The Return

19

“Verhaven Arrested! Sensational Development in Beatrice Case!”

The headline ran across the whole of Neuwe Blatt’s front page on April 30, 1962. Van Veeteren drank half a mug of water and started reading.

Was it Leopold Verhaven who murdered his own fiancée, Beatrice Holden?

In any case the police officer in charge of the notorious Kaustin murder, Detective Chief Inspector Mort, and also the public prosecutor, Mr. Hagendeck, have good reason to think so. Such good reason that the former international athlete was taken into custody yesterday. At the press conference Hagendeck was very careful not to reveal the grounds for the arrest, but thought that charges would be made within the twelve-day period stipulated by law.

Precisely how new evidence or proof that would throw light on this sinister business had emerged was something neither the police nor the prosecutor were prepared to discuss at the press conference in the Maardam police station. Nor does it seem that Leopold Verhaven has made a confession. His lawyer, Pierre Quenterran, was adamant that his client had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder, and claimed that the arrest was a consequence of, and a reaction to, all that had been written about the case.

“The police are desperate,” Quenterran insisted to assembled reporters. “The general public with its ingrained sense of justice has demanded results, and rather than admit to their incompetence, those in charge of the case have conjured up a scapegoat….”

Detective Chief Inspector Mort dismisses Mr. Quenterran’s statement as “utter rubbish.”

Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Van Veeteren thought and turned to the next photocopy, which was from the same issue of Neuwe Blatt, but an inside page. It comprised a short summary of the background, a résumé of developments from the time when “this somber and depressing course of events first began,” as the reporter put it.

April 6:

A Saturday, sunny with a warm breeze. Early in the morning Leopold Verhaven sets off, as is his wont, for the towns of Linzhuisen and Maardam on business, and does not return home until late afternoon. Beatrice Holden has vanished by then, according to Verhaven’s own testimony, but he assumes that “she’s just gone off somewhere.” However, nobody has seen Beatrice Holden from that moment on. Some neighbors noticed her on her way home on Saturday morning, several hours after Verhaven had left. She spent the morning visiting her mother and daughter in the village. There is no evidence to suggest that she left home again on business of her own, and of her own free will.

On business of her own, and of her own free will! Van Veeteren thought. What a wordsmith! He continued reading:

April 16:

Verhaven reports to the police that his fiancée has been missing for over a week. He declines to comment on why he left it so long before informing the police. He does not believe, however, that “anything serious can have happened to her.”

April 22:

Beatrice Holden’s dead body is found by an elderly couple in some woods only a mile or so away from Verhaven’s house. She is naked and has been strangled, probably not at the place where her body was found.

April 22–29:

A major police investigation examines the circumstances of the murder. Meticulous forensic procedures are followed, and a hundred or so people, most of them from the village of Kaustin, are interviewed.

April 30:

Leopold Verhaven is arrested on suspicion of having murdered his 23-year-old fiancée, or alternatively committed manslaughter.

That was all. Van Veeteren put the photocopy at the bottom of the pile and checked the time. Half past eleven. Shouldn’t lunch be served about now? For the first time since he came to after the operation, he could feel a little pang of hunger. That must surely be a sign that he was on the mend?

In any case, everything seemed to have gone according to plan. That is what the young surgeon with the cherubic cheeks had stressed enthusiastically that very morning, when he had called in to prod at Van Veeteren’s stomach with his pale, cocktail-sausage fingers. A mere six to eight days’ convalescence, then the chief inspector would be able to return to his usual routines, more energetic than ever.

Energetic? Van Veeteren thought. How can he know that I have any particular desire to be energetic?

He turned his head to look at the display of flowers. Three bouquets, no more, no less, were squeezed onto the bedside table. His colleagues’. Renate’s. Jess and Erich’s. And this afternoon Jess was due to visit him with the twins. What more could he ask for?

Now he could hear the food trolley approaching down the corridor. Presumably he would only be allowed a few morsels of dietary fare, but perhaps that was just as well. Maybe he was not yet ready for rare steak.

He yawned and turned his thoughts back to Verhaven. Tried to imagine that little village off the beaten track around the beginning of the 1960s.

What components would have been there?

The usual ones? Presumably.

Narrowness of outlook. Suspicions. Envy. Wagging tongues.

Yes, that was about it, generally speaking.

Verhaven’s outsider status?

He seems to have been an odd character, and an odd character was what was needed. The ideal murderer? Perhaps that is what it looked like.

How about proof? He tried to recall the circumstances, but he couldn’t remember much more than a series of question marks that he hadn’t been able to sort out.

Had they managed to resist all the half-truths that must have emerged? There had been a bit of a manhunt, he remembered. Quite a lot of insinuations in the media about the competence of the police and the courts. Or rather, incompetence. The police had been under pressure. If they didn’t find a murderer, they were condemning themselves…

What about the forensic proof? It had been a case of circumstantial evidence, hadn’t it? He must get down to the court records that Münster had brought him, that was obvious. If only he could get something nutritious down himself first. Certainly there had been one or two shaky points. He had only talked about the case once with Mort after it was all over, and it had been obvious that his predecessor had not been too happy about discussing it.

He was slightly better informed about the other business, the Marlene case. Hadn’t that investigation left quite a lot to be desired as well? Van Veeteren had actually been involved in it, but only on the periphery. He’d never been in the courtroom. Mort had been in charge on that occasion as well.

Leopold Verhaven? Surely this was a chapter in legal history that would not stand up to meticulous rescrutiny?

Or was he merely imagining things? Was it just a matter of him needing something more or less perverse to occupy his mind as he lay here flat on his back, waiting for his intestine to heal properly again? Screened off and isolated from the outside world, where the only thing demanded of him was to lie still and not get excited.

Something really messy. An old legal scandal, like the one in that crime novel by Josephine Tey, whatever it was called.

Why was it so difficult to let your mind lie fallow?

What was it that Pascal had said? Something about all the evil in the world being caused by our inability to sit still in an empty room?

Shit, what an existence, he thought. Hurry up and wheel in the food trolley, so that I can get my teeth into a good old spinach soup!