The Sunday Hangman

“And they lived miserably ever after?” Kramer asked.

“Ever after,” sighed his host, “until, of course, what happened came to pass. He was clever that one-oh, ja. The first time he took his belt to her, he was lucky and one of my men let him off with a warning. After that, when he came back drunk, or from his womanizing, he’d find ways of never leaving a mark. ‘Stefina,’ I would say-because Oom Dawid would always call me when he heard the screams-‘Stefina, you just make a charge and the doctor is sure to find marks.’ But she would shake her head. Not an ugly girl, you understand, although, in the eyes of some folk, a little on the plain side. It was her bones, man-bones like a little bird. To think of him beating her took you in the stomach. I tell you, when I got a chance, and had to have Toons in my lockup for the night, then he went in there off all four walls and the bloody ceiling. Mind you, like him, I had to be careful.”

Kramer drank to the irony of that.

“I wanted to slap charges on him-any bloody charges, so long as he’d be put away inside. But Lettie asked what would happen to Stefina then, out in the shack alone, with kaffirs all around, and the magistrate followed a similar line, giving him long lectures. They all wanted this dream of theirs-ach, I don’t know what to call it-to work out as it was planned and make them all happy. Never mind Stefina in the meantime! I watched her turning to a shadow of the happy kid I had known. The round cheeks and big dimples and-hell, it was terrible. She’d sit in the church on Sunday, reading her Bible like it would put blood back in her veins. Then she became pregnant.”

“He resented the …?”

“No; for once he settled down. That was actually when the railway job came up-you know how they look after poor whites-and the first was born. A girl.”

“Ah,” said Kramer.

“And the second, also a girl. The third, Stefina told us, was a miscarriage.”

At this point, Terblanche rose and went off to fetch his fish from the front verandah. The rain drubbed harder on the roof and two more pawpaws burst and slid. Kramer switched on the kitchen light when he saw his host take out a gutting knife.

“There was a nagmaal,” the old man continued, talking now as much to himself as to anyone. “Folk came from every direction, from places you never even heard of. When we hold communion in Olifantsvlei, the minister likes to make a big thing of it-bigger than most ministers do, and I’m not sure it’s right. Anyhow, there were hundreds camping here, around the church and down by the river. You can imagine how many kids that added up to! They were the ones who began the talk.”

His knife slid into the fish’s belly rather too deep. He drew it out a little way and tried again, slitting up toward the head. He scraped the innards away.

“They told their parents and soon everyone was whispering and pointing behind Stefina’s back. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the story reached my ears, and when it did, I went straight to her. ‘Stefina, I want you to charge him,’ I said. ‘Your children are saying that their pa kneed their ma in the stomach, and this made her sit on the potty and do a baby there. Stefina,’ I said, ‘they think it was a joke, Stefina.’ ‘Leave my man alone,’ was all she said. I caught Toons not two minutes later, and he said, ‘That’s not true-why not ask my wife?’ So I looked for the kids, but Stefina had taken them away. Not a word would they say when I finally had them to myself. Nothing! You have never seen kids-or a woman-so terrified. And what could I do about it? Also nothing! Not with the minister and the magistrate and every other bugger on the opposite side!”

The fish had begun to bleed.

“They didn’t mean any harm, Tromp. They said it just couldn’t be, they didn’t believe it. Not after Toons had been making such wonderful progress! But us bloody old sinners weren’t nearly so certain, and we made sure he knew it. We told Toons to his face. We said he was lucky it was nagmaal. Huh! So life goes. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rest?”

“How much later was he found in the gangers’ hut?”

“About a fortnight. The magistrate kept all this out of the inquest for Stefina’s sake; he said it wasn’t material.”

“Suicide, Joep?” murmured Kramer, emptying the last of his beer can into the glass before him.

Terblanche crossed over to the sink and carelessly inspected the cut in his palm. The tainted water eddied pink round the plug hole, not becoming any lighter.

“Now you’re asking, my friend. When she got over the shock, Lettie always used to put it best, I think. She used to say that no man is ever safe from the higher law, and this was what Toons Rossouw had forgotten.”

“Divine justice?”

“Call it what you like,” replied Joep Terblanche. “The man was a murderer.”

The color-control knob on Dr. Strydom’s new television set had his primitive employees in fits of laughter in the living room that evening. This was as well, because the cookboy, the gardener, and the maid had slightly annoyed him by taking his magnificent acquisition almost for granted, and by being less than astounded when the screen first lit up. It had been as disappointing as showing a conjuring trick to very small children, who simply accepted the magic as genuine and failed to appreciate the human ingenuity which lay behind it. Then it had occurred to him that they were probably unaware of the skill involved in getting a lifelike picture, and he’d given the knob a twist to the right. And now, as he exercised his power to transform the news reader from flesh pink to almost any shade of the rainbow, he was being rewarded by delighted giggles and guffaws that signified a proper degree of amazement.

“Didn’t you hear the phone?” Anneline said a little crossly, coming in with her knitting. “Gracious me, why’s that man gone green?”

“Er-a small teething trouble, I think. There, that’s fine now. The phone, you say?”

“He’s too flushed; looks like an immigrant.”

“Better?”

“Yellowy, like a Cape Colored.”

“Sorry. Try this.”

“Mmmm. But his tie was never so shiny as that. It was the Colonel.”

The servants took their leave then, thanking Strydom for his kindness and the demonstration, and he waved them out impatiently, eager to hear what else his wife had to say.

“What was Hans’s problem this time?”

“You don’t have to ring back; he just thought you’d be interested to know that one of your hanged bodies had been identified.”

“No! Really?”

Anneline paused to hear an item of interest to her, and then went on: “The krantz case-is that right? He says that Sergeant Marais had an inspiration and got in touch with the prison doctor where someone called Ringo had been kept during remand. This prison doctor remembered noticing two holes in the man’s mouth during the routine checkup, and having put some fillings in so there wouldn’t be any problems during the trial. Oh, a whole lot more, but that is the main gist of it. Can you do something about the sound?”

Strydom did do something-he wasn’t sure quite what-and then sat back on the sofa beside her, very content with the world and, in particular, with the way his day had been spent. As soon as the news was over, he and his huggable old helpmeet would certainly have a great deal to discuss.

The front doorbell rang.

“Oh, good,” said Anneline, elbowing him in the ribs. “That’ll be Hester and her mother from over the road. Go and welcome them in, Chris-this will be the first time they’ve seen it, poor things.”

Kramer returned from Olifantsvlei with a very definite idea of what he was up against; an idea that-as he’d been telling himself in the car-made the mind bloody boggle. It wasn’t so much a murderer they were looking for, but an avenger.

He chanced across Colonel Muller in the vehicle yard of police headquarters, just as the old bugger was sneaking off home after a long day, and they sat on the mounting step of a handy troop carrier for a quick debriefing.

“But I don’t see what you’ve established this afternoon,” the Colonel said, when each had given the other his news. “If the minister at Olifantsvlei claims there must have been folk from the Witklip district at his nagmaal, then