by Tony Medawar
After the meal, he sat on the stoep in the cool dusk smoking. Somewhere in the house behind him a door banged. It was followed by the noise of a horse’s hoofs. Vaguely uneasy, he sat forward listening as they grew fainter in the distance, then started violently to find Mrs Henshel standing at his elbow with a steaming cup of coffee. She set it down on a little table beside him.
‘My husband has ridden over to Cloete’s—to make the arrangements for getting you away in the morning,’ she explained.
‘Oh! I see.’
Curious, how his uneasiness persisted.
‘When will he be back?’
‘Some time after midnight.’
His uneasiness was not allayed. Yet what was it that he feared? Surely not that Henshel would give him up to the police? No, the man was sincere enough—a red-hot Revolutionist. The fact of the matter was that he, Conrad Schaefer, had got nerves! A German soldier (Schaefer unconsciously always thought of himself as a soldier) had no business with nerves. He took up the cup beside him and drank it down, making a grimace as he did so. What filthy stuff this Boer coffee always was! Roasted acorns! He was sure of it—roasted acorns!
He put the cup down again, and as he did so, a deep sigh came from the woman standing by his side. He had almost forgotten her presence.
‘Will you not sit down?’ he asked, making no motion, however, to rise from his own seat.
She shook her head.
‘I have to clear away, and wash the dishes, and make my house straight.’
Schaefer nodded an approving head.
‘The children are already in bed, I suppose,’ he said genially.
There was a pause before she answered.
‘I have no children.’
Schaefer was surprised. From the first moment he saw her he had definitely associated her with motherhood.
She took up the cup and walked to the entrance door with it. Then she spoke over her shoulder.
‘I had one child. It died …’
‘Ach! I am sorry,’ said Schaefer, kindly.
The woman did not answer. She stood there motionless. And suddenly Schaefer’s uneasiness returned a hundred-fold. Only this time, he connected it definitely—not with the house, not with Henshel, but with this slow-moving, grandly fashioned woman—this wife of Henshel’s who was neither English nor Dutch. His curiosity roused afresh, he asked her the question point blank. What nationality was she?
‘Flemish.’
She said the word abruptly, then passed into the house, leaving Herr Scaefer disturbed and upset.
Flemish! That was it, was it? Flemish! His mind flew swiftly to and fro, from the mud flats of Belgium to the sun-baked plateaus of South Africa. Flemish! He didn’t like it. Both the French and the Belgians were so extraordinarily unreasonable! They couldn’t forget.
His mind felt curiously confused. He yawned two or three times, wide, gaping yawns. He must get to bed and sleep—sleep—. Pah! How bitter that coffee had been—he could taste it still.
A light sprang up in the house. He got up and made his way to the door. His legs felt curiously unsteady. Inside, the big woman was sitting reading by the light of a small oil lamp. Herr Schaefer felt strangely reassured at the sight of the heavy volume on her knee. The Bible! He approved of women reading the Bible. He was a religious man himself, with a thorough belief in the German God, the God of the Old Testament, a God of blood and battles, of thunder and lightning, of material rewards and dire material vengeance, swift to anger and terrible in wrath.
He stumbled to a chair (what was the matter with his legs?); and in a thick, strange voice, suppressing another terrific yawn, he asked her what chapter she was reading.
Her blue eyes, under their level brows met his, something inscrutable in their depths. So might have looked a prophetess of Israel.
‘The fourth chapter of Judges.’
He nodded, yawning again. He must go to bed … but the effort to rise was too much for him … his eyelids closed …
‘The fourth chapter of Judges.’ What was the fourth chapter of Judges? His uneasiness returned, swelled into terror. Something was wrong … Judges … Sleep overcame him. He went down into the depths—and horror went with him …
He awoke, dragging himself back to consciousness … Time had passed—much time, he felt certain of it. Where was he? He blinked up at the light—there were pains in his arms and legs … he felt sick … the taste of the coffee was still in his mouth … But what was this? He was lying on the floor, bound hand and foot with strips of towel, and standing over him was the sinister figure of the woman who was not Dutch. His wits came back to him in a flash of sheer desperate fear. He was in danger … great danger …
She marked the growth of consciousness in his eyes, and answered it as though he had actually spoken.
‘Yes, I will tell you now. You remember passing through a place called Voogplaat, in Belgium?’
He recalled the name. Some twopenny-ha’penny village he had passed through with his regiment.
She nodded, and went on.
‘You came to my door with some other soldiers. My man was away with the Belgian Army. My first man—not Henshel, I have only been married to him two years. The boy, my little one—he was only four years of age—ran out. He began to cry—what child would not? He feared the soldiers. You ordered him to stop. He could not. You seized a chopper—ah God!—and struck off his hand! You laughed, and said: “That hand will never wield a weapon against Germany.”’
‘It is not true,’ cried Schaefer, shrilly, ‘And even if it was—it was war!’
She paid no heed, but went on.
‘I struck you in the face. What mother would not have done otherwise? You caught up the child … and dashed him against the wall …’
She stopped, her voice broken, her breast heaving …
Schaefer murmured feebly, abandoning the idea of denial.
‘It was war … it was war …’
The sweat stood on his brow. He was alone with this woman, miles from help …
‘I recognised you at once this afternoon in spite of your beard. You did not recognise me. You said it was chance led you here—but I knew it was God …’
Her bosom heaved, her eyes flashed with a fanatical light. Her God was Schaefer’s God—a God of vengeance. She was uplifted by the strange, stern frenzy of a Priestess of old.
‘He has delivered you into my hands.’
Wild words poured from Schaefer, arguments, prayers, appeals for mercy, threats. And all left her untouched.
‘God sent me another sign. When I opened the Bible tonight, I saw what He would have me do. Blessed above women shall Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, be …’
She stooped and took from the floor a hammer and some long, shining nails … A scream burst from Schaefer’s throat. He remembered now the fourth chapter of Judges, that dramatic story of black inhospitality! Sisera fleeing from his enemies … a woman standing at the door of a tent … Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite …
And sonorously, in her deep voice with the broad Flemish accent, her eyes shining as the Israelite woman’s may have shone in bygone days, she spoke the words of triumph:
‘This is the day in which the Lord hath delivered mine enemy into my hand … ’
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The name of Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is synonymous with the Golden Age of crime and detective fiction. While her first novel was not published until she was nearly 30 years old, she encapsulates its guiding principle, that of fair play detection, as well as being responsible for some of the finest examples of the genre, particularly in the 1930s which saw the publication of titles including Peril at End House (1932), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938) and the book now titled And Then There Were None (1939). Christie created Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, two of the best loved and most enduring characters in detective fiction, and all of her books remain in print. Whatever some may think, the so-called ‘Que
en of Crime’ is not yet ready to relinquish her crown, not even forty years after her death.
In what she later termed ‘my age of innocence’, Christie wrote poetry and plays—as well as a few short stories and a romantic novel that remains unpublished—before she became attracted by she called ‘the fascination of crime and its lure’. To those who reproached her for abandoning ‘serious’ writing, she told them: ‘I have a sordid mind. There is no money in poetry, and lots in criminals and their ways—provided you have a sense of humour.’ While she had written her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, ‘as the result of a bet’, the book was an immediate success and, as she said in an interview to promote her second novel, ‘When once you adopt crime it’s difficult to give it up, I know I can never do so.’ And countless readers are grateful that she never did.
Given her sales figures, there has been much speculation about Agatha Christie’s ‘secret’. It was even subject to media speculation in 1923, when she was reported as having said that ‘she framed her final chapter first and then worked backwards, covering up her tracks as she went’. That of course is only part of the story and fortunately we now have two essential, wholly fascinating studies of how she wrote her books, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks and Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making (subsequently combined into the one-volume Complete Secret Notebooks), in which the Christie scholar John Curran also reveals how extraordinarily prodigious her imagination was.
As well as a best-selling novelist, Christie was an immensely successful playwright responsible not only for the longest-running play in history, The Mousetrap, but a string of other thrillers including Witness for the Prosecution; again, there is now a detailed study of Christie’s theatrical life, the engrossing Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre by Julius Green.
‘The Wife of the Kenite’ was probably written in South Africa in 1922 when Christie accompanied her husband Archie to promote the British Empire Exhibition, which ran from 1924 to 1925. It is an unusual story but features a scenario to which she would return throughout her career, most notably in the stage play Love from a Stranger and in the novel Five Little Pigs. ‘The Wife of the Kenite’ was first published in Australia’s Home Magazine in September 1922.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘The Inverness Cape’ by Leo Bruce reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Leo Bruce/Rupert Croft-Cooke.
‘Dark Waters’ by Freeman Wills Crofts reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as Literary Representative of the Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts.
‘Linckes’ Great Case’ by Georgette Heyer copyright © Georgette Heyer 1923.
‘Calling James Braithwaite’ by Nicholas Blake reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Nicholas Blake.
‘The Elusive Bullet’ by John Rhode copyright © Estate of John Rhode 1936.
‘The Euthanasia of Hilary’s Aunt’ by Cyril Hare reprinted by permission of United Agents.
‘The Girdle of Dreams’ by Vincent Cornier copyright © Estate of Vincent Cornier 1933.
‘The Fool and the Perfect Murder’ by Arthur Upfield copyright © 1979 William A. Upfield.
‘Bread Upon the Waters’ by A. A. Milne copyright © A. A. Milne 1950, reprinted with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London.
‘The Man with the Twisted Thumb’ by Anthony Berkeley reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as Literary Representative of the Estate of Anthony Berkeley Cox.
‘The Rum Punch’ by Christianna Brand copyright © Christianna Brand 2018. Reprinted by permission of A M Heath & Co. Ltd Authors’ Agents.
‘Victoria Pumphrey’ by H. C. Bailey copyright © the estate of H. C. Bailey 1939.
‘The Starting Handle Murder’ by Roy Vickers copyright © the estate of Roy Vickers, reprinted with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London.
‘The Wife of the Kenite’ by Agatha Christie copyright © 1922 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved. Agatha Christie® is a registered trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere.
Every effort has been made to trace all owners of copyright. The editor and publishers apologise for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections.
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