Puppet on a Chain

This time she advanced without any hesitation, put her hand out, made a small bobbing motion like the beginnings of a curtsy, and smiled.

'How do you do, Major Sherman?'

Not to be outdone in courtesy I smiled and bowed slightly. 'Miss van Gelder. My pleasure.'

'My pleasure.' She turned and looked enquiringly at van Gelder.

'English is not one of Trudi's Strong points,' van Gelder said apologetically. 'Sit down, Major, sit down.'

He took a bottle of Scotch from the sideboard, poured drinks for myself and himself, handed me mine and sank into his chair with a sigh. Then he looked up at his daughter, who was gazing steadily at me in a way that made me feel more than vaguely uncomfortable.

'Won't you sit down, my dear?'

She turned to van Gelder, smiled brightly, nodded and handed the huge puppet to him. He accepted it so readily that he was obviously used to this sort of thing.

'Yes, Papa,' she said, then without warning but at the same time as unaffectedly as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she sat down on my knee, put an arm around my neck and smiled at me. I smiled right back, though, for just that instant, it was a Herculean effort.

Trudi regarded me solemnly and said: 'I like you.'

'And I like you too, Trudi.' I squeezed her shoulder to show her how much I liked her. She smiled at me, put her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. I looked at the top of the blonde head for a moment, then glanced in mild enquiry at van Gelder. He smiled, a smile full of sorrow.

'If I do not wound you, Major Sherman, Trudi loves everyone.'

'All girls of a certain age do.'

'You are a man of quite extraordinary perception.'

I didn't think it called for any great perception at all to make the remark I had just made, so I didn't answer, just smiled and turned again to Trudi. I said, very gently: Trudi?'

She said nothing. She just stirred and smiled again, a curiously contented smile that for some obscure reason made me feel more than a little of a fraud, closed her eyes even more tightly and snuggled close to me.

I tried again. 'Trudi. I'm sure you must have beautiful eyes. Can I see them?'

She thought this over for a bit, smiled again, sat up, held herself at straight arm's length with her hands on my shoulders, then opened her eyes very wide as a child would do on such a request.

The huge violet eyes were beautiful, no doubt about that. But they were something else also. They were glazed and vacant and did not seem to reflect the light: they sparkled, a sparkle that would have deceptively highlit any still photograph taken of her, for the sparkle was superficial only: behind lay a strange quality of opacity.

Still gently, I took her right hand from my shoulder and pushed the sleeve up as far as the elbow. If the rest of her were anything to go by it should have been a beautiful forearm but it wasn't: it was shockingly mutilated by the punctures left by a countless number of hypodermic needles. Trudi, her lips trembling, looked at me in dismay as if fearful of reproach, snatched down the sleeve of her dress, flung her arms about me, buried her face in my neck and started to cry. She cried as if her heart was breaking. I patted her as soothingly as one can pat anyone who seems bent on choking you and looked over at van Gelder.

'Now I know your reasons,' I said. 'For insisting I come here.'

'I'm sorry. Now you know.'

'You make a third point?'

'I make a third point. God alone knows I wish I didn't have to. But you will understand that in all fairness to my colleagues I must let them know these things.'

'De Graaf knows?'

'Every senior police officer in Amsterdam knows,' van Gelder said simply. 'Trudi!'

Trudi's only reaction was to cling even more tightly. I was beginning to suffer from anoxia.

'Trudi!' Van Gelder was more insistent this time. 'Your afternoon's sleep. You know what the doctor says. Bed I'

'No,' she sobbed. 'No bed.'

Van Gelder sighed and raised his voice: 'Herta!'

Almost as if she had been waiting for her cue — which she probably had been, listening outside the door — a most outlandish creature entered the room. As far as health farms were concerned, she was the challenge to end all challenges. She was a huge and enormously fat waddling woman — to describe her method of locomotion as, walking would have been a gross inaccuracy — dressed in exactly the same type of clothes as Trudi's puppet was wearing. Long blonde pigtails tied with bright ribbon hung down her massive front. Her face was old — she had to be at least over seventy — deeply trenched and had the texture and appearance of cracked brown leather. The contrast between the gaily hued clothes and the blonde pigtails on the one hand and the enormous old hag that wore them on the other, was bizarre, horrible, so grotesque as to be almost obscene, but the contrast appeared to evoke no such responses in either van Gelder or Trudi.

The old woman crossed the room — for all her bulk and waddling gait she made ground quite quickly — nodded a curt acknowledgment to me and, without saying a word, laid a kindly but firm hand on Trudi's shoulder. Trudi looked up at once, her tears gone as quickly as they had come, smiled, nodded docilely, disengaged her arms from my neck and rose. She crossed to van Gelder's chair, recovered her puppet, kissed him, crossed to where I was sitting, kissed me as unaffectedly as a child saying good night, and almost skipped from the room, the waddling Herta close behind. I exhaled a long sigh and just managed to refrain from mopping my brow.

'You might have warned me,' I complained. 'About Trudi and Herta. Who is she anyway — Herta, I mean? A nurse?'

'An ancient retainer, you'd say in English.' Van Gelder took a large gulp of his whisky as if he needed it and I did the same for I needed it even more: after all he was used to this sort of thing. 'My parents' old housekeeper — from the island of Huyler in the Zuider Zee. As you may have noticed, they are a little — what do you say — conservative in their dress. She's been with us for only a few months — but, well, you can see how she is with Trudi.'

'And Trudi?'

'Trudi is eight years old. She has been eight years old for the past fifteen years, she always will be eight years old. Not my daughter, as you may have guessed — but I could never love a daughter more. My brother's adopted daughter. He and I worked in Curacao until last year — I was in narcotics, he was the security officer for a Dutch oil company. His wife died some years ago — and then he and my wife were killed in a car crash last year. Someone had to take Trudi. I did. I didn't want her — and now I couldn't live without her. She will never grow up, Mr Sherman.'

And all the time his subordinates probably thought that he was just their lucky superior with no other thought or concern in his mind than to put as many malefactors behind bars as possible. Sympathetic comment and commiseration were never my forte, so I said: 'This addiction — when did it start?'

'God knows. Years ago. Years before my brother found out.'

'Some of those hypo punctures are recent.'

'She's on withdrawal treatment. Too many injections, you would say?'

'I would say.'

'Herta watches her like a hawk. Every morning she takes her to the Vondel Park — she loves to feed the birds. In the afternoon Trudi sleeps. But sometimes in the evening Herta gets tired — and I am often from home in the evening.'