Criminal Conversation by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page A

that comfortable.” A long sofa, with a severe oblong coffee-table in front of it. A very good simple vase, to match the ashtray – Vosges crystal – with tiger lilies in it today. Van der Valk liked all these things very much. Last time he had been too close to his antagonist, and had not had a chance to study the surroundings. From the sofa, too, he could survey better. Had the doctor thought of that? Was he deliberately being allowed to sit here, lower, further back, with a perspective of the room?
    This furniture was modern. Over there, though, between the doors behind him, was a console table so mannered, so delicate, that he felt sure it was a faithful copy of some piece by a court ebonist of Louis Quinze. Really, Madame de Pompadour would not have found this room ugly, and he felt immediately that this beauty, this elegance, was important to the man that sat there at the desk. The elegance was not exclusively feminine, but it was a room where a woman would immediately feel at home, at ease, ready to confide, to blossom. Quite a remarkable notion I have there, thought van der Valk, making chit-chat to the man at the desk.
    The man is sure of himself, he thought: absolutely smooth, his self-command unusually well administered to his features, his actions. And yet there is anxiety there. But it was not a simple guessing puzzle, for this was a complicated, sophisticated person. He shook his head to get rid of an unpleasant sensation of being trapped in cobwebs, suddenly decided to get up and walk about, and did so, rather to his own surprise, wondering what instinct had told him to yield openly to a feeling of inadequacy.
    Post’s face, courteous, intelligent, good-humoured, smiled at him amusedly.
    â€œYou plainly do not expect to find help from me. But you hope, as plainly, to find that I can give you relief from the fears and distortions that press upon you. You are feeling harassed. By all means walk about if it helps you.”
    Van der Valk had to exert a great deal of his own self-command not to get swept off his feet by a sudden red tide of fury. Now damn the fellow’s bloody cheek. He thought, deliberately, of standing on abeach, chest high in water, at the moment a big roller breaks. One wrestles to stay upright, forcing one’s feet to stay buried in the shifting, swirling sand against the undertow. As the wave goes back all the sand is sucked away behind one’s heels and one nearly loses all balance afresh, to sit ignominiously in the surf.
    â€œI am walking about. It does help me.”
    Isn’t there a kind of wrestling, he thought vaguely, where by pretending to give in you reach a winning position? Or is there a better analogy in a chess sacrifice? Now that is characteristic of my poor muddled brain; I have really very little idea how to stop myself looking ridiculous. I have no footing at all. By being friendly and pleasant and oh so co-operative, he has lured me on: I thought he was opening the door for me and so he was, to watch me fall into the pit dug inside and laugh his head off – and all I can think of is chess, a subject on which my level is roughly that of an averagely bright elementary-school child.
    The only advantage he possessed, he thought while staring at a shelf of unhelpful medical literature, was a kind of vague moral force. The man was expecting an orthodox police reaction; he had to find an unorthodox reply.
    He had reached the door to the back when Post made the expected remark.
    â€œI need hardly say, my friend, that those doors lead to my examination-rooms, where I do not allow you to wander about unsupervised – nor at all without a permission I shall not, naturally, give. Even police inspectors are not allowed upon private property without impressive pieces of paper, which you do not possess simply because, as I have reminded you, you are suffering from delusions.”
    Van der Valk had found himself suddenly. He turned in the closed