James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“He resented the …?”

“No; for once he settled down. That was actually when the railway job came up-you know how they look after poor whites-and the first was born. A girl.”

“Ah,” said Kramer.

“And the second, also a girl. The third, Stefina told us, was a miscarriage.”

At this point, Terblanche rose and went off to fetch his fish from the front verandah. The rain drubbed harder on the roof and two more pawpaws burst and slid. Kramer switched on the kitchen light when he saw his host take out a gutting knife.

“There was a nagmaal,” the old man continued, talking now as much to himself as to anyone. “Folk came from every direction, from places you never even heard of. When we hold communion in Olifantsvlei, the minister likes to make a big thing of it-bigger than most ministers do, and I’m not sure it’s right. Anyhow, there were hundreds camping here, around the church and down by the river. You can imagine how many kids that added up to! They were the ones who began the talk.”

His knife slid into the fish’s belly rather too deep. He drew it out a little way and tried again, slitting up toward the head. He scraped the innards away.

“They told their parents and soon everyone was whispering and pointing behind Stefina’s back. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the story reached my ears, and when it did, I went straight to her. ‘Stefina, I want you to charge him,’ I said. ‘Your children are saying that their pa kneed their ma in the stomach, and this made her sit on the potty and do a baby there. Stefina,’ I said, ‘they think it was a joke, Stefina.’ ‘Leave my man alone,’ was all she said. I caught Toons not two minutes later, and he said, ‘That’s not true-why not ask my wife?’ So I looked for the kids, but Stefina had taken them away. Not a word would they say when I finally had them to myself. Nothing! You have never seen kids-or a woman-so terrified. And what could I do about it? Also nothing! Not with the minister and the magistrate and every other bugger on the opposite side!”

The fish had begun to bleed.

“They didn’t mean any harm, Tromp. They said it just couldn’t be, they didn’t believe it. Not after Toons had been making such wonderful progress! But us bloody old sinners weren’t nearly so certain, and we made sure he knew it. We told Toons to his face. We said he was lucky it was nagmaal. Huh! So life goes. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rest?”

“How much later was he found in the gangers’ hut?”

“About a fortnight. The magistrate kept all this out of the inquest for Stefina’s sake; he said it wasn’t material.”

“Suicide, Joep?” murmured Kramer, emptying the last of his beer can into the glass before him.

Terblanche crossed over to the sink and carelessly inspected the cut in his palm. The tainted water eddied pink round the plug hole, not becoming any lighter.

“Now you’re asking, my friend. When she got over the shock, Lettie always used to put it best, I think. She used to say that no man is ever safe from the higher law, and this was what Toons Rossouw had forgotten.”

“Divine justice?”

“Call it what you like,” replied Joep Terblanche. “The man was a murderer.”

The color-control knob on Dr. Strydom’s new television set had his primitive employees in fits of laughter in the living room that evening. This was as well, because the cookboy, the gardener, and the maid had slightly annoyed him by taking his magnificent acquisition almost for granted, and by being less than astounded when the screen first lit up. It had been as disappointing as showing a conjuring trick to very small children, who simply accepted the magic as genuine and failed to appreciate the human ingenuity which lay behind it. Then it had occurred to him that they were probably unaware of the skill involved in getting a lifelike picture, and he’d given the knob a twist to the right. And now, as he exercised his power to transform the news reader from flesh pink to almost any shade of the rainbow, he was being rewarded by delighted giggles and guffaws that signified a proper degree of amazement.

“Didn’t you hear the phone?” Anneline said a little crossly, coming in with her knitting. “Gracious me, why’s that man gone green?”

“Er-a small teething trouble, I think. There, that’s fine now. The phone, you say?”

“He’s too flushed; looks like an immigrant.”

“Better?”

“Yellowy, like a Cape Colored.”

“Sorry. Try this.”

“Mmmm. But his tie was never so shiny as that. It was the Colonel.”

The servants took their leave then, thanking Strydom for his kindness and the demonstration, and he waved them out impatiently, eager to hear what else his wife had to say.

“What was Hans’s problem this time?”

“You don’t have to ring back; he just thought you’d be interested to know that one of your hanged bodies had been identified.”

“No! Really?”

Anneline paused to hear an item of interest to her, and then went on: “The krantz case-is that right? He says that Sergeant Marais had an inspiration and got in touch with the prison doctor where someone called Ringo had been kept during remand. This prison doctor remembered noticing two holes in the man’s mouth during the routine checkup, and having put some fillings in so there wouldn’t be any problems during the trial. Oh, a whole lot more, but that is the main gist of it. Can you do something about the sound?”

Strydom did do something-he wasn’t sure quite what-and then sat back on the sofa beside her, very content with the world and, in particular, with the way his day had been spent. As soon as the news was over, he and his huggable old helpmeet would certainly have a great deal to discuss.

The front doorbell rang.

“Oh, good,” said Anneline, elbowing him in the ribs. “That’ll be Hester and her mother from over the road. Go and welcome them in, Chris-this will be the first time they’ve seen it, poor things.”

Kramer returned from Olifantsvlei with a very definite idea of what he was up against; an idea that-as he’d been telling himself in the car-made the mind bloody boggle. It wasn’t so much a murderer they were looking for, but an avenger.

He chanced across Colonel Muller in the vehicle yard of police headquarters, just as the old bugger was sneaking off home after a long day, and they sat on the mounting step of a handy troop carrier for a quick debriefing.

“But I don’t see what you’ve established this afternoon,” the Colonel said, when each had given the other his news. “If the minister at Olifantsvlei claims there must have been folk from the Witklip district at his nagmaal, then surely that doesn’t in itself begin to clinch anything? What about all the other people from all the other places? Any of them could be equally suspect.”

“Sir?” muttered Kramer, replacing the notes on the positive identification of Ringo Roberts in the Colonel’s briefcase-and blocking an impulse to be distracted by them. “Oh, I just threw that in for good measure. It was the interview before that which clinched it-the one I had with Joep Terblanche, the ex-sergeant who eats his meals with the foreman’s widow.”

“Terblanche couldn’t see a Witklip connection. Haven’t you just told me that?”

“Please, sir, disregard Witklip entirely. In Terblanche’s mind, Rossouw had committed a capital offense-murder.”

“Ja, I understand that. Quite natural.”

“Then take the three hangings we know something about. Rossouw was, to all intents and purposes, a murderer-agreed? But weren’t Ringo and Tollie also involved in capital offenses?”

“Er-in a manner of speaking.”

This hesitancy really annoyed Kramer and goaded him into sarcasm. “It may be a fact that only one white rapist gets hanged for every hundred bloody ntombi shaggers,” he said, “but you’re not denying that even attempted robbery can, strictly speaking, get you the noose?”