The Artful Egg

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The Artful Egg Page 22

by James McClure


  “Peerswammy?”

  “Nurse Chatterjee! I did not see—”

  “Is there something I can do for you? Something you’d like?”

  “I—er, was partially wondering, um, if it would be all right for me to, providing it causes no inconvenience.… I would like to write a letter.”

  “Why, of course, a letter,” said Nurse Chatterjee, with a kind smile, just as though he’d been half-expecting such a request. “I have only the humble-type stationery available in the hospital shop, but you are most welcome to it. An envelope, too?”

  “Many, many thanks,” said Ramjut Pillay.

  Then gaped when Nurse Chatterjee handed him a pad of cheap blue writing-paper with ruled lines.

  “ ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.…’ ”

  “You’ve taken the words right out of my mouth,” said Kramer, as he and Wilson walked back across the campus to the English Department. “Mind you, we can’t go assuming there is a connection between the murder and this Hamlet bloke.”

  “I thought you said Naomi Stride’s husband was dead and that the girl—”

  “Ja, but there’s no proof she was messing around with any uncle that would make her son get all upset about it.”

  “What do you know of the circumstances of her husband’s death?”

  “A heart surgeon who had a heart attack.”

  “Poetic irony!”

  Kramer frowned, not being aware of having said anything that rhymed, but he was getting more used to Wilson’s ways by now, and let it pass. “No, the mad part is really the bloke using a sword that could be traced so easily.”

  “What if the culprit is mad and indifferent to the consequences?”

  “H’m, you’ve got a point there, but only maybe. Who had this sword in the play?”

  “Murray James was Laertes—a nicer, more harmless boy you couldn’t wish to come across.”

  “Would he have known Naomi Stride?”

  “I very much doubt it! And, anyway, he’s been in hospital since the last performance. Broke his leg, silly bugger, during the party afterwards.”

  They went into the English Department building and back into Wilson’s ivory tower. A dark-haired man, with fierce brown eyes and a big beard, was standing at the window, smoking a pipe.

  “Ah, Aaron,” said Wilson, stopping short. “Come about those essays?”

  “You’re bloody right I have. I’m not going to be accused of marking too high when what’s happened is that I’ve managed actually to teach the bastards something. Which is more than can be—”

  “But, er, could this wait until a little later? I’ve someone with me.”

  “So I see. Who is he?”

  “Say about half-past four?”

  “A fencing instructor?” said the man, smiling unpleasantly as he pushed past Kramer and the sword. “Or your new bodyguard, Wilson? Very wise, because when I come back you’re going to bloody need one.”

  “Now, Aaron, there’s no call for—”

  “By the way, I’ve just read your paper on J.M. Coetzee. It’s crap.”

  The door slammed.

  Wilson took a seat on his throne and got his bounce back. “ ‘So full of artless jealousy is guilt’! That was Aaron Sariff—didn’t introduce you as the man’s enough of a screaming paranoid as it is, without telling him you were a policeman. You’ve heard of the Jew being persecuted down the ages?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, that’s the Jew they mean—you’ve just met him!”

  And Wilson did another of his castrated-donkey impressions, making it sound as though the delicate operation had been performed by banging together two house bricks, while Kramer lit a Lucky Strike.

  If he hadn’t become burdened by a strong hunch this man could be useful to him, he’d have been off like a shot long ago.

  Knowing nowhere else that he might pick up the missing postman’s trail, Zondi had headed for Gladstoneville. It had been just his luck to come across a serious accident at the point where the dirt road began, which had meant having to stop and give assistance until the ambulances came.

  But now at last, his suit stained with blood and his tie left behind on someone as a tourniquet, he was on his way again. He’d never thought he would hold a young Indian beauty in his arms, which had somehow made it worse when she’d died there.

  Ramjut Pillay’s house had no number, and he had twice to ask directions, before finding it at the foot of a low hill topped by wattle-trees. A fierce-faced old crone, with a bright dab of scarlet between her eyebrows, sat in a cane chair on the sloping veranda. She glared at him as he climbed out of the car, and took up a fly-whisk.

  “Police, mama.”

  “No menfolk are here, no men,” she quavered. “You would not hurt an old woman.”

  “Where are your menfolk, mama?”

  “My son is run away and my poor aged husband goes looking for him.”

  “Where does he look?”

  She made a gesture with her fly-whisk that seemed to take in the best part of the Southern Hemisphere.

  “Much too tiring, mama,” said Zondi. “I will just take a look in the house, so I can say to my boss that I have been here, and then I will leave you in peace again.”

  “Peace? What peace can there ever be,” she wailed, deftly killing a fly, “for the mother of Ramjut Pillay?”

  The telephone rang, and Kramer was surprised when Dr. Wilson held it out to him, saying: “Someone for you, Lieutenant—Baksteen, is it?”

  “Kramer here.”

  “Tromp, it’s Piet, ringing you from the lab. I thought this was where I might find you, and the switchboard lady—”

  “Piet, your guess was right. This is where the sword came from. Only next time wait until I get a chance to get in touch myself. I’m in the middle of—”

  “I was right? Good God, now I won’t be able to sleep tonight! But the sword wasn’t why I’ve rung. I thought you were in a hurry for a result on those pine-scented samples you gave me at the mortuary this morning, and it’s after four.”

  Kramer needed a moment to switch thought-tracks. “Oh ja, the Zuid—the stuff you were happy to say wasn’t semen?”

  “Believe it or not, Tromp, Van Rensburg was spot on—it is DH-136, the detergent he claimed it was. I had to start somewhere, and it matches up exactly. What’s more, I’ve been in touch with the distributors, and they assure me there’s not another detergent on the market with exactly the same components, as the stuff’s patented.”

  “Well, I’m buggered! These distributors, what are they called?”

  “Buchan & Layne Wholesale. Very helpful, very nice people. While I was on to them, I thought I might as well ask for distribution details. They say DH-136 isn’t available through ordinary retail outlets, and they’re the only suppliers in Natal.”

  “Is it poisonous, that it’s not on sale to the general public?”

  “Ach, no, nothing sinister like that, Tromp. There’d simply be no demand. DH-136 is biological in its action and designed for a specific, usually industrial, purpose, namely disinfecting and cleaning areas where there’s lot of blood lying around. Blood’s funny stuff, you know; it isn’t all that easy to—”

  “Industrial purposes, you say? Like what?”

  “The obvious ones,” said Baksteen, sounding a little surprised by the question. “You know, such as cleaning up butcher’s shops, slaughter-houses, chicken—”

  “The municipal abattoir?”

  “Same difference! Hey, don’t tell me this connects up with something you know already? And there I was, thinking I’d really surprise you!”

  Zondi sat cross-legged on the horsehair mattress in Ramjut Pillay’s lean- to and examined a pen he had found tucked behind a wooden rafter, together with a bottle of lemon juice. His first assumption had been that the juice was taken as some sort of medicine, and the pen had been used to stir it with. But why dip the nib end into the lemon juice, when the other end would work
just as well? It was obvious the nib would have to be washed before taking any ink now.

  Or had Pillay in fact been writing with lemon juice? No, that was absurd, for the liquid would surely leave no mark.

  Putting the bottle and pen aside, Zondi looked round at the mess left on the floor by Mbopa and Jones, and then at the array of uniforms in the corner. Disguises! Most wouldn’t have fitted Pillay in a hundred years, except perhaps the Scout uniform. It had made him a little sad to note that each of the others matched one of the terrible courses the poor fool kept taking, not having noticed that the signature of Dr. Gideon de Bruin, principal of the Easiway College, was seldom written in the same hand twice.

  Then Zondi caught sight of a stamp album, pushed between two Superman comics, and took it down. He flicked to the page headed Great Britain and saw a very new-looking stamp stuck there. He jumped to his feet. But when he used Pillay’s magnifying glass to check the postmark he found that the stamp had been cancelled in London more than six months ago. A sheet of paper started to slip out of the album as he was replacing it, but it was blank and of no possible interest.

  “Just a minute,” Zondi muttered to himself, and gave the blank sheet of paper a sniff. “Cra-zeee brother! Lemons!”

  Then he tried the magnifying glass on it, and found tiny scratchmarks such as a pen nib would make, although he could not pick out any actual writing. Perhaps Baksteen would be able to shed some light on the matter, he thought, and pocketed the paper while intensifying his search, irritated less by the stink of horsehair than by the flies which kept settling on his bloodstained clothing.

  “A penny for them,” said Wilson, lighting a fresh cigar.

  “What?” Kramer, who had been lost in thought, wondering what to make of the DH-136 discovery, looked away from the courtyard. “Ach, sorry, hey?”

  “That was one of your forensic experts on the phone, I take it? Fascinating business that, the way they come up with secrets from beyond the grave, as it were. ‘The sheeted dead did squeak and gibber!’—and all that. Has he managed to produce many clues for you so far?”

  “A few, not that they all make sense yet.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stuff that was sprinkled around the body, making the murder seem even more weird and ritualistic than just the sword had done.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  Kramer looked at him, noted that he was acting his age again, and decided no harm could be done by taking the man further into his confidence, as this might be useful later on if the Hamlet connection were ever established. “Between you and me, sir, Naomi Stride was left surrounded by pansies and a herb called—ach, it’s some woman’s name.”

  “Rosemary?”

  “Very quick!”

  “I admit I was probably ahead of you, Lieutenant, once I’d heard the word ‘pansies.’ ” And back came the show-off gleam to his eye. “You’ll allow me one final quotation?”

  “Ja, go ahead.…”

  “ ‘Rosemary, that’s for remembrance’ and ‘Pansies, that’s for thoughts’—Hamlet, Act IV, scene v, and spoken, I might add, by Ophelia.”

  “Who?”

  “By the girlfriend.”

  15

  ZONDI RAN INTO his new house, undressing as he went. He rolled up his bloodstained suit, threw it into a corner of his bedroom, and dragged the shirt off his back.

  “Wife!” he called out, opening their wardrobe. “Where is my other suit? My old one with the silver thread?”

  But Miriam appeared to be out, despite the fact that the front door had been unlocked. Ever since moving to Hamilton, she’d gone in for socialising on a scale hitherto unknown, and time and again was to be found gossiping over at some neighbour’s house. Her excuse was, of course, that now the twins had grown up, and the other children were older, too, there was not the same need for her to be always at everyone’s beck and call, bent over the ironing-board in the kitchen.

  “Where is it? Where is it?” muttered Zondi, scattering their scant selection of garments along the brass rail and making the wire hangers squeal. “If she has sold it, there is going to be much, much trouble …”

  But the Lieutenant’s radio message had been to get down to CID headquarters as soon as possible, so that would have to wait. He grabbed his only other pair of trousers and his brown sports jacket, took a clean white shirt from the pile of three, and did most of his changing behind the front door, being very impatient to get on the road again.

  From the sound of it, they’d at last had some sort of big breakthrough.

  On his own way back to CID headquarters, Kramer stopped off at Buchan & Layne, the wholesalers. Like Piet Baksteen had said, the staff were very helpful and pleasant. Yes, they supplied DH-136 to the municipal abattoir in Lawrence Street and, yes, they knew this for a fact. They showed him invoices.

  He drove on, intending to see the Colonel before catching up with Zondi, then had another thought. He couldn’t be too careful before forming a conclusion. He detoured left and parked his car outside the State mortuary.

  Pulling back the fly-screen, and then banging open the door, he shouted out: “Van!” A loud exclamation came from the refrigerator room, and when he looked in there, Van Rensburg was leaning against the wall, a hand clasped over his heart.

  “Please, Lieutenant, never do that again, sir!” he pleaded, very shaken. “My nerves will not stand it.”

  “Your nerves? Hell, you’ve never mentioned having any nerves before, man.”

  “Well, I’ve got them now, sir, and I don’t mind telling you they’re shot. Do you know what’s happening inside my fridge? What I’ve got in there?”

  Kramer glanced into the dark, foetid chamber, and shook his head. “No, I don’t—and I’m not that interested right this minute. I want to know what else you can tell me about DH-136.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Van Rensburg, brightening. “You know I was right first time?” He emerged from the refrigerator room and said to Nxumalo: “Try banging a stick against the trays, and see if that frightens it off, hey?”

  Nxumalo obeyed with a grin.

  “All I really want to know about DH-136,” said Kramer, moving to the post-mortem room to get away from the noise, “is whether it’s slippery underfoot.”

  “Slippery? Hooo!”

  “Very?”

  “So slippy, Lieutenant,” said Van Rensburg, miming what looked like a hippo’s pirouette on ice, “that the firm warns you about it every time they deliver! Oh ja, you have to be very, very careful with the stuff, as I am forever telling Nxumalo.”

  “I see, so—”

  “Not that you can stop less sensible people than myself from doing stupid things with it,” went on Van Rensburg, really warming to his subject. “Last April Fool’s Day, for instance, some young idiot at the abattoir poured DH-136 on the ramp where they herd cattle up from the lorries to the guy who shoots them in the head. Total shambles, all the poor bloody cows sliding down again on their arses, kicking shit out of the lorry boys, and quite a few had even made a bolt for it. The rep who told me said Lawrence Street looked like a bloody rodeo!”

  “Who was it that pulled this stunt with the DH-136?”

  “Ach, one of the young clerks in the office.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “Hell, no! He was sacked so fast he was on his way home before the first of those cows bit the dust!”

  “Ta,” said Kramer, and started to leave. “By the way, did Piet Baksteen give you a result on those goat hairs? Had Nxumalo been lying to you?”

  Van Rensburg’s face fell instantly; the deeply worried look came back to his eyes. “Er, apparently not, Lieutenant. Nxumalo certainly couldn’t be responsible for what Mr. Baksteen found, not in a million years.”

  “Then, what were they?”

  With a glance over his shoulder, Van Rensburg whispered: “Giraffe hairs. Lieutenant.…”

  “Giraffe?” Kramer began to grin. “How in God’s name could giraffe hairs get in you
r fridge?”

  “Shhh, not so loud, sir! That’s the very question I myself put to Mr. Baksteen, and do you know what his answer was? Why my nerves are in this state? ‘Van,’ he said, ‘the only scientific explanation I can offer for this phenomenon is that you’ve got yourself a poltergeist down there.’ ”

  Nurse Chatterjee paused beside Ramjut Pillay’s cot, causing him hurriedly to hide a sheet of cheap blue ruled paper beneath his pillow. “What is this, Peerswammy?” he said, picking up the pad. “Not a blessed word written yet?”

  “ ‘One should always compose oneself,’ ” said Ramjut Pillay, remembering an uppermost thought he’d pondered one morning, “ ‘before one composes a letter’—a piece of advice I am finding highly helpful.”

  “You will not leave it too long, will you? My shift is only twelve hours, so I am away again at seven, when Nurse Mooljum will be in charge.”

  “No, no, my composition is almost entire already! I am most grateful for the facilities.”

  “My pleasure, Peerswammy! Oh dear, a new patient.…”

  He bustled off, and Ramjut Pillay retrieved the hidden sheet of paper, turned it round the right way up, and fell to work again. How he chuckled—very softly, of course—as he saw the fruit of his latest and greatest inspiration blossoming before him. It was a work of sheer genius.

  Gone were his plans to send Sergeant Zondi a map. Gone were his ideas of making direct contact with him, which would have involved admitting at some stage that he had absconded with a little of the mail that fateful day.

  No, what he was doing now would have only one effect: it would give the CID another chance to open the post arriving at Woodhollow and to find the very same anonymous threatening letter among it, written on the identical paper and word-perfect.

  Or almost word-perfect.

  Gracious me, thought Ramjut Pillay, I must have read the thing umpteen times that tormented night, and yet I cannot remember the name that began Riche properly. It came in front of Act II, scene ii and ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ What about Richelieu? No, that still didn’t look right. But at least JUW was spelled as it had been.

 

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