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on. “I want you to know that I finally arrived at an even better solution to dear

    Fivepence’s little trouble. I was having my six-monthly check-up at the dentist and Dr

    Levy gave me an injection of local anaesthetic to deaden the pain.” She hesitated as if

    ashamed to confess to a weakness. “Of course in the old days we never bothered with such

    nonsense. A little pain never hurt anyone. But Dr Levy insisted and afterwards I was so

    glad I had had it. You see I suddenly realized how I could stop Fivepence being overcome

    by the intensity of his feelings for me.” She paused. There was indeed no need for her to

    continue.
    Kommandant van Heerden’s lightning intellect had raced ahead and had grasped the point

    quite firmly. Besides he was beginning to understand, though only fitfully, the train

    of thought that Miss Hazelstone was bound to follow.
    At this moment he visualized the scene in court which would follow the disclosure

    that Miss Hazelstone had made it a habit to inject her black cook’s penis with a

    hypodermic syringe filled with novocaine before allowing him to have sexual

    intercourse with her. He visualized it and vowed that it would never happen, even if it

    meant he had to kill her to prevent it.
    Despairingly his gaze wandered round the assembly of long-dead Hazelstones adorning

    the walls of the drawing-room and he hoped they appreciated the sacrifices he was

    prepared to make to save their family name from the shame that Miss Hazelstone seemed

    hell-bent on bestowing on it. The bit about the novocaine injections was an innovation

    in sexual techniques of such a bizarre nature that it wouldn’t just hit the national

    headlines. The newspapers of the world would splash that titbit in foot-high letters

    across their front pages. He couldn’t begin to think how they would actually word it, but

    he had every confidence in their editors’ abilities to make it sensational. He tried to

    imagine what sort of sensation Fivepence had found it to be and reached the conclusion

    that the cook’s death at the muzzle of that awful elephant gun must have seemed a

    relatively comfortable release from the continual practice of Miss Hazelstone

    plunging the needle of her hypodermic syringe into the top of his cock. The Kommandant

    wondered idly if Fivepence had had a foreskin. It was a fact that they would never be able

    to ascertain now.
    The thought caused him to glance out of the window to see how Konstabel Els was getting

    on. He noted, with what little astonishment Miss Hazelstone’s confession had left in

    him, that Els had regained his head for heights, not to mention Fivepence’s, and had somehow

    managed to reach the ground where he was busily seeking promotion by kicking the Indian

    butler into collecting the scattered remains of the Zulu cook and putting them into a

    pillowcase. Els was, as usual, the Kommandant thought, being a bit optimistic. They

    didn’t need anything as large as a pillowcase. A spongebag would have done just as

    well.

Chapter 4
    Behind him Miss Hazelstone, evidently exhausted by her confession, sat back silent

    in her armchair and gazed happily into her memories. Kommandant van Heerden slumped

    into a chair opposite her and gazed with less satisfaction into his immediate

    future. What Miss Hazelstone had revealed to him he had no doubt she would reveal to the

    world if he gave her half a chance and at all costs those revelations had got to be stopped

    in their tracks. His own career, the reputation of Zululand’s leading family, the whole

    future of South Africa clearly depended on Miss Hazelstone’s silence. His first duty was

    to ensure that no word of the afternoon’s events leaked out of Jacaranda Park. Kommandant

    van Heerden had little faith in his own ability to prevent that leak. He had none

    whatsoever in Els’.
    The Kommandant knew from bitter experience that Konstabel Els was incapable of

    keeping anything, money,