Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

‘A search warrant.’ The overtones of pathos and heart-break and tragedy would have moved a statue to tears; had he been half his size he’d have been a natural for Hamlet.

‘A search warrant for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler! For a hundred and fifty years our two families have been respected, no, honoured tradesmen in the city of Amsterdam. And now this!’ He groped behind him and sank into a chair in what appeared to be some kind of stupor, the paper falling from his hand. ‘A search warrant!’

‘A search warrant,’ Morgenstern intoned. He, too, had found it necessary to seek an armchair. ‘A search warrant, Ernest. A black day for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler! My God! The shame of it! The ignominy of it! A search warrant!’

Muggenthaler waved a despairingly listless hand. ‘Go on, search all you want.’

‘Don’t you want to know what we’re searching for?’ de Graaf asked politely.

‘Why should I want to know?’ Muggenthaler tried to raise himself to a momentary state of indignation, but he was too stricken. ‘In one hundred and fifty years–’

‘Now, now, gentlemen,’ de Graaf said soothingly, ‘don’t take it so hard. I appreciate the shock you must feel and in my own view we’re on a wild goose chase. But an official request has been made and we must go through the official motions. We have information that you have illicitly obtained diamonds–’

‘Diamonds!’ Muggenthaler stared in disbelief at his partner. ‘You hear that, Jan? Diamonds?’ He shook his head and said to de Graaf: ‘If you find some, give me a few, will you?’

De Graaf was unaffected by the morose sarcasm. ‘And, much more important, diamond-cutting machinery.’

‘We’re crammed from floor to ceiling with diamond-cutting machinery,’ Morgenstern said heavily. ‘Look for yourselves.’

‘And the invoice books?’

‘Anything, anything,’ Muggenthaler said wearily.

‘Thank you for your co-operation.’ De Graaf nodded to van Gelder, who rose and left the room. De Graaf went on confidentially: ‘I apologize, in advance, for what is, I’m sure, a complete waste of time. Candidly, I’m more interested in that horrible thing dangling by a chain from your hoisting beam. A puppet.’

‘A what?’ Muggenthaler demanded.

‘A puppet. A big one.’

‘A puppet on a chain.’ Muggenthaler looked both flabbergasted and horrified, which is not an easy thing to achieve. ‘In front of our warehouse? Jan!’

It wouldn’t quite be accurate to say that we raced up the stairs, for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler weren’t built along the right lines, but we made pretty good time for all that. On the third floor we found van Gelder and his men at work and at a word from de Graaf van Gelder joined us. I hoped his men didn’t wear themselves out looking, for I knew they’d never find anything. They’d never even come across the smell of cannabis which had hung so heavily on that floor the previous night, although I felt that the sickly-sweet smell of some powerful flower-based air-freshener that had taken its place could scarcely be described as an improvement. But it hardly seemed the time to mention it to anyone.

The puppet, its back to us and the dark head resting on its right shoulder, was still swaying gently in the breeze. Muggenthaler, supported by Morgenstern and obviously feeling none too happy in his precarious position, reached out gingerly, caught the chain just above the hook and hauled it in sufficiently for him, not without considerable difficulty, to unhook the puppet from the chain. He held it in his arms and stared down at it for long moments, then shook his head and looked up at Morgenstern.

‘Jan, he who did this wicked thing, this sick, sick joke – he leaves our employment this very day.’

‘This very hour,’ Morgenstern corrected. His face twisted in repugnance, not at the puppet, but at what had been done to it. ‘And such a beautiful puppet!’

Morgenstern was in no way exaggerating. It was indeed a beautiful puppet and not only or indeed primarily because of the wonderfully cut and fitted bodice and gown. Despite the fact that the neck had been broken and cruelly gouged by the hook, the face itself was arrestingly beautiful, a work of great artistic skill in which the colours of the dark hair, the brown eyes and the complexion blended so subtly and in which the delicate features had been so exquisitely shaped that it was hard to believe that this was the face of a puppet and not that of a human being with an existence and distinctive personality of her own. Nor was I the only person who felt that way.

De Graaf took the puppet from Muggenthaler and gazed at it. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘How beautiful. And how real, how living. This lives.’ He glanced at Muggenthaler. ‘Would you have any idea who made this puppet?’

‘I’ve never seen one like it before. It’s not one of ours, I’m sure, but the floor foreman is the man to ask. But I know it’s not ours.’

‘And this exquisite colouring,’ de Graaf mused. ‘It’s so right for the face, so inevitable. No man could have created this from his own mind. Surely, surely, he must have worked from a living model, from someone he knew. Wouldn’t you say so, Inspector?’

‘It couldn’t have been done otherwise,’ van Gelder said flatly.

‘I’ve the feeling, almost, that I’ve seen this face before,’ de Graaf continued. ‘Any of you gentlemen ever seen a girl like this?’

We all shook our heads slowly and none more slowly than I did. The old leaden feeling was back in my stomach again but this time the lead was coated with a thick layer of ice. It wasn’t just that the puppet bore a frighteningly accurate resemblance to Astrid Lemay: it was so lifelike, it was Astrid Lemay.

Fifteen minutes later, after the thorough search carried out in the warehouse had produced its predictably total negative result, de Graaf took his farewell of Muggenthaler and Morgenstern on the steps of the warehouse, while van Gelder and I stood by. Muggenthaler was back at his beaming while Morgenstern stood by his side, smiling with patronizing satisfaction. De Graaf shook hands warmly with both in turn.

‘Again, a thousand apologies.’ De Graaf was being almost effusive. ‘Our information was about as accurate as it usually is. All records of this visit will be struck from the books.’ He smiled broadly. ‘The invoices will be returned to you as soon as certain interested parties have failed to find all the different illicit diamond suppliers they expected to find there. Good morning, gentlemen.’

Van Gelder and I said our farewell in turn and I shook hands especially warmly with Morgenstern and reflected that it was just as well that he lacked the obvious ability to read thoughts and had unluckily come into this world without any inborn ability to sense when death and danger stood very close at hand: for Morgenstern it was who had been at the Balinova night-club last night and had been the first to leave after Maggie and Belinda had passed out into the street.

We made the journey back to the Marnixstraat in partial silence, by which I mean that de Graaf and van Gelder talked freely but I didn’t. They appeared to be much more interested in the curious incident of the broken puppet than they were in the ostensible reason for our visit to the warehouse, which probably demonstrated quite clearly what they thought of the ostensible reason, and as I hardly liked to intrude to tell them that they had their priorities right, I kept silent,

Back in his office, de Graaf said: ‘Coffee? We have a girl here who makes the best coffee in Amsterdam.’

‘A pleasure to be postponed. Too much of a hurry, I’m afraid.’

‘You have plans? A course of action, perhaps?’

‘Neither. I want to lie on my bed and think.’