The Blood of an Englishman (13 page)

“Left her with us, you see. I had to feed, house and maintain her, put up with her whining, listen to her eternal stories about her golden-haired boy. The most abominable woman.”

“I see, and—”

“Well, you don’t think he’d have honored us with this visit had she still been alive, do you?” Digby-Smith laughed then, but his laughter was completely silent. “Always a chap to look after his end of things is Brother Edward.”

“
Was
Brother Edward,” Kramer corrected him.

For upwards of a minute, Digby-Smith stared straight back over his desk, not moving a muscle. Kramer held the stare, trying to see in beyond the cool, calm facade confronting him; never before had he conducted an interview quite like this one.

“You must think it odd.…” began Digby-Smith.

“What, sir?”

“That I have spoken to you so frankly. You should perhaps be made aware that my opinion of Edward Hookham has never been a secret. I have made it known to him personally on several occasions, just as he has informed me of what a dull, stuffy, wet and thoroughly gutless specimen I am. I may yet, of course, come to moderate my views somewhat, to feel a
degree of remorse, to even enumerate his undoubted virtues as a self-made man—who knows? But not until I have finally convinced myself.”

“Convinced yourself of what, Mr. Digby-Smith?”

“Why, that he’s well and truly dead, of course!”

It wasn’t an easy line to follow. Kramer stood up, took the man’s glass over to the liquor cabinet for a refill, and returned it to him without speaking. Then he gave the big globe of the world a spin, and tried to pick out the area of England called Hampshire.

Digby-Smith came round to stand beside him. “Ah, I see what you’re at! Take a line directly just to the east of it—yes, about there. A lovely thing, a globe.”

“True,” said Kramer. “And the fact of the matter is, sir, that your brother-in-law has departed this one forever. I would now like to hear about the last three weeks, dating back to his time of arrival.”

“He came, he saw, he didn’t care much for it.”

“Pardon?”

“Things here had either changed too much or they hadn’t changed enough,” said Digby-Smith, adopting his icy, nonchalant manner again. “But shall we leave out the politics? Lillian—my wife, y’know—tried to find things to amuse him. The trip to Hluhluwe Game Reserve was a partial success, in that he managed to capture on film the rare sight of a rhinoceros mating, but otherwise our idea of entertainment seldom seemed to suit him. Then again, how does one entertain a man whose wife has just died? Hardly with bawdy song and dancing girls.”

“Ja, I see the problem,” said Kramer, wondering how soon the tense would switch from the past to the present again. “You reckon he was quite upset then?”

“Liked to go off on his own, moped a good deal, was liable to bite one’s head off for practically nothing. Neither of us had seen him for ages, of course, but yes, I think it would be fair
to say that at least some of his behavior can be attributed to his recent bereavement.”

“And last night? Do you know where he went?”

Digby-Smith returned to his chair. “Not the faintest idea—neither has Lillian. It’s almost become a regular routine in this house: he disappears after dinner, comes back at an unearthly hour, and the servants are under instructions to allow him to sleep in the following morning. Come to think of it, the only evening I’ve actually known his whereabouts was at the start of last week, when I suggested he might like to gate-crash the flying club’s monthly social.”

“You’re saying that was your idea, sir?”

“Entirely,” said Digby-Smith, lighting a cigarette without thinking to offer one first. “It seemed to buck him up a bit. I thought it might—birds of a feather, y’know! Wings?”

“Ah, very apt,” Kramer replied, finding a half-smile. “It bucked him up in what way?”

“Became livelier, more attentive to our idle conversation. Oh, it lasted until last Saturday, when the paper arrived with that tale about that swine Bradshaw—no doubt up to his devious tricks again, and somebody with enough decency and nerve tried to put an end to it. Damned shame they missed.”

“You’ve had dealings with Mr. Bradshaw?”

“Dealings singular,” said Digby-Smith, bitterly. “I thought it might be amusing to put one of my small creations on the market, just to see what sort of price it could fetch, and he swindled me completely.”

Kramer looked across at the little ships. “So those are your handiwork, hey? I’m impressed. Where did you learn how to do it, sir? Were you in the navy?”

“I regret to say I have never served in any of the armed services, old chap; Royal, Republican or otherwise.”

“Really? You were saying—”

“Black-outs, y’know; don’t remember a damned thing.”

“Shame, hey? This newspaper report.… Did Mr. Hookham have some reaction to it?”

“Fright,” said Digby-Smith, twisting his thin smile.

“He looked scared, you mean?”

“Shook like a leaf and we had to ask him what the matter was. Told us he’d only just met the chap, former RAF type and so on. Lillian disagrees with me, mark you. She says our little hero looked absolutely furious at the thought that an old comrade-in-arms had been attacked in such a cowardly fashion. Again, in an effort to be fair, his reaction probably lay somewhere between those two extremes—shall we say he was merely startled?”

Kramer nodded. “Ja, maybe we’d better, sir—unless you can suggest a reason for it frightening him. Without there being more of a connection between him and Bradshaw, why the hell should it?” Then he gazed intently at Rupert Digby-Smith, who appeared as glassy smooth and suave as ever on the surface, yet seemed to have all manner of tempestuous things bottled up inside him.

“Maybe that was a big mistake,” Mama Bhengu confided in a mumble, having second thoughts as she watched Missy Madam lead a swaggering youth with one eye into the middle cubicle. “Maybe I should have said to him, ‘No! You choose another girl!’ You can plainly see he isn’t a house boy, so for him to—well, he could be not straight in the head. He could have strange practices.…”

“He could just have a lust for young girls before they become proper women,” sniffed one of her nieces, whose own charms were bountiful. “
She
is not a woman that one. Where are her breasts?”

“Such jealousy.…” murmured Zondi.

Mama Bhengu laid a hand on his arm. “You will stay five minutes more, Michael Zondi?”

“Why sound so worried, Mama? You know how to handle these guys if they get rough.”

“You have not finished your questions. Look, Gertrude has just come out.” She beckoned to the slut. “Here, Gertrude, the detective sergeant wants to ask you something.”

Gertrude, a dull-skinned, sour-faced frump, whose one redeeming feature was that she didn’t mind lying with dirty old men and other undesirables like Jiji Govender, slopped over, buttoning up her blouse.

“What is it?” she whined. “I have not done any—”

“Just look at that and tell me if it means anything to you,” said Zondi, pointing to the table in front of him.

The prepuce-cover still lay there on its side. Once such an object was all that a Zulu needed to wear to consider himself fully dressed, and although modern society demanded rather more of him, the traditions of encasing one’s foreskin in this fashion persisted beneath even some quite sophisticated trousers. Not that anyone bothered to have it woven out of palm leaves any longer, when various sizes were available cheap and ready-made at most trading stores.

“Um-ncedo,” said Gertrude, like a child in class.

“That is its name,” agreed Zondi. “Now its owner’s name?”

“Banjo Nyembezi.”

“And why?”

“Because it is the only one I have seen made in that kind of metal.”

Zondi grinned and slipped it into his pocket. Without exception, every other niece in Mama Bhengu’s house had made the same response, and so it looked very much as though Banjo Nyembezi was on his way to being restrung in the gallows room at Pretoria Central.

“Mama, I have to meet my white boss at ten,” Zondi began apologetically, “so sadly I must—”

There was a terrible whimper from the middle cubicle.

“I’m ready, Mama!” whispered Zondi, leaping to grab the curtains. “Go, Mama, go!”

Mama Bhengu moved with astonishing speed. She freed the billy-goat, swung it round in the right direction, and gave it a mighty slap on the rump. The goat charged straight through the gap in the curtains that Zondi provided for it at the very last moment, and its lowered horns caught a pair of sadistic buttocks right in the act, so to speak.

K
RAMER GLANCED AT
his watch. It was almost twenty to ten, and soon he would have to make a decision: Zondi was expecting him then, so was Jonty, while his visit to 52 Armstrong Avenue had still a few minutes to run. He clenched his teeth on another boiled-cabbage burp and took a final look at the diary he had found in the drawer beside Bonzo Hookham’s bed.

The entries were no more than jottings, not literary efforts but appropriate to the nature of the diary itself, which was the sort businessmen carry to remind them of appointments. The nearest it came to having any character was when Hookham had apparently added a comment or two in brackets when checking what lay in store for him the next day.

Kramer pondered this parenthetical aside, skipped the pages covering Hookham’s stay in the game reserve, and stopped at an entry made soon after his return.

There were other entries to follow, many detailing appointments Hookham would now never keep, but his habit of adding comments ended at that point. It was as though a man who’d been living inside himself a lot, talking to himself and comforting himself, had suddenly turned outwards on the world again. To check his theory, Kramer leafed back through the pages for April and May, and found that Hookham had used brackets only very occasionally. One entry stood out from all the others.

Such had been Hookham’s agitation that he’d not closed the brackets again, and like the entry for November the 18th, his handwriting showed evidence of heavy drinking. Kramer shut the diary with a snap.

“What have you got there?” asked Digby-Smith, coming into the guest bedroom. “Don’t tell me Edward kept a diary!”

“Do I need to?” said Kramer, with a flash of insight into Digby-Smith’s earlier remarks about the beneficial effects of the flying club social. “Businessmen like Mr. Hookham surely get in the way of writing down lunch dates et cetera?”

“Oh, is that all it’s got in it?”

“Have a look if you like, sir.”

Digby-Smith flicked through the diary in a too-uninterested way. “Hmmm, not very inspired, I must say. More importantly, have you managed to get anything useful from it? Apart from the fact he took to consorting with lower forms of canine life in the late afternoon?”

“Ach, you could say I’ve built up a better picture of the deceased, sir—attitudes, things like that.”

Digby-Smith colored very slightly. “But no riveting clues?”

“Only one,” said Kramer, taking the diary and going back to November the 10th. “Or should I say, only one reference that doesn’t explain itself. Can you suggest who this ‘A.K.’ person is?”

After looking at the initials, Digby-Smith cross-checked them with a list of names that he and his wife had been compiling in her bedroom. “We’ve included here every single friend or acquaintance of his that comes to mind, but I’m afraid if it’s an A.K. you want, you’re out of luck. Perhaps something will occur to us overnight, but my good lady has had quite enough of this for one day, and I’m becoming a trifle worn out myself.” He handed over the list and glanced meaningfully at the door. “But naturally, if you feel this extremely long interview could be prolonged even longer to your advantage, then—”

“I’m just on my way, sir,” said Kramer, pocketing the list and picking up a small suitcase. “I’m taking various papers, his shoes, odds and ends for our laboratory—there’s a receipt on the dressing table. Oh, and this diary as well.”

“Excellent. Shall I show you the way down?”

Kramer waited until they had reached the front door of the house before putting his final question for the night. “About this phone call for Mr. Hookham, the one when the bloke spoke with a funny accent.…”

“Yes, I answered that not last night but the night before, just as I’ve already said at least three times.”

“The exact words again, please?”

Digby-Smith glared. “Good God, you’re not trying to trip me up, are you, officer? Anyway, a half-witted child could get it off pat! He said, ‘Can I speak to Bonzo Hookman, please?’ I said, ‘No, he’s out, I’m afraid, and I don’t know where.’ Then he said, ‘Will he be there in the morning?’ To which my reply was, ‘You are sure to get him then, but don’t ring before eleven as we generally allow him to sleep in.’ He said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, just say it was an old school-friend who wanted to surprise him—no, better say nothing, or that will spoil it.’ My answer to that was, ‘Very well, I won’t, good night.’ ‘Good night,’ he said.”