The Artful Egg (2 page)

He pictured the lady coming to the door, his asking for the stamp most politely, and her agreeing as always, giving that throaty little laugh. Perhaps she would want to ask him more about preparing curries, which she did from time to time, and he would have a glass of chilled orange juice brought out to him by the servant.

Just then, there was a stirring in his loins, making him wonder why on earth the problem of the brahmacharya experiments should return to bother him at such a time. Then, without warning, a truly shocking insight provided the answer to that, tempting him to think the unthinkable.

He gave in.

There would be no servant to answer the door when he knocked. The hall would ring empty. Then he would hear the slap of her sandals, and the door would swing inwards, revealing her in her voluptuous glory. Her face would soften sweetly when she saw who was standing there, then a flush would rise to her throat. “Come in,” she would whisper hoarsely, “I have great need of you.” And there would be no mistaking what she meant by those words. In another minute, his postbag cast aside, he would enter—

“Ho, what balderingdash is this?” Ramjut Pillay scoffed out aloud. “Have we taken leave of our senses, post wallah?”

Not entirely, another side to him insisted. The lady in question had already shown herself to be unusually sympathetic to his race. What other house on his round always smelled of incense? What other lady wore toe-thong sandals on her feet, and dressed in long, loose-fitting garments so clearly inspired by the sari? What other lady asked him intelligent questions about the God Kali, about yoga and yoghurt, and knew words such as “Sanskrit”?

“None,” admitted Ramjut Pillay.

Well, said this other side of him, at last we’re getting somewhere. And is it not true that she has several times listened with
fascination to your accounts of the Mahatma Gandhi, confessing herself to be in awe of his great spirituality? Has she not herself said that she would dearly love to be able to follow in his footsteps, too? Then, is this not her great opportunity? If properly cajoled, I am sure she would be willing to join a true disciple such as yourself in a brahmacharya experiment, and to—

“Bosh!” said Ramjut Pillay. “Bosh, bosh, bosh! Immorality Act!”

That old thing, sighed another side to him. What has that to do with it? Without hanky-panky, there can be no contravention of the Act, surely? OK, OK, so you are of different races, but all you’re asking her to do is to lie naked beside you, while you—

“Enough!” declared Ramjut Pillay. “This is mad talk, and I will hear no more of it! I have forgotten it already. There, now, it’s all gone.…”

Even so, there was still such a stirring in his loins that, for want of a loincloth, he had to move his postbag round to cover his upper thighs before reaching up for the doorbell.

Nobody answered his ring.

The house remained silent.

He rang again, two short rings and then a long one.

Nothing.

How uncanny, that all should be just as he’d imagined it, only a minute or so ago. And were those approaching sandals he heard? Glancing round first, he then bent low and peered through the letter-slot. The hall was empty.

Well, perhaps the servants were taking their breakfast break, and she was out in the garden somewhere. He was about to slip the letters through the slot anyway, when his hand rebelled, not wanting to release the cream envelope until he had been promised the stamp on it. Perhaps he could just take a quick look round, and hope to spot her with her gardening things or beside the swimming-pool.

Bump, bump, bump, moving a little awkwardly because of the postbag, Ramjut Pillay set off to circle the house anti-clockwise.

The swimming-pool lay without so much as a ripple on its surface. The garden looked quite empty. There was no sign of life anywhere. Then something that flashed caught his eye.

Needing new lenses in his wire-framed spectacles, Ramjut Pillay had to cross the patio beside the swimming-pool before he could make out what was reflecting the sun’s rays in this unusual manner: it was an electric fan with shiny metal blades, purring away just inside a room that opened out through huge sliding glass doors. Edging a little closer, he took a quick peep into the room, which was probably what he’d seen described somewhere as a sun-lounge. There was certainly enough sun in it, bouncing in off the pool outside, so no wonder someone had the fan on.

“Oh, heavens!” gasped Ramjut Pillay.

That someone was none other than the lady of the house, who lay stretched out on the black-leather sofa directly in line with where he was standing. She must certainly have seen him peering in, for he had been able to see
her
well enough, and would now doubtless expect some very good excuse for his intrusion. All the more so because she was virtually naked, save for a glittering bluey-green bikini.

“Er, madam?” Ramjut Pillay said hoarsely, stepping over to where the sliding doors stood ajar, but keeping his eyes humbly averted. “Good morning, madam, so sorry for the disturbance—many, many apologies, madam.”

There was what he took to be a stunned silence, so he went on hastily: “All in the line of duty, you see, madam. When I feel the weight of this cream letter in my hand, I say to myself, ‘Pillay, you are the bearer of some very important tidings—see there is no delay in the conveyance.’ And so, when I am ringing at your bell and there was no immediate answer, I.…” He
had just taken another peep at her, and now realised her eyes were closed. “Asleep?” he whispered, hardly believing his good fortune.

Why, he need only sneak away as quickly as possible, and nobody would ever know he’d been there.

Then he hesitated for a fateful fraction of a second.

Long enough anyway to want a closer look at those splendidly rounded white limbs, at those womanly breasts, at the gently domed belly, and in that same blink of an eye another side to him took possession. This frightened Ramjut Pillay—in fact, it scared the wits out of him—but it also somehow excited him, and excited him enormously, if the situation behind his postbag was anything to go by.

At first, he acted with cold calculation. He cleared his throat loudly, and when this failed to produce a reaction he gave a rap on the glass door. He did not rap a second time, however, having satisfied himself she was not merely dozing. And then he took his boots off, leaving them outside on the patio before setting off on tiptoe across the wooden floor of the sun-lounge.

This was when a feverish, dizzying feeling overcame him. He would never have believed such a perfect pallor of exposed skin possible, not in a million trillion years, and wanted desperately to caress it, to feel its cool sheen soothe his brown fingertips like magnolia blossom. Nothing could stop him now, and if she awoke suddenly, too bad—he’d just have to do something drastic.

There was a low buzzing in the room. He ignored it.

He marvelled instead at the glittering bluey-green bikini, shimmering as though stitched over by thousands of iridescent sequins, and moved closer, his weak eyes greedy for strong detail. The bikini had some red in it, too, he noted. The blurry face was as he remembered it—rosebud lips and long sweeping eyelashes. The breasts seemed heavier than he had suspected, the mound between her thighs far more pronounced than he
could have dreamed. All of a sudden, he hated that bikini and wished it away, wanting to see beneath it.

He got his wish.

No sooner had his advancing shadow fallen across the female body lying languorously before him, than the bluey-green glitter disintegrated into a buzzing swirl of angry flies, rose up and disappeared over his shoulder.

T
UESDAY MORNING HAD
started well for Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad. At 5
A.M
. exactly—the Widow Fourie’s body clock came complete with its own alarm—he’d been woken by her blowing gently in his left ear. “Trompie,” she had said, “it’s any moment now, hey?” He’d lit a Lucky Strike, wanting to stay awake long enough to mark the moment. “Is it over yet?” she’d whispered a few minutes later. Her timing was perfect, because even as she said this he had seen in his mind’s eye a trapdoor, five hundred miles away, fall with a crash and the hangman’s rope snap straight, before beginning its slow twirl.

And Tuesday morning had progressed from there. When he’d been woken again, it had been by the Widow Fourie making secret love to him, which he had pretended not to know about; and then, when he’d woken for the third and final time, it had been to find his favourite breakfast waiting on the locker beside her bed. Two jam doughnuts and a bottle of ginger beer.

Burping quietly—he found the burps that went with this breakfast one of its more attractive and lasting features—he had then taken himself out onto the veranda, there to scratch at the pelt on his chest in remarkably contented fashion.

A note, sticky-taped to a veranda-post, had read: “Me and the kids have gone out for the day to Myra’s and I’ve told
Johannes to take the day off also so you can have peace and quiet for a change. XXX”

Quite what he had done with the time between then and now, which had to be somewhere around eleven o’clock, he wasn’t at all certain, except that he’d enjoyed himself. There had been the long, deep bath, which had lasted until the water had lost its heat, and then the change into fresh clothes, his first in over a week. After that, he had wandered round the old farmhouse, visited the pumpkin patch, and had eventually settled down in a crude hammock that her children had rigged between two peach-trees.

He lit another Lucky Strike, noticing that the match flame was almost invisible in the brilliance of the blazing sun. There would be a storm later on, there always was when the weather turned as hot as this, but for the moment it was as near to a perfect day as anyone with nothing to do, and absolutely no intention of doing anything, could wish.

A butcher bird came to sit on a branch above him. It had a fledgling in its beak, still struggling feebly. After a while, the fledgling hung limp, but the butcher bird remained where it was.

Kramer looked down and away. The coarse lawn was burned almost the colour of the tinder-dry veld beyond the barbed-wire fence surrounding the property; and far off, murky-grey at this distance, Trekkersburg lay in its wide bowl, brimmed by rocky outcrops. Nothing was distinct: the scraps of bright colour, the metallic glints, the little white shapes were like ants’ eggs, bits of beetle, gaudy scraps of butterfly wing and other insect debris caught at the centre of a cocooning spider web. Poke it with a twig, and God knows what might come crawling out.

The butcher bird had its head cocked, watching him.

He twisted round in the hammock, facing downwards through its wide mesh, finding a hole through which his blunt
nose fitted comfortably. Below him, in the fine red dust, were two conical depressions made by a couple of ant lions. The ant lions were buried out of sight at the bottom of each depression, waiting for an unwary ant to come slithering down the treacherous walls of the pits they’d dug. A tiny moth, dizzy in the daylight, rang the changes by becoming a victim, and he turned away as the ant lion closed its pincers.

The butcher bird had gone.

He tried to doze. He left the hammock and went indoors, where he strapped on his shoulder holster. A minute later, having made sure all was secured and locked, he climbed into his Chevrolet, started it up, and drove off.

“Naomi Stride?” said Colonel Hans Muller, pausing to blow hard into his pipe-stem. “Damn, the bloody thing’s properly blocked this time. I best send out for some cleaners.”

“Ja, Naomi Stride,” repeated Lieutenant Jacob Jones. “Do you know who that is, Colonel, sir?”

“Is her dad that Jewish tailor on the corner opposite the prison?”

Jones, an Afrikaner to the core, despite such a ridiculous name, gave one of his tight little smiles and said: “Let me give you a clue, sir.… Books.”

“Just a minute,” growled Colonel Muller, setting his pipe aside and glowering up from his desk. “This is the CID, hey? The Criminal Investigation Department! I haven’t got time to bugger around with bloody clues!”

“Sorry, Colonel, I just—”

“So spit it out, man! Let me hear what is so important that it’s OK for you to come running in here, just banging open the door like that, making me break off the match I’m using to—”

“She’s dead, Colonel—murdered.”

As accustomed as he was to receiving reports of sudden death, Colonel Muller needed a moment or two to adjust to
this information. He spent the time wondering why Lieutenant Jacob Jones had such a pale, bloodless complexion, and why Mrs. Muller had confided to him, during the last police ball at the city hall, that the detective’s brooding eyes and sensuous lips gave her the creeps.

“Oh ja? Where?”

“Here in Morningside. There’s just been a report from a Uniform van. It seems they got a tip-off from some neighbours, went round to the house and there she was. She’d been stabbed.”

“I see,” said Colonel Muller, choosing the sharpest of his two dozen 2B pencils, and making a note of the name on a pad. “Naomi Stride.… But what has this got to do with books?”

“She wrote them—you know, a world-famous novelist! Hell, when this gets out, you’re going to have the press here from every—”

“Oh, no,” said Colonel Muller very firmly. “Not unless I give the word. And, anyway, she can’t be as famous as you say, because I always look in the bookshop window down the road, and I don’t have any memory of—”

“Well, you wouldn’t, Colonel, sir. Her books are all banned.”

The pencil point snapped. “Banned?” echoed Colonel Muller, staring at the name on his pad. “God in Heaven, now I do smell trouble. Remember how it was when that stupid bloody political detainee—what’s-his-name—hanged himself in the cells here?”

“Ja, and the overseas press tried to prove we’d done it to put a stop to his—”

“Please! I need no reminders, hey?”

“But, Colonel, sir, it was you who—”

“Quiet, Jones. We must nip all such talk in the bud.”