'I once arrested a dear old lady,' the commissaris said. 'She had lived fifty years with a most miserable scoundrel. The miser lived in splendor, and the missus scrubbed the marble floors of his mansion. If she spent too much time under the shower, he would turn off the water. She throttled him one evening. They were both in their eighties.'
'You dumped the old lady in a cell?' de Gier asked.
'I stretched the investigation a little,' the commissaris said, 'while she stayed at home. In the end she was diagnosed as irresponsibly senile. With her husband's money we were able to place her in a most comfortable home. Every Christmas she sent me choice chocolate pie and I would take it back to her so that we could eat it together.'
The telephone rang. Grijpstra answered, listened solemnly, and replaced the receiver.
'Bad news, Adjutant?'
'Lieutenant Sudema, sir. Mrs. Scherjoen did spend that night in Amsterdam. She was staying with her sister, a Miss Terpstra. Returned the night after the murder.'
'Lieutenant Sudema interrogated Mrs. Scherjoen?'
'His wife did, sir. Gyske Sudema. She's friendly with Mem Scherjoen. Mrs. Scherjoen was never allowed to leave her house, as Scherjoen wanted her to be waiting for him whenever he happened to come home, but she did manage to get away from time to time.'
'Do I smell pea soup?' the commissaris asked.
De Gier filled a bowl. The commissaris ate, kept company by Eddy, whose snout lay flat on the kitchen table, between his pink paws. He rattled fondly.
'Asthmatic?' the commissaris asked.
De Gier picked up the rat and listened to the mysterious sounds. 'I would think it's in his belly.'
The commissaris listened too. 'No, I think it's from his chest.'
The doorbell rang. De Gier opened the door. 'Hylkje, how nice to see you. Come in and join us.'
'No time now, I'm only here to deliver the lieutenant's list of suspects.' The corporal stamped her booted foot. 'Bah, I'm running late. Two collisions here in the city. I'm State Police, but the civilians can't see the difference in uniform. And the Municipal Police are nowhere to be found again. I had to write the reports. Stupid civilians!'
A small girl ran toward the corporal. 'Officer?'
'Yes?' Hylkje asked grimly.
'See that man there, he's watering against my father's car.'
'Shouldn't he be?'
'He does that every evening, he makes me mad.'
'Dear little girl,' the corporal said sweetly. 'Leave that poor man be.'
The little girl pummeled the corporal's thigh. 'Please, officer, please?'
'I'm tired,' Hylkje said.
'One moment,' de Gier said and ran off. He came back with the man, who was buttoning up bis fly. The man was explaining his misdemeanor as the result of a small bladder.
'And you always pick that particular car?' de Gier asked. 'Tell you what, sir. The corporal will take care of you for a moment. I'll be right back.'
The commissaris came to the door and was introduced by Grijpstra. He shook Hylkje's hand. He also shook the suspect's hand.
De Gier joined them. 'They're on their way.'
A squad car drove into the street. 'It's you?' the policemen asked the commissaris. 'Would you like us to take you somewhere again, or was it you who was pissing?'
'Small bladder,' the suspect explained.
'You can take me to your headquarters,' the commissaris said, 'but perhaps you should take care of this gentleman first.'
'I'll take you,' de Gier said, pointing at the Volkswagen.
'Is that your vehicle?' a policeman asked.
'Belongs to the Detective Department,' Grijpstra said. 'Amsterdam, used exclusively by the Murder Brigade.'
'You sure it's not dead?' the policeman in charge of the squad car asked. 'We saw it just now and phoned it through to our wrecker. It should be here any moment.'
'Alive,' Grijpstra said.
The police wrecker drove into the street.
'Hey!' Hylkje shouted. The suspect had run off. De Gier ran after him.
'I'll take you now, sir,' Grijpstra said. 'I don't like the way these colleagues are looking at my car.'
De Gier brought the suspect back. One policeman pushed him into the squad car while the other spoke to the wrecker's driver, apologizing for the mistake.
'Take the lieutenant's list,' Hylkje said, 'before anything else happens. I need a shower and some sleep. I'll be back at eleven.'
'Right,' de Gier said.
'A rat!' Hylkje yelled, pointing at the threshold.
De Gier picked Eddy up and held him against his cheek. Eddy waved his paws at Hylkje. The corporal staggered back. She replaced her helmet, slid into the Guzzi's saddle, and pressed the starter. The motorcycle reared up briefly, came down, and shot off.
De Gier put Eddy down and pushed the rat gently across the threshold. He went inside, cleared the dining room and kitchen tables, and washed and dried the dishes.
Eddy was back on the couch, curled up on a cushion.
'Move up, please,' de Gier said. 'I want to read for a while.'
The rat squirmed around.
'If I read aloud, will you stop rattling?'
Eddy, soothed by de Gier's voice, became quiet. De Gier read in Frisian, guessing at the meaning of the foreign words, which resembled English here and there, but the verbs were conjugated according to German grammar. The story he had selected was called 'Optimal Functioning.'
'He weighs heavily on my stomach,' de Gier read. He closed the book. Eddy was asleep. De Gier slid his finger under the rat's tail, flicking it up. 'Did you follow the general trend of the tale?'
Eddy rearranged his tail.
'She has just eaten her husband,' de Gier said. 'This author who calls herself Martha when she writes.' Because Eddy wouldn't wake up, de Gier addressed the plants as he watered them, being careful not to slosh the water. While he poured and talked, he read Mrs. Oppenhuyzen's instructions. 'Ten cc, primula, twelve cc, fuchsia.' He poured from a measured watering can.
'The Frisian character,' de Gier said. 'Consciously pure, so the impurities are repressed. In order to function optimally, Martha has to eat her husband. A literary joke? Not at all. A revelation, rather. This is serious stuff, true art, well written. The author is telling me, the intelligent reader, that here in Friesland, where true goodness reigns, evil is active under pressure. So how is it released?'
De Gier returned the sleeping Eddy to the terrarium upstairs.
He went back to the couch and immersed his mind further in the Frisian female aspect. Woman eats her man. De Gier penetrated into the next short story, where Martha beats her man to death. In the next tale she drowns him in a bath of black paint that, once he's quite dead, takes on a brilliant green color.
The book dropped away. De Gier dropped away with it. He changed into a spider. So did Martha, but she was three times his size. She rang a bell at him while she ate him slowly. He woke up with a shriek and was no longer being eaten, but the ringing persisted. De Gier rolled off the couch and reached for the telephone.
'Hello?'
'We dropped down a dike,' Grrjpstra said. 'Save us, Sergeant.'
'Where are you?'
'Between the towns of Tzum,' Grgpstra said, 'and Tzummarum. In a village, but it's closed. In a phone booth without a phone book. Do something, Sergeant.'
