"All right," Gyske said. "I started it, I know that very well, but I'm damned if I'll feel guilty. It wasn't sinful at all. Sjurd is from the past. I'm not. I read magazine articles and the psychological column in the paper. I live with the times. I know what things are like today. When I do it, I do it."

"With whom, dear lady?"

Gyske lifted one shoulder. "With a man, of course."

"Let's go in," the commissaris said. "Or are your children in the house?"

"Gone out," Gyske said, "to play with friends. So that they don't have to work in Sjurd's greenhouse tonight. They don't want to do that, they're too little anyway. Sjurd's idea of duty is too heavy. Slave away, day after day, that's a bad example."

"I like your furniture," the commissaris said when they had gone inside. "Real antiques, I'm sure."

"From the past," Gyske said. "Like my husband. Passed down through the generations. Clammy, moldy, sealed off from fresh air. I'm a modern woman. Would you like a beer?"

"I still have to drive," Grypstra said, "and the commissaris has to see the Leeuwarden chief constable. We'd better stay sober."

Gyske plucked at her jacket. "It's Sjurd's, it doesn't fit. I'll take it off now. I only put it on to have something to carry the pistol in. Sjurd wanted to shoot Anne."

"The neighbor lady?"

"No," Gyske said. "Anne is a man. You're from Holland, are you? Our names are different here. Anne is the man I had been doing it with. He lives close by too. Everybody lives close by." She began to cry. Grypstra supplied a handkerchief, the commissaris gentle words. "Now, now, Mrs. Sudema."

Gyske stopped crying. "Anne's the Christian therapist here, qualified, with proper papers. He does social work for the municipality and the church. He's Dutch Reformed, too, same denomination as Sjurd and I. He was supposed to help me. I wasn't sleeping well at all, and cramps down below, and crying all the time. Sjurd got the parson to pray with me, but that made it worse, and then the pastor sent his therapeutical man."