luncheon party in the English manner. May I hope that you will join us? There will be just twenty people or so — the amusing ones, of course. I would like you to meet Professor van Zestien and his brother. They were so interested in your paper on Traumatic Regicides With Special Reference to the Death of Charles I. Professor Derde van Zestien has made a special study of the period, your English Puritans having points of interest for all Netherlanders, of course.’

‘Ah, yes. The Pilgrim Fathers came originally from this country.’

‘From Rotterdam. You should visit that city. There is much that is of interest. And do persuade Professor Sweyn van Zestien to describe to you Amsterdam. If you go there, be sure to look for the street organs, the barrel-organs, you know. They are a particular feature. He is sure to mention them. He admires them very much and is an authority upon their manufacture.’

Still chatting, he led her away, and it was not until some three hours later that she rejoined her secretary in the lounge of their hotel.

‘Did you talk Higher Thought all the time?’ asked Laura.

‘Talking shop was outlawed, politely but firmly, by Professor Derde van Zestien,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘I was seated between him and his brother at table and he told me of some of the places of interest which we ought to visit before we return to England.’

‘We?’

‘Well, as your dear Robert seems to be fully occupied with that tiresome Curlew murder, and your son Hamish is away at school, I had hoped that you would see your way to remaining here with me while I go on this promised tour. After all, sightseeing counts for nothing unless one is in a position to point out the obvious to one’s long- suffering travelling companion.’

‘There’s bound to be a lot of stuff that needs attention at your London clinic, you know. Oughtn’t I… ?’