The Artful Egg Page 6

  “Hau, Sergeant!” the constable exclaimed guiltily, surprised by his sudden appearance. “My intention was not to—”

  “Your intention,” said Zondi, “was to stay here undercover as long as possible—correct? It’s what any sensible man would do.”

  The constable chuckled. “My name,” he said, “is Hopeful Dumela.”

  “Dumela? Did your father work CID five—six years ago?”

  “It is a common name, Sergeant, but, yes, that was my father. He always spoke of you with great respect.”

  “I do not remember that he owed me money.…”

  Dumela grinned from ear to ear.

  Outside, the rain became heavier, sweeping at almost forty-five degrees across the lawns and making the surface of the swimming-pool dance. Lightning flashed, but the thunder was faint and distant.

  “Would the Sergeant like a drink of tea?” offered Hopeful Dumela.

  “You know where to find the kitchen?”

  “I have found it many times before,” replied Dumela, displaying a certain dry humour of his own. “This is my beat.”

  Excellent, thought Zondi. There was nothing quite like a thick stew of cook’s gossip for information, and the spicier it was, the better.

  Kramer waited, black ballpoint poised above his notebook.

  “Yes, I know why my mother put off going to London on Sunday,” said Theo Kennedy. “She’d been fighting this writer’s block thing—couldn’t get a word down for days—and then she suddenly could. Well, she didn’t want to stop again until she absolutely had to, so she—”

  “And when did you speak with her last?”

  “On … on Saturday. She came over to where I live and told me she’d postponed her flight. Yes, it must’ve been Saturday, because I had the Land-Rover in bits and couldn’t hear the phone from outside. She’d rung me originally, you see, and not getting an answer she thought she’d drop me a note. Then she saw me fixing the shocks, and … well.”

  “It was a good visit?”

  “Sorry? Not sure what you mean.”

  “You parted on good terms, Mr. Kennedy?”

  “As good as we ever do.”

  “Were any family problems discussed?”

  “No.”

  Kramer raised an eyebrow fractionally. “You said that fast,” he remarked.

  “No quicker than I could have said ‘yes,’ Lieutenant.”

  The note that Kramer made in his notebook was Shampoo. Then he asked: “Did anything your mother say—or hint at—suggest to you that she had reason to fear for her life?”

  “No, nothing at all. She was in a very good mood, as her writing was going so well.”

  Kramer wrote down: Toothpaste.

  “In fact,” Kennedy added, “I can’t remember her ever suggesting she felt in any danger.”

  Blades.

  “Never ever, sir?” queried Kramer.

  Kennedy shrugged. “Once or twice, after she’d got some really disgusting hate mail—people threatening her with acid, that sort of thing.”

  Coffee.

  “Oh, really? Was there a recent one, sir?”

  “Not that she told me about.”

  “I don’t suppose she kept any of them?”

  “Hell, no! Had them destroyed immediately.”

  Sardines.

  “Did any of this hate mail seem to be coming from one person, sir?”

  Kennedy shrugged. “I’d not heard of that happening.”

  “And so,” said Kramer, jotting down Sugar, “we can’t say your ma was afraid of anyone, but she did have enemies.…”

  “Lots. She’d become a celebrity, a public figure of a kind.”

  “Uh-huh.” Rent. “Go on, sir.”

  “Automatically, that starts upsetting people. First, there are the straightforward cranks, and then come the buggers who don’t like what you do to be called a celebrity. You know, some don’t like your actual writing, with others it’s the sex scenes—or, as happens more often, it’s what is called the ‘subversive slant.’ ”

  “There was lots of politics in the stories your ma made up?”

  “Obliquely, yes. Her settings were always South Africa.”

  “And she was anti-Government?”

  “Anti-suffering.”

  “Uh-huh. Now, what about plain jealousy? Greed? Things like that?”

  “Sorry …?”

  “Your ma was famous, right?”

  Kennedy smiled wryly. “Rich and famous.”

  New chequebook, wrote Kramer.

  Hopeful Dumela made a fine pot of tea, and he knew how to sweeten it properly with condensed milk, scorning the sugar-bowl. Zondi took his mug over to the window. There had been a pause in the storm, but now the thunder and lightning were back, crashing down much closer.

  “So tell me,” he said. “Why do you say this murder is no surprise to you?”

  “Hau, many strange things have already happened in this place.”

  “Such as?”

  Dumela scratched vigorously at the side of his head. “There was once a naked coloured woman here, and the people sat around her and made pictures of her on big sheets of paper.”

  “What people?”

  “Friends of the missus. Would you believe it if the cook told you that some of these people were black men, just the same as you or me?”

  “Hau!”

  “Oh, yes,” went on Dumela, suitably encouraged. “There have been parties, too, all races—many bad men.”

  “How could the cook tell that?”

  “Because she saw them laughing behind the back of her missus, sometimes it was only their eyes. These men would come to the house carrying a piece of polished wood one day, maybe a stone with holes in it the next day, and they would ask much money for them. The cook swears to me she would pay it.”

  Zondi glanced away, distracted by lightning striking close by. “What has the cook told you of the son?”

  “A good man, always polite when asking for anything. But him and his mother—it was always fight-fight-fight-fight, the cook says.”

  “What is the reason for their quarrelling?”

  “Mainly, it is money. The mother says her son thinks of money too much.”

  “He has wanted her to give him some also?”

  Dumela shrugged. “That I do not know, Sergeant. But let me tell you another of the strange things that has happened here.”

  The storm clenched the house in its fist, darkening rooms, rattling windows, shaking it to its foundations. There was a brilliant flash and then a tremendous bang; a piece of chimneypot clattered down the tiles. Leaping to his feet, Theo Kennedy took a step, paused and looked foolish.

  “Christ,” he muttered, “my nerves must be all shot to hell.”

  “Come,” said Kramer, rising from the sofa’s arm.

  This seemed an excellent moment to test the suspect’s reactions to the scene of the crime. He led the way through the gloom of the long corridor with mats on its walls and into the study.

  Kennedy’s attention went immediately to the sheet of paper in the typewriter. “What a strange line.…” he remarked, touching a fingertip to ‘II, ii!’

  “Any idea what it means?” murmured Kramer, watching him closely.

  Kennedy shook his head, and then turned towards the door into the sun-lounge. “If she was changing at the time, that’s where it must have happened,” he said. “Is it all right for me to take a look?”

  Which neatly defused the small bombshell Kramer had been about to drop by taking him through there. “Ach, there’s not much to see, sir,” he said.

  “I’d still like to,” Kennedy insisted quietly.

  Kramer let him go through alone. Bugger it, the man was genuine—he felt sure of this. Nobody could fake the pain in those eyes, the anguish in the way Kennedy was struggling to act casually, passing on nothing of what he was feeling. So what if—as Kennedy had himself revealed a few minutes ago—his mother’s death left him a rand millionaire? Plainly,
to judge by the off-the-peg casuals he wore, and the inexpensive watch on his wrist, Theo Kennedy wasn’t someone who cared a great deal about money—most definitely not enough to kill for, and least of all his own mother. On top of which, if he’d been in need of money, surely he could have just asked her for it?

  “She had that sun-lounge built onto the house specially,” said Kennedy, returning to the study. “Called it her second-favourite room.”

  “What was her most favourite?”

  “This one, the study. It has—well, a lot of her in it.”

  “Oh, ja? Can you tell me if anything’s been disturbed?”

  “No, I can’t, not really,” replied Kennedy. “It’s been ages since I last had a proper look around in here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Er, strained relationship—that sort of thing. Look, do you mind if …?”

  Kramer caught his arm to steady him. “Hey, you’ve gone a bad colour,” he said. “Best you go through somewhere else and have a lie-down.”

  “No, I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “That’s what I was suggesting, so if you’ll—”

  “Right out, if you’ve no objection,” said Kennedy, so pale now he looked on the point of collapse. “I don’t think I can take this house another minute.”

  For a moment, Kramer stood undecided, uncertain whether he ought to make the most of this moment, while Kennedy was at his weakest, or to act as his instincts dictated. “I’ll run you home,” he said.

  “Thanks, but there’s no need. I can drive myself quite—”

  “Bullshit, man! You can’t even bloody stand properly!”

  The trouble was, decided Ramjut Pillay, it was very difficult to feel like a private investigator, dressed up in your plastic raincoat, when just about everybody else on the streets of central Trekkersburg was also wearing a raincoat. The worst of the storm had passed, but now a steady downpour had set in.

  Still, he did have something few other people had—a gold badge (Issued Free with Every Diploma) pinned to the underside of his jacket lapel—and that at least set him apart from the common herd. Turning his collar up even higher, he moved like a shadow along the inside of the pavement, pondering where to begin probing into the foul murder of Naomi Stride.

  “Ats-zoo!” sneezed Ramjut Pillay. “God’s blessing me and dammit!”

  A head cold was the last thing he needed, right at the start of his first major case. Muttering about the changeable weather in Trekkersburg, he put his hand through the slit in the right-hand side of his raincoat and into his trouser pocket, groping for a handkerchief. He felt instead a wad of crumpled envelopes, and realised with a sickening lurch that not only had he forgotten to change out of his Post Office trousers, but he’d also somehow absconded with some of the mail.

  The seriousness of his situation weighed so heavily on him that he was forced to find a place to sit down, and went into the public lavatory reserved for males of his race behind the city hall. There, bolted into the last cubicle in the line of four, he gingerly withdrew the mail from his pocket and looked to see what names and addresses were on it.

  He should have guessed: every item had been destined for Woodhollow—and there was the new English stamp he had coveted.

  “Oh, dearie me,” sighed Ramjut Pillay, now with a faint recollection of stuffing the envelopes into his pocket as he fled from the house in wild panic. “We are in a considerable pickling, are we not?”

  And he shuddered as he pictured what would happen if he took these items of mail round to his superior at the Post Office. From the outset, Mr. Jarman had made it very clear that the worst, the very worst crime any postman could commit—no matter what his excuse—was pocketing mail instead of leaving it at the given address. Instant dismissal would be automatic, with instant arrest on a criminal charge of tampering to follow, Mr. Jarman had warned.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Ramjut Pillay, having a sudden bright idea. “There is no difficulty here. I am delivering these tomorrow, just as if—”

  But how could he, now he was under suspension? A prickle of icy sweat broke out on Ramjut Pillay’s brow. He was trapped, forced into a corner from which there could be no escape. Unless.…

  He counted the envelopes—six were missing, if he remembered correctly. Six letters and a circular he must have dropped in the room where he’d discovered the deceased lady. Good, then those would account for why he had called at the house, and the rest he could destroy, claiming he’d never seen them. None was registered, none had been recorded in any way.

  And he was about to begin tearing them up into very tiny pieces, for flushing down the contrivance upon which he sat, when he had another sudden bright idea. What if a vital clue to the murder lay in one of the letters he held in his hand? Shouldn’t he first take a look before destroying possible evidence? After all, he had been trying to think of a good place to begin his investigation.…

  You’re right, said another side to Ramjut Pillay, filling him with that same cool detachment as before. Go on, take a look—I dare you.

  But he hesitated, intimidated by the sound of someone coming in to use the cubicle next to him. The someone, however, soon proved to be beset by severe flatulence problems, and made such a noise, what with his loud sighings and the rest of it, that it seemed impossible he’d overhear a few envelopes being carefully opened. With trembling fingers, Ramjut Pillay set to work, and moments later he was unfolding the first of the letters, turning it the right way up.

  What he saw written on that sheet of blue notepaper made his eyebrows leap in horrified amazement. “Phee-eeeew!” exclaimed Ramjut Pillay.

  “No need to be so rudely personal,” grumbled the someone next door.

  5

  WITH THEO KENNEDY at his side, and Zondi following behind in the zebra-painted Land-Rover, Kramer drove across town to Azalea Mansions.

  “Have you got a girlfriend?” he asked Kennedy.

  “Not any more. Why?”

  “You’re going back to an empty flat, man—that’s why.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Or maybe there’s some bloke you could go and stay with. The press and television won’t take all that long to find out where you live, and then—”

  “The hell with them!”

  “Then, at least take your phone off the hook, hey?” said Kramer, switching off his windscreen wipers.

  Azalea Mansions was made up of five two-storey blocks of flats set at odd angles on an uneven slope of untidy brown lawn. Over the road, where Charlton Heights housed the better-off in an imposing high-rise, the lawn was green, weeded and watered. The sign outside it said, KEEP OFF THE GRASS—NO BALL GAMES, while the chipped enamel notice, askew at the foot of Azalea Mansions’ potholed drive, warned: KIDDIES AT PLAY—DRIVE CAREFULLY.

  Not that there were any about, as the rain had only just stopped, and Kramer hardly slackened speed on his way up through the puddles.

  “My flat’s over there,” said Kennedy, “but this is far enough, so just—”

  “Hold on, my sergeant has to know where to park your jalopy, hey? Which number is it?”

  “That one, Number 3.”

  Kramer took him almost to his front door, and moments later Zondi drew up beside them.

  “Well, Mr. Kennedy, I’m not sure you’re doing the right—”

  “No, I’ll be fine, but thanks anyway,” he said, opening his car door and getting out. “It’s just I need—”

  “T’eo, why aren’t you in zebby car?” demanded a little girl, running up to him. She was immaculately dressed, fair, dimpled, and looked like something straight off a chocolate-box. “Why’s there a boy in zebby car? Did you let him?”

  Kennedy forced a smile. “It’s all right, Amanda—and how are you today?”

  “Been to the shops and to the slide!”

  “That must’ve been nice,” said Kennedy, adding in an aside to Kramer: “Er, this is a young lady who comes out and watches me when I’m working
on my ‘zebby car,’ as she calls it. The zebra stripes fascinate kids.”

  “Ja, I bet.”

  “T’eo, why are your eyes red?” asked Amanda, frowning.

  “Look, maybe—” began Kramer.

  “Amanda! What are you doing out in the wet?”

  “But, Mummy, you said—”

  “Amanda—and you’re making a pest of yourself again!”

  “No, she’s not,” said Kennedy, “really she’s not.”

  Kramer watched the approach of the child’s mother. She was a slim woman of about twenty-six in slacks and a jumper and a red headscarf patterned with horseshoes. Her manner was shy, over-anxious.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve so much to do, and no sooner do I turn my—”

  “Please, Mummy,” broke in Amanda, “please can I sit in T’eo’s zebby car? He says I can’t unless my mummy says so.”

  Perhaps that made it one “mummy” too many for Kennedy, his having so recently joined the ranks of the motherless. He mumbled an apology, pulled his latchkey out of his pocket, and made for his front door.

  “Goodness,” said Amanda’s mother, looking at Kramer. “Is there something the matter?”

  He nodded. “Mickey,” he said, “scoot after Mr. Kennedy and give him his car-keys—tell him we’ll be in touch.” And then Kramer murmured very softly, trying not to let the child hear: “The ‘something’ is that his mother was murdered last night.”

  “His mother …?”

  “Ja, and so he’s naturally a bit—”

  “Oh God, how dreadful! Are you the police, then?”

  “CID. We’ve just brought him back from the scene. Tell me, how well do you know Mr. Kennedy, Mrs.… er?”

  “Stilgoe, Vicki Stilgoe. I’m afraid I’ve hardly ever exchanged more than the odd word with him. It’s been Amanda, you see, and of course Bruce, but as far as—”

  “Bruce?”

  “My brother. He and Mr. Kennedy both tinker with their engines out here at the weekend, and—”