pushed or kicked her mother down die stairs?
“Go on,” he said gently, trying to tune his voice and mood to hers.
“I came down about an hour ago, I always check before I go to sleep. Mother drinks a bit and sometimes she falls asleep in front of the TV and I have to wake her up and take her upstairs.”
“I am sorry, I have to ask questions. You know that don’t you, Miss Carnet?” She nodded. She was trying to get a handkerchief from her pocket but it stuck and she got up. He got up too. “Do you want to go upstairs, miss?”
“No. It’s all right here.”
They sat down again. She was sitting very close; he could feel the warmth of her thigh.
“Was your mother an alcoholic, miss?”
“Yes. No.”
“How much did she drink, a day, I mean. Did she drink everyday?”
“Most days, but only wine. Good wine. A bottle a day perhaps, but I think she was drinking more lately. I didn’t see very much of her anymore, we were living separately.”
“Because of some trouble? Did you fight?” He kept his voice as low as he could to take the sting out of the key words. Alcoholic. Fight. They weren’t good words but hie had to use them.
“No, we didn’t fight, we just didn’t get on. I’m nearly thirty now. I should have a place of my own but I didn’t want to live somewhere else, she needed care. Oh, my God.”
She was crying and he waited. Her thigh was still pressing against him. He didn’t like the girl, but why didn’t he? She wasn’t pretty but she was certainly attractive. An attractive pushover. He could hear Grijpstra’s booming voice dominating the health officers farther down the house. If they weren’t around he could make the girl right on the stairs, dead mother or no dead mother. He could feel his lips stretching into a sneer. A most unbecoming thought. A policeman is a public servant. But the fact was mat the girl wakened nothing in him, nothing at all. And he was sure she was lying. Gabrielle should have heard her mother scream as she fell down the stairs. But there was the gale. Perhaps its noise had drowned the scream. The gale seemed to have found the street at that very moment, and he could hear its deep, menacing, sonorous whoosh and the rattle of parked cars being pushed into each other.
“Sergeant?”
De Gier looked up. “Yes, Grijpstra?”
“Would you go and fetch the commissaris? I phoned the experts, they’ll come down as soon as they get their gear together. The doctor is on his way too.”
“Sure.”
“And get Cardozo too if you can. He’s off duty tonight, he’s visiting friends, but his mother gave me the address, it’s on the way. He knows you’re coming.”
The girl was still crying and hiding her face. Grijpstra’s eyebrows arched. De Gier shook his head silently. His mouth formed the word “lying.” Grijpstra nodded. De Gier got up and gestured invitingly. Grijpstra lowered his body slowly. The girl felt his bulk on the step and edged away.
“You can tell me what you told the sergeant, miss. Do you know what happened?”
The front door clicked behind de Gier. The health officers came and said good-bye. Grijpstra could hear the engines of the Volkswagen and the ambulance start as the gale breathed in for a second only to roar away at full strength.
“Miss?”
“She must have fallen down the stairs,” Gabrielle said.
“I think she worried about her azaleas and opened the garden door, and then the wind pulled the door out of her hands and she lost her balance.”
“Come with me, miss, please.”
He pulled her to her feet and she followed him down the corridor and into the large sitting room. He glanced at the room’s wall. A bookcase holding a beautifully bound encyclopedia, brand-new and never used. A row of artbooks, just as new. A flower arrangement. A modern painting. There was a thick wall-to-wall carpet under his feet, off-white to set off the darker furniture. A showroom designed by an interior decorator. The porch was more personal, with a battered old TV on a cane table and some easy chairs that looked ugly and comfortable.
“Your mother liked to sit on the porch miss?”
“Yes. She had it glassed in when she moved here, some ten years ago, I think. She was always here, it’s the only part of the house that wasn’t redecorated. And my apartment, of course. I did that myself after the carpenters were done.”
Grijpstra had opened the garden door. “There’s no wind here, miss. These gardens are well protected. The houses won’t let the gale in. See?”
“Yes.”
“So how did your mother fall down the stairs?” Grijpstra’s voice was kind and puzzled. He looked solid, trustworthy, fatherly. He was very concerned. “Now how could such an awful accident have happened? Your mother knew these stairs well, didn’t she? Did she like gardening?”
“Yes.”
“She planted those bushes over there, didn’t she? Those are nice azaleas. Did she plant the hedge in the back as well?”
“Yes.”
Gabrielle wandered around the room dreamily. She reached for the wineglass on a low table near the TV. Grijpstra touched her arm. “Don’t touch anything, please, miss. We’ll have mat glass checked for fingerprints. Is mis your mother’s ring, miss?” He showed her a smooth gold wedding ring that was lying on a bare board near the garden door. She stooped.
“Don’t pick it up please, miss.”
“Yes, that’s my mother’s ring.”
“Did she play with it? Put it on and take it off when she was nervous?”
“No.”
“Did it fit tightly?”
She was crying, fighting the tears, biting on her handkerchief.
“I’m sorry, miss.”
The girl had sat down, and he sat down opposite her and rubbed his cheeks. He could do with a shave again, there hadn’t been much time mat morning. His wife had come into the bathroom and he wanted to get away, so he had done a sloppy job. He would do better later on, she would be asleep by then. The thought of scalding hot water soaking into the stubby folds and the neat strokes of a new razor blade cheered him up somewhat. He didn’t like cornering the girl. De Gier thought she was lying, and she very likely was. But there could be extenuating circumstances. A drunken, nagging mother, wailing, screaming. A family fight. A push. Most anything can be explained and understood, if not accepted. But if mere had been a struggle it would be better for the girl to admit to it, now, when everything was still fresh. It would look better in court. But he wasn’t going to feed her a confession. Perhaps the commissaris would. He would wait.
The girl looked up. “I don’t want to cry.”
“No, miss, I understand. Perhaps we can have some coffee. I’ll make it if you tell me where everything is.”
“No. I can do it.”
He followed her to the kitchen and stood around while she worked. Her movements were organized, efficient.
The percolator began to gurgle, then throb. She was staring out at the garden when he began to look for the garbage container. He found it fitted into a cupboard under the sink, attached to the cupboard door. There was another wineglass in die plastic bag protecting the container. The glass had broken at the stem. It was of the same type as the glass he had seen on the table near the TV. He took a long-handled fork lying on the kitchen counter and poked around in the bag. There were several cigar stubs, each stub connected to a plastic mouthpiece, and some cigar ash. The ashtray stood on the counter. It had been cleaned.
A visitor after all. There was no lipstick on the mouthpieces and both Gabrielle and her mother used lipstick. Women smoked cigars these days, and the cigars would have been long and very thin. De Gier sometimes smoked
