I first reported the matter to Sergeant Vermeulen of the Ceres police. There weren’t a lot of police about in those days — it was a small town and the crime wave hadn’t started yet. The sergeant was the man in charge, and he said he would be there himself in about fifteen minutes. Then I phoned Hansie and told him what we had found. “We don’t know that it’s Dirk.”
“It would be real Chinaman’s luck for it to be Paul Onkers,” he said, naming a troublesome farm laborer. I suggested he come down on his tractor and bring some ropes to help with the removal of the rock. I also suggested he come by himself and not involve the gossiping farmhands just yet. I put my wet boots on again, left Mary to look after Rina, and made my way back to the river.
Sergeant Vermeulen arrived before I had time to quiz my friends on their thoughts. I didn’t know him at all. He was overweight and looked as if he would be heavyhanded and not overanxious for work, but George, who knew him through court work, had great respect for him. He spent the time while we were waiting for Hansie examining what he laughingly called the scene of the crime. He was particularly interested in the scar left in the bank.
“You can see,” he said, “that the big rock isn’t properly round, so when it rolled out, it didn’t roll straight into the river but off at an angle like a bowl with a big bias. Or maybe it came out straight and then keeled over on its side where its flatness stopped it rolling farther. It’s hard to tell which, now the flood has washed away the marks. It doesn’t matter really. Too bad, hey, somebody had to be lying just there.” He spoke English with the thick, guttural accent of those who habitually spoke Afrikaans.
Then Hansie arrived in his pickup with some rope and some poles — the tractor would be no use, he said — and with these we managed to roll the rock away from the body. Not without considerable difficulty and getting ourselves thoroughly soaked in the process. Then came the grisly task of retrieving the body. We felt around with our feet, stationed one man at each corner, so to speak, and with our faces in the water lifted the limp mass. We held it for a while to let the current carry away most of the mud and then laid it on the beach ready for the arrival of Dr. Frank Masson, a G.P. who acted as police doctor should the need arise, which it rarely did.
The water had washed away any blood that might have been about, so the body wasn’t too hard to look at. Nevertheless, Jean elected to wander along the path for a little way, just in time to meet Wynand du Toit, better known as Oom Wynand, as he came strolling along the path. He stopped and greeted her and surveyed the scene.
“Which one is it?” he asked, but before she could reply, “Oh, there’s Hansie, so it must be Dirk.”
I was standing somewhat nearer to them than the others, and I don’t think any of them heard the strange remark. Certainly not Sergeant Vermeulen, who was showing concern for Hansie. Hansie was white and shivering.
“You go home, Mr. Theron. You’ve had a bad shock, and the cold water hasn’t helped you. Go and get into a hot tub. Perhaps Mrs. Rawson would drive you? That would be better.”
Jean was only too pleased to fall in with this scheme, and the two of them drove off, leaving George and me to back up the sergeant. Oom Wynand sat on a rock a little distance away and stoked his pipe. He was a delightful old character full of patience and wisdom. He had never been a rich farmer, and now he had sold most of his land to his neighbors and kept just a wedge for himself and his wife. We had seen them earlier as we came along the river, sitting on their stoep, and we had waved and called out a greeting. Now he sat quietly smoking until the excitement was over.
Dr. Masson arrived, and we told him what had happened.
“Apart from the bruise on the back of his head, there’s not much to see,” he said. “Let’s turn him over.”
So we rolled him over, the doctor shuddering as the shattered bones crunched.
“God, that must have been painful! But only for a millisecond, I should think. Every bone in his torso seems to be smashed. But his head has escaped. That’s strange.”
“I think the rock rolled alongside of him and then flipped over.” said the sergeant.
I had been dreading seeing a smashed up, unrecognizable face, but it was hardly damaged. A little mud clung to Dirk’s usually immaculate beard, and there was a scratch on his forehead, that’s all.
There was nothing Dr. Frank could do here — he would perform an autopsy in the cottage hospital later. Sergeant Vermeulen took some photos of the body on the beach, and we loaded poor Dirk’s mortal remains into the police car. The officials drove away and left George and me to meditate.
We walked back along the path to where Oom Wynand was still puffing contentedly away. George was shaking his head. “I just can’t believe any of this.”
“Neither can I. But Oom Wynand here wasn’t all that surprised. I’m sure I heard him ask Jean which brother it was. Isn’t that so?”
Wynand shrugged one of those deep shrugs of his, where his shoulders all but cover his ears, a mannerism that prefaces a deep philosophical pronouncement. George and I therefore found suitable rocks and sat down.
“I was at the party yesterday, listening to the talk, and while everybody was saying what a good idea the bridge was, I was having doubts about it.”
“I thought it was a good idea — bring them closer together,” said George.
Wynand nodded. “That’s what most people said, but I was thinking they might be better apart. There’s never been much love between those two brothers. The big one always bullied the small one. Then he had the better deal when it came to the inheritance, and to top it off, he married Hansie’s schooldays sweetheart.”
“He did Hansie a favor there. Lisa is much more suited to him than Rina. They have much more in common, and Lisa’s knowledge of plants is a great help on their farming efforts. Rina is a sweet person, but her interests don’t extend much beyond clothes and hairdos and what’s known as having a good time. Things Dirk frowned on. She wasn’t the type to pine for a lover who was going to be away for four years. In fact, she married Dirk only a year after Hansie left. Long before he met Lisa. I just can’t believe that he can have any lingering passion for Rina. Pity, yes, but love, no. In any case, Rina would have been much too frightened of Dirk to try anything like that.”
Oom Wynand nodded his head and blew out a satisfying cloud of blue smoke. “You are most probably right, but who can know the truth when it comes to affairs of the heart? There is a rumor circulating that the two are — what do they say? — having it on. Yes, that’s what they say. Only the idle gossip of bored country people, of course, but it will have got to Dirk’s ears. Then, when I am lying awake last night and thinking about the party and the things we have been talking about, I hear shouting and arguing and perhaps even fighting coming from down here, so when I walk along the riverbank and see a body lying on the sand, the thing that occurs to me to ask is, which one?”
“So you don’t think it was an accident?”
Wynand looked startled at George’s question. “It must have been an accident, Mr. Rawson, those people aren’t murderers. Not a simple accident like the rock rolling down in the downpour just when Dirk happened to be walking by or was maybe standing there in the riverbed. No, that’s too much to believe, but there was some other circumstance we may never precisely know. The one thing we can be sure of is that whatever happened last night, none of the players had murder in their hearts; therefore, the rock rolling on Dirk was an accident.” He paused to put another match to his pipe. “Mind you, if it had been Hansie lying under the rock, I would not have been so sure. That Dirk was a hard man — a man without compassion. The colored folk who work for him won’t be shedding any tears. No, the puzzle is not whether it was an accident but how exactly such an accident happened.” He stood up and stuffed his now lighted pipe in his pocket. “I must go and tell Anna all about it.”