Riotous Assembly Read Online Free PDF Page A

reasons

    for the Dobermann’s continuing attachment to Els’ groin, the interval allowed the

    Kommandant to concentrate his attention, interrupted only by the agonized screams of

    his assistant, on the case he had been forced to investigate.
    By the time peace and tranquillity had once more been restored to Jacaranda House and

    Miss Hazelstone had sent Oogly, the Indian butler, to serve tea in the drawing-room,

    Kommandant van Heerden had sufficiently recovered his faculties to begin the

    investigation of the case. But first he ordered Konstabel Els to retrieve the remains

    of Fivepence from the lawn and from what was clearly an unscaleable blue gum, an order which

    the Konstabel tended to dispute on the grounds that he was in need of immediate and

    prolonged hospital treatment for multiple and severe dog bite, not to mention battle

    fatigue and shell shock.
    In the end the Kommandant was able to resume his interrogation of Miss Hazelstone to

    the accompaniment of an old-fashioned tea with smoked-salmon sandwiches and cream

    scones and the almost equally enjoyable observation of Konstabel Els suffering

    severe vertigo some forty feet up the blue gum.
    “Now about this cook,” the Kommandant began. “Can I take it that you were dissatisfied

    with his cooking?”
    “Fivepence was an excellent cook,” Miss Hazelstone declared emphatically.
    “I see,” said the Kommandant, though he didn’t, either literally or metaphorically.

    He had been having difficulty with his vision ever since he had been enveloped in that

    ball of flame. It sort of came and went and his hearing was behaving erratically too.
    “Fivepence was a culinary expert,” Miss Hazelstone went on.
    “Was he indeed?” The Kommandant’s hopes were raised. “And when did he do this?”
    “Every day of course.”
    “And when did you first discover what he was up to?”
    “Almost from the word ‘Go’.”
    The Kommandant was amazed. “And you allowed him to go on?”
    “Of course I did. You don’t think I was going to stop him, do you?” Miss Hazelstone

    snapped.
    “But your duty as a citizen-”
    “My duty as a citizen fiddlesticks. Why in the name of heaven should my duty as a

    citizen oblige me to sack an excellent cook?”
    The Kommandant groped in the recesses of his shell-shocked mind for a suitable

    answer.
    “Well, you seem to have shot him for it,” he said at last.
    “I did nothing of the sort,” Miss Hazelstone snorted. “Fivepence’s death was a crime

    passionelle.”
    Kommandant van Heerden tried to imagine what a Cream Passion Nell looked like.

    Fivepence’s death had looked more like an exploded blood pudding to him and as for the

    portions that Konstabel Els was still attempting to dislodge from the blue gum, even a

    dog butcher would have been hard put to it to think of an adequate description for

    them.
    “A Cream Passion Nell,” he repeated slowly, hoping that Miss Hazelstone would come to

    his rescue with a more familiar term. She did.
    “A crime of passion, you fool,” she snarled.
    Kommandant van Heerden nodded. He had never supposed it to have been anything else.

    Nobody in his right mind would have inflicted those appalling injuries on Fivepence in

    cold blood and without some degree of feeling being involved.
    “Oh I can see that,” he said.
    But Miss Hazelstone had no intention of allowing him to remain under this

    comforting misapprehension. “I want you to understand that my feelings for Fivepence

    were not those which normally obtain between mistress and servant,” she said.
    Kommandant van Heerden had already reached that conclusion off his own bat. He nodded

    encouragingly. Miss Hazelstone’s old-fashioned and formal way of expressing her

    thoughts delighted him. Her next remark had quite the opposite effect.
    “What I am trying to tell you,” she continued, “is that I was in love with him.”
    It took some time for the full implications of this statement to sink