“The little difference between the old and the new schools, you might say. I always wear gloves.”
“Uhuh.”
Kramer closed his notebook.
“That seems to be all, Mr Farthing. But tell me one thing: why didn’t you fix up Miss Le Roux yourself and not leave it to Mr Abbott?”
“Oh, there’s no hurry once they’re in the fridge. Besides which-”
“What?”
“I personally prefer-not to do females.”
“And Mr Abbott?”
But just then three off-duty postmen of roughly the same height arrived to change into their pall-bearer suits and earn an afternoon’s beer money. They apologised on behalf of the other corner who could not come as he had the hiccoughs.
Kramer left Farthing panicking quietly at the thought of finding a replacement, and went back down the passage to see how Mrs Johnson was getting on. He found her sitting up very straight, her eyes dry and her hat off.
“Somebody killed my little girl,” she said as he entered.
“Yes, they did. Now, are you going to help us find out who?”
“If I can.”
“Thank you, Mrs Johnson.”
“The name is really Francis, sir. Johnson was my maiden name.”
“But Gladys stays the same?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Gladys, that’s the style. Was your daughter trying for white?”
Mrs Francis smiled wanly.
“She was trying for white, as they say.”
“She made a good job of it,” Kramer remarked. “There wasn’t a trace of her past anywhere in her flat. A spy couldn’t have done better. The only thing I found was one tiny photograph.”
“Oh? Where was that?”
“In a heart-shaped locket.”
She bit her lip.
“That was Mr Francis, her dad.”
“Look, Gladys, maybe it would be better if we went back right to the very beginning.”
“Must we?”
“It could help me a lot in understanding.”
This obviously appealed to her.
Kramer sat down on the other chair that Farthing had provided from the chapel and prepared to write.
“You were born in the Cape?”
Her scornful laugh brought his head up sharply in surprise.
“Why do you people always think Coloureds are all born in the Cape?”
Again, that curious over-reaction on her part.
“Where then?”
“Durban.”
“And-?”
Kramer’s ballpoint hovered, ready to set the date down. But the pad slid unheeded from his knee a moment later.
“And I was born white,” Mrs Francis said. “We were all born white. The whole family. And we lived white, too.”
11
Over the years Kramer had taken down a great variety of formal statements. They had ranged from long, rambling allegations about neighbours’ dogs to short, pitiful admissions by parents who had failed to keep a proper eye on baby in his bath. More than once he had snatched his tiny cramped words from a dying breath.
This should have prepared him to function professionally under any circumstances but he abandoned the idea after the first ten pages. He just let Mrs Francis talk and jotted down what he could. His brain was bruised from doing somersaults, it needed a rest.
Not that he got it.
“We moved into a flat behind the Esplanade about a year after we got married,” Mrs Francis explained. “Palm Court it was called-one of those skyscraper things with sea sand all over the verandahs at the back. Always lots of children around, noisy but nice.
“Tessa was our first. She was a good baby even if she cried a lot at nights. Pat said ‘No more,’ what with him just working on the buses, you see. Leon-he happened to us, if you know what I mean, and somehow we still managed.
“Up till their teens, that was. Then they started wanting all sorts of things. It was Tessa, really. She had such a gift for music, we had to get her a piano. That’s when I started dressmaking to help with the extras.
“Well, Tessa went from strength to strength with her playing. Her teacher, a Mrs Clarke, came up to me in town one day and said it was time our Tessa got herself another teacher.
“I was shocked. I asked, why on earth? What had Tessa done? This Mrs Clarke laughed and said, didn’t I know? Tessa had passed so many of her Royal College certificates she was now as well qualified as she was!”
“You mean she could teach music?” Kramer asked.
“Yes, that was it. Mrs Clarke, the dear old thing, had taken Tessa right up to where she was. She couldn’t take her further, could she? So anyway I told Tessa what had happened and she said the best person was some Belgian or other in the orchestra-municipal, I mean.
“The next day we went along to see him and he said all right if we could pay the fees. They were steep, I can tell you.
“Pat and I talked it over and we decided we must give her the opportunity. I would take in more work, sack the girl, and Pat would try for overtime.”
“And you did that?”
“Yes. Then Lenny-Leon-started to give us trouble.”
“Oh?”
“It wasn’t serious, not then. You see, he wanted to be a pilot but his maths were terrible. He asked his Dad if he could have extra lessons, and he said yes. Tessa was having them, wasn’t she?”
“Was he jealous of his sister?”
Mrs Francis hesitated.
“He said cruel things at times but brothers and sisters are like that.”
Kramer underlined the word “jealous” three times.
“Go on-what happened? Did he pass?”
“He never got the chance.”
“Why? What school was he at?”
“Durban High. But that’s got nothing to do with it. Pat got sick with all the long hours he was working and not getting the proper food either, he was in such a rush. I nagged at him until he went to Addington and the doctors there said it was TB.”
Mrs Francis stopped talking abruptly. Fearful that she would not carry on, Kramer broke off a carnation and handed it to her.
“Nice smell,” he said.
“Funny, that,” Mrs Francis murmured. “It was always carnations in the hospital-I suppose it was because of all those Indian kids selling them outside.
