Snake (8 page)

“Most people do,” Kramer replied, his spirits restored. “But you just watch it, or you’ll be landing yourself in trouble with a smart lawyer one of these days.”

And they went to find Monty.

When Zondi had finally managed to arrange the living room as the Widow Fourie wanted it, she went out with him onto the stoep.

“What do you think of it?” she asked.

“
Hau
, it is beautiful,” he said. “The madam’s children will be very happy here. You can even buy them a donkey perhaps.”

“That is an idea!”

He picked up his jacket.

“Yes, I’ll ask Trompie—or do you know about donkeys?” she asked.

“No, madam, nothing.” He lied without malice. As a herdboy, he had seen all he wanted of donkeys before he was seven.

“I thought all.…”

She let that tail away as her eye was caught by a white butterfly dipping by.

“I’m so happy,” she said. “Does it show?”

Zondi felt embarrassed and looked round for his hat. It had been dropped in the tea chest with the lampshades.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“Is there something…?”

“Oh, no, Mickey, you’ve been a marvelous help. Just I feel lonely all of a sudden. It’s so private here, isn’t it? When is the lieutenant getting back?”

“That I don’t know, madam. Shame.”

“Of course—who ever knows that?”

She walked to the edge of the veranda and shaded her eyes to look into the trees. Grasshoppers were doing their erratic dance in the slanted rays between the trunks.

“Could I—could I possibly ask you one more favor? To fetch the kids from the park now for me, instead of the nanny sending them in a taxi at four? It’s really your fault I’m at such a loose end!”

“Victoria Park? With the swings? I’ll go straight away now.”

“Hey, you know what? You must bring your kids here to play in July when we’re at the beach. Do you think they’d like that?”

He knew they would. But that he would never have enough explanations for them afterward.

“Maybe, maybe.” He laughed. “I’ll go now. See you by and by.”

“Oh, where are the presents for Miriam?”

“In the boot, madam—thank you, madam.
Sala gahle
.”

He drove off, thankful to escape a woman who asked so many questions, many of which left him looking tongue-tied. But he was indebted to the Widow Fourie for all the unwanted household effects, including an iron that had lost its cord, and for the children’s clothing she decided to get rid of as well. She knew how to give so it didn’t hurt to take from her. She seemed to do it without thinking. As she had dumped, without thinking, that very serviceable old paraffin heater, which was only a little rusty, on her new rubbish heap. He had not thought it wrong to stow that in the trunk also.

A day that began like this could only get better.

5

S
TEVENSON HAD TO
be in. A station wagon stood in the drive, and the curtains of the bay window round the side were closed. Yet Kramer looked disappointed.

“Not the smart place I thought it would be,” he said, in no hurry to get out.

The Chev Commando was parked under a flame tree on the opposite side of the street.

“Well, like I say, he’s up against something with the other club,” Marais explained. “Got style and class.”

Kramer, who had entered it on one occasion, in the hope of buying cigarettes after midnight, made a face. If a black ceiling and black walls and a black stage were considered stylish, so be it. And if Trekkersburg’s high society was class, he was no one to argue. But his own response to both had been one of acute depression, so instantaneous that he had gone a mile to get his Lucky Strikes off an obliging refugee near the station. Those buggers worked all hours under very bright lights.

“Do we?” Marais ventured.

“Uh-huh. Let’s go and drag him out,” Kramer said, turning off the engine. “This is only one of three places I’m supposed to be.”

As they went up the flagstones to the front door, past an old gymkhana poster on the gate, he wondered how things were progressing in Peacevale. His senior sergeant was in charge there, but he wished Ludwig hadn’t sodded off on leave, because that was his territory. Same as Lawrence of Arabia, without the camels.

He was still not concentrating when the door opened to Marais’s knock and a black housemaid peered round it. It would have seemed more natural to see the Widow Fourie.

“
Yer-ba-baw!
” the maid exclaimed in fright, at once recognizing them for what they represented, probably from their haircuts.

“Is your master in?” Marais asked. “You fetch him for us,
che-che.
”

“Gladys? What are you up to? Oh, I see—you Mormons have been here pestering before!”

“Never,” said Kramer, tugging Marais into the hall behind him and closing the door.

“Police, CID,” the youngster got in hurriedly.

“But what is this about?”

Kramer did the stare that implied heavily his dislike of rhetoric.

She was man enough to stare right back. Her hair color was amazing—perhaps a poodle parlor did it.

Then the crimson lipstick—which claimed more lip than she owned—twisted into a mean streak.

“You must be the uncouth one,” she said. “I’m sorry, but my husband’s sleeping. He does conduct his affairs at night, you know.”

“Uh-huh?”

“And he has taken two tablets today because one hasn’t been enough lately.”

“Since when? Sunday?”

That pitted her poise. She moved back a little and folded her arms.

“
Am
I entitled to know what this is about?”

“You’d better ask hubby,” said Kramer. “He’s the man with all the answers.”

The children attended the first shift at Kwela Village School and so returned home while Miriam was still trying to find enough space to put everything and to complete her account of the funeral. They were given their new clothes to try on, and told to stay in the other room. It was raining.

“Yes, very sad,” Zondi agreed, “but it will mean a little more money for us.”

Like most workingmen, he did his best to help others in the family who couldn’t get passes to leave the homeland and find employment.

“There, you see? You are not listening me properly. Now that there is room for another at the kraal, the aunt of my sister’s brother’s wife will be coming to live there. Her sons all died in that mine accident.”

“Were they bastards?”

“Her husband has TB. They’ve locked him up with the lepers in the Transkei.”

“I forgot. Hey, you know? Now Lucky is dead—shot down.”

“No!”

“The lieutenant is very angry with them. It was the same ones as before.”

“
Hau!
They were stupid to shoot Lucky!”

“That’s why I must go now,” said Zondi, slipping on the harness of his shoulder holster. “There is a man I must see. Is this all right with you?”

Miriam nodded, holding a wasp-waist corset against the light and wondering at its potential.

“You go, you go—since when does the man ask? And I need you out of the way; this house is so dirty I must do a big clean.” Zondi left in just the right frame of mind to jolt Yankee Boy Msomi out of his lethargy.

After taking coffee with Mrs. Stevenson, Kramer knew they had a possible ally. She did not like Monty much more than they did. She almost implied the existence of their child was evidence enough to support a charge of indecent assault.

How such partnerships began Kramer would never know, but this one seemed very near its end.

“I met an American airman in England during the war,” she said, “and he used to talk about ‘slarbs.’ That’s what he is—a slob.”

“Mind if I take more sugar?” asked Marais, having trouble with his cup.

“Help yourself, dear. I’ll just pop out again and see if I can get him up.”

Marais went purple as Kramer made a shocked grimace behind her back.

“Jesus, have a heart, sir!” He winced.

“Notice?” said Kramer. “She smells something—and she’s liking it. But she told us the story about Monday morning and everything as if she’d read about it in the papers. I don’t think she knows even as much as we do. If she hasn’t fetched him, then we’ll check out his movements on Sunday with her—okay?”

Marais raised a thumb.

Mrs. Stevenson came back in and half filled the settee.

“Not as much as a moan,” she said. “Oh, yes, slobs. That slob in there must have done what he did on Sunday.”

“Oh, ja?”

“Took four of his blinking tablets and decided not to get up at all.”

“What?”

“It’s the truth. On Sunday, he came in after checking our sweet machine near the bus depot—we’ve got the concession, and if you don’t keep emptying it the vandals try their luck—and, calm as you please, went out like a light. Must have been about one. Twelve hours later, he’s still like that. And I’ve had a proper Sunday dinner cooked and everything. No good trying to wake him. He’s still in his pit at six and— would you believe it—he didn’t get up at
all
until Monday, when his lordship managed his usual time.”

Her indignation was quite real.

Marais put his cup down and reached for a list.

“Twenty minutes from town to here in traffic,” Kramer said impatiently.

Mrs. Stevenson was waving to someone through the window.

“Oh, look,” she said. “There’s Bess outside and I want a word with her about taking Jeremy to riding lessons. Are you…?”

“I’d appreciate if we could just use your phone for a moment,” Kramer said, courteously rising with her. “Then maybe we best be going.”

“It’s in the hall, Mr. Kramer. Well, toodle-oo, if I don’t see you again.”

She rushed out through the French windows, making hi-there noises.

“Sir, this means his only chance of feeling the deceased was stiff—or even knowing about it—was between when she left the stage and when the snake got her or a few minutes afterwards. She couldn’t have been cold either—and that’s something else in his sworn statement.”

“Do I look like your grandmother?” asked Kramer. “You sit tight while I ring the Chocolate Fairy.”

The python was going off. Perhaps, without the bulk of a human body, a few minutes out of the fridge was enough for the putrefactive processes to continue. Snakes were strange things at the best of times, and certainly had a metabolism all their own.

This distressed Strydom under the circumstances: the largest glass bottle he had been able to find was not big enough to contain it.

Nxumalo, who was standing ready to pour in the formalin to preserve it, clucked his tongue sympathetically.

“Why doesn’t the doctor-boss just skin it?” he suggested.

“Because the boss wants a better permanent record of it than that,” Strydom explained. “You see, I’m hoping to deliver a paper about this case at our annual conference in Cape Town, and it would be so much more effective if a three-dimensional concept could be arranged. Understand?”

Nxumalo nodded. The boss did not want to skin it.

“Well, perhaps the museum will lend me one of their bottles,” Strydom said. “I never thought of that.”

“Very clever, my boss.”

“Or at least they’ll tell me where they got theirs from. And I want their views on its strength.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Pop it away for me again, then, but be extremely careful like before,” Strydom ordered, and then went into the office.

Kloppers was away at lunch.

The reptile man at the museum was very quiet-spoken but showed a practical interest in the problem. He said there were no spare bottles, as that method of preservation had been abandoned years ago, and any specimens outstanding were therefore kept in a deep-freeze. However, if the district surgeon would care to drop in that afternoon, bringing his snake with him, he was sure something could be done. A break in routine would be most welcome.

Kramer replaced the receiver very quietly and stood gazing down the passage. A pair of polished black shoes waited outside the third door down. “Okay, man, let’s go,” he called to Marais, adding in a whisper when the sergeant reached him, “We’re not really going, hey?”

Then Kramer opened the front door, counted three, stepped back inside, and closed it.

They waited. Not a murmur.

“We try plan B,” he said into Marais’s ear, knowing he would like it put that way.

Kramer took hold of a carpet sweeper, which the maid had left handy to clear away their crumbs, and wheeled it down the passage. It made very good squeaks when scrubbed back and forward. He began to bump its rubber trim against the wainscoting, and to hum one of the Zulu love chants he had heard Zondi hum so often at the steering wheel. The sweeper collided with the shoes and Kramer paused, keeping the sound in the back of his throat as high-pitched as possible.

“Oil Gladys!” roared a wide-awake voice behind the door “Bloody bitch, think you’re back in your kraal, do—”

“Hello again,” said Kramer as the door was jerked open.

“You!”

“And you. Come in the front room for a moment—don’t bother to change.”

Years of calling on homes early in the morning had taught Kramer that unless a man went in for boxing or wrestling, he generally felt most vulnerable in his dressing gown. And it certainly saved everyone time.

Presently, seated in a black silk kimono, with Japanese egg stains, Monty Stevenson told them everything he knew. It was the same old story, with the alibi of the sweet machine tacked on the end.

“Have to have a finger in a lot of pies in my game,” he explained. “There’s the club and my traveling disco for house parties, then my catering course for Indians, and I’m negotiating rights for—”

“Uh-huh. But according to a bus inspector I know, your chocolate machine at the depot is empty.”

“Wonderful news—knew it would catch on.”

“Because it’s broken.”

“What?”

“Smashed by vandals on Saturday.”

“The bastards!”

“All bluff,” Kramer admitted, adding for Marais’s benefit, “Remember, that bus inspector needs a kick up the arse sometime—said he’d got better things to do than doing stupid inquiries for CID.”

“Then it’s not bro—”