The Steam Pig Read Online Free Page A

last.
    â€œHow come Doc Strydom didn’t check out the body for himself? Is he often filleting your customers by accident?”
    â€œHave you asked him that?”
    â€œNo, not exactly.”
    â€œGood, because I must take the blame,” Mr Abbott declared manfully. “All I said to him on the phone this morning was that there was a white female and I’d have it ready and waiting as usual.”
    â€œBut he has forms to fill in, right?”
    â€œNormally we do the names and that afterwards—together, so to speak.”
    â€œUhuh?”
    â€œYou see, he comes in here and I provide particulars while we—”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œHave a glass or two.”
    The poor little sod, you would have thought Ma Abbott had the room bugged from the way he dropped his voice almost to nothing for the awful revelation. Kramer tried the drawer with the key in it and scored first time.
    He poured a large one for himself and another, in a glass already suspiciously fragrant, for Mr Abbott. It was cheap medicinal brandy, no doubt a stock-in-trade in the event of graveside collapse. A quick calculation indicated somebody must have been spreading tales of mourners going down like ninepins out on Monument Hill. They sipped slowly and in silence.
    But only for a minute.
    â€œLet’s get this straight from the start,” Kramer said. “Farthing did the whatsits.”
    â€œRemovals, officer. The old woman from the State morgue—Sergeant Van Rensburg was up to his eyebrows after the derailment—and the girl from her home.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œThen he had the morning off. I was rather rushed so—”
    â€œYes, yes!” Kramer interrupted.
    â€œWhat happened was we left for the crematorium before Dr Strydom arrived.”
    â€œBut there must have been forms.”
    â€œMrs Abbott always saw to that.”
    â€œWho had them?”
    â€œFarthing. That was it, you see. Miss -er, she was covered up with a sheet and the Trinity doesn’t allow for an inscription plate—that’s an ordinary Arabella over there. Farthing just saw a coffin.”
    â€œBoth women were about the same size?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThere was a minister at the crematorium? Didn’t he say the name?”
    â€œI’d gone out again to park the hearse, they were expecting another right on our tail.”
    â€œAnd this bloke Farthing?”
    â€œIn the crematorium office still, signing the book.”
    â€œSo it wasn’t until you got back here you knew you had made a mistake?”
    â€œNo.”
    Ambiguity exercised its single virtue and a subtlety escaped Kramer. Mr Abbott finished his glass in a gulp.
    â€œOkay, if you weren’t there at the start, were you inside at any stage?”
    â€œThe whole of the latter part.”
    â€œAh, then can you describe any of the mourners? Anyone that struck you as—”
    â€œThere weren’t any.”
    Kramer put his glass down. This was unexpected. According to the medical evidence, there should have been at least one. A forlorn male wondering where his next was coming from.
    Mr Abbott continued hastily: “I assure you it was advertised in the local papers as is required by Trinity under its policy, but not a soul turned up. And that’s another reason I didn’t expect anything was wrong: elderlies, especially the ones on Trinity’s books, often have no one. That’s why they join.”
    Now came the moment that Kramer had been trying to avoid.
    â€œHave you got Miss Le Roux’s papers handy?” he asked.
    Mr Abbott pointed to a ledger emblazoned Trinity Records beside the telephone. Kramer began to leaf slowly through it.
    â€œI see what you mean,” he murmured, “half these old crones have got one foot and a cornplaster in it already.”
    Finally he reached the entry he was after and found it revealed nothing but the name, the policy number, the date