Recipes for Love and Murder. Sally Andrew

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      ‘Tannie Maria?’

      ‘Hats,’ I said.

      ‘You all right, darling? You sound a tad breathless.’

      I put the rosemary and the geraniums on the phone table and sat down on the chair.

      ‘What did Jessie find out?’ I asked.

      ‘Can you come in to the office? To discuss the murder case.’

      ‘The case,’ I said, because it felt good to say.

      ‘Well, it’s not as if it’s a big murder mystery. We know jolly well who did it. But we don’t want the rotter to get away with it, do we?’

      ‘I can’t come yet,’ I said. ‘Detective Henk Kannemeyer is coming here today.’

      ‘The big chap,’ she said, ‘with the strong arms.’

      ‘To take my statement. And read the letters.’

      ‘Jessie went to interview him, but he wouldn’t tell her anything. Maybe you’ll have better luck.’

      ‘I’ll do my best. What did Jessie find out at the hospital?’

      ‘Sister Mostert, Jessie’s mum, heard that it may’ve been an overdose. Sleeping tablets.’

      ‘Suicide?’ I leaned forward in my chair.

      ‘Maybe. They still have to do the autopsy.’

      ‘Look, I mustn’t stay on the phone. You know, in case Kannemeyer calls.’

      ‘You sound like you’re waiting for a date.’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Hattie. I must go.’

      I rubbed the geranium leaf between my finger and thumb and breathed it in.

      Suicide. Selfmoord as they say in Afrikaans: self-murder. Sjoe. In some ways it felt worse than murder. If a man treats a woman so badly that she ends her own life, it’s like he has killed her twice: her heart and then her body.

      When I was with Fanie I thought of killing myself. I even got as far as buying sleeping tablets.

      There was a pressure on my chest like a bag of potatoes. I just let myself sit there, next to the phone. Then I was suddenly crying. For Martine, for Anna, for myself. I hadn’t cried for years and there I was, crying for the second time in just a few weeks. Maybe it was not a bad thing. When I was finished, my heart felt a bit lighter.

      I hadn’t killed myself. I was here now, alive. I had chickens that gave me beautiful eggs, a stoep with the best view, and some real friends.

      I took another sniff of the geranium and got up.

      I peeled the potatoes and sprinkled rosemary, salt and olive oil over them, put them in the oven and turned up the heat. Then I took the letters from Martine and Anna outside to the stoep table, along with some tea and beskuit, and read through what the women had written, and my responses to them.

      ‘No,’ I said to the last beskuit. ‘This woman didn’t kill herself. She had plans to escape.’

      I went inside and chopped up half a pumpkin, and sprinkled it with sugar, cinnamon and blobs of butter.

      ‘I wonder if I left the phone off the hook,’ I said to the pumpkin as I put it in the oven.

      I checked the phone. It was okay. I nipped the ends off the green beans and prepared the batter for the chocolate cake. I was greasing the cake tin, my fingers covered with butter, when the phone rang.

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      ‘Mevrou van Harten? It’s Detective Lieutenant Henk Kannemeyer. Can I come round now?’

      I looked at the clock on the wall. It was noon.

      ‘Could you make it at one o’clock, Detective?’

      He cleared his throat. Everyone in Ladismith knows business is not done between one and two. All the shops close so that people can go home for lunch. Except for the Spar. And the police station.

      ‘I can give you a bite to eat,’ I said. ‘That is, unless . . . ’

      Maybe he was expected at home.

      ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’ve got sandwiches.’

      ‘No, no, I’ve made roast lamb.’

      ‘Roast lamb?’

      ‘With potatoes and pumpkin. Soetpampoen.’

      ‘Oh. Well then . . . ’

      I wondered who made him his sandwiches.

      I put the cake in the oven and took the foil off the lamb. Then I prepared the chocolate icing. I added the rum and buttermilk and tasted the dark mixture on the tip of my little finger.

      ‘Mmmm,’ I said. I added a pinch of salt and then tasted again. ‘Perfect.’

      I cleaned the kitchen and laid the outside table. The big jug of lemonade with ice and fresh mint stood next to a tray with the letters from Martine, and her friend, Anna. My replies were there too.

      The heat had melted the dark blue out of the sky, leaving it that pale Karoo blue. But the trees and tin afdak kept the stoep cool.

      I took off my apron, tidied my hair and put on fresh lipstick. I heard a car heading my way and I smoothed my dress and went outside. A bokmakierie was calling to its mate in the thorn tree. I saw his police van pulling up in my driveway. Those birds make such a beautiful trilling sound, it goes right through your heart. I walked up the pathway to wave at him. Just so he knew he was in the right place.

      I watched him get out. Long trousers and his khaki cotton shirt a bit open at his neck and chest. He touched the tip of his moustache and dipped his head as he greeted me.

      ‘Just listen to those bokmakieries,’ I said.

      ‘Ja. Lovely.’

      We walked to the stoep together. He sat down, fitting his long legs under the table.

      ‘Smells good,’ he said.

      ‘Lemonade?’ I poured some into a tall glass for him. He smelled good too. Like sandalwood and honey. ‘Here are the letters I told you about. I’ll just be in the kitchen.’

      He started reading as I went to look after the roast and the chocolate cake. The cake needed to cool before I could ice it.

      When I came out with the roast lamb and vegetables, Kannemeyer was holding the letters in his hand, and looking out across the veld at our red mountain, the Rooiberg. I could still hear the bokmakieries calling, but they sounded further away now, maybe in the big gwarrie tree.

      He jumped up to help me put the roasting tray on the table.

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