The Gooseberry Fool (9 page)

“Hard on him?”

“Terrible. Nag, nag, nag. Every time their servants did anything she’d want him back to threaten them with the sack.”

“Hell,” murmured Kramer, amused by this unwitting confession of eavesdropping.

“Oh, yes. The times I’ve taken it on myself to give him a warning buzz so he can decide whether he’ll talk to her.”

“These other girls you spoke about—they found him attractive, too?”

“Not as much as me, I suppose. You see, I thought we had a lot more in common, even if he was a bit square.”

“You must be very upset, Pat.”

“I am and I’m not. It’s a feeling like someone crying deep down inside of me.”

But she pushed away the plate with half a round still on it.

“What was I saying?”

“That Mr. Wallace was a bit square. How about triangles?”

His tone was carefully confidential, probing.

“It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was never quite sure.”

“Go on, you can tell me. It can’t hurt him now—and it just could help us if there is something, or somebody rather, behind this.”

“Well,” she said, glad to have been coaxed out of having a bad conscience, “well, I think that Mr. Wallace found himself a girlfriend six months ago.”

“Uh huh?”

“Little things a man wouldn’t notice—but I did. I saw him as he came out of the lift, you see, before he changed back into his usual self.”

“You’re bright, aren’t you? More.”

“There isn’t any.”

“Hey?”

“Anyway, he’s been very down in the dumps for two weeks now—was, I mean—so it must have ended.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

“No theories as to who it was?”

“None. Besides, he didn’t really have time.”

“Oh, come on.”

“He didn’t. He arrived at the office at eight, right? Went out for half an hour at eleven to change his library book, stayed in at lunch-time and ate from a tray the office boy fetched from the tearoom, went home at five on the dot. If I had to ring him, he’d be there by five-thirty.”

Kramer examined her face carefully, trying to detect in it a deliberate attempt to withhold information—what had started out as a promising sidelight on Mark Wallace had certainly taken a nosedive. But she passed the test.

“Which is why you weren’t sure? You couldn’t fit your feeling and the timing together?”

“I suppose so. Yes, that’s it, and why I didn’t really want to say anything.”

“Just suppose you were right, though. What would his wife have done?”

“Her? If that bitch had caught him up to something, she’d have—”

“Thanks, Miss Weston.”

It was best the girl should rush off to do her shopping without feeling her lunch hour had been wasted. There was no other justification for leading her into that final, contrived remark, cut short as it had been by shocked pseudo-realization.

For Kramer knew damn well that Mrs. Paula Wallace could no sooner rig a fatal car accident than get a fairy to stand upright on her Christmas tree. When he had started on about triangles, he had been looking for a bloke in the other apex, not a phantom floozy. Some ingenious lover boy who wanted husband Mark out of the way. Of course there could always have been another triangle—Wallace, floozy and her lawful spouse.…

“Ach, rubbish,” he said, inadvertently attracting the attention of a waiter.

“Sub?”

The point of it all eluded him. He went back to basics. Here was an ordinary accident to which he was giving the full treatment. He wanted to know something about the victim, so he had tried that fine source of office and home truths, the switchboard girl. What she had to say was vague and sentimental and probably half daydreams. Take that nonsense about Wallace changing as he stepped into his work place; it was a tired, sad little trick practiced daily by millions. All that her confidences established was that Wallace had been, in the more acceptable sense of the word, one of her gentlemen. And a dull henpecked hubby to boot. Which was, in all fairness, as much as you could expect out of a freak pileup.

Yet Kramer felt a fret of frustration and the drag of disappointment. Hell, of course! Man, he was slipping. It was McDonald’s behavior, his blatant anxiety over Pat Weston, which had set a level of expectation for the interview. It had never been reached.

He paid for his drink and sank it quickly. The logic of it was simple. Number one, as McDonald had claimed, and as Pat Weston had made plain, there was nothing between those two. Number two, this meant McDonald feared she would tell the police something about Wallace which he also knew but would keep to himself. Number three, McDonald had assumed incorrectly that Pat Weston was in possession of such information. Number four, all Kramer need do was pretend to McDonald that she had, in fact, spilled some beans, and see what happened next.

As he had done his shopping, there was no time like the present.

Zondi saw the blue Volkswagen again, quite by chance. He had traveled far into an undulating countryside, so eroded and barren it was like taking a close look at the dirt road itself. Any thorn trees had long since disappeared, and so had any grass that was good for cattle—goats were the only livestock capable of survival on the dry spikes that remained. Sure enough, he saw a few of them to begin with, and the huddles of huts from which they had wandered, but then no others beyond a forlorn trading store with a rusted hole in its rain-water tank. This was when the drive had become thoroughly monotonous, and his speed along the seldom-used byway proportionately greater. And so, through accident rather than design, he achieved what few men, however skillfully they strived, ever achieved—he hit a rising guinea fowl full-on with the nose of his car.

It happened just around a tight bend on the shoulder of a hill and the impact was considerable. A loud thud, a splatter of blood, and another thud as it bounced off the roof. He slammed on his brakes and went into a zigzag skid, finishing up a good hundred yards farther on. Cursing at the delay, he jumped out and wiped the windshield, black feathers with white polka dots confirming his split-second diagnosis.

Then he looked back up the road. The guinea fowl must have spun off into the boulders and aloes, for it was nowhere to be seen. A pity, because he would have liked to retrieve such a delectable trophy, but searching for it would take up too much time.

So he drove on again, making the gearbox howl for mercy as he wrenched the most from each ratio before shifting to the next. This occupied him for the best part of a kilometer before he thought of looking at his watch. The truth was he had made very good time. And there was the possibility that a guinea fowl would make a first-class enticement if he had to resort to bartering with Shabalala’s neighbors for a tip-off.

Yet another kilometer went by before he made up his mind to turn back. It seemed much farther than it should be, but finally the skid marks showed up on the slope ahead. He left the Anglia well off the road and began looking for the dead bird, anxious now that some passing predator had not beaten him to it. He was crouched low in the rocks, mourning a mangled, quite inedible mess, when he heard the whine of a Volkswagen engine.

And looked up to catch no more than a glimpse of NTK 4544 diving down in the direction of Jabula.

It was a touching sight. Two angels knelt before McDonald’s desk and sang loudly of a Silent Night. Their voices were sweet if their diction was terrible. Kramer paused in the doorway, highly amused.

“That’s enough. Lovely, happy Christmas,” said the embarrassed McDonald, hastily handing them each some change, which was snatched away into the engulfing bed sheets.

Then the angels, whose wings were pinned-on pages of newspaper carefully torn, tried to make their exit.

“Not so fast, you skelms,” said Kramer, barring the way. “Is that you inside there, Ephraim?”

“Hau, Boss Kramer!”

The slightly taller of the two African children pulled back his sheet and grinned up at him.

“Doing good business?”

“Lambele, lambele,” Ephraim chanted mischievously.

“Like hell you’re hungry. Go on, bugger off.”

“Christmas box, Boss Kramer?”

“Give you a kick up the arse, if that’s any good.”

The other angel fled and Ephraim spat scornfully after him.

“My cousin,” he explained. “No damn respect. I must go catch him.”

Kramer closed the door.

“You surprise me, Lieutenant. I must say, I never for a moment thought I was entertaining friends of yours.”

“Hey?”

“Just joking, you understand.”

McDonald tried a chuckle and coughed on it.

“Most people know Ephraim,” Kramer said, intrigued by the man’s agitation. “Smartest seven-year-old in Trekkersburg. Pa killed ma and we got him, but Ephraim can look after himself.”

“Certainly novel, a change from the sods making a hell of a row with guitars out of tins. Beats me, though, why coons think they’ve got to black their faces! Seem to be more of them every year, a bloody pest, get them at home as well as the office. Not that they usually get past Pat Weston. Er, is she back?”

“No,” said Kramer. “There’s some old dame at the counter.”

“Miss Godfrey? That surprises me even more; she’s a right battle-ax. Look, wouldn’t you like to take a seat?”

“Ta.”

McDonald tried to find something to arrange on his desk top, but it was bare apart from the blotter. So he took out his key ring and jangled it.

“Let’s say I know now, Mr. McDonald. Was it really worth all the fuss?”

Jangle, jangle.

“Come on, man.”

Jangle, jangle.

“Don’t play games with me or—”

“That’s what I’m interested in, Lieutenant. I mean what can you do?” McDonald said, trying to sound tough. “My brother’s a solicitor.”

“And mine is in the Special Branch.”

What a lovely fib. It put a stop to those bloody things jiggling about.

“Shall we start again, Mr. McDonald? Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Simply this: you’re going to find that there was nothing sinister about Mark’s death. He had more to drink than was good for him—and he hardly ever drank, as it was—then did something bloody silly.”

“How do you know he had been drinking?”

“I was at the Old Comrades’ Club when he came in last night.”

“Time?”

“Before nine-forty, because I had to call a client and saw him arrive. It was a surprise, as he didn’t often partake, but then it was also bloody hot.”

How well Kramer remembered that, but it was best not to lead your witness to start with.

“Uh huh.”

“In that heat, you’re not counting, are you? Just belting the stuff down, cold as it’ll come. Only takes three or four and you’re well away without realizing.”

“True.”

“To be honest, I was well away by nine, and in comes Mark, knocked out—even had a nosebleed like kids do when it’s over ninety—and before I was taking it in, he was gone.”

“Really?”

“Got myself naked up in a bit of a singsong, carols and all that, round the piano, my back to him, didn’t know if it was my own glass half the time, still no one complained, proper rave-up, forgot he was there. Yes, I feel guilty, he’d said he wanted to talk, should have seen him home, but that’s all, I’ve told you the lot.”

“Sorry, but you haven’t.”

A twanging silence. McDonald jerked as the match flame, un-watched, reached his fingers.

“Here,” said Kramer, lighting the king-size for him. “Now get back to why you didn’t want Pat Weston to tell me about it.”

Inhale and exhale, very slowly.

“Paula, Lieutenant—Paula is suffering enough. And there was nothing to his little affair, that I promise.”

“With a wife like that.…”

“That’s Pat, I knew it! Little bitch. Paula’s one of the best. Gave up a lot for Mark.”

“Uh huh?”

“Which is why it bowled me over when he told me. Came for advice, actually, and bloody well got it, silly clot; told him to pack it in, and he did, then and there. Nothing to it.”

“But why?”

I’d put it down to middle age, to the fact he’d never had the guts to speak to a strange woman in his life, let alone chat her up, then along came.…”

“And he did?”

“Huh, not in a conventional sense, not in the beginning anyway, if ever.”

“Then he just slept with her?”

“Good God, no! Never touched her; I asked.”

Kramer lit himself a cigarette and wondered if he was going mad.

“Then what’s the big deal?”

“Trust. He was breaking his trust, stepping outside the mark, taking chances on tearing Paula apart. He loved her, loved her, see?”

“Except for half an hour a day.”

“She’d picked that up, too, had she? Give Pat her due, she belongs with your brother in the SBs!”