Blond Baboon ac-6

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Francesco hadn’t answered her. He had sat in his chair, his handsome bearded head resting on his slender hands. He had wanted her to stop screaming. But she went on and on, repeating herself, waving the money, dropping some of it and picking it up again. She wasn’t going to give it to him. She was only showing it. She would keep it as a small repayment for a lot of suffering. It was hers. Money squeezed out of the pockets of Italian lovers who took their girls for long walks in the moonlight, who sent flowers and beautifully wrapped presents, who slithered into the girls’ beds and who performed so admirably only to slide away in the night if the relationships proved to yield more problems than pleasures.

  The gale shrieked around the house as Francesco sat listening and the woman screamed on, her lips bubbling with venom. And when she paused it was only to remember swear words in both French and Italian, flinging them at him as they came to her. She had taken off her wedding ring, wrenching it off her finger. She threw it on die floor and it rolled toward his feet and he stared at it. Francesco was having difficulty understanding Mrs. Carnet. His French was bad, but he did know some words, and he gradually began to fit together what the crazy woman was telling him. His nerves stretched even more tautly as a fresh torrent of abuse burst free. Mrs. Camet’s voice had dropped now; she was whispering and her insults had the sharpness of a dagger. The dagger slid into his feverish, aching brain.

  “But times have changed,” Mrs. Carnet was whispering. Oh yes, times had changed. Girls were no longer helpless and had woken up to the hardness and cruelty of the male world that would use and manipulate and discard mem if it was given half a chance. Papa Pullini hadn’t liked to use anything when he made love and neither would Francesco. Men didn’t like a film of rubber to come between mem and their pleasure. They wanted all their pleasure, and if their pleasure led to their girlfriends’ sorrow, well, what of it? They were up and away, hunting for fresh game. But now girls had the pill and they didn’t get pregnant unless they wanted to. And girls had many lovers now, as many as they pleased.

  Did Francesco know that he was only one of Gabrielle’s lovers? That Gabrielle only accepted his embraces because he happened to please her for the time being? Other men were asked to come to Gabrielle’s apartment upstairs, and they were told to go when she no longer needed them. Gabrielle didn’t care so much about Francesco. Gabrielle didn’t even care that Francesco was her half-brother. For she knew. She had been told, just now, just a few days ago. Francesco could go back to Italy and never come back and Gabrielle would replace him, just like that. And Mrs. Carnet stepped forward, leering, and snapped her fingers in his face.

  And it was the last thing she ever did, for Francesco jumped her and tore the money out of her hand and pushed her to die open garden door. They fell together and Francesco came back alone, to face Gabrielle, who hadn’t moved from her corner throughout her mother’s final performance. They had probably gone down into the garden together and ascertained Mrs. Carnet’s death. Perhaps Francesco had cried and Gabrielle had comforted him, she might have stroked his hair. Perhaps Gabrielle had hated her mother and pitied her half-brother. Perhaps she had always wanted a brother and her love could have changed but not ended.

  The commissaris pushed the teacup; it filled with soapy water and sank onto his legs. Gabrielle still had a portrait in her room, close to her pillow, that resembled Francesco’s features. What did he know about a woman’s love? Gabrielle also loved the baboon, for she carried his omen, his symbol, between her breasts. She might have protected Francesco out of love, but it could also be that she was levelheaded enough not to want the police to meddle with someone who was her lover, her brother, and an important business contact, the man who controlled the supplies of furniture that her firm depended on. Whatever her motives, she had covered up the mess, removed Francesco’s glass, wiped everything his hands might have touched, and sent him back to his hotel. She hadn’t telephoned the police but the ambulance service, hoping that her mother’s death would be filed away as accidental.

  And she had allowed him to leave with the money but had probably contacted him again later, very likely early in the next morning, and had arranged for him to return the cash so that she could pretend to find it. And Francesco had been honest enough to return the full hundred thousand. That Mrs. Carnet had waved a hundred notes at him instead of the eighty she owed would have been due to her state of nerves. She had simply added the twenty notes she had just received from the baboon, perhaps to make the wad thicker amd more impressive.

  Perhaps Gabrielle was a courageous girl who should be allowed to take care of her own life and not be charged as an accomplice to a serious crime. But as the killer’s half-sister she might be excused, although she would be charged. The commissaris looked at the submerged cup and thought of refloating it but began to climb out of the tub instead. He wouldn’t let Francesco off, for Francesco had pushed a lady down her own garden stairs and the lady had broken her neck. The young man should have had die sense to confess, but he might still be manipulated into a confession. It would help his case and soften the lesson. And mis trip was part of that 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 h
e 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.”

  “It was your idea,” Grijpstra said, “and I agreed with it. Eighty thousand guilders form a motive. What motives could Bergen and the baboon have?”

  “The wedding ring.”

  “Yes, sergeant, a powerful indication. A wedding ring on the floor and the lady was never married. Yet she wore a ring. And she threw it on the floor that evening; it didn’t just drop off her finger. Marriage, love or the lack of love.”

  “Humiliation,” de Gier said.

  “Exactly. Women like to humiliate men these days. You were on the corridor’s floor a little while ago, groveling. You wanted a cigarette, I believe, and the girl was using her power.”

  “What?” Cardozo had jumped up. “The sergeant on the floor? What happened?”

  “If you had been on time you would have seen what was happening. A female constable had our sergeant on the floor, on his knees, whining.”

  “Really?”

  “Let it go,” de Gier said, 1 was only play-acting. You’re right about the humiliation. So you’re saying mat Elaine Carnet had her future killer in a position where he felt silly and his pathetic predicament had something to do with her wedding ring. But Francesco is a young man, he couldn’t have made Elaine Carnet pregnant way back in nineteen forty-five or forty-six.”

  “Papa Pullini could have. Papa Pullini is a businessman and he was a businessman in nineteen forty-five too. He must have traveled. We know he speaks French, Bergen told us so. Maybe he went to Paris, strayed into a nightclub, saw the beautiful singer, bought her a bunch of roses, started a romance.”

  “So she waits thirty years and revenges herself on Papa Pullini’s son, is that what you’re saying?”

  Grijpstra got up and walked over to the window.

  “Very weak,” de Gier said softly. “Now what if Bergen was the wicked father? Or the baboon? They’re the right age.”

  Grijpstra turned around. “I know. But the commissaris went to Milano. I thought of Bergen too, but why would she pick him as a business partner? And the same goes for the baboon. She worked with both men for many years. Why would she work with a man, and allow him to share her profits, if she had every reason to despise that man? And where do the eighty thousand guilders fit in? And the twenty thousand that the baboon borrowed and returned? That money does exist. Did you count the money Gabrielle showed to you, Cardozo?”

  “Yes, adjutant. There were one hundred thousand guilder notes, eighty new, twenty slightly used.”

  Grijpstra’s index finger came up. “See, sergeant? The money was there. Francesco took the lot and rushed out of the house. He counted the money in his hotel and found more than he expected. He phoned Gabrielle. She told him that she had removed his fingerprints and that he was safe but that he should return the money to her. She probably promised to pay him the eighty later, officially, out of the firm’s account-she could make that promise for she inherits the firm, Bergen only owns a quarter of it, she could override all his decisions. I am sure Francesco would have given the twenty back anyway. I don’t think he’s a robber, he just wanted what was due him.”

  “And he killed Elaine in anger,” de Gier said slowly. That’ll help him in court, if he confe
sses. He should come and see us and give himself up, mat’s why the commissaris didn’t want us to make an arrest while he was away.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Adjutant?”

  “Yes, Caidozo?”

  “But Elaine was a bit of a bitch, wasn’t she? She knew that her daughter was having an affair with Francesco and that Francesco was Gabrielle’s half-brother. She could have stopped the affair, couldn’t she?”

  Grijpstra shrugged. “Perhaps, but Gabrielle might not have cared. I would say that Gabrielle’s real feeling is for the baboon and that Francesco was something on the side, strong enough to protect him against us but still… She jumped at you at the drop of a hat, didn’t she? She probably has lots of sex, here, there, and everywhere.”

  Cardozo blushed.

  De Gier got up too and joined Grijpstra at the window. “I don’t know, Grijpstra. Elaine had an affair with the baboon and he got himself out of it, even at the expense of losing his job. Next thing we know is that Gabrielle dives into bis bed. Elaine may have known. There may have been a terrific scene between mother and daughter, which would explain the wedding ring on the floor too. Gabrielle kills her mother. That way she has the business and the baboon and is free forever after.”

  “And who was smoking the cigars that evening?”

  De Gier walked back to his desk. “True. It would be nice if we could prove that angle, wouldn’t it?”

  “Here,” Grijpstra said.

  They all looked at the long narrow tin of cigars the adjutant had placed on de Gier’s desk. “Signorinas, made in Brazil. I found this tin late last night, had to wake up my cousin who owns a tobacco store. Expensive cigars for successful businessmen, my cousin doesn’t sell too many of them. He says they are really excellent cigars. Maybe he is right, I tried one and they taste rather perfumed. Cardozo can take the tin and check the cigar counter in the Pulitzer Hotel and all the tobacconists around it. He should be able to come up with a statement that says that a man of Francesco’s description bought the cigars on the evening of Mrs. Carnet’s death. The statement won’t mean too much in court, but it’ll mean something. At least we’ll be able to prove that Francesco was lying when he said that he didn’t visit Elaine Carnet on the evening of her death.”