Herman Charles Bosman has produced another surprise from the grave. It is a hitherto unpublished murder mystery that was uncovered in archives held by the University of Texas. It appears in a new edition of Unto Dust, edited by Craig MacKenzie and published by Human & Rousseau this week.
”Three is no company.”
It was the landdrost’s man who spoke these words (Oom Schalk Lourens said). The landdrost’s man made that comment when three people kept a tryst by the willows on the Vaal.
I was on my way to the town with a load of mealies, that time when the Vaal was in flood. It was not a big load, because of the stalk-borer. A short distance away Nicolaas Vermeulen was standing with his trek. His wagon had been outspanned there for several days. He, too, had been making his way to the dorp and had been held up by floodwaters. Nicolaas Vermeulen was on a visit to relatives and had brought his wife and family with him. Along with his family, Nicolaas Vermeulen had with him, on his wagon, Miemie Retief, who was about nineteen years of age. Miemie Retief was the daughter of a neighbour. She was supposed to be accompanying the Vermeulens to town also in order to visit relatives.
Still further away Gerrit Huyser was camped. He had arrived at the drift a little while before Nicolaas Vermeulen. He had a kaffir to help with the oxen. But otherwise he was travelling alone. Gerrit Huyser’s farm was some distance further up along the Vaal River.
He was now camped on the same outspan with Nicolaas Vermeulen and myself, but had drawn his wagon up nearer the drift, so that when the river went down he would be the first to cross.
I learnt from Nicolaas Vermeulen and his wife that Gerrit Huyser was on his way to the diamond diggings. Well, the mealie crop had been a failure in most parts of the Transvaal that year, and Gerrit Huyser was not the only farmer from that area who had decided to try his luck on the diggings for a while. And because of what had happened with the mealies, I suppose that more than one farmer, in turning up a diamond on the sorting table, would first look to see if there wasn’t a stalk-borer in it.
What was singular about Gerrit Huyser’s trek, however, was the kind of load he had on his wagon. It looked to be mostly household furniture. We could see that from where the bucksails did not fit properly.
One evening Nicolaas Vermeulen and his wife and I sat in front of their family tent after supper, drinking coffee.
Nicolaas Vermeulen’s children played around the camp-fire while we talked and Miemie Retief, the daughter of their neighbour, sat on a riempies stool some distance from us. She had threaded a red ribbon into her black hair. And I was glad of it. Here on a lonely part of the veld, next to a river in flood, where there was nobody to see her — as you would think — she still wanted to appear at her best.
I regretted that I hadn’t thought of wearing my new veldskoens.
After Nicolaas Vermeulen and I had, each in turn, said that it would probably take another two days for the river to go down enough for us to be able to cross, the conversation turned to Gerrit Huyser.
”It’s not as though he has sold up,” Nicolaas Vermeulen said, ”and no farmer goes and stays on the diggings for more than a few months. When I first saw his wagon loaded up so high I thought it was with tree-trunks that he had fished out of the flooded river. I thought it was firewood … ”
”If he’s brought along that big tamboetie-wood cupboard in which his wife keeps those plates with the blue twigs painted on them,” Nicolaas Vermeulen’s wife, Martha, interrupted him, ”then it might perhaps not be so foolish, after all. That’s about all that cupboard is any good for — to light the fire with … The airs she gives herself over that piece of junk.”
I mentioned that I had that very morning also seen Gerrit Huyser’s rusbank on the wagon. I had seen it while I was talking to Gerrit Huyser, I explained, and a gust of wind had raised a corner of the wagon-sail. Later in the day I had seen him fasten down that flap with an ox-riem.
So we said that it looked as though Gerrit Huyser intended taking things in rather too easy a way on the diggings.
”I suppose he thinks he can sit back on that rusbank and watch the kaffirs work,” Nicolaas Vermeulen said. ”Just as though he’s still at home on his farm.”
We said that with all that furniture in his tent on the diggings, it looked as though Gerrit Huyser was expecting company. We started to wonder if he would have the coloured portrait of the president hanging on the inside of his tent, opposite his family tree in its gold frame — just like in his voorkamer at home.
It was then that Martha Vermeulen asked what Gerrit Huyser’s wife would be doing all that time on the farm, alone and without any furniture in the house.
”Anyway,” I said, ”she’ll find it easy to keep the place tidy.”
I said this several times. But Nicolaas Vermeulen and his wife did not laugh. I looked quickly in the direction of Miemie Retief. The light from the fire made pictures on her cheeks and forehead.
That was the moment when Gerrit Huyser arrived in our midst. He came out of the veld, where a dark wind was, and he moved slowly and ponderously. For a moment he stood between us and the fire, his shoulders high against the night. Then he took off his hat in a way that seemed to hold in it a kind of challenge.
Nicolaas Vermeulen invited him to sit down. Gerrit Huyser found a place for himself that was furthest away from where Miemie Retief was seated.
We spoke first in general terms, and then I mentioned to Gerrit Huyser that he would find quite a number of farmers from our area on the diggings. There were Stoffel Lange and his cousin Maans and Oupa Snyman and almost all the Bekkers, not even to mention the farmers from the Kromberg section.
”Anyway, if they all come to visit you at the same time in your tent on the diggings,” Nicolaas Vermeulen said, playfully, ”you’ll have chairs for them all.”
I was surprised at the way Nicolaas Vermeulen was talking.
”And if you find a big diamond you’ll be able to buy yourself a new span of red Afrikaner oxen, with their coats all shining,” Nicolaas Vermeulen chuckled. ”And you’ll be able to get perhaps even a new wife.”
I looked down at the ground and felt uncomfortable. When I glanced up again I could see that Martha Vermeulen had nudged her husband. She had nudged him almost off the upturned candle-box he was sitting on. The Vermeulens, at all events — I realised — had not brought many chairs with them.
I suddenly thought of looking at Miemie Retief. She was sitting with her head bent slightly forward and with her eyes cast on the ground, as mine had been. Then she raised her head again, and in the swift look that passed between herself and Gerrit Huyser I understood that it would have made no difference if I had thought of wearing my new veldskoens that evening.
The little party in front of the Vermeulens’ tent broke up shortly afterwards.
But the things Nicolaas Vermeulen had to tell me next morning did not come as a surprise to me. He told me of Miemie Retief’s meeting with Gerrit Huyser under the stars. He said that his wife, Martha, had watched those two from behind the flap of the tent.
”Miemie’s coming with my wife and me was just a trick of hers to get away from home,” Nicolaas Vermeulen said. ”It is clear that she and Gerrit Huyser had an appointment to meet here by the Vaal. How it will all end, the good Lord only knows.”
You can imagine for yourself the strain that was in the situation after that. When we were all five of us together, we spoke nervously about unimportant things. When I was with Nicolaas Vermeulen and his wife we spoke of Miemie Retief and Gerrit Huyser. But what Miemie Retief and Gerrit Huyser spoke about at those times when they were alone together, I suppose no one can tell.
Hour after hour we waited for the river to go down. But nobody scanned the floodwaters more anxiously than did Gerrit Huyser.
Nicolaas Vermeulen’s wife said she was convinced that Gerrit Huyser would yet murder us all in our sleep. She was also sure that he had murdered his wife and had brought her along on the wagon, lying in that tall cupboard. Every murder story had a chest or something like that in it, for the body.
”And how she used to polish that cupboard with olieblaar,” Martha Vermeulen added. ”I can’t bear to think of it. The poor thing — lying there, in amongst those plates with all the blue twigs painted on them.”
I tried to comfort her by saying that Gerrit Huyser would at least have had the forethought to take the plates out first.
Martha Vermeulen’s agitation had an unhappy effect on both Nicolaas and myself.
Meanwhile, it seemed to me that Gerrit Huyser’s wagon wore a doomed look, somehow, with all that furniture piled on it. And it was at the wagon that Gerrit Huyser and Miemie Retief were standing when two men called on Gerrit Huyser. Even at a distance we could tell, from their official air, that the visitors were landdrost’s men. Gerrit did not take some chairs down from the wagon for his guests to sit on.
And, as always seems to happen in such cases, it was at about that time, also, that the third person in this affair arrived. She came there, to the trysting place, under the willows by the Vaal, where wild birds sang.
The landdrost’s men lifted her out of the water and loosened the ox-riems that had bound her feet over the long distance that the flooded river had carried her. And it was after they had laid the body of Gerrit Huyser’s wife in the tall tamboetie cupboard that one of the landdrost’s men made the remark that, earlier on, I told you of. — ”Three,” the landdrost’s man said, ”is no company.”
John Matshikiza’s column will return next week