A Beautiful Place to Die Part 19

Aggie stopped in front of a closed door and rummaged in her ap.r.o.n pocket. It took her an age to fit the key into the lock and turn it with her arthritic hands. She pushed the door open and motioned him in without a word. Emmanuel wondered if the black maid was mute as well as deaf.

He viewed the room before he disturbed the contents. It was a large, pleasant s.p.a.ce with a neatly made bed, bedside table, dark wooden wardrobe, and writing desk positioned by a window that looked out over the front garden. It was another example of the clean, ordered s.p.a.ces Captain Pretorius specialized in.

Emmanuel moved to the bedside table and pulled the drawer open. It contained a black calfskin-covered Bible and nothing else. He picked up the Bible and examined the well-thumbed pages. The good book wasn't just for show. Captain Pretorius read the words of the Lord on a regular basis. There was no Bible at the stone hut, however-just a camera stolen from a sniveling pervert and an envelope with something worth p.i.s.sing on a man for.

Emmanuel turned the Bible upside down and gave it a shake to see if anything fell out.

"Ayy..." It was the maid, Aggie, scandalized by his rough treatment of The Word. Seems she wasn't mute or blind, just reluctant to use her dwindling energy stores on talking. Emmanuel gently closed the Bible and turned it the right way up. With the old maid looking on, he flipped through the pages as if he were a preacher seeking pearls of wisdom for an upcoming sermon.

Emmanuel put the Bible back into the drawer. There was nothing in the book but the word of the Almighty. The bed was made up with a plaid blanket over clean yellow sheets. He lifted the pillow. A pair of blue cotton pajamas nestled underneath. The maid gave another soft gasp and Emmanuel replaced the pillow exactly as he'd found it. The room already had the feel of a shrine, with everything in it destined to remain untouched until the captain returned on Judgment Day.

The wardrobe was a handsome piece of furniture with double doors and mother-of-pearl handles. Two ironed police uniforms on wooden hangers hung side by side. Two pairs of s.h.i.+ny brown boots glowed with polish and waited for the captain's size-13 feet to fill them.

"Patience," Emmanuel told himself. The room was locked for a reason. He opened the writing desk's top drawer and his heart began to pound. Inside, a fat police file lay next to a slim hardcover book. He undid the tie and flicked the file open. The first page was an incident report filed in August '51 in which the luscious Tottie James was subjected to a gasping noise coming from outside her bedroom window. No surprises there. Emmanuel guessed that most men made gasping noises when she was in the immediate vicinity.

He flipped to the end of the reports and failed to find a humorous angle in the description of Della, the pastor's daughter, who had been grabbed from behind in her own room and held facedown on the floor while the perpetrator ground his hips against her backside. Peeping Tom implied distance, a furtive individual coveting the desired object from afar. Physical a.s.sault resulting in bruising and a cracked rib was another matter entirely.

Tonight he'd read the file in detail and try to get some idea of the man who committed the offenses and why the captain and his lieutenant failed to find and apprehend him.

Emmanuel put the police file down and examined the hardcover book in the drawer. Small enough to fit into a jacket pocket, the slim volume was a high-cla.s.s item. He felt the smooth leather cover. The t.i.tle intrigued him: Celestial Pleasures. Celestial Pleasures.

He opened the hand-cut pages at random and skimmed a couple of lines: Plum Blossom stretched out on the plush sedan, her only covering a red and gold ta.s.sel that hung from her exquisite neck. Wisps of opium smoke escaped her parted lips and rose up into the air. Plum Blossom stretched out on the plush sedan, her only covering a red and gold ta.s.sel that hung from her exquisite neck. Wisps of opium smoke escaped her parted lips and rose up into the air.

Curiosity got the better of him and he skipped to the middle. There was a line drawing of a naked Oriental girl with downcast eyes kneeling on a cus.h.i.+on. Cla.s.sy, Emmanuel thought, and edging on literary, but a stroke book nonetheless. He slipped it into his pocket.

"Hmmm..." Aggie was alerting him to the fact she'd seen him take the book.

Emmanuel kept his back turned. He was leaving the Pretorius house with the police file and the book no matter how outraged the deaf servant might be.

The rest of the drawers revealed the captain's love of starched unders.h.i.+rts, plaid pajamas and olive drab socks. He moved back to the bed, checked underneath it, and found not a speck of dust.

Emmanuel approached the generously padded black maid, who was resting her weight against the doorjamb. It was nine-thirty in the morning and she looked ready for a nap.

"What do you do in the house?" he shouted in Zulu. Holding a conversation in English was likely to send the maid into a coma.

"Clean," she replied in her native language. "And keep the key."

"What key?"

She rummaged in her ap.r.o.n pocket and pulled out the key to the spare room. She displayed it in the palm of her hand but didn't say anything.

"You keep the key to this room?"

The maid nodded.

"How did the captain get in?"

"He asked for the key."

Aggie the trusted servant was the gatekeeper, but how did Willem Pretorius gain access when he came home late from fis.h.i.+ng?

"Did he wake you and get the key when he came home after dark?"

"No. He said where I must leave the key."

"You left the key on a table," Emmanuel said. "Somewhere like that?"

"He said where I must leave the key," she repeated, and waved him out of the room impatiently. She was ready to move on.

Emmanuel stepped into the corridor.

"Where did you leave the key?" he asked.

"In the flowerpot, behind the sugar sack, in the teapot. Wherever he said I must put it."

"Really?" Emmanuel marveled at the captain's relentless need for secrecy. He acted like an undercover policeman whose real ident.i.ty was his greatest liability.

"Why do you think he changed the place for the key?" he asked while Aggie pushed the key into the lock with her gnarled hands.

The worn-out old woman gave a shrug that implied she'd long since given up trying to understand the mysterious ways of the white man.

"The baas says, 'Put it in the teapot,' I put it in the teapot."

That was the end of the matter as far as the maid was concerned. A servant didn't question the master or try to make sense of why the missus needed the s.h.i.+rts hung on the line a certain way.

"Aggie!" Mrs. Pretorius called from the back veranda. "Aggie?"

The black maid didn't hear the missus. She was busy turning the key in the lock with as much speed as her brittle fingers allowed.

"I will go outside and have tea with the nkosikati," Emmanuel said, and walked through to the back of the house. If he waited for Aggie it would be lunchtime when they finally made it outside.

He stopped by the display cabinet running along the side of the large sitting room and picked up the picture of Frikkie van Brandenburg and his family. He was used to seeing the dour clergyman, the Afrikaner oracle, as an older man with a furrowed brow and fire in his eyes but even in his youth the unsmiling Frikkie looked ready to set the world to rights.

What would van Brandenburg make of his daughter's family? Dagga-smoking Louis, Erich the arsonist and Willem the deceiver were all tied to him by blood and marriage. Would Frikkie be proud or would he doubt, for just a moment, that the Afrikaner nation was set on a higher plane than the rest of humanity?

Emmanuel replaced the photograph and continued toward the kitchen, where a younger black maid set up the tea service on a silver tray.

"Sawubona..." He said good morning to the girl and stepped onto the vine-covered veranda. Mrs. Pretorius waved him over to a table overlooking a small vegetable garden. A garden boy, a squat man in his thirties, weeded the rows and turned the earth with a hand fork.

Emmanuel sat down opposite Mrs. Pretorius and placed the police file on the ground. He kept the book in his pocket. The young black maid came out with the tea service and set it down on the table before she disappeared back into the house.

"How do you take your tea, Detective Cooper?" Mrs. Pretorius asked.

"White, no sugar," he replied, and studied the late Willem Pretorius's wife. She was beautiful in a refined way. There were no rough edges to her despite the steel he sensed within.

"You have a lovely garden," Emmanuel said, and accepted his tea. This would be his first and only chance to get a bead on the captain's home life.

"My father was a gardener. He believed that with G.o.d's help and hard work, it was possible to create Eden here on earth."

"I thought your father was a minister. An exceptionally well-known one."

She made a weak attempt to wave off the reference to her famous father. "Pa didn't pay any attention to the stories written about him. He liked better to work in his orchard than to speak to a hall full of people."

Like many powerful men, it appeared that Frikkie van Brandenburg had greatness thrust upon him.

"He was a homebody?" Emmanuel asked with a smile. The newly written history books made a point of mentioning van Brandenburg's zeal in spreading the message of white superiority and redemption. No meeting was too small or insignificant. No town too isolated to escape the gospel according to Frikkie. The great prophet traveled to them all.

"He was home when he could be. We knew how important his work was for our country. Four of my brothers followed in his steps and became ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church. My two sisters are married to ministers."

"You're the odd one out."

"Not at all," Mrs. Pretorius answered. "Willem could easily have become a minister of the church. He had the strength for it but he wasn't called."

"I see," Emmanuel said. Perhaps the captain realized early in life that the path of moral rect.i.tude wasn't for him. Beating a small-time p.o.r.nographer with your bare fists was not on the list of pastoral duties. And of course, Celestial Pleasures Celestial Pleasures wasn't required reading at the seminary. wasn't required reading at the seminary.

"Louis is going to be a minister," Mrs. Pretorius said with satisfaction. "This was his first year at theological college."

Emmanuel didn't show his surprise. After witnessing Louis ha.s.sling Tiny for booze and smokes, it was hard to imagine him leading a congregation or dispensing Christian wisdom.

"What's he doing home?" It wasn't holiday time. All the schools and colleges were still in full swing. The summer break would begin in late December.

Mrs. Pretorius sipped her tea and considered her answer. It took her a few moments to find the correct words. "Louis wants to be part of our people's new covenant with G.o.d, but he's too young to be away from home. The separation didn't suit him."

Emmanuel waited. He'd seen a flash of doubt escape through a c.h.i.n.k in the widow's holy armor. Louis was her weak spot and there was something more to his early return from theological college.

"My father took a break from his studies, you know. When he returned to the church he was stronger than before, more able to lead the people on the Way. Louis will spend time on Johannes's farm, get to know the land and the concerns of the volk...he'll go back to theological college and when he comes out he'll be a lion of G.o.d."

There was absolute belief in her eyes.

"Maybe Louis will be a farmer or a businessman like his brothers?"

"No. Not Louis." Her smile formed icicles on the rim of her teacup. "He's not like the others. Even as a child he had a gift for gentleness and compa.s.sion. He is destined for greater things than what can be found in this town."

Mrs. Pretorius dreamed big, he'd give her that. Her sons ruled Jacob's Rest but her ambitions were grander. She wanted a leader of the people who could make the nation into a holy land. The boy's total unsuitability for the job was a fact that escaped her completely.

"Did the captain share your dreams for Louis?"

"They're not my dreams, Detective Cooper. They're Louis's." This time Emmanuel felt the chill from her smile in his bones. She was certainly van Brandenburg's daughter. To go against her wishes was to go against the wishes of G.o.d.

It was no wonder Willem Pretorius and his son traveled the kaffir paths in the dark. A woman with fire in her eyes and ice in her heart ruled their home.

Emmanuel drank his tea. Mrs. Pretorius's home was a showcase for her vision of how Afrikaner life should be. If he proved a link between the captain and the importation of banned materials, she'd burn the house down to purify it.

"Willem loved this place and these people." The widow's blue eyes glistened with tears as she looked over the back fence to the veldt. "He was like a native that way. The land was all. I know you English laugh at our belief that we are the white tribe of Africa, but in Willem's case it was true. He was an African man."

The captain certainly had an affinity with the Africans. His closeness with Shabalala was the source of Sarel Uys's bitterness and maybe the lieutenant wasn't the only one uncomfortable with Willem Pretorius's relations.h.i.+p with the black constable.

"Do you think some whites resented the captain's good relations.h.i.+p with the natives?" he asked. He was thinking of Uys and the fact he'd just returned from Mozambique. Did the hard-faced little man park his car across the border, swim the width of the river then back again after committing the crime? He would have had two days to lie low and get a suntan before showing up at Jacob's Rest again.

"Willem didn't mix with them socially," Mrs. Pretorius said firmly. "He knew all of them because he grew up here. As police captain he had to talk with them and spend time among them. People understood that."

"Of course." Emmanuel set his teacup down. Willem Pretorius did more than police the native community. He'd chosen Shabalala and Aggie the arthritic old maid to keep his secrets safe. That implied trust.

The new segregation laws formalized the long-standing idea that the Black tribe and the White tribe were created by G.o.d to be separate and to develop along separate lines. Each tribe had its own natural sphere. Only degenerates crossed over into unnatural territory. In the eyes of some whites, Captain Pretorius might have done just that: crossed the line into the black world.

"He's not like other Dutchmen." That was what Shabalala said on the first day of the investigation. Maybe that difference got the captain killed.

"Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Pretorius." Emmanuel retrieved the molester files from the floor. He had to see Erich and then he'd dig deeper into the "white man gone to black" lead.

"I'll be in contact if there are any developments." He held his hand out, aware that this was the last time he'd have physical contact with her. After he interviewed her son, Mrs. Pretorius would freeze him out.

She shook his hand and stared at the police file. "What's that?" she asked.

"A file on the molestation case involving some of the coloured women in town." He told her the truth. She didn't like dirt in her house and he wanted to gauge her reaction to the news that Willem Pretorius had brought darkness into her world.

"Oh..." She took a half step back. "Was it in the spare room?"

"Yes," Emmanuel said. "The case was unsolved and probably due for a review to see if any fresh leads came up."

Her brow wrinkled with distaste. "It was most likely one of them. One of their own who did it."

"Did Captain Pretorius say that?"

"He didn't have to." She regained her composure and moved on to a topic she knew a lot about, the weakness of others. "The man who committed these acts still has strong primitive traits. We Europeans are further away from the animal state than the blacks or the coloureds."

Emmanuel wanted to tell her that every night he dreamed of the terrible things that civilized Europeans did to each other with guns, knives and firebombs.

He slipped the file under his arm. Every hour of every day someone somewhere in South Africa commented on the strange behavior of those outside their own racial group. The Indians, the blacks, the coloureds and the whites pointed the finger at each other with equal enthusiasm.

"Strange..." Mrs. Pretorius's voice was soft. "Willem didn't say anything about working on the case. He said it was closed."

The widow looked at the bulging file with a hungry curiosity. It was as if she wanted a taste of the shadow world her husband had worked to contain.

"Did he discuss his cases with you?"

"Not all of them," she said. "But this one was special. It upset him to work on it. There were nights he couldn't sleep for worrying about the town's morality."

"Unsolved cases can do that to a policeman."

"That's why..." Her focus on the file was complete. "I don't understand why he didn't say he was looking it over again. He...Willem told me everything."

The presence of the file in her house without her knowledge cracked the foundation of Mrs. Pretorius's fantasy world. The certainty of her true Christian union with the captain had been called into question.

"I'm sure he didn't want to trouble you." Emmanuel gave her an easy way out. She'd face a real test of her beliefs if he found the captain's business in Mozambique was criminal.

"Of course." She smiled at her own doubts. "Willem was a natural protector. He lived to keep our family and the town safe."

The tears returned as the word "lived" left her mouth. It was the past tense. Every conversation she held about her husband was now a conversation about the past. Mrs. Pretorius's sorrow was genuine but he had a feeling that if she'd caught her beloved Willem in an immoral act she'd have pulled the trigger herself.