‘Careful,’ Jessie said. ‘Looks like broken glass. Let’s close up, then we can turn on our torches.’
‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ I said.
Jessie closed the curtains while I did the shutters. Now it was really dark.
‘Here,’ she said, turning on a torch, and handing me another. ‘It’s a headtorch. Fit the strap over like this. And press this button, to make the light dimmer or brighter.’
She helped me fit it on and I looked around the big room. It was an old farmhouse, bigger than mine, but a similar style. Like in my house, the wall had been removed between the sitting room and kitchen. There was a wooden table and a small pantry in the kitchen part, and a fireplace against the wall in the sitting room.
‘Ouch,’ said Jessie.
I thought she’d cut herself, but it was what she’d seen on the floor that hurt. It was a photograph of Martine, all young and glowing in her wedding dress, and Dirk, not quite as young as her, but looking like not such a bad guy after all. There were spears of glass around them, as they smiled up at us.
‘That’s the photograph Anna told me about,’ I said.
I shone onto another picture amongst the broken glass: two men in uniform.
‘It’s Dirk,’ I said. Young and without sideburns. ‘And his father, maybe.’
They were wearing the old South African army uniform. Dirk was grinning but the older guy had thin straight lips.
‘His pa looks like a mean bastard,’ said Jessie.
My husband did his two years in that army. They didn’t train them to be good men.
‘Look,’ said Jessie, shining onto a dark brown smudge on the couch. ‘Blood.’
I nodded, trying not to feel the sadness, trying to think like an investigator. The couch was not far from the fireplace.
‘Yes,’ I said. I shone on the floor next to the couch. In the pool of light was a tiny dark circle. ‘And a drop of blood there too.’
I stepped around the glass and went across to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Clean shelves. Lettuce. Ladismith cheese. Sauces. It was not very exciting, but it made me feel hungry. It was too soon for our sandwiches, though. We needed to do some work first.
‘You carry on here, I’ll check out the rest of the house,’ said Jessie.
I closed the fridge. Next to the stove was a spice rack, labelled in alphabetical order. The pantry had shelves of tins and jars and packets, also very tidy and labelled. Not alphabetically, but by group. Vegetables, Meat, Baking, Recipes. There was a small row of recipe books on a shelf, organised according to size. I saw she had a copy of Cook and Enjoy. I had the Afrikaans version, Kook en Geniet.
I looked around the pantry and kitchen. There was fine black dust on one side of the sink and on the edges of the wooden kitchen table. The kind of dust the police used for fingerprinting. I took the torch from my head and shone it from this angle and that, then leaned down closely to examine the dust.
‘Nothing much in the bedrooms and bathroom,’ said Jessie, coming into the lounge. ‘But Martine’s got a study full of papers. She’s totally organised. Bills, letters, documents, all neatly filed. I bet she was a good bookkeeper.’
‘Look at the table here, Jess. It’s been wiped. Just this part, where the two chairs have been pulled back from the table.’
‘Ja?’
‘Only half the table. Wouldn’t you wipe the whole table, if you were wiping it?’
‘No. I’d just wipe off the messy bit. You think it got messy in here?’
‘Uh uh,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘The murderer wiped their prints off the poker. Which means they weren’t wearing gloves and might have left prints in other places. Martine wasn’t the kind of woman who would wipe only half the table. Look, there are still some little crumbs and dust in the middle there. She wouldn’t have left it like that. Look at her spice rack.’
‘Whoa. Ja. Like her filing system. But maybe she was in a hurry. Or she’s got a maid who’s a bit slack.’ She shone across the black dust on the table. ‘The police were looking for prints here.’
‘But they wouldn’t find any because it was wiped. I think the murderer sat down at the table with her,’ I said, touching the back of a chair.
‘And they drank tea together?’
‘No, the teapot is up on the shelf. High and dry. But there are two glasses washed up at the sink.’
‘So it might be someone she knows.’ Jessie glanced at her watch. ‘Let me get back to those papers.’
While she was in the study, I opened all the kitchen drawers. I put the torch back on my head again because it freed up both my hands. Everything was very netjies in the drawers. Cutlery, dishcloths all neatly stored. Plastic shopping bags folded in little triangles like samosas.
I poked through the rubbish bin. There was a Spar packet crumpled up in there. Why wasn’t it folded? Her arm, I remembered, she had a broken arm. Could you fold a packet properly with one hand? I tried it. It wasn’t easy but I could do it. Even with a glove on.
I went back to the fridge and looked at the expiry date on the packet of lettuce. It was for today, Friday. Spar likes to keep their lettuce fresh, so this one was bought within the last few days.
‘How did you get here?’ I asked the lettuce. ‘And when?’ I turned the packet over in my hands. ‘Sunday and Monday, the Spar has no fresh lettuce. So you must have been bought on Tuesday or Wednesday. Did Martine buy you on Tuesday? The day she died. Her arm was broken, so I don’t think she could drive. Did Dirk drive her or did he maybe shop himself?’ I put the lettuce back on the shelf. ‘I don’t know what it is about men and salad, but I’ve never heard of a man buying lettuce for himself. Did someone else shop for Martine?’
I closed the door of the fridge. I was sorry for the lettuce; it was looking wilted, and it’s a sad thing to see good food going bad. But I had to move on.
At the sink was a dishcloth that I studied in the torchlight. It was white with blue checks. There was a faint reddish mark on one corner. I shone all around the sink. I spotted a small red drop of liquid, beside the tap. I dipped the tip of my gloved little finger into the liquid and then touched it to my tongue and closed my eyes.
I knew that sweet metallic taste.
‘Psssst! Jessie!’