manipulation, but so far it had only resulted in a pleasant hour in a marble bathtub. He found his watch and began to dress. There was still plenty of time. He would go for a walk.
The commissaris had walked for no more than a quarter of an hour when he found himself on a long narrow road with a low wall on each side. He had come to the end of the village and the road was leading to a confusion of small fields, all carefully planted with vegetables. He had just decided to turn back when he saw a small green truck roaring around the next curve. A disreputable pickup with a snarling, lopsided grille set between rusted headlights that wobbled on dented mudguards. As the truck hurtled toward him he recognized its driver, a young man in a light blue turtleneck sweater, the same imperturbable young man who had driven Pullini’s limousine. He thought of raising his hand in greeting when he realized that the pickup was coming straight at him, that its left wheels were on die sidewalk, and that its mudguard was razing the crumbling wall. The pickup was sounding its hoarse little horn, but mere was nowhere for the commissaris to go, and he pointed his cane at it in a futile gesture of defiance.
\\ 17 /////
Sergeant De Gier looked at the square electric wall clock that had been hanging, for as long as he could remember, on an improbably thin and bent nail stuck loosely into the soft plaster of his office wall. The clock had said five to eight and had just moved, with an ominous faint click, to four to eight.
“It’s morning,” he said, and his voice reverberated through the empty room. The hollow, artificial sound sent a shiver through the base of his neck. “It’s very early in the morning,” he whispered. There had been no coffee in the machine in the washroom and he was out of cigarettes. The cigarette machine in the hall was out of order. The tobacconist’s wouldn’t open up until after nine. Cardozo and his plastic pouch filled with crumbly, cheap, shag tobacco were nowhere to be seen. Grijpstra and his flat tin of cigars hadn’t come in yet. The commissaris’s office was securely locked. There was nothing to do but to stare at the clock and at his desk calendar, which showed no entries at all.
“First things first,” de Gier said and jumped up. He had heard a sound in the corridor. He pulled the door open and jumped out and collided with a uniformed secretary from the traffic department. Her blue jacket showed the stripes of a constable.
“Darling,” de Gier murmured, and he clasped the dumpy girl in his arms and breathed against her thick spectacles. “You smoke, don’t you? Tell me you do.”
The constable had dropped her shoulderbag; her spectacles were sliding down her short broad nose.
“Yes,” she said into de Gier’s shoulder. “Yes, I do, sergeant.”
“Half a pack,” he whispered. “Give me half a pack and maybe I can do some work today. Catch the horrible killer, grab the pernicious poisoner, trap the blond baboon. Please? Beloved?”
Her glasses dropped, but he extended his chest, and they caught on the top button of his jacket. He plucked them away, released the girl, whipped out his handkerchief, and polished them before replacing them gently onto her nose and sliding the stems over her ears.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the girl said. “You are a pig, sergeant.” Her breathing was still irregular but her tight little smile had a hard twist to it. “So you’re out of cigarettes?”
“Yes, darling,” de Gier said, “and I caught your spectacles. They would have broken if I hadn’t caught them and you would have been blind as a bat, they would have smashed to smithereens on the nasty floor.”
“I won’t give you any cigarettes,” she said firmly, “unless…”
“I’ll kiss you,” de Gier said. “How’s that?”
“On your knees!”
“What?”
“On your knees!”
De Gier looked around. There was nobody in sight in the long corridor. He dropped onto his knees.
“Repeat after me: ‘I am a male chauvinist!’”
“I am a male chauvinist.”
She opened her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. De Gier looked at the brand. It was the wrong brand. Long and thin and low on tar and tasteless and with noted filters that would let the smoke drift away before it could reach his mouth. His lips curled down, but she was watching his face, so he smiled pleasingly.
“I’ll give you four, that’s all you’re worth.” She counted mem out on his palm.
“Well, well, well,” Grijpstra said.
The girl was on her way, her heels tapping firmly on the thick linoleum of the corridor. De Gier had got up.
“Well what, adjutant? I was out of cigarettes.”
Grijpstra’s grin was still spreading. “Ha!”
“Ha what, adjutant?”
“Pity Cardozo wasn’t here. There he is! Late again, always late.”
Cardozo looked at his watch. “Five to nine, adjutant.”
“Nevermind.”
They went in together. Cardozo was sent out to buy coffee and to pay for it out of his own pocket. De Gier puffed on his cigarette, threw it on the floor, and stamped on it. Cardozo came back.
“Give me your pouch, Cardozo, and some cigarette paper and a light.”
Cardozo put the coffee mugs down and fished a crumpled plastic pouch of shag tobacco from his pocket. “Do you want me to smoke it for you too, sergeant?”
De Gier reached out and took the pouch. The three men smoked and drank coffee and stared at each other. Grijpstra sighed. “Well…”
“Yes?”
“It seems the case is solved. I saw the commissaris’s secretary just now. The old man has gone to Milano, he’s due back tomorrow. He telephoned her last night and wanted Papa Pullini’s number in Sesta San Giovanni, a little town close to Milano. The round-trip ticket to Milano must cost a bit of money and he wouldn’t be wasting it, would he now?”
De Gier stretched and began to cough. He glared at Cardozo. “Terrible tobacco, you should change your brand.” Cardozo tried to say something but winced instead.
“Right,” de Gier said. “So Francesco is our man, as we nought, but there’s still a chance that we’re wrong, for the commissaris could be wrong too.”
Grijpstra yawned.
“Small chance, but still… Let’s go through it again: Why did we pick Francesco?”
“We picked Francesco,” Grijpstra said patiently, “for a number of reasons, all of them flimsy and none of them good enough to stand up in court.”
“Let’s have the reasons.”
“O.K. We agreed that whoever smokes long thin cigars with plastic mouthpieces made to resemble ivory must be a vain man. We had three suspects, apart from Gabrielle. All the suspects were vain. Bergen is a nicely dressed gentleman if he isn’t going to pieces in the privacy of his own home. The baboon is a strange-looking man, but he takes great care about the way he looks, and Francesco dries and sets his lovely hair with a dryer and sports a silk dressing gown. All three suspects are vain, but Francesco wins the race. A very faint hint, but something to go on if we can bring up supporting hints.
“A man who pushes a lady down the stairs is violent We couldn’t picture Bergen pushing Elaine and we had trouble imagining the baboon in that position. The baboon is violent, for he got you in the river, but you are a man, not a nicely dressed lady in her own house. Francesco could be an excitable young fellow and he had some sort of motive. He thought the Carnet firm owed him eighty thousand guilders and we knew that Elaine Carnet took out eighty thousand in cash from her company’s bank account.
The figures tally, she had the money the evening of her death, and Francesco could have visited her. Suppose she showed him the money but wouldn’t give it to him so he jumps her, right?”
“Hmm.”
