easy lessons.
“She was in, though?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what did happen that day?”
“Ring for Rebecca,” Mrs Bezuidenhout ordered, somewhat rhetorically for she herself raised her stick and beat on a brass spittoon.
Along the passage came a shuffle of slippers two sizes too large and an elderly Zulu woman in a maid’s uniform entered the room. She drew back instinctively as she saw Kramer.
“Yes, he’s a policeman, you old rascal,” said Mrs Bezuiden-hout. “He wants to ask you about the little missus.”
The servant’s fright doubled. “Rebecca take nothing in that place, baas,” she said anxiously. “True’s God, me not doing anything bad by that side.”
Kramer greeted her courteously in Zulu: “Just tell me and the missus what happened.”
Rebecca gabbled through it, using both official languages, her own, kitchen kaffir, and a pair of big rolling brown eyes.
Every Monday morning she went up very early to the cottage and, using her employer’s master key, removed the dustbin for the rubbish collectors. On the previous Monday, she had gone in to find the washing-up still in the sink, and one plate of the stove red hot. The little missus had always been very clean and most particular about switching things off, so she suspected something was amiss immediately. She called out once or twice and tiptoed through to the bedroom to see if in fact the little missus was at home. She was. Dead.
“Came wailing down here as if the devil himself was after her,” Mrs Bezuidenhout cut in. “Of course I didn’t believe the old bag. Got Henry to take me up there. There she lay, peaceful as you could wish, but stone cold.”
“And how was the room?”
“Oh, very nice and tidy,” said Miss Henry. “Sheets tucked up under her chin, too, the poor thing.”
So much for convulsions.
“Poison,” Mrs Bezuidenhout pronounced.
Kramer saw no need to contradict her. Instead he asked how, if Miss Le Roux was so secretive, they knew which doctor to call. The question seemed to embarrass Mrs Bezuidenhout, which was surprising in one way but not in another.
“Well, you see,” Miss Henry explained, arching her voice with tact, “once upon a time Dr Matthews used to see to Mrs Bezuidenhout. It was when Miss Le Roux first came here. She asked the name of a -er, good family doctor, nothing flashy, and we told her Dr Matthews.”
“She should have changed when I got rid of him,” Mrs Bezuidenhout said defensively. “He didn’t know his job.”
Which had been proved partly true, although for ninety-two Mrs Bezuidenhout had the sort of rude health best maintained on self-administered doses of totally ineffectual patent medicine.
“Were either of you in the flat when he arrived?”
“Oh, yes!”
They would not have missed it for worlds.
“Shocking, it was,” Miss Henry sighed. “He hardly looked at the poor thing. Said she was a heart case and these things were to be just expected. He signed the certificate right there on her bedside table.”
“And then?”
“He asked us if we knew who to contact, you see,” Miss Henry continued, reliving a glorious hour. “I said- remember, dearie?-I said the name of her lawyer was on the lease thing. I went and got it and Dr Matthews rang him from the flat. The lawyer took a bit of time and then he told the doctor that Trixie had some sort of insurance for funerals and gave him the undertaker’s name.”
“Vultures were here in two-two’s,” Mrs Bezuidenhout muttered. “But they had to wait.”
“Oh?”
“The death certificate has to be witnessed by another doctor for a cremation,” Miss Henry explained kindly. “I think that’s very wise, don’t you?”
“Huh! Not when it’s Dr Matthews’s partner, two of a kind, if you ask me,” Mrs Bezuidenhout sneered.
“Who’s that then?”
“Dr Campbell. Terrible old soak.”
“Really, dearie!”
“He is. He didn’t even bother to come right into her bedroom. Stood there in the doorway moaning about being up all night.”
Kramer had overlooked the fact that a second opinion would have been compulsory, but that was a minor point and no doubt Strydom had thought so, too. Neither of the doctors seemed remotely capable of being party to an intelligent act of destruction.
“What about the flat?” he asked Mrs Bezuidenhout.
“Her lawyer’s promised to see to it and it’s paid up for the month so why should I care?”
“Untouched?”
“I’m not doing his work for him, sonny.”
Kramer rose.
“It is necessary that I have a look at it.”
“Now?”
“Yes, and we’ll probably have to trouble you again in the morning. Fingerprints, photographs.”
“Well, if you have to, you have to. But see you use the side gate. I’m too old for this sort of commotion.”
Something ugly shaded her bright eyes for an instant. Strange it had taken so long.
“Are we-are Miss Henry and I in any danger through what’s happened?”
“No, madam, we don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
Almost a hint of disappointment. Perhaps a less formidable son had thought the burglar guards advisable.
“I mean it’s a murder, isn’t it?” Miss Henry said. “These things are usually very personal.”
“Quite right,” Kramer agreed, and then cautioned them not to say a word about it. They joined the conspiracy with self-important nods.
Kramer wanted to take a second look at Miss Le Roux’s underwear. But he was finding Miss Henry’s presence most inhibiting. In fact she was beginning to get on his nerves badly. From the moment she unlocked the door to the flat, the avowed vegetarian had displayed an astonishing taste for gore. He was tired of grunting evasively as she sought to extract details of the Royal Hotel double-killing. And he was tired of being asked if he had given himself to Jesus. The time had come for his Jehovah’s Witness ploy.
“Oh, Christ!” he said, looking at his watch. “I’d better get a bloody move on or I’ll be late for Mass.”
Miss Henry shuddered away into the night.
And Kramer opened the wardrobe. Nine dresses hung from the rail, each demure and rather dull. There was also a raincoat in a severe military cut and a worn overcoat which had been altered. Nothing here to conflict with the picture the old girls had conjured up. Then he pulled out one of the drawers. In it was a large collection of what women’s magazines termed “romantic undies” while refraining from specifying under what circumstances they would appear so. The colours were strong and the lace a main ingredient rather than a trimming. He thumbed through them again with the idle notion he might have missed something men’s magazines called “exotic”. Some of them came damn close but that was all. It worried him. Bothered him because he could not reconcile the striking contrast between the inner and outer Theresa le Roux.
Bloody hell. Nothing in the place made sense once you thought about it. He shut the wardrobe, went out into the living-room for his cigarettes, and returned to lie back on the stripped mattress. The low ceiling was white and unblemished by cracks, providing a perfect surface on which to transcribe a confusion of mental jottings.
But his eyes wearied quickly of the glare and wandered to the print of Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral which hung on the wall beyond the foot of the bed. Its qualities as a best-seller were obvious; a nice, restful scene with a touch of the old spiritual uplift. Yet only two nights before the glass over it had held the reflection of a killer getting his kicks. Oh jesus, this case bent the mind and his had been going flat out since before sunrise.
