The Artful Egg

by James McClure

  With lunch in the admitting-ward over, and most of it on the floor, walls and in the other patients’ hair, Ramjut Pillay was becoming even more determined to escape from Garrison Road Mental Hospital before his rather remarkable mind suffered any permanent impairment. Perhaps this showed a little, because Nurse Chatterjee kept a very close eye on him, as he moved from barred window to barred window, assessing the height of the surrounding walls.

  “What interests you so much out here, Peerswammy?” asked Nurse Chatterjee, finally coming to stand beside him. “There is very little to see except the sky.”

  “I have a great fondness for the sky, sir.”

  “Of course, I was forgetting. You are a parachutist—not so?”

  Ramjut Pillay curled his toes, deeply regretting such foolishness on his part. “I am certainly a fellow requiring much outdoor exercising. Would it be permissible for me to take a short stroll?”

  “No, it wouldn’t—not today. Not until it has been decided which ward you are to be sent to. Is there something else you would like to do? Read an uplifting magazine? I have a Reader’s Digest put away you are most welcome to.”

  So Ramjut Pillay retired to his cot and made a start on an article entitled “I Am John’s Gall Bladder.” But even though he was most curious to learn how such an organ could be persuaded to talk—by jingo, these American chappies were endlessly ingenious—he got no further than the first page before becoming lost in his thoughts again.

  What he had to do, he told himself, was to become classified as a low-risk patient as soon as possible, which would presumably mean being moved from behind these barred windows and big barred door to a ward where the security was at a sensible minimum.

  “Yes, yes,” murmured Ramjut Pillay, nodding. “We must have patience in the serenely passive manner of the Mahatma.…”

  “What was that?” asked Nurse Chatterjee, looking up from the duty desk.

  “Oh, nothing whatsoever, sir! I was very merely talking to myself.”

  “Do you often do that, Peerswammy?”

  “This article on the gall bladder is a huge enlightenment, Nurse Chatterjee. Have you perhaps read it?”

  “Do you ever hear voices? You know, in your head?”

  “Sometimes another side to me will—”

  “Will what?”

  “Er, why do you ask, Nurse Chatterjee?”

  Nurse Chatter]eee made a careful note on a card. “Just get on with your reading, Peerswammy Lal,” he said kindly. “Nothing for you to worry about.…”

  “I’ve just been making a few phone calls,” said Kramer, as he came out of the house and joined Zondi at the side of the swimming-pool. “Got myself an appointment with some English Department bugger at three.”

  “What’s this all about, boss?”

  “I’ll explain to you in a minute. First, take this and hold it for me.” He handed Zondi a long brown-paper parcel. “It’s the murder weapon, hey? I think it’d be more tactful if I haven’t got it with me while I’m having a few words with young Kennedy.”

  “But he’s gone, Lieutenant.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He didn’t want to be here when the reporters come.”

  “Ach, of course! I should’ve thought of that sooner. In fact, it’s surprising he stayed as long as—”

  “That was because of the child, Amanda, boss, who wanted to watch the divers. She makes Boss Kennedy laugh, and he spoils her very much.”

  “Not a bad kid, really.” Kramer looked over at the tree beneath which they’d been sitting. “What did you think of the mother?”

  “She acted very friendly towards me, Lieutenant. I.…” Zondi looked at him for an instant and then away again.

  Kramer shot him a curious glance. “Are you blushing under all that brown?” he asked. “If so, this’ll be the first time I’ve ever seen it.”

  “It’s nothing, Lieutenant. I was treated very well. Have you heard that Gagonk and Jones have been involved in a road accident?”

  “What, again?” said Kramer, and laughed. “Fatal?”

  “I’m sorry but it’s bad news: both are alive and—”

  “Zondi, just a minute, man!” said Colonel Muller, coming up whisking a long bamboo cane he’d found somewhere. “Where do you think you’re going with my prize exhibit? The photographers and television people will be here any minute.”

  With an impatient sigh, Kramer turned away. “I’d best go and change that appointment to half-past three,” he said.

  Jones winced as he tried to unlock the driver’s door of his replacement car. “Bloody hell,” he grumbled. “Something’s happened to my wrist; it’s gone all stiff and sore. Now what do I do? Get myself another boy from Housebreaking or somewhere?”

  With a wince of his own, Mbopa weighed up the pros and cons of the situation. If Jones took on Tims Shabalala as his driver, then he, Joseph, would have to go into Housebreaking and Theft to keep up its numbers. On the other hand, if there was one thing he hated doing, it was driving badly, as he’d be obliged to do in view of his reputation with his “little pink chauffeur.” Either way, it seemed, his pride was going to suffer greatly.

  “No ideas?” said Jones.

  But his pride, thought Mbopa, would possibly suffer the most if he left the Murder and Robbery Squad. Just say this Pillay proved the key to the murder of Naomi Stride—and his strong hunch that this was so had been growing apace all day—then there’d be no fine photographs of him in the newspapers for Zsazsa Lady Gatumi to cut out. All he had to do was picture her, sitting forlornly beside an empty scrapbook, scissors poised, for his mind to be made up.

  “Lieutenant,” he said, so respectfully that he very nearly was sick, “I have heard it said that not long ago you came from the police college, where your teaching was much admired.”

  “Naturally,” said Jones. “But what’s that got to do with—?”

  “Forgive me, sir, interrupting, but if your skills as a teacher are so great, and Mbopa promises to pay every attention, could not even I learn from you very quickly?”

  “Let you try driving again, you mean?”

  “Please, Lieutenant.”

  Jones looked him over and pondered. “You’ve got a point there,” he finally conceded. “It could be better not to change you. You don’t smell the way Shabalala does, for example. By the way, you mustn’t let what I’m saying now go to your head, hey? You’ve just been exceptionally lucky in your glands. And it’s also true, I suppose, that I won’t have to go explaining everything about Pillay all over again to some other thick head, when further time-wasting is not in my interest. But I’ll require a promise.…”

  “Anything, sir.”

  “That when you’re at the wheel you’ll do, without question or hesitation, anything I say.”

  Mbopa mumbled.

  “Louder man! Let’s hear it!”

  “I promise, Lieutenant,” said Mbopa, and was thrown the car keys. “First stop the main post office?”

  Jones waited until he was in the rear seat before asking: “Did I say we were going to the main post office?”

  Mbopa shook his head. “It is that I have been thinking, Lieutenant. Do you remember when we were there yesterday? There was this other churra postman who came into that boss’s office and told us that Pillay was on a bicycle in the town.”

  “Ja, ja, man, I can remember all that! What’s it got to do with anything?”

  “We wasted much time looking for him in the town, sir. And what was happening while we were wasting that time?”

  “I’m the one who asks the questions,” said Jones cunningly.

  “Then this is my answer, Lieutenant. While we were there, Pillay was given the chance to return to his home, get his money, and escape over the hill. In very short words, sir, that other churra postman must be Pillay’s accomplice and the one who knows his secrets, maybe even where he is hiding today.”

  There was silence from Jones while he absorbed all that. “H’m, fair
ly good,” he finally conceded. “You have got that one right, but do you know this other churra’s name?”

  “I can recognise him, Lieutenant.”

  “Then what are you dilly-dallying around for, Gagonk? Christ, man, put in that key, turn it, and select first gear—I always remember it as the one nearest the ashtray.”

  Kramer waited out of sight inside the house until the photographers and television crews had finshed with the sword and Zondi was able to return it to him. Carefully, he replaced its brown wrapping, while explaining Piet Baksteen’s theory that the weapon may have come from the University. Then he handed Zondi a note.

  “See those names, Mickey?”

  “ ‘Miss Theresa Muldoon, also known as Tess,” Zondi read out. “Miss Liz Geldenhuys, Kennedy’s former shop assistant.…’ ”

  “What I want you to do now is to take another crack at Betty the maid. Put those names to her, ask for anything she can remember. What I’m particularly interested in is whether Ma Stride and Muldoon ever discussed Liz Geldenhuys in Betty’s hearing, and what they might have said. Also, Liz Geldenhuys made one visit to this house, which didn’t go down too well. Find out more about that, too, if you can—OK?”

  “I can try, boss, but.…” Zondi shrugged.

  “Ja, I’m sorry, it’s a bit of a balls-ache, but you could find she remembers things easier when you hit her with specifics. Meet you back at the office about five?”

  Some men in white came into the ward and took away everyone except for Ramjut Pillay. Much relieved by this, he left his cot and rushed to the lavatory in the far corner, absolutely bursting after almost twenty terrifying hours during which he’d dared not turn his back. Then he returned to carry on with a most Gandhi-esque article in the Reader’s Digest, “Living with Your Conscience,” that’d had him in its thrall for quite some time now.

  The tall white doctor dropped by, followed by a group of young persons wearing stethoscopes in conspicuous places, and spoke to Nurse Chatterjee in a low murmur. Twice he used the word “delusion,” and once he mentioned “parachutist,” which made the young persons chuckle. One of them remarked: “Whoever heard of a non-white making a jump? He must be schizo.” What that meant, Ramjut Pillay had no idea, but he was far more concerned by the effect the Reader’s Digest article was now having on him.

  “Do not feel slighted, Peerswammy,” said Nurse Chatterjee, coming over when the doctor and his young friends had departed. “You are still with me because your case cannot be decided by snap decision on the doctor’s part. He says it has many unusual qualities to it.”

  “But how much longer before I—?”

  “Two days, three?”

  “And then I will be cured? Allowed to go?”

  “It will first be necessary to keep you under further observation, before—er, we decide that,” said Nurse Chatterjee. “Reconcile yourself to at least a month within our portals, Peerswammy.”

  “A month!”

  “Keep going with your reading,” said Nurse Chatterjee cheerfully, returning to his duty desk. “It will greatly help to pass the time away!”

  It will not, thought Ramjut Pillay. It will simply make matters very, very much worse. Just the first two pages of “Living with Your Conscience” had been enough for him to tremble, on reflection, at the thought of all the wicked acts he had so recently committed. Not that they’d seemed bad at the time, of course, but now he’d partially filled in the questionnaire contained within the article they had assumed their properly monstrous proportions.

  Step One, the article advised, identify the most serious wrong you have done, and then take steps to make amends, if possible. You will probably find it’s something that relates to another person.

  To what other person? To Peerswammy Lal himself? No, decided Ramjut Pillay, he had fully deserved to have mercilessly ruthless truths said about him. To the little man in spectacles who had been chased by Tomato Face? No, not him, either, for he should have known better than to stare so rudely. To Mistering Jarman, for having absconded with the mail? No, the mail wasn’t really his, so that hardly counted. But who else was there?

  Suddenly, his conscience pricked him so sharply he almost cried out. And there before him, in his mind’s eye, he saw the naked and defenceless body of the novelist lady, Naomi Stride, of whom he had taken a most despicable advantage by sneaking into her sun-lounge without his Post Office boots on.

  “Fiendish, fiendish cad,” Ramjut Pillay castigated himself under his breath. “How can I ever be making rectification? Dead and gone, dead and gone.…”

  By seeing that her death is avenged, you fool, said another side to Ramjut Pillay, which had been very quiet for the last hour, but now spoke up as coldly logically as ever, if somewhat reluctantly.

  “And how am I doing that, my fine fellow?” he scoffed.

  “The letter, you fool—the letter! You know that holds many clues the CID need urgently to help them go in the right direction and not take wrong turnings! See that you get it to them.”

  “Why, of course!”

  Then Ramjut Pillay realised he was thinking out aloud, and glanced at Nurse Chatterjee. But luckily the good fellow was too busy fiddling with a small tape recorder to have apparently noticed anything.

  * * *

  Betty Duboza was a different woman in her own home, even though it was part and parcel of Woodhollow, hidden away on one side behind a screen of hibiscus. Grave and gracious, pouring out the tea with the aid of a silver strainer, she served both Zondi and her husband Ben without so much as the clatter of a cup in its saucer. And her other hand, when she held out some small biscuits on a plate, didn’t shake at all, either.

  “Yes, I remember the night the little master brought Miss Geldenhuys to dinner,” she said. “The madam was unhappy.”

  “The madam called her ‘Miss Geldenhuys,’ never anything else,” added Ben Duboza, with a wink for Zondi’s benefit.

  His wife ignored him. “We thought her manners at the table were”—Betty Duboza shuddered—“were manners we were not used to at Woodhollow. She did not once touch her finger-bowl, and during the meat course she held her knife like a pencil, my dear! So terribly embarrassing.”

  “You found it embarrassing, too?” Zondi asked Ben Duboza.

  “Hau, I never saw this little missus, Sergeant. Remember, I am working as chef boy in the kitchen.”

  “No, it was just me and madam,” continued Betty Duboza, settling back in a velvet-covered chair that went with her extraordinarily well-furnished room. “We could not believe our ears, either, at some of the things she said. It was never ‘Excuse me,’ but ‘Hey?,’ and she kept on coming out with ‘Ach’ at the start of almost every sentence. We could see that Theo was trying not to be embarrassed as well, being so infatuated with this strange creature, but as the evening progressed even his smile was wearing thin. What puzzled us most, of course, was what he could see in her, for her figure was dreadful and her features were worse than plain. In the end, it just had to be her talent as a window-dresser he was exploiting, while clearly, in her own way, she was exploiting him. We noticed that, halfway through dessert, she began watching Theo and had learned to use her fork as well as her spoon by the time dinner ended. It simply wasn’t on, we decided, and the sooner it ended, the better. Oh, yes, even for the girl, for he would eventually see her with the same clear vision, once his infatuation had passed, and she would find herself rejected. Would you care for another drop in that?”

  Zondi, bemused, was a second or two late with his response. “No, no, thank you, Mrs. Duboza,” he said. “And Miss Muldoon? You said you know her as well.”

  “Sweet little Tess—a bit batty at times, but so refreshing,” Betty Duboza confirmed with a quick half-nod. “Another drop for you, Ben?”

  Not once, during the long interrogation last night, had the woman given that quick half-nod, realised Zondi. A very distinctive nod, expressing the personality of someone terribly sure of herself, caught up in her thoughts
, not unaware of how brusque it might seem to others. A nod which must once have belonged, not to Betty Duboza, but to someone else.

  “Now, where was I?” she asked, setting down her teapot again.

  “Wife, speak Zulu,” muttered Ben Duboza, who had started to look very ill at ease. “There is no need all of a sudden for English, and hasn’t Sergeant Zondi always done us the courtesy of addressing us in our own tongue?”

  “Tess,” his wife continued in English, “was appalled when she heard how Theo was selling his soul in all directions. We had her round here the very next day, and the madam spoke to her for hours about the problem. But, of course, without being seen to be interfering, there wasn’t much anybody could do. Tess said she thought it’d sort itself out soon enough, and thankfully it did. The girl proved to be an utter hysteric, started accusing poor Theo of all sorts of shady things, and … Well, my dear, they parted and it was over, thank God. The last time Tess stayed here for the night, we could even have a little laugh about it.”

  “You did not have a ‘little laugh about it,’ ” said Ben Duboza, putting his tea aside on the floor, which earned him an immediate scowl. “All you did was take the two madams out their coffee after dinner beside the swimming-pool.”

  “I laughed when I came back to the kitchen—not so?”

  “I don’t remember,” he grunted.

  “Well, I did.” She gave that quick half-nod again, and crossed her thick ankles in a way which only a woman with trim ankles would think of doing. “I do hope I have been of some use to you, my dear. There’s nothing else I can think of, not at this moment.”

  “Many thanks,” said Zondi, rising and placing his teacup on her tray.

  The cook politely walked him as far as the hibiscus, where Ben Duboza shook his head again and murmured in Zulu: “Bad, bad spirits.…”

  “Cheer up, my friend!” Zondi replied, also in Zulu. “At least Boss Kennedy has promised you that you still have your job, and soon he will be here at Woodhollow to change the way things feel.”

  “Huh! All that didn’t seem so bad while she was still alive, but now! You do realise who you’ve just been speaking with, Sergeant?”