The Artful Egg Read Online Free PDF

had no crow’s feet at their corners to confirm that she’d often seen the funny side of things, this despite the high forehead.
    Then too much detail began to impose itself. The fly trapped in the sticky blood on the lower breast, another glutted in her pubic hair, where there had been seepage, and most unpleasant of all, for no particular reason, the nail missing from the smallest toe on her left foot—a recent injury that’d been healing. So Kramer half-closed his eyes, and looked at the body again, this time intent only on forming a general impression.
    What he saw this time made him smile, as the pallor of her skin, her jet-black hair and red lipstick combined to create a
risqué
image of Walt Disney’s Snow White, with obviously one of the Seven Dwarfs in attendance.
    “What’s so funny?” demanded Strydom.
    “Nothing, Doc! But I must be right in saying this lady was in the habit of using her swimming-pool at night. See how pale she is? Where’s her tan, if she was used to going out there in the daytime?”
    “Oh ja, that’s a great help—any of her friends could probably tell you that,” said Strydom. “What I still want to know is how this stabbing was done.”
    Kramer took the magnifying glass from him and bent low over the wound.
    “Ja, I can see what you mean.… The hole’s a funny shape, isn’t it? Why a stabbing? How can you tell this wasn’t a big bullet?”
    “From the way the skin’s been turned and pushed in. Besides, there’s no burn marks of any kind. Whatever went in there can’t have been hot.”
    “Uh-huh, that sounds logical.”
    “I’ll just have to get her back to the mortuary and cut down through here, try to work it out that way.”
    “When will this be?”
    “Well, as soon as Fingerprints has arrived and taken pictures, I suppose. To hurry things up, I’m having her own doctor to come round and identify her.”
    “Can we fix a time, so I can be there?”
    “Say two o’clock, then, Tromp,” said Strydom, glancing at his watch. “Which reminds me, where has that bloody fool Van Rensburg got to with the mortuary van? I don’t suppose you passed him on the way out here, did you?”
    “Not exactly,” said Kramer.

3
    T HEN THE USUAL party atmosphere began to establish itself, as more and more police vehicles came up the drive, spilling out men who joked nervously and laughed a lot. Many arrived by invitation, ready to perform the tasks that made them specialists at a murder scene. Most of the others were gatecrashers, uniformed patrol officers from neighbouring beat areas whose curiosity had been aroused by the flurry of radio calls. The new arrivals mingled on the patio, stealing glances through the sliding window at their hostess for the afternoon, now wearing a pink sheet from the airing cupboard.
    When Dr. Strydom left, giving a curt nod to Jaap du Preez, two Fingerprint officers were admitted. One immediately set about doing conjuring tricks with dusting powder and sable brushes, producing latent prints from nowhere, while his partner flicked back the sheet and started taking pictures, bobbing around his subject with all the deference of a Society photographer.
    The murmurings on the patio became a cocktail titter, several rather bitchy things were said about middle-aged spread, and then they all looked behind them, distracted by a loud diversion. This was provided by a police dog which, entering into the spirit of things, had decided to go skinny-dipping in the swimming-pool, inadvertently dragging its master, who’dbeen on tiptoe, off balance and into the water with it. This earned the pair of them, both dog-paddling furiously, a ragged cheer, and an athletic uniformed sergeant leaped up on to the springboard to bawl directions, almost falling in himself. More cheering, and when everyone turned around again the sheet had been replaced and Sergeant Van Rensburg, looking like some form of extremely pompous and obese butler, was to be seen carrying in his