Over the High Side (20 page)

Wait; take this step by step. She learns that I have made the link between Denis and herself, and goes off the deep end. She cooks up a plot to suppress me. Jim Collins is involved with that and how? Flynn suggests that he's an ex-lover of hers, and he's anyway her sister's lover. Too many people involved, he sighed gloomily – I've quite enough trouble sorting out Denis Lynch; let's not bother about Collins, the more so as we'd never get anything proved.

And then suddenly she comes to me and chucks herself at me – now is that another elaborate plot? Or is that quite spontaneous? Don't tell me the whole gang of them there in Belgrave Square are sitting brewing up these conspiracies.
First they decide to suppress me. That doesn't work so they decide to discredit me – and that might have worked except she's in the same position as me with Big Jim – she can't prove anything … Or is she now going to try and manoeuvre me into a position where she could prove something? In which case its up to me to manoeuvre a wee bit my own self, huh?

Let's go and see the sisters, and find out what they think about all this.

*

It was a very Dutch woman who opened the door.

‘Mrs Collins?'

‘No – I'm Mrs MacManus – who are you?'

‘About your father.'

‘Ah.' She knew all about him. ‘Well – I suppose you'd better come in. If it's Agnes you want she's inside.' Fine pair of legs, he thought following. Look good in her nurse's uniform – his mind had gone back to the little nurse with no legs at all who had tied his sling that morning. Suppose I'd got this one – he was grinning, and she didn't like him grinning; there was a hostility.

There was even more hostility from Agnes, the eldest sister, not as tall but with blonder hair. They looked very like, and yet unlike, and neither very much like Stasie, but what did that mean? She was sitting knitting and looking at the television: she wore glasses, which she took off to look at him with dislike, as though disgusted that Big Jim had not made a better job. Did they know anything about that?

He had not much idea what he could gain by this visit. He had never felt much interest in these two. Their letters had been boring, and nothing now contradicted this impression. She echoed his thought.

‘What you hope to gain by this I can't imagine.'

Why did the lovely ladies live so close together? What was it that they had in common?

A family feeling, of course. Nothing strange there; it is a Dutch phenomenon. Dutch families are very clannish: grownup children go on dropping in on each other, so that the next
generation lives in a most intricate network of aunts and uncles, even if half of them are in-laws. They take pains over one another's birthdays and wedding anniversaries; they spend evenings together playing cards. There are constantly fights, changes of alliance, temporary bouts of not-speaking. No reunion passes without at least one yelling quarrel, but the deeply-knit ties of family are never snapped: if anything, they are enriched.

Agnes, he saw at once, was a tiresome woman, brainless and aggressive, with the quarrelsomeness of being opinionated without being informed. One of those people who argue for hours whether it had been Thursday or Wednesday a fortnight back that something happened that had been trivial even then.

Her voice, her looks, her manner were harsh and over-vigorous. The room was dark, she had the light on to knit by – electricity made her looks even more striking. Her hair was so ferociously blonde that one would have gone bail it was artificial, but after a quarter of an hour he knew it was natural, just as he knew she hadn't been in any conspiracy: too outspoken on the subject, and saying too many silly things.

‘Well, Father of course – just an accident – like you there. Yes, we heard about that; guessed it must have been you, Stasie told us you'd been coming pestering her.'

‘I heard at the hospital,' said Agathe more placidly; she was knitting too, in a less violent style than her sister. ‘They were full of the Dutch gentleman who stupidly got himself run over in Seapoint Avenue.' Not without malice.

‘Just the same,' said Agnes almost gleefully. ‘You see, these things happen. Like scaffolding falling on someone's head. Coincidence, that's all.'

‘We've thought about it,' said Agathe. ‘Coincidence isn't quite the right word – more kind of wrong-headed. Like these student riots where an innocent bystander gets hit on the head. Probably by the police.' Quite spiteful, though she was more tranquil than Agnes, who knitted as though in a rage with the wool. More co-ordinated. Came from being a nurse, perhaps. ‘Somebody unbalanced – look at the Boston Strangler, or that young man who got up in a tower and shot a whole
lot of people for no reason at all. If you worked in a hospital you'd understand that,' she told him kindly.

‘If you had known Father as we knew him,' thought Agnes aloud, ‘he was always getting mixed up in odd situations and weird people, the house used to be full of them, artists, all quite cracked, with grudges and grievances, what d'you call them?'

‘Psychopath,' supplied Agathe-the-nurse. Weren't they odd, convinced apparently that a police officer in the criminal brigade has less experience than a nurse in the accident ward. Lack of imagination.

‘Not necessarily anyone we'd know,' she went on, ‘or that Anna would know. Since he got poor he was too proud to bring people home. This theory you've apparently got about Denis Lynch is just too idiotic for words.'

‘You know Denis?'

‘Of course I do, he used to come to me for German lessons – we have our living to earn you know. Nice boy considering his background – that so-called Senator is purely and simply an offence to humanity.' Sounded like one of Jim Collins's political opinions.

‘I think it was a stranger,' said Agathe. ‘People carrying daggers; I've known them with the weirdest things in their pockets. Somebody Father spoke to or maybe snapped at for treading on his toe – he was very sharp, you know, and had a very sarcastic tongue. And very little impatience with fools,' she added, rather cleverly: Van der Valk felt like getting up and bowing.

‘Just like you,' said Agnes, who plainly had heard of his adventure with much pleasure. ‘You couldn't say that the car which hit you had killed you or tried to.'

Agathe took the needle full of knitting, tucked it under her armpit, and with the empty needle scratched unselfconsciously round the clip of her bra, quite unconcerned about the presence of a stupid policeman going on about her father's death. This absence of tenseness struck Van der Valk. Figures danced meaninglessly across the television screen: Agnes had turned the sound down out of perfunctory politeness, but had left the picture to show him clearly how little he was wanted.
He didn't like the room much. An ordinary room in a small Victorian house, but furnished with a garish ostentation.

‘Of course,' went on Agnes, ‘Denis met Father, who was showing him round Amsterdam probably. But if you really can't find anyone better than that to suspect, well, you must be pretty incompetent is all I can say. As for coming snooping round here, well, Jim – my husband – wouldn't be best pleased is all I can say.' And all these people can say always does include such a very great deal …

Agathe was a bit more conciliatory. Nurse – tactful.

‘It does seem an awful waste of time. I simply can't imagine what you go wandering around Dublin for. Even if Denis could tell you anything he isn't here. He's in Rome by the way,' to her sister. ‘Stasie got a card from him.' Agnes made a poo sound; what was that to her?

‘Did your husband know your father?' he asked Agathe.

‘Met him a few times – no, not when he lived here – not for a few years now. He was here on trips, a time or two.'

‘I'd be interested in his opinion.' No reaction.

‘Well he's not here – gone to the pictures. He goes often; it rests his nerves.'

‘No real importance,' he said vaguely. ‘Well, thank you for the courteous welcome and your patience.' Jim Collins's whisky bottle was standing on a tray with glasses but he wasn't getting offered any!

‘Don't mention it but if you take my advice you'll be getting back to Holland. There's nothing here to interest you. Our private lives are our own – and you don't get away with invasion of privacy here.' He got the message! They knew of course about Denis and Stasie: they must know. But they didn't, he thought, know what big Jim Collins was getting up to in his spare time. Or the little sister! So much for the conspiracy theory.

The lovely ladies of Belgrave Square are either very stupid or… no, they can't be that stupid!

He left, with an impression that the moment his back was turned the two of them would be having a violent quarrel.

*

‘They don't know anything at all,' he muttered. ‘I wonder if even Stasie really knows herself.'

Inspector Flynn had had a sudden idea.

‘Did you maybe bed her a tiny bit on purpose?' suddenly, a bit awed at so much wickedness.

‘Not really on purpose. Kind of half and half. Like her a bit. One decides to – or not to – and then one wavers, because of – oh, fear or shame or scruple, or anything you like, maybe worry at being found out, and you end up doing or not doing because you just can't help yourself.'

‘The cork theory is it now? Floating along according to the whims of the current?'

‘More or less,' vaguely. What did it matter what you called it? He couldn't explain – he didn't need to either; this fellow was quite bright enough to see for himself: he wasn't a fool. What will Stasie do next?

He had wanted to get closer to her. Well he had. Right up against her. There was a nick in his fingernail that caught irritatingly on his pullover; he opened the small blade of his knife, cut a smooth edge carefully, and flipped the knife at the table, where it stuck for once, quivering in a nervous, sensitive way.

‘Destroying the good government equipment,' said Flynn. ‘I'm wondering now whether perhaps this wasn't a clever thing to have done.'

‘I've no idea,' flipping the knife again and spearing an empty cigarette packet.

‘Saint Sebastian, that's who you are. All stuck full with arrows. The Senator Lynch will be shooting a few off at you too.'

‘I wonder what's happened to Denis.'

*

There had been about five occasions in his life when he had had to put on a dinner-jacket. The fancy-dress did not irritate him: this was a carnival; very well, dress up. The dinner-jacket fitted well; the secret of these hire places was to have good stuff, well cut, standing up to the cleaning. One paid a high price – as for most things, including understanding. No
difference really between Lynch and Stasie. One had to obey these peoples' ‘rules'. The Lynch world – the more important, perhaps, to obey its rules since Denis had slipped outside them. And it was a test, again. Lynch's confidence depended on himself being house-trained, as the civil servants put it.

The sling was too white and too smelly in a nasty hospital way. He threw it out, and tried a black silk scarf instead. Better. Hurt my wrist playing polo.

The formal invitation had said seven thirty for eight, so he made it seven forty-five precisely and the maid took his trench-coat without disapproval. Being tall and big-boned had been some use when a rookie trainee on the streets, and still served a purpose. But he needed a little cord, a tiny little Legion of Honour or something, really.

There were several guests. There was an old gentleman in a monocle from the Belgian Embassy, who spoke a few polite words in careful, formal Dutch, like a District Commissioner addressing the natives. Van der Valk, with no wish to get caught in linguistic problems of the Brussels suburbs, answered in French, whereat the old gentleman smiled and began a series – which lasted all evening – of rapid, brilliant, devious comic stories. There was also a Dublin surgeon and his wife, both covered in what Arlette called les marques extérieures de la richesse. He was a big, fat man, interested in criminology and the reform of the penal code: Van der Valk was found wanting, slightly, here. There was also an old lady in petunia satin who began over the glasses of sherry by asking him whether he had read Proust. He did not come too well out of this either, but it put the old gentleman into chuckles.

‘When the Duke was on his way to an evening party, and met by agitated female relatives announcing the death of his cousin, a piece of news he had been dreading all day since he was greatly looking forward to this particular party, he climbed resolutely into his carriage saying “People do exaggerate so.”'

‘An answer I've always wanted to give when told about people's deaths,' said Van der Valk, winning back a bit of ground.

During dinner, which was grand enough for him to eye all
the little trinkets and be grateful it wasn't the asparagus season, he got told a good deal about the Common Market, about which he knew little. Everyone was a mine of information, including himself. The food was good, the wine very. The soufflé might have had too much sugar in it. Mrs Lynch took the ladies away – he had wondered ábout this phenomenon – and port was produced. It all went on rather. Did one have to tell dirty stories? – he never could remember any. He was relieved to find it wasn't Lynch's style.

But was it going on all night? He was beginning to wonder whether he was being made a fool of, fiddling with a little gold cup holding two drops of lukewarm coffee, terrified that somebody would begin talking about art, when he was suddenly liberated by the old gentleman taking polite leave of him. It was a signal; the old lady went off to read Proust in bed, the surgeon had to operate at seven forty-five next morning, a very pretty young American girl (fancied, distinctly, despite Stasie) had a whole sheaf of lecture-notes still to go through, and he was still bowing politely, more or less, when both Lynches reappeared suddenly in the drawing-room and said ‘Please take another cigar.' It was, he realized bemusedly, his cue.