“I will leave you there for Chainpuller,” he snapped, “unless you and me have a good talk together.”
This one was not going to get away.
Kramer splashed up through the puddles to the door of the Wigwam and found Joseph Ngcobo hunched there on his haunches, using the drizzle to soften his half loaf of stale bread.
“Come to clean, hey?”
Ngcobo sprang up beaming, quickly swallowing his last mouthful, showing all the painful eagerness of a poor man paid by the day. Then his face fell.
“Boss not coming this morning,” Kramer explained, flipping him a coin for his trouble, glad that Zondi wasn’t there to make him feel a fool.
“ Hau, thanks!” said Ngcobo, getting the hell out before lightning hit him next.
Untrue. The boss was coming. It was just that Marais had been unable to find a parking place, and the now pathetically cooperative Stevenson had offered up his personal bay in a multistory one short block away.
Kramer tried the Yale key, stepped inside, and left the door unlatched. Then he saw a new show card propped on a child’s easel that had been covered in glitter. The card announced:
YOU KNEW HER-YOU LOVED HER-SEE THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED-MEMBERS ONLY-NOTHING HAS BEEN TOUCHED!
It made him proud to be a pig.
A note had been left in the eagle’s beak in the phony totem pole disguising a coat stand. The message was that someone signing himself Mohammed had finished work at 4 A.M. and respectfully requested prompt payment- in cash-of the sum agreed.
That sent Kramer clattering down the steps and across the stage. The warning notice had gone and the passage was carpeted in blue and had striped wallpaper over the cracks. Even the little stairs had been covered.
He took them at a bound, examined the key ring, chose a chunky old-fashioned one, and hurried down the passage.
There was no keyhole in the door with the star on it. Just a bolt on the inside.
His fist smashed into the paneling.
“Marais!” he bellowed.
“Coming, sir! Stevenson was just worrying the painters hadn’t closed the front door behind them properly and-”
“Marais! Look at this, man! And tell me what sort of person-especially if she’s just driven a lot of sex maniacs half mad-walks around, bare-arsed, in her room without locking the door first? Hey? ”
“Oh, Eve wouldn’t have done that,” Stevenson agreed obsequiously. “She hated strangers bothering her-and the snake was loose, too, and he was terribly expensive. What if he had escaped into the club and one of my members took a-”
“Shut up! Ja, Marais?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“And you, Stevenson?”
“Well-um-didn’t think of it at the time. So much else on the go.”
“That seems to be the trouble with quite a lot of people around here.”
Marais went into the dressing room and came out again.
“Sir, it’s possible that in her struggle she tried to get out and get help and had pulled the bolt back before-”
“And which hand did she use?”
“That’s when the snake got the better of her!” said Stevenson. “She had her hand off and-”
“Which hand?” Kramer repeated. “She’d never let go the tail, according to Strydom, and there’s no bites on her. The door was closed, you said?”
“Completely. I even wondered for a moment if her light was on, and I remember glancing at the edge to see if-”
“Light? Was that on, Marais?”
“Yes, it was on. I noticed because there’s no window and-”
“Actually, it was off for a bit,” Stevenson confessed. “Every penny counts and-”
“Shut up!”
“You never let me finish a-”
“Take him to his office, for Christ’s sake,” ordered Kramer.
While Marais was away, Kramer began a careful search of the room. He found two Gunstone butts in a corner, a dress-shirt button with a fancy design under the basin, and nothing to suggest the divan had ever been used for anything except as a place to put the snake basket.
“Who smokes Gunstone filter-tip?” he asked Marais on his return. “You?”
“Ja, sir, but I chucked them both-Where’s that button from?”
“That’s the first of your problems,” Kramer said, handing it to him. “The second is why, with all this bloody mess-powder everywhere, lipsticks without their tops, eyelashes stuck to the mirror, coffee spilled on the hot plate… you see what I mean?”
“Sir?”
“I want to know why I’ve just noticed that she washes a mug and glass nicely and then leaves them on a box that’s got jam smeared on it.”
“Man, oh, man,” Marais murmured. “I didn’t think.”
“Thirdly, I want Stevenson’s alibi for what he did here on the night fully investigated. Get hold of that club member he showed to the door.”
Kramer was surprised to find his anger had gone-and reasoned this was because he had been as much to blame in making these oversights.
“What sort of inquiry is this?” Marais asked. “Has it-er-changed?”
“Not all that much, from what I can see, but if he was in there when it happened, that’s a further piece of false information.”
“But Stevenson seems-”
“Marais! Just do it, hey? Get Gardiner here, too. I’ll take the bugger back on foot and have him locked up for the night. If you want me, use the radio. Okay?”
“Peacevale again, sir?”
“You never know,” answered Kramer, and he went down the passage into the office.
Stevenson looked different.
“Been on the phone, have you?” Kramer asked lightly. “Been giving your lawyer a bell? Who is he?”
“Ben Gold-”
“Ben? Hell, it’ll be good to hear from an old mate again. But meantime, let’s go and see if we have got a nice cell for you.”
Stevenson took a little time finding his feet. While this was going on, Kramer noticed a bottle on top of the safe, and that there was only one used tumbler beside it.
Every lie had to start with a truth somewhere, he mused on the way out.
“That’s as much as I can ascertain from the outside,” said Bose, glancing up from the viper he was painting. “Have you made your mind up yet?”
Strydom dithered, and then closed the door behind him.
“So it wasn’t necessarily my boy? She could have done it herself? Are you sure?”
“The possibility must exist. Although it would have had to be coincidental with her own demise.”
“Ja, ja-otherwise she could have freed herself.”
“May I?” Bose asked deferentially, as one expert does to another before straying into his field.
“Please.”
“The reptile could, of course, have been used to cover the-if I may make so bold-the work or rather marks left by another lethal agent. Hmmmm?”
“Manual, you mean? That’s where I’ve just been-to the mortuary to check.”
“I see; so that’s out of the question. You must pardon my being so fanciful; it’s the books my wife
