The Blood of an Englishman by James McClure Read Free Book Online Page B

clapped-out undertaker’s van leaving with a body. He parked the car around the corner from the Digby-Smith residence and proceeded on foot.
    The Digby-Smiths lived in a wide, colorful avenue lined by flame trees in full blossom and small, bright notices which warned that burglar alarm systems had been installed in the respective properties. Like all the other houses in the avenue, theirs was set well back in park-like grounds, with lawns, terraces, formal flowerbeds, neat hedges and a tennis court. Instead of a swimming pool, however, they had a lily pond surrounded by a rockery, and presided over by curious white piccanins in cement, each potbellied and bare-bottomed, holding up heavy dishes filled with soil and flowers. These figures were possibly some sort of fertility fetish meant to encourage growth around them, but as their private parts were extremely vague, he couldn’t be too sure of this. There was only one way of reaching the house from the street, and that was up a long, crooked drive that was being resurfaced, so he kept to the verge, exchanged greetings with the workmen, and came presently to a walled yard leading off the garage area.
    “Is your madam out?” he asked, when a skinny cook opened the kitchen door to his knock.
    “Who asks?” she replied haughtily.
    “CID.”
    “Hau!”
    And from there on the rest was easy. The cook invited him into the kitchen, switched the kettle on for a pot of tea, and listened with rapt attention to the description he gave of a known rapist recently seen in the vicinity. She soon had herself half-convinced that she’d actually seen a glimpse of him near the shops, and promised she would pass the word on among the other women servants thereabouts. By the time the tea had been poured, the conversation had turned to this and that.
    “No, the work isn’t too hard here,” the cook admitted. “There is just the master and the madam.”
    “And the madam’s brother,” added the housemaid, a buxom wench who had just joined them. “Such a small man!” And she giggled. “Small with gray hair that will not lie straight, and these brown knobs that grow on his head!”
    “Shhhh!” cautioned the cook.
    “It’s all right, he’s still asleep,” said the housemaid.
    “Asleep?” Zondi feigned surprise.
    “He was very late coming home last night,” explained the housemaid, “and the madam said we were not to disturb him. Look, there is his breakfast tray still waiting for him to ring his bell.”
    The cook tut-tutted. “He has not rung his bell all morning.”
    “I believe you,” said Zondi.
    He stirred his tea and looked at the cook, wondering if her skinniness indicated she was bad at her job or whether she had worms.
    “These white people,” sighed the housemaid. “It is a good life they live, is it not? Just because you are out enjoying yourselfuntil one in the morning, you are then allowed to sleep all the next day.”
    “How do you know it was one o’clock?” asked Zondi, winking at her. “What was keeping you up so late?”
    She giggled, and so did the cook.
    “You saw him come home?” Zondi persisted. “How could you see anything in that position?”
    “She goes into the garden with the—” began the cook, then muffled her own words with a clasp of her hand.
    “I had got up from my bed to go to the lavatory,” said the housemaid with ill-kept dignity. “I heard a car coming and I looked down to the street.” Then she giggled again. “No, I am only joking with you,” she confessed. “There was a car that stopped outside here at one, but the man who got out from it was big.”

5
    T HE L AST G REAT journey into the unknown had properly begun now for Edward “Bonzo” Hookham. He lay unzipped from pubic arch to jaw bone, and looked as though he was passing through Customs. Zealous rummaging had left his colorful contents in gay disorder; his heart, lungs, liver and gullet had been seized and sliced open on the sink’s draining board, his