The Artful Egg

by James McClure

  “You mean you’ve had them, too?”

  Winny Barnes nodded, redoubling her chins. “There’s just this very sexy woman’s voice that says ‘Is Theo there …?’ ”

  “And?”

  “Well, there isn’t an ‘and,’ really. Theo talked to her once, that was in the beginning, but since then he slams the phone down or tells whoever else answers it to do the same. That first time, he says, she went on and on saying how much she loved him, although he’d never heard her voice in his life before. He’s got a private theory it’s somebody’s secretary being put up to it by her boss, probably an old schoolfriend of his or a business rival—but Liz has to start imagining things. She asked my dad how she could be sure Theo wasn’t chatting to the woman while she wasn’t in the shop, and every time he went away on a trip there was Liz, telephoning the hotel and embarrassing him by asking the management if he’d booked a double room. It finally got to the stage that she was questioning the reason for every trip he made, and then she just walked out on him, poor pet.”

  “About a month ago?”

  “That’s right. I could never understand Liz myself, being so quick to think the worst. Granted, nobody could call her pretty, and she was very flat-chested, with a funny nose, but that didn’t matter to Theo, you could see he was devoted—you know, like John Lennon and Yoko? No? Well, never mind, all I’m saying is that she was very silly in my opinion, and I told her so. ‘Don’t look a gift horse, Liz Geldenhuys,’ I said, and then she started crying and saying she’d always known she could never keep him for long, being so plain and coming from such a different background—her dad’s just a bulldozer driver, and terribly crude. Oh, yes, I learned that to my cost when he tried coming in here afterwards to give poor Theo a good thrashing, you know! And she went on about how Theo’s mother had treated them, the one and only time she was invited to Woodhollow, and had argued about what they were doing here in the shop and, goodness me, she did go on and on! In fact, I started to think she wanted to cause a break-up, just because she couldn’t bear the strain of waiting for it to happen anyway. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Ja, I think you’ve probably got it in a nutshell,” agreed Kramer, stubbing out his Lucky. “By the way, Winny, when was the last time this mystery lady tried ringing Theo?”

  “Oh, somewhere towards the end of last week—perhaps Thursday.”

  “And there’ve been no more calls since?”

  “I should hope not! I’m sure that whoever it is realises how cruel that’d be after what’s happened!”

  “A joke’s a joke, you mean? What do you remember about the calls you yourself have answered? Any noises in the background? People typing? Traffic?”

  Winny Barnes sucked her thumb and thought. “Once or twice,” she said, “I think I heard music.”

  “What music?”

  “The tune? Oh, it was too quick for that.”

  “No, was it pop or what?”

  “Classical.”

  “Opera? Four violins and a drum?”

  “A big orchestra, like ballet or on the radio on Sundays.”

  “So your ears aren’t just a pretty shape,” said Kramer, rising and backing off with a wink. “Bye for now, Winny.…”

  “Tromp!—er, do you want me to contact you if she rings again?”

  “You might as well, hey?”

  “Oh, and sorry if I talked too much. I’m always doing that and spoiling things.”

  “I loved it, honest!”

  “You did?” she said wonderingly, and looked as though, God forgive him, her happiness was complete.

  Little Amanda shrieked with delight as Theo Kennedy surfaced once again, coming up with a huge splash from the bottom of the swimming-pool and gasping for air.

  “Isn’t Uncle T’eo funny. Mummy?” she said, jumping up and down. “Just like Danny and Delilah! Go on, Uncle T’eo, do that again!”

  “It looks—as though—I’ll have to,” said Kennedy, treading water. “Damn thing won’t—budge.”

  “Danny ’n’ Delilah! Danny ’n’ Delilah!”

  “You know who they are, don’t you, Sergeant Zondi?” said Amanda’s mother, turning to him. “The star dolphins down at Durban aquarium. Ooops, darling! You nearly fell in then. Take nice Sergeant Zondi’s hand as well, then you’ll be much safer when we’re both holding on to you.”

  With his children almost grown-up now, it’d been a long time since Zondi had last had such a small hand in his own, and it felt good there. He returned Mrs. Stilgoe’s smile and, to his astonishment, saw something in her eyes that gave him a tingle of excitement.

  “Harry,” said Kennedy in Zulu, still treading water, “now I’ve got my breath back, what are the chances of my pulling that grating away? Is it detachable? What precisely is the design of the thing?”

  “It is a deep hole, about a leg’s length, with an outlet in one side of it that goes to the filter and the pump, little master. The grating fits on top of it in such a way that, if you pull it first to the left, then you can easily lift it to get underneath.”

  “Then I’ll give that a try, because grabbing at that jewel thing isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “It still looks like a jewel, sir?” asked Zondi in English.

  “Very much so.”

  “Couldn’t it be something of your mother’s?” suggested Mrs. Stilgoe.

  “Oh, ho, she was never into jewels, gems, or anything like that—would have thought it very immoral.”

  “But don’t people sometimes buy diamonds and things when they’re going overseas? You know, to get round the currency restrictions by—”

  “Even worse!” said Kennedy with a laugh and then a sad smile. “You very obviously never knew her, Vicki! Mum would have a fit at the very thought of any form of smuggling. Actually, the thing looks almost too big to be real, even allowing for how the water magnifies, and it could just be glass, a huge bead with facets cut on it or something. Anyway, here goes again!”

  As Kennedy dived, Amanda laughed and jumped up and down, bringing Zondi’s attention back to her mother. But Mrs. Stilgoe had her eyes on the swimmer, and so he looked instead at the child, wondering whether his head wasn’t being turned slightly by being in the company of whites so extraordinarily relaxed and friendly in their behaviour. In fact, on reflection, never once had he—not even as a domestic servant—been trusted to hold the hand of a small white female before, although it’d been quite different when it had to come to the brothers.

  “Mummy, sure this boy a good boy?” said Amanda doubtfully. “He’s doing a stare at me.”

  “Sergeant Zondi’s not a boy, Amanda! Wherever did you—? Good heavens, Excalibur!”

  And Zondi looked up just in time to see an arm coming up out of the water with a sword in its hand.

  13

  KRAMER SAT ALONE in his car beside the public telephone box for almost ten minutes before finally getting out to dial the number Control had supplied him with. He wished there’d been a telephone directory in the box so that he could have looked up the number for himself. It made him uncomfortable to think those six digits would now have been written down somewhere, a permanent record of one of the nastiest suspicions he’d ever had.

  So nasty, in fact, that common decency alone should have instantly banished it from his mind.

  He dialled.

  After a couple of rings, the other receiver was lifted. “Hello …?”

  “Hello to you.”

  “Tromp?”

  “The very same.”

  “What happened to last night?”

  “Up to my ears.”

  “Pardon? If you’ll hold on a tick, I’ll get the kids to turn that down. We’re right in the middle of—”

  “I only wanted to say I could be around a bit later, OK?”

  “Can’t wait, mon cheri.…”

  He hung up, aroused. He couldn’t help it. Face to face, all else had been upstaged by those bewitching green eyes and her firm smoothness, but on th
e telephone, disembodied ballet teacher Tess Muldoon had proved to have one of the sexiest voices he’d ever heard.

  “Control to Lieutenant Kramer.…”

  And in the background, music, orchestral.

  “Control to Lieutenant Kramer.…”

  “Ach, bugger off!” he protested, having returned to his car for a long, uninterrupted think. “Tell the Colonel to—”

  “Control to Kramer, urgent message ex Bantu DS Zondi.”

  He reached for his hand mike and pressed the “send” button: “Ja, Kramer here.… Let’s hear it. Over.”

  “Message reads, ‘Murder weapon found, Woodhollow.’ ”

  Gagonk Mbopa just had time to close his eyes and make a grab for the dashboard. Less than a second later, the car left the road, mounted the pavement and collided with a fire hydrant, slewing round again into the path of an oncoming vehicle. There was a loud blast from a horn, a shriek of brakes, and another collision, battering the car back against the hydrant. A huge jet of water shot into the air.

  “My God,” said Jones, his hands on the steering-wheel, his eyes staring ahead of him, “whoever would believe it?”

  Mbopa, kneeling wedged between the front seats and the dashboard, had a panicky moment when he thought he’d not be able to breathe.

  “Those two bastards’ve gone and done it again to us!” said Jones. “Tricked the Colonel into sending us on a wild goose chase after some crazy coolie, while they go behind our backs and.…”

  “You maniac!” Mbopa heard someone shouting. “You total bloody idiot! Have you seen what you’ve done to my breakdown truck?”

  “It’s too much,” said Jones. “Much too much. You agree, Gagonk?”

  “Umph.”

  “Speak up, man.”

  “Can the—ooof, Lieutenant, please help me to …?”

  “Maniac!” bellowed a burly, bare-chested motor mechanic as he reached the driver’s window. “What the hell made you do a thing like that? Just driving off the road suddenly without any rhyme or—” Then he noticed Mbopa on the floor, with his head in Jones’s lap, and his eyes bulged. “Jesus H. Christ O’Reilly,” he gasped.

  “Unbelievable,” murmured Jones. “Gagonk, you and me have got to find a new way of going about things, hey?”

  At which point, the burly mechanic’s eyes almost started from his head, and the municipal traffic officer, who arrived at the scene on his motorcycle a few moments later, could hardly credit his own ears at first.

  There were already a dozen vehicles parked outside Woodhollow when Kramer arrived, having thought he’d just set up a land-speed record crossing town from the telephone box. This annoyed him, making him wonder what game Zondi was playing at, until he realised that Control would have felt duty bound to inform Colonel Muller of the message’s contents before relaying it on to him.

  “Where’s everyone?” he asked the Bantu constable standing guard at the front door of the house.

  “Round by the swimming-pool, boss,” said Zondi, emerging at that moment. “I’ve been listening for the car.”

  “So it paid off after all, hey, Mickey?” said Kramer, as they took the garden path. “Or are you personally responsible for putting your hands on—?”

  “No, no, boss. It was a mixture of the garden boy and Boss Kennedy.” And he related the sequence of events leading up to the discovery of the sword in the pool’s filter trap. “The big help,” he said, “was probably not having the sun dance on the water.”

  “Bet it’s dancing now,” grunted Kramer, glancing up at a sky that was rapidly becoming a brilliant blue again. “Who’s here? The Colonel?”

  Zondi nodded. “Many, many people. It is like a big picnic, boss.”

  “H’m, more like a bloody circus,” said Kramer, as the back garden came in view.

  Captain Tiens “Tickey” Marais of Fingerprints was there, with his red nose, white gloves and baggy yellow trousers, crawling along the springboard, but his was not the only act. Jaap du Preez, long hairy arms flailing, was going ape in front of a huddled group of his uniformed officers, and behind him two members of the police diving team, glistening like sea lions in their black wetsuits, were heading a beach ball back and forth in the shallow end. Over on the right, little Amanda Stilgoe was turning cartwheels.

  “Hello, Tromp!” said Colonel Muller with a ringmaster’s gusto. “It’s all go here, hey? I’m just waiting to make my big announcement!”

  “Colonel?”

  “To the press and television about the sword! I’ve invited them all up.”

  Kramer raised an eyebrow, knowing Colonel Muller’s little weaknesses. “Not the news that we’ve only just found the murder weapon, sir? That could make you—”

  “No, no, what I’m doing is releasing the news.”

  “Ah,” said Kramer. “Then I assume there’s no doubt—”

  “Tiens has already checked, and so has Piet Baksteen: the broken-off tip we found in the deceased lady fits the rest of the sword exactly.” Colonel Muller dropped his voice and added, with a wink: “Naturally, you realise why I’m getting the press in like this? And am even prepared to allow them to take pictures in the sun-lounge and her study? Because, my friend, it’ll cause such a fuss and a fly-around that—”

  “The Zuidmeyer case will be quite safe from their unwelcome attentions, hey, Colonel?” said Kramer, not bothering to hide a cynicism that always surfaced in him when the talk was of killers.

  “Exactly, Tromp. I’m glad we’re of the same mind on this,” replied Colonel Muller blithely. “Now I think you’d best have a word with Piet, who’s in the house somewhere, looking at the sword. Personally, I think our main hope lies in getting pictures of it into the papers and onto the television news. Swords aren’t so common in this country, which means, with any luck, maybe this particular sword will be easily remembered by someone.”

  As Kramer started towards Piet Baksteen, he thought for a moment of first going over to Theo Kennedy and asking him how he was feeling today, and whether he had ever had any contact in the past with his mother’s friend, Theresa Mary Muldoon. But Kennedy seemed wrapped up in Amanda’s antics, and so he decided to leave the man looking happy for a while.

  Piet Baksteen was in Naomi Stride’s study, holding a sword upright above his head and sighting along the blade, as though preparing himself to go outside and swallow it.

  “Well, Piet, what’s there to add to your previous assessment?” asked Kramer, flopping into the comfortable swivel chair at the desk. “Or do you still think it’s a crudely made imitation?”

  “Here, handle it for yourself, Tromp,” he said.

  The sword had a narrow, four-sided blade about a metre long, tapering down to where it’d lost its point. The hilt was bound with thick string that had then been sprayed with gold paint, and to protect the user’s hand there was a piece of wood, also sprayed gold and with a hole through it, fixed at right angles where the blade itself began. This cross-piece and the top of the hilt had been decorated with big glass beads, glued down and given settings of more gold string.

  “What is it, just a play-play sword?” asked Kramer.

  “Close!” said Baksteen, raising a thumb to him. “But why not simply a play sword?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I mean ‘play,’ not as in kiddies’ fun and games, but as in theatre. Here, give me it back and I’ll show you a few things.… See these marks on the blade, and these dents in the wood? This thing has been used against another sword, which proves it wasn’t made just for decoration, to hang on the wall or whatever. See this blade? It was never meant to have a hilt like that, more the Three Musketeers’ sort with a metal bowl to guard the bloke’s fingers. And if you look carefully, here, you’ll see it could’ve had a guard on it like that before being converted. In short, Tromp, I think what we have here is an actor’s sword which gets changed about from one play to another, to save all the sweat of trying to make a new blade. The genuine article would cost a hell of a lot, let me tel
l you.”

  “Uh-huh, and that theory agrees with your original finding—you know, that the steel wasn’t tempered properly.…” Kramer took the sword again and stood up to try its balance. “Hey, a snag.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Actors would never fight each other with the point we found sticking in Ma Stride; they’d have a bobble on the end, or a cork or something.”

  Baksteen sighed and shook his head. “If people took the trouble to read the reports I put in, instead of constantly relying on Tickey’s hearsay, then you’d already know that I found fresh file marks on the point, and that my conclusion was that the sword had been recently sharpened.”

  “Touché,” said Kramer, swishing off the head of a dead flower in a vase on the desk. “Now truly amaze me, Professor, and tell me exactly, to within one kilometre, where this sword originated.”

  “I—er, could have a bloody good guess.”

  “Oh ja?”

  “In fact, it’s so good I’m afraid of getting it right. I distrust anything that’s too simple.”

  “Let that be my worry. Come on, man.”

  But Baksteen held back, nibbling on his lower lip. “I’ll make it your guess, then,” he said. “What’s about this size, black and blue, and has recently been stuck up all over Trekkersburg?”

  “A midget bank clerk who gets tripped over a lot?”

  “No, I’m being serious. Two more clues: it’s oblong and made of paper.”

  “Stuck up all over—ah, like a poster?”

  “A poster with lettering and something drawn on it.…”

  Kramer closed his eyes, cursing Zondi for never being about when he needed him, and then suddenly had a glimpse of a poster he’d seen near the carpark on Ackerman Street. “There’s a skull being waved around and two buggers swordfighting.” he said. “Across the top—ach, one word.”

  “Hamlet,” said Baksteen, with a shrug, “for what it’s worth. The University’s latest Shakespeare production. You could always start by seeing whether any of their old props are missing, I suppose.”

  “You’re right,” said Kramer.