Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

'The electric-shock machine. You've got a customer up at Jacaranda House.'

As they drove up the hill Els sat silent. He wasn't looking forward to seeing the Kommandant and having to explain why he had left his post. As they passed the burnt-out Saracen, Els couldn't restrain a little giggle.

'I don't know what you're laughing at,' said the Sergeant sourly. 'Might have been you in there.'

'Not me,' said Els. 'You wouldn't find me in one of those things. Asking for trouble they are.'

'Safe enough normally.'

'Not when you're up against a good man with the right sort of weapon,' Els said.

'You sound as though you had something to do with it, you know so much about it.'

'Who? Me? Nothing to do with me. Why should I knock out a Saracen?'

'God alone knows,' said the Sergeant, 'but it's just the sort of stupid thing you would get up to.'

Konstabel Els cursed himself for opening his mouth. He would have to be more careful with the Kommandant. He began to wonder what the symptoms of bubonic plague were. He might have to develop them as a last resort.

Kommandant van Heerden's examination of Miss Hazelstone had got off to a bad start. Nothing that he could say would convince her that she hadn't murdered Fivepence.

'All right, suppose for the moment that you did shoot him,' he said for the umpteenth time. 'What was your motive?'

'He was my lover.'

'Most people love their lovers, Miss Hazelstone, yet you say you shot him.'

'Correct. I did.'

'Hardly a normal reaction.'

'I'm not a normal person,' said Miss Hazelstone. 'Nor are you. Nor is the konstabel outside the door. We are none of us normal people.'

'I would have said I was fairly normal,' said the Kommandant smugly.

'That's just the sort of asinine remark I would expect you to make and it only goes to prove how abnormal you are. Most people like to think that they are unique. You evidently don't and since you seem to consider normality to consist of being like other people, in so far as you possess qualities that make you unlike other people, you are abnormal. Do I make myself clear?'

'No,' said the Kommandant, 'you don't.'

'Let me put it another way,' said Miss Hazelstone. 'Normality is a concept. Do you follow me?'

'I'm trying to,' the Kommandant said despairingly.

'Good. As I have said, normality is a concept. It is not a state of being. You are confusing it with the desire to conform. You have a strong urge to conform. I have none.'

Kommandant van Heerden groped his way after her. He couldn't understand a word of what she was saying but it didn't sound very complimentary.

'What about motive?' he asked, trying to get back on to more familiar ground.

'What about it?' Miss Hazelstone countered.

'If you killed Fivepence you must have had a motive.'

Miss Hazelstone thought for a moment. 'It doesn't follow,' she said at last, 'though I suppose you could argue that a motiveless act is an impossibility because it inevitably presupposes an intention to act without motive which is a motive in itself.'

Kommandant van Heerden looked desperately round the room. The woman was driving him mad.

'You didn't have one then?' he asked after counting to twenty slowly.

'If you insist on my having one, I suppose I'll have to supply it. You can say it was jealousy.'

The Kommandant perked up. This was much better. He was getting on to familiar ground again.

'And who were you jealous of?'

'No one.'

'No one?'

'That's what I said.'

Kommandant van Heerden peered over the edge of an abyss. 'No one,' he almost screamed. 'How in the name of hell can you be jealous of no one?' He paused, and looked at her suspiciously. 'No One is not the name of another kaffir, is it?'

'Of course not. It means exactly what it says. I was jealous of no one.'

'You can't be jealous of no one. It's not possible. You've got to be jealous of somebody else.'

'I haven't, you know.' Miss Hazelstone looked at him pityingly.

Beneath him the Kommandant could feel the abyss yawning. It was the abyss of all abysses.

'No one. No one,' he repeated almost pathetically, shaking his head. 'Someone tell me how somebody can be jealous of no one.'

'Oh it's really quite simple,' Miss Hazelstone continued, 'I was just jealous.'

'Just jealous,' the Kommandant repeated slowly.

'That's right. I didn't want to lose dear Fivepence.'

Teetering above the unfathomable void of abstraction the Kommandant clutched at Fivepence. There had once been something substantial about the Zulu cook and the Kommandant needed something substantial to hang on to.

'You were frightened you were going to lose him?' he pondered aloud, and then realized the terrible contradiction he was stepping into. 'But you say you shot him. Isn't that the best way of losing the brute?' He was almost beside himself.

'It was the only way I had of making sure I kept him,' Miss Hazelstone replied.

Kommandant van Heerden pulled himself back from the void. He was losing control of the interview. He started again at the beginning.

'Let's forget for the moment that you shot Fivepence so that you wouldn't lose him,' he said slowly and very patiently. 'Let's start at the other end. What was your motive for falling in love with him?' It was not a topic he particularly wanted to investigate, not that he believed for a moment that she had ever been in love with the swine, but it was better than harping on about no one. Besides he felt pretty sure she would give herself away now. The Hazelstones couldn't fall in love with Zulu cooks.

'Fivepence and I shared certain mutual interests,' said Miss Hazelstone slowly. 'For one thing we had the same fetish.'

'Oh really. The same fetish?' In his mind the Kommandant conjured up a picture of the little native idols he had seen in the Piemburg Museum.

'Naturally,' said Miss Hazelstone, 'it provided a bond between us.'

'Yes, it must have done, and I suppose you sacrified goats to it,' the Kommandant said sarcastically.

'What an extraordinary thing to say,' Miss Hazelstone looked puzzled. 'Of course we didn't. It wasn't that sort of fetish.'

'Wasn't it? What sort was it? Wooden or stone?'

'Rubber,' said Miss Hazelstone briefly.

Kommandant van Heerden leant back in his chair angrily. He had had about as much of Miss Hazelstone's leg-pulling as he could take. If the old girl seriously supposed that he was going to believe some cock-and-bull story about a rubber idol, she had another think coming.

'Now listen to me, Miss Hazelstone,' he said seriously. 'I can appreciate what you are trying to do and I must say I admire you for it. Family loyalty is a fine thing and trying to save your brother is a fine thing too, but I have my duty to do and nothing you can say is going to prevent me doing it. Now if you will be good enough to get to the point and admit that you had nothing whatever to do with the murder of your cook and were never approximately in love with him, I will allow you to go. If not I shall be forced to take some drastic action against you. You are obstructing the course of justice and you leave me no alternative. Now then, be sensible and admit that all this talk about fetishes is nonsense.'

Miss Hazelstone looked at him icily.

'Are you easily stimulated?' she asked. 'Sexually, I mean.'

'That has got nothing whatever to do with you.'

'It has got a lot to do with this case,' said Miss Hazelstone, and hesitated. Kommandant van Heerden shifted uneasily in his chair. He had come to recognize that Miss Hazelstone's hesitations tended to augur some new and revolting disclosure.

'I have to admit that I am not easily aroused,' she said at last. The Kommandant was delighted to hear it. 'I need the presence of rubber to stimulate my sexual appetite.'