Blond Baboon by Janwillem van de Wetering Read Free Book Online

he did try to kill that dog. We could hold on to him if you can produce some evidence, the slightest evidence will do. He is our only clear contact with the Carnet household: he knows both Elaine and Gabrielle, his garden borders on theirs, neighbors always know quite a lot about each other. It would be too much to expect that you can find witnesses to the actual death of Elaine—it must have happened late at night, when the gale was having its climax and it was raining heavily. But try anyway, take your time, visit everybody who lives in a house with a view of the Carnet garden.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Grijpstra’s eyelids dropped as he looked away from Cardozo’s bright face. The young detective reminded him of a fellow pupil at school, a wiry little get-ahead, an eager-beaver pup mat would drool whenever he could catch a teacher’s attention. The pupil always got straight A’s. He was a general now, in charge of Dutch tank brigades, clumsily plowing down fences on German farms. Grijpstra was glad he wasn’t a general, but then, perhaps generals can get divorces easily. He stopped the thought. Whatever he tried to think about these days would always lead to divorce.
    The commissaris stubbed out his cigar and the detectives got up but sat down again. The cigar hadn’t been the right signal. The commissaiis had left his desk and was wandering about the room, studying his plants.
    He mumbled to himself, took an atomizer from a shelf, and sprayed a large fern that hung from the ceiling on a chain.
    “Lovely, look at this new sprout, it’s all curled up like a bishop’s stave.” The detectives stood around the fern and made appropriate remarks. Only de Gier seemed really interested.
    “You should have some ferns in your apartment, de Gier, they are both decorative and tranquilizing.”
    “My cat will jump them and tear their leaves, sir.”
    “Really? Tabriz? I thought she was a pleasant, sedate female. Well, just hang it high enough. It’ll rest your mind as you lie on your bed and it will give you good ideas. The mind really only functions well when it’s properly calmed.” He walked back to his desk and sat down. His small dried-out, almost yellow hands rested on the tabletop. He didn’t hear the detectives as they trooped out of the room.
    “Sir?” de Gier asked from the door.
    “Hmm? Yes. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in fifteen minutes, sergeant. We’ll visit Mr. Bergen first, the Carnet partner—find the address of Carnet and Company, please, they deal in furniture. I think I’ve seen their building, near the Pepperstraat somewhere.”
    The sergeant closed the door slowly. He heard the last two words the commissaris said. “Messy. Yagh!”
    * A guilder is $0.40, or £0.25.

\\\\\ 5 /////
    T HE BUILDING IN THE P EPPERSTRAAT CONSISTED OF SIX small, three-storied houses joined on die inside while still retaining their apparent individualities. Each house had its own ornamentation, very different from the others if observed carefully, but the overall effect created unity again. The commissaris stood in the narrow street while de Gier drove off again to find a parking place, and looked up to get a good view. He wondered why the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had given rise to so much perfect beauty and how the beauty could have got lost for so long. It was coming back now, there was hope again, but it had been gone for hundreds of years, drab years that had built other parts of the city, long cramped streets of soot-soaked grayness lining up houses that were an insult to humanity with their cramped quarters and stark, forbidding rooflines.
    A sign, hung from a cast-iron bar, read CARNET & CO., FURNITURE, IMPORT & WHOLESALE in small neat lettering. Through several open windows on the first floor the clatter of electric typewriters could be heard. An elderly couple, probably a storekeeper and his wife, were received at the narrow green front door of the first gable by a smooth-looking young man in a