“Then what…?” faltered the apprehensive Pembrook.
“There is more than one way of skinning a cat, son. Watch and you’ll find out. Know your job?”
“Keep the women away and try to get a statement from Mrs. Jarvis.”
“And you, Zondi?”
“Find the garden boy.”
Kramer knocked hard, once.
The maid opened up so promptly she gave herself away. Those diamond-shaped panes of glass had blobs in their centers like the lenses in peepholes.
Zondi questioned her. Captain Jarvis was in his study. Mrs. Jarvis was in her sewing room. Caroline was still in bed.
“Forget the daughter, then,” Kramer said to Pembrook. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Zondi, get this woman to take you to the garden boy.”
He led Pembrook in by the arm, unaware that his grip accounted for the brawny youth’s sudden pallor.
“For Christ’s sake don’t go soft on me,” he hissed.
“I’m okay, sir.”
“Sewing room’s on the landing. Keep it quiet as you can or Caroline’ll only complicate things. Now move!”
Kramer watched him start up the stairs, then he began opening every door in the passage, other than that leading to the drawing room, which he remembered was first on the right.
Third time lucky-Jarvis rose in surprise from behind his desk.
“Please don’t get up, sir. Just a few questions.”
“Really, this is getting beyond a joke!”
All the same, Jarvis lowered himself back into the chair. Maybe his legs had weakened.
“First question: Do you own a firearm?”
“Several.”
“And where are they?”
“The guns are locked away-my revolver’s in my bedroom. What’s all this about? They’re licensed.”
“And your dog-is it licensed?”
“I don’t have one.”
“I see.”
Kramer took out an invoice he had received for a dozen red roses.
“What’s that?” Jarvis asked.
“The counterfoil of a dog license issued in your name by the Trekkersburg Municipality. It’s expired.”
“So I was informed this morning,” Jarvis said coldly. “But as the wretched animal itself expired about a week ago, I don’t see the point of all this. As a matter of fact, I-”
“Yes?”
While awaiting an answer, Kramer wheeled over an easy chair and then commandeered a small table for his foot. He made himself comfortable. And noted that now he was closer to Jarvis, the man reeked of strong drink.
“This is intimidation!” Jarvis declared.
“Asking about a dog license?”
“The hell with that. What are you really? Special Branch?”
“ Ach, no, just a bit of an all-rounder.”
Kramer lit a Lucky.
“Well?” challenged Jarvis, bringing a small tumbler out from behind a pile of books.
“Cheers!” said Kramer.
Jesus, it was bizarre. Only a genuine psychopath could have lasted as long in a situation engineered to disorientate a suspect and now having much that effect on Kramer himself. You had to be mad to treat it anything like normal-and to rationalize so fluently, as with the Special Branch remark. On another level, these were the responses of a man entirely confident of his position; nothing would be achieved by trying Boetie’s trick of flushing out fact with a well-aimed fistful of surmise. It would clatter off the cold-blooded bastard like pellets off a croc. The most Kramer could hope for would be a cynical, private admission of guilt, without any indication of where concrete evidence, fit for public judgment, could be found. For that sort of information, the abandon of high passion was required; this in turn meant a change in metabolism, something that would raise the body temperature high enough for careless talk. Kramer had a plan, based on first reverting Jarvis to basic behavior, that might or might not work. It was worth a try anyway.
“Going to sit there long, Lieutenant?”
“Just giving my foot a rest. I cut it yesterday.”
“Always a nasty business. What on?”
“With a sickle, actually.”
A gleam shone momentarily in Jarvis’s monocled eye. Then he leaned across his desktop.
“Isn’t it time you ran along, Lieutenant? It does seem as though we were just going to waste each other’s afternoon.”
“I’d hoped…”
There were slithering footsteps in the passageway outside.
“Just a minute, Captain Jarvis, I’ve got a small surprise for you before I go.”
Kramer went quickly over to the door, took a large zinc bath from Zondi, and returned with it to the desk. The stench which suddenly filled the room was incredibly awful.
“Good God! What have you there?”
Kramer let the bath fall on the desk with a thump.
Inside it was a shape, a long shape as shiny as a prune, only hairy in parts, and acrawl with a mass of maggots more numerous than the grains in an orphanage rice pudding. A snarl of teeth gleamed at one end.
But it was undoubtedly the smell that made Jarvis spew violently over himself as he turned his head away, ruining the right sleeve of his smoking jacket. Some of his lunch-barely digested-splattered more considerately into the wastepaper bin. If the stuff had its own smell, it was certainly not discernible against such competition.
Kramer switched to autopsy breathing and concentrated on the next phase of the operation. He tipped the bath up a little and shook it. The dead dog released gas bilaterally.
“Oh, my Christ!” gasped Jarvis, doubling up to dry retch.
Meanwhile, Kramer resumed his seat, sick to the stomach with the pain in his foot. He should have foreseen that carrying over the bath would place an agonizing weight on it every other step. But somehow he managed to maintain an air of bright interest in the proceedings.
“Sis, man, you’re disgusting!” he said finally, with a laugh. “Where’s the pride of the regiment now?”
This brought back the color to Jarvis’s puffing cheeks-and then some. His head became engorged with blood until it threatened to seep steaming through the pores. He gave a hoarse shout and lunged.
The black pupil of the Smith amp; Wesson stared him back to the far side of the desk, yet it could not silence Jarvis.
“You swine!” he said. “You filthy Boer bastard! Bringing a thing like that into a man’s house!”
Come to think of it, the incongruity alone was powerfully disturbing. There squatted the servants’ bath, smack in the center of a rosewood veneer clean enough to eat off and surrounded by such elegance as a silver inkstand; a crystal goblet containing a single, immaculate rose; an ivory paperweight carved with great delicacy; and a picture in a leather frame of a young woman with her two little girls.
“ Ach, yes, it would have been nicer to bring Boetie along, but his ma wouldn’t let me,” Kramer replied.
Jarvis jarred, as if struck a blow by the words.
“My God! Is there no limit to the way you Afrikaans scum behave? First the Junior Gestapo and now you.”
“But you wouldn’t have killed him if you’d really thought he worked for us,” Kramer said quietly.
“Oh, no? Prove it!”
And there it was: that incautious bravado Kramer had planned on producing.
“Mrs. Jarvis is already being a great help.”
