“So you can be certain Stevenson didn’t just break the tension by trying to lift her?”
“I see your point-stretching muscle does destroy its rigidity, Tromp-but I was obviously paying particular attention to the head, and I know it had already passed away there. And I also know it had reached the torso. The arms had to be included in that sweep; they could not have been stiff when he says they were.”
“Just had to be sure,” Kramer said, starting for the door. “And thanks, Doc. Coming, Marais?”
“Hell, I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I was transferred from House-breaking down here. I didn’t know all that about breaking tensions. I’ve always thought a stiff was just a stiff.”
“Most people do,” Kramer replied, his spirits restored. “But you just watch it, or you’ll be landing yourself in trouble with a smart lawyer one of these days.”
And they went to find Monty.
When Zondi had finally managed to arrange the living room as the Widow Fourie wanted it, she went out with him onto the stoep.
“What do you think of it?” she asked.
“ Hau, it is beautiful,” he said. “The madam’s children will be very happy here. You can even buy them a donkey perhaps.”
“That is an idea!”
He picked up his jacket.
“Yes, I’ll ask Trompie-or do you know about donkeys?” she asked.
“No, madam, nothing.” He lied without malice. As a herdboy, he had seen all he wanted of donkeys before he was seven.
“I thought all…”
She let that tail away as her eye was caught by a white butterfly dipping by.
“I’m so happy,” she said. “Does it show?”
Zondi felt embarrassed and looked round for his hat. It had been dropped in the tea chest with the lampshades.
“Are you going?” she asked.
“Is there something…?”
“Oh, no, Mickey, you’ve been a marvelous help. Just I feel lonely all of a sudden. It’s so private here, isn’t it? When is the lieutenant getting back?”
“That I don’t know, madam. Shame.”
“Of course-who ever knows that?”
She walked to the edge of the veranda and shaded her eyes to look into the trees. Grasshoppers were doing their erratic dance in the slanted rays between the trunks.
“Could I-could I possibly ask you one more favor? To fetch the kids from the park now for me, instead of the nanny sending them in a taxi at four? It’s really your fault I’m at such a loose end!”
“Victoria Park? With the swings? I’ll go straight away now.”
“Hey, you know what? You must bring your kids here to play in July when we’re at the beach. Do you think they’d like that?”
He knew they would. But that he would never have enough explanations for them afterward.
“Maybe, maybe.” He laughed. “I’ll go now. See you by and by.”
“Oh, where are the presents for Miriam?”
“In the boot, madam-thank you, madam. Sala gahle.”
He drove off, thankful to escape a woman who asked so many questions, many of which left him looking tongue-tied. But he was indebted to the Widow Fourie for all the unwanted household effects, including an iron that had lost its cord, and for the children’s clothing she decided to get rid of as well. She knew how to give so it didn’t hurt to take from her. She seemed to do it without thinking. As she had dumped, without thinking, that very serviceable old paraffin heater, which was only a little rusty, on her new rubbish heap. He had not thought it wrong to stow that in the trunk also.
A day that began like this could only get better.
5
Stevenson had to be in. A station wagon stood in the drive, and the curtains of the bay window round the side were closed. Yet Kramer looked disappointed.
“Not the smart place I thought it would be,” he said, in no hurry to get out.
The Chev Commando was parked under a flame tree on the opposite side of the street.
“Well, like I say, he’s up against something with the other club,” Marais explained. “Got style and class.”
Kramer, who had entered it on one occasion, in the hope of buying cigarettes after midnight, made a face. If a black ceiling and black walls and a black stage were considered stylish, so be it. And if Trekkersburg’s high society was class, he was no one to argue. But his own response to both had been one of acute depression, so instantaneous that he had gone a mile to get his Lucky Strikes off an obliging refugee near the station. Those buggers worked all hours under very bright lights.
“Do we?” Marais ventured.
“Uh-huh. Let’s go and drag him out,” Kramer said, turning off the engine. “This is only one of three places I’m supposed to be.”
As they went up the flagstones to the front door, past an old gymkhana poster on the gate, he wondered how things were progressing in Peacevale. His senior sergeant was in charge there, but he wished Ludwig hadn’t sodded off on leave, because that was his territory. Same as Lawrence of Arabia, without the camels.
He was still not concentrating when the door opened to Marais’s knock and a black housemaid peered round it. It would have seemed more natural to see the Widow Fourie.
“ Yer-ba-baw! ” the maid exclaimed in fright, at once recognizing them for what they represented, probably from their haircuts.
“Is your master in?” Marais asked. “You fetch him for us, che-che. ”
“Gladys? What are you up to? Oh, I see-you Mormons have been here pestering before!”
“Never,” said Kramer, tugging Marais into the hall behind him and closing the door.
“Police, CID,” the youngster got in hurriedly.
“But what is this about?”
Kramer did the stare that implied heavily his dislike of rhetoric.
She was man enough to stare right back. Her hair color was amazing-perhaps a poodle parlor did it.
Then the crimson lipstick-which claimed more lip than she owned-twisted into a mean streak.
“You must be the uncouth one,” she said. “I’m sorry, but my husband’s sleeping. He does conduct his affairs at night, you know.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And he has taken two tablets today because one hasn’t been enough lately.”
“Since when? Sunday?”
That pitted her poise. She moved back a little and folded her arms.
“ Am I entitled to know what this is about?”
“You’d better ask hubby,” said Kramer. “He’s the man with all the answers.”
The children attended the first shift at Kwela Village School and so returned home while Miriam was still trying to find enough space to put everything and to complete her account of the funeral. They were given their new clothes to try on, and told to stay in the other room. It was raining.
“Yes, very sad,” Zondi agreed, “but it will mean a little more money for us.”
Like most workingmen, he did his best to help others in the family who couldn’t get passes to leave the homeland and find employment.
“There, you see? You are not listening me properly. Now that there is room for another at the kraal, the aunt of my sister’s brother’s wife will be coming to live there. Her sons all died in that mine accident.”
“Were they bastards?”
“Her husband has TB. They’ve locked him up with the lepers in the Transkei.”
“I forgot. Hey, you know? Now Lucky is dead-shot down.”
“No!”
“The lieutenant is very angry with them. It was the same ones as before.”
“ Hau! They were stupid to shoot Lucky!”
“That’s why I must go now,” said Zondi, slipping on the harness of his shoulder holster. “There is a man I must see. Is this all right with you?”
Miriam nodded, holding a wasp-waist corset against the light and wondering at its potential.
“You go, you go-since when does the man ask? And I need you out of the way; this house is so dirty I must do a big clean.” Zondi left in just the right frame of mind to jolt Yankee Boy Msomi out of his lethargy.