Criminal Conversation by Nicolas Freeling Page B

as well.”
    Not quite so obtuse…first tiny sign of hesitancy and confusion in the girl’s manner. Van der Valk, quietly writing shorthand, could see her very well.
    â€œNow…to be honest, no. I mean they’re very reasonable about letting me go where I please and meet whom I choose, especially when it’s anything to do with work, but – well, it’s a question of tact really. I mean if I’d mentioned Casimir at home there might have been a flap and questions and it might have led to a row and I just prefer to avoid that.”
    â€œThat’s quite natural.” It was decidedly the first time van der Valk had ever known the old man being silky.
    â€œWould both your parents have been inclined to disapprove?”
    â€œPerhaps,” she said carefully. “My father’s more strict but he has to be because he’s very well known, you see. My mother wouldn’t really have minded much but she’d back him up, if you understand.”
    â€œBut you find it reasonable that she should back him up, eh?”
    â€œA wife ought to back her husband up,” immediately, decidedly.
    â€œHave you ever met Dr Post?”
    Again a hesitation and this time tension. Slight; only noticeable because her answers had been coming so easily and loosely.
    â€œWell – met isn’t quite the word. He treated me a couple of months ago for anaemia.”
    â€œI thought he was a neurologist.”
    â€œI don’t know. My mother says he’s a good doctor. He certainly cured me.”
    â€œAh, your mother suggested it. I don’t know why, I thought perhaps Mrs Post had suggested your consulting her husband.”
    â€œNo, no,” emphatically. “She knew nothing about it.”
    â€œShe never introduced you to her husband?”
    â€œI’d never seen him. I supposed he wasn’t interested in pictures. That’s to say I’d never thought about it.”
    â€œUm. You know Mrs Post and your mother knows Dr Post but your paths just hadn’t crossed, uh?”
    She just looked a little puzzled.
    â€œI don’t think my mother knows him all that well. She’d consulted him one time, she told me and I suppose she found him good.”
    â€œExactly. Now this Mr Simons; did you ever meet him again?”
    She was going to balk; he could see it. Mr Samson lit another of his terrible cigars: van der Valk got a cigarette out one-handed, awkwardly.
    â€œYou are pretty inquisitive about all my doings, aren’t you?”
    â€œBut that’s our work, you see. Just like painting pictures, or building a wall, come to that,” poking with his burnt match-point to get a better draught in the horrible thing.
    â€œCan’t you tell me what it’s all about, then?”
    â€œI may,” said Mr Samson briefly. “We’d got to Mr Simons.”
    â€œI met him a couple more times. You know how it is – you get into a sort of group.”
    â€œYou’ve been to his house again?”
    â€œI don’t know who can have told you that.”
    â€œNobody told me; that’s why I ask.”
    â€œA couple of times, yes.”
    â€œWhen was it that you heard Cabestan was dead?”
    â€œI hadn’t heard anything of him in a while and I supposed he’d just got tired of trying to make me. A couple of the boys told me he was dead. It was a shock because – ja, it always is, isn’t it? – I mean hearing someone is dead. I mean one knows people die, of course, but you don’t expect people you know ever to die. But I wasn’t terribly surprised because I knew he wasn’t well. He drank much too much, and he used to go a funny colour and breathe heavily, after climbing all those stairs.”
    â€œYou said a couple of the boys.”
    â€œYes, at school, but not the same class. They heard at the arts club, they said. Casimir used to go there. He took me once but I didn’t care for