Criminal Conversation by Nicolas Freeling

difference between a sixteen-year-old wearing blue jeans and a rebellious look and the same sixteen-year-old in a summer frock with stockings on and white high-heeled sandals, and Suzanne was carefully composed. She looked quite calm, was alone, and had appeared on the dot. The face was pretty, young and round. She behaved simply as though called up to the headmaster’s office. Van der Valk was curious to see how Mr Samson, who had an old-fashioned earthiness about his way with the public, would handle this girl.
    The old man was going through some mail, which he shuffled into a pile and pushed aside.
    â€œGood morning,” he said casually. “Sit down then, Miss Wilde.” He picked up a neglected cigar and drew on it a couple of times to get it going. There was a sputtering noise and a redhot fragment flew off, which the old man killed with a thick finger, wiping the cinders off carefully with someone’s envelope. Fifth of November, thought van der Valk. Or, as the French put it, fires of artifice…
    â€œLet me explain why I asked you to come and see me,” began Samson quietly. “You probably, in common with most of the public, think of the police as concerned with nothing but crime, and if the average person gets a summons to the bureau, he starts examining his conscience and wondering what he’s been caught at. Eh?”
    â€œWell, I did wonder…”
    â€œThere you are, you see. Nobody ever thinks that our function is always first and foremost to protect the public. And of course a good deal of that is the prevention of what is loosely called crime. Beginning with the local district police who pick up somebody who drives while drunk and lock him up for the night. That sort of thing has nothing to do with us, here. If, however, they come across an involved tale, they call me, because they haven’t the time to spend on unwinding complicated stories. You might call this the department of involved stories, that may or may not have anything to do with crime but do involve the protection of the public. Eh? I don’t suppose you’ve ever had anything to do with the police and that’s why I’m telling you this. Eh?”
    All this paternalism seemed to be having the desired effect: the girl sat quietly and with relaxed muscles.
    â€œVery good. These complicated stories drag in all sorts of people, whom we have to pester because they may have heard or known something that helps us to understand. People quite uninvolved in anything disgraceful. Clear so far? Good. Happens that a man died recently, and there are some surrounding incidental circumstances we aren’t altogether happy about. They may all have a perfectly simple natural explanation and that’s why we’re trying to meet all the people who knew him, even slightly, and listen to anything however trivial or irrelevant they may be able to tell us. This man was a painter called Cabestan.”
    Watching the face that he could see in profile van der Valk could not see anything beyond an increase in attention, perhaps. It was nothing more than the face of a girl practically of student age who is accustomed to concentrating on spoken words. To her,Mr Samson appeared no more intimidating or important than her professor of Formal Design.
    â€œYou are an art student as I understand, Miss Wilde?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou go to a special school, where you learn languages and history and all the usual things, but with less emphasis on maths and physics and so on but special courses in the development of art or whatnot – is that all correct?”
    â€œYes.” Her voice was small and shy, but apart from that she gave a poised, even an assured impression. She looked older than sixteen. One would have said eighteen, nineteen. Of course these girls wear much more sophisticated clothes than they used to. They have their hair done professionally, they study their make-up carefully and they have