The Artful Egg (31 page)

Kennedy threw back his head and laughed. “Secrets perhaps, but the rest isn’t Tess!”

“Sorry?”

“Tess Muldoon, let me assure you, Tromp, is the sort of person who never gets involved with
anyone else’s
problems. She’s like a sleek, green-eyed cat: beautiful to look at, lovely to stroke, I’d imagine, but totally ‘bugger you’ in her attitude when it comes to humans demanding anything more of her. My mother often said she’d have liked to unburden herself on occasion to Tess, ‘but it would’ve been like asking one’s Siamese if one could borrow a Kleenex.’ ”

Vickie Stilgoe giggled, and Kramer, who needed time to think, said: “I didn’t know your ma made jokes, hey? They say her books were always so serious.”

Kennedy nodded. “We had rows about that, too—it spoiled some of her best writing. She’d put everything into, say, a scene in a Bantu males’ hostel, and then forget it was only because they found things to laugh at that they didn’t go stark raving crackers. I used to become very restless, reading them, and not know quite why, until I spotted what the mistake was. Mum’s answer to that was ‘Don’t you realise, Theo, I
weep
when I write those bits.’ She bottled up a lot.”

“Although, where Liz Geldenhuys was concerned, your ma didn’t exactly bottle up what she thought of her table manners and how she kept saying ‘Ach’ in front of her sentences.”

“Mum didn’t say a word about that to her!” Kennedy went pale. “How the Jesus—? Oh, I see, Tess again! Well, that’s that bitch written off!”

“Not Tess, another source,” said Kramer. “But, while we’re on the subject, do you think your break-up could’ve had anything to do with—?”

“Look, Tromp, I know I might be a bit touchy about my mum at the moment, but I still think I’ve every right to resent what you seem to be implying. She could have a very wicked tongue in private, just as she could in her books, but she wasn’t the sort of person to go hurting someone like Liz. And, besides, my mother’s never tried to interfere directly in my life, however much she may have—”

“Ja, I’m sorry, Theo, but I have a job to do, hey? And you can’t deny, man, that
somebody
has interfered in your life until very recently. I’m talking about the ‘sexy voice’ phone calls.”

“God, you leave no stone unturned! What has all this to do with anything?”

“These calls, Theo, can you tell me if—?”

“Look, I’ve not heard that bitch’s voice since the day before Liz walked out, and so what relevance—?”

“Winny Barnes says the last one was only last week.”

“Yes, and I was away. I’ve been away every time she’s phoned since Winny came to work for me. I still can’t see what the hell you’re driving at, Tromp!”

But Kramer suddenly saw something then. He saw Winny Barnes lift the receiver in her father’s boring photographic shop and begin a series of telephone calls. He saw Winny taking over as assistant to Theo Kennedy, a man she plainly idolised, and he even saw her pause outside a jeweller’s window, her eye caught by a tray of wedding rings.

“If I might interrupt,” said Vicki Stilgoe, “time to pop next door.”

Nurse Chatterjee had stayed on after his shift ended in an effort to placate Ramjut Pillay, and because his relief, Nurse Mooljum, could hardly be expected to pick up the pieces
single-handed. But Ramjut Pillay was in no frame of mind to give anybody his due, not even the Devil himself.

Ever since regaining his voice and the ability to move, he had been loudly denouncing Garrison Road Mental Hospital as an institution filled with traitors and unspeakable cads, while prancing about, exposing himself, on the top of the ward cupboard. Nothing would make him listen to reason. Nothing would make him come down again, and the rest of the patients were becoming over-excited.

“Look here, Peerswammy, kindly replace your pyjama trousers and—”

“Ho, ho, so the great Dr. Schrink is back!”

“Kindly stop referring to me—”

“Showing us where we are Jewish!” demanded Ramjut Pillay.

“Peerswammy, you’re missing the point. In saying—”

“We are
not
missing our point. Just you looking, Dr. Schrink, and you will see it is entirely uncircumscribed!”

Nurse Chatterjee came a step closer. “But nobody said you were Jewish, Peerswammy Lal, old fellow. What you over—”

“Nobody said,” Ramjut Pillay echoed bitterly, “that this was a place where an honest face was not to be trusted! Once a letter is sealed, it becomes—”

“But you shouldn’t have sealed it, Peerswammy, that is altogether against hospital regulations. We have to read all correspondence before it is leaving here, to make sure nothing that is offensive—”

“By jingo, you just think yourself lucky I am trying to emasculate the Mahatma! If that were not so, already your traitorous dog’s body would—betrayed again! O woe is Ramjut Pillay!”

Men in white had leaped up from nowhere, catching him completely off guard, so intent had he been on replying to treacherous Nurse Chatterjee.

“Ramjut Pillay?” he heard Dr. Schrink repeat after him.
“What is going on? Pillay, Pillay, Pillay … rings a bell somewhere. Some sort of police notice we had circulated to us?”

“I have seen none, Doctor,” said Nurse Chatterjee. “Have you, Mooljum?”

“Typical of the organisation in this place,” grumbled Dr. Schrink. “I’m still waiting for those figures on drug dosages to surface again. Oh, well, what I propose is, unless something else happens, that we have another word with him in the morning, once the sedative has properly calmed him down, and then possibly get in touch with them. I’m curious to know who this Mrs. Kennedy could be.”

No, no,
no
! pleaded Ramjut Pillay.

But he could only do so by blinking, because he was again unable either to move or to utter, having been gagged and then strapped most cruelly into a straitjacket.

There was a whole shelf of books by Naomi Stride above Theo Kennedy’s stereo equipment, noted Kramer. The next shelf up was almost empty, apart from a road atlas, a dictionary and a few African ornaments.

“Vicki’ll be back in a minute,” said Kennedy, returning to the living-room. “That was Amanda. Bruce is looking after her, but she won’t go to sleep until she’s been kissed goodnight.”

“And you’re now included in the bedtime parade, hey?”

Kennedy nodded. “Mind you, as I think I mentioned to you before, Mandy and me have been friends for some time now. You got any kids?”

“Mine isn’t the job for them.”

“You don’t think it’d be right?”

“Have you ever been to a police funeral? They fire guns at the end.”

“The salute?”

“Uh-huh. You should see those bloody kids jump.”

Kennedy stared at him, then turned away slowly and went
over to the bottle of Scotch. He poured himself another tot, put a dash more in Vicki Stilgoe’s tumbler, and came back to sit opposite Kramer. He offered him the peanuts.

“No, like I said, Theo, I’m doing fine, thanks.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Kennedy. “Putting two and two together. I can’t believe what I’ve come up with, but I’m going to have to ask you if I’m right. Are you forming some sort of theory that Liz Geldenhuys is mixed up in my—in what’s happened? Because, if you are, that’s crazy!”

“You can’t see there’s a possible motive?”

“In that she blamed my mum for our splitting up? Or even, if my worst two-and-two is right, for being behind those calls to the shop?”

“Look, Theo, I’ve satisfied myself your mum had nothing to do with them, but from Liz’s point of view she could’ve easily—”

“Stop! Please, just stop right there. You don’t know Liz, you’ve never even set eyes on her, or you’d realise how totally ridiculous the whole idea is.”

“Then maybe I’d better see her for myself, hey?”

“On what pretext?”

“Oh, any information concerning your ma that she can think of which could be relevant to our investigation. I’ll tell her we’re going round everyone who knew her, which is true.”

Kennedy took a sip of his Scotch. “Fine,” he said. “Well, I suggest you do that as soon as possible. You know where she lives?”

“Ja, Sweethaven Avenue, only she’s away up near Dundee at the moment,”

“Oh, yes, at Mooikop, her uncle’s place. She took me riding there a few times.”

“Well, then,” said Kramer, “perhaps I’d better—”

“At last,” said Vicki Stilgoe, with a mother’s sigh, as she rejoined them. “Some nights I could strangle Miss Moppet, but she’s asleep now. Sorry, am I intruding—?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Kennedy, getting up to bring her drink over. “I’ve just been persuading Tromp to get a bee out of his bonnet.”

“What I can’t understand—” she began.

“No, let’s hear,” said Kramer. “It’s often a help to have someone right on the outside give their opinion, and female intuition’s not always too far wrong.”

Vicke Stilgoe smiled at him, although her eyes still said he scared her, and sat down on the sofa. “What I find baffling is why so much time is being spent on Theo’s mother’s personal or, if you like, family side of life. Surely, this could all have happened because she was, first and foremost, a famous writer.”

“So far, Vicki, we’ve no evidence to confirm that.”

“You haven’t?”

“Listen, anybody could have gone up to the University and taken that sword from under the stage. Second—”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “What about the bookish symbolism of the rosemary and the pansies? That reference to Act II, scene ii? Doesn’t that all point to the motive, or whatever you call it, being somehow connected with writing?”

But Kramer, who’d had some fine honey from bees in his bonnet in the past, merely thanked them both for their hospitality and went on his way again, armed with Liz Geldenhuys’s present address.

Zondi picked up the phone. “Lieutenant Kramer’s office. Yes, Dr. Wilson, will you hold on a minute, please—the Lieutenant has just walked in.” Then he cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said: “Any luck, boss?”

Kramer nodded. “And you?”

“Both times. The father could have taken all the DH-136 he wanted from the rubbish at the abattoir, and Marlene Thomas’s address and telephone number are here on your desk.”

“But where is my tea?”

Zondi grinned and handed the receiver to him.

“You’ve got something for me, sir?”

“Ah, Lieutenant! ‘A hit, a very palpable hit’!”

“Oh ja?”

“But before I go into Act II, scene ii,” said Wilson with a chortle, “I have some intelligence for you.”

“You don’t think my IQ’s high enough as it is, Doc?”

Shrill donkey sounds. “Superb! Must remember that! But what I intended to convey is that one of my staff has told me that Naomi Stride was among the audience on the first night. Another of my staff, who must also remain nameless, has also informed me that Aaron Sariff—you met briefly, remember?—had sent a play he’d written to Stride for her opinion, and had not been terribly pleased with her response. Yet another colleague—”

“Hell, you’ve been busy, hey?”

“ ‘Not single spies, but in battalions,’ what?”

“Ja, what did this other bloke say?”

“Apparently, Aaron Sariff found out from a student who you were, and made a devil of a fuss about it, saying there were secret police everywhere, turning the University upside down and threatening the freedom of democracy. He also wanted to know, from me, whether you’d had a search warrant to look under the stage. Enormous fun all round.”

“Not that I can see why you’re telling me all this, sir.”

“You can’t? Thought it might amuse you—and Stride being here on the first night does establish a closer link with the play, doesn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Kramer enjoyed saying. “From what I’ve read about her, Naomi Stride encouraged all the arts in the district, which would include seeing plays put on, not so? Can you get back to Act II, scene ii?”

“Ah, of course.” There was a shuffling of papers. “I’ve spent hours on it, mulling over the possible significance of the scenes within the scene. Tends to give your ‘mad girl’ a bit of a knock,
of course. Ophelia’s perfectly sane at this stage—it’s Hamlet who’s acting up a bit, pretending idiocy. Oh, and while we’re touching on the significance of the pansies and the rosemary, I think I ought to point out that there is always the danger of being too literal in one’s interpretations. Just because Ophelia spoke those words about ‘thoughts’ and ‘remembrances,’ it wouldn’t preclude a man from using them for his own ends. ‘Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven’—there, you could use that yourself, couldn’t you, but, again, those are Ophelia’s words, you see! And so—”

“And so?” prompted Kramer, doodling a jumping bean on his memo pad.

“Themes, themes, themes, none of which quite matched up—no wicked uncle et cetera, nothing to get one’s teeth into. What I ended up doing was going through it line by line, disregarding the context, seeking only something that had the sense of immediate and undeniable relevance. I was appalled.”

“Appalled, sir?”

“Devastated to think that I could have failed to see the one and only truly apposite line right at the start. The line that has
got
to be the one—it shrieks at you.”

“Ja, go on, sir—I’m ready to write it down.”

“Here goes, then, Lieutenant: ‘many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills.’ ”

“And?”

“What ‘and’ could there possibly be?
There it is …
Rapiers, rapiers, Lieutenant! Naomi Stride was killed by a rapier! The precise word, you see, not merely the rather vague word ‘sword,’ which embraces sabres, two-handed—”

“I see that, sir, but what has goose-feathers got to do with anybody?”

“
Goose-quills
, Lieutenant. Never heard of quill pens? Dear me, you must’ve. Even today, still a potent symbol of the writer, and so what this line means is—”

“The pen is a bigger bastard than the sword, sir?” said Kramer, wincing as another donkey joined the papal choir.

“At last. Lieutenant, you’ve pipped me to it! ‘Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword,’ Edward Bulwer-Lytton—I’ve just looked it up. And—would you believe it?—by some extraordinary coincidence those lines appear in Act II, scene ii, of his
Richelieu
!”