LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      Hattie drove us to our guesthouse, The Rose, in Baron van Reede Street. Jessie would follow on her scooter.

      ‘So Piet found sauce bottles under the table at the Kudu Stall?’ said Hattie. ‘And he brought them to you to smell?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Two yellow bottles. And one smelt a lot like the sauce on Slimkat’s napkin.’

      ‘Quite a nose you’ve got there. That sauce had garlic in it?’

      ‘Ja,’ I said.

      ‘Here we are,’ she said, as she turned into the driveway of a big Victorian house with a long narrow stoep.

      ‘Watch out!’ I said, as she headed for a karee tree. She bumped into it, but not too hard.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘That’s what bumpers are for. There’s a sweet old auntie and uncle that will ply you with coffee and rusks if they spot you; they’ll probably be asleep now.’

      But we were greeted by Tannie Rosa and Oom Frik van der Vyver. Tannie Rosa showed us our rooms, which were full of ornate wooden furniture, with everything covered in white and gold ruffles and lace. The pillows, the bedside lamps, the curtains, even the doorknobs – all had pretty covers. It somehow made me feel wrapped up and looked after. I hoped Slimkat was being looked after at the hospital.

      ‘Dis pragtig. Baie dankie,’ I said to the tannie. Lovely, thank you. She smiled at the praise.

      ‘Koffie en beskuit?’ she asked.

      ‘Tomorrow, thank you,’ said Hattie. ‘We really must sleep.’

      I was too tired to argue. I took a diet tablet and headed to bed.

      That night, I dreamt I was sitting on the branch of that old gwarrie tree. The veld flowers smelt like pineapples, and I heard galloping hooves. As the sound got closer, I saw it was a giant kudu with two men riding on its back. They came to a stop in front of me. The man in front called for me to climb on. It was Slimkat, and in his hand was a bow. He reached for an arrow from the quiver on his back. But it was not an arrow; it was a pen.

      The man sitting behind him wore a blue mechanic’s overall, and in his hand was a huge spanner. I couldn’t see his face. The kudu pawed the ground with a restless hoof; it would not wait for ever. I looked again at the big spanner and wondered if I was the loose nut the man had come to make right. I woke up holding onto my head.

      I was surrounded by frills and doilies, and didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered. I wondered if the diet tablets were giving me strange dreams. My mind went to Slimkat: had he made it through the night? I struggled to get back to sleep.

      In the morning, I washed and dressed. The rubbish bin and the spare toilet rolls also had frilly covers on them. It was cool, so I wore a cotton jacket over my brown dress, and socks with my veldskoene.

      I went to the kitchen, and there was Tannie Rosa. She pointed out a tin of rusks.

      ‘Mosbolletjiebeskuit,’ she said.

      ‘Jirre,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had those rusks for ages.’

      ‘I used muscadel must that I got from my brother,’ she said. ‘He makes his own wine.’

      Mosbolletjie bread is made with ‘must’, the fermented leftovers from the winemaking process: grape skins, seeds and stalks. This, together with the aniseed, gives the rusks their special flavour.

      I turned on the kettle and spooned some coffee and sugar into a cup and put two rusks onto a plate. Tannie Rosa left and Hattie came into the kitchen, her cream skirt all fresh and ironed as if she wasn’t travelling.

      ‘Good morning, Maria. Gosh, you didn’t sleep much, did you?’

      ‘Morning, Hats. Tea?’ I said, putting a third rusk on the plate for her.

      ‘I am going to make an appointment for you with Doctor Walters,’ she said.

      We went and sat on the stoep, which was painted an oxblood red, and watched the sun lighting up the Groot Swartberge. Grey cliffs cast purple shadows on slopes of green. This range of mountains linked us all the way to Ladismith and went on beyond Oudtshoorn, towards De Rust.

      ‘Jessie went to the hospital first thing,’ said Hattie. ‘She’ll come and report to us.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Any time now. They wouldn’t give her information last night, but she says a good friend of her mother’s is on duty this morning.’

      I dipped one of the rusks into my coffee and took a bite. It was better than any mosbolletjiebeskuit I could remember. Which says something, because food memories often cheat on the side of sweetness. Hattie sipped on her tea and nibbled on the edge of a rusk, and I shook my head; she knows beskuit are meant to be dipped.

      We heard a buzzing sound, and Jessie’s red scooter came zooming towards the house. Instead of driving up to the parking area behind the house, she pulled her bike to the side of the driveway and jumped off. She wore jeans and a denim jacket, and she took off her helmet and shook out her hair as she walked towards us.

      I saw her face and did not need to hear her words to know: ‘He’s dead. Slimkat’s dead.’

      I dropped my mosbolletjie rusk into my coffee.

      ‘Damnation,’ said Hattie.

      ‘Ag, no,’ I said.

      ‘It’s so wrong,’ said Jessie. ‘He was such a gentle man.’

      ‘Have they established the cause of death?’ asked Hattie.

      ‘At first they thought it might be cholera or food poisoning. They pumped him with antibiotics.’

      ‘But what about the death threats? And the sauce bottle that Piet found under the Kudu Stall table,’ Hattie said, ‘thanks to our clever cook here? Surely they needed to treat him for deliberate poisoning?’

      ‘Yes, but they didn’t know what kind of poison. He was paralysed, and it wasn’t long till he stopped breathing. Neither the hospital nor the LCRC – the Local Crime Registration Centre – were able to get test results in time.’

      ‘How did the poisoner know that Slimkat was going to eat that sauce?’ said Hattie. ‘How did they even know he’d go to the Kudu Stall?’

      ‘He just loved that kudu,’ said Jessie. ‘It’s about all he ate. Though he did have roosterkoek and scrambled ostrich egg for breakfast.’

      ‘Did Slimkat tell you this last night?’ I said.

      ‘Ja, and I checked with Reghardt, who was following him. He couldn’t get enough of that kudu, and he always put on that sauce from the yellow bottle.’

      ‘So someone else watching him would’ve learnt the same thing . . .’ said Hattie.

      ‘I don’t understand why other people didn’t get poisoned by that sauce,’ I said.

      ‘I asked at the hospital,’ said Jess, ‘and they had one other person admitted with vomiting. But he didn’t have the other symptoms; it looks like he had alcohol poisoning. The sister said he was moederloos gesuip.’ Drunk as a skunk.

      ‘What would you do if you wanted to poison one person but not others?’ said Hattie.

      ‘Maybe the woman who served him put the poison sauce on his sosatie,’ said Jessie.

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘the sauces were self-service, to speed things up.’

      Hattie answered her own question: ‘I’d get in front of him in the queue, remove the good bottle and give him the poisoned sauce. Then I’d wait till he was finished and take the poisoned bottle away from him.’

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