James Mcclure - Snake

“Ah, there you spot the weakness. He did his last patrol inside the premises from midnight and reached the pavement only as the clock struck. He remained there until morning.”

Kramer lit a Lucky and waited for the colonel to find his place again among Marais’s notes. God, every conference was the same.

“Right, gentlemen. Miss Bergstroom was last seen alive at midnight and last heard alive slightly before twenty past. Between then and twenty-five past, when she was found by the manager, she had died.”

“And an unidentified male was with her at the time,” Kramer said, unchivalrously cutting across the preamble to steal the colonel’s punch line.

“Oh, ja? So you’ve been doing some thinking, too?”

“Sorry, sir, but it made a difference having it all written down here, and the time to read it.”

Marais put the newspaper down.

“Then you take it from there,” the colonel said petulantly.

Then broke the silence by himself carrying on. “From the evidence before us, it would appear that a male was present. Warrant Gardiner reports that the drinking vessels had been cleaned of any prints, and the wash basin-which is only one reason I want the DS here-had been given a thorough rub-over. Which means, why should any guest- Ach, no; let’s do this another way.”

Kramer kept his eyes on the tip of his cigarette.

“This male is with Bergstroom,” said the colonel, “and she gets killed by the snake. It’s a private show maybe. Who knows? Anyhow, she is dead and because he’s high-class-and here we have a fancy button to support that-this gives rise to social fears. He does not want it known that he was in the room of such a person, and at such a time as will cause him embarrassment following the publication of the inquest proceedings.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So he attempts to disguise his presence there. He cleans the glasses, but overlooks in his hurry-he had only seconds-that he put them down in the jam, which the girl would never do. He then wipes over the basin. The place is in such a hell of a mess, he doesn’t notice the button.”

“Or it isn’t his,” said Kramer unhelpfully.

“If Stevenson approaches at this time, there is nobody in the second dressing room, so he can hide there,” the colonel said, not liking being interrupted. “Or he can get out before that, and just pull the front door closed behind him. He faces no real problems.”

“I don’t know, sir. It could have been more than a social fear, as you call it. Who takes prints after an accident?”

The colonel began to fiddle with the pieces of his broken ruler. “Go on, Tromp.”

“Well, there is that chance, because the posters outside all said how dangerous it was, and because what happened seemed so-”

“Strydom?” the colonel said

“One or two little slips in the past, although his examination of the body in situ was thorough, and I saw enough of the P.M. to realize that any bruises on the neck could only have been made by-”

“And you think…?”

“He’s been paying too much attention to the bloody snake from the beginning.”

“But I want that snake to get attention, Tromp. I want every detail of the case looked over. I want all the staff interviewed for statements. I want semen from today’s deceased, too, while we’re on the subject. Enough has come to light now to change our whole attitude to the-”

“What about other causes?” Kramer asked. “That blow to the back of the head-was it proved to be from her falling?”

“And poison?” Marais suggested. “I mean, the glasses were cleaned and-”

“ Ach, no, Marais. He’d be bloody mad to leave them, and that would involve premeditation.”

“Mulberry bushes, Kramer, mulberry bushes.”

“You reject the idea of a blow, sir?”

“Not altogether, but I want everything gone over first. The snake marks are what worry me, in this respect.”

“Why not after it was in its own death throes? Put there to fool us? He probably hit it on the head before touching it.”

“The murderer, you mean?”

Kramer saw the broken edges of the ruler fitted together in a conscious gesture that made his eyes meet the colonel’s and hold their gaze steadily.

It was left to Marais to notice Strydom listening and gloating in the doorway.

A space had been cleared on the colonel’s desk, and shortly afterward an attendant from the museum arrived and placed on it a large enamel tray covered with a variety of colorful bits and pieces.

“But it’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of,” the colonel said, recoiling at the snake stink of ammonia. “You can’t even imagine someone doing a thing like that!”

“The beauty of it,” murmured Kramer, moving in to watch the demonstration.

“In the heat of the moment, Tromp?”

“Could’ve been, sir-or the bugger knew his snakes.”

“You wanted to see, so I’m showing you,” said Strydom.

“And I can assure you the facts speak for themselves,” added Bose.

It was difficult at times to work out which of them was playing the straight man.

“What happened was that Mr. Bose here said the deceased must have had very strong arms to effect a break in the spinal cord,” said Strydom. “And I had to explain to him that she was of slight to medium build, and that her hands had been found in place toward the ends of the reptile. We then discovered-”

“By empirical means,” Bose interposed.

“Ja, by trying it ourselves with a bit of rope, we found that once you were holding a snake the same length by each end, you didn’t have much power in your arms.”

“The critical moment being when your arms begin to make an obtuse angle at the elbow and the leverage factor diminishes,” Bose further explained. “Hence the difficulty of using a pair of chest expanders to their full width.”

“Ta,” said the colonel, who was good with the general public.

“But for safety reasons she’d keep holding the ends?” asked Kramer.

“Quite,” agreed Bose. “She had to control both head and tail in an effort to-”

“Then we found slight tissue damage where her hands had gripped the python,” went on Strydom, “not so much at the tail end, where the pressure was with the run of the scales, but certainly behind the head, once we’d wiped away surplus bleeding.”

“And considerable damage at two other points much closer to the central loop of the body-and here we refer you to this section from the right lung, which shows severe bruising and even signs of having been torn.”

“This is the liver, also showing contusion,” said Strydom.

“And note, if you will,” said Bose, “the deplorable state of the esophagus.”

Marais tut-tutted.

“And a lot of force was used?” the colonel asked.

“A very considerable degree of it,” Strydom replied, “as we established with the help of another snake when it had thawed-that’s what took us so long. Man, you had to really hammer that thing to get the same amount of damage, squeeze till your whole bloody arm shook. Either the killer was a big bloke, or he was half out of his mind at the time-like when you don’t know your own strength.”

“That’s a point,” said Kramer. “He couldn’t have been just trying to pull it off her?”

“ Ach, what about the other evidence, Tromp?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Strydom, “but do you try and get a tie off by pulling hard on either side? Never! And besides, he was pulling it this way because, as we said before, the spinal-”

“We’d also like to draw your attention to this sample of skin taken from a point where severe bruising occurred.”

“Ja, Mr. Bose?”