The Caterpillar Cop kaz-2

by James McClure

  Jackson had shrugged. He could follow the ways of the Europeans so far and then… Perhaps the Captain had taken too much spirits. Any sober man would have seen how attentively the guests had listened to the missus-and have heard how loudly they laughed.

  This elder daughter? She was not so bad but a bit cheeky. Also very lazy about getting up and usually had her breakfast on a tray. He put this down to the fact that she had a lover called Mr. Glen.

  The younger daughter, Sally, was a different calf altogether. More like her mother although she was not the pretty one. Hau, she had been so sad until she, too, found a little lover. At first he had come to the house just to swim, and then he had been invited to lunch.

  That was another bad meal, Jackson remembered. Hastening to add that the cooking had been, as always, fit for a paramount chief. The thing was the boy had eaten his fish with the meat knife and fork. Then, when the meat was served, he tried to cut his steak with a fish knife. The little missus had been so angry when the others laughed because he complained the knife was blunt. She cried afterwards, too, when he had gone. Only the missus seemed sorry for her and asked that Jackson make some ice cream. After this incident he had given them their meals separately on the back veranda. There was talk, he added in hushed tones, that despite speaking English, the boy was actually an amaboona. A Boer.

  Zondi relished echoing, by example, a degree of restrained horror. Kramer took the recollection better than Pembrook, who seemed, for some reason or other, acutely embarrassed. Then Jackson had tried to get back to the garden boy, about whom he harbored certain suspicions. There was this curious habit he had of going to sleep immediately after his evening meal. But Zondi wanted to know if the story of the little missus had a happy ending.

  The boy had been up at the house on Saturday, Jackson said. No, not since then, because the little missus had gone away suddenly to stay with her grandparents in Johannesburg. That was on Monday. Oh, yes, of course, a driver was also employed now. He had taken her with the master.

  “What about the American?” Kramer demanded.

  “Jackson did not say much, boss, because he was at home in his kraal for the month. He could only tell me the maids thought he was very strange in his ways. He cut up all his food before-”

  “Please, no more bloody table manners, man!”

  “I was also going to say he spoke to the maids like they were white. They were afraid his mind was dirty.”

  “That’s all?”

  “ Hau, one more thing. They told Jackson that one morning the maid who makes the beds found a sock in the older daughter’s sheets. The laundry maid helped her return it to the proper place.”

  “Young Andy’s chest of drawers, no doubt?”

  Zondi laughed, nodding.

  “You bastard,” said Kramer. “Why not start there with your story? Still, we’ve learned a lot, hey, Pembrook?”

  “Yes, we have, sir.”

  “Still not happy about something. What is it?”

  “Must I answer that, sir?”

  “Zondi, push off outside a minute.”

  He left, closing the door carefully behind him.

  “Come on, Constable, speak up.”

  “It’s just-well, this doesn’t strike me as-er-a very wise procedure, sir, sending in Zondi. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Kramer turned his back on him and then went over to look down into the street.

  “Orthodox, you mean? What happened to Boetie Swanepoel wasn’t orthodox, Constable. Remember that. And to help you get your job into its correct perspective, I’m ordering you to go down now to the mortuary and ask to see the body. I want you to touch it with your left hand. I will then sign that hand in ink. You will not wash that hand until this docket here has some red tape around it. Understand?”

  “No, sir. I mean-”

  “What the hell do you mean, Constable?”

  “I’ve already seen Boetie, sir. It’s not that. I’m worried about what will result if the cookboy tells his employers. If we’re wrong-”

  He was interrupted by Kramer’s chortle.

  “ Ach, Pembrook, let’s have our storyteller back in and see if he can’t put your mind at rest. You’ve got the aptitude for CID but still a lot to learn.”

  Zondi entered warily.

  “Sergeant, did you speak to any other of the servants?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And how did you end your interview with Bantu male Jackson Zulu?”

  “I asked to see his room, sir.”

  “For what reason?”

  “To admire it, sir.”

  “And what transpired there?”

  Instead of answering, Zondi took an official envelope out of his jacket and emptied out of it two silver fruit knives marked with a crest. There was not a servant’s room in the land that could not reveal some sign of petty pilfering.

  “You gave Zulu a receipt for them?”

  “He did not want one.”

  “But he took it?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. I told him to put it in a safe place while I considered making further inquiries.”

  “How was he when you left him? Talkative?”

  “Very quiet, sir.”

  Pembrook, whose youth had made it impossible for him to disguise his astonishment at Zondi’s sudden command of formal Afrikaans, laughed out loud for the first time.

  “It sounds very orthodox to me, sir!” he said.

  “Naturally,” replied Kramer. “Now I think we’d all better get about our business. You to check the room and me to pay a call on the Jarvises. Zondi here has to tidy up his part in last night’s ax murder.”

  They began to move towards the passage.

  “Why are you taking that stick, sir?” asked Pembrook.

  “To be honest, man, I don’t like dogs myself.”

  “But there isn’t one at No. 10,” Zondi reassured him. “It’s dead.”

  The last lesson before midmorning break induced the teeth-gritting feeling Lisbet usually associated with a piece of hard chalk squealing on the blackboard.

  Finally she gave up trying to instill any enthusiasm for the onomatopoeia in early Afrikaans poetry, and told her class to read.

  Immediately every hand shot up. She would kill the lot of them in another minute.

  “What’s the matter now, Jan?” she asked.

  “We haven’t been to the library this week,” he replied earnestly. “We’ve all finished our books.”

  “Yes, miss,” chorused the others, suddenly anxious to receive the best education possible.

  Little swine. Kids were quicker than anyone to smell out weakness.

  “Have the magazines come?” asked Jan.

  “That’s a good idea. They’re in my desk. Just a minute.”

  Lisbet brought out the parcel, tore the paper off, and divided the pile into two.

  “I’d like Dirk and Hester to hand them out, please. Be as quick and quiet as you can. Then you must all read until the bell.”

  “Can I do the crossword puzzle instead, miss?”

  “Yes, you may, Jan.”

  Sometimes she suspected, rather nastily, that he took full advantage of that harelip of his, knowing that few had the courage to shut him up. You felt it might be likened to tripping a cripple.

  Peace.

  Lisbet began to do what she had wanted so badly all morning: to read through Boetie’s compositions in the hope of finding something there of significance. Her courses at teachers’ training college had included elementary psychology and she had learned something of the mechanism of projected thoughts.

  “Miss?”

  “Jan! Didn’t I tell you I wanted silence?”

  “I want to show you something, miss.”

  He looked very hurt. Realistically, too.

  “What? It better be important! Tell me from there.”

  Jan pointed in Hester’s direction without letting her see him do it. Lisbet took the hint but frowned.

  “All right then, come u
p if you must.”

  He tiptoed onto the platform and spread his copy of the magazine before her. His finger jabbed at a letter in the Detective Club section.

  “See, miss? It’s signed by Boetie.”

  Lisbet read the letter in a gulp.

  “Jan,” she said softly, “I don’t think it’ll do Hester any harm to see this. But I think I’d better make a phone call. Can I leave you as monitor in charge?”

  “If you like, miss.”

  She shot from the room.

  The constable handling the switchboard at police headquarters turned to his companion working on canteen accounts and said: “Hell, what are you buggers putting into old Kramer’s coffee these days?”

  “He doesn’t drink our coffee. Why?”

  “Then it must be that Greek over the road.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting something in his coffee.”

  “Christ, I’m taking these things into the other office if you’re going to go on like that all bloody morning!”

  “ Ach, don’t be like that, hey? It was just a joke. I mean a bloke like that isn’t my idea of a ladykiller-he needs a little extra.”

  “Look, just tell me what this is all about.”

  “That’s two dollies now, both different, both wanting to speak to him. Very sexy voices, I can tell you.”

  “And so?”

  “They keep ringing but I can’t put them through. He’s out and as usual I don’t know where. Feel like introducing myself-they sound hell of a anxious, if you know what I mean.”

  One of the pinafored Bantu maids admitted Kramer to the hall and left to inform her master and missus of his arrival.

  If she had been white, it would have convinced Kramer he was on a film set. Even the weather contributed to the uncanny feel of the place as rain hissed against the diamond-shaped bits of glass in the narrow windows on either side of the great wooden door. Not that he had seen more than two films about England in his life, but they had made a strong impression on him-largely because the strange girl who insisted on going to them was too ladylike to allow herself to be unbuttoned.

  Kramer removed his raincoat and hung it up with some others on a thing made of antlers. Curious to know the name of the beast, he peered at the small silver plate beneath it and read: “Subalterns’ Mess, Fort George.” A lot of use that was.

  He went back and wiped his feet on the mat again before stepping onto the rich pile of the Persian rug. The ceiling was very low. He tapped one of the brown beams and confirmed it was painted concrete, as befitted such conceits in the land of the termite. The original purpose of a long row of brass disks with pictures cut in them was quite beyond him.

  But he understood the prime function of the rest of the decorations, while wondering idly if some were properly licensed. There were old pistols, swords, a crossbow, a daisy of daggers, and a battleax; an enormous gong, a vase as high as his waist stuffed with bull rushes, and paintings of horsemen in red blazers jumping over farm fences-in one the farmer was waving his stick at them.

  Much as he looked, however, he could not find anything from Africa. All the smaller stuff was the sort of junk that Indians tried to sell you from cloth-covered baskets on Durban beach, although not as nice and shiny. With so many servants about you would think they-

  The maid had returned with a maidenly giggle to announce that her master would see the boss now in the drawing room. Having carefully surveyed the large, thatched house on his way up the drive, Kramer had worked out its distribution of rooms well enough to open the correct door in the corridor.

  Captain Peter Jarvis stood with his back to the gigantic fire-place, which had a one-bar electric fire poised for winter in its grate, at the far end of a gleaming floor. In spite of the distance separating them, Jarvis’s features-and particularly his mustache-were defined with exceptional clarity; they were sharp, in the physical sense, but it was the strong coloring that gave such an edge. The face was deeply tanned, from a line just above a normal collar, the cheeks had circles of red on them, the mustache itself was pitch black, while the hair fringing the pate was shark gray; the eyes were brown, the teeth whiter than a new golfball. The first thing Kramer thought of was a model soldier, dismissed it as too trite, and then could not think of a better comparison. That was what the man looked like, and he stood like one, too, making the best of his five-footten heavy build, and no visible scars or tattoos.

  He wore a tailored suit as muted in its tone as the furnishings, offset by a single carnation.

  “Gentlemen generally make an appointment,” Jarvis remarked in military English with a militant edge to it. “However, seeing as you’re here, come in, Lieutenant. I’m afraid I do not speak Cape Dutch.”

  “That’s all right, sir. I’m paid to be bilingual. Just a casual inquiry.”

  Kramer made his way over, using the many rugs like stepping stones, and was waved diffidently into a leather chair.

  “Drink?”

  “Later maybe. Is your wife not here this morning?”

  “Mrs. Jarvis is about the place, but I am sure that there is no necessity for troubling her with whatever you have come about.”

  “I thought that might be obvious, sir.”

  “Is it? I would have thought our connection with the boy hardly warranted your attention. It was very much a passing phase on Sally Ann’s part.”

  “Surely that’s an assumption?”

  “Made himself unpopular, I’m afraid, rather inevitably really. He was not quite our-”

  “Go on, sir?”

  Jarvis eyed Kramer carefully.

  “Shall we say, cup of tea, Lieutenant?”

  “Uhuh. And yet he came to your house very frequently.”

  “Got that off his school friends, did you? I’m afraid he must have exaggerated to impress them. I would not place his visits at over half a dozen at the most.”

  “So you’re not sorry he’s dead?”

  Jarvis reddened. “That is a most outrageous remark, sir! You will withdraw it at once!”

  “I was only asking, Captain. You’re not the first person to seem-you know. Far from it.”

  Jarvis took a decanter from a tray and poured a whisky.

  “Think I’ll join you, sir, after all,” Kramer said.

  “Good man.”

  With them both seated, the tension eased slightly. They raised glasses and drank.

  “I imagine you prefer a Cape brandy?” Jarvis said conversationally.

  “To tell the truth, Captain, I usually order Pernod.”

  “Remarkable,” Jarvis muttered to himself. Then added quickly, “Is there anything specific you want to know about the boy?”

  “Yes, we’d like to know when he was last here.”

  “On Saturday afternoon. He came to bathe, I believe.”

  “So your daughter was friendly with him as recently as that?”

  “That was when it happened, Lieutenant. He overstepped the mark with some of his schoolboy smut. My elder daughter was not amused. Sally tried to defend him and realized, during the kafuffel that then took place, how dreadfully-er-common he was.”

  “Smut? You mean a joke?”

  “I do. A deplorable piece of filth, so I was told.”

  “By whom? Sally?”

  “No, Caroline, my eldest daughter.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He left under a cloud.”

  “I see.”

  “May I emphasize something, Lieutenant? When I use the word ‘common’ I refer to a chap’s breeding. I have the greatest respect for the forefathers of this country. The Boers were the finest mounted warriors since the Huns-Winston himself says so in one of his books.”

  A pretty speech.

  “You mean you were lucky to win?” Kramer asked with a laugh.

  Jarvis reddened again-he was better value than a performing chameleon.

  “Perhaps so, Lieutenant. I must say your people were a surprise after the peasantry we were used t
o scrapping with.”

  Oh, very nicely done. However, Kramer was not there to settle old scores, but a new one. And he still had no idea who the enemy was.

  “Did any member of your family see Boetie again after his incident?”

  “No. I’m quite sure they would have mentioned it.”

  “Nevertheless, could I have a word with your daughters this evening, Captain? After school?”

  “Caroline is in the nursing home having a cyst removed. I wonder if you’d not-”

  “Sally, then?”

  “I sent her up to her grandmother on the Witwatersrand.”

  “When was this?”

  “On Monday, directly I saw the news in the paper. It would have upset her dreadfully. I know what I said about their little liaison, but the child’s had enough to contend with recently.”

  Kramer got up and put his glass on the tray. He had the air of a man who had suddenly lost interest in the matter in hand and just wanted to beat a friendly retreat.

  “Of course, I’d forgotten,” he said. “You also had that sad business concerning the American youth. I was in Zululand at the time.”

  “Lovely part of the world, that,” murmured Jarvis, accompanying him over to the door. “I’ll show you out myself.”

  “There was one thing I never quite did understand about that accident.”

  “Really, Lieutenant? This is your mackintosh, I believe.”

  “The bit about the American’s clothes. The story goes he was stripped down and probably about to have a swim when he fell in accidentally.”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “But where was his swimming costume? I’ve never seen that mentioned.”

  Kramer took his raincoat from the hands outstretched to help him on with it so that he would be able to keep his eyes on Jarvis’s face. A slight tremor.

  “Then your colleagues have kept their word,” Jarvis said quietly.

  “Not that I’ve been asking questions, but I’d like to know out of curiosity.”

  “You’re an astute man, Lieutenant, but the explanation is simple: he often swam alone without one. He was rather given to that sort of thing.”

  “Walking round nude?”

  “Something of that order. Surprising what American youth considers normal these days. Even so, we felt obliged to be discreet in the matter for his parents’ sake. Sergeant Brandsma was most understanding. We didn’t want the papers calling Andrew a hippie either-it’s such a vulgar expression-and they would have leaped at it. As it was, the press wallahs did rather overdo-”