“Yes,” I said, thinking of the wound in Billy’s chest. “It does. This customer was also an older gentleman?”
“Oh no,” said Ansveld. “He was quite—what’s the word?—strapping. Yes. Perhaps thirty. Athletic. A virile young black man with a pale scar just above one eye. An old cut.”
“He was black?” I said, taken off guard.
“It’s not unusual,” said Ansveld, very slightly defensive. “We do not discriminate here.”
“Not if they can pay,” I said.
Ansveld’s face clouded with indignation, but I cut in before he could say anything.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that to sound … Of course you don’t discriminate, and of course your customers—all your customers—have to be able to pay. Luxorite is an expensive commodity.”
Ansveld’s hauteur had drained a little, but he was still standing on his dignity. “My father was not an easy man,” he said. “Very strict in his ways. Conservative. But he did not believe in the old Feldesland lie about the hierarchy of peoples, and he had some feeling for what was taken from the Mahweni when our ancestors came here. In his own small way, he did what he could to restore balance, and in this, at least, I try to emulate him.”
“Of course,” I said. “I apologize. This is not my world, Mr. Ansveld,” I said, gesturing around the shop, with its beautiful, elegant merchandise, sparkling in its own light. “I am in it because it is my job to be so. But I am not of it, and at times it seems quite…”
“Hostile?”
“Let’s say foreign,” I said with a half smile.
He considered me, then conceded the point. “I can see how it would,” he said.
“So this young Mahweni,” I said, regrouping. “You called him strapping.”
“Athletic,” he said thoughtfully, and it struck me that he had a connoisseur’s eye for more than luxorite. “But it was more than that. He had a certain bearing, a poise…”
“Military?” I asked.
The word struck him with the force of inspiration. “Exactly!” he said.
“And the white man?”
Ansveld wobbled his head uncertainly. “Perhaps,” he said. “I really didn’t get a good look at him, and his movement was less—” Something dawned in his face. “He had a limp! I had forgotten, but I’m sure of it. Not too pronounced, but a kind of stiffness down one side that made him shuffle. I remember wondering if he might break something.”
“One more question,” I said.
Ansveld smiled, pleased to show how useful he could be.
“When did the cane appear?” I asked.
“I didn’t see the person who brought it,” said Ansveld Jr. “It wasn’t there the day my father went to see the Lani boy, I’d swear to it, and I closed the shop that night.”
“So someone brought it the following day?” I asked. “The day your father died.”
“Well, that’s the odd thing,” said Ansveld, his face contorted with the effort of remembering. “I’d swear it was already there. I opened the shop before I heard about my father’s death, and I remember seeing it there in the umbrella stand. But that would mean someone put it there overnight, or the previous evening after I had closed up. Whoever it was must have broken in.”
“And left his cane in an umbrella stand?” I said doubtfully. “That doesn’t sound right. Was there sign of forced entry?”
“None.”
“Was there anything else unusual when you opened the shop that morning?”
“Cigar ash,” said Ansveld, staring at nothing and clearly unnerved. “Over there beside that chair. I spoke to the maid about it, but she said my father had told her not to bother cleaning the shop that evening.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Yes.”
“And you did not mention this to the police?”
“I was told my father had died by his own hand. There was no reason to think … But, now…” His face, which had been clouded by doubt, became suddenly focused and intense. “You think he was killed by someone. That’s why you are here asking questions. You think he met with someone here the night before he died, someone who left his cane behind, and that that person typed a suicide note on that infernal machine of his, and then killed him. Murdered him.” He sat down abruptly, face slack as his mind put the pieces together.
“Yes,” I said. “I do. And that person has killed others as well. Billy Jennings was the most recent, but not the youngest. That was the boy called Berrit, who also met your father. There was an old Mahweni as well, though that never made the papers. And me,” I added. “He tried to kill me the night he got Billy, and I am certain that he is going to try again.”
CHAPTER