The Artful Egg Read Online Free
again they both laughed.
The police mortuary van went rocketing past them with the considerable bulk of Sergeant Van Rensburg crouched over its wheel, his tongue curling up into his moustache in intense concentration.
“Do you know of this woman who has died?” asked Zondi.
“Ach, just that she’s a banned writer or something,” replied Kramer. “The Colonel’s having pups that it’ll cause a big fuss.”
“Then he wants results right this minute?”
“Something like that.…”
They left the dual carriageway and plunged down a slip-road into Morningside. Every house was different, every house a testament to the taste and pocket of its original owner; some were big, some were small, some exotic, some very plain, but they did have two things in common: a bonding of lush tropical vegetation and an air of earnest middle-class pretension. This made it a terrible place to work in uniform, because if you were called to a man-and-wife fight the violence would beall verbal, and they’d be saying intellectual things about each other in English that the average constable had a hard time understanding. “Ach, lady,” Kramer could remember a colleague remarking with a sigh, “if it’s just your husband has anal fixations, why don’t you get him one of those blow-up rubber rings he can sit down on?”
Zondi’s memory, developed as a pupil at a mission school which never had enough textbooks to go round, came into its own on an occasion like this. Show him anything, even a map of the more complicated parts of Trekkersburg, and it was imprinted for good, allowing him immediate and easy reference. Without taking a single wrong turning, he found his way to Jan Smuts Close and accelerated towards the top end of it.
“Hey, slow down,” said Kramer. “There’s some woman with an old man who’s shaking a golf club at us.”
Zondi was already slowing down. He stopped outside 20 Jan Smuts Close, and Kramer lowered his window.
“Excuse me, but are you the police?” asked the woman. “Only Major—”
“Ja, lady—and who are you?”
“Er, Miss Simson, actually. I live on my own here at number 20.”
He had already guessed as much. Miss Simson’s petticoat dropped beneath the hemline of her skirt, which was something that anyone on an even vaguely intimate basis with her would surely have pointed out before breakfast. He put her age at around thirty-eight, and noted her very small chin. He lamented the fact that she stooped a little, spoiling the effect of two very fine, rather girlish breasts, and wondered if she bought her sanitary towels by mail order.
“Major Hamish MacTaggart, Cameron Highlanders Retired,” gruffly announced the stumpy, grey-haired warrior standing beside her with his golf club at slope arms. “Neighbours. Bloody poor show.”
Kramer liked these old lunatics, who really should have been dead and buried long ago, but persisted in staining their corners of the globe Empire Red with shakier and shakier pourings from the port-bottle. “What’s a bloody poor show. Major?” he asked.
“Dammit, man, you can see the state this young woman’s in, having that infernal idiot left on her doorstep! Good God, when she first came battering at my door I thought we’d another uprising on our hands, and her—”
“No, honestly, Major, I’m really quite all right now,” said Miss Simson, “although it was very sweet of you to rush to my rescue.” Then she turned to Kramer and said: “I’m afraid it’s the poor Indian postman, you see. He just came tearing down here, dived on to my veranda, and began the most dreadful howling. I couldn’t get a word of sense out of him until the Major—”
“An accident of some sort, I gathered—blood and that sort of thing,” Major MacTaggart explained. “Got him calmed down long enough to sound that out, then gave the local police station a ring. Any idea what’s happened to the poor woman?”
Kramer exchanged glances with Zondi, before
The police mortuary van went rocketing past them with the considerable bulk of Sergeant Van Rensburg crouched over its wheel, his tongue curling up into his moustache in intense concentration.
“Do you know of this woman who has died?” asked Zondi.
“Ach, just that she’s a banned writer or something,” replied Kramer. “The Colonel’s having pups that it’ll cause a big fuss.”
“Then he wants results right this minute?”
“Something like that.…”
They left the dual carriageway and plunged down a slip-road into Morningside. Every house was different, every house a testament to the taste and pocket of its original owner; some were big, some were small, some exotic, some very plain, but they did have two things in common: a bonding of lush tropical vegetation and an air of earnest middle-class pretension. This made it a terrible place to work in uniform, because if you were called to a man-and-wife fight the violence would beall verbal, and they’d be saying intellectual things about each other in English that the average constable had a hard time understanding. “Ach, lady,” Kramer could remember a colleague remarking with a sigh, “if it’s just your husband has anal fixations, why don’t you get him one of those blow-up rubber rings he can sit down on?”
Zondi’s memory, developed as a pupil at a mission school which never had enough textbooks to go round, came into its own on an occasion like this. Show him anything, even a map of the more complicated parts of Trekkersburg, and it was imprinted for good, allowing him immediate and easy reference. Without taking a single wrong turning, he found his way to Jan Smuts Close and accelerated towards the top end of it.
“Hey, slow down,” said Kramer. “There’s some woman with an old man who’s shaking a golf club at us.”
Zondi was already slowing down. He stopped outside 20 Jan Smuts Close, and Kramer lowered his window.
“Excuse me, but are you the police?” asked the woman. “Only Major—”
“Ja, lady—and who are you?”
“Er, Miss Simson, actually. I live on my own here at number 20.”
He had already guessed as much. Miss Simson’s petticoat dropped beneath the hemline of her skirt, which was something that anyone on an even vaguely intimate basis with her would surely have pointed out before breakfast. He put her age at around thirty-eight, and noted her very small chin. He lamented the fact that she stooped a little, spoiling the effect of two very fine, rather girlish breasts, and wondered if she bought her sanitary towels by mail order.
“Major Hamish MacTaggart, Cameron Highlanders Retired,” gruffly announced the stumpy, grey-haired warrior standing beside her with his golf club at slope arms. “Neighbours. Bloody poor show.”
Kramer liked these old lunatics, who really should have been dead and buried long ago, but persisted in staining their corners of the globe Empire Red with shakier and shakier pourings from the port-bottle. “What’s a bloody poor show. Major?” he asked.
“Dammit, man, you can see the state this young woman’s in, having that infernal idiot left on her doorstep! Good God, when she first came battering at my door I thought we’d another uprising on our hands, and her—”
“No, honestly, Major, I’m really quite all right now,” said Miss Simson, “although it was very sweet of you to rush to my rescue.” Then she turned to Kramer and said: “I’m afraid it’s the poor Indian postman, you see. He just came tearing down here, dived on to my veranda, and began the most dreadful howling. I couldn’t get a word of sense out of him until the Major—”
“An accident of some sort, I gathered—blood and that sort of thing,” Major MacTaggart explained. “Got him calmed down long enough to sound that out, then gave the local police station a ring. Any idea what’s happened to the poor woman?”
Kramer exchanged glances with Zondi, before
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