The Sergeant's Cat Read online

  “Husbands,” the doctor said. “Prime suspects in my ex­perience. Husbands are supposed to love their wives, but usually they don’t. It’s the same the other way round. Marriage seems to breed violence—it’s one of the impossible situations we hu­mans have to put up with.”

  Grijpstra’s pale blue eyes twinkled. “Are you married, Doc­tor?”

  The doctor grinned back. “Very. Oh, yes.”

  “A long time?”

  “Long enough.”

  Grijpstra’s grin faded. “So am I. Too long. But poison is nasty. Thank you, Doctor.”

  There wasn’t much conversation in the car as they drove to the engineer’s address. The city’s streets had filled up. People were stirring about on the sidewalks and cars crowded each other, honking occasionally. The engineer lived in a block of apartments, and Grijpstra switched off the engine and lit another small black cigar.

  “A family drama. What do you think, Sergeant?”

  “I don’t think. But that rabbit was most extraordinary. Not bought in a shop. A specially made rabbit, and well made, not by an amateur.”

  “Are we looking for a sculptor? Some arty person? Would Mr. Moozen or the engineer be an artist in his spare time? How does one make a chocolate rabbit, anyway?”

  De Gier tried to stretch, but didn’t succeed in his cramped quarters. He yawned instead. “You make a mold, I suppose, out of plaster of Paris or something, and then you pour hot chocolate into the mold and wait for it to harden. That rabbit was solid chocolate, several kilos of it. Our artistic friend went to a lot of trouble.”

  “A baker? A pastry man?”

  “Or an engineer—engineers design forms sometimes, I be­lieve. Let’s meet this lover man.”

  The engineer was a small nimble man with a shock of black hair and dark lively eyes, a nervous man, nervous in a pleasant, childlike manner. De Gier remembered that Mrs. Moozen was small, too. They were ushered into a four-room apartment. They had to be careful not to step on a large number of toys, spread about evenly. Two little boys played on the floor; the eldest ran out of the room to fetch his Easter present to show to them. It was a basketful of eggs, homemade, out of chocolate. The other boy came to show his basket, identical but a size smaller.

  “My sister and I made them last night,” the engineer said. “She came to live here after my wife left, and she looks after the kids, but she is spending the Easter weekend with my parents in the country. We couldn’t go because Tom here had measles, hadn’t you, Tom?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “Big measles. Little Klaas here hasn’t had them yet.”

  Klaas looked sorry. Grijpstra took a plastic truck off a chair and sat down heavily after having looked at the engineer, who waved him on. “Please, make yourself at home.” De Gier had found himself a chair, too, and was rolling a cigarette. The en­gineer provided coffee and shooed the children into another room.

  “Any trouble?”

  “Yes,” Grijpstra said. “I am afraid we usually bring trouble. A Mrs. Moozen has been taken to the hospital. An attempt was made on her life. I believe you are acquainted with Mrs. Moozen?”

  “Ann,” the engineer said. “My God! Is she all right?”

  De Gier had stopped rolling his cigarette. He was watching the man carefully; his large brown eyes gleamed, but not with pleasure or anticipation. The sergeant felt sorrow, a feeling that often accompanied his intrusions into the private lives of his fellow citizens. He shifted, and the automatic pistol in his shoul­der holster nuzzled into his armpit. He impatiently pushed the weapon back. This was no time to be reminded that he carried death with him, legal death.

  “What happened?” the engineer was asking. “Did some­body hurt her?”

  “A question,” Grijpstra said gently. “A question first, sir. You said your sister and you were making chocolate Easter eggs last night. Did you happen to make any bunnies, too?”

  The engineer sucked noisily on his cigarette. Grijpstra re­peated his question.

  “Bunnies? Yes, or no. We tried, but it was too much for us. The eggs were easy—my sister is good at that. We have a pudding form for a bunny, but all we could manage was a pud­ding. It is still in the kitchen, a surprise for the kids later on today. Chocolate pudding—they like it.”

  “Can we see the kitchen, please?”

  The engineer didn’t get up. “My God,” he said again, “she was poisoned? How horrible! Where is she now?”

  “In the hospital, sir.”

  “Bad?”

  Grijpstra nodded. “The doctor said she will live. Some sort of pesticide was mixed into chocolate, which she ate.”

  The engineer got up; he seemed dazed. They found the kitchen. Leftover chocolate mix was still on the counter. Grijps­tra brought out an envelope and scooped some of the hardened chips into it.

  “Do you know that Ann and I had an affair?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you told that she ended the affair, that she decided to stay with her husband?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The engineer was tidying up the counter mechanically. “I see. So I could be a suspect. Tried to get at her out of spite or something. But I am not a spiteful man. You wouldn’t know that. I don’t mind being a suspect, but I would like to see Ann. She is in the hospital, you said. What hospital?”

  “The Wilhelmina, sir.”

  “Can’t leave the kids here, can I? Maybe the neighbors will take them for an hour or so . . . yes. I’ll go and see Ann. This is terrible.”

  Grijpstra marched to the front door with de Gier trailing behind him. “Don’t move from the house today, if you please, sir, not until we telephone or come again. We’ll try and be as quick as we can.”

  “Nice chap,” de Gier said when the car found its parking place in the vast courtyard of Headquarters. “That engineer, I mean. I rather liked Mr. Moozen, too, and Mrs. Moozen is a lovely lady. Now what?”

  “Go back to the Moozen house, Sergeant, and get a sample of the roaring bunny. Bring it to the laboratory together with this envelope. If they match, we have a strong case against the engineer.”

  De Gier restarted the engine. “Maybe he is not so nice, eh? He could have driven his wife crazy and now he tries to murder his girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend. Lovely Ann Moozen, who dared to drop him. Could be. Do you think so?”

  Grijpstra leaned his bulk against the car and addressed his words to the emptiness of the yard. “No. That would be the obvious solution. But he was distressed, genuinely distressed, I would say. If he hadn’t been and if he hadn’t had those kids in the house, I might have brought him in for further questioning.”

  “And Mr. Moozen?”

  “Could be. Maybe he didn’t find the bunny on the garden path; maybe he put it there, or maybe he had it ready in the cupboard and brought it to his wandering wife. He is a lawyer—lawyers can be devious at times. True?”

  De Gier said, “Yes, yes, yes . . .” and kept on saying so until Grijpstra squeezed the elbow sticking out of the car’s win­dow. “You are saying yes, but you don’t sound convinced.”

  “I thought Moozen was suffering, too.”

  “Murderers usually suffer, don’t they?”

  De Gier started his “Yes, yes,” and Grijpstra marched off.

  They met an hour later, in the canteen at Headquarters. They munched rolls stuffed with sliced liver and roast beef and muttered diligently at each other.

  “So it is the same chocolate?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean much. One of the lab assistants has a father who owns a pastry shop. He said that there are only three mixes on the market and our stuff is the most popular make. No, not much of a clue there.”

  “So?”

  “We may have a complex case on our hands. We should go back to Mr. Moozen, I think, and find out about friends and relatives. Perhaps his wif
e had other lovers, or jealous lady friends.”

  “Why her?”

  Grijpstra munched on. “Hmm?”

  “Why her?” de Gier repeated. “Why not him?”

  Grijpstra swallowed. “Him? What about him?”

  De Gier reached for the plate, but Grijpstra restrained the sergeant’s hand. “Wait, you are hard to understand when you have your mouth full. What about him?”

  De Gier looked at the roll. Grijpstra picked it up and ate it.

  “Him,” de Gier said unhappily. “He found the bunny on the garden path, the ferocious bunny holding the pernicious egg. A gift, how nice. But he doesn’t eat chocolate, so he runs inside and shows the gift to his wife, and his wife grabs the egg and eats it. She may have thought he was giving it to her; she was still half-asleep. Maybe she noticed the taste, but she ate on to please her husband. She became ill at once and he telephoned for an ambulance. Now, if he had wanted to kill her, he might have waited an hour or so, to give the poison a chance to do its job. But he grabbed his phone, fortunately. What I am trying to say is, the egg may have been intended for him, from an enemy who didn’t even know Moozen had a wife, who didn’t care about killing the wife.”

  “Ah,” Grijpstra said, and swallowed the last of the roll. “Could be. We’ll ask Mr. Moozen about his enemies. But not just now. There is the dead man we found in the park—a mes­sage came in while you were away. A missing person has been reported and the description fits our corpse. According to the communications room, a woman phoned to say that a man who is renting a room in her house has been behaving strangely lately and has now disappeared. She traced him to the corner bar where he spent last evening, until two a.m., when they closed.

  “He was a little drunk, according to the barkeeper, but not blind drunk. She always takes him tea in the morning, but this morning he wasn’t there and the bed was still made. But she thinks he’d been home, for at a little after two a.m. she heard the front door opening and closing twice. He probably fetched the rope and his camp stool then.”

  “And the man was fairly old and had a short grey beard?”

  “Right.”

  “So we go and see the landlady. I’ll get a photograph—they took dozens this morning and they should be developed by now. Was anything found in his clothes?”

  “Nothing.” Grijpstra looked guiltily at the empty plate. “Want another roll?”

  “You ate it.”

  “That’s true, and the canteen is out of rolls; we got the last batch. Never mind, Sergeant. Let’s go out and do some work. Work will take your mind off food.”

  •

  “That’s him,” the landlady with the plastic curlers said. Her glasses had slipped to the tip of her blunt nose while she studied the photograph. “Oh, how horrible! His tongue is sticking out. Poor Mr. Marchant. Is he dead?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “For shame, and such a nice gentleman. He has been staying here for nearly five years now and he was always so polite.”

  Grijpstra tried to look away from the glaring pink curlers, which pointed at his forehead from the woman’s thinning hair.

  “Did he have any troubles, ma’am? Anything that may have led him to take his own life?”

  The curlers bobbed frantically. “Yes. Money troubles. Nothing to pay the tax man with. He always paid the rent, but he hadn’t been paying his taxes. And his business wasn’t doing well. He has a shop in the next street; he makes things—orna­ments, he calls them—out of brass. But there was some trouble with the neighbors. Too much noise, and something about the zoning, too; this is a residential area now, they say. The neigh­bors wanted him to move, but he had nowhere to move to, and he was getting nasty letters, lawyers’ letters. He would have had to close down, and he had to make money to pay the tax man. It was driving him crazy. I could hear him walk around in his room at night, round and round, until I had to switch off my hearing aid.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “He was alone,” the woman said, and shuffled with them to the door. “All alone, like me. And he was always so nice.” She was crying.

  “Happy Easter,” de Gier said, and opened the Volkswa­gen’s door for the adjutant.

  “The same to you. Back to Mr. Moozen again—we are driving about this morning. I could use some coffee again. Maybe Mr. Moozen will oblige.”

  “He won’t be so happy either. We aren’t making anybody happy today,” the sergeant said, and tried to put the Volkswagen into first gear. The gear slipped and the car took off in second.

  They found Mr. Moozen in his garden. It had begun to rain again, but the lawyer didn’t seem to notice that he was getting wet. He was staring at the bright yellow crocuses, touching them with his foot. He had trampled a few of them into the grass.

  “How is your wife, sir?”

  “Conscious and in pain. The doctors think they can save her, but she will have to be on a stringent diet for years and she’ll be very weak for months. I won’t have her back for a while.”

  Grijpstra coughed. “We visited your wife’s, ah, recent lover, sir.” The word “recent” came out awkwardly and he coughed again to take away the bad taste.

  “Did you arrest him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any strong reasons to suspect the man?”

  “Are you a criminal lawyer, sir?”

  Moozen kicked the last surviving crocus, turned on his heel, and led his visitors to the house. “No, I specialize in civil cases. Sometimes I do divorces, but I don’t have enough experience to point a finger in this personal case. Divorce is a messy business, but with a little tact and patience reason usually prevails. To try and poison somebody is unreasonable behavior. I can’t visualize Ann provoking that type of action—she is a gentle woman, sensual but gentle. If she did break off her relationship with the engineer, she would have done it diplomatically.”

  “He seemed upset, sir, genuinely upset.”

  “Quite. I had hoped as much. So where are we now?”

  “With you, sir. Do you have any enemies? Anybody who hated you so much that he wanted you to die a grotesque death, handed to you by a roaring rabbit? You did find the rabbit on the garden path this morning, didn’t you, sir?”

  Moozen pointed. “Yes, out there, sitting in between the crocuses, leering, and as you say, roaring. Giving me the egg.”

  “Now, which demented mind might have thought of shap­ing that apparition, sir? Are you dealing with any particularly unpleasant cases at this moment? Any cases that have a twisted undercurrent? Does anyone blame you for something bad that is happening to them?”

  Moozen brushed his hair with both hands. “No. I am working on a bad case having to do with a truck driver who got involved in a complicated accident; his truck caught fire and it was loaded with expensive cargo. Both his legs were crushed. His firm is suing the firm that owned the other truck. A lot of money in claims is involved and the parties are becoming im­patient, with me mostly. The case is dragging on and on. But if they kill me, the case will become even more complicated, with no hope of settlement in sight.”

  “Anything else, sir?”

  “The usual. I collect bad debts, so sometimes I have to get nasty. I write threatening letters; sometimes I telephone people or even visit them. I act tough—it’s got to be done in my pro­fession. Usually they pay, but they don’t like me for bothering them.”

  “Any pastry shops?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Pastry shops,” Grijpstra said. “People who make and sell confectionery. The rabbit was a work of art in a way, made by a professional. Are you suing anybody who would have the abil­ity to create the roaring rabbit?”

  “Ornaments!” de Gier shouted. His shout tore at the quiet room. Moozen and Grijpstra looked up, startled.

  “Ornaments! Brass ornaments. Ornaments are made from molds. W
e’ve got to check his shop.”

  “Whose shop?” Grijpstra frowned irritably. “Keep your voice down, Sergeant. What shop? What ornaments?”

  “Marchant!” de Gier shouted. “Marchant’s shop.”

  “Marchant?” Moozen was shouting, too. “Where did you get that name? Emil Marchant?”

  Grijpstra’s cigar fell on the carpet. He tried to pick it up and it burned his hand, sparks finding their way into the carpet’s strands. He stamped them out roughly.

  “You know a Mr. Marchant, sir?” de Gier asked quietly.

  “No, I haven’t met him. But I have written several letters to a man named Emil Marchant. On behalf of clients who are bothered by the noise he makes in his shop. He works with brass, and it isn’t only the noise, but there seems to be a stink as well. My clients want him to move out and are prepared to take him to court if necessary. Mr. Marchant telephoned me a few times, pleading for mercy. He said he owed money to the tax department and wanted time to make the money, that he would move out later; but my clients have lost patience. I didn’t give in to him—in fact, I just pushed harder. He will have to go to court next week and he is sure to lose.”

  “Do you know what line of business he is in, sir?”

  “Doorknobs, I believe, and knockers for doors, in the shape of lions’ heads—that sort of thing. And weather vanes. He told me on the phone. All handmade. He is a craftsman.”

  Grijpstra got up. “We’ll be on our way, sir. We found Mr. Marchant this morning, dead, hanging from a tree in the Am­sterdam Forest. He probably hanged himself early this morning, and at some time before, he must have delivered the rabbit and its egg. According to his landlady, he has been behaving strangely lately. He must have blamed you for his troubles and tried to take his revenge. He didn’t mean to kill your wife; he meant to kill you. He didn’t know that you don’t eat chocolate, and he probably didn’t even know you were married. We’ll check fur­ther and make a report. The rabbit’s mold is probably still in his shop, and if not, we’ll find traces of the chocolate. We’ll have the rabbit checked for fingerprints.