Double-Barrel by Nicolas Freeling Page A

suspect.’
    â€˜I came, quite frankly, finding somebody intelligent, to pick his brains.’
    He smiled again. ‘What I have is at your disposal.’
    I changed the subject. There was no use in pursuing it.
11
    Arlette, when I got home, was looking out for me. She had taken my instructions, my silly plan, very seriously, and had filled four pages of one of my scratch pads with pure ethnographic research, quite trivial and absurd, and probably very valuable. I could turn it all over to a sociologist from the University of Yale who was making a survey of provincial towns. Like the man who wrote the absorbing book about the status seekers. I read it allcarefully. She stood like a self-conscious schoolgirl having her essay corrected.
    â€˜One thing happened that was a little odd. I didn’t know how to put it down briefly; I thought I could tell you if you were interested; you can judge for yourself. I’m probably imagining things straight away – I knew I’d be no good at this.’
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜Housewives’ snooping – incredible. If I lived here I’d turn into a window-peeper too.’ She was indignant with herself.
    â€˜Tell me, then.’
    â€˜It’s nothing really, and in Amsterdam I would have paid no heed at all, if I’d even noticed, which I probably wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t have listened. Here I did listen – avidly.’
    I had to laugh. She wasn’t only indignant; she was ashamed of herself.
    â€˜Woman. Stop tantalizing. Nothing is important, but observe whatever you see with total accuracy. You never know, you may discover the long-sought cure to the common cold.’
    â€˜Well …’ Plunge. ‘A couple down the road had a fight. Three doors down opposite. That’s – let’s see – number ten. There’s a man and his wife and they have a little girl about five; long hair tied in a bow with a ribbon.’
    â€˜I’m trying to place them in my mind.’
    â€˜He has a little beige car, sort of butty-looking.’
    â€˜I know – Fiat eleven hundred. I’ve got him; he’s a traveller in seeds and plants and things.’
    It amused her, and slightly horrified her, that I was paying attention. That I had my notebook out, and had written on top of a clean page: ‘Mimosastraat. No. 10. Beige mille-cento.’ She was a witness; I was taking her down. I could see that she felt this to be a bit immoral after fifteen years of being married to me.
    â€˜I’ve learned a good deal of miscellaneous gossip about the whole street.’
    â€˜You tell me everything in order. Continue with the row.’
    â€˜The first I heard was, I was ironing in here and heard a door slamming, front door it sounded like, and a woman’s voice screaming, “Peter, Peter!” So I remembered what you told me, and flew to the window – I may say that every wife in the street did exactly the same. The auto door banged too; that was the man – Peter, I take it – getting in. She flew out after him, got into the car too just as it started, and there seemed to be a sort of struggle inside, because the auto lurched all over the street. I suppose she was hanging on to the steering wheel but I couldn’t see properly’ – conscientious. ‘Anyway it stopped down the street, out of my sight.’ She went a bit pink. ‘I went to the door and looked. You did tell me.’
    â€˜You weren’t the only one, I’ll bet.’
    â€˜If I hadn’t I’d have been the only one. But I thought myself a dirty bitch, standing there blissfully enjoying someone else’s private troubles. It was a very suburban scene. I mean – here, everything seems so hidden and hushed up, and therefore everybody peeks. At home nobody looks because they don’t seem ashamed – people do often have fights on the pavement, after all. When they aren’t ashamed,