The Artful Egg (9 page)

“I’m in here because I can’t take the telephone any longer,” explained Colonel Muller. “
Time
magazine is already on our backs—it’ll be
Newsweek
and
Der Spiegel
next! On top of which, Pretoria is on the line in my office every five minutes, with the Brigadier wanting results yesterday. Have you got anything I can tell him?”

“To get stuffed, sir?”

Colonel Muller smiled briefly before raising a finger to his lips and using a sideways movement of his eyes to draw Kramer’s attention to the huddle of Security Branch officers sitting two tables away to their left.

“Or alternatively—”

“Er, cheers,” said Colonel Muller, swallowing half a large Scotch.

Kramer raised his glass.

“But seriously now, Tromp, what have you got to tell me? You’ve interviewed the son, I hear. What’s he like?”

Kramer glanced round the mess to see if there was anyone there who bore some resemblance to Theo Kennedy. It was like trying to pick out a cocker spaniel in a kennel of guard dogs.

“Ach, six-two, age twenty-four. Medium build.”

“No, but what
sort
of bloke, I mean. All artistic, like his ma was?”

“Ordinary, Colonel—nothing flash. A good bloke, that’s all. Naturally, he is totally bombed out of his tree by what’s happened. I took him back to his place and fixed up for some neighbours to keep an eye on him.”

“Oh ja?” said Colonel Muller, sipping at his Scotch. “And where was he last night?”

Kramer had drunk half his lager. “He’d had this phone message from some bloke who said he had some business to offer him. The arrangement was they’d meet in the cocktail room at the Florida Hotel in Durban at nine, but the bloke never turned up. Kennedy waited around until ten-thirty, then drove back to Trekkersburg, had a shower and a couple of drinks and went to bed.”

“Alone?”

“Ja, alone. He hasn’t got a girlfriend at the moment.”

“You’ve not accepted that as an alibi?”

“I don’t see he needs one, sir. Kennedy doesn’t rate as a suspect.”

“Oh, no? One of the lawyers connected with the will has let slip to Jones that mother and son ‘had their differences concerning money,’ which suggests an important line of enquiry—at least, to me it does.”

“What will?”

“Naomi Stride’s, of course—in which she leaves him the best part of a million rand, with more to come from her book sales.”

Kramer shrugged. “Typical Jones thinking,” he said. “In a flash, he comes up with the obvious: the lady was killed for her money. Never mind the fact she wasn’t just any rich woman, but a famous writer; never mind that her son obviously doesn’t give a damn about money, or that she’s killed by a sword, of all things. Let’s not complicate the issue.”

“Agreed,” said Colonel Muller, handing him a smudgy carbon copy of a list of names and addresses. “She was killed for her money. Here’s a list of other beneficiaries, all except one of them local.”

“Huh! The fourth one down is for only a piddling thousand rand!”

“But look at the name beside it—Kwakona Mtunsi. How many coons do you know that have ever even dreamed of so much money coming their way?”

“Oh, I think they all dream,” said Kramer.

“The point remains,” went on Colonel Muller, showing some irritation in the way he knocked the dottle from his new pipe, “that everything is relative. What a white wouldn’t think was worth killing for, a black could easily—”

“There are two assumptions being made here,” interrupted Kramer. “The first is that all the beneficiaries were aware of being included in her will.”

“She could have told them, Tromp. Have you any way of proving she didn’t?”

Kramer shrugged and shook his head.

“So what is the second assumption?” asked Colonel Muller, opening his tobacco-pouch.

“The one that’s already been made, that she was killed for her money, sir. It could have been for all sorts of other reasons.”

“But have you any evidence of a different motive so far?”

“No, sir,” Kramer had to concede, “apart from a sword being
a bloody funny weapon in this day and age. But neither have I had a chance to make the usual checks on who she’s been seeing lately, whether the neighbours had noticed anything suspicious, the likelihood of—”

“Fine, then this list at least gives us somewhere to begin, and the Brigadier is pleased with it. He suggests that you take the first five names, and Jones does the second five, with me co-ordinating in the middle.”

“But, Colonel—”

“I know, Lieutenant, I know.… You’re not a man who likes teamwork. Usually, I’m willing to go along with that; only in these circumstances, with the pressure we’re getting put on us, I can’t oblige right now. And, on second thought, can I have your list back a minute?”

Kramer handed it over to him, and watched him make an alteration with a ballpoint.

Zondi said nothing. Just drove.

Down long tunnels of violet jacaranda blossom, avenues of palm-trees, and over the bridge into the oldest part of town, where the Victorian houses had faded tin roofs, fancy cast-iron railings surrounding their balconies and dim verandas, high hedges with narrow gates opening onto mossy paths of red tile. Little-old-lady territory, where carefully darned pastel petticoats hung on the washing-lines each Monday, and the cats sat combing best cream from their whiskers. But here and there, like vivid fungi beginning to sprout from a mouldering log, colourful blinds shaded freshly painted window-frames, and shiny new cars, vivid as toadstools, stood in clumps, signifying the gradual return of life to the neighbourhood.

Still without saying anything, Zondi drew up in front of a narrow two-storey house, blazing with light from every window.

“Christ,” grunted Kramer, “what’s it supposed to be? A warning to shipping?”

The silhouette of a stocky figure appeared at an upper window and gazed down on them. It vanished for a moment, the light in that room went out, and then the figure returned again, to stand motionless.

“Now he thinks we can’t see him,” murmured Zondi. “I am beginning to wonder about his politics.”

“Ja, he’s acting like an old hand at the game,” agreed Kramer. “Like he’s had cop cars outside his house before.…”

“Let him stew for a minute, boss?”

“Could be useful—why not?”

Zondi lit two Luckies and passed one across. “And so,” he said, “why the dark face, boss? What happened when you met the Colonel?”

Kramer told him.

“Hau, hau, hau … Lieutenant Jones? And that lazy baboon, Gagonk Mbopa? They take half the list?”

“Uh-huh. Including Theo Kennedy, although he was mine originally.”

With a low whistle, Zondi settled back in his seat. “They get the Number One Suspect! You know, Hopeful Dumela’s information about the money fights Boss Kennedy had with his mother, plus—”

“Ach, not you, too!” protested Kramer, flinging open his door.

“Boss?”

But Kramer was out of the car the next second and striding up the path to the house of the second person named on the beneficiaries list.

“Can I help you?” asked the stocky figure, now appearing against the dazzling hallway light.

“You’d bloody better,” growled Kramer. “Anton Leonard Carswell?”

“That’s right, but just who do you—?”

“Lieutenant Kramer, Murder and Robbery.”

Carswell swallowed hard. “Er, then, perhaps we ought to go inside,” he said. “This must be about poor Naomi.…”

God, the house stank. Turpentine, paint, over-ripe fruit. The excessive wattage in the light fittings didn’t contribute much, either, for they showed quite plainly that the floorboards were totally bare, the whitewashed walls unevenly plastered, and that the colours used in the huge pictures stuck up everywhere were childishly garish.

Carswell stumped hurriedly down the hallway corridor. He went through the second door on the left, and came to a stop on the far side of a pine dinner-table, turning to face Kramer.

“My wife Pamela,” he said, a pleased note of warning in his voice, as though now he had all the protection he needed.

Kramer winked at the woman seated at the head of the table. “Hello, Pamela,” he said. “Tromp Kramer, CID, hey?”

“Mrs. Carswell,
if
you don’t mind,” she said icily. “Do you want to sit down?”

Kramer took the chair opposite to her and waited to see how long it would be before Carswell seated himself, too. They were an odd pair and no mistake. The man was about thirty-two and wore baggy white shorts, red sandals, and a T-shirt the same colour as his baby-blue eyes. He was almost hairless, except for a few reddish wisps growing across the pate of his very round head, and his limbs had dimples at the elbows and knees, accentuating his chubby smoothness. By way of contrast, the woman had a very full head of hair, drawn back tightly into a braided knot the size and colour of a large pastry. It was the nearest she came to indulging in frivolous femininity. The long serious face bore no make-up, the capable hands had their fingernails cut straight across, the swell of her breasts was lost in a loose-fitting garment that fell to her ankles, which were pink and pressed tightly together. It would undoubtedly take a great deal more than missionary zeal, decided Kramer, to get this lady into any sort of position.

*   *   *

Zondi glanced up from the paperback edition of
The Last Magnolia
which he had let slip into his pocket as he was leaving Naomi Stride’s study. There was a car approaching with only its sidelights burning. He switched off the small torch he had been reading by, tipped the rearview mirror so that he could use it as a periscope, and lay down across the front seat of the Ford, hidden from sight.

He heard the car slowing right down and then stopping. Carefully, he manoeuvred himself until he could read its licence plate in the angled mirror, ready to make a note of the number. Then he began to smile. The number of the vehicle was all too familiar to him.

So Jones and Mbopa had decided on a detour to check up on the Lieutenant’s progress, although it was impossible to guess what they hoped to deduce by peering into the house from the street. They acted strangely at the best of times, however, and anybody trying to establish rational reasons for their behaviour was probably expecting too much of them.

“Where’s that bugger Zondi?” came Jones’s nasal whine.

The gravelly response by Mbopa was impossible to make out.

“Just see he doesn’t,” said Jones, “or you’ll be back in uniform double-bloody-quick, my fat friend.”

The car began moving again, and for an instant Zondi glimpsed its two occupants in the mirror above him. They were both looking straight in his direction, but evidently—and predictably—had seen nothing.

Anton Carswell sat down suddenly in an awed slump. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Naomi has left us
how much …
?”

“Forty thousand rand,” said Kramer, “give or take a few hundred. Are you implying you weren’t aware until now of being a beneficiary?”

“Aware? I didn’t even know she thought of us as special friends of hers!”

“Obviously the bequest must be in recognition of your work,” said Pamela Carswell, taking the news quite calmly. “Yes, that makes perfect sense to me.” And to Kramer she said: “Anton has been hung in New York, you know.”

“Really, hey?” said Kramer, resisting the temptation to say he knew quite a few who’d been hung in Pretoria.

“In fact, if he hadn’t to spend so much of his time teaching, my husband would’ve long since—”

“To hell with that now, Pamela! Forty grand means we can—”

“I want,” cut in Kramer, “to go back to something you came out with a couple of seconds ago: this business of not being ‘special friends’ of the deceased. What exactly was your relationship?”

“Um, artist and patron would cover it, I suppose.”

“Patroness,” said Pamela Carswell. “Naomi came across Anton’s work not long after moving here, to Trekkersburg, and made a point of acquiring several of his pictures for her private collection.”

“I see, so it was all just buying and selling between you,” said Kramer.

She coloured slightly. “No, not entirely.”

“Far from it!” said Anton Carswell. “We were often invited to parties at Woodhollow, weren’t we, Pamela?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say we’d—”

“Quite intimate ones, too,” he added.

“Ah,” said Kramer, consulting a blank page in his notebook. “That’s what I thought. I have some dates here.”

A beautiful moment. The couple exchanged uneasy glances and each sat up a little straighter, as though bracing themselves. But Kramer said nothing more; he simply waited.

“All right,” said Anton Carswell, “I’ll admit that, on one level, Naomi and I were unusually close.”

So it was “I” now all of a sudden, instead of “we,” which indicated he was taking care to keep his wife out of this. But, no, it couldn’t be sex, thought Kramer, and opted for: “Politics, Mr. Carswell?”

“Anton, you needn’t have said any—”

But Carswell ignored her. “Politics, human rights, call it what you like, Lieutenant. Naomi Stride and I shared certain beliefs, and through our work we both attempted to convey the same message, if you like. Every nation, as someone once said, must look to its artists to act as the watchdogs of its soul and its future!”

“Which I also believe,” Pamela Carswell said quietly.

Kramer turned and stared at the canvas filling half the wall behind him. It looked as if the paint had been smeared on by hand, the way a toddler has fun with mashed pumpkin while its mother is answering the front door to the electricity-meter reader. There was plenty of yellow, and plenty of orange, with dribbles of gory red here and there, coinciding roughly with skinny black shapes that almost had arms and legs but didn’t.

“Well?” demanded Anton Carswell, lifting a dimpled chin in proud defiance.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think you stand a hope of getting it banned,” said Kramer. “Only, you probably realise that, don’t you?”

“You bastard!” hissed Pamela Carswell.

With great care, Ramjut Pillay sealed each piece of correspondence addressed to Naomi Stride in its own plastic sandwich-bag, and labelled them
Exhibit One
to
Exhibit Five
. Then he adjusted the wick of the paraffin-lamp on the orange-crate locker beside his divan in the lean-to, cleaned his glasses, and began his forensic examination in earnest.