A Crime in Holland Read Online Free PDF Page A

territory.’
    â€˜This is Mademoiselle Any?’
    Irregular features. If not for the large mouth and uneven teeth, she wouldn’t have been worse-looking than average. Flat-chested. Large feet. But above all, the forbidding self-confidence of the suffragette.
    â€˜Yes. According to the statutes, she’s right. But I’ve told her that in practice …’
    â€˜Mademoiselle Any understands French, I believe?’
    â€˜I think so.’
    The young woman didn’t react, but waited, chin held high, for the end of this consultation between the two men, which did not appear to concern her.
    â€˜Mademoiselle,’ said Maigret, with exaggerated gallantry, ‘please accept my respects. Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, from Police Headquarters in Paris. All I wanted to know is what you thought about Mademoiselle Beetje and her relationship with Cornelius.’
    She tried to smile. A shy, forced smile. She looked from Maigret to her compatriot and stammered in poor French:
    â€˜I not … I not understand very well.’
    And the effort was enough to make her blush scarlet to the tips of her ears, while everything in her expression pleaded for release.

3. The Quayside Rats Club
    There were about a dozen of them, all men, wearing heavy blue woollen jackets, seaman’s caps and varnished clogs, some lounging against the town gates, others leaning their elbows on bollards, others again just standing around, their wide trousers making their legs look monumental.
    They were smoking, chewing tobacco, spitting a lot, and now and then something made them all burst out laughing, slapping their thighs.
    Four metres away from them floated the boats. Beyond lay the smug little town, surrounded by its dykes. Further along, a crane was unloading a collier.
    At first the men did not notice Maigret strolling along the wharf. So he had plenty of time to observe them.
    He had learned that in Delfzijl this group was known ironically as ‘the Quayside Rats Club’. Without even being told, he could have guessed that most of these sailors spent the greater part of their days on the same spot, rain or shine, chatting lazily and sending jets of saliva to the ground.
    One of them was the owner of three clippers, handsome vessels of four hundred tons equipped with sails and engines, one of which was just moving up the Ems and would soon be in port.
    Other men seemed less distinguished; a ship’s caulker
who probably didn’t do much caulking and the keeper of a disused lock, still wearing his government service cap.
    But in the middle of the group, one figure eclipsed all the rest, not only because he was the most massively built and the reddest of face, but because one sensed in him a man of stronger character.
    Clogs, a jacket. And on his head a brand-new cap, which had not yet had time to mould itself to the shape of his skull, and consequently looked faintly ridiculous.
    This was Oosting, commonly known as the Baes, smoking a short clay pipe as he listened to his neighbours talking.
    A vague smile played on his face. From time to time, he removed the pipe from his mouth to allow the smoke to flow gently from his lips.
    He reminded Maigret of a small-scale rhinoceros. A heavily built brute, but with mild eyes and something at the same time tough and gentle about his whole person.
    His eyes were fixed on a boat about fifteen metres long, moored to the quayside. A swift boat with clean lines, probably a former yacht, though now dirty and cluttered.
    This belonged to him, and from here it was possible to see the Ems estuary, twenty kilometres wide, and the distant glimmer of the North Sea: out there somewhere lay a golden brown sandbank known as the island of Workum, Oosting’s domain.
    Night was falling: the crimson rays of the setting sun painted the brick-built town even redder and glinted in fiery flashes on the scarlet lead paint of a cargo vessel undergoing repairs, reflected in