The Artful Egg (28 page)

“Buchan & Layne Wholesale. Very helpful, very nice people. While I was on to them, I thought I might as well ask for distribution details. They say DH-136 isn’t available through ordinary retail outlets, and they’re the only suppliers in Natal.”

“Is it poisonous, that it’s not on sale to the general public?”

“Ach, no, nothing sinister like that, Tromp. There’d simply be no demand. DH-136 is biological in its action and designed for a specific, usually industrial, purpose, namely disinfecting and cleaning areas where there’s lot of blood lying around. Blood’s funny stuff, you know; it isn’t all that easy to—”

“
Industrial
purposes, you say? Like what?”

“The obvious ones,” said Baksteen, sounding a little surprised by the question. “You know, such as cleaning up butcher’s shops, slaughter-houses, chicken—”

“The municipal abattoir?”

“Same difference! Hey, don’t tell me this connects up with something you know already? And there I was, thinking I’d really surprise you!”

Zondi sat cross-legged on the horsehair mattress in Ramjut Pillay’s lean- to and examined a pen he had found tucked behind a wooden rafter, together with a bottle of lemon juice. His first assumption had been that the juice was taken as some sort of medicine, and the pen had been used to stir it with. But why dip the nib end into the lemon juice, when the other end would work just as well? It was obvious the nib would have to be washed before taking any ink now.

Or had Pillay in fact been writing with lemon juice? No, that was absurd, for the liquid would surely leave no mark.

Putting the bottle and pen aside, Zondi looked round at the mess left on the floor by Mbopa and Jones, and then at
the array of uniforms in the corner. Disguises! Most wouldn’t have fitted Pillay in a hundred years, except perhaps the Scout uniform. It had made him a little sad to note that each of the others matched one of the terrible courses the poor fool kept taking, not having noticed that the signature of Dr. Gideon de Bruin, principal of the Easiway College, was seldom written in the same hand twice.

Then Zondi caught sight of a stamp album, pushed between two Superman comics, and took it down. He flicked to the page headed
Great Britain
and saw a very new-looking stamp stuck there. He jumped to his feet. But when he used Pillay’s magnifying glass to check the postmark he found that the stamp had been cancelled in London more than six months ago. A sheet of paper started to slip out of the album as he was replacing it, but it was blank and of no possible interest.

“Just a minute,” Zondi muttered to himself, and gave the blank sheet of paper a sniff. “Cra-zeee brother! Lemons!”

Then he tried the magnifying glass on it, and found tiny scratchmarks such as a pen nib would make, although he could not pick out any actual writing. Perhaps Baksteen would be able to shed some light on the matter, he thought, and pocketed the paper while intensifying his search, irritated less by the stink of horsehair than by the flies which kept settling on his bloodstained clothing.

“A penny for them,” said Wilson, lighting a fresh cigar.

“What?” Kramer, who had been lost in thought, wondering what to make of the DH-136 discovery, looked away from the courtyard. “Ach, sorry, hey?”

“That was one of your forensic experts on the phone, I take it? Fascinating business that, the way they come up with secrets from beyond the grave, as it were. ‘The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber!’—and all that. Has he managed to produce many clues for you so far?”

“A few, not that they all make sense yet.”

“Such as?”

“Stuff that was sprinkled around the body, making the murder seem even more weird and ritualistic than just the sword had done.”

“I’m intrigued.”

Kramer looked at him, noted that he was acting his age again, and decided no harm could be done by taking the man further into his confidence, as this might be useful later on if the
Hamlet
connection were ever established. “Between you and me, sir, Naomi Stride was left surrounded by pansies and a herb called—ach, it’s some woman’s name.”

“Rosemary?”

“Very quick!”

“I admit I was probably ahead of you, Lieutenant, once I’d heard the word ‘pansies.’ ” And back came the show-off gleam to his eye. “You’ll allow me one final quotation?”

“Ja, go ahead.…”

“ ‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance’ and ‘Pansies, that’s for thoughts’—
Hamlet
, Act IV, scene v, and spoken, I might add, by Ophelia.”

“Who?”

“By the girlfriend.”

Z
ONDI RAN INTO
his new house, undressing as he went. He rolled up his bloodstained suit, threw it into a corner of his bedroom, and dragged the shirt off his back.

“Wife!” he called out, opening their wardrobe. “Where is my other suit? My old one with the silver thread?”

But Miriam appeared to be out, despite the fact that the front door had been unlocked. Ever since moving to Hamilton, she’d gone in for socialising on a scale hitherto unknown, and time and again was to be found gossiping over at some neighbour’s house. Her excuse was, of course, that now the twins had grown up, and the other children were older, too, there was not the same need for her to be always at everyone’s beck and call, bent over the ironing-board in the kitchen.

“Where is it? Where is it?” muttered Zondi, scattering their scant selection of garments along the brass rail and making the wire hangers squeal. “If she has sold it, there is going to be much, much trouble …”

But the Lieutenant’s radio message had been to get down to CID headquarters as soon as possible, so that would have to wait. He grabbed his only other pair of trousers and his brown sports jacket, took a clean white shirt from the pile of three, and did most of his changing behind the front door, being very impatient to get on the road again.

From the sound of it, they’d at last had some sort of big breakthrough.

On his own way back to CID headquarters, Kramer stopped off at Buchan & Layne, the wholesalers. Like Piet Baksteen had said, the staff were very helpful and pleasant. Yes, they supplied DH-136 to the municipal abattoir in Lawrence Street and, yes, they knew this for a fact. They showed him invoices.

He drove on, intending to see the Colonel before catching up with Zondi, then had another thought. He couldn’t be too careful before forming a conclusion. He detoured left and parked his car outside the State mortuary.

Pulling back the fly-screen, and then banging open the door, he shouted out: “Van!” A loud exclamation came from the refrigerator room, and when he looked in there, Van Rensburg was leaning against the wall, a hand clasped over his heart.

“Please, Lieutenant, never do that again, sir!” he pleaded, very shaken. “My nerves will not stand it.”

“Your nerves? Hell, you’ve never mentioned having any nerves before, man.”

“Well, I’ve got them now, sir, and I don’t mind telling you they’re shot. Do you know what’s happening inside my fridge? What I’ve got in there?”

Kramer glanced into the dark, foetid chamber, and shook his head. “No, I don’t—and I’m not that interested right this minute. I want to know what else you can tell me about DH-136.”

“Ah, yes,” said Van Rensburg, brightening. “You know I was right first time?” He emerged from the refrigerator room and said to Nxumalo: “Try banging a stick against the trays, and see if that frightens it off, hey?”

Nxumalo obeyed with a grin.

“All I really want to know about DH-136,” said Kramer,
moving to the post-mortem room to get away from the noise, “is whether it’s slippery underfoot.”

“Slippery? Hooo!”

“Very?”

“So slippy, Lieutenant,” said Van Rensburg, miming what looked like a hippo’s pirouette on ice, “that the firm warns you about it every time they deliver! Oh ja, you have to be very, very careful with the stuff, as I am forever telling Nxumalo.”

“I see, so—”

“Not that you can stop less sensible people than myself from doing stupid things with it,” went on Van Rensburg, really warming to his subject. “Last April Fool’s Day, for instance, some young idiot at the abattoir poured DH-136 on the ramp where they herd cattle up from the lorries to the guy who shoots them in the head. Total shambles, all the poor bloody cows sliding down again on their arses, kicking shit out of the lorry boys, and quite a few had even made a bolt for it. The rep who told me said Lawrence Street looked like a bloody rodeo!”

“Who was it that pulled this stunt with the DH-136?”

“Ach, one of the young clerks in the office.”

“Is he still there?”

“Hell, no! He was sacked so fast he was on his way home before the first of those cows bit the dust!”

“Ta,” said Kramer, and started to leave. “By the way, did Piet Baksteen give you a result on those goat hairs? Had Nxumalo been lying to you?”

Van Rensburg’s face fell instantly; the deeply worried look came back to his eyes. “Er, apparently not, Lieutenant. Nxumalo certainly couldn’t be responsible for what Mr. Baksteen found, not in a million years.”

“Then, what were they?”

With a glance over his shoulder, Van Rensburg whispered: “Giraffe hairs. Lieutenant.…”

“Giraffe?” Kramer began to grin. “How in God’s name could
giraffe
hairs get in your fridge?”

“Shhh, not so loud, sir! That’s the very question I myself put to Mr. Baksteen, and do you know what his answer was? Why my nerves are in this state? ‘Van,’ he said, ‘the only scientific explanation I can offer for this phenomenon is that you’ve got yourself a poltergeist down there.’ ”

Nurse Chatterjee paused beside Ramjut Pillay’s cot, causing him hurriedly to hide a sheet of cheap blue ruled paper beneath his pillow. “What is this, Peerswammy?” he said, picking up the pad. “Not a blessed word written yet?”

“ ‘One should always compose oneself,’ ” said Ramjut Pillay, remembering an uppermost thought he’d pondered one morning, “ ‘before one composes a letter’—a piece of advice I am finding highly helpful.”

“You will not leave it too long, will you? My shift is only twelve hours, so I am away again at seven, when Nurse Mooljum will be in charge.”

“No, no, my composition is almost entire already! I am most grateful for the facilities.”

“My pleasure, Peerswammy! Oh dear, a new patient.…”

He bustled off, and Ramjut Pillay retrieved the hidden sheet of paper, turned it round the right way up, and fell to work again. How he chuckled—very softly, of course—as he saw the fruit of his latest and greatest inspiration blossoming before him. It was a work of sheer genius.

Gone were his plans to send Sergeant Zondi a map. Gone were his ideas of making direct contact with him, which would have involved admitting at some stage that he had absconded with a little of the mail that fateful day.

No, what he was doing now would have only one effect: it would give the CID another chance to open the post arriving at Woodhollow and to find the very same anonymous
threatening letter among it, written on the identical paper and word-perfect.

Or almost word-perfect.

Gracious me, thought Ramjut Pillay, I must have read the thing umpteen times that tormented night, and yet I cannot remember the name that began
Riche
properly. It came in front of
Act II, scene ii
and
‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’
What about
Richelieu?
No, that still didn’t look right. But at least JUW was spelled as it had been.

“And finally,” said Kramer, shifting the position of his feet on his desk, “I wrote down for this Doc Wilson the line in double quotes typed on the end of Naomi Stride’s last page. You know the ‘two, comma, two’ that had us so fooled?”

Zondi nodded, doodling ‘
II
,
ii!’
on a report form.

“Ach, he didn’t bat an eyelid, man! Came straight out with the answer! It stands for ‘Act II, scene ii,’ when you’re talking about a play.”

“Hau! And did this Doc Wilson give you the reason why the killer chose to make this reference, boss? Did it explain the motive?”

Kramer took out his notebook and opened it at a page marked with his last supermarket receipt. “Wilson said the whole scene was summed up in the final words spoken by Hamlet. ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ ”

“Boss?”

“Apparently Hamlet suspects the king was the bloke who murdered his own pa, so he puts on a play about a murder to make him blush and fart and give himself away. ‘Hey, hang on there,’ I said to this Wilson, ‘remember it’s a lady, not a king, that’s been murdered in real life. How does that fit in?’ ‘Ach, no problem,’ he says, ‘the lady—that’s Hamlet’s ma—was also guilty.’ Then we really started arguing, because I couldn’t see
how this was even close to being a motive in the Stride case. In the end, he said he would think about it some more, and in the meantime he’s given us a copy we can look at, but I still stick to the mad-popsie theory.”

“You mean Miss Liz Geldenhuys? But, boss, if—”

“Now, listen to me, Mickey. At last we know one thing for definite about this murderer: it’s somebody who knows the play
Hamlet
—agreed?”

“Agreed, boss.”

“We also have reason to believe this person is of the female sex, because it was a woman’s words that the killer used the pansies and the rosemary to symbolise. A young woman upset by ‘thoughts’ and ‘remembrances’ who has lost the love of her life, OK? Someone so bitter that even using a sword would seem—”

“But, boss, what would turn her bitterness against—?”

“Just wait till I’m finished, hey? We have evidence to suggest that Liz Geldenhuys was such a woman. She was badly treated by the deceased, who did not think her fit for her son, and who may even have plotted with Tess Muldoon of the sexy voice to drive her away from young Kennedy. Just say that, after leaving Afro Arts, Liz Geldenhuys somehow found out about this—wouldn’t that give her more than enough motive for revenge? Just say, also, that first she wrote a whole lot of letters to Ma Stride on the sort of cheap blue paper her kind would buy, but Ma Stride just ignored them, never answered. That could have been the fatal snub, Mickey—and, one other thing, remember that Liz Geldenhuys had been to the house that night with Theo, and that would have given her a chance to see its layout and know her way around.”