Blond Baboon Read Online Free PDF

they are dead now, my grandmother is dead too. Mother liked it here, she never left.”
    “And she sang again?”
    “No. She has a business, Carnet and Company. The company sells furniture, Italian furniture mostly. Mother made some good contacts, and she used to be very energetic. She had saved money from her singing and she was looking around for a way to invest it, and then she saw an advertisement of some Italian firm that wanted to have an agent here. The Italians spoke French and Mother spoke French too, of course, and she went to Milan and got the agency and bought some stock and she was lucky, I think.
    The firm does very well now. Oh!” The hand had come up suddenly and covered her mouth.
    Cardozo jumped up, but the commissaris touched his leg and he sat down again.
    “Yes, miss?”
    “Mr. Bergen. He will be very upset about Mother. He is her partner, you see. I should have called him.”
    “Perhaps you should call him tomorrow. With mis weather he’ll be better off at home. Does Mr. Bergen live in Amsterdam?”
    “Yes, but on the other side of the city.”
    “We shouldn’t disturb him then. Did your mother start the business with him?”
    “He came in a little later. She started on her own and he was working for another firm selling furniture. I think they met somewhere and she offered him a job on commission and he did well. Later he became a director and a partner; she gave him a quarter of the shares.”
    “Mr. Bergen is married, is he?”
    “Yes.”
    The commissaris shifted on his cushion. “I am sorry, miss. You don’t have to answer the question if you don’t want to. Did your mother have any close friends? Men, I mean.”
    She giggled. Cardozo hunched his shoulders. He had been watching the girl carefully, fascinated by her flowing hair and startling green eyes and firm breasts, but he had reminded himself that he was a police officer and that the girl had just lost her mother, by an accident or otherwise. Her purring voice had set off tiny ripples below the skin of his back. He had been impressed by the room and the way the girl’s small body controlled the room. He had had the feeling that he had been venturing out into a new world, a world of beautiful sadness, of delicate shades of emotion that he didn’t usually come into contact with. But the girl’s giggle broke his rapture. The giggle was almost coarse, exciting on another scale, the excitement of a low bar with a juke box going and beer slopped into cheap straight glasses.
    “Yes. Mother had a lover but the affair broke up. He came for several years “
    “His name, miss?”
    “Vleuten, Jan Vleuten, but everybody calls him the baboon, the blond baboon.”
    “You liked him?” The question was irrelevant at that point and came up suddenly, but the giggle had shaken the commissaris too.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “But the connection broke up, you said. When was that, miss?”
    “About two years ago, I think. She would still see him occasionally but then it stopped altogether. He worked for the company, but when he left the affair ended too.”
    “I see. Well, I think we can go now. We have to see you a few more times, but that will be later. You need a good rest now. You’re sure that your mother didn’t have a visitor tonight, aren’t you, miss? If we knew she had and we knew who the visitor was our work would be easier and take up less time.”
    “I don’t know, there was only one glass on the table when I came down. I didn’t hear the bell, but I may have been in the kitchen here when the bell rang. It isn’t a very loud bell.”
    Cardozo jumped up again. “Shall I check the bell, sir?”
    “No, that’s all right. Thanks for the coffee, miss.” The commissaris was attempting to get up and his face grimaced with pain. Cardozo helped him to his feet.

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    T HE COMMISSARIS WOULDNT LET G ABRIELLE ACCOM pany him to the front door but said good-bye at die door of her room. He held her shoulder lightly as he said his