Riotous Assembly (10 page)

Kommandant van Heerden smiled. “Sometimes listening to you, Miss Hazelstone, I fancy
there’s something wrong with my ears too, but I don’t go around with a rubber bathing-cap on
all the time.”

“Nor does Jonathan.”

“No? Well then perhaps you’ll explain how it came about that when he was brought before
me this morning, he was still wearing it. Your brother evidently likes wearing rubber
things.”

“He probably forgot to take it off,” Miss Hazelstone said, “He’s very absent-minded
you know. He’s always forgetting where he’s left things.”

“So I’ve noticed,” said the Kommandant. He paused and leant back in the chair
expansively. “The pattern of the case seems to go like this. Your brother comes home from
Rhodesia, probably because things got too hot for him up there.”

“Nonsense,” interrupted Miss Hazelstone. “Barotseland does get very hot, I know, but
Jonathan’s used to the heat.”

“You can say that again,” said the Kommandant. “Well, whatever the reason, he comes
home. He brings with him all the rubber clothes he’s so fond of and he starts trying to
seduce your Zulu cook.”

“What utter rubbish,” said Miss Hazelstone. “Jonathan wouldn’t dream of any such thing.
You’re forgetting that he is a bishop.”

The Kommandant wasn’t forgetting anything of the sort since he had never known it.

“That’s maybe what he has told you,” he said. “Our information is that he is a
convicted criminal. There is a file on him down at the station. Luitenant Verkramp has the
details.”

“But this is insane. Jonathan is the Bishop of Barotseland.”

“Probably his alias,” said the Kommandant. “Right. We’ve got to the part where he tries
to make Fivepence. The cook objects and runs out on to the lawn, and your brother shoots him
down.”

“You’re mad,” Miss Hazelstone shouted and stood up. “You’re quite mad. My brother was in
the swimming-bath when I shot Fivepence. He came running when he heard the shot and tried to
administer the last rites.”

“Last rites is one way of putting it,” said the Kommandant. “And I suppose that’s how he
got blood all over himself?”

“Exactly.”

“And you honestly expect me to believe that a nice old lady like you shot your cook,
and that your brother whom I find dead drunk on a bed, naked and covered with blood, is a
bishop and had nothing to do with the killing? Really Miss Hazelstone, you must take me
for an idiot.”

“I do,” said Miss Hazelstone simply.

“And another thing,” the Kommandant continued hurriedly, “some maniac shot down
twenty-one of my men yesterday afternoon up at the gate to the Park. Now you’re not
going to try to tell me that you murdered them too, are you?”

“If the wish were father to the thought, yes,” said Miss Hazelstone.

Kommandant van Heerden smiled. “It’s not, I’m afraid. I wish I could hush this whole case
up and if it were simply the death of your cook, I daresay it would be possible, but there
is nothing I can do now. Justice must run its course.”

He swung his chair round and faced the bookshelves. He was feeling quite pleased with
himself. Everything had sorted itself out in his own mind and he had no doubt that he
would be able to convince the State Attorney. Kommandant van Heerden’s career had been
saved. Behind him Miss Hazelstone acted promptly. Seizing both the opportunity
provided by the back of the Kommandant’s head, and the brass paperweight, she brought the
two together with as much strength as she could muster. The Kommandant slumped to the
floor.

Miss Hazelstone stepped nimbly across to the door. “The Kommandant has had a stroke,”
she said to the two konstabels on duty there. “Help me take him up to his bedroom,” and she
led the way upstairs. When the two konstabels had deposited Kommandant van Heerden on
the bed in the blue bedroom, she sent them downstairs to ring the hospital for an
ambulance and the two men, accustomed to obeying orders without question, dashed down
the corridor and told Sergeant de Kock. As soon as they had gone Miss Hazelstone stepped to
the door of the bedroom and whistled. A Dobermann Pinscher that had been asleep on the rug
in the drawing-room heard the whistle and left its sanctuary. Silently it climbed the
stairs and loped down the passage to its mistress.

By the time Sergeant de Kock had telephoned Piemburg Hospital and had arranged for an
ambulance to be sent up to the house, a call which necessitated explaining to the
telephonist that Kommandant van Heerden was white and didn’t need a non-European
ambulance, it was clear that van Heerden’s condition had taken a turn for the worse.

The Sergeant found Miss Hazelstone waiting for him at the end of the passage. She stood
demurely and with that air of melancholy the Kommandant had so much admired the day
before, and in her hands she held something that was decidedly melancholy and not in the
least demure. It was not the size of the elephant gun and it quite clearly couldn’t
incapacitate a charging elephant at a thousand yards, but in its own small way it was
suited to the purpose Miss Hazelstone very clearly had in mind.

“That’s right,” she said as the Sergeant stopped on the landing. “Stand quite still and you
won’t get hurt. This is a scatter gun and if you want to find out how many cartridges the
magazine holds I suggest you try to rush me. You’ll need a lot of men.” Beside her the great
Dobermann growled encouragingly. It had obviously had enough of policemen to last it
a lifetime. On the landing Sergeant de Kock stood very still. It was obvious from the tone
of Miss Hazelstone’s voice that whatever the capabilities of the scatter gun, she was
not in the habit of repeating herself.

“That’s right,” she continued as the Sergeant stared at her. “Have a good look and while
you’re about it have a good look at the weapons on the walls. They are all in working order
and I have enough ammunition in my bedroom to last me quite some time.” She paused, and the
Sergeant obediently looked at the guns. “Now then, you trot off downstairs and don’t
attempt to come up again. Toby will tell me if you do.” The dog growled again knowingly.
“And when you get down there,” she went on, “you are to release my brother. I shall give you
ten minutes and then I shall expect to see him walk up the drive freely and without let or
hindrance. If not I shall shoot Kommandant van Heerden. If you have any doubts about my
ability to kill I suggest you look at the gum trees in the garden. I think you’ll find the
evidence you need there.” Sergeant de Kock needed no such evidence. He felt sure she could
kill. “Good, it seems you understand me. Now I will remain in intercourse with
Kommandant van Heerden until I receive a telephone call from my brother in
Barotseland. When I receive that call I will release the Kommandant. If I hear nothing
from Jonathan within forty-eight hours I will release the Kommandant dead. Do you
understand me?”

The Sergeant nodded.

“Now then, get out.”

Sergeant de Kock dashed downstairs and as he went Miss Hazelstone fired one shot by way of
warning down the passage. Its results justified every expectation the Sergeant had
entertained about the gun’s lethal capacity. Sixty-four large holes appeared suddenly
in the bathroom door.

Miss Hazelstone surveyed the holes with satisfaction and went back into the bedroom.
Then having fastened the Kommandant by his wrists to the head of the bed with the
handcuffs he had noted in the chest of drawers, she walked quietly along the corridor.
Five minutes later she had collected a small arsenal from the walls and had erected two
formidable barricades which would stop any attempt to rush her long enough for her to start
using the scatter gun and other assorted weapons she had piled outside the bedroom door.
Finally and for good measure she dragged several mattresses and a chaise-longue down
the passage and built herself a bullet-proof barricade.

When she had finished, she surveyed her handiwork and smiled. “I don’t think we’re
likely to be disturbed just yet, Toby,” she said to the Dobermann which had climbed on to
the chaise-longue, and patting the dog on the head she went into the bedroom and began to
undress Kommandant van Heerden.

Downstairs Konstabel Els was having a heated argument with Sergeant de Kock.

“I tell you,” he kept shouting. “I’m no more like a flaming bishop than-”

“Than he is?” suggested the Sergeant, pointing at the manacled figure of Jonathan. “He
doesn’t look like a bishop either.”

Konstabel Els had to admit that this was true. “I don’t care. I’m still not going to
walk down the drive dressed up in his clothes. She’d spot me a mile off.”

“So what? She’s only an old woman. She couldn’t shoot straight if she tried,” said the
Sergeant.

“Are you mad?” Els shouted. “I’ve seen what that old bird can do with a gun. Why she blew
that Zulu cook of hers to pieces without batting an eyelid. I should know. I had to pick
the bugger up.”

“Listen to me, Els,” said the Sergeant, “she won’t have time to take a pot shot at you.
She’ll go to the window to have a look and-”

“And the next moment I’ll be scattered in little bits over half the fucking Park. No
thank you. If anyone has to pick the bits up afterwards, I’ll pick up yours. I’ve had more
experience.”

“If you would let me finish,” said the Sergeant. “As soon as she goes to the window, we’ll
rush her down the passage. She won’t have time to take a shot at you.”

“In that case, why not make him walk down the drive?” asked Els. “I’ll keep him covered,
and as soon as you’ve got his sister, we’ll take him in again.”

Sergeant de Kock wasn’t to be persuaded. “That sod’s killed twenty-one men already. I
wouldn’t let him out of those handcuffs if you paid me,” he said.

Konstabel Els had an answer to that one, but he decided not to use it.

“What’s going to be happening to the Kommandant while all this is going on?” he asked.
“She’ll kill him for sure.”

“Good riddance,” said the Sergeant. “He got himself into her clutches, let him get
himself out.”

“In that case, why don’t we just sit tight and starve the old bag out?”

Sergeant de Kock smiled. “The Kommandant will be pleased when he hears you wanted to let
her knock him off. Now then, stop messing about and get into his clothes.”

Konstabel Els realized his mistake. Without Kommandant van Heerden’s
incompetence he was likely to have to answer a charge of killing twenty-one fellow
officers. Els decided he had better see to it that the old man didn’t get killed after
all. He didn’t want an efficient officer taking his place. He started to put on the
Bishop’s clothes.

Upstairs Miss Hazelstone had been having almost as much difficulty getting
Kommandant van Heerden out of his clothes as the Sergeant was in getting Els to put on the
Bishop’s. It wasn’t that he put up any resistance, but his bulk and unconscious lack of
cooperation hardly helped. When he was finally naked, she went to the wardrobe and picked
out a pink rubber nightdress with a matching hood and squeezed him into them. She was just
putting the finishing touches to her own ensemble when she heard a movement on the bed.
Kommandant van Heerden was coming round.

In the days to come the Kommandant was wont to say that it was this fresh and
horrifying experience which had led to the trouble with his heart. As he regained
consciousness, the first thought to enter the disordered labyrinth of his mind was that he
would never touch a drop again. Nothing less than a bottle of Old Rhino Skin could account
for the pain in his head and the horrible sensation of something hot and sticky and tight
adhering to his face. It was even worse when he opened his eyes. He had evidently gone down
with the DTs or perhaps the fever he had suspected in the night had finally struck him
down delirious. He shut his eyes and tried to work out what was wrong. His arms appeared to
be tied to something above his head and his body dressed in something very tight and
elastic. He tried to open his mouth to speak but some horrible stuff prevented a sound
coming out. Unable to move or to speak he lifted his head and peered at the apparition
that sat down on the bed beside him.

It appeared to be an elderly man with unspeakable feminine characteristics and it
was dressed in a double-breasted suit of salmon-pink rubber with a yellow pinstripe. As
if that wasn’t bad enough it had on a shirt of off-white latex and a mauve rubber tie
complete with polka dots. For a moment the Kommandant gaped at the creature and was
horrified to see it leer at him. The Kommandant shut his eyes and tried to conjure the
apparition away by thinking about the pain in his head, but when he opened them again it was
still there, leering for all it was worth. Kommandant van Heerden couldn’t remember when
last he had been leered at by an elderly gent but he knew that it must have been a long time
since and certainly when and if it had last happened, it had not produced anything like
the degree of aversion he felt now. He was shutting his eyes for the second time when he
opened them again hurriedly and in horror. A hand had settled gently on his knee and was
beginning to tickle his thigh. In his revulsion from its touch the Kommandant jerked his
legs into the air and for the first time caught a glimpse of what he was wearing and
realized what he was not. He was wearing a pink rubber nightdress with frills along the
bottom. The Kommandant shuddered and, aware that he had left himself open by his seizure
to whatever depredations the ghastly old man had in mind, he straightened his legs
abruptly and vowed that no temptation would make him open them again. The apparition
continued to leer and to tickle, and the Kommandant turned his head hurriedly away from
the leer and faced the wall.

Directly in front of his face was a small table and on it lay something which made the
leer seem preferable if not actually alluring, and which forced the Kommandant into an
attempt to scream. He opened his mouth, but nothing like a scream came out. Instead he
sucked in a mouthful of thin rubber which immediately popped out again and left him
gasping and he was just recovering from the attempt when a growl from the passage
attracted the old man’s attention. He rose from the bed, picked up a gun and went to the
door.

Kommandant van Heerden seized the opportunity to try to break loose from the bed. He
bounced and thrashed, oblivious of the pain in his head, and as he thrashed he saw the barrel
of the gun point round the door at him. In the face of its menace he lay still and tried to
forget what he had seen lying ready for use on the table by the bed. It was a hypodermic
syringe and an ampoule marked “Novocaine”.

 The difficulties which from the word go had been attendant on getting
Konstabel Els into the Bishop’s clothes, had not been lessened by the discovery that
they were not quite his size. The jacket was still the greatcoat it had been the night
before, and the trousers made him look like a seal. They made his plan to run down the drive
utterly impracticable. It was not a plan he had mentioned to the Sergeant who, he felt,
would take it amiss, but now that he had flippers where his boots should have been, running
was definitely out. At this rate he would be lucky to waddle let alone run, and Els who had
once been privileged to shoot a kaffir with a wooden leg knew that waddling targets were
as good as dead ones. It was at this point that Els had his second attack of rabies.

It was as ineffectual as his first, and after he had got himself severely kicked for
biting Sergeant de Kock in the ankle, and had loosened several teeth by champing on a
wrought-iron table leg he had mistaken for wood, he gave up the attempt at deception and
was shepherded outside to begin his imitation of a bishop.

“Do it half as well as you do a dog with rabies and they’ll make you an archbishop, Els,”
said the Sergeant giving him a shove which sent him on his way. As the Sergeant and his men
climbed stealthily to the top of the stairs, Els flapped off miserably on what he knew was
to be his last walk. His hat was too large for him and made it difficult to see where he was
going and when he did try to run he only succeeded in falling flat on his face. He gave up
the attempt as more likely to lead to dire consequences than the waddle. Behind him he
heard a konstabel snigger. Els felt aggrieved. He knew that he must look like a large black
duck. He was certain he would soon be a dead one.

 Warned by the Dobermann’s growl Miss Hazelstone peered down the corridor and
listened to the boots creaking on the stairs. Behind her the Kommandant, evidently in
ecstasy at the thought of the pleasures that lay ahead of him, thrashed wildly on the bed.
She pointed the gun round the door at him and the anticipatory wriggles ceased abruptly.
A voice from the stairs shouted, “He’s on his way. The Bishop is going down the drive
now.”

“I’ll just go and have a look,” Miss Hazelstone shouted back, and stayed where she
was.

It was doubtful who was most astonished by what followed. Certainly Sergeant de Kock
was amazed to find himself in the land of the living after Miss Hazelstone had fired her
first volley as the assault force tried to breast her first barricade. He wasn’t to know
that she had fired high less to avoid casualties than to preserve her defences. This time
sixty-four large holes appeared in the ceiling and the corridor was filled with a fine
fog of powdered plaster. Under cover of this smokescreen the Sergeant and his men fell
back thankfully and gathered among the potted plants in the hall.

Miss Hazelstone on the other hand surveyed her handiwork for a moment with
satisfaction, and then went back to the bedroom window to watch whatever it was that was
trying to run up the drive.

That it was nothing like her brother was obvious at first glance. With the enormous hat
wedged down over his ears preventing him from seeing where he was heading and with the
trouser bottoms splaying out behind him with each step he took, Els hopped across the Park.
Miss Hazelstone burst out laughing and hearing the laughter Konstabel Els redoubled his
efforts to win the sack race. As Miss Hazelstone fired, he fell on his face
involuntarily. He need not have bothered. Miss Hazelstone was laughing too much to aim
straight. Her bullets crashed through the leaves of a tree some distance from him and merely
wounded a large and well-fed vulture that had been digesting its breakfast there. As it
fluttered to the ground near him and belched, Konstabel Els lying helpless on the grass
looked at it speculatively. He could see nothing in the world to laugh at.

Kommandant van Heerden felt the same way about the laughter. It bore too many of the
hallmarks of the expert in refined living to leave him in any doubt who the creature in
the salmon-pink suit was. Nobody else of his acquaintance laughed like that, shot like that
or had such a marked propensity for administering intramuscular injections of
novocaine.

Miss Hazelstone returned to her seat on the bed and picked up the hypodermic. “You
won’t feel anything,” she said inserting the ampoule. “Not a thing.”

“I know I won’t,” shouted the Kommandant inside the rubber hood. “That’s what’s
bothering me,” but Miss Hazelstone didn’t hear him. The grunts and muffled screams that
came out of the hood were quite indistinguishable as words.

“Just a little prick to begin with,” said Miss Hazelstone soothingly. She lifted the
skirt of his nightdress and the Kommandant tried to make it even smaller. Eyeing the
needle he found was the best way of maintaining his flaccidity, and he concentrated on
it with grim determination.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” said Miss Hazelstone after a moment’s
speculation and evidently thinking at cross-purposes to the Kommandant.

Inside the hood the Kommandant continued his attempt to explain that he wasn’t
afflicted with the same complaint as the Zulu cook.

“It’s just the opposite with me,” he yelled. “I take hours and hours.”

“You are a shy man,” said Miss Hazelstone, and thought for a moment. “Perhaps you would
find a little whipping helpful. Some men do, you know,” and she got up from the bed and
rummaged in the wardrobe, emerging at last with a particularly horrid-looking riding
crop.

“No I wouldn’t,” yelled the Kommandant. “I wouldn’t find it helpful at all.”

“Yes or no?” said Miss Hazelstone as the muffled cries subsided. “Nod for yes, shake
your head for no.”

Kommandant van Heerden shook his head as hard as he could.

“Not your cup of tea, eh?” said Miss Hazelstone. “Well then, how about some nasty
pictures.” This time she fetched a folder from the wardrobe and the Kommandant found
himself gazing fascinated at photographs that had evidently been taken by some
lunatic with a taste for contortionists and dwarfs.

“Take the disgusting things away,” he yelled as she pressed an exceptionally perverse
one on his attention.

“You like that one, do you?” Miss Hazelstone asked. “It’s a position Fivepence was
particularly fond of. I’ll see if I can get you in the right position.”

“No, I don’t,” the Kommandant screamed. “I loathe it. It’s revolting.” But before he
could shake his head to indicate his desire not to have his back broken, Miss Hazelstone
had seized the hood with one hand and one of his legs with the other, and was trying to bring
them together. With a desperate heave he broke loose and sent her spinning across the
room.

 Out in the Park, Els had recovered his composure. Once he had established that
he was not about to become part of the vulture’s daily intake of protein, Els decided
that his impersonation of the Bishop had gone on long enough. He got up and hobbled to a
tree and rid himself of the ridiculous trousers. Then clad in his vest and pants he returned
to the house, and found Sergeant de Kock covered in white dust and suffering from shock.

 “I don’t know what to do,” the Sergeant said. “She’s got barricades up and nothing
will get past them.”

“I know something that will,” said Els. “Where’s that elephant gun?”

“You’re not using that fucking thing,” Sergeant de Kock told him. “You’ll bring the whole
building down round our ears, and besides it’s evidence.”