Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering Page A

“Look at this. Piet Verboom mortgaged his house, a couple of weeks ago, for fifty thousand guilders. That’s a lot of money, a year’s wage of a well-to-do man. The house looks all right but it is rackety and three hundred years old. Fifty thousand is about the most you can get on a mortgage, I am pretty sure. The money has been paid into his bank account and he has drawn it out again, together with another twenty-five thousand he had to his credit. It was taken out in cash. Where is it?”
    “Any money left on the account?” de Gier asked.
    “About ten thousand. This means that he has drawn about everything the Society owned in ready cash. And we found nothing. If it is here, it must have been hidden in an impossible spot. If it is here. It’s probably somewhere else by now.”
    “Stolen,” de Gier said.
    Grijpstra nodded.
    “Then we have the motive.”
    “Certainly,” Grijpstra said, and sat down.
    “And the opportunity. Everybody had the chance to kill him. Van Meteren for instance. He must have killed quite a few people in New Guinea and he could have used the seventy-five thousand. And Mrs. Verboom, she is mad of course. But would she have wanted the money? She is over eighty years old.”
    “Money is money,” de Gier said. “Old crazy people like to use it just like everyone else. Perhaps she has it in her bag and plans to spend it on a cruise around the world or a year in a luxury hotel in Madeira. There’s an English hotel over there that caters to rich old ladies. Somebody told me about it.”
    “Possibly,” said Grijpstra. “I wasn’t trained along the new lines like you were. Psychology and all that. Perhaps you should go and visit her in the clinic.”
    “Nice,” de Gier said. “Any more bright ideas?”
    “A suspect has to be interrogated, even if she is as crazy as the government.”
    “True.”
    “And then we have Thérèse—she didn’t like Piet either. She threw dictionaries at him. And the boys, Eduard and Johan. Perhaps they got tired of being used and squeezed dry. Perhaps a joint venture of Eduard, Johan and Annetje. They worked for nothing for a long time and now, suddenly, rich! For seventy-five thousand you can buy a nice new houseboat and cover the floor with Persian carpets.”
    “Second-hand carpets,” de Gier said.
    “Sure.”
    De Gier scratched his neck. “Everybody could have nipped up the stairs. Perhaps the girls were so busy stirring the health food that they didn’t notice. Or they were looking at the rhododendrons. You can’t watch rhododendrons and a staircase at the same time. Anyway, why would they have watched anything? Any of the thirty-eight guests could have done it, but what Ican’t understand is the breaking and entering. Do you think they were looking for the money?”
    Grijpstra sat up.
    “They hanged him, you mean, and they wanted to grab the money. But it wasn’t there. So they came back later?”
    “Came back?” de Gier asked. “Perhaps they never left. The breaking and entering was a little sideshow. They just went on living here, quietly.”
    “Not quietly. Criminals are usually rather nervous. Fidgety.”
    “Next?” de Gier asked.
    “Let’s look through the house again,” Grijpstra said. “We haven’t found anything but it doesn’t matter. There are still plenty of detectives around, in spite of the shortage. Let
them
have a try.”
    He telephoned. Six constables arrived and searched the house. They knocked on beams, removed floorboards, unscrewed drainpipes and put hands into lavatories. Two went through the shop, like moles. White moles, for they upset some bags of flour.
    De Gier watched them and smiled. He had been a mole too, some years back.
    He was still smiling when he climbed the stairs.

Chapter 5
    H E FOUND G RIJPSTRA in Piet Verboom’s room, reclining on the low settee, hands folded on round belly, a belly that had lately formed itself, bulging over Grijpstra’s slipping belt, and that was being kept in some