The House with Nine Locks, page 6
Adelais frowned. ‘You said I’d laugh, but now you’re laughing.’
Sebastian fell silent. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to be the first to laugh, just in case. I haven’t told anyone about this. I’m afraid they’ll think …’
‘You’ve got a screw loose?’
Sebastian nodded.
‘Well, I think that about you already,’ Adelais said. ‘So it couldn’t make any difference.’
They made their way back down the stairs. Adelais knew now why Sebastian had brought her to the house: because he knew she would listen to his plan. It was a dream that mattered to him, however unrealistic it might seem. She felt a glow of pride, knowing that he trusted her, and her alone, with something precious. No one had ever done that before. Perhaps, she thought, it was another of those privileges that came with saving someone’s life.
When they were done inside, they took a tour of the grounds, following paths that had all but vanished under moss and dead leaves. In several places trees had blown down and been left where they fell. Birds took flight from the branches as they approached. Under the shade of a towering beech tree, a pair of children’s swings hung from a sturdy wooden frame.
‘Who put these here?’
‘I don’t know, but they’re still all right. Get on.’
The seats were warped and slippery, but solid, and the ropes were thicker than her thumb. Gingerly, Adelais sat down, leaving her stick on the ground.
‘I’ll give you a push.’
‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’
Adelais’s mother had never encouraged the use of swings. ‘If you slip off, I hate to think what would happen,’ she would say whenever they went near a playground. Adelais had watched the other children swinging, but never once had she seen anyone fall.
Sebastian took hold of the seat and pulled it back until it was under his chin.
‘What are you—’
He let go. Adelais swung forward, then back again, gripping the ropes so hard it hurt.
‘Stop! No, I can’t—’
Sebastian gave her a hard push, and another. She was going higher and higher, her heart in her mouth. At the top of every swing there was a delicious moment of weightlessness. She wanted more.
Sebastian got on the swing beside her, kicking his legs out to gain greater height, tucking them under as he rocked back. Adelais copied him, daring herself to go as high as he did, then higher. Without saying anything, they settled into a rhythm, one going forward as the other went back. Perfection was passing each other at the lowest point, dead centre, and saying ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’, like two casual acquaintances passing each other on a ride through the park.
Aux Quatre Vents
NINE
Brussels, May 1953
Liesbeth Verlinden had been at the Leopold Hotel, cleaning and making beds, for the last six months. There had been talk of compensation after her husband had been killed at the Federal Engraving Bureau, but the talk had come to nothing. Had he met his end inside the main building it might have been different, but the authorities had determined that Pauwel Verlinden was guilty of contributory negligence, having entered the burning warehouse in contravention of bureau policy. His employers were not therefore liable. The fact that his death might not have been an accident did not make any difference. Verlinden’s widow received nothing. An officer of the gendarmerie who had been investigating the death had advised her to hire a lawyer, but Mrs Verlinden had no money for lawyers. Her savings had been just enough to cover the funeral and one month’s rent at their apartment on the Rue des Fabriques. She gave birth to her second child, Nikolaas, at a hostel run by the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary.
The Leopold had seen better days. Once grander than its rivals in the Quartier des Quais, its wealthiest customers had drifted away to more modern establishments, equipped with basement swimming pools and en suite bathrooms as standard. The owners of the Leopold had been forced to cut their prices, filling its forty-eight rooms with commercial travellers and the occasional tourist, customers for whom cracked enamel and tasselled curtains were not intolerable. The main problem, as far as the staff were concerned, was that the tips were not as generous as they had been. The cleaning staff, in particular, noticed how the ten-franc notes, left on pillows or bedside tables by departing guests, had become five-franc notes, or even coins. Sometimes there was no money at all. Nor was the management in any mood to make up the difference. As Monsieur Poncelet, the general manager, never tired of repeating, with so many Belgians out of work, anyone with a job should consider themselves lucky.
Cleaning at the Leopold always started with the common areas – the lobby, dining room, stairs and corridors – which had to be swept, mopped and polished well before the guests got up, the work of three hours. At half past nine, it was time to start on the rooms. The decor might be faded and unmistakably pre-war, but Monsieur Poncelet insisted that standards in all other respects should be of the highest order. The beds were stripped, fresh linen supplied every day and fitted with martial precision around the mattresses, bolsters and pillows. A maid who had once decided that the sheets only needed a little straightening had been sacked on the spot. Whether there was a change of guest or not, the floors had to be swept, the surfaces dusted, the windows and mirrors polished. The bathrooms were to be spotless, with fresh towels, soaps and colognes arranged exactly as prescribed. The work was supposed to be complete by one o’clock, at which time the tips were collected and handed over to Monsieur Poncelet for safe keeping. After the kitchens and staff quarters had been cleaned, and after Monsieur Poncelet had completed his inspections, the money was shared out.
On a Thursday, one year and three months after her husband’s death, Liesbeth Verlinden was making the beds on the top floor, when a bellboy called Thomas stuck his head round the door. She had been making slower progress than usual that morning, thanks to a fingernail that had split while tucking sheets under one of the heavy mattresses. The pain was intense and the wound threatened to leave blood on the linen.
‘I’m almost done. Give me two minutes.’ She was sure Thomas had come to deliver a reprimand from Monsieur Poncelet, or worse: a summons.
‘There’s a telephone call for you downstairs.’
‘For me?’
‘A Mrs de Bruyn. It sounded urgent.’
Mrs de Bruyn looked after the Verlinden children when Liesbeth Verlinden was at work. She did not own a telephone, which could only mean she had made the call from the telephone box at the far end of the street.
‘What did she say?’
‘Something about your daughter.’
‘Emeline? What’s happened?’
Thomas shrugged.
Liesbeth left the bed half made and hurried down the corridor towards the lifts.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Thomas called after her, as she reached for the call button.
The main elevators were exclusively for the use of guests. Staff, Monsieur Poncelet excepted, were supposed to use the back stairs or the small service elevator that hardly ever worked. If nobody had been sacked on account of this rule, it was only because nobody had dared to break it.
Liesbeth could hear the machinery in motion. The sound was getting louder. It was probably a guest, on the way to their room – or Monsieur Poncelet, starting his inspections on the top floor.
She couldn’t risk her job. Liesbeth took the eight flights of steps to the ground floor. The telephone was one of two behind the reception desk. The receiver lay on its side. Liesbeth snatched it up, ignoring a disapproving glance from Roland, the elderly concierge, who was going through the post.
‘Mrs de Bruyn?’
The line was dead.
‘I have to go.’
Roland looked at the clock above his head. ‘So soon?’
‘It’s an emergency: my daughter. Please explain to Monsieur Poncelet.’
‘I’ll try.’
Without looking up from the letters, Roland held out his hand. It took a moment for Liesbeth to realise that she was supposed to give him the tips she had found. There wasn’t time to argue. She reached into her apron and took out a handful of notes and coins. She didn’t know if Roland planned to keep the money, or see that it was shared out among the other cleaning staff later that day. She only knew that she wouldn’t be seeing a single centime of it.
The attacks had begun around the time they moved from the hostel to a pair of attic rooms on the Rue des Palais. Liesbeth had been woken one night by the sound of Emeline’s wheezing. She found the child balled up in a corner of the bed, panic-stricken and flailing as she struggled for breath. The first attacks had only lasted a few minutes, but over the following weeks, they had become longer and more frequent. Liesbeth worried that Emeline had caught an infection in her chest. The rooms were cold and they’d been forced to stuff paper around the window frames to keep out the draughts. But there were no signs of a fever and only occasional fits of coughing. Liesbeth wondered if the death of her husband was responsible. Emeline had seemed to take the news well at the time, if only because, at three years old, she had been too young to understand what death was. But maybe the loss had gnawed away at her from the inside, weakening her system, like a bad conscience.
‘She’s asthmatic,’ Dr de Witte had declared on their first visit. He said there was no treatment and advised against violent exercise.
Mrs de Bruyn’s sister had recommended an infusion of butterbur and ginger, but it did not seem to do any good, even when Emeline didn’t spit it up. The attacks had gone on getting worse. Liesbeth hated leaving for work in the mornings. She was better than anyone else at keeping Emeline calm, helping her fight the panic that made breathing even harder. As she ran for the tram stop on the Chaussée d’Anvers, she felt certain it was another attack that had sent Mrs de Bruyn scurrying to the telephone. What else could it be but the sight of the little girl slowly suffocating in front of her?
Mrs de Bruyn lived in a basement apartment three doors down on the Rue des Palais, within sight of the elevated rail lines that ran north to Antwerp. A bicycle was resting against the railings outside. The door to the basement was ajar. She could hear Nikolaas crying on the other side.
She found Emeline sitting upright on the edge of Mrs de Bruyn’s armchair. A nurse was kneeling on the floor in front of her. Emeline looked deathly pale. Her eyes were bloodshot and she was trembling.
‘Remember now, Emeline,’ the nurse said, ‘pursed lips. Like you’re blowing me a kiss. Nice and slow.’
Breathing exercises. Dr de Witte had given them a pamphlet on the subject. Liesbeth took her daughter’s hands and did the exercises with her: deep breaths in through the nose, long breaths out through pursed lips. In a couple of minutes, the wheezing stopped. Emeline slumped into her mother’s arms. It had been a bad attack, but there had been worse.
Mrs de Bruyn came in from the kitchen, carrying Nikolaas. Some of her grey hair had come loose and hung about her face. ‘I sent for the doctor. I didn’t know what else to do. You should’ve seen her.’
She had called Dr de Witte, but Dr de Witte had not come. A nurse had been dispatched instead. Was that because the last bill had not been paid?
The nurse got to her feet. She was a neat, handsome woman of about thirty. Liesbeth noticed that she was still wearing her coat. ‘It’s the air, if you ask me. Filthier than ever these days, especially around here, with the trains. Not good for a child with weak lungs, not good at all.’
No one had ever suggested that Emeline had weak lungs. She had always been a healthy, active child. But then, that was before.
The nurse made out her bill and, after a moment’s hesitation, left it on the table. On her wedding finger there was a gold ring. Liesbeth wondered if she had children of her own.
‘I’d think about moving to the country, if I were you,’ the nurse said. ‘Clean air. Good for the bronchioles. She’d be fine there, after a while.’
Liesbeth Verlinden nodded. ‘The country. We must think about that,’ she said, trying to sound like it was a practical suggestion, and one that was perfectly well within her reach.
TEN
They called it a seminar, as if the officers of the gendarmerie were a bunch of students studying philosophy at university, but that did not mean attendance was voluntary. ‘Centralised Command Structure – Demarcation and Reporting’ was scheduled for nine o’clock, but with two minutes to go, Sub-Lieutenant Toussaint found Major de Smet on the telephone. As soon as he hung up, he began putting on his hat and coat.
‘Have you forgotten, sir? The seminar?’
De Smet unlocked the top drawer of his desk and took out a magnifying glass. He owned several, but this one was special: instead of one lens, there were three, sandwiched together. The arrangement eliminated all distortion, even at the edges. Manufactured by the Carl Zeiss company, it had been liberated from a counterfeiter currently serving a thirteen-year sentence at the Maison d’Arrêt de Saint-Gilles. De Smet kept it in a suede pouch, and always polished it after use with two practised swirls of the lens cloth. Toussaint had never yet dared to touch it.
‘I haven’t forgotten.’ De Smet tucked the magnifying glass, pouch and all, inside his coat and pulled on his gloves.
‘I was under the impression we were all … Didn’t Colonel Bedois say—’
‘Don’t let me stop you, Sub-Lieutenant. If you feel a lecture on … what was it?’
‘Demarcation and reporting.’
‘If you feel that’s a good use of your time, go ahead.’ De Smet was already at the door. It was a while since Toussaint had seen him in such a hurry. ‘On the other hand, if you feel like being useful – now, or at some point in the future – I suggest you come with me.’
Number 15 Rue de la Chancellerie was a monumental six-storey building in the heart of the city. With bars on its windows and two floors of classical stonework, it was too ornate for a prison, but too austere for a palace. A brass panel to the left of the doors read: Banque Bruxelles Lambert.
‘What are we doing here?’
A doorman stood by to let them pass, giving de Smet a nod of recognition, although whether to the uniform or the man Toussaint could not tell.
‘Answering a summons from Monsieur Declercq.’
‘Declercq?’ Toussaint’s words echoed in the marble-clad lobby. He lowered his voice. ‘Who’s Monsieur Declercq?’
‘A man worth knowing.’
Another bank employee, a young man in a crisp pinstripe suit and shiny shoes, was waiting for them at the reception desk. ‘Major de Smet? The chef des dépôts is waiting for you downstairs.’
He set off along a corridor towards the back of the building. A flight of stone steps led them down to another corridor, as wide and bare as the first, but lit with electric light. A third corridor ended in a metal grille with a door set into the middle. An armed guard on the other side let them through. The space beyond was wider, with rooms going off left and right, and at the far end, the studded steel doors of the main vault. Toussaint wondered how much money was behind it, how much treasure: millions of francs’ worth probably, perhaps hundreds of millions. He wondered what it looked like, that kind of wealth.
A room to one side was furnished with filing cabinets, two large desks and some upright chairs. The young man showed them in and left, closing the door behind him. Toussaint heard keys jangling outside.
Monsieur Declercq was a tall, slender man, with old-fashioned wire spectacles and a beaky nose. He wore a waistcoat with a fob watch, and the cut of his suit, like the rest of him, made no visible concession to the twentieth century. Perhaps, Toussaint thought, he had spent the last fifty years in the bowels of the Banque Bruxelles Lambert and was oblivious to the modern world.
Declercq greeted them in French. De Smet replied in kind. ‘So what do you have for us, monsieur?’
Declercq put on a pair of white cotton gloves. He handed another pair to de Smet, and a third to Sub-Lieutenant Toussaint. On a desk, under the light of a powerful lamp, lay a leather document wallet. Declercq opened it and stepped back. There, between two sheets of clear acetate, lay a single 500-franc note.
De Smet sat down at the desk. The front of the note bore an image of the bearded Leopold II, etched – appropriately, Toussaint thought, given the horrors he had inflicted on the Congo – in the colour of dried blood. De Smet drew the light closer. After a few moments, he removed the note from the acetate and laid it down again, reaching into his coat for the magnifying glass. Silence fell, punctuated only by the ticking of an old pendulum clock on the wall, as he began a detailed examination. Declercq stood waiting, his hands folded in front of him, like a pall-bearer at a funeral. Toussaint found his stillness unnerving.
In the Brussels gendarmerie they told stories about Salvator de Smet, his record and his methods. Sub-Lieutenant Toussaint hadn’t been in the department a month when he began to hear them. It was said de Smet could spot a counterfeit note with his eyes closed, literally. He could tell a fake from the smell, from differences in the composition of the ink, or the chemical treatment of the paper. Genuine notes and forged ones made different sounds to de Smet’s ear when they were folded or crumpled up. It was said de Smet could pick out the forged bills from a stack, merely by running his fingertips over the edge, that he could detect differences in the way the fake notes had been cut, the response of different types of paper to the blade. More than that, he could assign each forgery to the individual who had created it, as readily as an art dealer could attribute a Rembrandt or a Chagall. They might as well have been signed.
Toussaint was sceptical. From what he had seen so far, such extraordinary talents weren’t necessary. Forged currency was usually crude. A moment’s examination in daylight was enough to spot it. The colours were wrong, the printing was sometimes crooked, most often the shading was achieved not by thousands of tiny points of ink, the fruit of meticulous etching on steel plates, but with a wash, as in a watercolour. Such fakes were not designed to fool a bank teller, let alone an expert. They were for passing in bars, at racetracks and fairgrounds, under cover of darkness.
