Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

Els parked the car in front of the house and stepped quietly out into the night to collect his trophy. It was dark and clouds obscured the moon, and he had some difficulty finding the Dobermann's corpse.

'That's funny,' he said to himself, as he searched the lawn. 'I could have sworn I left the bugger here,' and continued to look for the beast.

In the back of the car Kommandant van Heerden snored more loudly than ever. He slipped sideways across the seat and bumped his head on the window. The next moment he was wide awake and staring out into the darkness.

'Els,' he said loudly, 'what have you stopped for and why are the headlights off?' From the driver's seat there came no comforting reply and as Kommandant van Heerden sat terrified in the back of the car and wondered where the hell Els had got to, the cloud slipped gently from the moon, and the Kommandant saw before him the front door of Jacaranda House. With a whimper the Kommandant crouched down in the cushions and cursed his own foolishness for leaving the prison. Above him the facade of the great house loomed threateningly, its unlighted windows dark with menace. Moaning with terror, the Kommandant opened the door and stepped on to the forecourt. A moment later he was in the driver's seat and searching for the keys. They had gone.

'I might have known the swine would do something like this,' the Kommandant gibbered and promising himself that more than the Dobermann would get himself stuffed, waited for Els to return. As the minutes passed and Els continued his search for the elusive Toby, the Kommandant's terror grew.

'I can't sit here all night,' he thought. 'I'll have to go and find him,' and he climbed out and moving stealthily stole into the garden. Around him bushes assumed strange and terrifying shapes and the moon which had proved so illuminating but a few minutes before discovered a convenient cloud to hide behind. In the darkness and not daring to shout, Kommandant van Heerden stumbled on a flowerbed and fell flat on his face. 'Dog roses,' he thought bitterly, clutching his face and as he clambered to his feet, Kommandant van Heerden's ears and eyes caught sight and sound of two things that sent his heart racing in his breast. The car's engine had started on the forecourt. Els had found the Dobermann and was departing. As the car's headlights swung round floodlighting the front of Jacaranda House, the Kommandant stood rigid in the flowerbed staring into the night sky at something far more sinister than the house itself. A faint plume of smoke was issuing slowly but steadily from one of the chimneys of the deserted mansion. Kommandant van Heerden was not alone.

Clutching his heart, the Kommandant fell back among the roses and passed out. When he came round from what he chose to call his first heart attack, it was to hear a voice he had hoped never to hear again.

'Nights of wine and roses, Kommandant?' it inquired, and as the Kommandant stared up he saw outlined against the drifting clouds the elegant figure of Miss Hazelstone. She was dressed as he had seen her first, and not, he thanked heaven, in the dreadful salmon-pink suit.

'You're not going to lie there all night, I hope,' Miss Hazelstone continued. 'Come into the house and I'll make you some coffee.'

'Don't want any coffee,' the Kommandant mumbled, disengaging himself from the rose bushes.

'You may not want it, but that's what you obviously need to sober you up. I'm not having drunken policemen stumbling about my garden ruining the flowerbeds at this time of night,' and bowing to that authority he could never resist, Kommandant van Heerden found himself once more in the drawing-room of Jacaranda House. The room was in darkness except for the lamp on a film projector which stood on a small table.

'I was just running through some old films I took, before I burn them,' Miss Hazelstone said, and the Kommandant understood the faint plume of smoke he had seen issuing from the chimney. 'I shan't be able to see them in prison, and besides I think it's better to forget the past, don't you, Kommandant?'

The Kommandant had to agree. The past was something he would have paid a fortune to forget. Unfortunately, it was all too present in his mind's eye. Trapped between his own terror and a sense of deference made all the more persuasive by the erratic beating of his heart, the Kommandant allowed himself to be seated in a low chair from which he expected never to rise, while Miss Hazelstone turned on a reading lamp.

'There's some coffee left over from supper,' Miss Hazelstone said. 'I'll have to heat it up, I'm afraid. In the normal way I would have some fresh made, but I'm rather short of home help at the moment.'

'I don't need any coffee,' the Kommandant said, and regretted his words immediately. He might have had a chance to escape if Miss Hazelstone had gone to the kitchen. Instead she looked at him doubtfully and sat down opposite him in the wing-backed armchair.

'Just as you like,' she said. 'You don't look unusually drunk. Just rather pale.'

'I'm not drunk. It's my heart,' said the Kommandant.

'In that case, coffee is the worst thing for you. It's a stimulant, you know. You should try to avoid any form of stimulation.'

'I know that,' said the Kommandant.

There was a pause, broken finally by Miss Hazelstone.

'I suppose you've finally come to arrest me,' she said. The Kommandant couldn't think of anything he would like to do more, but he didn't seem to have the energy. Mesmerized by the house and the air of gentle melancholy he found so fascinating in the old woman, he sat in his chair listening to his palpitations.

'I suppose Jonathan has confessed already,' Miss Hazelstone said by way of polite conversation. The Kommandant nodded.

'Such a waste,' Miss Hazelstone continued. 'The poor boy suffers from such a sense of guilt. I can't imagine why. I suspect it's because he had such a blameless childhood. Guilt is so often a substitute for good honest-to-goodness evil. You must find that in your profession, Kommandant.'

In his profession, the Kommandant had to agree it very often was, but he couldn't see the relevance in the case of a man who had several prison sentences behind him. He felt himself once more succumbing not only to deference but also to a sense of unease that Miss Hazelstone's conversation seemed to induce in him.

'I never suffered from the same weakness,' Miss Hazelstone continued primly. 'If anything, I had difficulty finding anything to do that wasn't depressingly good. Like the Devil, I too have felt how awful goodness is. So boring, but I daresay you don't have the same opportunity for being nauseated by it.'

'I daresay you're right,' said the Kommandant whose feeling of nausea sprang from quite different causes.

'As you must have gathered, I have done my best to bring a little gaiety into my life,' Miss Hazelstone went on. 'I write for the papers, you know.'

Kommandant van Heerden knew only too well.

'A little column every now and then on fashion and tasteful living.'

'I have read some of your articles,' said the Kommandant.

'I do hope you didn't follow my advice,' Miss Hazelstone went on. 'They were written with my tongue in my cheek, and I had great fun thinking up the most awful combinations of colours. Everybody took my recommendations seriously too. I think I can honestly say that I have made more homes un-liveable in than all the termites in South Africa.'

Kommandant van Heerden gaped at her. 'Why on earth should you want to do that?' he asked.

'A sense of moral duty,' Miss Hazelstone murmured. 'My brother has given his life to spread light and goodness, I have merely sought to redress the balance. If people choose to follow my advice to put maroon wallpaper next to orange curtains, who am I to say them nay? People who believe that having a pink skin makes them civilized, while having a black one makes a man a savage, will believe anything.'