Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page B

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    vicious.
    With the bottle still in his hand Kommandant van Heerden tiptoed from the room.

    Outside in the passage he tried to consider how this discovery affected his plans. That

    the man was a murderer, he had no doubt. That he was now drunk to the world, no doubt

    either. What remained a mystery was why Miss Hazelstone had confessed to a crime she had

    never committed. More of a mystery still, why she had embroidered her confession with

    the gratuitous filth that she had been sleeping with her Zulu cook and injecting him with

    novocaine. Kommandant van Heerden’s head reeled with possibilities and, not wishing to

    remain in the vicinity of a dangerous killer, he made his way along the passage to the

    landing at the top of the stairs. He wished now that he hadn’t sent Els off to guard the main

    gateway and at the same time he began to wonder when Luitenant Verkramp would arrive with

    the main force. He leant over the balustrade and stared down on the tropical mausoleum in the

    hall. Hard by him the head of a stuffed rhinoceros peered myopically into eternity.

    Kommandant van Heerden peered back and wondered which of his acquaintances it reminded

    him of, and as he did so he had the sudden insight into the true meaning of Miss

    Hazelstone’s confession which was to alter his life so radically.
    He had suddenly realized that the face of the murderer on the bed reminded him of

    someone. The realization sent him stumbling down the stairs to stare up at the great

    portrait of Sir Theophilus. A moment later he was back in the bedroom. Tiptoeing to the

    edge of the bed Kommandant van Heerden peered cautiously down at the face on the pillow.

    He saw there what he had expected to find. In spite of the gaping mouth and the

    bag-bottomed eyes, in spite of years of dissipation and sexual over-indulgence and

    gallons of Old Rhino Skin brandy, the features of the man on the bed bore an unmistakable

    resemblance to those of Sir Theophilus and to the late Judge Hazelstone. He knew now who the

    man was. He was Jonathan Hazelstone, Miss Hazelstone’s younger brother.
    With new understanding dawning on him, Kommandant van Heerden turned to leave the

    room. As he did so the murderer stirred again. The Kommandant froze in his tracks and

    watched with a mixture of fear and disgust as a bloodstained hand groped up the man’s hairy

    thigh and grasped the great erection. Kommandant van Heerden waited no longer. With a gasp

    he dashed from the room and hurried along the corridor. A man who could put away a bottle

    of Old Rhino Skin and still survive in no matter how comatose a state was undoubtedly a

    maniac, and if on top of all that he could lie there with an erection while his body fought

    off the appalling injuries being inflicted on it by the brandy, he was undoubtedly a

    sex fiend whose sexual appetite must be of such an intensity as to leave nothing safe.

    Kommandant van Heerden remembered Fivepence’s posture at the foot of the pedestal and he

    began to think he knew how the Zulu cook had died and in his calculations there was no

    place for the elephant gun.
    Without a moment’s hesitation he hurried down the stairs and left the house. He must

    fetch Konstabel Els before he tried to arrest the man. As he strode up the drive, he

    understood why Miss Hazelstone had made her outrageous confession and with this

    understanding there grew in the Kommandant’s breast a new and deeper respect for the old

    family ties of the British.
    “Chivalry. It’s pure chivalry,” he said to himself. “She is sacrificing herself to

    protect the family name.” He couldn’t quite see how confessing to murdering your black

    cook was saving the family name, but he supposed it was better than having your brother

    confess to having buggered the said cook into an early grave. He wondered what the

    sentence for that sort of crime was.
    “Deserves to be hanged,” he said hopefully, and then remembered that no