Riotous Assembly

Chapter 15

While the case against Jonathan Hazelstone was being prepared, Kommandant van Heerden wrestled with the problem posed by the continuing disappearance of the prisoner's sister. In spite of the most intensive manhunt Miss Hazelstone continued to elude the police. Kommandant van Heerden increased the reward offered but still no information worth the telling was telephoned into the Piemburg police station. The only consolation the Kommandant could find was that Miss Hazelstone had not added to his problems by communicating with her lawyer or with newspapers outside his province.

'She's a cunning old devil,' he told Luitenant Verkramp, and was alarmed to note in himself a return of the admiration he had previously felt for her.

'I wouldn't worry about the old bag, she'll probably turn up at the trial,' Verkramp answered optimistically. His fall had not, the Kommandant noted, deprived the Luitenant of his capacity to say things calculated to upset his commanding officer.

'If you're so bloody clever, where do you suggest we start looking for her?' the Kommandant growled.

'Probably sitting in Jacaranda House laughing to herself,' and Verkramp took himself off to compile a list of black cooks known to favour Chicken Maryland.

'Sarcastic bastard,' muttered the Kommandant. 'One of these days somebody will fix him properly.'

It was in fact Konstabel Els whose initiative led to the capture of Miss Hazelstone. Ever since his battle with the Dobermann, Els had been regretting his decision to leave the body lying on the lawn of Jacaranda House.

'I should have had it stuffed. It would look nice in the hall,' he said to the Kommandant during an idle moment.

'I should have thought it had been stuffed enough already,' the Kommandant had replied. 'Besides, whoever heard of having a dog stuffed.'

'There are lots of stuffed lions and wart-hogs and things in the hall of Jacaranda House. Why shouldn't I have a stuffed dog in my hall?'

'You're getting ideas above your station,' the Kommandant said. Els had gone off to ask the warder in Bottom about getting dogs stuffed. The old man seemed to know about things like that.

'You want to take it to a taxidermist,' the warder told him. 'There's one in the museum but I'd ask for a quote first. Stuffing's a costly business.'

'I don't mind spending a bit of money on it,' Els said and together they went to ask the Bishop about the dog.

'I believe it had a pedigree,' the Bishop told them.

'What's a pedigree?' Els asked.

'A family tree,' said the Bishop, wondering if killing the dog was going to be added to the list of crimes he was supposed to have committed.

'Fussy sort of dog, having a family tree,' Els said to the warder. 'You'd think it would pee against lamp-posts like any other dogs.'

'Spoilt if you ask me,' said the warder. 'Sounds more like a lapdog than a real Dobermann. I'm not surprised you could kill it so easily. Probably died of fright.'

'It bloody well didn't. It fought like mad. Fiercest dog I ever saw,' said Els, annoyed.

'I'll believe it when I see it,' said the warder and Els had promptly made up his mind to fetch the Dobermann to get rid of the slur on his honour.

'Permission to visit Jacaranda House,' he said to the Kommandant, later that day.

'Permission to do what?' the Kommandant asked incredulously.

'To go up to Jacaranda House. I want to get that dog's body.'

'You must be out of your mind, Els,' said the Kommandant. 'I should have thought you'd had enough of that bloody place by now.'

'It's not a bad place,' said Els whose own memories of the Park were quite different from those of the Kommandant.

'It's a bloody awful place, and you've done enough harm up there already,' said the Kommandant. 'You keep your nose out of it, do you hear me?' and Els had vented his anger by bullying some black convicts in the prison yard.

That evening Kommandant van Heerden decided to make a spot check on the road blocks around Piemburg. He was beginning to suspect that his enforced absence from the outside world was having a bad effect on the morale of his men, and since he thought it improbable that Miss Hazelstone would be out and about at eleven o'clock at night, and wouldn't be able to see him in the police car if she were, he decided to make his rounds when it seemed most likely his men would be asleep on the job.

'Drive slowly,' he told Els when he was seated in the back of the car. 'I just want to have a look around.' For an hour men on duty at street corners and at the road blocks were harassed by van Heerden's questions.

'How do you know she didn't come through here disguised as a coon?' he asked the sergeant on duty on the Vlockfontein road who had been complaining about the numbers of cars he had had to search.

'We've checked them all, sir,' said the sergeant.

'Checked them? How have you checked them?'

'We give them the skin test, sir.'

'The skin test? Never heard of it.'

'We use a bit of sandpaper, sir. Rub their skin with it and if the black comes off they're white. If it doesn't they're not.'

Kommandant van Heerden was impressed. 'Shows initiative, Sergeant,' he said and they drove on.

It was shortly after this and as they were driving up Town Hill to inspect the road block there that Konstabel Els noticed that the Kommandant had fallen asleep.

'It's only the old man making his rounds,' Els told the Konstabel on duty, and was about to turn round and return to the prison when he realized that they were quite close to Jacaranda Park. He looked over his shoulder and regarded the sleeping figure in the back of the car.

'Permission to go up to Jacaranda House, sir,' he said softly. In the back the Kommandant was snoring loudly. 'Thank you, sir.' said Els with a smile and the car moved off past the road block and up the hill to Jacaranda House. On either side of the road the headlights illuminated the billboards which stood like advertisements for macabre holiday resorts: Bubonic Plague, some sinister beach and Rabies, a game reserve. Unaware of his destination, Kommandant van Heerden slept noisily in the back as the car passed through the gate of Jacaranda House, and with a crunch of tyres on gravel, moved slowly down the long drive.-

Els parked the car in front of the house and stepped quietly out into the night to collect his trophy. It was dark and clouds obscured the moon, and he had some difficulty finding the Dobermann's corpse.

'That's funny,' he said to himself, as he searched the lawn. 'I could have sworn I left the bugger here,' and continued to look for the beast.

In the back of the car Kommandant van Heerden snored more loudly than ever. He slipped sideways across the seat and bumped his head on the window. The next moment he was wide awake and staring out into the darkness.

'Els,' he said loudly, 'what have you stopped for and why are the headlights off?' From the driver's seat there came no comforting reply and as Kommandant van Heerden sat terrified in the back of the car and wondered where the hell Els had got to, the cloud slipped gently from the moon, and the Kommandant saw before him the front door of Jacaranda House. With a whimper the Kommandant crouched down in the cushions and cursed his own foolishness for leaving the prison. Above him the facade of the great house loomed threateningly, its unlighted windows dark with menace. Moaning with terror, the Kommandant opened the door and stepped on to the forecourt. A moment later he was in the driver's seat and searching for the keys. They had gone.

'I might have known the swine would do something like this,' the Kommandant gibbered and promising himself that more than the Dobermann would get himself stuffed, waited for Els to return. As the minutes passed and Els continued his search for the elusive Toby, the Kommandant's terror grew.

'I can't sit here all night,' he thought. 'I'll have to go and find him,' and he climbed out and moving stealthily stole into the garden. Around him bushes assumed strange and terrifying shapes and the moon which had proved so illuminating but a few minutes before discovered a convenient cloud to hide behind. In the darkness and not daring to shout, Kommandant van Heerden stumbled on a flowerbed and fell flat on his face. 'Dog roses,' he thought bitterly, clutching his face and as he clambered to his feet, Kommandant van Heerden's ears and eyes caught sight and sound of two things that sent his heart racing in his breast. The car's engine had started on the forecourt. Els had found the Dobermann and was departing. As the car's headlights swung round floodlighting the front of Jacaranda House, the Kommandant stood rigid in the flowerbed staring into the night sky at something far more sinister than the house itself. A faint plume of smoke was issuing slowly but steadily from one of the chimneys of the deserted mansion. Kommandant van Heerden was not alone.

Clutching his heart, the Kommandant fell back among the roses and passed out. When he came round from what he chose to call his first heart attack, it was to hear a voice he had hoped never to hear again.

'Nights of wine and roses, Kommandant?' it inquired, and as the Kommandant stared up he saw outlined against the drifting clouds the elegant figure of Miss Hazelstone. She was dressed as he had seen her first, and not, he thanked heaven, in the dreadful salmon-pink suit.

'You're not going to lie there all night, I hope,' Miss Hazelstone continued. 'Come into the house and I'll make you some coffee.'

'Don't want any coffee,' the Kommandant mumbled, disengaging himself from the rose bushes.

'You may not want it, but that's what you obviously need to sober you up. I'm not having drunken policemen stumbling about my garden ruining the flowerbeds at this time of night,' and bowing to that authority he could never resist, Kommandant van Heerden found himself once more in the drawing-room of Jacaranda House. The room was in darkness except for the lamp on a film projector which stood on a small table.

'I was just running through some old films I took, before I burn them,' Miss Hazelstone said, and the Kommandant understood the faint plume of smoke he had seen issuing from the chimney. 'I shan't be able to see them in prison, and besides I think it's better to forget the past, don't you, Kommandant?'

The Kommandant had to agree. The past was something he would have paid a fortune to forget. Unfortunately, it was all too present in his mind's eye. Trapped between his own terror and a sense of deference made all the more persuasive by the erratic beating of his heart, the Kommandant allowed himself to be seated in a low chair from which he expected never to rise, while Miss Hazelstone turned on a reading lamp.

'There's some coffee left over from supper,' Miss Hazelstone said. 'I'll have to heat it up, I'm afraid. In the normal way I would have some fresh made, but I'm rather short of home help at the moment.'

'I don't need any coffee,' the Kommandant said, and regretted his words immediately. He might have had a chance to escape if Miss Hazelstone had gone to the kitchen. Instead she looked at him doubtfully and sat down opposite him in the wing-backed armchair.

'Just as you like,' she said. 'You don't look unusually drunk. Just rather pale.'

'I'm not drunk. It's my heart,' said the Kommandant.

'In that case, coffee is the worst thing for you. It's a stimulant, you know. You should try to avoid any form of stimulation.'

'I know that,' said the Kommandant.

There was a pause, broken finally by Miss Hazelstone.

'I suppose you've finally come to arrest me,' she said. The Kommandant couldn't think of anything he would like to do more, but he didn't seem to have the energy. Mesmerized by the house and the air of gentle melancholy he found so fascinating in the old woman, he sat in his chair listening to his palpitations.

'I suppose Jonathan has confessed already,' Miss Hazelstone said by way of polite conversation. The Kommandant nodded.

'Such a waste,' Miss Hazelstone continued. 'The poor boy suffers from such a sense of guilt. I can't imagine why. I suspect it's because he had such a blameless childhood. Guilt is so often a substitute for good honest-to-goodness evil. You must find that in your profession, Kommandant.'

In his profession, the Kommandant had to agree it very often was, but he couldn't see the relevance in the case of a man who had several prison sentences behind him. He felt himself once more succumbing not only to deference but also to a sense of unease that Miss Hazelstone's conversation seemed to induce in him.

'I never suffered from the same weakness,' Miss Hazelstone continued primly. 'If anything, I had difficulty finding anything to do that wasn't depressingly good. Like the Devil, I too have felt how awful goodness is. So boring, but I daresay you don't have the same opportunity for being nauseated by it.'

'I daresay you're right,' said the Kommandant whose feeling of nausea sprang from quite different causes.

'As you must have gathered, I have done my best to bring a little gaiety into my life,' Miss Hazelstone went on. 'I write for the papers, you know.'

Kommandant van Heerden knew only too well.

'A little column every now and then on fashion and tasteful living.'

'I have read some of your articles,' said the Kommandant.

'I do hope you didn't follow my advice,' Miss Hazelstone went on. 'They were written with my tongue in my cheek, and I had great fun thinking up the most awful combinations of colours. Everybody took my recommendations seriously too. I think I can honestly say that I have made more homes un-liveable in than all the termites in South Africa.'

Kommandant van Heerden gaped at her. 'Why on earth should you want to do that?' he asked.

'A sense of moral duty,' Miss Hazelstone murmured. 'My brother has given his life to spread light and goodness, I have merely sought to redress the balance. If people choose to follow my advice to put maroon wallpaper next to orange curtains, who am I to say them nay? People who believe that having a pink skin makes them civilized, while having a black one makes a man a savage, will believe anything.'

'You mean to say you don't believe in apartheid?' the Kommandant asked in astonishment.

'Really, Kommandant, what a silly question,' Miss Hazelstone replied. 'Do I behave as though I believed in it?'

Kommandant van Heerden had to admit that she didn't.

'You can't live with a Zulu for eight years and still believe in segregation,' Miss Hazelstone went on. 'As a matter of fact, the films I have just been looking at are ones I took of Fivepence. I wonder if you would care to see one.'

Kommandant van Heerden hesitated. What he had already seen of the cook didn't dispose him to want to see any more.

'I admire your delicacy of feeling,' Miss Hazelstone said, 'but you need not hesitate. I don't in the least mind sharing my memories with you,' and she started the projector.

A moment later the Kommandant saw on a screen at the far end of the room, the object of Miss Hazelstone's passion, moving about the garden of Jacaranda House as it had been in the summer some years before. The film had been shot from the same angle and in the same corner of the garden as had its actor nearly a decade later. At first sight the Kommandant had the illusion that there had been no murder and that he had dreamt the events of the preceding days. It was an illusion that did not last. As the image of Fivepence grew larger on the screen, the Kommandant decided that he preferred the reality he had known to the fantastic scene he was now witnessing. There had, he noted, been something almost healthy about the corpse of Fivepence. Living, the Zulu cook had quite clearly been diseased.

Tall and heavily built, he cavorted about the lawn like some appalling black nymph, and paused a moment to caress the bust of Sir Theophilus before kissing it passionately upon its unresponding mouth. Then he was off again, flitting about the garden and displaying his repulsive charms in a series of swirls and flounces designed to show off his garments to their very worst advantage. He was wearing a very short crimson frock trimmed with violet; as the Kommandant might have anticipated, it was made of rubber. As Fivepence executed his last pirouette and ended his performance with a curtsy, the Kommandant understood why Miss Hazelstone had murdered him. If the film was anything to go by, he had asked for it.

The film ended and Miss Hazelstone switched off the projector. 'Well?' she said.

'I can see why you shot him,' said the Kommandant.

'You can see nothing,' Miss Hazelstone snapped. 'What you have just seen appears to your crude mind to be quite horrible. To me it is beautiful.' She paused. 'That is life, a black man pretending to be a white woman, dancing steps of a ballet he has never seen, dressed in clothes made of a material totally unsuited to a hot climate on a lawn which was imported from England, and kissing the stone face of a man who destroyed his nation, filmed by a woman who is widely regarded as the arbiter of good taste. Nothing could better express the quality of life in South Africa.'

Kommandant van Heerden was about to say that he didn't think she was very patriotic, when Miss Hazelstone stood up.

'I'll get my suitcase. I have one packed ready,' she said, and was moving towards the door when a dark shape hurtled through the french windows and threw her to the ground.

It had taken Konstabel Els some time to locate the body of the Dobermann in the darkness, and in the end he had been guided more by smell than sight to the rubbish dump behind the house where Miss Hazelstone had deposited the dog. Carrying it carefully Els went back to the car and put the body in the boot. He climbed in and started the engine, and drove slowly off thankful that the Kommandant had not woken. It wasn't until he had got halfway down the hill into town that the absence of snores from the back led him to realize that he had been mistaken.

With a curse he turned the car and headed back to the Park. He stopped in the drive and looked about. Kommandant van Heerden was nowhere to be seen. Els left the car and walked round the house and found himself looking into the lighted drawing-room where the Kommandant and Miss Hazelstone were talking. In the darkness Els wondered what the hell was going on. 'The sly old devil,' he thought to himself at last. 'No wonder he wouldn't give me permission to come up here,' and Els began to think he understood how it was that the Kommandant should be sitting chatting in a very friendly way with a woman who had a reward on her head. He knew now why the Kommandant had been so eager to pin the murder of Fivepence on Jonathan Hazelstone.

'The old sod's courting her,' he thought, and a new respect for the Kommandant grew in Konstabel Els' mind. His own courtships were always accompanied by threats of violence or blackmail and it seemed obvious that the Kommandant, whose own lack of charm almost equalled that of Els, would have to employ pretty drastic methods to make himself at all attractive to a woman of Miss Hazelstone's wealth and social standing.

'He goes and arrests her brother for murder, and then puts a price on the old bag's head. What a way to get a dowry,' Els exclaimed, and immediately thought how he could forestall the plan. With a rush he was across the lawn and into the room. As he hurled himself on the Kommandant's fiancée he yelled, 'I claim the reward. I captured her,' and from the floor looked up and wondered why the Kommandant was looking so relieved.