Читать онлайн «The Artful Egg»
Автор Джеймс Макклюр
ALSO BY JAMES McCLURE
Copyright ©1984 by Sabensa Gakulu Limited
First published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan
London Limited, London
This edition published in 2013 by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McClure, James, 1939–2006.
The artful egg / James McClure. —1st American ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-61695-246-4
1. Kramer, Trompie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Zondi, Mickey (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Police—South Africa—Fiction.
4. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PR9369.
3. M394A87 2012823′. 914—dc23
2012033748
v3. 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
1
A HEN IS an egg’s way of making another egg.
This was the thought uppermost in the mind of Ramjut Pillay, Asiatic Postman 2nd Class, at the start of the horrific Tuesday morning that altered the course of his life. He tried to have an uppermost thought every morning, for fear of being lulled into intellectual stagnation by the sort of reading his work required of him:
Not that most envelopes, being mailed locally, had anything like as much on them, making this example—an air letter from Cincinnati—the workaday equivalent of
Not that there was ever any real need to read further than the first couple of lines anyway, because nothing reached his sorting-frame that hadn’t already been set aside for Morningside, but he prided himself on being conscientious.
Ramjut Pillay slipped Mrs. Truscott’s air letter through the slot in her front door, sidestepped her Dachshund with nimble disdain, and continued on his way. There was nothing today for the Van der Plank family at number 6, and only a few bills and a holiday postcard for the Trenchards at number 8.
He no longer perused postcards; the sheer inanity of their scribbled messages was more than his rather remarkable mind could bear.
“So let us ponder more profoundly and afresh,” he murmured, as he opened the gate to 8 Jan Smuts Close, “the devilish cunning shown by the aforesaid egg, and its consequent effect upon the wretched fowl in question. …”
Ramjut Pillay invariably used the plural form when addressing himself, being exceedingly conscious of the fact that there was a lot more to him than met the eye—which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
Bespectacled, standing five-two-and-a-quarter, slightly bow-legged and as spare as a sparrow’s drumstick, he “reliably informed” his pen pals the world over that he was “wholly Gandhi-esque” in appearance, “save for a head of truly healthy hair. ” What he didn’t tell his pen pals was that people frequently looked right through him, just as though he wasn’t there, and that, as a child, his mother had kept losing him on buses, in shops, and at the Hindu temple down Harber Road.
