When he was out of earshot, George said, “Has the old man lost his marbles, or do you think he is talking some kind of sense?”
“There are no flies on Oom Wynand, that you can be sure of, and I don’t like to think of Rina or Hansie or Lisa being murderers. In fact, I can’t think of it. But there could have been an unintentional killing and perhaps an attempt at a coverup. I’ll tell you one thing, Rina was out there last night in the storm — her washing basket is full of wet, muddy clothes.”
“In that case she would be advised to get rid of them before Vermeulen comes snooping around.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got themselves in some kind of a jam and plan to say they were all at home, safely tucked up in bed, when the storm broke. And probably that’s the best thing for them to do — it will be impossible to prove otherwise. Unless they leave incriminating bits of evidence around.”
“You do surprise me! I never thought of you as a conspirator trying to defeat the ends of justice.”
“It’s nothing to do with me, they’re your friends. If I do get dragged into it, it will be as counsel for the defense, and it will be simpler for me if they don’t do anything too silly.”
I thought about this for a few seconds, then said, “I’m with you. And I’m cold and wet. And so are you.”
We set off for home at a fast trot and were soon warming up with hot showers and small whiskies. I got into warm clothes and set off in my pickup to fetch the girls. George would have to stay and dry his clothes, as nothing of mine, apart from a dressing gown, would fit him.
I drove first to Dirk’s — I mean Rina’s — and found the ladies inside, very subdued and sipping tea. Rina was looking terrible and I thought in no state to be left on her own; she should come and stay with us at least for the night. But she and Mary had been through that exercise, and Rina was staying. So I said I would get in touch with Gert, the farm foreman, and tell him to take over the running of the farm in the meantime, which at this time of year he was more or less doing anyway. Then after more protestations that she would be all right and just wanted to be alone for a while and try to sleep, we started to move out.
“At least let us take your dirty laundry away with us and let Mary deal with it.”
Her eyes widened, and she went just a shade paler. “But why...”
“Just a precaution. Sergeant Vermeulen is very likely to pay you a routine visit, either later today or tomorrow morning, and it would be a pity if he found anything that might give him wrong ideas about where you were last night.”
We were at the back door, and before she could say anything, I nipped into the laundry and grabbed the wet clothes from the basket.
I explained the reason behind my action to a mystified Mary as we drove to collect Jean. At Hansie’s it was much the same as it had been at Rina’s except that there were the two of them to sustain each other so there was no problem about leaving them. But I had to know whether they too had any wet and dirty clothes to take care of. When I managed to draw Hansie away from the others, he preempted me.
“Bill, this is a terrible business; what am I going to do? Everybody will be saying I did for Dirk because of what they seem to think was going on between me and Rina. The police will be coming and asking all sorts of questions, and I won’t know what to say. I can’t pretend that things were ever good between me and Dirk, everybody knows that.”
“Look, Hansie, I want to help you all I can, but I think at this stage the less I know about what happened last night the better. George thinks the less anybody knows the better. It was an accident, right? None of you three were there after you had your fight with Dirk — Wynand heard a squabble down there when you were seeing Dirk home. But after that, nobody has reason to believe any of you were not safely home in your beds. Unless you leave evidence to the contrary lying about.”
“What do you mean?”
I told him about Rina’s basket of wet clothes, and he said yes, they had a wet clothes problem, too, but they had put theirs in a fertilizer sack and stowed it at the back of the garage.
“If Vermeulen were to come across it, he’d never believe anything else you tried to tell him. Better let me take it, too. And don’t try to explain — yet.”
We went to the garage, and I saw where they had hidden the sack behind some empty cartons at the back. Oh, Hansie, I thought, you’ll have to read a lot more whodunits before you embark on your next criminal enterprise.
We took the short way home, which was along the new connecting road over the new bridge. Just over the bridge I stopped the pickup and surveyed the scene. There was an old fence standard stuck in the ground almost in the riverbed. A relic of some long gone fenceline. You know what they’re like — like a very small railway line. Only yesterday I had tried to get it out to fix Mary’s sweetpea fence, but it was stuck fast in the clay. Now, when I went down the bank and wobbled it about a bit, it came out easily. I wasn’t surprised.
“Just what I need to fix your sweetpea fence.”
“You can’t just take other people’s property,” said Mary. “Put it back.”
I didn’t put it back, I took it home and drove it in next to the rotted support and tied the fence to it. Then I made sure the fruit drying trays had been stacked for the night, and by the time I got back to the house, the sun had set and wisps of cloud were spilling over the mountains.
Inside all was bright and cheerful. I could hear the washing machine doing its stuff in the background. No doubt George would take the clean, damp clothes home and put them through his drier. The main thing was that nobody should see them hanging on a line anywhere. George had made himself useful by getting a good blaze going in the hearth and making a big pot of coffee, and we were soon sitting around with mugs of coffee well laced with brandy. And then the speculations began in earnest. All sorts of suggestions were put forward as to what had happened last night, and the more brandy we drank, the more bizarre they became. “They” had decided they had had enough of Dirk and had got together and waylaid him somewhere, killed him with a blow to the head with a rock, and dragged him down to the river and rolled the rock on him to make it look like an accident. Of course none of us believed this — we were just looking for the most dastardly scenario we could think of. But it did seem to me that there was a vestige of truth in the idea. Suppose Dirk had attacked Rina, but Rina had somehow managed to hit him with a rock down there by the river, and Hansie and Lisa had happened along, finding Rina in a state because of what would become of her. Lisa had then maybe had the idea of staging an accident to cover Dirk’s injuries, and they had between them managed to wrestle the standard free and use it to loosen the rock. This, I suppose, was semi-plausible at best and was full of holes that would need to be plugged before it would hold any water. For example, why should Lisa and Hansie happen along? But they had been out in the storm, and so had Rina. It was too difficult to imagine, so when George suggested that we give up that line of research and work on the scene where they were all safely tucked up as they were no doubt going to maintain, we jumped at the idea and started putting up idiotic ideas such as Dirk’s taking a nap in the riverbed, being wakened by the downpour and the thunder but being too slow to get out of the way when the rock rolled.