Riotous Assembly Read Online Free PDF

into the

    Kommandant’s overloaded mind. By comparison his experience of bodily dissolution

    at the muzzle of the elephant gun had been a mere sighing of the breeze in distant meadow

    grass. This was a bombshell. Speechless with horror he gazed unfocused in Miss

    Hazelstone’s direction. He knew now what the face of madness looked like. It looked like a

    frail elderly gentlewoman of illustrious and impeccable British descent sitting in

    a winged-back armchair holding in her delicate hands a china teacup on which in gilt

    transfer the crest of the Hazelstones, a wild boar rampant, was underlined by the family

    motto “Baisez-moi”, and openly confessing to an Afrikaans policeman that she was in love

    with her black cook.
    Miss Hazelstone ignored the Kommandant’s stunned silence. She evidently took it for a

    mark of respect for the delicacy of her feelings.
    “Fivepence and I were lovers,” she went on. “We loved one another with a deep and undying

    devotion.”
    Kommandant van Heerden’s mind reeled. It was bad enough having to try, however

    hopelessly, to comprehend what, in God’s name, Miss Hazelstone could have found in any way

    attractive in a black cook, let alone trying to imagine how a black cook could be in love

    with Miss Hazelstone, but when to crown it all, she used the expression “undying

    devotion” while what was left of Fivepence was splattered over an acre of lawn and

    shrubbery or hung sixty feet up a blue gum tree as a direct result of his lover’s passion

    for him, then Kommandant van Heerden knew that his mind was seriously in danger of

    utter derangement.
    “Go on,” he gasped involuntarily. He had intended to say, “For God’s sake shut up,”

    but his professional training got the better of him.
    Miss Hazelstone seemed happy to continue.
    “We became lovers eight years ago and from the first we were delightfully happy.

    Fivepence understood my emotional needs. Of course we couldn’t marry, because of the

    absurd Immorality Act.” She paused and held up a hand as if to silence the Kommandant’s

    shocked protest. “So we had to live in sin.” Kommandant van Heerden was past shock. He

    goggled at her. “But if we weren’t married,” Miss Hazelstone continued, “we were happy. I

    must admit we didn’t have much of a social life, but then by the time you reach my age, a

    quiet life at home is all one really wants, don’t you think?”
    Kommandant van Heerden didn’t think. He was doing his best not to listen. He rose

    unsteadily from his chair and closed the french doors that led out on to the stoep. What this

    ghastly old woman was telling him must on no account reach the ears of Konstabel Els. He

    was relieved to note that the redoubtable Konstabel had finally made it to the top of the

    tree, where he seemed to be stuck.
    While Miss Hazelstone mumbled on with her catalogue of Fivepence’s virtues, the

    Kommandant paced the room, frenziedly searching his mind for some means of hushing the

    case up. Miss Hazelstone and Jacaranda House were practically national institutions.

    Her column on refined living and etiquette appeared in every newspaper in the country,

    not to mention her frequent articles in the glossier women’s journals. If the doyenne of

    English society in Zululand were known to have murdered her black cook, or if falling in

    love with black cooks was to come into the category of refined living and the fashion

    spread, as well it might, South Africa would go coloured in a year. And what about the effect

    on the Zulus themselves when they learnt that one of their number had been having it off

    with the granddaughter of the Great Governor, Sir Theophilus Hazelstone, in Sir

    Theophilus’ own kraal, Jacaranda Park, freely, practically legally, and at her

    insistence? Kommandant van Heerden’s imagination swept on from wholesale rape by

    thousands of Zulu cooks, to native rebellion and finally race war. Luitenant