The Artful Egg (17 page)

The abrupt silence in the room had its own loudness.

Kramer glanced at the sergeant; at Colonel Muller, who completed his shorthand note barely three strokes after the final word of apology; and he looked at the son, who was seated on the floor in front of the television set.

Jannie Zuidmeyer bore no obvious resemblance to either of his parents. Thin and wiry, curly-haired, brown-eyed on the left, blue-eyed on the right, he was all arms and legs, and seemed to rest very lightly on this earth. His face, downy with a mid-teen fuzz, did nothing in itself to declare him much older than that, but made one think of soppy films in which lonely boys had loyal pets with soulful eyes. Young Zuidmeyer was, in point of fact, all of twenty-one, according to the Colonel, and held a clerical post at the municipal abattoir.

“Tell me, Jannie,” murmured Colonel Muller, “why did you say to the sergeant that your father was a murderer?”

“Because he is.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me.”

“Hadn’t he been rowing all night? Wasn’t it him that got her so upset that she took a shower this morning and didn’t look to see what she was doing? If he hadn’t done that, then nothing would have happened. Christ, I hate him!
Hate him
!”

It was hatred that everyone else in the room could feel, striking a chill to the bone. But Kramer, who had been wondering how long the youngster could sit there, describing events so unemotionally, took it as a healthy sign.

Crawling on his hands and knees through the long grass and bedsprings and rusty cans down the slope behind his house on the outskirts of Gladstoneville, Ramjut Pillay experienced a moment when his uppermost thought was to wonder whether, in a former life, he had not perhaps been a
Red
Indian. He was really remarkably good at secretive stalking.

Then panic again took possession of his entire being, and he crawled on with heart thumping and thorns going into the palms of his hands unnoticed. He simply had to reach his room, destroy the evidence of his crime, snatch up his savings, and take to the hills, all before the police could get there. The one good thing that could be said about Peerswammy Lal, may the
God Kali persecute him unceasingly, was that he had given those detectives the idea their prey was lurking about town, but of course there was no way of telling when they’d complete their eliminations.

The sound of a car churning up the dirt road to his house made Ramjut Pillay drop flat and close his eyes tightly. But the car carried on by, and when he dared to take a peep at it he saw that it was only Sammy Govender’s old Oldsmobile, dragging a broken exhaust-pipe. The same peep sufficed to reassure him that nobody was about to spy on his approach, and so he crawled twice as fast the rest of the way, ending up panting behind his lean- to extension.

Here, he listened very carefully. All was quiet. His father was probably out looking for him somewhere, and no doubt his mother was seated on the front veranda killing flies with her fly-whisk. It wasn’t a sight he’d ever imagined would move him, but it was hard to think he might never see it again.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Ramjut Pillay then sprang into action, nipping nimbly round the corner of the extension and plunging his key into his door-lock. Seconds later, almost choked by the smell of hot horsehair mattress, he stuffed Naomi Stride’s letters and their envelopes into his plastic shopping-bag, threw in the knotted sock containing his savings, and snatched up his dog-eared copy of
The Life of Mahatma Gandhi
. Turning, he was outside again in a single jump, locked the door, and then crawled for all he was worth, back up the slope behind his house, exhilarated by his daring.

No sooner had he reached the wattle plantation against the skyline, however, than he realised with a sickening thud that he’d committed two terrible oversights. First, although having decided that fire would be the most effective way of destroying the evidence of his crimes, he had forgotten to pick up a box of matches. Second, and this was possibly even more serious, he’d left behind in his lean- to some secret notes he’d jotted down
during the course of the night. Would they not in themselves be totally incriminating?

He had just shuffled round on his knees to begin the descent once again when he was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of a shiny beige Ford sedan drawing up in front of his house. Two men stepped out. They were too far away to be seen in any detail, but quite plainly one was white, the other black. A whimper escaped him.

Panic-stricken, Ramjut Pillay crawled frantically to the foot of a nearby tree, found a small burrow beneath it, poked the letters and envelopes down into it with a stick, blocked the hole with a stone, found a bigger stone, blocked it with that, looked back once over his shoulder, and fled again.

“Doc Strydom has just arrived, Willem,” Colonel Muller said to Zuidmeyer, who was still sitting in the bathroom, staring at his wife’s body. “I think this is the moment when we must ask you to go through to the lounge. OK?”

Zuidmeyer didn’t even look up, and the young constable, who had been ordered into the bathroom to keep an eye on him while the son was being interviewed, tapped a finger on his temple.

“Willem, can you understand what I’m saying?” asked Colonel Muller, motioning Kramer further into the room. “Would you like Tromp to help me give you a hand in—?”

“No, I can manage,” said Zuidmeyer, getting slowly to his feet. “Tell Doc I don’t want her cut up.”

“But, Willem, you know the procedure when there’s a sudden death and—”

“That doesn’t concern me. No post-mortem. They’re not doing that to my little girl. There are ways round; I have used them myself on other occ—”

“Come, Willem, man. All Doc Strydom wants to do here is a small examination.”

Kramer stood back, allowing Zuidmeyer to pass through the door ahead of him, and then tagged along behind Colonel Muller. They went into the lounge and Zuidmeyer took the big chair by the fireplace, as of habit.

“Where’s the boy?” he asked.

“The sergeant’s taken Jannie to be treated for shock at the hospital,” said Colonel Muller. “Don’t worry about him; Sergeant Botha is one of the best.”

“He recognised me,” said Zuidmeyer, smiling slightly. “Knew straight off who I was. There’s lots that have forgotten.”

But the English-language newspapers wouldn’t have forgotten, thought Kramer, and, given half a chance, would have a field day reminding everyone of Major “Many a Slip” Zuidmeyer’s notorious bad luck in the past. No wonder the Colonel, who hated certain types of human-interest stories more than anything, had the sweats.

“Tromp,” said Colonel Muller, bringing out his shorthand-pad, “would you like to ask our friend here some routine questions, just for the record? Then I can concentrate on—”

“Certainly, Colonel, sir.”

“You see, Willem,” the Colonel explained to Zuidmeyer, getting his ballpoint ready as well, “what I intend is having Tromp here wrap up this whole unhappy affair as quickly and quietly as possible. That’s why I’ve chosen my best man for the job, a bloke you can trust with your life, I promise you. I know it’s only a simple accident investigation but, if I used anybody else, there could be mistakes in the paperwork, procedures not followed correctly, and that’s when our problems could start, with the magistrate splitting hairs at the inquest and the press finally getting to hear of it. As you know, they don’t as a rule attend inquests, but just take a look at the papers in the Attorney-General’s office later on, when I’m sure some slight oversight could be arranged—papers that go astray, that type of thing. Personally, I see no need
for any publicity, do you? I can’t see how it could serve the public interest.”

Zuidmeyer nodded dully. “Agreed, Colonel. I have never seen what good it does, and I have had more than my fair share of publicity in my day, so I should know.” Then he looked across at Kramer. “I put myself entirely in your hands, young man.”

It was a second or two before Kramer responded. The Colonel’s little speech had come as a surprise to him, and he wasn’t at all sure he liked the role in which he now found himself, although he’d been a fool not to have suspected something of the sort earlier. On top of which, the expression in Zuidmeyer’s eyes, now turned in his direction, was so strange that he couldn’t think of the right word to describe it. “Creepy” came close, but wasn’t quite right.

“Fine, sir,” said Kramer, taking out his own notebook and a pen. “All I want you to do is to tell me what happened here this morning.”

“Well, I was out in my garage, sorting through—”

“Sorry, sir, but if you’ll go back a bit. I really need the whole picture.”

“Tromp—” began Colonel Muller.

But Kramer ignored him. “I don’t want to know what you had for breakfast or anything like that, sir, just a general idea of Mrs. Zuidmeyer’s state of mind, when she went for her shower, that sort of thing.”

“Of course,” said Zuidmeyer, nodding. “I’m sorry to sound so like an amateur at this! God knows, I have done investigations like this myself often enough, so I’m fully conversant with what is wanted. Let me see.…” He sank back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. “The day began badly—for which I now curse myself.”

Kramer waited and heard a dry sob.

“Curse myself!” repeated Zuidmeyer, his face still covered, then he sat up a little straighter. “A stupid argument that got so
stupid in the end that I just decided to forget breakfast and get out of the house to find some distraction. I haven’t any projects on the go at the moment, so I started tidying my magazines. I can’t tell you when my wife went into the bathroom. As you can see, I didn’t even shave this morning, didn’t bother to wash, just went charging out. Usually I shower first, and she uses the bathroom after me. I suppose she could have gone in straight away.”

“Which would have been about what time, sir?” asked Kramer.

“I’d say a quarter to eight, maybe ten to.”

“And so, if it was about eleven o’clock when your son called you to go see what the matter was in the bathroom, your wife could have been lying there for more than three hours?”

Zuidmeyer nodded behind those hands. “Why? Why didn’t I go into the house sooner?”

“Ja, why didn’t you, Willem?” coaxed Colonel Muller.

“Because … because—my God, how petty can a man be?—I was still so annoyed with her. I thought she owed me an apology; I was waiting for her to come to me, to say she was sorry. There was that, and also the fact that once I start with my magazines I start reading pieces here and there, and I don’t notice how the time flies.”

“Wasn’t there a servant who might’ve—?”

“No servants,” replied Zuidmeyer shortly. “They are not welcome in my house.”

“Uh-huh. And then what happened, sir? Your son came up to you?”

Zuidmeyer brought his hands down and fixed his eyes on the blank television screen. “Jannie came and grabbed me, said something was wrong in the bathroom. I told him to stay out of the way as soon as I—as I saw my wife lying there. I turned the water off first, and I felt how cold it was. Because of that, I realised immediately she had been lying there for quite some
time. I did not want to look at her. I made some sound when I saw her eyes looking up at me. Then I realised she was still alive. I was sure of it. I went frantic. I got hold of her and tried dragging her out of the shower, to get her on her back to give her the kiss of life. She was slippery and wet and I couldn’t get a proper grip. I knew I was being rough, jerking at her and pulling, heaving on her arms as hard as I could—but, Almighty God, she was heavy. It was a struggle, but finally I did it and she came out of the shower with a bump. I’d lost my footing, crouched down like that, and I’d toppled backwards. When I got back on my knees, she was gone. I was too late. I wouldn’t accept it. I grabbed her and shook her, I got blood from her head on my chest. I tried mouth-to-mouth. Cardiac massage. I held her to me and cried. Later, before I went to telephone, I covered her with her dressing-gown.” And he went on staring into the television screen, as though doomed through all eternity to watch the same scene repeated again and again.

Kramer turned to Colonel Muller, who had stopped taking shorthand at roughly the point where Zuidmeyer’s account had diverged so markedly from that given only a short time ago by his son. The Colonel was even paler now than he had been before.

“Willem,” he said softly, his voice not working properly, “are you sure that’s what occurred here this morning?”

“I’m sure,” replied Zuidmeyer, looking up at them.

“Because, you see, according to—”

“
It was an accident
,” said Zuidmeyer. “What else could it possibly have been?”

Then Kramer realised what it was about Zuidmeyer’s eyes that gave them their strange quality. They were haunted.

“Gagonk,
do
something with this crazy old bitch,” whined Jones. “I tell you, I can’t stand another minute of this.”

So Mbopa picked up the aged mother of Ramjut Pillay, shook
her until her fly-whisk fell from her hand and she stopped flailing him with it in the face, then carried her out to the car and put her in the boot.

“Now you can finish what you were saying,” Jones told the father of Ramjut Pillay, who stood smiling nervously before him, one bare big toe hooked over the other. “When exactly was it your son came back?”

“I have no watch, my master. I am a poor man, my health—”

“OK, OK, just give us a rough idea. Was it long ago? Not so long ago?”

“Not so long ago, my master.”

“And what did he do here? Did he talk to you?”

“No, no, my master! No talk. Ramjut go in his room, come quick-quick out, then run away again on kneecaps.”

“Kneecaps?” echoed Jones. “Any idea what this silly bugger means, Mbopa?”

“No, sir.”

“Ach, never mind, that can come later. Listen, you, which way did your son go?”

“Up hills and far away, my master.”

“Where?”

“Backside.”

“Hey, you watch what you’re—”

“Excuse me, suh,” interrupted Mbopa, who wanted to get back to his book. “I think what is meant is the hill at the back of this man’s house.”