“You recognized the voices?” I asked.
“I think it was probably too far away for me to be sure — I suppose it could have been two farm laborers, but I never thought about it, I just assumed it must be the two brothers. The shouting went on for what seemed several minutes, and then quite suddenly it stopped. Oh my God, I thought, he’s killed Hansie, and now he’ll come and kill me. The locked door seemed frail — one kick of his great boot and he’d be in. I started to barricade the door with a chair, and then I noticed the window. The only thing to do was to get out. Stop panicking, I told myself, it will take at least ten minutes for him to get here. I knew it would be cold out there, so I took enough time to dress warmly in trousers, jersey, and my warm parka. I found my torch and went out the front door.
“The first thing that struck me was how light it was. The moon was not far from full and over halfway up the sky. He’ll see me from a mile away, I thought. I hurried through the garden, keeping to the shadows whenever I could, and then into the orchard, but it didn’t provide much cover with its nearly leafless trees. I dodged from one to the other as quietly as I could and prayed that he wouldn’t see me. I don’t know what plan I had in mind; I obviously wasn’t thinking clearly. I should have been heading for your place, Mary, but I suppose some instinct told me to keep our troubles in the family, so I was heading for Lisa and Hansie. Suddenly I was out of the orchard and almost at the bridge. I ducked behind a bush and listened. Not a sound. I crept out from my cover and prepared to make a run for it, over the bridge and up the road to safety. I willed my trembling legs to do it.
“And then I saw it. A body lying face down in the riverbed, half in the water. I wanted to cry out and scramble down to it, but my fear prevented me. The moon was still bright, though clouds had begun blowing across it. I could see from the size of him and the thick black hair that it was Dirk. Perhaps at that point I should have run for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to just leave him lying there. I slithered down the bank. ‘Dirk?’ I whispered. ‘Dirk?’ I took a step towards him, and then some instinct made me stop. I saw a river-rounded stone a little bigger than an ostrich egg lying at my feet. I stooped and picked it up. I moved a step nearer. He gave a pitiful moan. Another step. ‘Dirk, what happened? Are you hurt?’ He groaned again. I moved right up to him. ‘Dirk, are you all right?’
“And then he spoke, his voice cold and menacing. ‘I saw you sneaking out of the house to go to your lover, you scheming bitch. I knew you would come this way, so I laid this little trap for you. Now I’m going to kill you and leave you here on the sand while I find your randy boyfriend, and then the two of you will lie here, and the big rock will roll over you, and the world will know that it was God’s just retribution.’ While he was saying this, his hand shot out and grabbed me by the ankle in a bone-crushing grip. There was no time to argue; I brought the stone down hard on the back of his head. His face dropped back onto the sand, and his grip relaxed. I turned and ran and tried to scramble back to the track, but my legs gave way. Then there were comforting arms about me.”
She was sobbing quietly, and Mary went and knelt before her, taking her hands. “You poor, poor child, but there’s nothing to fear now. It’s all over now.” Rina wiped her eyes and managed a faint smile.
“Yes, it’s over now except for the nightmares.”
“They will pass,” said Jean. Rina nodded.
Hansie took up the tale.
“As soon as we saw Rina go toward Dirk, we started to move. Please don’t ask me why we didn’t cry out — I’ve been asking myself why ever since. We might have prevented a tragedy if we had. There was such a conspiratorial air about that it didn’t occur to us. We didn’t have much more than a hundred yards to go, and we set off at as good a pace as we could, me grasping my three by two in one hand and steadying Lisa with the other. But everything happened so quickly we got to the bottom of the bank only just in time to catch Rina. She was in a terrible state, screaming that she had killed Dirk, and nothing we could say would comfort her. The only thing to do was to hold her until she calmed down. I was conscious of Dirk lying there dangerously close to the loosened rock, but comforting Rina seemed to be of prime importance. Then everything happened at once. The moon finally went out for good, leaving us in total darkness, and the rain began to fall in great stinging drops. Thunder rolled in the hills quite near us, and suddenly there was one hell of a lightning strike on the mountainside just behind my farm. The thunderclap that followed was like nemesis. It shook the ground, and in the light of another strike I saw Dirk try to struggle up and the great rock start to roll.”
There was a stunned silence, all of us too shocked to speak. We just stared at Hansie, openmouthed.
Hansie went on. “You are shocked, aren’t you? Can you imagine what it was like for us? You don’t want to believe it, and you don’t have to. We didn’t want to believe it, but we had no choice. I left Rina in Lisa’s care and made my way to the rock, using a torch that made little impression in the teeming rain. But it showed enough for me to see that it seemed to have done a crooked roll and was sitting squarely on poor Dirk. Only his head protruded and his lower legs and one arm. I felt for his pulse, but there was none, thank heaven.
“There was nothing I could do besides get the girls home as quick as I could. As I made my way towards them, I tripped over the fencing stake. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I felt its presence there could be misconstrued, so I picked it up and managed to find the hole where it had come from and put it back. Then we got Rina up the bank, and I fetched the pickup and drove her home. While Lisa was getting Rina’s wet clothes off, I went to the phone to ring the police. I wondered if there would be anyone on duty. Then I thought, even if there is, it’s one hell of a night to bring anybody out, and what could they possibly achieve? So I didn’t ring. Instead I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on and made a big pot of strong tea. Lisa got Rina into a hot bath — the poor kid was in a state of shock and shivering. Eventually we had her tucked up in bed with a big mug of hot sweet tea, and by then I’d had time to think. I thought, this thing is so bizarre that there’s a good chance nobody will believe us, and if they don’t believe us, we will be charged with murder and very likely convicted. On the other hand, if we simply said that I had seen Dirk to the bridge and had a bit of a fight — somebody, Wynand at least, might have heard us — nobody could prove that we weren’t all safely tucked up in bed. So we decided we would all stick to that story. The rest you know.”
“You got away with it,” said lawyer George, “and I was sure you would, precisely because there was no evidence that you hadn’t all been in bed as you said. There was, of course, equally no evidence that you had been — Rina had no alibi, and a husband and wife alibiing each other doesn’t hold much water. But it was heard in a little country court where villainy is not the order of the day. And I must say you put on a very good act! You took a chance, though, by leaving wet clothes around. You have Bill to thank for getting rid of that bit of evidence.”
“On George’s advice,” I said.
“Legally speaking,” said George, “the case is closed, so now that you have put us fully in the picture and set our minds at rest, let’s leave it at that.”
“Oh no!” said Mary. “How can we just leave it at that? Our dear friends have been through hell, suffered terribly, and we say you got away with it — good for you! I want you to know that we all love you, and that includes my amateur detective husband, who tried to put all sorts of terrible ideas into our heads. And that, though we knew there was more to it than came out at the inquest, we never doubted for an instant that you were innocent of any crime. Though I’m not sure that the aforesaid husband can be included in this.”