After taking coffee with Mrs. Stevenson, Kramer knew they had a possible ally. She did not like Monty much more than they did. She almost implied the existence of their child was evidence enough to support a charge of indecent assault.
How such partnerships began Kramer would never know, but this one seemed very near its end.
“I met an American airman in England during the war,” she said, “and he used to talk about ‘slarbs.’ That’s what he is-a slob.”
“Mind if I take more sugar?” asked Marais, having trouble with his cup.
“Help yourself, dear. I’ll just pop out again and see if I can get him up.”
Marais went purple as Kramer made a shocked grimace behind her back.
“Jesus, have a heart, sir!” He winced.
“Notice?” said Kramer. “She smells something-and she’s liking it. But she told us the story about Monday morning and everything as if she’d read about it in the papers. I don’t think she knows even as much as we do. If she hasn’t fetched him, then we’ll check out his movements on Sunday with her-okay?”
Marais raised a thumb.
Mrs. Stevenson came back in and half filled the settee.
“Not as much as a moan,” she said. “Oh, yes, slobs. That slob in there must have done what he did on Sunday.”
“Oh, ja?”
“Took four of his blinking tablets and decided not to get up at all.”
“What?”
“It’s the truth. On Sunday, he came in after checking our sweet machine near the bus depot-we’ve got the concession, and if you don’t keep emptying it the vandals try their luck-and, calm as you please, went out like a light. Must have been about one. Twelve hours later, he’s still like that. And I’ve had a proper Sunday dinner cooked and everything. No good trying to wake him. He’s still in his pit at six and- would you believe it-he didn’t get up at all until Monday, when his lordship managed his usual time.”
Her indignation was quite real.
Marais put his cup down and reached for a list.
“Twenty minutes from town to here in traffic,” Kramer said impatiently.
Mrs. Stevenson was waving to someone through the window.
“Oh, look,” she said. “There’s Bess outside and I want a word with her about taking Jeremy to riding lessons. Are you…?”
“I’d appreciate if we could just use your phone for a moment,” Kramer said, courteously rising with her. “Then maybe we best be going.”
“It’s in the hall, Mr. Kramer. Well, toodle-oo, if I don’t see you again.”
She rushed out through the French windows, making hi-there noises.
“Sir, this means his only chance of feeling the deceased was stiff-or even knowing about it-was between when she left the stage and when the snake got her or a few minutes afterwards. She couldn’t have been cold either-and that’s something else in his sworn statement.”
“Do I look like your grandmother?” asked Kramer. “You sit tight while I ring the Chocolate Fairy.”
The python was going off. Perhaps, without the bulk of a human body, a few minutes out of the fridge was enough for the putrefactive processes to continue. Snakes were strange things at the best of times, and certainly had a metabolism all their own.
This distressed Strydom under the circumstances: the largest glass bottle he had been able to find was not big enough to contain it.
Nxumalo, who was standing ready to pour in the formalin to preserve it, clucked his tongue sympathetically.
“Why doesn’t the doctor-boss just skin it?” he suggested.
“Because the boss wants a better permanent record of it than that,” Strydom explained. “You see, I’m hoping to deliver a paper about this case at our annual conference in Cape Town, and it would be so much more effective if a three-dimensional concept could be arranged. Understand?”
Nxumalo nodded. The boss did not want to skin it.
“Well, perhaps the museum will lend me one of their bottles,” Strydom said. “I never thought of that.”
“Very clever, my boss.”
“Or at least they’ll tell me where they got theirs from. And I want their views on its strength.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Pop it away for me again, then, but be extremely careful like before,” Strydom ordered, and then went into the office.
Kloppers was away at lunch.
The reptile man at the museum was very quiet-spoken but showed a practical interest in the problem. He said there were no spare bottles, as that method of preservation had been abandoned years ago, and any specimens outstanding were therefore kept in a deep-freeze. However, if the district surgeon would care to drop in that afternoon, bringing his snake with him, he was sure something could be done. A break in routine would be most welcome.
Kramer replaced the receiver very quietly and stood gazing down the passage. A pair of polished black shoes waited outside the third door down. “Okay, man, let’s go,” he called to Marais, adding in a whisper when the sergeant reached him, “We’re not really going, hey?”
Then Kramer opened the front door, counted three, stepped back inside, and closed it.
They waited. Not a murmur.
“We try plan B,” he said into Marais’s ear, knowing he would like it put that way.
Kramer took hold of a carpet sweeper, which the maid had left handy to clear away their crumbs, and wheeled it down the passage. It made very good squeaks when scrubbed back and forward. He began to bump its rubber trim against the wainscoting, and to hum one of the Zulu love chants he had heard Zondi hum so often at the steering wheel. The sweeper collided with the shoes and Kramer paused, keeping the sound in the back of his throat as high-pitched as possible.
“Oil Gladys!” roared a wide-awake voice behind the door “Bloody bitch, think you’re back in your kraal, do-”
“Hello again,” said Kramer as the door was jerked open.
“You!”
“And you. Come in the front room for a moment-don’t bother to change.”
Years of calling on homes early in the morning had taught Kramer that unless a man went in for boxing or wrestling, he generally felt most vulnerable in his dressing gown. And it certainly saved everyone time.
Presently, seated in a black silk kimono, with Japanese egg stains, Monty Stevenson told them everything he knew. It was the same old story, with the alibi of the sweet machine tacked on the end.
“Have to have a finger in a lot of pies in my game,” he explained. “There’s the club and my traveling disco for house parties, then my catering course for Indians, and I’m negotiating rights for-”
“Uh-huh. But according to a bus inspector I know, your chocolate machine at the depot is empty.”
“Wonderful news-knew it would catch on.”
“Because it’s broken.”
“What?”
“Smashed by vandals on Saturday.”
“The bastards!”
“All bluff,” Kramer admitted, adding for Marais’s benefit, “Remember, that bus inspector needs a kick up the arse sometime-said he’d got better things to do than doing stupid inquiries for CID.”
“Then it’s not bro-”
And that was it. The quick flip-flop of conflicting fact caught up with Monty Stevenson and laid him low. Then he told them the true story of what had happened at the Wigwam that weekend.
He’d met this very old friend and they’d taken a bottle of the best into his office to enjoy it in private and then he’d suddenly noticed the time and had to rush home and lie because she didn’t like this particular old friend very much. Who had, unfortunately, left town for a job opportunity in Australia.
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” said Kramer.
“Thank God.”
“So get dressed. You’re under arrest.”
There was an obvious place to look. For all his healthy cynicism, Yankee Boy Msomi was a hypochondriac. And the private surgery of Dr. Arthur Pentecost Thlengwa, which took in hundreds of rand a day, welcomed his drop in the ocean. It was Msomi’s kidneys that primarily concerned him.
But he was not in the long queue of people who preferred to pay for their suffering.