Free The Maine Massacre by Janwillem van de Wetering Page B

waiting area for simmering soups and boiling water. The hunters joined the audience and everybody learned about what to use for firewood and what not, unless there was nothing else. Pine crackles, Beth said, and spruce pops, and alder bums too fast and gives so much heat that the stove may come apart. Birch, that's what should be used, and maple. Oak? the hunters asked. Yes, oak, but oak is expensive. Beech is even more expensive. There was more coffee again, and finally the commissaris was allowed to pay.
    "Why don't we stay here?" the commissaris asked when they were back on Main Street. "That came to half of what any Amsterdam restaurant would have charged and some sloppy waiter would have popped the bill under my nose before I had finished the pie. Good pie too. She must have baked it herself in that museum piece."
    "But they seem a little slow here. We spent hours in there."
    "What's time, sergeant? There must be a lot of time here; back home there isn't anymore. The telephone rings it away and people like you grab it. With questions and bits of paper. Grijpstra takes my time too. With his scheming and conniving."
    "He meant well, sir."
    "Yes. Here we are, sergeant. I haven't got my glasses on. What do those cards say? Here, they are stuck in the door."
    De Gier read the signs. The first said, "Out, back in ten minutes," and the second said, "Closed for the winter."
    The commissaris tried the door and found it unlocked. A girl opened the second door for them. "Come in, gentlemen. It's very cold out there. I've finally managed to get this office warm. Please sit down. What can I do for you?"
    De Gier gaped at the girl while the commissaris stated his business. He knew the girl, he knew her very well, he knew she wouldn't be in his day-to-day memory, but he had gone deeper down already. His dreams, but further back. Madelin's face seemed to be all eyes, large dark eyes. He had seen the eyes before. And the small slender body too, in tight corduroy jeans and a soft sweater, so supple that he was sure it would wilt if he breathed out with force. He guessed her age, twenty-five perhaps. He admired the smooth skin, stretched over small cheekbones and a dainty but firm jaw, and her pointed chin, a perfect base for the triangular face. He looked back at her eyes and recognized the girl: the princess caught and kept by the dragon. He had lost the book but the page came back in full detail. The girl was in a cave, chained to a rock, and the dragon was breathing foul fumes at her. She was staring bravely into the dragon's face. When he had the book he couldn't read—he must have been four or five years old. His mother and his older sister had read the story to him so many times that he knew the words by heart, but he still carried the book around and made them read the tale. The dragon was slain by a knight with long black hair. He had hated the knight almost as much as he had hated the dragon, and he finally destroyed both by rubbing the page with a wet finger, patiently, until the images faded away. But he hadn't rubbed out Madelin.
    She was dressed differently then, in a semitransparent dress. She had excited him then. She still excited him now.
    She wasn't in a cave now. He looked about. The office could have been anywhere. The best and most expensive metal and imitation wood desks. A thick wall-to-wall carpet. Brand-new office machinery. Walls paneled in veneer. One wall carried a map of Woodcock County, an antique map, cracked in places, with a wealth of detail and handwritten place names. He got up and found Cape Orca and the bay and studied the fish that had been drawn into the bay's waves. A large fish, black on top, white below. Smooth, sleek, with a wicked mouth full of grinning teeth, on its leisurely way to take another tasty morsel off the rapidly approaching shore.
    "The Opdijk house," Madelin said thoughtfully. "And you are Pete Opdijk's brother-in-law. What a terrible accident that was. We were all very upset. Dad