The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  “Slow down,” I said.

  She did, and also took a deep breath as if to slow her body down. “If he had even one family member who was still alive,” she said. “But of course, he doesn’t, except for some old aunts and an uncle who have always lived in Leiden and have no idea what he did in Amsterdam during the war.”

  “You don’t need someone else to tell you that your father is an ineffectual accounting professor—assistant professor—who has spent his adult life trying to build himself up in the eyes of the world. It was mean and petty of him to pick on Anne Frank, but I don’t think he’s ever had the nerve to actually do anything except tattle to the dean about his colleagues.”

  “Maybe he tattled on the Franks.”

  “Please, please don’t get caught up in your father’s nonsense.”

  “What if it’s not nonsense?” she whispered as if she was alone in the car. She was no longer crying but looked indescribably sad.

  When we got home, she immediately immersed herself in her diary, scribbling at a frantic pace. A couple of hours later, she set it aside at last and, sitting at the kitchen table with me while I nursed a beer, began to speak as if she was picking up from where she left off writing.

  “The informer had to be someone who had reason to suspect that Jews were being harboured at Prinsengracht 263.”

  “Rachel, it’s ridiculous to think that your father—”

  “Why? Why is it ridiculous? Because he’s a mere man who has lived in a place as far removed from Amsterdam as Newfoundland? A couple of months ago, he told us at dinner that he collaborated with the Nazis. He took it all back, but why would he say it in the first place?”

  “I’ve already told you what I think. He only confesses to things that he didn’t do.”

  “The war didn’t happen in the movies or on TV. It happened in places just as ordinary as St. John’s to people just as ordinary as your family. You’ve never been to Amsterdam.”

  “I think it’s time we went back to what I call home,” I said.

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “It is.”

  “Thank God. I thought you’d want to stay for Bethany.”

  “No. I’ve had enough. We should go home through Amsterdam and visit the Secret Annex.”

  “Jesus Christ. Why? Do you think you can find out if your father betrayed Anne Frank by going there? Do all the secrets of the van Houts, if there even are any, lead back to Anne Frank?”

  “I’ve never been there. I want to go there at least once.”

  “All right, then. Fine. I don’t care what route we take or what we do along the way as long as we go home.”

  * * *

  —

  A week later, unable to sleep, I got up and was reading when the phone rang on the table beside my chair. I answered it as quickly as I could, hoping to keep it from waking Rachel, who, after hours spent writing in her diary, had finally gone to bed.

  It was Max. His voice quavering, he said, “Wade, I’m afraid I have some very bad news.”

  By mid-morning, that news was all over Cape Town, in the papers and on the radio and on TV. A middle-aged couple who lived in the City Bowl neighbourhood had been murdered in their home by someone who was still at large. The killer, or killers, let themselves into the unlocked house on Liesbeek Road—their maid was asleep in the shed at the back of their garden—crept upstairs, where Myra and Hans van Hout were sleeping, and shot each of them once in the head. It did not appear to have been a botched robbery, since nothing had been stolen or disturbed.

  I was still talking to Max, fighting to control my own voice, when Rachel came out of the bedroom in her nightshirt and grabbed the phone from me.

  “Max, what’s happened?” she said. A few seconds later, she dropped the receiver, which I caught before it hit the floor. She covered her face with her hands. I hung up the phone and led her to the sofa, where we sat side by side.

  “It can’t be true,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands, her head bowed. Tears seeped between her fingers and dripped onto the floor. “It can’t be true, it can’t. Mom was supposed to be spending the weekend at the Star of the Sea Convent School reunion with Theresa DeVries.”

  “Theresa went by the house late in the afternoon to pick her up. But your mother said that Hans’s ulcers had been acting up badly and it looked as if he might have to go to hospital. She said she felt she couldn’t leave him alone. So Theresa went to the reunion by herself.”

  I tried to take Rachel in my arms but she was rigid. She dropped her hands. Lips quivering, she said, “I knew it was possible, after that argument, that I would never see them again. I almost hoped I wouldn’t. But I would never wish for something like this—never…” Her voice trailed off. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “My God. A few days ago we argued and now they’re gone? What’s happening? In spite of everything he said, I thought that, someday, he might own up to the truth, whatever it was. I thought she might. I thought that, sooner or later, there’d be some kind of truce. I know it makes no sense, but it almost feels like they committed suicide.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I stammered.

  “How is Bethany?” Rachel said. “And Gloria? What about Carmen? Does she know?”

  “Carmen knows. Max said he spoke to Fritz. Bethany…Max said she’s in pretty rough shape. They want to take her to hospital to be assessed, but she refuses to go. Gloria…I don’t know. He didn’t mention her.”

  Max had told me that Nora and the van Houts’ neighbours hadn’t heard any shots. Nora was woken by the sound of the front door banging shut. She heard a car drive off, tires spinning in the gravel beside the tree fern—just as those of the Citroën had done when we drove away from the house the last time. Terrified, Nora stayed in her shed for half an hour. Afraid to go into the house by herself, she eventually went to one of the next-door neighbours and told them what she’d heard. The husband went to check, saw that the front door was open and called the police, who, unsure if an intruder was still inside, entered with guns drawn. After finding Myra and Hans, they went to the neighbour’s house and interviewed Nora, who gave them the only family phone number she knew, Gloria’s. The police used a reverse directory to find Gloria’s address and drove to the house to tell them what had happened. And to interview both of them.

  “They want to interview all the children and their spouses,” Max had said. “We gave them your number and address. They said it’s just standard procedure. They said to tell you to sit tight. They’ll be there as soon as they can. “I’ve also called Peter and Theresa and Clive. The police are going to speak to them as well.” I repeated this to Rachel.

  “One thing before the police get here,” Rachel said to me, wiping her eyes, which were puffy and swollen. “If they can’t find out who did it, they will put the blame on Nora or her husband or God knows who, as long as they’re not white.”

  The two inspectors arrived at our door just after eight that morning. Rachel and I had stayed up all night, me watching Rachel most of the time as she stood in silence at the window that overlooked Table Mountain as if she was staring at her own reflection. Only at sunrise did she move away from the window to sit down in an armchair, her eyes no longer leaking tears.

  The inspectors were in their forties, but both were very fit, lightly muscled, blond, brush-cut and deeply tanned. They wore black suits and crisp white shirts. Detective Nap did all the talking while the other, whose name neither of them offered, scrutinized us and took notes. One of the first things Detective Nap said, after a perfunctory offer of his condolences, was, “So the two of you aren’t married? You’re living common-law, is that right?” It was an expression that Rachel and I hated, and she looked like she was about to say so, so I blurted out, “Yes,” and Nap nodded.

  We sat on the sofa while he and the other detective sat in the two armchairs opposite us. Nap did not tell us what Gloria and Max
had told him, but it soon became clear that they had told him quite a lot. “Did you bear any animosity toward your parents?” he asked Rachel. As if she had long felt the urge to tell her story to someone in authority, Rachel spoke without interruption for ten minutes as Nap, from time to time, shook his head in wonderment and distaste. Finally, he interrupted her. “And you are planning to leave soon, is that right? Go back to Canada with your boyfriend here?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said.

  “And the maid, Nora, she said the two of you argued with the van Houts for quite some time a few days ago, early in the evening. She could hear you from the shed. You must have been shouting.”

  “All of us except for my mother were shouting,” Rachel said. As she recounted the argument for him, the other inspector stopped taking notes. Nap shook his head and sighed from time to time. At last, he interrupted her again.

  “Terrible, terrible things. Or they would be if they were true,” he said.

  “They could be true,” Rachel said.

  “Now that your parents are deceased, there’s no reason for you and your sister Bethany to publicize your accusations, is there? Your sister Gloria, she seems to have thought quite highly of Professor van Hout and your mother. A war hero. He made it through all that, saving others’ lives as well, only to be murdered in his sleep by some animal.” He shook his head. “Your other sister, Carmen…well, she was quite distraught one minute, and the next she was laughing. I expect you know why. High as a kite on something. You don’t seem upset at all.”

  “I’m very upset,” Rachel said. “I just don’t like to show it.” Nap nodded, approvingly it seemed.

  “Anyway, Gloria and her husband say they were home all day yesterday, and all night, too, with Bethany, who was in bed for most of the time. Carmen and her husband, Fritz, also say they were at home, with friends. They gave us their names. And the DeVrieses—the wife was at the reunion in Kalk Bay, and the father and son each vouch for the whereabouts of the other. What about you two?”

  “Except for the afternoon, when I went to yoga class and Wade went out running, we were here all the time,” Rachel said. I nodded.

  “We rarely see this kind of crime in the City Bowl,” Nap said, “but when we do, we don’t always find the guilty parties.”

  “Are they ever white?” Rachel said.

  Nap frowned at her. “Don’t make any trouble for your dead parents,” he said. “Common human decency and all that. We’ve seen a few killings of this kind elsewhere in Cape Town. Money is often involved. Drug money, sometimes. The country is rampant with drugs. I’m not saying your parents had anything to do with drugs. Drug money is used for a lot of things. Loan sharking, for instance. Your poor father may have got in over his head with some very bad people. It happens. The most decent people can be drawn into situations when they’re desperate. A pair of killings like this, they send a message. This is what happens if you don’t pay up. We’ll catch them or we won’t, but I hope you won’t run around telling tales about your father. You should let him and your mother rest in peace. No need to sully their good names. The coloureds bring the drugs in, you see. Anything for a few rand. Often, they’re paid in drugs. It’s all too much for us to keep up with. The drugs come in from the north, from Rhodesia and South West Africa, from the jungle and the Bantu. There might as well be no borders. It would be one thing if the drugs stayed in the townships, but they don’t and here we are.”

  “You’re very dogged,” Rachel said. The other inspector laughed.

  “En Jy’s ’n saucy ’goed koop’meisie,” Nap said and the other inspector laughed again. They left abruptly, without saying another word to either of us.

  “What did he say to you at the end?” I said.

  “I think he said I was a saucy slut.”

  * * *

  —

  Neither Gloria nor Carmen called Rachel, and she did not call them. The next day, on the radio, on the SABC television station, in the Argus and the Times, it was reported that the police were stymied. They hadn’t found a murder weapon; they had no suspects. Everyone on Liesbeek Road and nearby streets had been interviewed. No one had seen anything suspicious on the night of the murders.

  “It’s only been a day,” I said.

  “In South Africa,” Rachel said, “swift justice is the only kind.”

  “Are you still worried about Nora?”

  “Maybe the police are right,” Rachel said. “Maybe Dad borrowed money from someone he shouldn’t have and couldn’t pay it back.”

  “Wouldn’t he have borrowed from Max if he had to?”

  “Maybe. But that would have been a lot of pride for him to swallow.”

  SABC reported a day later that newly obtained eyewitness accounts suggested that an as yet unidentified “coloured or black man” had been seen in the neighbourhood on the night of the murders.

  “Surprise, surprise,” Rachel said.

  We gathered up our nerve and drove past the house on Liesbeek Road. It was surrounded by police tape that read “polisie halte.” The doors and windows were sealed with yellow plastic. Two police cruisers were parked outside.

  That night, after spending hours with her diary, Rachel lay sleeping on her side, faced away from me, her knees drawn up to her chest, her fists clenched on the pillow. She shivered as if she was freezing, shook with jolt after jolt, but she remained asleep, flinching, twitching, wincing, faint whimpering sounds coming from her throat.

  * * *

  —

  We went to see Bethany the next morning. Max and Gloria left almost as soon as we arrived. “We’re off to Port Elizabeth for a couple of days,” Gloria said, her eyes hidden by sunglasses. “You’re staying here with her until we get back. Don’t even think of saying no.”

  They hurried out the door without so much as a mention of Hans and Myra just as Bethany came downstairs to the front hall. She seemed self-possessed and untroubled. Noticing that I seemed surprised, she looked at me and said, “I have no tears left for them, Wade. Maybe I’ll have a delayed reaction, but I don’t think so. Have you told your parents?”

  “I’ll wait till I get home.”

  “And what about you, Rachel? You’re acting kind of weird.”

  “Well, the last time I saw Dad, he told me he was the one who tipped off the Gestapo about Anne Frank and the others.”

  “Did he also tell you that he killed JFK?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Obviously not,” Bethany said, “judging by the amount of ink on the side of your hand.”

  “I don’t care who knows how much I’ve been writing. We’re your minders for the next two days, remember?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m almost self-maintaining. Wade, I appoint you Keeper of the Happy Pills. It’s not that I might take the whole bottle. I might just forget to take them. One every eight hours, with lots of water, please.” She gave me an unopened bottle and a prescription for refills—the latter, she said, in case I lost the bottle. “Are we still on the outs with Carmen and Fritz?” she asked.

  “I haven’t spoken to them,” Rachel said. “I barely had a chance to say hello to Gloria and Max before they lit out. I’ve kind of been waiting for everyone to call or drop by or something. We need to get together to make some decisions.”

  “The police told Gloria it will be a little while before they give us Mom and Dad,” Bethany said. “That’s how Gloria put it.”

  “Well, I’m not driving that cliff road out to Fritz’s place and, after two days here, I’ll be craving our apartment, no offence, so I think we should all meet there when Gloria and Max get back.”

  * * *

  —

  And that’s what happened a few days later, after dinner. Gloria and Max and Bethany arrived first and everyone hugged awkwardly. When Carmen and Fritz arrived, Rachel warned them as they came in the d
oor: “If one of you slips Bethany something—”

  “Don’t worry, baby sister,” Fritz said. “I’ve been clean and sober and empty-handed for six days now. In case the cops come back to visit. Six very long days.” Carmen, sullen, dark rings beneath her eyes, didn’t say a word or look at either of us. She was clearly having a hard time dealing with being straight.

  “Nice place,” Max said, looking about the room. “A bit small for seven of us, but nice.”

  “It’s bigger than the Secret Annex, where eight people hid out for two years,” Rachel said.

  “Mandiba is six foot two and he sleeps in a cell six feet long and four feet wide,” Fritz said. “Imagine that, Rachel. And he’s been there a lot longer than two years.”

  “If I’d known that we’d be playing Name the Martyr with the Least Leg Room, I’d have done my homework,” Bethany said.

  “I expect there’s not much meat on Mandela,” Max said. “But then again, it’s what he deserves.” Fritz laughed scornfully.

  “Anne Frank was not a martyr,” Rachel said.

  “All of this squabbling,” I said. “When does it stop? Does it ever stop?”

  Fritz snickered. Rachel looked chastened but said nothing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Wade,” Bethany said. “It’s just that our parents have almost never been murdered before. How would you recommend that we comport ourselves?”

  Rachel put her hand on my arm before I could respond.

  “Has anyone heard from the DeVrieses?” Bethany said.

  “I have,” Gloria said. “I don’t think they’re long for Cape Town. Peter told me on the phone that they may move to Stellenbosch or Pretoria. He thinks he can get a job in either place. He said the three of them need a new start.”

  “He means a place they’re unlikely to run into me,” Bethany said.

  “I’m sure Clive needs a new start,” I said. “Engaged, dumped, re-engaged, re-dumped, a soon to be father who will never be a dad.”